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Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

Title: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

Development log (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)
Development page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/), and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).  Questions and comments about the development page or DF development somewhat more broadly work here, though any contentious topics that lead to derails are discouraged -- there are threads for those too.

If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them all, although it is difficult to respond to everything when it is busy.  I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here.  In the past, we've all found the practice of making questions limegreen works pretty well.  You do that like this:

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions limegreen[/color]


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:51:23 am

The last reply from the last thread:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2988807#msg2988807


We're going to be starting up the bug-fixing soon, and at some point during that process we'll also be settling exactly what the next new features will be.  We'll update the dev page once we know!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 15, 2012, 02:00:21 am

Sadly you haven't time for random vampires. It was one of the features I thought was really cool.

No problem, I think this is still your greatest release by far. There isn't a lot of bugs (though it needs a bit of balance...) and almost no game breaking bugs!

I hope you find time to fine tune some of the new vampires. Vampires in adventure mode almost scream they are vampires. Werewolves shouldn't be found easily in their human form...and sewers shouldn't be depopulated when their denizens die of old age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nukularpower on February 15, 2012, 02:02:04 am

Thanks for all the hard work!

My question:
Are there any plans to implement a relatively easier way to handle zombies in Fortress mode such as a weapon material weakness, or a type of fire weapon such as a torch that doesn't set fire to terrain, or whatever else?  Because I'm not sure how it's intended to be done right now - With how they revive about 10 seconds after death, there isnt even enough time to drag them to a modded "crematorium" or some such thing before you have to kill them again.. and then again.. and then again...

Also, and just IMO, it seems like there are way too many animal men and giant animals lately.. animal men are amusing but it would be nice to see normal animals sometimes too!

Thanks again for the awesome release otherwise!  Looking forward to all the possibilities these new features open up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 02:41:12 am

Quote from: nukularpower on February 15, 2012, 02:02:04 am

Thanks for all the hard work!

My question:
Are there any plans to implement a relatively easier way to handle zombies in Fortress mode such as a weapon material weakness, or a type of fire weapon such as a torch that doesn't set fire to terrain, or whatever else?  Because I'm not sure how it's intended to be done right now - With how they revive about 10 seconds after death, there isnt even enough time to drag them to a modded "crematorium" or some such thing before you have to kill them again.. and then again.. and then again...

Depending on your zombie source, there are two possible solutions: Kill the necromancer, or stay out of evil areas.

Quote

Also, and just IMO, it seems like there are way too many animal men and giant animals lately.. animal men are amusing but it would be nice to see normal animals sometimes too!

Thanks again for the awesome release otherwise!  Looking forward to all the possibilities these new features open up.

I agree that deviant creatures could be toned down a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nukularpower on February 15, 2012, 03:51:13 am

I know "don't embark on evil areas" is a solution to that.. but, well, is that really an improvement to the last version?  Not being able to use evil areas at all?

Maybe I just suck, but I failed 10/10 embarks on haunted biomes within 10 minutes each, 2 of them within about 2 minutes or less... whats the point of evil biomes existing at all in that case?   Even a full military embark didn't work, cuz as soon as one military dwarf dies, you're screwed.. and the less said of my dog zerg attempt, the better.

I guess that my feeling is that they just reanimate too fast, and too many times.  Everything that dies becoming immortal and hostile doesnt seem sustainable, given how DF works, and assuming that this is how it is meant to be, I guess I just prefer the old evil biomes that were playable, if hard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 04:35:34 am

Toady, something I'm sure you're aware of is how the Kobolds have been starving to death en masse and mostly extincting very early in worldgen ever since the prior update where worldgen food needs became respected. A lot of people have gotten around this by adding the [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] to them, and because this is the solution you used to avoid the same thing happening with Goblins, I figured its omission from the Kobold raws was an oversight to be fixed in the long update. Now that it's launched, I see the Kobolds once again dying off of starvation - albeit, in 27 or 33 now instead of in 4, but they're still very much gone. I'm betting that the slightly longer survival is an accidental product of how worldgen has changed, and not an intentional attempt to make the Kobs more survivable.

Given how straightforward it is to fix the problem with the [NO_EAT] / [NO_DRINK] tags, the fact that you've clearly been willing to apply that fix before with Goblins, and the near-universality of Kobold doom without it, should we assume there's another reason you haven't made the Kobolds inediate for the time being? If not - and I apologize if this falls into suggestion territory - will the issue be considered a bug to be stamped out in the forthcoming bugfix releases by adding the tags?

I realize self-fixing it is easy, but especially with the newer, much lengthier Worldgen process, it's a pain to generate a world and then realize you forgot to do so and you either have to throw the whole thing out or live with a Koboldless or mostly-Koboldless world, and it would be equally quick to address on your end and be done with it, no?

Thank you for all your hard work, especially over the last eleven months. :) I'll be donating some ☼ when I have some to spare.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on February 15, 2012, 05:02:28 am

So I was reading through legends and I came across an abducted child who was reunited with her mother (and then abducted again, turned, worked as a kidnapper and became famous for her murders but that's neither here nor there).

Is the reunion of abductees and their parents a new and heartwarming feature or just a little known one?

Edit: Confirmed to be old by Parker147

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: darkflagrance on February 15, 2012, 05:51:37 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 04:35:34 am

Toady, something I'm sure you're aware of is how the Kobolds have been starving to death en masse and mostly extincting very early in worldgen ever since the prior update where worldgen food needs became respected. A lot of people have gotten around this by adding the [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] to them, and because this is the solution you used to avoid the same thing happening with Goblins, I figured its omission from the Kobold raws was an oversight to be fixed in the long update. Now that it's launched, I see the Kobolds once again dying off of starvation - albeit, in 27 or 33 now instead of in 4, but they're still very much gone. I'm betting that the slightly longer survival is an accidental product of how worldgen has changed, and not an intentional attempt to make the Kobs more survivable.

Given how straightforward it is to fix the problem with the [NO_EAT] / [NO_DRINK] tags, the fact that you've clearly been willing to apply that fix before with Goblins, and the near-universality of Kobold doom without it, should we assume there's another reason you haven't made the Kobolds inediate for the time being? If not - and I apologize if this falls into suggestion territory - will the issue be considered a bug to be stamped out in the forthcoming bugfix releases by adding the tags?

I realize self-fixing it is easy, but especially with the newer, much lengthier Worldgen process, it's a pain to generate a world and then realize you forgot to do so and you either have to throw the whole thing out or live with a Koboldless or mostly-Koboldless world, and it would be equally quick to address on your end and be done with it, no?

Thank you for all your hard work, especially over the last eleven months. :) I'll be donating some ☼ when I have some to spare.

I thought kobolds had been fixed in this version? There are plenty of reports about people getting murdered by kobolds if I recall correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 15, 2012, 05:54:44 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on February 15, 2012, 05:51:37 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 04:35:34 am

Toady, something I'm sure you're aware of is how the Kobolds have been starving to death en masse and mostly extincting very early in worldgen ever since the prior update where worldgen food needs became respected. A lot of people have gotten around this by adding the [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] to them, and because this is the solution you used to avoid the same thing happening with Goblins, I figured its omission from the Kobold raws was an oversight to be fixed in the long update. Now that it's launched, I see the Kobolds once again dying off of starvation - albeit, in 27 or 33 now instead of in 4, but they're still very much gone. I'm betting that the slightly longer survival is an accidental product of how worldgen has changed, and not an intentional attempt to make the Kobs more survivable.

Given how straightforward it is to fix the problem with the [NO_EAT] / [NO_DRINK] tags, the fact that you've clearly been willing to apply that fix before with Goblins, and the near-universality of Kobold doom without it, should we assume there's another reason you haven't made the Kobolds inediate for the time being? If not - and I apologize if this falls into suggestion territory - will the issue be considered a bug to be stamped out in the forthcoming bugfix releases by adding the tags?

I realize self-fixing it is easy, but especially with the newer, much lengthier Worldgen process, it's a pain to generate a world and then realize you forgot to do so and you either have to throw the whole thing out or live with a Koboldless or mostly-Koboldless world, and it would be equally quick to address on your end and be done with it, no?

Thank you for all your hard work, especially over the last eleven months. :) I'll be donating some ☼ when I have some to spare.

I thought kobolds had been fixed in this version? There are plenty of reports about people getting murdered by kobolds if I recall correctly.

Well, like he said, a lot of them seems to starve at year 30 or so, so I guess either all of them don't die out or that they were playing games with less than 30 years generated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 06:17:47 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 15, 2012, 05:54:44 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on February 15, 2012, 05:51:37 am

I thought kobolds had been fixed in this version? There are plenty of reports about people getting murdered by kobolds if I recall correctly.

Well, like he said, a lot of them seems to starve at year 30 or so, so I guess either all of them don't die out or that they were playing games with less than 30 years generated.

I did say "near-universality" for a reason; even in the last version, I had at least one adventurer get ambushed by a pack of Kobolds in a world where every Kobold listed in Legends was marked as having starved in 4, and I'd thought them extinct. At the time, I assumed there was something strange going on re: respect of kobold extinction when generating ambush groups, because they were all generic un-nameds and because their species had otherwise been totally unheard of since the year in which they allegedly died out. I don't know enough about how that system works to pose an intelligent question about it, though, and it's only related to the starvation problem after-the-fact, so it's neither here nor there with regards to that question.

EDIT: Is it possible that the starving-extinction is still occurring, but this ambush group weirdness combined with the already well-documented overfrequency of ambushes in the new version are making the technically dead kobolds seem more common anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 06:18:57 am

edit: double post sorry, don't think I can delete it either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 15, 2012, 06:21:02 am

Every world I generated, even those with 500 years had kobols.... Granted, they aren't as numerous as dwarves or elves, but they are there. The last one had 2000+ kobolds, in the year 250.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 07:09:49 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 04:35:34 am

Toady, something I'm sure you're aware of is how the Kobolds have been starving to death en masse and mostly extincting very early in worldgen ever since the prior update where worldgen food needs became respected. A lot of people have gotten around this by adding the [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] to them, and because this is the solution you used to avoid the same thing happening with Goblins, I figured its omission from the Kobold raws was an oversight to be fixed in the long update. Now that it's launched, I see the Kobolds once again dying off of starvation - albeit, in 27 or 33 now instead of in 4, but they're still very much gone. I'm betting that the slightly longer survival is an accidental product of how worldgen has changed, and not an intentional attempt to make the Kobs more survivable.

Given how straightforward it is to fix the problem with the [NO_EAT] / [NO_DRINK] tags, the fact that you've clearly been willing to apply that fix before with Goblins, and the near-universality of Kobold doom without it, should we assume there's another reason you haven't made the Kobolds inediate for the time being? If not - and I apologize if this falls into suggestion territory - will the issue be considered a bug to be stamped out in the forthcoming bugfix releases by adding the tags?

I realize self-fixing it is easy, but especially with the newer, much lengthier Worldgen process, it's a pain to generate a world and then realize you forgot to do so and you either have to throw the whole thing out or live with a Koboldless or mostly-Koboldless world, and it would be equally quick to address on your end and be done with it, no?

Thank you for all your hard work, especially over the last eleven months. :) I'll be donating some ☼ when I have some to spare.

Goblins have [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] for thematic reasons. Kobolds don't get them because they're thematically different. Hopefully they'll make it to play time more often after the bugfix releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on February 15, 2012, 07:13:56 am

I have a quest to go to a mountain hall and kill a dwarven werebeast. Is this currently possible? If not, are such quests a bug?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 07:34:51 am

Should we expect something that undoes curses or some form of protection against them aside from fun abstinence?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 07:41:19 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 07:09:49 am

Goblins have [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] for thematic reasons. Kobolds don't get them because they're thematically different. Hopefully they'll make it to play time more often after the bugfix releases.

At the time Toady put the tags on, I'm pretty sure he described it as a "temporary solution". Goblins were originally BONECARN like kobolds, or at least CARNIVORE, weren't they? "Thematically", I only remember that they weren't supposed to be able to farm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 15, 2012, 07:48:49 am

Are adventurers-turned-vampire meant to be friendly towards raised dead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on February 15, 2012, 07:57:18 am

I've encountered Kobolds in a camp raid in adventurer and the year is someplace near 250, so either they do survive more often or they are spawned as bogeymen are.
I did get murdered three times by mummies (human) that had died of hunger (one was a farmer even!).
Apparently starvation is a very common event . . . even when all the world is covered with farmsteads.

Are skins supposed to die of bloodloss each time they are animated?
I wonder whether they would attempt to strangle or suffocate if they survived longer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress - Kobolds Still Starving
Post by: tfaal on February 15, 2012, 09:14:32 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 07:41:19 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 07:09:49 am

Goblins have [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] for thematic reasons. Kobolds don't get them because they're thematically different. Hopefully they'll make it to play time more often after the bugfix releases.

At the time Toady put the tags on, I'm pretty sure he described it as a "temporary solution". Goblins were originally BONECARN like kobolds, or at least CARNIVORE, weren't they? "Thematically", I only remember that they weren't supposed to be able to farm.

I can't recall the exact quote, but Toady wants them to stay foodless; he says farming goblins wouldn't fit the theme, and said much the same thing of fixed or nomadic herding goblins. So they're meant to have [NO_EAT] for the foreseeable future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 09:36:06 am

Toady wants it so Goblins CAN eat and perhaps enjoy it... but not so much that they need to eat and thus make farms. As having meat farms is something he cannot view goblins as doing.

It isn't a point of view I agree with but one I can more then live with.

Mind you I think it is because Toady more and more wants the goblins to be more like monsters rather then an outright humanoid race like Elves, dwarves, and even Kobolds are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 10:17:53 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 09:36:06 am

Toady wants it so Goblins CAN eat and perhaps enjoy it... but not so much that they need to eat and thus make farms. As having meat farms is something he cannot view goblins as doing.

It isn't a point of view I agree with but one I can more then live with.

Mind you I think it is because Toady more and more wants the goblins to be more like monsters rather then an outright humanoid race like Elves, dwarves, and even Kobolds are.

In my opinion adding a code that makes the goblins raid for there food source can be a solution. That way they can still eat and they don't have to make a farm. As with DF they have the alignment of evil and attack your fortress early on in game. Which brings me to another question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin)

Should we expect races to have some form of link to magic in future releases?
ex dwarf enchanting and/or enhancing weapons and armor with materials. different then elf who might simply use runes. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 15, 2012, 11:16:47 am

Quote from: tfaal on February 15, 2012, 07:13:56 am

I have a quest to go to a mountain hall and kill a dwarven werebeast. Is this currently possible? If not, are such quests a bug?

It'd be helpful if you could confirm that the quest location is empty of creatures (and the target in particular).  If so, it's a bug and deserves a report on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt).

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 04:35:34 am

Toady, something I'm sure you're aware of is how the Kobolds have been starving to death en masse and mostly extincting very early in worldgen ever since the prior update where worldgen food needs became respected. A lot of people have gotten around this by adding the [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] to them, and because this is the solution you used to avoid the same thing happening with Goblins, I figured its omission from the Kobold raws was an oversight to be fixed in the long update. Now that it's launched, I see the Kobolds once again dying off of starvation - albeit, in 27 or 33 now instead of in 4, but they're still very much gone. I'm betting that the slightly longer survival is an accidental product of how worldgen has changed, and not an intentional attempt to make the Kobs more survivable.

Given how straightforward it is to fix the problem with the [NO_EAT] / [NO_DRINK] tags, the fact that you've clearly been willing to apply that fix before with Goblins, and the near-universality of Kobold doom without it, should we assume there's another reason you haven't made the Kobolds inediate for the time being? If not - and I apologize if this falls into suggestion territory - will the issue be considered a bug to be stamped out in the forthcoming bugfix releases by adding the tags?

Toady did do some work for this release on making kobolds "more survivable in world gen." (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2011-06-09)  He notably did not add NO_EAT at that time.  Kobolds are treated differently from goblins in this regard.

Quote from: Torchy on February 15, 2012, 07:41:19 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 07:09:49 am

Goblins have [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK] for thematic reasons. Kobolds don't get them because they're thematically different. Hopefully they'll make it to play time more often after the bugfix releases.

At the time Toady put the tags on, I'm pretty sure he described it as a "temporary solution". Goblins were originally BONECARN like kobolds, or at least CARNIVORE, weren't they? "Thematically", I only remember that they weren't supposed to be able to farm.

It's not temporary: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2244937#msg2244937)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady do you mean Goblins don't need to eat in any future update or that Goblins won't need to eat until you can get it working properly?

Quote from: Mephansteras

Toady: Could you clairify a bit on the "Goblins don't need to eat" bit? Just curious how that's going to play out and what the reasoning behind it is (from a world lore perspective). Also, even if goblins don't eat what about any other future carnivorous civs? Wolfmen or the like? Do you see yourself adding in herding-based civilizations to accommodate that? Even in our history we have examples of very successful civilizations that did very little actual farming and mostly just herded animals around. The Mongols are probably the best example of that.

In any future update.  I know a few people were dismissive of our decision and called it a cop out, but we thought about these situations (including the Mongols) and rejected them.  Goblins that herd meat animals are insufficiently scary to us.  Goblins that die exclusively violent deaths in great numbers in a potentially vegetationless wasteland are better, and we want to explore a wider variety of possibilities than humans allow -- humans can be Mongols, because the Mongols were human, and we hope to support some human variety eventually.  There are beak dog considerations, etc., but those aren't fundamental -- wrangling some critters isn't as image-shattering as having large herds of meat animals ranging over grasslands with goblin ranchers.

Quote from: Japa on February 15, 2012, 07:48:49 am

Are adventurers-turned-vampire meant to be friendly towards raised dead?

There's a bug report about zombie loyalty issues. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5111)

Quote from: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 10:17:53 am

Should we expect races to have some form of link to magic in future releases?
ex dwarf enchanting and/or enhancing weapons and armor with materials. different then elf who might simply use runes. 

This is pretty much the future of artifacts: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

# Core80, ARTIFACT MAGIC, (Future): An early angle on magic that should find its way into the game. Although ultimately influenced by world parameters, stock DF will likely focus on rare, unique, somewhat mysterious effects without tables, to the extent that that's possible. Some cliches are probably unavoidable, he he he. The artifact process is likely to be changed somewhat to align with this, and artifacts should be created in world-generation and elsewhere during play, though a good player artifact should still have high importance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on February 15, 2012, 11:58:43 am

I remember in 40d many historical figures led the squads that besieged your fort other than the leader of the enemy civilization, so an old fort would end up killing swathes of historical figures. However, it appears to me that the new enemies are mostly generated from the entity population pools.

Now that historical migrants arrive, will we also (someday) see squads of historical enemies where even the common troops are historical figures and not just the squad leader?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 12:06:09 pm

Hmmm does anyone remember that list of animals arranged by lifespan?

I am thinking of using it in a suggestion hmmm... Especially since I just noticed something I found rather odd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 15, 2012, 12:38:48 pm

I ran across an empty fort while looking for potential recruits. I sadly walked around the cavy infested fort (with one very happy barn owl) and went to the keep.

The keep had stairs and some statues. Neat, I thought. I looked at the statues. Then I followed the stairs and was greeted by a room fill with armor! WOW! Thanks for adding that to the game! Even exploring abandoned forts has its rewards now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JasonMel on February 15, 2012, 01:33:40 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 15, 2012, 11:16:47 am

Quote from: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 10:17:53 am

Should we expect races to have some form of link to magic in future releases?
ex dwarf enchanting and/or enhancing weapons and armor with materials. different then elf who might simply use runes. 

This is pretty much the future of artifacts: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

# Core80, ARTIFACT MAGIC, (Future): An early angle on magic that should find its way into the game. Although ultimately influenced by world parameters, stock DF will likely focus on rare, unique, somewhat mysterious effects without tables, to the extent that that's possible. Some cliches are probably unavoidable, he he he. The artifact process is likely to be changed somewhat to align with this, and artifacts should be created in world-generation and elsewhere during play, though a good player artifact should still have high importance.

If you're interested, this is an excellent discussion of artifacts and magic from Feb 22, 2010, which I stumbled upon recently, in audio form:
http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_7_missing_segment.mp3 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_7_missing_segment.mp3)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on February 15, 2012, 02:03:50 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 09:36:06 am

Toady wants it so Goblins CAN eat and perhaps enjoy it... but not so much that they need to eat and thus make farms. As having meat farms is something he cannot view goblins as doing.

This gave me a mental image of obese goblins. (because they don't need to eat, but like to)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 02:35:35 pm

Quote from: Areyar on February 15, 2012, 02:03:50 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 09:36:06 am

Toady wants it so Goblins CAN eat and perhaps enjoy it... but not so much that they need to eat and thus make farms. As having meat farms is something he cannot view goblins as doing.

This gave me a mental image of obese goblins. (because they don't need to eat, but like to)

I could picture that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on February 15, 2012, 03:25:25 pm

If they don't need to eat, fat wouldn't have a purpose in their body... Do they like to be fat ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 15, 2012, 03:45:27 pm

Quote from: Dae on February 15, 2012, 03:25:25 pm

If they don't need to eat, fat wouldn't have a purpose in their body... Do they like to be fat ?

It would probably be a fashion statement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on February 15, 2012, 03:59:56 pm

Quote from: Dae on February 15, 2012, 03:25:25 pm

If they don't need to eat, fat wouldn't have a purpose in their body... Do they like to be fat ?

Without the need to eat, there is little need to do anything for that matter. :)
Assuming therefor that the purpose in a goblin's (un?)life is causing pain,
not staying alive, as is usual for living creatures.
Fatty tissue is a sort of armour, shielding more critical organs. Easier to gain and keep than muscle, less likely to cause lethal bleeding if cut. Protecting from the cold too. Plus in winter your buddies can set you on fire, melt the fat and create a nice hot greasefire to keep from freezing.
Gobbos are not bound by the laws of logic, reason, nature or the laws of dwarfkind for that matter, by Tautatis!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 15, 2012, 04:23:36 pm

Quote from: Dae on February 15, 2012, 03:25:25 pm

If they don't need to eat, fat wouldn't have a purpose in their body... Do they like to be fat ?

They might not. I like to eat, but getting fat is an unfortunate effect of eating. I don't like being fat, but I still love to eat.

Granted differing cultures could determine which they are. A tribe of goblins in peace with a nearby civ might enjoy eating food for trade and view being fat as a sign of social status/wealth (or skill in bartering) whereas a tribe at war might view fat as being a hindrance and therefore unnecessary. Goblins, either way, strike me as too lazy to get skilled enough to produce their own food (perhaps because they do NOT NEED to eat, they simply lack the key motivator of being hungry), but instead get it through trade or more likely flat-out war which they view as less work. Considering their laziness they won't like to craft either so they'll still need to raid for crafts. Thus we end up with goblin cultures swinging between war and peace based on how easily they can obtain food.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 04:42:27 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 15, 2012, 11:16:47 am

Quote from: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 10:17:53 am

Should we expect races to have some form of link to magic in future releases?
ex dwarf enchanting and/or enhancing weapons and armor with materials. different then elf who might simply use runes. 

This is pretty much the future of artifacts: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

# Core80, ARTIFACT MAGIC, (Future): An early angle on magic that should find its way into the game. Although ultimately influenced by world parameters, stock DF will likely focus on rare, unique, somewhat mysterious effects without tables, to the extent that that's possible. Some cliches are probably unavoidable, he he he. The artifact process is likely to be changed somewhat to align with this, and artifacts should be created in world-generation and elsewhere during play, though a good player artifact should still have high importance.

That's not what he was asking though, he was asking if different races would interact with magic differently based on their race and used dwarven artifacts as an example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 15, 2012, 05:13:01 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on February 15, 2012, 04:42:27 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 15, 2012, 11:16:47 am

Quote from: Blue-Demon on February 15, 2012, 10:17:53 am

Should we expect races to have some form of link to magic in future releases?
ex dwarf enchanting and/or enhancing weapons and armor with materials. different then elf who might simply use runes. 

This is pretty much the future of artifacts: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

# Core80, ARTIFACT MAGIC, (Future): An early angle on magic that should find its way into the game. Although ultimately influenced by world parameters, stock DF will likely focus on rare, unique, somewhat mysterious effects without tables, to the extent that that's possible. Some cliches are probably unavoidable, he he he. The artifact process is likely to be changed somewhat to align with this, and artifacts should be created in world-generation and elsewhere during play, though a good player artifact should still have high importance.

That's not what he was asking though, he was asking if different races would interact with magic differently based on their race and used dwarven artifacts as an example.

If that was the point s/he was emphasizing, I'd point to the Adams brothers' stories.  This series of ASCII art rewards (http://df.magmawiki.com/ASCII_Art_Reward#The_Toad_Preservation_Society) has mechanical beasts animated by dwarven artifact magic, and another reward (http://df.magmawiki.com/ASCII_Art_Reward#AbuDhabi) describes a dwarf-made artifact staff that not only grants skill to the user but has secret mechanical functions.  Meanwhile, many of ThreeToe's stories (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_story.html) describe elven artifacts being shaped and empowered by the forces of nature, e.g.:
"She drew her curved blade Elstra, a wooden sword polished for a hundred years in the brooks and streams of the forest until it took on the aspect of steel." (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_animal_justice.html)
"Dahlia slammed down her staff at its feet, flowers suddenly springing up where the pole struck the ground." (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_summon.html)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on February 15, 2012, 05:55:13 pm

posting to follow

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on February 15, 2012, 07:42:28 pm

posting to follow!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on February 15, 2012, 09:37:44 pm

Toady: When is the fortress mode trading Caravan Arc stuff going to be implemented?  Supply/demand, being able to import enough iron and flux to outfit your dwarves on a site which has neither, stuff like that.  I'm assuming that no part of it has been included in the 0.34.01 release, since nothing about it was mentioned in the release notes, and nothing about the dwarf trading interface has changed (besides being able to select only part of a stack for trading).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 15, 2012, 10:07:29 pm

Quote from: Khym Chanur on February 15, 2012, 09:37:44 pm

Toady: When is the fortress mode trading Caravan Arc stuff going to be implemented?  Supply/demand, being able to import enough iron and flux to outfit your dwarves on a site which has neither, stuff like that.  I'm assuming that no part of it has been included in the 0.34.01 release, since nothing about it was mentioned in the release notes, and nothing about the dwarf trading interface has changed (besides being able to select only part of a stack for trading).

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Release 6 on that page is "Dwarf mode trading improvements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc".

Releases 4 and 5 (or even 2 depending on what Toady means by "mine maps") might see some preliminary stuff, but it looks like the bulk of what you're asking for is in that one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 15, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on February 15, 2012, 03:51:13 am

I know "don't embark on evil areas" is a solution to that.. but, well, is that really an improvement to the last version?  Not being able to use evil areas at all?

Maybe I just suck, but I failed 10/10 embarks on haunted biomes within 10 minutes each, 2 of them within about 2 minutes or less... whats the point of evil biomes existing at all in that case?   Even a full military embark didn't work, cuz as soon as one military dwarf dies, you're screwed.. and the less said of my dog zerg attempt, the better.

I guess that my feeling is that they just reanimate too fast, and too many times.  Everything that dies becoming immortal and hostile doesnt seem sustainable, given how DF works, and assuming that this is how it is meant to be, I guess I just prefer the old evil biomes that were playable, if hard.

It is worth noting that you can embark on an evil biome without zombies to get the rest of the Fun- it's what I've been doing. I've noticed that the zombie free zones have the fogs instead- I don't know if that's intentional or not.

Not that I don't agree with you- I hope pulping makes it in sooner rather than later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmperorJon on February 16, 2012, 08:43:28 am

Now we have the interactions, can you see the collection of things we have ever being fused into one? Interactions can cause syndromes and syndromes can allow interactions, but will the "sound" capabilities you added, and reactions, and speech, and similar ever be all handled as an "interaction"? What about us ever seeing conditional raws or variables? (Poor example: "Hello, I see you have" player:haircolor "hair".) I'd call it Dwarf&ObjectReferenceFormat.

Good job on this release. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 16, 2012, 08:44:54 am

I could be wrong but so far it seems to me that areas marked as "Haunted" have the undead. "Terrifying" has only the evil raintypes and sinister comes with "fumes/mists". 6 forts thought arent a good basis for a statistic. The evil rain is the most tolerable from what i encountered they seem rather harmles. The "repellent ooze" rain (blue) was only in so far annoying that my dorfs started pussing without any harm. I guess its different when they are injured as the wound can get infected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 16, 2012, 09:27:44 am

I really like this new version. Sure it has a lot of rough patches but if anything it makes me curious and wracked with glee and dread with how Toady is going to smooth them out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 16, 2012, 11:55:02 am

Quote from: Heph on February 16, 2012, 08:44:54 am

I could be wrong but so far it seems to me that areas marked as "Haunted" have the undead. "Terrifying" has only the evil raintypes and sinister comes with "fumes/mists". 6 forts thought arent a good basis for a statistic. The evil rain is the most tolerable from what i encountered they seem rather harmles. The "repellent ooze" rain (blue) was only in so far annoying that my dorfs started pussing without any harm. I guess its different when they are injured as the wound can get infected.

I can confirm eeevil mist in Terrifying embarks. I'm guessing that it is on a biome basis- each biome can only have one regional curse, and how horrible it is may be linked to savagery. I have yet to encounter evil rain at all, but then I've only played 4 Terrifying embarks (1 Zombie 3 Mist)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on February 16, 2012, 12:04:50 pm

Quote from: The One Toad

A creature definition can transform critters through a syndrome, either in their venom syndrome/etc. or directly through a CAN_DO_INTERACTION which has an ADD_SYNDROME effect.  Syndromes can't currently be cured, so there's no way to turn somebody back to their original form, unless the syndrome has a duration and runs out.

Is it possible to give a syndrome a seriously high duration (9999 years, etc.) for "permanent" effects and then have another syndrome (or other interaction) that would reduce the duration on another (active) syndrome?  That would handle "cures" pretty nicely

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on February 16, 2012, 12:16:39 pm

Enjoying this new version so far. Pretty stable, and no game breaking bugs discovered yet!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 16, 2012, 12:26:48 pm

Quote from: Draco18s on February 16, 2012, 12:04:50 pm

Is it possible to give a syndrome a seriously high duration (9999 years, etc.) for "permanent" effects and then have another syndrome (or other interaction) that would reduce the duration on another (active) syndrome?  That would handle "cures" pretty nicely

It's not possible to reduce the duration of an active syndrome, no.  The crux of the matter is that there's no way for a syndrome to directly target another syndrome already present on the creature. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on February 16, 2012, 12:31:01 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 16, 2012, 12:26:48 pm

Quote from: Draco18s on February 16, 2012, 12:04:50 pm

Is it possible to give a syndrome a seriously high duration (9999 years, etc.) for "permanent" effects and then have another syndrome (or other interaction) that would reduce the duration on another (active) syndrome?  That would handle "cures" pretty nicely

It's not possible to reduce the duration of an active syndrome, no.  The crux of the matter is that there's no way for a syndrome to directly target another syndrome already present on the creature.

Shame.  Oh well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 16, 2012, 12:49:41 pm

The bug tracker is disturbingly quiet considering the size of this release.  I usually root around for things to avoid/reproduce, but most of what's there are sort of "random worldgen-related" things.  The overall cleanliness of this release is quite good.

This makes me hopeful that the "long-standing" bugfix component of the next few weeks will be especially fruitful. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Blue-Demon on February 16, 2012, 02:08:55 pm

i would have liked it more if we could experiment with necromancer, vampire and were beast on "testing arena mode".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 16, 2012, 02:11:50 pm

Quote from: Blue-Demon on February 16, 2012, 02:08:55 pm

i would have liked it more if we could experiment with necromancer, vampire and were beast on "testing arena mode".

That'll be fixed. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100692.msg2984571#msg2984571)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McArathos on February 16, 2012, 03:20:10 pm

Quote from: monk12 on February 16, 2012, 11:55:02 am

Quote from: Heph on February 16, 2012, 08:44:54 am

I could be wrong but so far it seems to me that areas marked as "Haunted" have the undead. "Terrifying" has only the evil raintypes and sinister comes with "fumes/mists". 6 forts thought arent a good basis for a statistic. The evil rain is the most tolerable from what i encountered they seem rather harmles. The "repellent ooze" rain (blue) was only in so far annoying that my dorfs started pussing without any harm. I guess its different when they are injured as the wound can get infected.

I can confirm eeevil mist in Terrifying embarks. I'm guessing that it is on a biome basis- each biome can only have one regional curse, and how horrible it is may be linked to savagery. I have yet to encounter evil rain at all, but then I've only played 4 Terrifying embarks (1 Zombie 3 Mist)

Is it confirmed that there is only one "effect" per evil biome?  Because I'd like to have more than one, at times.

Assuming that it is not a bug, are there plans to have multiple evil effects occur in a single biome?  Will it be possible at some point to have good artifacts, workshops, items, or jobs that can repel or prevent evil effects?  I'm envisioning dwarven priests sanctifying coffins so the corpses don't rise, holy water being used to treat mysterious ailments from mists and fogs, protective amulets to guard against creeping ashes, etc.  That sort of thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on February 16, 2012, 03:22:14 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on February 16, 2012, 12:16:39 pm

Pretty stable

I've found it's pretty stable while playing, but it keeps crashing when I try to save my fort :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 16, 2012, 03:22:47 pm

I notice whenever a werecreature devours a creature without a name the quest text is missing 'a' or 'an'.

"Werebeast Name devoured cat."

Not sure if that is considered a bug and I can't operate the search engine on the bug tracker very well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 16, 2012, 05:37:06 pm

Quote from: EmperorJon on February 16, 2012, 08:43:28 am

Now we have the interactions, can you see the collection of things we have ever being fused into one? Interactions can cause syndromes and syndromes can allow interactions, but will the "sound" capabilities you added, and reactions, and speech, and similar ever be all handled as an "interaction"? What about us ever seeing conditional raws or variables? (Poor example: "Hello, I see you have" player:haircolor "hair".) I'd call it Dwarf&ObjectReferenceFormat.

Good job on this release. :)

dialog already works like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aplsos on February 16, 2012, 07:00:05 pm

I'd appreciate an in-depth explanation of the CE:PERIODIC syndrome tag.  Are there valid values for it besides MOON_PHASE?  I'm specifically looking for a way to make werebeasts that transform every night, because currently in adventure mode they're just naked peasants that like to chill out in holes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: trees on February 16, 2012, 07:06:33 pm

Posting to watch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 16, 2012, 08:22:27 pm

I miss the old FotF. This one just doesn't compare.

The worldgen still dies when you select 1 complete edge ocean.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 612DwarfAvenue on February 16, 2012, 08:53:47 pm

From the devblog:

Quote

Made wagons appear again.

Huzzah, the next release will have wagons again!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on February 16, 2012, 09:21:42 pm

Huzzah!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ves on February 16, 2012, 11:04:10 pm

Quote

made forge jobs use bar amounts properly

But I thought it was a feature :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on February 16, 2012, 11:08:59 pm

yey! New Thread! o! bug-fixes coming :D 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on February 16, 2012, 11:17:19 pm

Was there a specific motivation for removing the "rude" words from the language files?  Just tone of how you want the goblins to sound, or was there pressure from some source, or did you need to cut down on language size?

Just curious as to reasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 16, 2012, 11:40:39 pm

Quote from: Fieari on February 16, 2012, 11:17:19 pm

Was there a specific motivation for removing the "rude" words from the language files?  Just tone of how you want the goblins to sound, or was there pressure from some source, or did you need to cut down on language size?

Just curious as to reasons.

It can't be language size, since at the same time that he removed the 11 "untoward" words, he added several dozen new words, including many colors and sphere-related terms.  The language raws can be expanded nigh-infinitely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 16, 2012, 11:45:22 pm

I guess it was because of people who named their chars Rape Raperape The Rape of Rape.

That doesn't really give a good image of the game for random bystanders  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ChristmasDwarf on February 16, 2012, 11:49:13 pm

Please Tarn make the next few releases simple and fix all the bugs in dwarf fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on February 17, 2012, 12:03:55 am

I instinctively made a 3-wide path to my fort for the new version, just in case wagons made a comeback against the odds. Now all my dreams are going to come true.

_{I cannot wait to see the first wagon zombie rise from the dead.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 12:08:25 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 16, 2012, 11:45:22 pm

I guess it was because of people who named their chars Rape Raperape The Rape of Rape.

That doesn't really give a good image of the game for random bystanders  :P

If people hear about the game, it's not because someone named their character "Rape Raperape", it's because they hear about mermaid soap factories or kitten genocides, which is probably more offensive than someone simply having the ability to name their character whatever they darn well please.

Quote from: ChristmasDwarf on February 16, 2012, 11:49:13 pm

Please Tarn make the next few releases simple and fix all the bugs in dwarf fortress.

I find it amusing you would consider fixing all the bugs in Dwarf Fortress a "simple release".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 17, 2012, 12:37:41 am

Quote from: ChristmasDwarf on February 16, 2012, 11:49:13 pm

Please Tarn make the next few releases simple and fix all the bugs in dwarf fortress.

hahaha... all the bugs. That's a good one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McArathos on February 17, 2012, 01:03:46 am

Quote from: monk12 on February 17, 2012, 12:37:41 am

Quote from: ChristmasDwarf on February 16, 2012, 11:49:13 pm

Please Tarn make the next few releases simple and fix all the bugs in dwarf fortress.

hahaha... all the bugs. That's a good one.

I find his username rather apt given his request...it would take a Santa Claus level of magic to make that possible in a timely manner, and would indeed be one hell of a present.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 17, 2012, 01:54:28 am

If toady fixes all bugs half of the emergent features are gone  :o who wants that! Its nice thought to see some bugs fixed in every iteration and i can tell you that it is the only viabale way to find all bugs. I was for a while profesional Softwaretester and from my experience i can tell that under the first layer of bugs are many more increasingly subtile bugs. Even if you have good programmers with good, well document and commented code you will find bugs in every program that is bigger then 1000 lines of code.

Reintroducing Wagons is a nice bonus for the first bugfix release. I hope the crash on saving gets fixed too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McArathos on February 17, 2012, 01:57:34 am

Oh, just realized:

Are the rapid rates of reanimation a bug or working as intended?  Are items like wool and hair supposed to reanimate, or this is a bug/unintended behavior?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snelg on February 17, 2012, 02:03:17 am

Suddenly! Wagons.

I've waited for them to make it back into the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Himmelblau on February 17, 2012, 05:44:09 am

Forge jobs using proper amounts of bars, wagons appearing again and making lye using empty buckets.

Inspired me to make my first donation, and create an account to thank for these fixes (been stalking the forum for a few months now), as these bugs were among the most annoying in the game, probably outmatched only by the clothing issues. If dwarfs start wearing the clothes they've claimed, I'm likely to make another donation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 17, 2012, 05:49:13 am

Quote from: Himmelblau on February 17, 2012, 05:44:09 am

Forge jobs using proper amounts of bars, wagons appearing again and making lye using empty buckets.

Inspired me to make my first donation, and create an account to thank for these fixes (been stalking the forum for a few months now), as these bugs were among the most annoying in the game, probably outmatched only by the clothing issues. If dwarfs start wearing the clothes they've claimed, I'm likely to make another donation.

There is more to follow. After ironing out the bugs introduced by this release, Toady may do a release with only "old bugs" fixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on February 17, 2012, 08:54:20 am

Are those all bugs that Toady has already fixed or is planning to fix for the next release? It is already pretty impressive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 17, 2012, 09:06:01 am

Quote from: jellsprout on February 17, 2012, 08:54:20 am

Are those all bugs that Toady has already fixed or is planning to fix for the next release? It is already pretty impressive.

They're already fixed in 0.34.02, which hasn't been released yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on February 17, 2012, 09:38:06 am

Quote

stopped lye making from using full water buckets

Where do I line up to bow down?

No more dwarves dying of infection because I'm too tired of micromanaging bucket-forbidding to get any soap made.

Quote

made forge jobs use bar amounts properly

Nevermind, I'm bitter again.

Back to the days of needing 3 steel bars for one damn breastplate ... I haven't known that feeling since March 31, 2010. How will I cope?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmperorJon on February 17, 2012, 09:44:39 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 16, 2012, 05:37:06 pm

Quote from: EmperorJon on February 16, 2012, 08:43:28 am

Now we have the interactions, can you see the collection of things we have ever being fused into one? Interactions can cause syndromes and syndromes can allow interactions, but will the "sound" capabilities you added, and reactions, and speech, and similar ever be all handled as an "interaction"? What about us ever seeing conditional raws or variables? (Poor example: "Hello, I see you have" player:haircolor "hair".) I'd call it Dwarf&ObjectReferenceFormat.

Good job on this release. :)

dialog already works like that.

Yes, but I mean implementing things like that in with reactions, actions, interactions, all this stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 17, 2012, 02:04:08 pm

Quote from: snelg on February 17, 2012, 02:03:17 am

Suddenly! Wagons.

I've waited for them to make it back into the game.

Does he really mean like, wagon-wagons?  Trader-wagons? Those had been gone for so long I had assumed they would be missing until movable siege equipment was implemented. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runiq on February 17, 2012, 02:32:05 pm

Postin' to follow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 17, 2012, 02:33:40 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on February 17, 2012, 02:04:08 pm

Quote from: snelg on February 17, 2012, 02:03:17 am

Suddenly! Wagons.

I've waited for them to make it back into the game.

Does he really mean like, wagon-wagons?  Trader-wagons? Those had been gone for so long I had assumed they would be missing until movable siege equipment was implemented.

Yup.

turns out it was actually a pretty simple fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 17, 2012, 02:37:48 pm

Quote from: Japa on February 17, 2012, 02:33:40 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on February 17, 2012, 02:04:08 pm

Quote from: snelg on February 17, 2012, 02:03:17 am

Suddenly! Wagons.

I've waited for them to make it back into the game.

Does he really mean like, wagon-wagons?  Trader-wagons? Those had been gone for so long I had assumed they would be missing until movable siege equipment was implemented.

Yup.

turns out it was actually a pretty simple fix.

At least, it was simple once Toady knew where to look (thanks to Quietust (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=197#c19404)).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on February 17, 2012, 03:41:14 pm

Wow...This is an exciting moment for me, having never even seen these wagons before! :D
I have to say, my most-anticipated feature, even if it is far off yet, is the personality rewrite. Imagine, everyone in worldgen having a motive for what they do, allies and friends, arch-enemies and people who need avenging when a FB pulls off their arms, all that stuff... Oh, and taverns. :P I think they might be a bit closer to reality.

I just love the new towns, imagine them with taverns which evolve specifically to serve the needs of the populace? Imagine the different menus, perhaps even specialty dishes which differ from cook to cook, or a house brew? Perhaps a shadier tavern might have a trapdoor to the catacombs, built in by a goblin owner a long time ago who had a lucrative business deal with a band of outlaws? And then, years later when said trapdoor is dusty and forgotten, your adventurer comes barreling up the stairs from beneath, pursued by unspeakable horrors from below, and finds himself in a storeroom? Oh oh, and I have to say, I would just love being able to construct taverns in Dwarf Mode. :D Forget traders, I could have folk coming from far and wide to sample my *Rutherer Tallow Roast* and wash it down with a pint of ale... And don't get me started on the cozy, intricate above-ground buildings I love building already!
Oh man, I'm rambling 'cause I'm half asleep. :P It's just for some reason I've been thinking about this alot. Forgive me. I should sell my house or something so I can donate to Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 03:44:59 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 17, 2012, 02:37:48 pm

At least, it was simple once Toady knew where to look (thanks to Quietust (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=197#c19404)).

Wow, way to go Quietust. 

There's something a little odd about players fixing bugs on their own by memory hacking the problem away, though... I'm not sure Toady would exactly encourage that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 17, 2012, 04:06:01 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 03:44:59 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 17, 2012, 02:37:48 pm

At least, it was simple once Toady knew where to look (thanks to Quietust (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=197#c19404)).

Wow, way to go Quietust. 

There's something a little odd about players fixing bugs on their own by memory hacking the problem away, though... I'm not sure Toady would exactly encourage that.

He didn't seem to mind, at least. Great work Quietust!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on February 17, 2012, 04:08:15 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 03:44:59 pm

Wow, way to go Quietust. 

Hear, hear!

Quote

There's something a little odd about players fixing bugs on their own by memory hacking the problem away, though... I'm not sure Toady would exactly encourage that.

My impression was that, instead, he thought it helpful as having brought to light a set of bugs in the code which would be quick fixes (when perhaps there was no reason to think so otherwise). 

But my first thought was actually "you know, given this is going on, it would save both Toady and Quietust some work if T just showed Q the source"...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: veok on February 17, 2012, 04:18:52 pm

Is "Pulping" a goal for the short term or the long term? Inability to permanently deal with zombies in evil regions... might be considered a bug?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on February 17, 2012, 06:58:20 pm

Toady said in one of the fixed bug reports:

Quote from: Word of Toad

Yep, this one is evil. Releasing within 24 hours or so because of it.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5114 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5114)
It was about a bug that crashes DF when trying to save game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on February 17, 2012, 06:59:43 pm

Yay! :D I'll be able to use my first-genned world again, hopefully!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hummingbird on February 17, 2012, 07:00:42 pm

Quote from: Urist_McArathos on February 17, 2012, 01:03:46 am

Quote from: monk12 on February 17, 2012, 12:37:41 am

Quote from: ChristmasDwarf on February 16, 2012, 11:49:13 pm

Please Tarn make the next few releases simple and fix all the bugs in dwarf fortress.

hahaha... all the bugs. That's a good one.

I find his username rather apt given his request...it would take a Santa Claus level of magic to make that possible in a timely manner, and would indeed be one hell of a present.

Not to mention it would probably take Toady until next Christmas, at the very earliest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on February 17, 2012, 10:02:24 pm

This release went pretty well beyond the scope stated on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html). Will the future caravan arc releases toe that line a bit more?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 17, 2012, 11:15:12 pm

As much as I'd like a shorter release cycle again, the odds are against it; "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" and "Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps" could potentially lead to incalculable town- and underground-related feature creep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 11:30:43 pm

Quote from: tfaal on February 17, 2012, 10:02:24 pm

This release went pretty well beyond the scope stated on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html). Will the future caravan arc releases toe that line a bit more?

I don't think Toady knew he was going to make vampires and such until he actually started doing it (at least, at that time, it was planned for "eventually" before that), and he certainly wasn't planning on spending months doing it when he started off on doing it. 

The answer is very likely "Maybe, who knows?"  Maybe he'll strictly stick to his schedule, maybe he'll go off on a tangent again when a strange mood hits. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 17, 2012, 11:32:44 pm

following to watch

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 17, 2012, 11:36:02 pm

On the note of memory hacking to fix bugs, if toady was an AAA game developer he would flip the fuck out and try to sue the ever living shit out of them for helping them, hell im sure a number of indie developers might as well.

that is the wonderful factor that seperated toady from the rest. he is not making a product to sell, he is fulfilling his strange mood at the coder's workshop he claimed in 2002 and is creating an artifact program that will put planepacked to shame.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 17, 2012, 11:46:50 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 17, 2012, 11:36:02 pm

On the note of memory hacking to fix bugs, if toady was an AAA game developer he would flip the fuck out and try to sue the ever living shit out of them for helping them, hell im sure a number of indie developers might as well

Can you give example of any AAA corp acting that way? Sure they hate when people patch out their copy-protection, but I didn't see examples of any legal actions for even stuff like resource unpackers, not to mention custom patches.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 12:03:04 am

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on February 17, 2012, 11:46:50 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 17, 2012, 11:36:02 pm

On the note of memory hacking to fix bugs, if toady was an AAA game developer he would flip the fuck out and try to sue the ever living shit out of them for helping them, hell im sure a number of indie developers might as well

Can you give example of any AAA corp acting that way? Sure they hate when people patch out their copy-protection, but I didn't see examples of any legal actions for even stuff like resource unpackers, not to mention custom patches.

ill search around if i get bored, not sure if there's an instance of an actual lawsuit being raised. but i know of a guy who got a cease and desist order for making an unofficial patch for one of EA's games.
im geussing they can sue for it, im just not sure how well it may hold up in court.

damn you, this is now going to waste a ton of my time googling random shit that i honestly shouldn't care about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 01:00:52 am

Quote from: bombzero on February 17, 2012, 11:36:02 pm

On the note of memory hacking to fix bugs, if toady was an AAA game developer he would flip the fuck out and try to sue the ever living shit out of them for helping them, hell im sure a number of indie developers might as well.

that is the wonderful factor that seperated toady from the rest. he is not making a product to sell, he is fulfilling his strange mood at the coder's workshop he claimed in 2002 and is creating an artifact program that will put planepacked to shame.

He did flip out a bit the first time people started hacking DF's memory. Of course, he found out about that together with Khazad which was a whole 'nother shitstorm so it's understandable. At this point DFhack has existed for a long time and never* been used for anything that wasn't innocuous, so it's not too surprising that Toady's chill about it.

_{*Unless there's some small isolated instance of which I'm unaware.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 01:40:51 am

Toady also has the wonderful privilege of knowing 99% of his fanbase respects him enough to not use decompilers and memory hacking to steal or otherwise defile his wonderful creation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 04:58:47 am

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 01:40:51 am

Toady also has the wonderful privilege of knowing 99% of his fanbase respects him enough to not use decompilers and memory hacking to steal or otherwise defile his wonderful creation.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Many just doesn't do it because they can't. If you search for it, there are places where you can find undeserved animosity towards Toady, even though they keep playing DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2012, 05:14:46 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 04:58:47 am

Unfortunately, this is not true. Many just doesn't do it because they can't. If you search for it, there are places where you can find undeserved animosity towards Toady, even though they keep playing DF.

There is a difference between complaints or criticism or even venting frustrations and "undeserved animosity". 

There are plenty of complaints that one thing or another hasn't been fixed yet or cries for more attention be put to one thing or another all the time, but animosity - openly wishing ill upon or, in this case, wanting to steal from Toady, is something very rare.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 05:26:38 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2012, 05:14:46 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 04:58:47 am

Unfortunately, this is not true. Many just doesn't do it because they can't. If you search for it, there are places where you can find undeserved animosity towards Toady, even though they keep playing DF.

There is a difference between complaints or criticism or even venting frustrations and "undeserved animosity". 

There are plenty of complaints that one thing or another hasn't been fixed yet or cries for more attention be put to one thing or another all the time, but animosity - openly wishing ill upon or, in this case, wanting to steal from Toady, is something very rare.

You weren't here when one of those people caused a stir here on the forums recently (even demanding a refund from his donation), later sending email to people saying he was gonna to clone DF. I saw in other forums people wishing someone clone DF and drives Toady out of the genre...this is openly wishing ill, not just criticisms. Criticisms are welcome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 05:41:13 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 04:58:47 am

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 01:40:51 am

Toady also has the wonderful privilege of knowing 99% of his fanbase respects him enough to not use decompilers and memory hacking to steal or otherwise defile his wonderful creation.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Many just doesn't do it because they can't. If you search for it, there are places where you can find undeserved animosity towards Toady, even though they keep playing DF.

I hang out in places famed for spewing undeserved animosity and even so I see nothing more negative than occasional hyberbole about the release schedule

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 05:26:38 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2012, 05:14:46 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 04:58:47 am

Unfortunately, this is not true. Many just doesn't do it because they can't. If you search for it, there are places where you can find undeserved animosity towards Toady, even though they keep playing DF.

There is a difference between complaints or criticism or even venting frustrations and "undeserved animosity". 

There are plenty of complaints that one thing or another hasn't been fixed yet or cries for more attention be put to one thing or another all the time, but animosity - openly wishing ill upon or, in this case, wanting to steal from Toady, is something very rare.

You weren't here when one of those people caused a stir here on the forums recently (even demanding a refund from his donation), later sending email to people saying he was gonna to clone DF. I saw in other forums people wishing someone clone DF and drives Toady out of the genre...this is openly wishing ill, not just criticisms. Criticisms are welcome.

There have been a couple isolated instances like that. But besides the thing you mention and the Khazad thing, I can't think of any. Goblin Camp was intended to illustrate how things could work and was made with significant hope that Toady would copy elements of it, and I can't think of any other "DF clone" projects that have happened. In all the very many people that play and enjoy DF, or even just that small subset that posts on the forums, two people are a portion so small as to be negligible. Most projects and most devs see far more animosity than this; it's a note of how rare this is with DF that we can remember these specific instances rather than "there's plenty of people who wish he would just die/go out of business" which could honestly be said for most (all?) major devs and more than a few indie ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 18, 2012, 05:51:27 am

/unrelated
seeing as, near the end of the old fotf, people started to explicitly ask the community instead of toady maybe the use of another colouring for highlighting such questions would be useful. maybe orange? also editing questions meant for toady which got already answered by the community to something else than limegreen(blue?).

also: good to see nw_kohaku alive(ive only been lurking around fotf, so i dont know about activities in other threads)

since i havent done this yet: thx toady for all the hard work and the new release. the bugfixes coming up also look great!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on February 18, 2012, 07:52:10 am

What does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" entail in the next release? Simple daily activities such as meals and work only? Or do you plan to have things such as attending religious ceremonies at specific locations of worship at specific times? Will farmers make trips to towns to sell food after harvest? Would they halt their activities for a short while to exchange a few pleasantries between friends?

How rigid would the schedules be? Would a farmer postpone the aforementioned town trip if it was raining or would he wait for better weather?

I assume all or at least most of this could be observed in adventure mode, otherwise it would be rather pointless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 18, 2012, 08:18:46 am

Wouldn't be more appropriate the personality rewrite before the villager schedules?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 18, 2012, 09:34:56 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 01:00:52 am

Quote from: bombzero on February 17, 2012, 11:36:02 pm

On the note of memory hacking to fix bugs, if toady was an AAA game developer he would flip the fuck out and try to sue the ever living shit out of them for helping them, hell im sure a number of indie developers might as well.

that is the wonderful factor that seperated toady from the rest. he is not making a product to sell, he is fulfilling his strange mood at the coder's workshop he claimed in 2002 and is creating an artifact program that will put planepacked to shame.

He did flip out a bit the first time people started hacking DF's memory. Of course, he found out about that together with Khazad which was a whole 'nother shitstorm so it's understandable. At this point DFhack has existed for a long time and never* been used for anything that wasn't innocuous, so it's not too surprising that Toady's chill about it.

_{*Unless there's some small isolated instance of which I'm unaware.}

Some quibbles on that description of events -- dfhack wasn't the first time people hacked DF's memory.  Memory hacking utilities like reveal.exe have been in use since... 2007? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtjEsOwjAMRO_Chs0I1ekPThOliUWL0gYlaQEph8eRurH9nmZs3GE2y65cC5VLmWK97qAGA3qMUApEIJkdqIVstOigxA2gESTZHvSAaqSe5vDRNqxvz5nlUVX79GKbddj87zQhZu2WKGSSPYXA4vSanpXZRDuLiXyw8Tf-8h9lZjcQ)  Khazad launched as an ordinary visualizer ~2009, along with a slew of other visualizers.  During this period, Toady just expressed some trepidation at memory hacking's potential to create custom UIs.  It wasn't until 2010 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58796.0) that Khazad's developer began a public DF ripoff using reverse-engineered code, which was the shitstorm you mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Misterstone on February 18, 2012, 12:18:04 pm

Right now it seems no one is able to generate even a medium-sized world with a history longer than ~400 years or so.  The memory usage tops out and the game freezes or crashes.  Do you think that this is an issue that requires better optimization of code, or do you think it can be dealt with by changing the way save files work?  Is it something you can or want to address directly, or do you need development in other areas to progress before you can tackle this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 12:27:25 pm

Quote from: Misterstone on February 18, 2012, 12:18:04 pm

Right now it seems no one is able to generate even a medium-sized world with a history longer than ~400 years or so.  The memory usage tops out and the game freezes or crashes.  Do you think that this is an issue that requires better optimization of code, or do you think it can be dealt with by changing the way save files work?  Is it something you can or want to address directly, or do you need development in other areas to progress before you can tackle this?

if you have the RAM for it look up DFLAA it allows dwarf fortress to use more RAM. does not help fps much but prevents crashes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scarpa on February 18, 2012, 12:29:47 pm

Yeesh thanks for the trip down memory lane, Footkerchief. I had almost forgotten about all that drama, and who likes to forget drama?!?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 12:47:41 pm

Quote from: Scarpa on February 18, 2012, 12:29:47 pm

Yeesh thanks for the trip down memory lane, Footkerchief. I had almost forgotten about all that drama, and who likes to forget drama?!?

not enough people at my school...

anyways, i like the current level of children.

consider this, ever done a no migrant fort? (cept first 2 waves o course.)
but now its feasable as dwarfs arrive with more children and seem to have more children.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on February 18, 2012, 01:03:44 pm

Thanks for bugfixes! </post to watch>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2012, 01:24:20 pm

Although this occurred in the 34.01 version, I noticed that monster rampages seem to take up a tremendous amount of the Legends mode.  I noticed that, in a world with around 1,000,000 events, 10,000 of those events were monster rampages on a single town... in a 350 year history, so that averages out to that town being rampaged upon 30 times a year. 

This increases dramatically as time goes on - werewolves and the like spreading their curse.  Nothing bad happened in that town for the first 30 years, but in the last year alone, over 120 beast rampages took place.

I realize things are not exactly settled regarding worldgen, but I guess my question would be related to whether this is a bug or an intended feature...

What is the "appropriate" number of monster rampages a year for a city in your mind, once you have things where you want them?  Is it the goal behavior for an ever-escalating set of altered creatures to populate the world, or are the humanoid adventurers supposed to be killing all these guys off, and are just bad at their jobs right now? 

What would be a "target population" of vampires and werecreatures and other afflicted people that get added in later, compared to the population at large? Or is there one?



EDIT:
In another thread, we've been talking about it, and it turns out werecritters are a major cause of bloat in worldgen.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100732.msg3013512#msg3013512
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100732.msg3014064#msg3014064

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 18, 2012, 02:13:09 pm

30 Rampages per year per were-creature sounds suspicious. If we go with lunar cycles it should hover around 12.3 its quit different for vampries thought. You could go to 30 if the full moon is around 3 days.

I am wondering, since vamps and weres can spread the curse, if it would be possible to create a disease from a curse, something like the pest :P
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2012, 02:24:22 pm

Quote from: Heph on February 18, 2012, 02:13:09 pm

30 Rampages per year per were-creature sounds suspicious. If we go with lunar cycles it should hover around 12.3 its quit different for vampries thought. You could go to 30 if the full moon is around 3 days.

I am wondering, since vamps and weres can spread the curse, if it would be possible to create a disease from a curse, something like the pest :P

It's not per were creature, it's total on the town.  The town was constructed in the year 29, got to the year 43 before a single were creature struck town, but by the year 340 of worldgen, was getting over 100 rampages a year.

The town had a population of 5000 humans left and 500 dwarves, and a casualty list of only 2500, so most of these rampages didn't even result in much but a devoured chicken.

If you look at it, legends mode is glutted with thousands of lines of "werewolf attacks citizen in the 84th rampage of Longname McWerewolf" followed by "in spite of losing, citizen managed to escape unharmed from werewolf in the 84th rampage of Longname McWerewolf".

I have to wonder if this is a major contributor to the worldgen lag problems the new versions have...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 18, 2012, 02:46:58 pm

Hmm it would have a impact on the ram-usage that for sure  :-\ and shoving many small bits of data around takes some time indeed which makes me wonder how the part of worldgen works that deals with these and other events. I dont think that it is bad that WG takes some time but it shouldnt "crash" in longer worldgens.

edit: its nice to see you again

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 18, 2012, 03:05:35 pm

In 0.34.01, I had some traders show up in a migration wave. They are considered "friendly" but not otherwise part of the fortress and they just sit around on the edge of the map. Has anyone got this in 0.34.02 yet?

Are the 0.34.01 saves the only ones incompatible with 0.34.02, or are all the DF2010 saves also incompatible?

Edit: Oh God Metal Bar requirements. Wonder if there's going to be a "patch" to reintroduce that bug anytime soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 18, 2012, 03:10:51 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 18, 2012, 03:05:35 pm

In 0.34.01, I had some traders show up in a migration wave. They are considered "friendly" but not otherwise part of the fortress and they just sit around on the edge of the map. Has anyone got this in 0.34.02 yet?

It's almost certainly still present in 0.34.02.  Here's the ongoing bug report. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5098)

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 18, 2012, 03:05:35 pm

Are the 0.34.01 saves the only ones incompatible with 0.34.02, or are all the DF2010 saves also incompatible?

Saves from any previous version are not compatible with 0.34.02.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 04:30:17 pm

Quote from: rex mortis on February 18, 2012, 07:52:10 am

What does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" entail in the next release? Simple daily activities such as meals and work only? Or do you plan to have things such as attending religious ceremonies at specific locations of worship at specific times? Will farmers make trips to towns to sell food after harvest? Would they halt their activities for a short while to exchange a few pleasantries between friends?

How rigid would the schedules be? Would a farmer postpone the aforementioned town trip if it was raining or would he wait for better weather?

I assume all or at least most of this could be observed in adventure mode, otherwise it would be rather pointless.

I would guess this stuff is mostly dependent on whether it ends up being a two month release or a ten month release. Since we just had a long one it's probable that Toady is going to try to keep the next few releases fairly quick, and will try hard enough to more or less succeed. It's also possible that he'll just get a basic easily expandable framework in place, and then add things like temple worship to that framework when he adds temples, for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 18, 2012, 04:52:03 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 12:27:25 pm

Quote from: Misterstone on February 18, 2012, 12:18:04 pm

Right now it seems no one is able to generate even a medium-sized world with a history longer than ~400 years or so.  The memory usage tops out and the game freezes or crashes.  Do you think that this is an issue that requires better optimization of code, or do you think it can be dealt with by changing the way save files work?  Is it something you can or want to address directly, or do you need development in other areas to progress before you can tackle this?

if you have the RAM for it look up DFLAA it allows dwarf fortress to use more RAM. does not help fps much but prevents crashes.

You don't actually need more RAM to benefit from DFLAA. It will work and prevent 2Gb limit crashes on all systems. If DF uses more memory than you physically have, then it will run slow, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 18, 2012, 05:57:45 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 04:30:17 pm

It's also possible that he'll just get a basic easily expandable framework in place, and then add things like temple worship to that framework when he adds temples, for example.

We already have temples.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 06:43:39 pm

so why is everyone complaining about realistic bar requirements?

personally, it sets off every part of the realism obbsesed sections of my mind when i see that breastplates and mail shirts are one bar.

(also have fun with clogging halls with serrated discs‼)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on February 18, 2012, 06:57:14 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 06:43:39 pm

so why is everyone complaining about realistic bar requirements?

personally, it sets off every part of the realism obbsesed sections of my mind when i see that breastplates and mail shirts are one bar.

(also have fun with clogging halls with serrated discs‼)

Oh please!
1 piece of stone is used for a trinket like a mug, but is also enough to carve a mansized statue from or build say a metre section of wall. Reality in quantity is not really an issue in materials yet, even if material qualities are very much detailed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 07:34:43 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 18, 2012, 05:57:45 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on February 18, 2012, 04:30:17 pm

It's also possible that he'll just get a basic easily expandable framework in place, and then add things like temple worship to that framework when he adds temples, for example.

We already have temples.

Yeah, but only as physical locations. I guess making people go hang out there for a while wouldn't be too hard, but then it would lead to more religion development and add up with other things and before you know it the release is taking a year again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on February 18, 2012, 08:13:31 pm

Quote from: Areyar on February 18, 2012, 06:57:14 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 06:43:39 pm

so why is everyone complaining about realistic bar requirements?

personally, it sets off every part of the realism obbsesed sections of my mind when i see that breastplates and mail shirts are one bar.

(also have fun with clogging halls with serrated discs‼)

Oh please!
1 piece of stone is used for a trinket like a mug, but is also enough to carve a mansized statue from or build say a metre section of wall. Reality in quantity is not really an issue in materials yet, even if material qualities are very much detailed.

Quiet, or else toady will make our masons use more stone!

Wait, we got too much of that stone stuff anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 09:04:50 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on February 18, 2012, 08:13:31 pm

Quote from: Areyar on February 18, 2012, 06:57:14 pm

Quote from: bombzero on February 18, 2012, 06:43:39 pm

so why is everyone complaining about realistic bar requirements?

personally, it sets off every part of the realism obbsesed sections of my mind when i see that breastplates and mail shirts are one bar.

(also have fun with clogging halls with serrated discs‼)

Oh please!
1 piece of stone is used for a trinket like a mug, but is also enough to carve a mansized statue from or build say a metre section of wall. Reality in quantity is not really an issue in materials yet, even if material qualities are very much detailed.

Quiet, or else toady will make our masons use more stone!

Wait, we got too much of that stone stuff anyway.

thats actually a good point.

although walls/floors should only take 1 stone anyway. fuck realism there, takes too long to build walls as is  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 18, 2012, 10:02:40 pm

I think I've gotten a potential source for the worldgen crashes. Whilst genning a Large world with maxed out everything, I was getting a year progression of around 1 year per second or two. The worldgen was set to run for 200 years. It kept on advancing at that rate until year 174, when DF crashed because of some leaks in some NSCFArray, NSCFNumber, NSCFDictionary, and SDLQuartzWindow and a bus error.

I tried worldgen again with a different random seed and fewer caves, and the progression was a little slower. It also crashed after reaching around 120 years or so with a similar error. So far I've only run three worldgens in DF2012. The first was successful, but in 0.34.01 and the worldgen only ran up to 100 years.

Running worldgen a third time was successful. It achieved a similar progression rate through years, but only went up to 100 years.

I've run four worldgens in DF2012, with the first one in 0.34.01 successful. It seems like any worldgen beyond 100 years is likely to result in crashes from these leaks. The other three were in 0.34.02, as documented.

For the 0.34.02 worldgens, minor personal mods were used.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andrew425 on February 19, 2012, 05:49:07 am

While I love the fact that families are coming to my fort do you think you will reduce the amount of children that come every wave?

My first spring wave I got 38 children.

I now have 50 children out of 90 dwarfs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runiq on February 19, 2012, 06:09:09 am

Quote from: Andrew425 on February 19, 2012, 05:49:07 am

While I love the fact that families are coming to my fort do you think you will reduce the amount of children that come every wave?

You can do that yourself. See <df_folder>/init/d_init.txt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmperorJon on February 19, 2012, 06:44:54 am

I think the baby/child cap is for pregnancies not migration, so that won't work.
Personally I really like the new migrants, the only issue I see with them is that everyone has low skills. I think this is mainly because people die a lot in world gen... and the economy seems to fail too, so your dwarves aren't too skilled.
Once that's sorted out it'll be nice to see the higher skilled dwarves arriving later on.
I can imagine the fort going through realistic waves; the first 7, skilled enough to do what needs to be done and determined to survive, then the rush of low-skilled migrants and poor families looking for a new life, then once your fort becomes more and more famous and prosperous, more and more important and highly skilled people arrive. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mctribble on February 19, 2012, 10:03:00 am

Does vampire feeding pose any actual threat to the victim in adventure mode?  I tried to feed on an unconscious bandit as a combat technique, but after five or six times decided it didn't seem to be doing anything.

edit: and since you're probably reading this anyway, this is a great place to point out that DF is quite possibly the best game ever made, despite its status as being buggy and incomplete.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on February 19, 2012, 10:46:30 am

What I have noticed about the new migration waves is that while people may have low economic skills, there are a lot more people rolling around with 'Competent' and 'Adequate' in the military skills, armor user and speardwarf and such. I kinda like having the slight kick start to my military.

Which reminds me, is the phenominon of miners and woodcutters dropping their weapon once drafted at all intended behavior?  It seems to me that if I need a soldier -right now-, or if I'm still really new to the game, that I would select the semi-combat folks to my military (miner, woodcutter, hunters) and expect them to already have their weapons.

Just as a related suggestion, when I draft dwarves with marksmen skills, it'd be nice if it auto-added crossbow to their equipment list upon assignment, though still let you drop that after drafting. Or perhaps via an init option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 19, 2012, 11:02:42 am

Quote from: O11O1 on February 19, 2012, 10:46:30 am

Which reminds me, is the phenominon of miners and woodcutters dropping their weapon once drafted at all intended behavior?  It seems to me that if I need a soldier -right now-, or if I'm still really new to the game, that I would select the semi-combat folks to my military (miner, woodcutter, hunters) and expect them to already have their weapons.

Just as a related suggestion, when I draft dwarves with marksmen skills, it'd be nice if it auto-added crossbow to their equipment list upon assignment, though still let you drop that after drafting. Or perhaps via an init option.

Here's the report for that bug. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1451)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MagmaSolutionsInc on February 19, 2012, 11:13:10 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 16, 2012, 11:45:22 pm

I guess it was because of people who named their chars Rape Raperape The Rape of Rape.

That doesn't really give a good image of the game for random bystanders  :P

Ok, I'm sorry about that. but it was funny at the time!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kriby on February 19, 2012, 11:30:34 am

One for Baughn:

Is it possible to make the macro function wait during the sleep/wait screen? Combine it with repeat and you have a way of "fast-forwarding" the world. You'll have to edit out hunger but still, it'd be nice to be able to pass the time!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: red_29A on February 19, 2012, 04:56:36 pm

My best fortress was called The Sweet Sweet Anus. And my most recent one was The Crotch of Sluts. So you can imagine my disappointment when i tried to name my new fort. Still, best game ever! There was a 16 month period encompassing the year 2008 where i played DF for 8-10 hours a day... i can quit anytime... tomorrow... Also Toady, if you need a butler/man-servant for cooking and cleaning and any/all of real-life's chores, let me know. i make a mean omelette and can fry bacon to various degrees of crispyness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cespinarve on February 19, 2012, 10:06:52 pm

 Are there plans to separate coffers and bags in the near future? I can macro cabinet and bed placement no problems, but coffers have to be done by hand if I don't want to waste my supply of bags.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: toboo123 on February 20, 2012, 04:34:12 am

I'm realitivly new to Dwarf Fortess and im really addicted to the game, and I know multiplayer has been discussed before but ive never heard toadies opinions on it, cause multiplayer seems like it would just add to the chaos that is dwarf fortess, i could just imagine a co-op mode with my friends
Me:Hey why arn't the dwarves working on the wall
Friend: oh because i told them to make a statue of a penis
Me: WHAT! but we need the wall to protect us from zombie camels
Friend: well maybe if you hadn't chosen a haunted area for our fortress we wouldn't have zombie camels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 20, 2012, 06:26:51 am

Quote from: toboo123 on February 20, 2012, 04:34:12 am

I'm realitivly new to Dwarf Fortess and im really addicted to the game, and I know multiplayer has been discussed before but ive never heard toadies opinions on it, cause multiplayer seems like it would just add to the chaos that is dwarf fortess, i could just imagine a co-op mode with my friends
Me:Hey why arn't the dwarves working on the wall
Friend: oh because i told them to make a statue of a penis
Me: WHAT! but we need the wall to protect us from zombie camels
Friend: well maybe if you hadn't chosen a haunted area for our fortress we wouldn't have zombie camels.

There is no intent for Dwarf Fortress to have multiplayer capability natively, but you can do the sort of thing that you describe using TelNet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 20, 2012, 11:25:21 am

A sort of multiplayer has been developed with one full time server currently running.

just one peice of advice, be respectful and use chat to coordinate, everyone's commands go in together.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on February 20, 2012, 12:04:31 pm

Quote

We drew up some crayon rewards and I'm trying to stay on top of email, but I'm currently losing that fight, he he he. I didn't spend much time on bugs today, but a lot of the embark crashes and adamantine spires and weirdness should be fixed for next time (thanks to Lightning4 for spotting the bad data files).

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/



Oh well, it was going to be fixed eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 20, 2012, 12:55:04 pm

Quote from: red_29A on February 19, 2012, 04:56:36 pm

My best fortress was called The Sweet Sweet Anus. And my most recent one was The Crotch of Sluts. So you can imagine my disappointment when i tried to name my new fort. Still, best game ever! There was a 16 month period encompassing the year 2008 where i played DF for 8-10 hours a day... i can quit anytime... tomorrow... Also Toady, if you need a butler/man-servant for cooking and cleaning and any/all of real-life's chores, let me know. i make a mean omelette and can fry bacon to various degrees of crispyness.

Language raws are moddable (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100787.0).

If you want, you can go through UrbanDictionary, adding everything you find, and set up a fort in Dirty Sanchezblooper the Cleavland Steamers of Donkey Show. It's just... only people who mod that in will get those things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lastofthelight on February 20, 2012, 05:42:47 pm

Toady, there are reports on the modding forum that any Secret not able to raise the dead will result in wizards/things not able to build towers. Is this is a bug? Could this perhaps be because you linked up the whole 'undead minions' with 'towers' in the code? Even if some code/worldgen limitation prevents them from having towers, is there any chance that you might put in a tag so you could choose to have Secret-creatures dwell in a hut  in the middle of nowhere, or a cave, go back and pretend to be a god, or just live in the forest instead? Those all seem like low hanging fruit, and might enable them to actually have apprentices, so stock-necromancers wouldn't just be over-running everything, which is what happens currently. This is probably on the bottom of the priority list though, sadly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 20, 2012, 05:54:31 pm

Quote from: lastofthelight on February 20, 2012, 05:42:47 pm

Toady, there are reports on the modding forum that any Secret not able to raise the dead will result in wizards/things not able to build towers. Is this is a bug? Could this perhaps be because you linked up the whole 'undead minions' with 'towers' in the code? Even if some code/worldgen limitation prevents them from having towers, is there any chance that you might put in a tag so you could choose to have Secret-creatures dwell in a hut  in the middle of nowhere, or a cave, go back and pretend to be a god, or just live in the forest instead? Those all seem like low hanging fruit, and might enable them to actually have apprentices, so stock-necromancers wouldn't just be over-running everything, which is what happens currently. This is probably on the bottom of the priority list though, sadly.

I saw some speculation (on other forums, I think) that worldgen only uses the first secret on the list or something.  If that's the case, it's a bug and should be reported (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/bug_report_page.php).  It certainly wouldn't be surprising if a bug like that slipped through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 20, 2012, 05:56:21 pm

That's one of the hardcoded things among the new night creatures, towers and the workforce needed to build them (fifty, I think Toady said). It's really unfortunate, too. Towers seem that they could have been lairs, the number of servants needed to create one a lair characteristic, writing books a creature habit... but well, there's more releases to come, so with any luck that'll move over with time. I guess it is also a problem that this leads to a proliferation of creature effect tokens and CE subtokens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 20, 2012, 08:04:14 pm

Don't forget, the magic arc is one of the longer-term development goals. We might get little bits and pieces of magicy goodness here and there, but the bulk of it will probably happen later rather than sooner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: toboo123 on February 20, 2012, 08:32:59 pm

Unless im missing something with dfterms, I belive the controls were similar to if i had just plugged a second keyboard into my computer and tried to have my friend use the other, but were controling the same cursor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McArathos on February 20, 2012, 09:02:58 pm

Quote from: toboo123 on February 20, 2012, 08:32:59 pm

Unless im missing something with dfterms, I belive the controls were similar to if i had just plugged a second keyboard into my computer and tried to have my friend use the other, but were controling the same cursor.

Correct; the game isn't meant for true multiplayer, so the dfterm workaround basically lets several people access one instance of the game and share control over it.  The players have to agree on how they will share the game (either by taking turns or what have you), and only one fortress can be played at a time (rather than running multiple sites that interact with each other).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 21, 2012, 12:47:12 am

also consider this, single player crashes 'gaming computers' (the real problem being gaming computers are GPU heavy stead of CPU but i digress).

multi-player would make supercomputers cry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 21, 2012, 01:41:44 am

The work on night creatures are finished for now or do you intend to return to them soon? For example, finishing randomly-generated vampires and integrating werewolves back to society.

Randomly generated vampires were one of the features I was most eager to get, and I was extremely disappointed they didn't make in into the release. Necromancer's and mummies I think are alright. I would like to see the Night hags/trolls to abducting people from your fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 21, 2012, 01:59:45 am

Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?

Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.

Of course there's also the thing where they're easily identifiable because they've been kicked out of a ton of places, haven't had a drink in ages, and wear a billion trophies. That hinders the gameplay a bit too. But I think frequency is the real problem. This is purely Dwarf mode, if that wasn't clear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 21, 2012, 02:26:42 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 21, 2012, 01:59:45 am

Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?

Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.

Of course there's also the thing where they're easily identifiable because they've been kicked out of a ton of places, haven't had a drink in ages, and wear a billion trophies. That hinders the gameplay a bit too. But I think frequency is the real problem. This is purely Dwarf mode, if that wasn't clear.

The gameplay mechanic of vampires in fortress is one of the best mechanics introduced to Fortress mode since the initial release, but I can see it becoming a hassle if two or more vampire arrive in each migrant wave.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 21, 2012, 05:27:17 am

"changed which civilized critters will move to which trade partner sites in world gen"

What does this mean?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 21, 2012, 09:43:25 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 21, 2012, 05:27:17 am

"changed which civilized critters will move to which trade partner sites in world gen"

What does this mean?

Why did you post this in two different threads? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101464.msg3016558#msg3016558)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 21, 2012, 09:46:55 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 21, 2012, 09:43:25 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 21, 2012, 05:27:17 am

"changed which civilized critters will move to which trade partner sites in world gen"

What does this mean?

Why did you post this in two different threads? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101464.msg3016558#msg3016558)

Ah, sorry, I assumed nobody would notice it since there were enough posts for page change ^^; I've experienced that on on other forums a lot, last post in page is usually not read by anyone for some reason...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 21, 2012, 09:56:05 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 21, 2012, 05:27:17 am

"changed which civilized critters will move to which trade partner sites in world gen"
What does this mean?

Something about this http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5137 I guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on February 21, 2012, 04:35:08 pm

Are the files in the raw/interaction examples folder used by the game or are they just there so we can see how hardcoded interactions work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 21, 2012, 04:48:26 pm

Quote from: Sizik on February 21, 2012, 04:35:08 pm

Are the files in the raw/interaction examples folder used by the game or are they just there so we can see how hardcoded interactions work?

They are not used by the game, they are just examples.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 21, 2012, 06:36:30 pm

Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101046.0) to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 21, 2012, 11:05:49 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 21, 2012, 06:36:30 pm

Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101046.0) to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.

Alternately: a 64bit version

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 21, 2012, 11:32:42 pm

"Currently available to do so" is a hyperlink. It's just invisible (http://www.thesecretofinvisibility.com/).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Himmelblau on February 22, 2012, 04:42:02 am

In the next release "dwarves train on archery targets again".

As they did in .28? Or was this feature even more broken in .34 than it was in .31, and they don't train archery at all in the current version (which they did in .31, in somewhat random manner but nonetheless)? I have had too little time to play the new version to try out archery practise yet :(

If it's going to work as well as it did in .28, another of my (least-)favorite bugs will be gone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 22, 2012, 07:02:46 am

vampires won't try to pin crimes on animals

Shame ... and I thought that I had vampire rabbits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on February 22, 2012, 10:08:24 am

Quote from: zwei on February 22, 2012, 07:02:46 am

vampires won't try to pin crimes on animals

Shame ... and I thought that I had vampire rabbits.

"The Bloated Tuber has been found dessicated, completely drained of juice!"

Nobody's going to get this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 22, 2012, 10:30:23 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 22, 2012, 10:08:24 am

Quote from: zwei on February 22, 2012, 07:02:46 am

vampires won't try to pin crimes on animals

Shame ... and I thought that I had vampire rabbits.

"The Bloated Tuber has been found dessicated, completely drained of juice!"

Nobody's going to get this.

Hah! You over-estimate your audience; I was definitely lame enough to read those books as a kid. Guess I'll need to start equipping my fortress cats with boxes of toothpicks...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 22, 2012, 10:34:48 am

Quote from: smirk on February 22, 2012, 10:30:23 am

Hah! You over-estimate your audience; I was definitely lame enough to read those books as a kid. Guess I'll need to start equipping my fortress cats with boxes of toothpicks...

I read those books AND listened to the audiobooks, which were great.  Nothing lame about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 22, 2012, 10:43:13 am

Aw man, there were audiobooks too? 0_o  I think I missed out on some valuable childhood experiences...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 22, 2012, 11:18:05 am

What are you talking about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on February 22, 2012, 11:42:40 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 22, 2012, 11:18:05 am

What are you talking about?

Bunnicula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnicula).

And I both read it and its first sequel as a kid and saw the animated TV special.  8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 22, 2012, 01:43:20 pm

Quote from: HiEv on February 22, 2012, 11:42:40 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 22, 2012, 11:18:05 am

What are you talking about?

Bunnicula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnicula).

And I both read it and its first sequel as a kid and saw the animated TV special.  8)

Oh. Never heard of that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mike Mayday on February 22, 2012, 02:34:07 pm

Guys I'm wary of greening this question because it's really minor: is there a way to stop animated creatures from blinking with the n~ symbol?

EDIT: eh, let's phrase it this way: Could animated/ghost creatures stop blinking with N~ once they're assigned proper graphics?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 22, 2012, 03:20:34 pm

Quote from: Mike Mayday on February 22, 2012, 02:34:07 pm

Guys I'm wary of greening this question because it's really minor: is there a way to stop animated creatures from blinking with the n~ symbol?

I think it is hardcoded; I was worried it would be seizure-inducing but I think it is quite nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 22, 2012, 03:46:48 pm

i think it is nice as it lets you know, that is not a friendly dwarf, not even close.

which can be slightly difficult even with a 16x16 texture pack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mike Mayday on February 22, 2012, 05:23:41 pm

Hey dudes, has the stone list once again become less functional? It seems to no longer allow me to control the use of all kinds of stone and once again only displays the economic ones. What gives?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 22, 2012, 05:57:06 pm

Quote from: Mike Mayday on February 22, 2012, 05:23:41 pm

Hey dudes, has the stone list once again become less functional? It seems to no longer allow me to control the use of all kinds of stone and once again only displays the economic ones. What gives?

Known bug. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5286)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mike Mayday on February 22, 2012, 06:25:34 pm

Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 22, 2012, 06:44:42 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 22, 2012, 05:57:06 pm

Known bug. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5286)

Its more like a feature request than a bug. It always limited menu only to ore, that "limit stone only to ore and sharp blade" check couldn't appear in code on mistake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 22, 2012, 06:48:06 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on February 22, 2012, 06:44:42 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 22, 2012, 05:57:06 pm

Known bug. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5286)

Its more like a feature request than a bug. It always limited menu only to ore, that "limit stone only to ore and sharp blade" check couldn't appear in code on mistake.

...except no it didn't? Last version you could, say, declare every stone that wasn't microcline to be economic so your Masons and Crafters would only ever build things out of Blinding Blue. It was quite handy if, like me, you wanted a fort uniform in color. Until I hear Word of Toad I'm assuming that lessening of functionality in any aspect of the game is a bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 22, 2012, 06:51:44 pm

Quote from: monk12 on February 22, 2012, 06:48:06 pm

...except no it didn't? Last version you could, say, declare every stone that wasn't microcline to be economic so your Masons and Crafters would only ever build things out of Blinding Blue. It was quite handy if, like me, you wanted a fort uniform in color. Until I hear Word of Toad I'm assuming that lessening of functionality in any aspect of the game is a bug.

Yeah, it was last version that was a bug - it got check on obsidian backwards (intended was to list only obsidian, but resulted in excluding obsidian and showing the rest).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 22, 2012, 06:52:23 pm

The bug report itself might be a better place to continue this discussion.  I'm not certain of the intended behavior myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on February 23, 2012, 01:40:00 pm

I'm guessing the "problem with age name calculation" is related to the fact that I had a world go from the Age of Death to the Second Age of Fairy tales?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 23, 2012, 01:47:07 pm

Quote from: Sizik on February 23, 2012, 01:40:00 pm

I'm guessing the "problem with age name calculation" is related to the fact that I had a world go from the Age of Death to the Second Age of Fairy tales?

I think it has more to do with me once getting to "The seventeenth age of myth". 

Before, this wasn't a problem because magical creatures basically never reproduced, but now, it's possible for fantastic creatures to drop low, then rise back up in population.

The game calculates several ages based upon the number of magical/fantastic creatures in the game, and now that werecritters can reproduce, it's possible for the game to fluctuate right on the borderline between an Age of Myth and an Age of Legends with each age lasting only about a couple years. 

Toady is probably adding a buffer threshold, so that, if the threshold is "Less than 60% of initial fantastic creatures alive" to reach Legends, then to go back to Myth, it would require "More than 70% of initial fantastic creatures alive" before it goes back to Myth to prevent fluctuations on the borderline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 23, 2012, 02:36:59 pm

Dragons, Hydras and Rocs have been reproducing since 31.19. If you start with a fair number of them, you can see dragons with 4 or 5 children. Most of them die soon though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on February 23, 2012, 05:54:11 pm

In RL ages are generally named retroactively. From what I hear, DF calculates each year or so, whereas if it stopped every, say, decade and looked backwards (however much RAM crying that would create) it would at least be less flickery, and could perhaps even notice the back-and-forth, resulting, perhaps, in an Age of Struggle or an Age of Strife.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: red_29A on February 23, 2012, 07:44:22 pm

Are there any plans to bring back glumprongs and sliver barbs?
I changed [EVIL] to [SAVAGE] and they came back, but its tough to find an evil and savage place that has all the features i want. I have had ~60 embarks since the 14th over 6-7 worlds and i have yet to start a fortress. I did have one that i liked but after restoring the language files and setting number of vampire curses to none (Sounds like not my cup of tea...) a different world was generated. I'll keep trying because it usually takes me a while, but not days...

On a more positive note i LOVE the evil rain and clouds! Makes everything seem much more haunted/terrifying/sinister. And after seeing the animated grass last year i don't think i'll ever embark anywhere else. Thanks for all that you do Toady! DF is the ultimate simulation. I pray to Armok that you never get tired of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 23, 2012, 08:03:29 pm

Quote from: red_29A on February 23, 2012, 07:44:22 pm

Are there any plans to bring back glumprongs and sliver barbs?

Bug report is here. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4133)  Yeah, it kinda sucks that they're busted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 23, 2012, 08:08:37 pm

Well one of the issues with evil and good lands is they need to assign a plot of land big enough.

It is why a LOT of evil and good lands are Glaciers. (in most worlds I generate... Glaciers make up 90% of all good lands)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: red_29A on February 23, 2012, 08:16:37 pm

Thanks for the quick response! And one of the duplicates is from me (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4248), even... Yeah i never thought i would mod this sweet sweet simulation, seems sacrilegious. I'm just hooked on purple beds and black clothing. Guess i'll look at my old raws and mod in that plant that can be milled into black dye and brewed into sake. Thanks again, this community is the best. Oh, and my cat died and i have a room-mate now.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on February 23, 2012, 09:59:35 pm

Quote from: red_29A on February 23, 2012, 08:16:37 pm

Thanks for the quick response! And one of the duplicates is from me (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4248), even... Yeah i never thought i would mod this sweet sweet simulation, seems sacrilegious. I'm just hooked on purple beds and black clothing. Guess i'll look at my old raws and mod in that plant that can be milled into black dye and brewed into sake. Thanks again, this community is the best. Oh, and my cat died and i have a room-mate now.  :P

I thought tunnel tubes were purple.  I guess glumprong trees are a different purple.

Personally, I wish there was more variety in dyes.  It makes it kinda boring to run a clothing industry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 24, 2012, 12:13:39 am

Quote from: Rockphed on February 23, 2012, 09:59:35 pm

Quote from: red_29A on February 23, 2012, 08:16:37 pm

Thanks for the quick response! And one of the duplicates is from me (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4248), even... Yeah i never thought i would mod this sweet sweet simulation, seems sacrilegious. I'm just hooked on purple beds and black clothing. Guess i'll look at my old raws and mod in that plant that can be milled into black dye and brewed into sake. Thanks again, this community is the best. Oh, and my cat died and i have a room-mate now.  :P

I thought tunnel tubes were purple.  I guess glumprong trees are a different purple.

Personally, I wish there was more variety in dyes.  It makes it kinda boring to run a clothing industry.

Yeah, it'd be sweet if we could mix dyes to make "burnt sienna" and all these other strange colors the game apparently recognizes. Ah well, wait and dream.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 24, 2012, 12:14:08 am

Quote

Still working on world gen. Made it a little faster, nothing spectacular (200 medium years in 10 minutes). There's more I can do there, in bits and pieces, but I'll probably go back to regular new bugs now for a bit, and then we can do another release.

But... there wasn't really a major problem with the first 200 years. The real problem is that it takes exponentially longer the more history you generate, so that long-history worlds are almost impossible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 24, 2012, 02:23:27 am

I generated 200 years in a medium world in 5 minutes in the current version. Just tested.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 24, 2012, 03:32:50 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 24, 2012, 12:14:08 am

Quote

Still working on world gen. Made it a little faster, nothing spectacular (200 medium years in 10 minutes). There's more I can do there, in bits and pieces, but I'll probably go back to regular new bugs now for a bit, and then we can do another release.

But... there wasn't really a major problem with the first 200 years. The real problem is that it takes exponentially longer the more history you generate, so that long-history worlds are almost impossible.

In the devlog before that, I mentioned that they finish now -- the years now go pretty uniformly through the rest of it.  The minute timing isn't as important as that I'm getting the years to pass 33% faster once they settle in, but I have no idea how any of that is going to translate to somebody else's computer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on February 24, 2012, 05:31:03 am

This one has been bugging me for ages:

When creatures attack each other, how does the targeting  work? How do they choose which part to attack and which weapon to use? Does this take into account the strikes of opportunity, or is the selection random? In other words, are strikes of opportunity something only I can do when using the "A" menu in adventurer mode, or are they something all creatures use automatically, even me when I simply attack my opponent using the movement arrows?

EDIT: Footkerchief and the others respond that creatures do use strikes of opportunity. But then why does attacking through keyboard arrows give me different results than attacking via the "A" menu. For example I open the "A" menu and see that I have a "simple strike" opportunity to kick my enemy in the left foot. I close the "A" menu and attack enemy using arrows instead. I would expect my character to kick his foe into the left foot, but he bashes him with mace to the head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on February 24, 2012, 06:33:57 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on February 24, 2012, 05:31:03 am

This one has been bugging me for ages...

Not an expert here, but I somehow recall: When Toady implemented opportunities he said all creatures use them, even adventurer when you just push arrows. Correct me if I'm wrong ;]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Halconnen on February 24, 2012, 08:22:55 am

Quote from: Rip0k on February 24, 2012, 06:33:57 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on February 24, 2012, 05:31:03 am

This one has been bugging me for ages...

Not an expert here, but I somehow recall: When Toady implemented opportunities he said all creatures use them, even adventurer when you just push arrows. Correct me if I'm wrong ;]

They do. It's why being knocked unconscious is now extremely lethal even in good armor. Before opportunities, you'd just get dinged all over. Now it's over with a few perfectly square critical strikes to the head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 24, 2012, 09:25:27 am

Quote from: Halconnen on February 24, 2012, 08:22:55 am

Quote from: Rip0k on February 24, 2012, 06:33:57 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on February 24, 2012, 05:31:03 am

This one has been bugging me for ages...

Not an expert here, but I somehow recall: When Toady implemented opportunities he said all creatures use them, even adventurer when you just push arrows. Correct me if I'm wrong ;]

They do. It's why being knocked unconscious is now extremely lethal even in good armor. Before opportunities, you'd just get dinged all over. Now it's over with a few perfectly square critical strikes to the head.

Yep: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2010.html#2010-11-01)

Quote from: devlog (minus links, plus emphasis)

I know I just said I was done with features, but I was on a roll and did aimed attacks and random combat opportunities. Enemies do it too. It shakes up the combat flow quite a bit, and you'll occasionally see them use their secondary attacks when opportunities come up. Opportunity maxes out on unconscious opponents and enemies also know how to pick the best strikes, so fights can be finished quickly now. Now I'll get to the pre-release cleaning, he he he.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 24, 2012, 09:49:54 am

Well, it makes sense that they'd be able to slit your throat when you're down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on February 24, 2012, 01:47:59 pm

Quote from: Halconnen on February 24, 2012, 08:22:55 am

Quote from: Rip0k on February 24, 2012, 06:33:57 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on February 24, 2012, 05:31:03 am

This one has been bugging me for ages...

Not an expert here, but I somehow recall: When Toady implemented opportunities he said all creatures use them, even adventurer when you just push arrows. Correct me if I'm wrong ;]

They do. It's why being knocked unconscious is now extremely lethal even in good armor. Before opportunities, you'd just get dinged all over. Now it's over with a few perfectly square critical strikes to the head.

Oddly enough I survived for about 200 turns after going unconscious against a marksdwarf.  Last I saw before giving up was said marksdwarf getting swarmed by ducks.  I love this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 24, 2012, 01:50:24 pm

I love it when that happens. More than once I've been saved from an ambush because a herd of something-or-other blundered into the battle and made a royal mess of things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 24, 2012, 02:27:02 pm

Which is why adventurers should always carry a loaf of bread; it's better to have the ducks with you than against you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 24, 2012, 02:41:12 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 24, 2012, 02:27:02 pm

Which is why adventurers should always carry a loaf of bread; it's better to have the ducks with you than against you.

Bread does not exist, at least, until Toady upgrades the cooking system.  Instead, we can only have cave wheat flour, and something dubiously called "biscuits" that can be made from any two (very loosely defined) "edible" substances.  You know, like sewer brew and prepared fly brain biscuits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 24, 2012, 03:17:07 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 24, 2012, 02:41:12 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 24, 2012, 02:27:02 pm

Which is why adventurers should always carry a loaf of bread; it's better to have the ducks with you than against you.

Bread does not exist, at least, until Toady upgrades the cooking system.  Instead, we can only have cave wheat flour, and something dubiously called "biscuits" that can be made from any two (very loosely defined) "edible" substances.  You know, like sewer brew and prepared fly brain biscuits.

Two great tastes that taste great together! Nutrition dwarves love, the taste ducks crave!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 25, 2012, 03:03:29 am

That's why I always carry a couple loaves of bread with me to mash the fly brains into a paste suitable for cooking. Dwarven bread makes for a good mortar and pestle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mike Mayday on February 25, 2012, 03:53:39 am

T Baughn/Toady: how would you judge the difficulty of coding switching between two tilesets during the game (for displaying maps)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ~Q~ on February 25, 2012, 07:32:29 am

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 25, 2012, 09:51:27 am

Sure it should probably go to suggestions board, but cant help myself from thinking that proper solution to undeath is not pulping, but introduction of managed fire. Dwarfs should use torches as weapons to fend them off, and burn corpses w/out resorting to magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on February 25, 2012, 01:03:11 pm

I'd like to disolve the mangled undead bits in barrels of lye.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 25, 2012, 02:00:35 pm

Quote from: ~Q~ on February 25, 2012, 07:32:29 am

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

As far as I understand it, it's because the current interactions are basically kludgy.  Toady put in hard-coded effects as (yet another) placeholder to just get things released, and will put it down as another "when he has time for it" thing to actually make the system robust enough to make modding and procedural generation possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 25, 2012, 03:10:31 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 25, 2012, 02:00:35 pm

Quote from: ~Q~ on February 25, 2012, 07:32:29 am

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

As far as I understand it, it's because the current interactions are basically kludgy.  Toady put in hard-coded effects as (yet another) placeholder to just get things released, and will put it down as another "when he has time for it" thing to actually make the system robust enough to make modding and procedural generation possible.

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 25, 2012, 03:15:22 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 25, 2012, 02:00:35 pm

"when he has time for it"

Well, I hope that when he has time for that, he would also have time to add some hardcoded materials (like glass), reactions and workshops too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on February 25, 2012, 04:16:36 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 25, 2012, 03:10:31 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 25, 2012, 02:00:35 pm

Quote from: ~Q~ on February 25, 2012, 07:32:29 am

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

As far as I understand it, it's because the current interactions are basically kludgy.  Toady put in hard-coded effects as (yet another) placeholder to just get things released, and will put it down as another "when he has time for it" thing to actually make the system robust enough to make modding and procedural generation possible.

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

In other words, the current randomly generated curses and interactions use data that is really hard to put in the RAWs.  But if you wanted to, you could create your own curses and interactions and turn off the randomly generated ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 05:18:04 pm

 Are there any kinds of interactions that can stem from using an item in another predefined way?(stupid example: a crossbow using the "shouting"-thing merchants do to say "whrrr" whenever it fires a bolt)
Also: what are your "final" plans for the raws? do you want to have just one big raw-file, where everything is listed, so that every tag could theoretically be applied to every entry(example: adding a weapon-style-attack-tag to a piece of armor) or do you want to keep everything separated(so that a rock can never use a creature-tag, like defining a bodystructure or tissues)?

 Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 25, 2012, 05:30:18 pm

Quote from: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 05:18:04 pm

Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

I'm not entirely certain what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 25, 2012, 06:27:07 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on February 25, 2012, 05:30:18 pm

Quote from: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 05:18:04 pm

Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

I'm not entirely certain what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

The Secret of life and death contains following line:

Code: [Select]

        [IS_SECRET:SUPERNATURAL_LEARNING_POSSIBLE]    // gods
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_RESEARCH_POSSIBLE]            // plain research by reading?
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_TEACHING_POSSIBLE]            // Student and Master
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_RECORDING_POSSIBLE:objects/text/book_instruction.txt:objects/text/secret_death.txt] // gets written down

(Comments and emphasis by me)

This gives you the ability to learn from various sources.

Thought let me get this straight you want to (for example) make a crossbow throw fireballs via a interaction? If so there is the following snippet (lifted from the fireimp):

Code: [Select]

   
 
[CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
        [CDI:ADV_NAME:Hurl fireball]
        [CDI:USAGE_HINT:ATTACK]
        [CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:HAND]
        [CDI:FLOW:FIREBALL]
        [CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
        [CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
        [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
        [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]


I dindt see any tags thought that add these abilities to actual objects. Potions work because they are a ingested material.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 07:21:39 pm

hm, ok, thx for the answers. thats what i feared: actually making an object use a breath is still not moddable(i want modded arquebuses to spit some smoke when firing)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 25, 2012, 08:42:37 pm

Is there any particular reason a creature can't be subjected to multiple body transformation effects, such that the most recent would have priority?

Merely wondering if it was a conscious design decision or just a byproduct of the way the code works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 25, 2012, 11:28:23 pm

Quote

sterilized zombies and mummies

I hope you used enough rubbing alcohol. We can't have anyone catching an infection. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 25, 2012, 11:43:47 pm

Quote from: devlog

made ramp name indicate unusability

Eh? What makes a ramp unusable, apart from another critter on it?

Also, whoo for having all the stones on the z-stones menu!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 11:57:27 pm

Quote from: Toady/devlog

made forbid/etc. from stocks screen not effect items used for buildings when applied to an entire group

noooo! past are the days of grouping my workshops by stone-type to "de-/activate" them in groups =(

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 12:20:39 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 25, 2012, 03:10:31 pm

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

That only means it's "not a placeholder" if Toady isn't intending to actually go back and make those work with the raws eventually.  As long as Toady does still intend to go back, it's a stopgap measure.

... The way in which you say that makes me wonder, however,
Toady, do you still intend to make interactions like vampirism or vampire weaknesses completely moddable at some point?  Or will things like Forgotten Beasts and general night creatures forever be hardcoded?  Is it a problem of not figuring out how to make procedurals play nice with raws, or something you want to keep?

---

Quote from: monk12 on February 25, 2012, 11:43:47 pm

Quote from: devlog

made ramp name indicate unusability

Eh? What makes a ramp unusable, apart from another critter on it?

Not having a wall to climb up to makes it unusable.  In adventure mode, I sometimes see a line of ramps leading nowhere, especially around things like market stalls, where it looks like the land was leveled to make a wide, open area for the market, and the ramps were left behind. 

There are also things like grates being on top of ramps that prevent travel through ramps to higher elevations. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 01:21:28 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 11:57:27 pm

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Your use case is the minority.  The larger concern is the many players who do that by accident.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 12:20:39 am

Toady, do you still intend to make interactions like vampirism or vampire weaknesses completely moddable at some point?  Or will things like Forgotten Beasts and general night creatures forever be hardcoded?  Is it a problem of not figuring out how to make procedurals play nice with raws, or something you want to keep?

The plan is for that stuff to be in the raws eventually, but there's no timeline as usual.

link (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59642.msg1387951#msg1387951)

Quote from: Toady One

Random creature generation is another example.  The forgotten beasts are hard-coded now, but I was considering starting with the random dragons out in the raws.  This would involve scripting again.  I don't know if this is at all similar, in terms of the concerns people are bringing up.  It seems like it's a matter of how central something is to the game.  The ability of some people to build water computers doesn't seem to bother most people, because that's sort of difficult and specialized, whereas presumably a script would be easier to use and would have more applications.

link (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1719248;topicseen#msg1719248)

Quote from: Toady One

But more recently the thing with dragons has been the idea of doing a semi-specified random creature generator, using dragons as the prototype, and getting it all out into the raws etc.  That is, I want a generator that'll take information from the raws and produce various dragons that are all somewhat recognizable as dragons, but still different from each other.  I guess that's not too far off what has been with night creatures already now, but that doesn't have a raw format.  We'll assuredly have flying dragons and intelligent speaking dragons once that happens, but it's sort of a damper on dragons until it does.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 26, 2012, 01:38:30 am

I doubt that the randomized effects are intended to stay hardcoded forever.  I seem to remember** something in a DFtalk mentioning that there were a few things Toady hadn't RAW-ified because he wasn't sure how he wanted to do it, and didn't want to make any choices dealing with the RAWs that weren't mostly permanent, since that would bean breaking mods down the road (not to mention potentially having to redo some of his own work). 

The simplest way to go about it would be to have some meta-code flags that got read and parsed on worldgen to create the raw folder for the generated world; example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:STRANGE_BIRD]
[DESCRIPTION:A strange bird.]
[NAME:strange bird:strange birds:strange bird]
[CREATURE_TILE:249][COLOR:1:0:1]
[PETVALUE:30]
{chance|50|[PET]}
{choose|2|[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:SHRUBLAND_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:FOREST_TEMPERATE_BROADLEAF]|[BIOME:FOREST_TEMPERATE_CONIFER]}
[BODY:HUMANOID_ARMLESS:2WINGS:{choose|1|2EYES|6EYES}:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:GIZZARD:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES:{choose|1|BEAK|BILL}:TONGUE:RIBCAGE{chance|50|:2ANTLERS}]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
[REMOVE_MATERIAL:HAIR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
[REMOVE_TISSUE:HAIR]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
...
gets parsed and turned into (in some particular world)

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:STRANGE_BIRD]
[DESCRIPTION:A strange bird.]
[NAME:strange bird:strange birds:strange bird]
[CREATURE_TILE:249][COLOR:1:0:1]
[PETVALUE:30]
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TEMPERATE][BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE]
[BODY:HUMANOID_ARMLESS:2WINGS:6EYES:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:GIZZARD:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES:BILL:TONGUE:RIBCAGE:2ANTLERS]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
[REMOVE_MATERIAL:HAIR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
[REMOVE_TISSUE:HAIR]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
...

Which would work for a lot of stuff, but maybe not everything Toady has planned to make random.  Whatever it is, I doubt it'll be coming down the pipeline soon, but the ability to create semi-randomized creatures is something I look forward to. 

** = ninjad by Footkerchief

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on February 26, 2012, 03:12:49 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 11:57:27 pm

Quote from: Toady/devlog

made forbid/etc. from stocks screen not effect items used for buildings when applied to an entire group

noooo! past are the days of grouping my workshops by stone-type to "de-/activate" them in groups =(

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Well, it was not supposed to be used this way and for me it is a great bugfix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: scriver on February 26, 2012, 10:19:02 am

Quote

sterilized zombies and mummies

Greatest game ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on February 26, 2012, 02:23:04 pm

Quote from: Kogut on February 26, 2012, 03:12:49 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 25, 2012, 11:57:27 pm

Quote from: Toady/devlog

made forbid/etc. from stocks screen not effect items used for buildings when applied to an entire group

noooo! past are the days of grouping my workshops by stone-type to "de-/activate" them in groups =(

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Well, it was not supposed to be used this way and for me it is a great bugfix.

Yeah it is a nice bugfix. I won't have to build all my workshops from blocks just to prevent accidental forbid.


Since the devlog contained not only typical bugfixes, but also some interface usability improvements, I wonder how big role had the bugtracker managers in pointing Toady's attention to these issues?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 02:45:29 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 01:21:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 12:20:39 am

Toady, do you still intend to make interactions like vampirism or vampire weaknesses completely moddable at some point?  Or will things like Forgotten Beasts and general night creatures forever be hardcoded?  Is it a problem of not figuring out how to make procedurals play nice with raws, or something you want to keep?

The plan is for that stuff to be in the raws eventually, but there's no timeline as usual.

link (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59642.msg1387951#msg1387951)

Quote from: Toady One

I haven't made any decisions.  There are lots of things that have come up in the past where scripting has been a natural extension/solution and I've been trying to find time recently to think about some of the options.

Even the most rudimentary standing production orders implementation is going to have to involve some kind of if-then structure and a way to get at certain game values/sums, and then it's a question of how that's going to work.  My own scripting stuff (which exists for some of the diplomacy but is quite godawful) would be too clunky and would be reinventing the wheel.  If a scripting language is used, it's a matter of whether it is available in the raws or if you'll just be able to enter some simple actions from a manager style screen, from which scripts are then built internally.  I suppose there would be utilities written that grab onto that and stuff scripts into the system even if there aren't scripts in the raws, but it would be limited by the script-DF interface in any case, as far as I know.  It would be a little strange to have universal management scripts that can do all sorts of things and be run any time, in part because of the accessibility issues, and because it's just sort of strange and unnatural to me to have a game that works that way, but that's exactly what a standing production order is.

There are future issues -- take creature special abilities or artifact magic.  It seems like that's inevitably going to involve some kind of scripts, and at that point, there will have to be a measure of interface with the guts of the game.  It's a lot of work to do that, as Footkerchief mentioned, however, it's a lot of work any way it is done, because the magic/abilities have to have effects/targets/etc. and that'll have to be kept up to date and access various parts of the game, pervasively if the typical variety is allowed.  It's similar to an actual API for the graphics/etc., but I don't think it'd be nearly as difficult to maintain, since there would be a fraction of the options, and it doesn't raise any of the other concerns.  In any case, I'd always wanted to have a game where you can do a variety of magic effects with a lot of freedom, but the more power you have, the more like programming it seems.

Random creature generation is another example.  The forgotten beasts are hard-coded now, but I was considering starting with the random dragons out in the raws.  This would involve scripting again.  I don't know if this is at all similar, in terms of the concerns people are bringing up.  It seems like it's a matter of how central something is to the game.  The ability of some people to build water computers doesn't seem to bother most people, because that's sort of difficult and specialized, whereas presumably a script would be easier to use and would have more applications.

Those are from 2010, so I think the "still" question still has a bit of validity, but I think I'll ask a different question, in its stead, as this has kept coming up and bothering me...

Toady, what exactly is the source of your recalcitrance over very basic scripting uses in the game?  Is it simply the term "script"?  Because such a fear of a definition seems very strange when the raws, macros, embark profiles, worldgen parameters, and many other things that the player has to interface with to play the game already are scripts.  I just don't see how making the scripting language that the Raws already are into having slightly more functionality will make them somehow bad, especially since they are already completely opaque to most players, due mostly to the fact that the raws aren't making enough use of scripts and templates to reduce the copy-pasted walls of text.

Is there some fear that scripts are not intuitive enough?  Because macros are pretty darn easy, and you can make full-text Mad Libs style scripts (Or even full graphic interface ones where you use colored blocks to build code like legos (http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/05/5-tools-to-introduce-programming-to-kids/)) that children are capable of understanding, and can let anyone with absolutely no knowledge of programming tell a dwarf, "If you run out of strawberry wine, don't complain to me about it, just go brew another batch!"

It makes me tear my hair out to see a game this complex, where everything has to be micromanaged to a fault because of a crippling phobia of AI, interface, and players orchestrating abstract, top-down control over the course of the game.

When brain-dead games like Final Fantasy XII let you fully script your character actions, while Dwarf Fortress shies away from that same thing because it's "too complicated for people", the world is over.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 26, 2012, 04:22:59 pm

I think its less that he's afraid of introducing a scripting language, and more that he hasn't gotten around to planning it out.  I can understand wanting to flesh out the system (develop the RAW format for interactions etc) before attempting to develop the scripting language meant to control it. 

It's a question of when, not if, Toady plans to implement user-defined randomized creatures. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 04:46:57 pm

Beware, Angry Internet Nerd in the area!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 05:11:00 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 04:46:57 pm

Beware, Angry Internet Nerd in the area!

Calls to mind fan-isms of yore like "The interface is literally a form of abuse and it pains me to see it inflicted upon people."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 26, 2012, 05:45:41 pm

The problem with scripting is that it makes modding inaccessible for the vast majority of the community i guess. The raws as they are right now are nice and (moderatly) simple so everybody can make and maintain a mod.

As far as actual ingame scripting goes *shrugs* but i guess here are the programmers and coders in the community at a certain advantage. I myself think the game should be enjoyable for everyone without such crutches but then again i would also like to see scripting too. Finding the right path between those poles is the crucial thing.

Also scripts can be damn slow respecktive the scriptengine could slow the game down to a crawl ...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 05:46:37 pm

Every time the term "script" comes up, people throw it around like it means something too terribly complex for ordinary humans to handle.  Scripting can be made incredibly intuitive, to the point of making it like simply speaking a sentence.  (Although I highly doubt anything DF vanilla will ever be anything considered "intuitive".) 

It's not even difficult, provided one goes into the project with the proper frame of mind, and approaches the subject with the game design direction of creating a completely high-level abstract interface with coding that makes reasonable assumptions about user intent. 

Final Fantasy XII, for example, just lets you set "(Cast Life) on (Any Ally)", and assumes it only means on valid targets, and if set to priority 1, means your character's highest priority is reviving dead allies.  That's not just something a child can figure out, it's something that a great many children actually use.

This should be the easy, obvious stuff you do before you push an absurdly micromanagement-heavy interface upon your players.  It's not complicated in the least, wouldn't take nearly as much time as vampires or interactions, and would be far more valuable to the actual game.

Standing production orders has been second place in the list of player demands since the Eternal Suggestions has been going in 2008.  It was suggested before then, as well.  Toady has yet to start work on any of those ESV suggestions, and from the looks of things, it'll probably be another 10 years before he even starts adding the basic needed-to-play-the-game functionality requests because he will always be finding some new random code that simulates the leaf size growth rates of saplings that will become a higher priority than making any of the data visible information to the player. 



... and besides, your fanboy-blindness-induced defensive rants when people raise legitimate complaints puts you in a bit of a glass house when it comes to "Internet RAGE", thvaz.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 05:54:09 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 05:46:37 pm

Toady has yet to start work on any of those ESV suggestions, and from the looks of things, it'll probably be another 10 years before he even starts adding the basic needed-to-play-the-game functionality requests because he will always be finding some new random code that simulates the leaf size growth rates of saplings that will become a higher priority than making any of the data visible information to the player. 

That's not how the voice of reason works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 05:55:04 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 05:46:37 pm

... and besides, your fanboy-blindness-induced defensive rants when people raise legitimate complaints puts you in a bit of a glass house when it comes to "Internet RAGE", thvaz.

It is not about what you wrote, but how you wrote it. Chill and relax.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on February 26, 2012, 06:10:01 pm

The problem is that all that will take up an entire arc to set up and an entirely new version. It is not something Toady can simply do when he's got a few minutes to spare. I imagine Toady doesn't really look forward to spending a year working on stuff that essentially adds nothing new to the core game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 06:21:16 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 05:54:09 pm

That's not how the voice of reason works.

Nor is this:

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 26, 2012, 05:11:00 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 04:46:57 pm

Beware, Angry Internet Nerd in the area!

Calls to mind fan-isms of yore like "The interface is literally a form of abuse and it pains me to see it inflicted upon people."

You can throw around spurious inferences to people trying to commit intellectual property theft at anyone you don't like with all the blind arrogance you can muster, but if you were as smart and aware as you think you are, you'd realize by now the real threat to DF is not the next Khazad, but the next Minecraft. 

Toady is down to what, a feature release per year, now? 

How much longer do you think players will wait for fixes, especially when things started getting pretty ugly in 2011 after all the things still unfixed from 31.01?

Meanwhile, games that take inspiration from DF pop up like weeds, and no, they aren't stealing or just outright clones, but games that have ideas of their own, and ideas that they merely take from inspiration from DF.  (And DF itself took obvious inspiration from the likes of Roguelikes and Lord of the Rings.)

The game that will bury Dwarf Fortress will not be made stealing its code, it will be made by using some elements inspired by DF with a design philosophy present from the start that DF has never had.  DF has always been about a stack of individual ideas that have never been tied together by any coherent philosophy (which is why it hops from being realism to steampunk to high fantasy in the eyes of its players), and you can't add one by copy-pasting code. 

There was never a need for Minecraft to steal code out of Dwarf Fortress, and the notion that people can have something to say about a game, or even if they "want to be a lead developer one day" is not the insult you clearly think it is. 

So don't you dare continuously cart out these same Khazad accusations every time someone raises a complaint about DF.

---

EDIT: For clarity, after the fight died down:
I am not mad at Toady in this, I am mad about the notion that Khazad can somehow be used as a ready all-purpose weapon against anyone with complaints about the game, especially the interface, as though we are all "traitors and thieves" Footkerchief has to keep in line.  The notion that somehow, having ideas or wanting to someday be a game developer yourself is an insult you can level against people, as with this:

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 27, 2011, 04:35:37 pm

This community (presumably due to the many programmers) has a history of making the leap from "I wish the game was this way" to "I want to be the head developer of a DF-like game."

It is something I find deeply offensive.

In spite of that, this clearly was an improper place and time to vent such a grievance, and for that, I was clearly in the wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 06:44:05 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 06:21:16 pm

-rant-

There is just one thing Toady can do about another game threatening DF, and it is selling the game to a publisher/getting a team/open sourcing the game, things he already said he will never do, because it will take out from him everything he likes about the project. So, if he doesn't care, why should you?

Do your suggestions, report bugs, point errors, criticize bad moves but remember that you aren't talking with an uncaring PR of a big company, Toady is just a guy. There is no need to get angry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on February 26, 2012, 08:22:23 pm

It's good to bear in mind that Toady is not a professional game designer, and not subject to professional standards; he is an extremely industrious amateur who publishes his work on the internet, and does not need a job by virtue of people throwing money at him. It's his prerogative to develop the game in whatever manner he feels fit, no matter how unorthodox. It's not like featurecreep is a recent trend either. We all knew what we were getting into when we started playing this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:19:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 26, 2012, 06:44:05 pm

There is just one thing Toady can do about another game threatening DF, and it is selling the game to a publisher/getting a team/open sourcing the game, things he already said he will never do, because it will take out from him everything he likes about the project. So, if he doesn't care, why should you?

To say that Toady is absolutely helpless as to where Dwarf Fortress will go as a project is simply false.  He has absolute creative control over this, as you, yourself are quick to remind people.

However, decisions have consequences.  He chooses whether or not to prioritize one thing or another, and those choices impact his players, and his players will impact him, whether that is by donation or leaving.

THAT is how DF competes against other games - by offering things that other games don't, and preferably in a way that doesn't involve flaws that bury the good.

And it's not Toady I'm mad at.  It's the dismissal of the frustration without consideration, not by Toady, but by "Toady's Elite Bodyguard" of the community.

Quote from: tfaal on February 26, 2012, 08:22:23 pm

It's good to bear in mind that Toady is not a professional game designer, and not subject to professional standards; he is an extremely industrious amateur who publishes his work on the internet, and does not need a job by virtue of people throwing money at him. It's his prerogative to develop the game in whatever manner he feels fit, no matter how unorthodox. It's not like featurecreep is a recent trend either. We all knew what we were getting into when we started playing this game.

As long as Toady makes his living off this, it is a job.  And when Toady took money specifically in exchange for providing a service to the people who gave him money, he was creating, and later fulfilling, a contract. 

You can treat it like a quirky performance art project, but as long as players are too low a priority, they will become upset players, and eventually, they will be players (and payers) no more. 

When the game starts tracking eyelash hair growth, in a way that is never displayable to the player or interactable with any other feature in the game, or when not even Toady notices that attributes rust without ever having growth outside the military until players literally have to memory-hack the data to even be able to see it, then things have stopped being "added features of the game", and simply started to become data added for the sheer sake of adding data. 

What is the purpose of data nobody, not even the code's creator can see? 

The signal-to-noise ratio is dropping. 

The meaningless junk data this game generates in areas like worldgen (with millions of meaningless rampages that result in no real difference) overwhelm any actual meaningful information, and even the ability of third-party software to try to search for and salvage the information is stretched.  A simulation that produces data that can never be seen in any meaningful format or tested is a waste.

It is a sign that Toady has gone beyond even trying to create a simulation, much less a game, and is simply performance art done for the mere thought that it had been done, not for any actual purpose.  He is completely losing sight of the forest growing sideways through the cliffs for the attempts to measure the growth rate of the bark on the trees.  Toady can't be an island totally unto himself, he has to interact with the players if he expects to have people interact with him.

I'm not even saying he has to do something he wasn't already planning on doing - I'm just saying keep some perspective that there is no point in data players can't even see.  The idea that somehow, a player will have to have a way to see and care about this should be in his mind somewhere before he adds something to the game, and if it doesn't, then it's probably not as high a priority as the crashes or the gaping holes in the way the player can see or interact with the data in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 26, 2012, 09:22:41 pm

Nw_Kohaku: When i hear script i think structures forks and loops. The stuff from your Final Fantasy example is more constrained and is indeed nice and dandy in my opinion because i have seen this variation in action in Stardocks elemental:Fallen enchantress.

Anyway i dont think that Dwarf fortress is made by toady for making money, thats just a neat side-effect. Toady has no pressing neat to throw out feature releases every few days.  [edit] As such it does not compete with other games on terms of popularity or whatever, it exists solely to be enjoyed like a piece of art. Toady has not signed any contract, a donation is different from contractual payment. People donate money because they like toadys idea and want to support him. Its not like a Big game company announcing a game that is paid by preorders that is also under the constraints of some PRjunk or release dates etc.. (and seriously the last one i had, "from dust", was a mayor disappointmment) [/edit]

And as far as fanboyism goes: Thats to much honor for me, i merely stated my distrust on complex scripting engines in this type of game. And i say that as Programmer and Softwaretester not as "Fanboy".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 26, 2012, 09:33:17 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:19:39 pm

As long as Toady makes his living off this, it is a job.  And when Toady took money specifically in exchange for providing a service to the people who gave him money, he was creating, and later fulfilling, a contract.

When you do such implications, you should provide some evidence. For example, please, point us to any kind of words from Toady that he provides something besides crayon art to payers or that there is any kind of contract. As far as I know, he never made any binding obligations towards anything besides one-time animal support project.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:38:41 pm

Quote from: Heph on February 26, 2012, 09:22:41 pm

Anyway i dont think that Dwarf fortress is made by toady for making money, thats just a neat side-effect. Toady has no pressing neat to throw out feature releases every few days. 

Toady clearly isn't setting out to get rich, but there is a minimum level of donation that is going to have to be maintained for the project to continue as it has been going. 

The gap in donations before DF2010's release, (and the boom when he did release,) will either get larger or smaller depending on what he has put in the last release.

There's a difference between "selling out" and keeping in mind that you can't cut off your supply to the food money when you make your plans for the day.

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on February 26, 2012, 09:33:17 pm

When you do such implications, you should provide some evidence. For example, please, point us to any kind of words from Toady that he provides something besides crayon art to payers or that there is any kind of contract. As far as I know, he never made any binding obligations towards anything besides one-time animal support project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract

Contracts are any exchange of goods (including money) or services in exchange for any other form of goods or services, voluntarily agreed upon in advance.  This includes implied contracts and verbal contracts. 

Open contracts include setting a price on an item in a store, declaring, essentially, that you are willing to sell that good for that price, and that exchange is legally binding.

Just because you don't sign on the dotted line does not mean something is not legally a contract.

So yes, saying "I will give you crayon drawings if you give me a certain amount of money" is a contract.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 26, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:38:41 pm

Contracts are any exchange of goods (including money) or services in exchange for any other form of goods or services, voluntarily agreed upon in advance.  This includes implied contracts and verbal contracts.

I've highlighted thing you should read carefully. Once again, Toady never stated any obligations to provide any kind of DF-related service to donating players, therefore your original statement is false.
Also, peeking in other people's pockets is unethical. Whatever decision Toady takes in this aspect is completely his own, it is not your business at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 26, 2012, 09:48:50 pm

In contrast: The Donation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation). The donatio is specificly a contract yes but one without return consideration.

Furthermore toady would still work on df even if the donations go down, he would thought have to get a job again to pay his bills.
 
Anyway does this discussion get us anywhere? I think not! So please back on topic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on February 26, 2012, 09:52:01 pm

On scripting, Toady said recently that he had reservations about that because it alienated non-programmers.  You may or may not agree, but it seems quite probable that the number of people modding would decrease, which is probably not a good thing.  The FF12 example is not particularly advanced scripting, it's changing variables in a limited, pre-existing AI script (e.g. if X then Y), which is pretty much what DF modding does now (you can change X but the Y part is hardcoded behaviour).  Opening up the Y part to scripting would mean taking elements of pretty much everything out into the raws... combat, pathfinding, emotional responses etc...  Good idea?  I don't think so, you'd be better off coding a completely new game if that's what you want.

On "excessive" complexity, this is absolutely required for emergent behaviour in a procedurally generated world.  The only reason commercial games do not do this is because 99% of the time they trammel you into a 3D canyon with gameplay choices that amount to movement and shooting.  I could go into a larger philosophical discussion on why the minutiae of the "world" are important in selling the reality of the game environment, or we could look at the amazing stories that emerge from the game because someone accidentally ran across one of those obscure titans or decided to pinch the eyelashes off a kobold.  Where is the line for this level of detail?  That's a tough call but as long as people *keep* finding new stories from the game after so many years, it would seem rather miserly to rain on that parade.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:38:41 pm

So yes, saying "I will give you crayon drawings if you give me a certain amount of money" is a contract.

Yes, it's a contract to provide a crayon drawing.   ???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:58:58 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on February 26, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:38:41 pm

Contracts are any exchange of goods (including money) or services in exchange for any other form of goods or services, voluntarily agreed upon in advance.  This includes implied contracts and verbal contracts.

I've highlighted thing you should read carefully. Once again, Toady never stated any obligations to provide any kind of DF-related service to donating players, therefore your original statement is false.
Also, peeking in other people's pockets is unethical. Whatever decision Toady takes in this aspect is completely his own, it is not your business at all.

I am aware of what I wrote, and you don't have the point you think you do.  He did, in fact, say that he would add donation drive animals in exchange.

I have no idea what you even mean by "peeking in other people's pockets", at that - Toady publicly posts what he gets in income, so it's not as if he's trying to keep that private.

Quote from: Heph on February 26, 2012, 09:48:50 pm

In contrast: The Donation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation). The donatio is specificly a contract yes but one without return consideration.

To quote the page you linked:

Quote

Donations are given without return consideration. This lack of return consideration means that, in common law, an agreement to make a donation is an "imperfect contract void for want of consideration."

That means it's only void as a contract if you get nothing in return.  If you get a drawing in return, it's a contract.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on February 26, 2012, 10:01:05 pm

@ NW_Kohaku:

So I get that you're passionate, and I think you say some interesting things (I thought your suggestion thread about alchemy was really quite neat, even if I don't agree with everything you suggested). And, furthermore, it's nice to see you back in the community!

That said, I do tend to get somewhat tired of people talking about what they think Toady absolutely must work on immediately and how when he isn't doing what they want, he is destroying Dwarf Fortress.

But it isn't because I'm a "fanboy" (though I am a fan of DF) or because I think the project shouldn't be criticized.

It's because:
a) most of these critiques have been voiced several times before, but while the same things generally get said, people nonetheless get really angry and hurt during the discussion, which is too bad and doesn't really add much, IMO

b) despite the repeated predictions of Dwarf Fortress's doom if he doesn't work on making the UI more intuitive/reworking the graphics/whatever other suggestion people have, Toady seems to be doing pretty well for himself (DF has been D/Led, IIRC, hundreds of thousands of times by now and the community seems to still be growing—it certainly isn't in any danger of going extinct anytime soon), and

c) I, personally, have found that my enjoyment of DF increases as new versions are released—I do actually notice the family webs in the new version, for example, to say nothing of neat haunted areas and necromancers and such. And the emergent features (someone described the ghosts of necromancers raising the dead) are my favorite part. So I think you're just wrong about him only working on invisible stuff. And much of the supposed invisible stuff (e.g. economy, though it is actually not invisible) he was working on for this release is the groundwork for things that one will notice even more in the coming versions.

Indeed, riffing off that last point, I kind of think that many of the critiques of Toady—at least for me and for many DF players—are a bit off base.

E.g., you make a point of comparing DF to Minecraft. Well, I (without saying it's a bad game, and totally understanding that many other people enjoy it) am completely bored by that game. It may have a "coherent" design philosophy, according to your criteria, but Dwarf Fortress's kitchen sink philosophy, with a bunch of insanely complex, interlocking systems, is pretty much the reason I play the game.

In other words, a wholesale reimagining of DF might turn me off it entirely—and I've been playing for 4-odd years. And I am basically not someone who otherwise plays video games. I dunno.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't say what you want. And I'm not even saying that you're wrong (though I do kind of hope Toady doesn't take your philosophy to heart, since I'm worried it would eliminate the unique flavor that makes DF the only computer game I play). But people can disagree with you and like what Toady is doing without being blind "fanboys."

Finally, you're wrong about there being a contract. A contract=offer+acceptance+consideration+"meeting of the minds." It is a legal construct, not just "I expected X when I gave money to T, but he isn't giving it to me."

For example, if you tried to sue Toady in any jurisdiction in the world for breach of contract, you would lose, and lose fast. Because a contract has not been formed. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing how you would win that lawsuit if Toady keeps on doing what he's doing.

The ASCII art reward argument doesn't work: PBS does fundraisers where they give out mugs if someone donates more than $25 or whatever, but it still isn't a contract, it's a donation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 26, 2012, 10:09:46 pm

Quote from: Heph on February 26, 2012, 05:45:41 pm

The problem with scripting is that it makes modding inaccessible for the vast majority of the community i guess. The raws as they are right now are nice and (moderatly) simple so everybody can make and maintain a mod.

On a sidenote - with COPY_TAGS_FROM, APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION, REMOVE_*, CHANGE_*, GO_TO_END, GO_TO_TAG etc commands/operators its already scripting language. And I'd personally prefer some more well-planned and capable DDL, as stuff like GO_TO_TAG is plain unreliable and will cause problems whenever you change tags in parent creature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 26, 2012, 10:12:32 pm

-what sunday said- (that ninja! ;] )
anyways, i find those discussions amusing
 toady, do you even _read_ those long colorfree discussion/rant-parts?
(yes, i am aware that i just used green instead of limegreen, its intentional)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 10:27:13 pm

Quote from: Sunday on February 26, 2012, 10:01:05 pm

c) I, personally, have found that my enjoyment of DF increases as new versions are released—I do actually notice the family webs in the new version, for example, to say nothing of neat haunted areas and necromancers and such. And the emergent features (someone described the ghosts of necromancers raising the dead) are my favorite part. So I think you're just wrong about him only working on invisible stuff. And much of the supposed invisible stuff (e.g. economy, though it is actually not invisible) he was working on for this release is the groundwork for things that one will notice even more in the coming versions.

There is a difference between the sort of coding that creates an emergent feature that creates things like necromancer ghosts by simply not preventing such things from happening, and the sort of thing that occurs when the code appears to just collapse from its own weight.

The way that necks just sort of hang off to the side of heads that are attached directly to torsos, for example.  Also, the fact that alligators and cows have almost exactly the same code, and as such, cows have more powerful bites than alligators because they are simply larger creatures overall.  It's because most of these creatures are copy-pastes of one another because the raws aren't making good enough use of templates or scripting to make them wieldable. 

Quote from: Sunday on February 26, 2012, 10:01:05 pm

E.g., you make a point of comparing DF to Minecraft. Well, I (without saying it's a bad game, and totally understanding that many other people enjoy it) am completely bored by that game. It may have a "coherent" design philosophy, according to your criteria, but Dwarf Fortress's kitchen sink philosophy, with a bunch of insanely complex, interlocking systems, is pretty much the reason I play the game.

In other words, a wholesale reimagining of DF might turn me off it entirely—and I've been playing for 4-odd years. And I am basically not someone who otherwise plays video games. I dunno.

I don't make a point of comparing it to Minecraft, (which I don't even play, myself,) I said that a game emerging without having to copy DF directly, the way Minecraft didn't, is the main competition. 

When I talk about a lack of direction, I mean the schizophrenic way the game doesn't know whether it's being realistic or high fantasy or sometimes leading people to think it's going towards steampunk.  Animals are mostly real animals (excepting the "real-but giant" and "-man" version), and trees are mostly real trees, but crops are fantasy crops.  I mean the astounding degree of detail on individual dwarves that you will probably not care about on your 200th dwarf that walks in during your second migration wave.  I mean basing Fortress Mode around resource management, and then having such an absolute overabundance of resources that it's more a management of the excesses than a prioritization of the resources to the things you actually need.

I didn't even say Toady change what he intends to create, but to create it with more of an eye to priorities, and how the game actually gets played. 

A game feature is only as important as its impact on the player.

Quote from: Sunday on February 26, 2012, 10:01:05 pm

The ASCII art reward argument doesn't work: PBS does fundraisers where they give out mugs if someone donates more than $25 or whatever, but it still isn't a contract, it's a donation.

Technically, a pledge to make a donation is a special type of contract.  Charities can, in fact, sue to compel a pledger to give the money they have pledged, as the act of making a pledge is a special form of contract.  (And a Simpsons episode brushed along the side of this: if you say you are giving PBS money, they have the right to collect.)

Throwing in a mug for it, legally, means you are giving money for a good.  It's a very, very informal contract, but a legal contract of the same form of a purchase from a shop being an open contract.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 26, 2012, 11:01:48 pm

The last time this thread had a big multi-page argument about issues that have been beaten to death, somebody got banned. Can we not have that happen again please?

Re: Devlog, yay fewer starvations!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on February 26, 2012, 11:37:36 pm

Quote from: Rafal99 on February 26, 2012, 02:23:04 pm

Yeah it is a nice bugfix. I won't have to build all my workshops from blocks just to prevent accidental forbid.

I started doing that myself after learning about those forbids the hard way.  That is I forbade all granite stones so my mason wouldn't make granite blocks while I was working on a magma pumpstack, only to find out all the workshops (quite a few) that had been build with granite had been shut down.  That caused more than a little bit of idling in the fort.  Hell, I got into the habit of bringing along a pair of gabbro blocks with me on embark to quickly get a carpenter's and mason's workshops up and running ASAP (gabbro because it is magma safe as another failsafe, and it's usually available unlike, say bauxite).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 26, 2012, 11:39:34 pm

hey guys, suggestion forums.

anyways, I realize that the 'future plans' means 1-2 years in the futures, so im fine with it.

also, i find it AMAZING how DF bugs tend to be fun (sometimes Fun), instead of annoying most of the time.
that said, i do kinda wish toady would work on some ESV stuff and major bug crunching, but as of right now, the game works, the game is fun, and has about 300x as much replay value and moddability as even other "open" games such as minecraft and terraria.


now i just need to get some damn money so i can donate to toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on February 26, 2012, 11:41:00 pm

Does the devlog mean rulers will stop dying at the same rate as their subjects of starvations, or is it just a fix of historical figures in general?

EDIT: Nevermind Toady, I already read that historical figure starving has been disabled. Not an ideal solution, but I can live with it, so question disabled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on February 27, 2012, 02:43:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:19:39 pm

As long as Toady makes his living off this, it is a job.  And when Toady took money specifically in exchange for providing a service to the people who gave him money, he was creating, and later fulfilling, a contract. 

Yes, but this service is "you may receive a unique drawing" not "you may influence coding and request bugfixing/scripting/boats/multithreading/feces as there was a contract".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 27, 2012, 03:24:19 am

Quote from: Kogut on February 27, 2012, 02:43:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:19:39 pm

As long as Toady makes his living off this, it is a job.  And when Toady took money specifically in exchange for providing a service to the people who gave him money, he was creating, and later fulfilling, a contract. 

Yes, but this service is "you may receive a unique drawing" not "you may influence coding and request bugfixing/scripting/boats/multithreading/feces as there was a contract".

The sad thing is that he has some valid points (noise in world gen like the werebeasts spamming attacks, etc) but he keeps himself attached to calling everyone who not agree with him a fanboy and believing he has some kind of right to be angry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alkhemia on February 27, 2012, 03:44:54 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 27, 2012, 03:24:19 am

Quote from: Kogut on February 27, 2012, 02:43:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 09:19:39 pm

As long as Toady makes his living off this, it is a job.  And when Toady took money specifically in exchange for providing a service to the people who gave him money, he was creating, and later fulfilling, a contract. 

Yes, but this service is "you may receive a unique drawing" not "you may influence coding and request bugfixing/scripting/boats/multithreading/feces as there was a contract".

The sad thing is that he has some valid points (noise in world gen like the werebeasts spamming attacks, etc) but he keeps himself attached to calling everyone who not agree with him a fanboy and believing he has some kind of right to be angry.

I agree with most of what NW_Kohaku said and the Were-creature attack are too much so I just turn them off not like they do much anyways.

Anyways back on topic, I wounder when the next df talk will be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Symmetry on February 27, 2012, 05:39:45 am

I remember when 0.31 was released, and although it took a while we had hospitals and new combat squads.  Definite differences to the gameplay, even if it didn't seem like very many for such a long time.  All the simulation work on materials and combat just wasn't noticeable to me except for introducing the glass bug.

This release we have werewolves, vampires and husks and zombies.  Rather than giving us new tools to play with (ie. gameplay) we've got more content, more things to interact with using the same tools.  I think this is why I'm feeling a little down about this release, especially after being told there would be work on the wishlist items.  (That's right, I don't care in the least about adventurer mode.)

I want DF to live up to its promise, and keep improving and getting closer to that, but perhaps that's asking too much.  There are business models in children's branding (Ben10, MTV, etc.) where the brand doesn't grow with the customer but just lets them go to be replaced by someone else.  If DF is now progressing too slowly for some old timers like me I think there are enough new people to keep the DF community going.   

I'll skip this one and show up next time there's a release.  Looking forward to the moving fortress structures and trap rework.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on February 27, 2012, 08:23:14 am

Quote from: Symmetry on February 27, 2012, 05:39:45 am

This release we have werewolves, vampires and husks and zombies.  Rather than giving us new tools to play with (ie. gameplay) we've got more content, more things to interact with using the same tools.  I think this is why I'm feeling a little down about this release, especially after being told there would be work on the wishlist items.  (That's right, I don't care in the least about adventurer mode.)

I want DF to live up to its promise, and keep improving and getting closer to that, but perhaps that's asking too much.  There are business models in children's branding (Ben10, MTV, etc.) where the brand doesn't grow with the customer but just lets them go to be replaced by someone else.  If DF is now progressing too slowly for some old timers like me I think there are enough new people to keep the DF community going.   

I'll skip this one and show up next time there's a release.  Looking forward to the moving fortress structures and trap rework.

I absolutely agree...Considering that the development speed is extremely slow [1 major release in 1+ years.....+ zillions of new bugs while the old bugs are not fixed at all] I don't understand that why was it needed to spend a year on improving adventure mode mostly. [The additions to Fortress Mode are basically nothing] If I want to play a roguelike I have tons of games to choose from. [My favourite is ToME4 by far..] If I want to manage a dwarven city [IE Fortress Mode] I only have 1 game on the list: Dwarf Fortress.
So yeah....I expected much more from the new version to be honest, but I wasn't following the development at all since DF2010...I was like: "The new version will be awesome anyway, so why to check the devlist at all.." I was wrong...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Drevlin on February 27, 2012, 08:35:43 am

I know it's early to ask, but... is some other Arc planned after the current caravan arc and the future army arc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 27, 2012, 08:46:50 am

Quote from: Drevlin on February 27, 2012, 08:35:43 am

I know it's early to ask, but... is some other Arc planned after the current caravan arc and the future army arc?

Yes. There's a list of arcs at the top of this old dev goal page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html), which is no longer updated and a little outdated but still gives you the gist of the long-term goals. Judging from the current dev goal page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html), Adventurer Skills is definitely going to see a fair bit of attention in the near future.

Also don't forget that "arcs" are fairly broad goals that get worked on a little bit at a time over a long period of time, not concrete things that get finished all at once. We've already got a little of the Randomization arc in terms of the random evil mist materials (I think), for instance, and I suspect we'll see a little more of it in Release 2 of the current cycle when Toady works with minerals a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Drevlin on February 27, 2012, 09:00:23 am

Thanks Untelligent. There are a lot of goals :o
So, even though that page isn't updated, are those goals still valid?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 27, 2012, 09:30:03 am

Quote from: Drevlin on February 27, 2012, 09:00:23 am

Thanks Untelligent. There are a lot of goals :o
So, even though that page isn't updated, are those goals still valid?

Yes: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1366982#msg1366982)

Quote from: Toady One

The core items, reqs, bloats and power goals of the previous pages still represent out plans for the game, and anything not on the new page is still fair game -- it's just the system itself that has been updated, because the previous system wasn't working well (not a single power goal was checked off, for example, and items often became outdated).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Drevlin on February 27, 2012, 03:09:32 pm

Cool :) Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 27, 2012, 07:07:11 pm

Quote from: gimli on February 27, 2012, 08:23:14 am

I absolutely agree...Considering that the development speed is extremely slow [1 major release in 1+ years.....+ zillions of new bugs while the old bugs are not fixed at all] I don't understand that why was it needed to spend a year on improving adventure mode mostly. [The additions to Fortress Mode are basically nothing] If I want to play a roguelike I have tons of games to choose from. [My favourite is ToME4 by far..] If I want to manage a dwarven city [IE Fortress Mode] I only have 1 game on the list: Dwarf Fortress.
So yeah....I expected much more from the new version to be honest, but I wasn't following the development at all since DF2010...I was like: "The new version will be awesome anyway, so why to check the devlist at all.." I was wrong...

im sorry, but to all people bashing adv mode, (i know, just light criticism but still) if Fortress mode is 10% done, adventure mode is 1%. look at the old and new dev pages and you will see that both adv mode and fortress mode will eventually be greater than any other game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 27, 2012, 10:00:44 pm

I think the total is closer to about a third than 11%.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 27, 2012, 10:04:54 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 27, 2012, 10:00:44 pm

I think the total is closer to about a third than 11%.

Which brings adventure mode all the way up to 3%?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 27, 2012, 10:18:20 pm

using a simpler relative comparison, just sayin that the final goals for adventure mode put it WAY above 'another rougelike' it is planned to be every bit as detailed (if not more) as fortress mode but following one person, you, instead of a dwarven fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 27, 2012, 11:49:07 pm

Quote from: gimli on February 27, 2012, 08:23:14 am

If I want to play a roguelike I have tons of games to choose from. [My favourite is ToME4 by far..] If I want to manage a dwarven city [IE Fortress Mode] I only have 1 game on the list: Dwarf Fortress.

This is a completely rigged comparision.  Allow me to turn it around for you:
If I wanted to manage a city I'd have tons of games to choose from, but if I wanted to play a rougelike with plump helmets I have only one game on the list: Adventure Mode.

And even that's missing the point, fort mode is much different than any other city sim or rts in existance, just like adventure mode is much different than any other rougelike, even in this early stage.  Both are unique, but one has gotten a lot of work from Toady and the other is sorely neglected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 27, 2012, 11:53:09 pm

The real benefit DF adventure mode over another roguelike is that it links with fortress mode. 

I had a world in the previous version where I settled as goblins (one line of modding to make that possible), abandoned, came back on a dwarf adventurer to find a night creature living in the hollowed out hill, killed it, reclaimed as dwarves, and had my first artifact created from the bones of the night creature my adventurer killed.  After playing the fort for ~35 years, an unfortunate sequence of events led to the fort's end at the hands of a combination of forgotten beast blood and goblins.  I came back to the fort on the same adventurer, recruited an antwoman queen from the caverns below the fort, and together we cleaned out the goblins and went on many adventures together. 

Granted, adventure mode kinda sucked at the time, but I would say that my enjoyment of each mode was amplified by achievements I made in the other.  I was once a hard-line fort-mode player, but the narratives you can get from switching back and forth are just too awesome.  The best is if you can manage to get your fort dwarves to create engravings of your adventurer doing adventurestuff. 

Seeing as how that's how the game is intended to be played, I guess I should be a little less surprised at how much fun that is, but hey, there you go. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 28, 2012, 12:00:43 am

holy shit, imagine once forts can be 'retired' and picked up again, handled by an AI in the meantime. (future goal for the uninformed.)

you could make a 10 year fort, retire it, make an adventurer that started from your civ at the fort, which will eventually be taken from a local pool anyways (i.e. your dwarfs from fort mode.)
setting out on a legendary journey slaying that gobbo general that killed your best hammerlord, than returning home and retiring, than having that dwarf back at work when you pick up again in fort mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on February 28, 2012, 03:11:35 am

Toady MENTIONED fixing screens to support dimensions larger than 80x25!
Makes me happy :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 28, 2012, 04:23:47 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on February 28, 2012, 03:11:35 am

Toady MENTIONED fixing screens to support dimensions larger than 80x25!
Makes me happy :)

Yeah, I'd quite like to use more of the space I have available.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RadHazard on February 28, 2012, 07:44:27 am

Is it sad that I'm just as exited for >80x25 support and the fixing of the TrueType not overwritting properly as I was for some of the previous bugfixes? :P

Thanks for all the great work you've been doing, Toady One and Baughn!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on February 28, 2012, 07:48:59 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 27, 2012, 11:49:07 pm

Quote from: gimli on February 27, 2012, 08:23:14 am

If I want to play a roguelike I have tons of games to choose from. [My favourite is ToME4 by far..] If I want to manage a dwarven city [IE Fortress Mode] I only have 1 game on the list: Dwarf Fortress.

This is a completely rigged comparision.  Allow me to turn it around for you:
If I wanted to manage a city I'd have tons of games to choose from, but if I wanted to play a rougelike with plump helmets I have only one game on the list: Adventure Mode.

And even that's missing the point, fort mode is much different than any other city sim or rts in existance, just like adventure mode is much different than any other rougelike, even in this early stage.  Both are unique, but one has gotten a lot of work from Toady and the other is sorely neglected.

You don't have to turn anything. I am absolutely sure, that the vast majority of the Bay12 fans are preferring Fortress mode over adventure mode. Fortress mode offers unique gameplay, adventure mode is not. I am not saying that it's bad or something, but we have tons of roguelikes anyway...at one point DF Adventure mode will be awesome, that is for sure, but still....fortress mode will be much more important to most of the Bay12 fans. Fortress mode made the game well known and famous.

Basically this is why many people are pissed about the new version. No love regarding fortress mode since a hella long time...and that is one thing. The biggest problem is: We won't see any serious updates in fortress mode for a hella long time. AFAIK Toady plans to keep working on adventure mode still, but even if he wouldn't when is the next major version coming? 1 year? More? So fortress mode was last enhanced in 2010 and it won't be touched 'til at least 2013++. That is 3+ years without any serious updates for fortress mode. I always knew that this game won't reach 1.0 ever, but this is kinda embarassing...

Anyway let's go on-topic, it's pointless to talk about this anyway, since DF is Toady's baby and the game is free basically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on February 28, 2012, 08:37:06 am

The next series of updates will include improved economy, inns, fairs, 3D ore veins, combat speed split and mounted combat improvements. All of this will influence Fortress Mode. Release 6 is even dedicated purely to Fortress Mode.
Furthermore, this release featured the Undead, Evil mists and rains and a ton of new animals. The change isn't as big as between 40d and .31, but Fortress Mode has most definitely been improved this release and will keep getting improved the next few releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Immacolata on February 28, 2012, 08:52:31 am

Who, 'bout of Entitlement Syndrome just hit. I wonder if it comes as Mist or Rain.

Anyways, thanks for the update, though I am also in the Fortress Mode camp, and Im going to sit on my hands on this release. My question concerns stockpiles. One of my biggest problems as player is to get some sort of clear map of their relationships as my fortress grows. I learn and optimise over time, but I somehow miss some kind of visual identification, or a bit of transparency in their inner workings. This isn't terribly concise, but it boils down to this: I find stockpiles difficult to plan and keep my overivew of. Most of my forts are disbanded because of stockpile woes.

Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on February 28, 2012, 11:47:59 am

Quote from: Untelligent on February 27, 2012, 10:00:44 pm

I think the total is closer to about a third than 11%.

That's not how maths works. 0.01 < P < 0.1. The exact value of P will depend on the percentage of the total code base that deals with fortress mode, adventure mode and both. If we take your figure of the overall figure being 1/3, that means that adventure mode is somewhere below that, and fortress mode somewhere above it, though exactly where is unclear without further information.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

A thing about people predicting what will be in "the next few releases": You really don't know when Toady is going to complete something or get around to some other thing.  Maybe I'm just too much a pessimist, and maybe Toady will finish the remainder of the Caravan Arc in less than a year with time to spare. 

However, people said I was exagerrating and melodramatic a year ago when I said that each step along the way of the Caravan Arc would take Toady "at least 2 months per release" when the assumption was each release would take about a month.  Ten months after that date, he's released one of those Caravan Arc releases, and spent a large amount of time working on a project that was never part of the "short-term" development pages.  We're already at the point in time people were predicting the Caravan Arc would be complete just a year ago.

That's hardly to say that adding interactions was a terrible thing or that they aren't progress, but it is to say that these predictions about what dev goals will have been fulfilled 5 months or 5 years down the road are rarely ever accurate.

It's entirely possible that 5 years down the road, we will have seen no major features for Fortress Mode added.  (Features being different from content.)

It is rather strange to claim that caravan arc releases will come in rapid succession, while taking the time to do the likes of Standing Production Orders will "take at least a year".

---

People keep using the word "entitlement" as though it shuts down any argument.  Before assuming that if a term with a negative connotation can fit, that it automatically should be seen exclusively as negative, perhaps consider that entitlement is a critical part of the relationship between consumer and producer. 

What sort of world would we live in if customers did not feel entitled to having the food the get from stores be fresh and safe, the appliances they buy actually work or at least be covered by warranty, and games at least reasonably function as advertised? 

If we are to support this game through our funding, I don't think it entirely unreasonable that we have some influence over its direction.  If Toady took the donation drive animals so seriously that he would not only work to make sure that all of the animals were in the game within a reasonable time of when the donation drive was over, but that he would go above and beyond to stop and spend months on making individual animals unique specifically because he felt that the money he took in exchange for that meant he owed the people who gave him that money the effort to make the animals special, that shows he really did care about what it meant for those people to donate. 

Sure, it gummed up the release schedule, but it is hardly a terrible thing that Toady feels the people who donated asking for specific animals were entitled to his time and effort in making them special and unique animals.

Is it really such a terrible thing that other people might want to donate money in a way that makes them feel entitled to ask for a priority change so that their player priorities are given more weight?  Why can't the people donating asking about data management interface features be added earlier so that the game isn't so micromanagement-heavy be given the same sense of entitlement the animal donators get?

Simply throwing around terms like "entitled" or "nerd rage" to summarily dismiss the concerns of others without ever discussing the merits of their critiques does not make you the one "keeping their perspective" in the argument, and only creates further frustration and resentment as it creates an environment where people are laughed at and insulted for their complaints that their arguments are not heard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

People keep using the word "entitlement" as though it shuts down any argument.  Before assuming that if a term with a negative connotation can fit, that it automatically should be seen exclusively as negative, perhaps consider that entitlement is a critical part of the relationship between consumer and producer. 

What sort of world would we live in if customers did not feel entitled to having the food the get from stores be fresh and safe, the appliances they buy actually work or at least be covered by warranty, and games at least reasonably function as advertised? 

If we are to support this game through our funding, I don't think it entirely unreasonable that we have some influence over its direction.  If Toady took the donation drive animals so seriously that he would not only work to make sure that all of the animals were in the game within a reasonable time of when the donation drive was over, but that he would go above and beyond to stop and spend months on making individual animals unique specifically because he felt that the money he took in exchange for that meant he owed the people who gave him that money the effort to make the animals special, that shows he really did care about what it meant for those people to donate. 

Sure, it gummed up the release schedule, but it is hardly a terrible thing that Toady feels the people who donated asking for specific animals were entitled to his time and effort in making them special and unique animals.

Is it really such a terrible thing that other people might want to donate money in a way that makes them feel entitled to ask for a priority change so that their player priorities are given more weight?  Why can't the people donating asking about data management interface features be added earlier so that the game isn't so micromanagement-heavy be given the same sense of entitlement the animal donators get?

Simply throwing around terms like "entitled" or "nerd rage" to summarily dismiss the concerns of others without ever discussing the merits of their critiques does not make you the one "keeping their perspective" in the argument, and only creates further frustration and resentment as it creates an environment where people are laughed at and insulted for their complaints that their arguments are not heard.

Animal sponsorship donations means that the donator is entitled to be able to play a vanilla version of DF that includes the animal.  Special abilities are strictly a bonus -- they were never guaranteed for all animals.  Emphasis mine: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2012-01-15)

Quote from: devlog

Since it is impossible to add new abilities for all of them in a timely fashion, and we've just rolled passed the one year anniversary, I'm just going to release them in basic form (with giant and person versions) to satisfy the basic inclusion requirement, and then work with them from there in subsequent releases.

Normal (non-sponsorship) donations entitle Bay 12 Games to the money, and the donator to the hope that their money will keep Bay 12 afloat.  That's it.  Donators are not consumers, and Bay 12 is not selling a product.  Comparisons to commercial enterprise are invalid from the start.

The reason I made reference to Impaler[WrG] was not that I think you're going to start a ripoff project.  It's that fans of DF (and probably other projects) follow one of several arcs, kind of like stellar evolution.  One of those arcs involves entitlement, loss of perspective, and a highly charged attitude toward the course of development.  Cf. murlocdummy (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2825151#msg2825151).

People aren't telling you to chill out because they think each of your statements is wrong.  It's because your true/accurate/insightful points are surrounded by hysteria.

In short, don't play DF or donate to Bay 12 if doing so, on the balance, gives you negative feelings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eataTREE on February 28, 2012, 03:42:03 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

Is it really such a terrible thing that other people might want to donate money in a way that makes them feel entitled to ask for a priority change so that their player priorities are given more weight? 

It probably doesn't qualify as a terrible thing but they're not right to feel that way.

Toady does not work for you. Period, full stop. You are not his customer, there is no contract explicit or implied between you, he does not owe you anything, period the end.

Toady makes Dwarf Fortress. He asks for donations. You voluntarily chose to give him one. In return, insofar as you got anything, you got Dwarf Fortress: not the idealized Dwarf Fortress in your head, but the real Dwarf Fortress as it exists today. Toady did not incur any sort of obligation to create your version of Dwarf Fortress or do any other thing (except give you a crayon drawing) by taking the money that you volunarily proffered. Yes you have a right to express your opinion, but you've already expressed it, and now have to get on with accepting the fact that Dwarf Fortress will continue to be developed the way Toady wants and not the way you want.

This is not any sort of fanboyism. If it were my game I would do many things differently, choosing to focus on an engaging fortress mode experience at the expense of depth and realism. But it's not my game, and giving Toady money doesn't make it my game; it's Toady's game and it will be developed according to Toady's vision. Ultimately we have to take it or leave it, and I find the game, warts and all, to be well worth taking at its attractive price of $0. You are not required to agree; there is a big world with lots of games in it -- many of which are organized as open community projects where decisions are made by consensus. Perhaps one of them is what you are looking for?

Edit: Pronouns, they all look alike.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 28, 2012, 04:00:05 pm

Sometimes I stop to think if I like to follow DF's development more than to play the game... I play a lot following big releases, and sometimes in between big releases, and I really have fun while doing so, but I check the devlog everyday. It is a great past-time. Toady said somewhere that it will be a fun ride until 1.0; it certainly has been one long fun ride.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 04:06:33 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

Animal sponsorship donations means that the donator is entitled to be able to play a vanilla version of DF that includes the animal.  Special abilities are strictly a bonus -- they were never guaranteed for all animals.

And that was entirely reasonable.  He declared he would add an animal if you donated, and did as he promised, and as I said, he felt the need to go above and beyond on some of those, and that is a great thing that he felt the desire to go out of his way to make some of the animals that he could spend the time on more than just copy-pastes, but given unique and special functionality in the game.

I am saying that's the example of Toady going out of his way to reward his donators that should be most encouraged.

As in, that was a compliment, not a complaint.

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

The reason I made reference to Impaler[WrG] was not that I think you're going to start a ripoff project.  It's that fans of DF (and probably other projects) follow one of several arcs, kind of like stellar evolution.  One of those arcs involves entitlement, loss of perspective, and a highly charged attitude toward the course of development.  Cf. murlocdummy (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2825151#msg2825151).

People aren't telling you to chill out because they think each of your statements is wrong.  It's because your true/accurate/insightful points are surrounded by hysteria.

And that is why I'm making the point of arguing against exactly that sort of attitude.

You are assuming that anyone who gets angry or frustrated will inevitably turn into an element that will somehow try to backstab the community, and use that as a weapon against anyone you are judging to be too "Impaler-like". 

Don't you think that inferring "traitor" on anyone who's already angry instead of trying to address their concerns in a reasonable manner might maybe make the problem worse?  Don't you think the proper manner of dealing with someone who thinks their concerns are not being heard might be to try to assure them in whatever way you can that they are, rather than insulting or mocking them for it, and pushing them to even more anger?

If you're going to try speaking to others as if you somehow carry some weight as a "spokesman of Toady", (and make no mistake, in his absence, that is exactly what mantle you are trying to assume,) that you should actually try diffusing some of that frustration, rather than inflaming it by belittling others or suggesting that you are only waiting for them to "turn traitor"?

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

In short, don't play DF or donate to Bay 12 if doing so, on the balance, gives you negative feelings.

Nor does it do Toady many favors to start selectively determining who you don't think should be playing or donating.  If you want to try speaking as though you speak for him, at least try to be inclusive, as opposed to openly passing judgment over every single player, and declaring who you deem to be the traitors-to-be.

My problem, once again, is not with Toady.  Toady has never been anything but reasonable in the times I've been able to talk to him, and he has always made me feel that I was being listened to when I did speak to him.  He does not dismiss complaints out of hand.  It is the people who feel they can speak for him that throw down emotionally loaded terms like "entitled" or imply that we are somehow "not fan enough" on anyone asking to be heard that I have a problem with.

---

Quote from: eataTREE on February 28, 2012, 03:42:03 pm

This is not any sort of fanboyism.

I was going to let this one get buried, but this keeps coming up.  So, for the record, I was using the term "fanboy" in response specifically to thvaz, and I was only doing so in specific response to his "nerd rage" statement.

The point (which, granted, was very poorly articulated due to my emotional status at the time, and a lapse in judgement,) was that using a pejorative term to summarily dismiss one person's argument is just as easy to be turned around on someone else.  That is, if my statement can be easily dismissed as "nerd rage", his defenses of the game can be just as easily dismissed as "fanboyism".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scarpa on February 28, 2012, 04:10:06 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 04:06:33 pm

Don't you think the proper manner of dealing with someone who thinks their concerns are not being heard might be to try to assure them in whatever way you can that they are, rather than insulting or mocking them for it, and pushing them to even more anger?

The bolded part is just wrong, IMO. Being angry over your 'concerns not being heard' is delusional and the correct response is not to validate that delusion.

To be clear, I mean 'delusional' in the literal sense, as in 'having false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions' and is not meant as a personal attack on you. I firmly believe that a) concerns are heard, although not at the level most would like and b) being angry over it is wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 28, 2012, 04:11:43 pm

Considering these series of posts are getting increasingly ad hominem (which I need not remind anyone is in violation of the CoC,) can we pretty please give it a rest already?

I hate it when mommy and daddy fight :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 28, 2012, 04:19:52 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 04:06:33 pm

The point (which, granted, was very poorly articulated due to my emotional status at the time, and a lapse in judgement,) was that using a pejorative term to summarily dismiss one person's argument is just as easy to be turned around on someone else.  That is, if my statement can be easily dismissed as "nerd rage", his defenses of the game can be just as easily dismissed as "fanboyism".

Let's make a pool. How many here consider me a fanboy and how many consider you an annoying entitled nerd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 04:23:39 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 04:06:33 pm

Don't you think that inferring "traitor" on anyone who's already angry instead of trying to address their concerns in a reasonable manner might maybe make the problem worse?

I'm not inferring "traitor," I'm inferring

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

entitlement, loss of perspective, and a highly charged attitude toward the course of development.

I don't think you're some kind of threat; I just think you should take a deep breath, accept certain incontrovertible facts about DF, e.g. the donationware model and the pace/nature of development, and then, with those facts in mind, take the course of action that makes you happy instead of agonized.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 28, 2012, 04:26:01 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 28, 2012, 04:19:52 pm

Let's make a pool. How many here consider me a fanboy and how many consider you an annoying entitled nerd.

Or we could remember that being hostile to people that are already angry at something usually just makes the problem worse. Mandatory subject change!

Quote from: RadHazard on February 28, 2012, 07:44:27 am

Is it sad that I'm just as exited for >80x25 support and the fixing of the TrueType not overwritting properly as I was for some of the previous bugfixes?

Thanks for all the great work you've been doing, Toady One and Baughn!

Wait, I'm confused. Doesn't the game already support increasing the screen size beyond 80x25 tiles? Or did that stop working in 34.01, I haven't tried it yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on February 28, 2012, 04:27:37 pm

Hey.  Let's be friendly.  A new release is upon us!

Is this one likely to break saves from 0.34.02?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 28, 2012, 04:28:17 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on February 28, 2012, 04:27:37 pm

Hey.  Let's be friendly.  A new release is upon us!

Is this one likely to break saves from 0.34.02?

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2012, 10:53:58 am

Forts from 0.34.02 should work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on February 28, 2012, 04:29:52 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 28, 2012, 04:26:01 pm

Quote from: RadHazard on February 28, 2012, 07:44:27 am

Is it sad that I'm just as exited for >80x25 support and the fixing of the TrueType not overwritting properly as I was for some of the previous bugfixes?

Thanks for all the great work you've been doing, Toady One and Baughn!

Wait, I'm confused. Doesn't the game already support increasing the screen size beyond 80x25 tiles?

Only map, try trade window, squads etc.

@Kohaku - I suggest you to start your own project - game/book/blog/webcomic/website/job, it will be more efficient to use your (usually very interesting) ideas in this way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 28, 2012, 04:31:26 pm

Quote from: Kogut on February 28, 2012, 04:29:52 pm

Only map, try trade window, squads etc.

Oh, right. Nevermind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 28, 2012, 05:34:38 pm

I suggest we make a stupid flamewar tread, just so we can link it every time a 2 page fight starts.

on topic: yay for DF bugfix releases!!! (yes, THIS is the topic of the thread, DF, not arguing whos a fanboy.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 28, 2012, 05:59:10 pm

I wish for a sarcasm font. I wasn't really suggesting to make a poll. I posted after another of his rage posts without even citing him, trying to change the subject but he keeps calling me a fanboy. The guy has an unhealthy obsession with Dwarf Fortress and keeps calling me to his flames.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on February 28, 2012, 06:43:28 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 28, 2012, 04:26:01 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 28, 2012, 04:19:52 pm

Let's make a pool. How many here consider me a fanboy and how many consider you an annoying entitled nerd.

Quote from: RadHazard on February 28, 2012, 07:44:27 am

Is it sad that I'm just as exited for >80x25 support and the fixing of the TrueType not overwritting properly as I was for some of the previous bugfixes?

Thanks for all the great work you've been doing, Toady One and Baughn!

Wait, I'm confused. Doesn't the game already support increasing the screen size beyond 80x25 tiles? Or did that stop working in 34.01, I haven't tried it yet.

heh, i was confused in the same manner, youre not alone ;)

 is there something like a specific sub-forum for posting real-life data formatted for easy access for toady? like a list of different material properties, or different lists of anatomical specifics for animals?

toady, how much do you think the "Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps" scheduled for the next arc-release will impact the gameplay of the different modes and does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" have any implications for fortress-mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 28, 2012, 06:53:55 pm

I'd like to hear toady's thoughts on that too. I suspect that it might hit FM in a tangential way, perhaps Toady updates plant life cycles and to conform to yearly schedules like fall harvests, and then that gets ported over to FM, and then FM farmers have to have something to do, so we get various field upkeep tasks.

Of course, I may be totally wrong. But I'm hopeful...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on February 28, 2012, 08:02:38 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 26, 2012, 10:27:13 pm

snipstuff

See, I kind of like the combination of extreme realism in many areas with weird fantasy elements popping in in different areas. . .but of course YMMV, which is totally fine.

In any case, I may disagree with you, but I hope you choose to stick around, even if parts of the DF development philosophy rub you the wrong way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 04:23:39 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 04:06:33 pm

Don't you think that inferring "traitor" on anyone who's already angry instead of trying to address their concerns in a reasonable manner might maybe make the problem worse?

I'm not inferring "traitor," I'm inferring

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

entitlement, loss of perspective, and a highly charged attitude toward the course of development.

I don't think you're some kind of threat; I just think you should take a deep breath, accept certain incontrovertible facts about DF, e.g. the donationware model and the pace/nature of development, and then, with those facts in mind, take the course of action that makes you happy instead of agonized.

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but his agony is most likely not due to Toady's pace and nature of development - of which I'd classify as "slow" and "poorly done", respectively. It comes from this incredibly culty community who seem convinced that if you love something you must never recognize where it fails.

It is not entitlement to voice this opinion. It would be irresponsible, as both a consumer (and yes, we are consumers, just very non-traditional ones) and as a fan of Dwarf Fortress to stay silent about these issues. We can of course control the tone and tact - both of which I feel NW_Kohaku lacked - but that doesn't change the message.

Finally, I find it extremely disingenuous to try and end an argument with "just accept it". Reminds me of the classic internet argument where someone says "oh well, let's just stop fighting!" the moment they get the last word in. It puts the other party in a no-win situation where they are either criticized for continuing the argument or forced to stay silent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 10:52:14 pm

Quote from: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but his agony is most likely not due to Toady's pace and nature of development - of which I'd classify as "slow" and "poorly done", respectively. It comes from this incredibly culty community who seem convinced that if you love something you must never recognize where it fails.

It is not entitlement to voice this opinion. It would be irresponsible, as both a consumer (and yes, we are consumers, just very non-traditional ones) and as a fan of Dwarf Fortress to stay silent about these issues. We can of course control the tone and tact - both of which I feel NW_Kohaku lacked - but that doesn't change the message.

Consumer semantics aside, I don't think I was disputing any of that:

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

People aren't telling you to chill out because they think each of your statements is wrong.  It's because your true/accurate/insightful points are surrounded by hysteria.

Quote from: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

Finally, I find it extremely disingenuous to try and end an argument with "just accept it". Reminds me of the classic internet argument where someone says "oh well, let's just stop fighting!" the moment they get the last word in. It puts the other party in a no-win situation where they are either criticized for continuing the argument or forced to stay silent.

I didn't say "just accept it" as a blanket statement, I said "accept certain incontrovertible facts", which I didn't mean to include things like specific goals, features, bugs, etc.  The state of the game is subject to criticism, but to get angry about the donation model or the nature of development is completely futile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on February 28, 2012, 11:31:35 pm

Quote from: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

Finally, I find it extremely disingenuous to try and end an argument with "just accept it". Reminds me of the classic internet argument where someone says "oh well, let's just stop fighting!" the moment they get the last word in. It puts the other party in a no-win situation where they are either criticized for continuing the argument or forced to stay silent.

There is special "what you hate in DF" thread for those kind of posts. I see no reason why this argument should go in FotF, which is specifically for discussion of _currently_ developed features. Scripting and general ranting is offtopic here and reading his kilometer-long unrelated posts serves no good for intended purpose of the thread and readers who are subscribed to this thread to read Q&A on current development.

Edit: from the first page:

Quote from: ToadyOne

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker, and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum.  Questions and comments about the development page or DF development somewhat more broadly work here, though any contentious topics that lead to derails are discouraged -- there are threads for those too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 28, 2012, 11:49:11 pm

small side question that seems reasonable to ask.

Have you considered adding a temporary limitation on just how many times a part can be raised? or will that have to wait until pulping/better damage stacking?

just that i tried to take on a necromancer tower with a rather large zombie pop, and could not finish off the horde due to the six necromancers chilling in the doorway.
would also fix the considerable issue of undead immortality in current evil zones, only fix for that right now is magma dumping body parts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 12:54:20 am

Huh, does fixing old bugs mean like Dungeon Master or good/evil plants not appearing? Or just the bugs that make game work less efficiently or what? o.o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 29, 2012, 01:12:27 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 12:54:20 am

Huh, does fixing old bugs mean like Dungeon Master or good/evil plants not appearing? Or just the bugs that make game work less efficiently or what? o.o

Yes to both. The bugfixing cycles are loosely divided up into "new bugs introduced with new release" and "longstanding bugs of all descriptions." I remember last time he got one that was like 4 years old or something, I'm too lazy to look it up. It dated to before my discovery of DF, at any rate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 29, 2012, 01:28:43 am

Yeah, you can look forward to those when the current version's primary grievances are fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 01:39:32 am

Well, I hope those two are the ones that are fixed since they bug me the most. No pun intended xD

BTW, are aquifers actually supposed to be penetrable? Most ways to pass them seem to be exploits... Unless you are on map which isn't flat and doesn't have complete aquifer layer, but still.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 29, 2012, 03:42:26 am

Quote from: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

It comes from this incredibly culty community who seem convinced that if you love something you must never recognize where it fails.

This community recognizes failures and problems with DF and is definitelly not silent. I'd say people who i.e. defend interface state as being okay are being met with as much, maybe even more, hostility.

Problem is with people who take it too far and simply become angry and annoying. There is difference between voicing your concerns and acting like a entitled child and it is not that hard to cross.

There are things that will never change (i.e. bigger team) and demaning them is waste of time. Other thing are worked on and everyone, including Toady, is well aware of them, but that is matter of priority. He knows very well that community would welcome polished interface and that it would also bring more people (and donations and whatever).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 04:30:05 am

Quote from: zwei on February 29, 2012, 03:42:26 am

Quote from: SirPenguin on February 28, 2012, 10:16:43 pm

It comes from this incredibly culty community who seem convinced that if you love something you must never recognize where it fails.

This community recognizes failures and problems with DF and is definitelly not silent. I'd say people who i.e. defend interface state as being okay are being met with as much, maybe even more, hostility.

Problem is with people who take it too far and simply become angry and annoying. There is difference between voicing your concerns and acting like a entitled child and it is not that hard to cross.

There are things that will never change (i.e. bigger team) and demaning them is waste of time. Other thing are worked on and everyone, including Toady, is well aware of them, but that is matter of priority. He knows very well that community would welcome polished interface and that it would also bring more people (and donations and whatever).

I could point a lot of problems with DF (Toady setting schedules he never completes, redoing development roadmaps each 2 years, excess sidetracking, pointless excessive details, some dubious taste and campy content)  but I usually try to be constructive and I'm never angry with the game or Bay12.
Most of these criticisms were already voiced more eloquently by others, so I do not see the need to make them. This, and the fact I'm usually not positively amused by entitled spoiled brats, is the reason NW_Kohaku always calls me a fanboy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Immacolata on February 29, 2012, 04:32:32 am

Quote from: monk12 on February 29, 2012, 01:12:27 am

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 12:54:20 am

Huh, does fixing old bugs mean like Dungeon Master or good/evil plants not appearing? Or just the bugs that make game work less efficiently or what? o.o

Yes to both. The bugfixing cycles are loosely divided up into "new bugs introduced with new release" and "longstanding bugs of all descriptions." I remember last time he got one that was like 4 years old or something, I'm too lazy to look it up. It dated to before my discovery of DF, at any rate.

This was the case of the last batch of the 31-releases. Old time thingies got fixed, like hospitals. It came at the end of the newer stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on February 29, 2012, 06:50:48 am

ehh.. I just admire Toady One for actually doing what I always dreamed of doing, but never had balls to start.

so the plan is:
 34.04 new bug fix,
 34.05 old bug fix, and...
...next caravan arc release? :>

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

also: Stop grumbling people. Nobody wants to read your whining. Somehow you come to think you can tell Toady what he should do with his game. Somebody does something amazing, and all you can do is to complain it's not what you would like to see? Nobody stops you from developing your own game, with all the features you want. Now If you will put all that energy you spend on useless posts, into work, you might even make a good game. You'll say: "It wasn't just a rant, but a constructive critic"   yeah.. right... think what you want, just don't throw your thrash in this topic please.

 ...ehh sory guys, just realized I'm contributing to this chaos, So to be clear: It's not aimed at anyone. Just an unimportant statement. (I will not continue) 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on February 29, 2012, 07:45:15 am

34.04 has just been released. 34.05 will be new bug fixes, 34.06 (assuming no emergency releases) will be old bug fixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 29, 2012, 07:55:32 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 28, 2012, 06:43:28 pm

toady, how much do you think the "Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps" scheduled for the next arc-release will impact the gameplay of the different modes and does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" have any implications for fortress-mode?

Well, release number 2 seems to be more along the line of more world gen shenanigans. The release is called the caravan arc, but its kinda of undermining it, this Arc is about getting the world more living and breathing for the Army Arc. Gotta build the block town before you can knock it over.

3d mineral vein, if means messing with how mineral are placed in DF geology, then for sure you'll see this in Fort Mode.  Not terribly sure how much impact this'll have in Fort Mode.

Now the village schedules that also probably more for World Gen shenanigans, and that'll spill over into Adventure mode more, probably have little impact on Fort Mode.  With the previous release we saw that items in Adventure Mode are 'remembered' by the game, and the towns, what not are probably abstracted into doing all the farming, warring, ect, but that relatively flat in Adventure Mode.

So yea, this change probably wont impact gameplay to much but it'll make off camera stuff more sane & sensible.

And it'll probably provide the framework for Adventure mode Dorf forts, and adventure mode elven tree things. And down the line, a bit further, it'll probably let Hill Dorfs do stuff.

Who knows, maybe it'll impact when trade caravans show up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 29, 2012, 08:50:30 am

I also have a suspicion that random-material minerals will make an appearance in Release 2.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 08:57:57 am

Mine maps I think will be about mine locations in the world map, probably with associated fun stuff. Maybe civilizations will have a chance of releasing spoilers and forgotten beasts in world gen, and you could visit and have adventures in abandoned and active mines.
As a result, will see more varied industries in the human towns.

If Toady sidetracks much, we may indeed see mountain halls and hill dwarves in adventurer mode.

Villagers schedules must be about giving back to npcs in adventure mode the little schedules they used to have, maybe even adding work schedules this time. (They used to go to houses at night, sleep, eat and hang around the old mead halls during the days).

3d mineral veins is pretty much what it says. More realistic ore veins. Maybe we could see auto-mining an ore vein implemented (a very old interface request).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on February 29, 2012, 09:03:31 am

Whatever shows up, I'm sure the 3d veins are going to have a huge impact on fortress mode. Right now the bar cost for certain forged items seems high, but I think the whole purpose of this is to make it so that rather than having a 8 different kinds of ores on one map, you'll have 3-4 but a ton of them. Thus each fortress will have to specialize in making one type of metal or alloy which seems much more realistic. The only thing that needs to be changed in order for that to work is the importing system. Because if you only have silver, lead, and aluminum it gets rather hard to fend off goblin sieges with those meager 5 bars of top priority steel that the caravan brought after asking for wagonloads of it.

Of course I could be overthinking it completely and the game will stay similar, but being able to carve a multi-z-level meeting hall out of a gold vein is one of my hopes for it. Not sure how I feel about auto ore mining, but since I never thought about it and it'll (theoretically) be toggleable I've not really got an opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on February 29, 2012, 10:16:46 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2012, 03:26:45 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

People aren't telling you to chill out because they think each of your statements is wrong.  It's because your true/accurate/insightful points are surrounded by hysteria.

In short, don't play DF or donate to Bay 12 if doing so, on the balance, gives you negative feelings.

Absolutely. All my respect goes to Toady for creating an amazing game like this, but to be honest I won't donate a single penny 'til I don't see real fortress mode updates, because why should I? It's basically the same since years. You don't pay for an MMO if it's not updated for 2 years. I guess it's fair like that, isn't it?..as for your hysteria "wording", I don't see any hysteria here. Kohaku is right in many points actally.
Anyway this speaks for itself:

08/10/2006 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.21.93.19b
10/29/2007 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.27.169.32a
09/06/2008 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.28.181.40d
04/01/2010 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.31.01 [Enhanced Fortress mode after 40d]
02/14/2012 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.34.01 [Almost no fortress mode related additions]
??/??/201? Future "major" release with who knows what additions

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Immacolata on February 29, 2012, 10:23:51 am

But the idea is, you make such a big deal out of you not donating another penny before this or that, bla de bla. Whats wrong with you? Why does that concern me? I discovered DF 2010 (31.xx), played it for hours, donated $20 and received a drawing. I was happy. Thanks Toady One, take my money for the good thing you did. I had fun, so much fun.

Now .34 is released. Still didn't install it, waiting for the "old bug" fixes. If then I find it fun, Ill probably donate again. Thanks Toady One, take my money, keep doing your stuff I hope.
If I am not having fun, well, I won't. Simple as that. Except I wont make a big fuss over it here and spoil everyones pot over it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 10:37:01 am

People should donate for the fun they had, not for the fun they hope to have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on February 29, 2012, 10:40:10 am

Quote from: Immacolata on February 29, 2012, 10:23:51 am

But the idea is, you make such a big deal out of you not donating another penny before this or that, bla de bla. Whats wrong with you? Why does that concern me? I discovered DF 2010 (31.xx), played it for hours, donated $20 and received a drawing. I was happy. Thanks Toady One, take my money for the good thing you did. I had fun, so much fun.

Now .34 is released. Still didn't install it, waiting for the "old bug" fixes. If then I find it fun, Ill probably donate again. Thanks Toady One, take my money, keep doing your stuff I hope.
If I am not having fun, well, I won't. Simple as that. Except I wont make a big fuss over it here and spoil everyones pot over it.

We are having a civilized discussion here with regard to the development of the game. [Even tho, everybody knows that Toady doesn't care about these things.]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on February 29, 2012, 10:45:01 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 10:37:01 am

People should donate for the fun they had, not for the fun they hope to have.

Agreed and this is what I was saying in my post as well, however a small correction: People should donate for the fun they have. I donated back in time when I had fun playing the game. Now I don't donate because I don't have fun while playing DF since it's still the old game basically [fortress mode] and I got bored with it. I won't donate just because one day a decent version might get released if everything goes right and nothing will force Toady to stop developing the game.
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 29, 2012, 11:06:17 am

Quote from: gimli on February 29, 2012, 10:45:01 am

Agreed and this is what I was saying in my post as well, however a small correction: People should donate for the fun they have. I donated back in time when I had fun playing the game. Now I don't donate because I don't have fun while playing DF since it's still the old game basically [fortress mode] and I got bored with it. I won't donate just because one day a decent version might get released if everything goes right and nothing will force Toady to stop developing the game.

And that's all totally reasonable.  What's unreasonable is for (other) people to claim their donations give them the right to control development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 29, 2012, 11:10:43 am

Mind you we already have an example of the absolute extreme of entitlement anyhow. Which I am not sure if it falls on annoying or hillarious. I'd link you but I am not sure if it would be in good taste.

Anyhow you can criticise Dwarf Fortress like mad, we even had a whole thread at one time created JUST for what people disliked about the game (MIND YOU! A lot of people went on that thread just to defend Dwarf Fortress).

The difference is between criticising what Dwarf Fortress is doing wrong within its own scope, and complaining about what Dwarf Fortress will never be or complaining simply that it is unfinished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on February 29, 2012, 11:25:40 am

Welp, curiosity is getting the better of me so it's time to slap this train back on the rails:

Will the improvements to mineral veins and the addition of mine maps have a major effect on worldgen in the number of metal items made? Will that then translate into a larger number of weapon/armor shops and a larger number of metal goods at the market? Will towns closer to major mines have more blacksmiths, miners, furnace operators, and shops containing the products of these jobs? Will there be warehouses full of iron ore/bars/goods in mining towns, or does worldgen space out items through trade too much to see that?

To occupy everyone else: Since the next release is a little ambiguous, what are you looking for from it and to what extent? I know the inn rewrite is going to include people in towns going to a tavern and drunks probably hanging around there more often, but do you think we'll have people praying at temples and farming in their fields during the day with seeds of whip vine and rope reed in their pockets? Or do you think it'll be more of a "meeting hall" framework that's set up just around the well or town square during the day?

Edit: Emphasis

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 11:49:58 am

I find complaining annoying because it is Toady's project  :P If I were painting a painting and everyone were telling me what to do, I would become annoyed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 29, 2012, 12:12:10 pm

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 11:49:58 am

I find complaining annoying because it is Toady's project  :P If I were painting a painting and everyone were telling me what to do, I would become annoyed.

Well if you would just paint it the way I wanted it. There wouldn't be a problem would there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 29, 2012, 12:37:30 pm

Quote from: MaskedMiner on February 29, 2012, 11:49:58 am

I find complaining annoying because it is Toady's project  :P If I were painting a painting and everyone were telling me what to do, I would become annoyed.

Pretty much, with the extension that if I were painting a terrible painting, and the guy next to me was making this amazing thing, and people kept complaining about his, I would be equally if not more annoyed than if they had been complaining about my thing.

And now I feel bad because I've perpetuated the cycle. When will I learn?



Re: Next Release- On the face of it, it doesn't seem overly exciting apart from the inherent appeal of seeing how deep the simulation goes (I enjoy the excessive, unnecessary detail myself,) but then again before .34 I thought the Regional material emissions whatever wasn't going to be exciting, and it has turned out to be my favorite part of Fort mode. Privately, I'm hoping the Personality Rewrite that has been rumored to be moving up the list somehow makes it all the way to Release 2, since that's supposed to make personalities matter more and be less inscrutable. If I'm just taking each release at face value, I think I'm more excited for Release 3 (Taverns/Hirelings/Manors) since I expect that will make Adventure Mode more enjoyable by roughly the same factor this release did.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 12:45:12 pm

Quote from: monk12 on February 29, 2012, 12:37:30 pm

Re: Next Release- On the face of it, it doesn't seem overly exciting apart from the inherent appeal of seeing how deep the simulation goes (I enjoy the excessive, unnecessary detail myself,) but then again before .34 I thought the Regional material emissions whatever wasn't going to be exciting, and it has turned out to be my favorite part of Fort mode. Privately, I'm hoping the Personality Rewrite that has been rumored to be moving up the list somehow makes it all the way to Release 2, since that's supposed to make personalities matter more and be less inscrutable. If I'm just taking each release at face value, I think I'm more excited for Release 3 (Taverns/Hirelings/Manors) since I expect that will make Adventure Mode more enjoyable by roughly the same factor this release did.

To be honest I hope personality release don't make Release 2 yet. As every rewrite Toady made, I fear it will take a long time to finish. Next release sounds simple enough that we could see a release after 4-6 months, even with a little (expected) sidetracking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 29, 2012, 01:13:03 pm

I don't blame you, since I suspect you're right. Apart from my inherent liking of the Personality Rewrite for its own sake, I'd like to see it then because that release is otherwise light on interesting features to play around with. I know the reason he was thinking of moving it up was that it would make more sense for it to be done before Release 5, so that when he's writing the AI to make worldgen-type decisions during play he can just incorporate the Personality stuff right away instead of rewriting that aspect again 3 releases down the road.

I think what's going to happen is that either we'll have another long wait as the Personality stuff is tacked on to an existing Release, or the Personality stuff will replace something. Releases 3 and 4 sound pretty awesome to me, so if something is going to get bumped I'd rather it be Release 2.

Hopefully I'm just grossly overestimating the amount of work that will be required by the Personality Rewrite (or any of those other Release items,) but I suppose we'll see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 29, 2012, 01:18:34 pm

Do you expect random-material minerals to show up in Release 2?


I've voiced my suspicions on that subject once or twice but I don't think I've asked that question outright (or seen somebody else ask it).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on February 29, 2012, 01:48:28 pm

To be fair to Toady, despite all the people claiming that he ignored Fortress Mode this time around, we've seen quite a few changes to several old issues in Fortress Mode even ignoring the new undead features, animals, and modding potential.

The ones I can remember off the top of my head are:

Unit screen division
Ramped bodies of water
Trading changes
Wagons
Several crashing and interface issues
Dwarf pathfinding when items are lost (why did he fix this it was fine the way it was grrr)
Armor now using the right amount of bars
Economic stones (I also wish he had ignored this bug :( )
Workshop automation
Melting magma-safe materials

If you want more, just check the change list.

I like it when people bring up constructive criticism, because I have plenty of my own to share. But I hate it when they are wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on February 29, 2012, 01:58:35 pm

There was some talk about doing the caravan arc out of order a little while back so, Which caravan arc topic will you be doing next?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 29, 2012, 03:24:08 pm

Quote from: Quatch on February 29, 2012, 01:58:35 pm

There was some talk about doing the caravan arc out of order a little while back so, Which caravan arc topic will you be doing next?

I'm pretty sure he mentioned that he'd reorganize the dev page to show the new order once he and ThreeToe worked it out. That said, from the last thread, release 5 and the personality rewrite from release 8 are strong contenders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on February 29, 2012, 03:45:20 pm

I can definately see the point of getting release 5 moved up, since that's essentially laying down another layer of depth to the game as big as adventure or fortress mode. Being able to see the changes in the world is a great thing, but it seems like having worldgen continue during play should be put off rather than bumped up seeing as how it really needs most of the things from the caravan arc to be at its full potential. Granted if we got it early I certainly wouldn't complain...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on February 29, 2012, 03:24:08 pm

Quote from: Quatch on February 29, 2012, 01:58:35 pm

There was some talk about doing the caravan arc out of order a little while back so, Which caravan arc topic will you be doing next?

I'm pretty sure he mentioned that he'd reorganize the dev page to show the new order once he and ThreeToe worked it out. That said, from the last thread, release 5 and the personality rewrite from release 8 are strong contenders.

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on February 29, 2012, 07:17:28 pm

I've actually been looking forward to the personality rewrite -- due to how it is necessary/helpful for 95% of the features I'm most looking forward to -- ever since it was first listed. I'm hoping against hope that it's in Release 2 no matter how much longer it makes it take.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 29, 2012, 09:39:49 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on February 29, 2012, 01:48:28 pm

Ramped bodies of water

Especially hilarious on maps with waterfalls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on February 29, 2012, 11:42:11 pm

I was also really confused about people saying he 'ignored' fortress mode, seems people who complained were taking what is obvious in to consideration, but not the subtleties that add up.

also, i dont generally give a damn if YOUR not an adventure mode player, others like it, hell im not sure but some people may just play ONLY adventure mode and get mad about fortress mode getting more attention.

considering that the most fun thing to do is play a long standing world with multiple forts and adventurers, then im happy with adventure mode getting some attention, it has been sorely neglected for all too long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 01, 2012, 12:27:11 am

Quote from: Japa on February 29, 2012, 09:39:49 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on February 29, 2012, 01:48:28 pm

Ramped bodies of water

Especially hilarious on maps with waterfalls.

Man, dem suicide fisherdorfs.  So many "missing" fisherdorfs.  So many. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 01, 2012, 12:57:19 am

ah yeah, the missing thing makes fortress mode very interesting...

although there was a big fire and one of my woodcutters is 'missing', found a bronze axe and an artifact sock by the main road though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 01, 2012, 04:33:44 am

All werecarp, all of them!

or... All were carp dat dunnit!

indeed interesting. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on March 01, 2012, 06:29:40 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Oh C'mon... Really? You think goals that Toady already finished aren't his own? .... and the implication that toady is doing it for money! oh... are you from around here? Do we live in the same world? ...and I don't wanna stir up a discussion, just couldn't believe someone can have so distorted view....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 01, 2012, 07:06:53 am

Quote from: Rip0k on March 01, 2012, 06:29:40 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Oh C'mon... Really? You think goals that Toady already finished aren't his own? .... and the implication that toady is doing it for money! oh... are you from around here? Do we live in the same world? ...and I don't wanna stir up a discussion, just couldn't believe someone can have so distorted view....

I was referring to Toady setting objectives (for example, Release 1 - towns and markets) that was supposed to be fast, but took 11 months and ended up with much more than what he planned; the fact that he is now considering to change the other planned releases - it is not the first time he does this; and though he aren't doing it for money, he needs it to survive and it is a fact the long development cycles give more money... though I don't think he is doing it on purpose. But if he does, it is his right.
Come on, I'm Bay12's raging fanboy! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 01, 2012, 07:22:39 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 01, 2012, 07:06:53 am

Come on, I'm Bay12's raging fanboy! :)

It sickens me!

(http://www.futurama-serial.cz/wp-content/img/zapp.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 01, 2012, 08:41:07 am

WHOA did Toady get a LOT in February.

Once again I am back to wondering what exactly Toady spends his money on... Knowing it is probably something boring like food and water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on March 01, 2012, 10:04:24 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 01, 2012, 08:41:07 am

WHOA did Toady get a LOT in February.

Once again I am back to wondering what exactly Toady spends his money on... Knowing it is probably something boring like food and water.

Major release. I thought it will "generate" more money than DF2010 [..since the playerbase must be much bigger now] but I was wrong, since DF2010's release = 16k income for Toady in that month. Weird. Oh well, it's still a very nice amount of cash.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 01, 2012, 10:48:52 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 01, 2012, 08:41:07 am

WHOA did Toady get a LOT in February.

Once again I am back to wondering what exactly Toady spends his money on... Knowing it is probably something boring like food and water.

Taxes :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on March 01, 2012, 11:12:36 am

Well, I think a lot of people wait up to donate until a new release—so  it makes sense there'd be a bigger donation after a 19 month period between releases than a 10 month period, even if the player base has expanded.

Anyway, if I were Toady, I'd sock away any extra cash, especially in more profitable months (like this one), and invest it, for insurance in case—in 5-10 years or whenever—donations start to drop off. If he saves up enough, he might be able to support himself for quite a while even if donations eventually start to taper off. Sort of an individual-Keynesian approach.

But I'm pretty risk averse, myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 01, 2012, 11:23:15 am

Don't forget Sunday that he also needs to replace his hardware eventually to better systems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: codecx on March 01, 2012, 11:32:23 am

There's always a trickle of cash every month, I'm guessing by repeat donators.

From the numbers generated, its clear that the amount donated is equal to the effort put into the game.
People who get instant gratification and results = $

Now, if Toady decided to put off *new* features and arcs and instead focused on cleaning up the code and fixing that giant list of pre-existing bugs... I'd wager that he'd see 3-5k more per month, since those things actually effect us--the player.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 01, 2012, 11:38:47 am

Quote from: codecx on March 01, 2012, 11:32:23 am

There's always a trickle of cash every month, I'm guessing by repeat donators.

From the numbers generated, its clear that the amount donated is equal to the effort put into the game.
People who get instant gratification and results = $

Now, if Toady decided to put off *new* features and arcs and instead focused on cleaning up the code and fixing that giant list of pre-existing bugs... I'd wager that he'd see 3-5k more per month, since those things actually effect us--the player.

The current dev cycle involves alternating between lots of new features and lots of old bugfixes. There'll be one more (possibly two, but I doubt it) release cleaning up some of the problems introduced in 34.01 that'll take a week or two, and then he'll spend a month or two primarily working on the older bugs.


The reason for alternating between new features and old bugs is because both of them are important, and neither is more important than the other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 11:51:07 am

I'm getting really tired of people complaining about not getting their money's worth out of a free game. Go outside, take a few deep breaths, and then please don't type anything until you're feeling rational.

Now, cites: super awesome, or ultra awesome? I'd love to get some exported city world maps- I just wish I could embark to some of these places. Oh sure, it would probably break everything terribly, but I would love to get a large-view of a section of a city.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 01, 2012, 11:51:59 am

Quote from: codecx on March 01, 2012, 11:32:23 am

Now, if Toady decided to put off *new* features and arcs and instead focused on cleaning up the code and fixing that giant list of pre-existing bugs... I'd wager that he'd see 3-5k more per month, since those things actually effect us--the player.

I'm all about bugfixes, but claims like this one are difficult to prove or disprove (even in hindsight) due to the many other factors that affect donations, such as seasonal stuff (e.g. the holiday season), the expanding player base, the fact that bug fixing cycles usually follow a major windfall month, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 01, 2012, 12:02:22 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 11:51:07 am

I'm getting really tired of people complaining about not getting their money's worth out of a free game. Go outside, take a few deep breaths, and then please don't type anything until you're feeling rational.

Now, cites: super awesome, or ultra awesome? I'd love to get some exported city world maps- I just wish I could embark to some of these places. Oh sure, it would probably break everything terribly, but I would love to get a large-view of a section of a city.

Almost but not quite ultra awesome, and it will probably make that jump once I can ask for directions to find a freakin weaponsmith's shop :P   Although I have been playing adventure mode almost exclusively this release, and the sewer/dungeon quests are pretty fantastic. Mind, I haven't actually completed one since I get really lost and murdered by bandits, but Losing is as fun as ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 12:10:09 pm

That reminds me, I walked into one town as an adventurer, walked over a sewer grate, and a snakeman down below starts cursing me out about how he's killed a billion people and he's going to come up there and rip me a new set of orifices.

Of course, anyone familiar with city life is well used to this sort of thing, and so I keep walking and waiting. So I go shopping and realize I can brag about something. Apparently the snakeman drowned or something trying to climb up to the surface, so I got the credit for it. I end up being able to recruit more than half a dozen soldiers to join me purely from that.

They all pummeled me into paste when I accidentally maliciously attacked a priest of death in the fortress they were formerly guarding.

Man, I just realized I need to see if I can wipe out a city using a zombie horde. Now I just need to figure out how to make a zombie horde. Hmmmm... Can I recruit necromancers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 01, 2012, 12:20:32 pm

That's pretty awesome. Best I've done is randomly accuse a law-giver of being a night creature, and have him turn out to actually be a vampire. Since he was also a fully equipped former Ranger, he quickly shot me in the spine and I bled out before seeing whether my comrades overcame his tyranny. I don't think you can recruit necromancers, but you can totally read their tomes to learn how to raise zombies yourself. It's one of my longer term goals, once I can string together three quests running.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on March 01, 2012, 12:50:40 pm

Oh god the towers... it might be beneficial to turn OFF dodging before you try to break into one. A bruise or even a missing hand is better than deciding to dodge into fifteen hungry undead...
Funny enough my only semi-successful foray into the sewers ended with me and a lasher both prone and pushing each other. I eventually realized I could still throw arrows at him, so I did that until the stack of thirty was used up. We both bled to death a turn apart, I suppose after finally having found our equal.

Man I love this version. Can't wait to see if the dungeon master gets fixed to avoid all this mucking about in the raws every new version. Not like it's much work, but I think having an immigrated noble would finally cause me to make clothes and assign nobles finely dyed silk attire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 01, 2012, 01:50:26 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 12:10:09 pm

Man, I just realized I need to see if I can wipe out a city using a zombie horde. Now I just need to figure out how to make a zombie horde. Hmmmm... Can I recruit necromancers?

I don't believe you can recruit necromancers, no; it seems to me that when they see an adventurer approaching their tower they assume he's there to steal their secrets, and so attempt to kill him before he can. That said, as has been pointed out, if you do steal their secrets you'll gain the ability to raise the dead yourself. You can also gain this ability by looking in Legends mode and finding a demon who's writing books on the subject while posing as a human deity. They won't be aggressive, and they'll leave the books lying around the fort they're in.

I can also say that it is a lot of fun to wipe out a city with an undead horde. I only did it to a small portion of the city, but the zombies were most efficient in doing so while I just stood back and laughed, reraising them if they fell. Since they have the [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE] tag, the zombies will kill villagers even if you don't want them to, and you won't be blamed for their actions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 02:09:11 pm

What's the best way to go about assembling this horde of zombies? Of course, once you've reached a certain level of capital, your undead investments start getting self-sustaining- that is, with enough zombies, you can be sure of killing (and then raising) anyone, with average losses of less than one zombie per peasant killed.

The difficult part is when you're starting out as a small business, and need a loan of, oh, a few dozen corpses. Anyone know a good way to get started there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 01, 2012, 02:19:53 pm

As it happens, the aforementioned sewers are a lovely source of unused corpses for you to recycle for your various ends, or you could recruit a handful of companions and lead them to their grisly deaths on some quest or another. Getting them to flounder into a river full of carp is a great, low-risk strategy with potentially high long-term gains, especially if they manage to bag a carp or two in their escapade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on March 01, 2012, 02:22:14 pm

Tombs are ideal for the first-time necromancer. They offer a low risk/large return on your investment; just make sure you raise the corpses before the mummy does. (I took my new army to a town to see what would happen...  so many dead ducks...  so many zombie ducks...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 01, 2012, 05:13:04 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 02:09:11 pm

What's the best way to go about assembling this horde of zombies? Of course, once you've reached a certain level of capital, your undead investments start getting self-sustaining- that is, with enough zombies, you can be sure of killing (and then raising) anyone, with average losses of less than one zombie per peasant killed.

The difficult part is when you're starting out as a small business, and need a loan of, oh, a few dozen corpses. Anyone know a good way to get started there?

step 1: learn to raise dead people. difficulty: HOLY SHITZ 800 ZOMBIEZ.
step 2: raise those 800 zombies to fight for you. difficulty: boring, but worth it.
step 3: go 'explain' to the townspeople just how little much you like their stupid ass wondeful quests, and not being rewarded at all ever. difficulty: non-existent, but gratifying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 01, 2012, 05:14:16 pm

Wild animals.

No, seriously. If you find a pack of wild boars, just kill one, raise it, and follow it around if it goes charging off. It'll immediately target any living creatures it can find, which will likely be the rest of the pack if you kill it fast enough. Any living companions you have at the time will then try to kill your undead animals, which in turn will attempt to kill the companions. You can use this to your advantage by gathering a group of companions, going out into the wilderness, and raising everything they kill until the undead overwhelm your personal army, thus allowing you to raise the companions, too.

Then, just go back to town.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 01, 2012, 05:21:07 pm

if youll excuse me... im gonna go play adv mode...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on March 01, 2012, 10:33:08 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 01, 2012, 12:10:09 pm

Man, I just realized I need to see if I can wipe out a city using a zombie horde. Now I just need to figure out how to make a zombie horde. Hmmmm... Can I recruit necromancers?

Oh yes, you can wipe out cities with a zombie horde. Though you can't recruit necromancers, you can learn the secrets of life and death yourself, raise some of the necro's old zombies and then go to town with them. A fight will immediately start as soon as your zombies see a living being. Sit and watch as your zombies kill tons of people, then raise their corpses and re-raise your zombies. Wash, rinse and repeat until you either crash from ludicrous amounts of zombies or kill everyone in the town.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 01, 2012, 10:51:38 pm

If you raise a necromancer, can they raise their own zombies?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on March 01, 2012, 11:02:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 01, 2012, 10:51:38 pm

If you raise a necromancer, can they raise their own zombies?

I don't think so, I swear I had a necromancer raise one of his buddies when I was clearing the tower but the necromancer zombie didn't do anything unusual.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RadHazard on March 01, 2012, 11:14:59 pm

Towers would be a pain to clear out if necromancers could raise each other.  I think interactions are tied to their soul, so resurrected zombies shouldn't remember how to do any that they knew in life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 01, 2012, 11:37:27 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 01, 2012, 07:06:53 am

Quote from: Rip0k on March 01, 2012, 06:29:40 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Oh C'mon... Really? You think goals that Toady already finished aren't his own? .... and the implication that toady is doing it for money! oh... are you from around here? Do we live in the same world? ...and I don't wanna stir up a discussion, just couldn't believe someone can have so distorted view....

I was referring to Toady setting objectives (for example, Release 1 - towns and markets) that was supposed to be fast, but took 11 months and ended up with much more than what he planned; the fact that he is now considering to change the other planned releases - it is not the first time he does this; and though he aren't doing it for money, he needs it to survive and it is a fact the long development cycles give more money... though I don't think he is doing it on purpose. But if he does, it is his right.
Come on, I'm Bay12's raging fanboy! :)

Maybe you should cite your claims? I haven't actually revisited this since the latest release (because it's a hassle), but by the math I did last time Toady released a big new version and people raised this claim Toady made less money overall when he doesn't update and then drops a big one than when he updates more consistently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 02, 2012, 02:04:40 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 01, 2012, 11:37:27 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 01, 2012, 07:06:53 am

Quote from: Rip0k on March 01, 2012, 06:29:40 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Oh C'mon... Really? You think goals that Toady already finished aren't his own? .... and the implication that toady is doing it for money! oh... are you from around here? Do we live in the same world? ...and I don't wanna stir up a discussion, just couldn't believe someone can have so distorted view....

I was referring to Toady setting objectives (for example, Release 1 - towns and markets) that was supposed to be fast, but took 11 months and ended up with much more than what he planned; the fact that he is now considering to change the other planned releases - it is not the first time he does this; and though he aren't doing it for money, he needs it to survive and it is a fact the long development cycles give more money... though I don't think he is doing it on purpose. But if he does, it is his right.
Come on, I'm Bay12's raging fanboy! :)

Maybe you should cite your claims? I haven't actually revisited this since the latest release (because it's a hassle), but by the math I did last time Toady released a big new version and people raised this claim Toady made less money overall when he doesn't update and then drops a big one than when he updates more consistently.

I didn't see the need to cite my claims because it was a casual observation, but here we go:

2011:     $42294.19 (Feature and bugfixes releases, first time annual donations decreased)
2010:     $54501.15 (DF2010 - April,month of the release, got Toady about 30% of the donations of the year)
2009:     $32516.44(no release year - more than the previous year)
2008:     $32318.46(various small releases)

Before the release of DF2010 the donations were dropping greatly, but that was a extreme long release cycle. This time this sharp decrease didn't happen, and this is a good sign.

Someone can prove that I'm wrong, but as I said, this is based on casual observation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 02, 2012, 04:10:36 am

Yeah, clearly the math should be actually done, particularly looking at the actual months of release in 2011. I ain't doing it tonight, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on March 02, 2012, 04:35:31 am

Quote from: gimli on March 01, 2012, 10:04:24 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 01, 2012, 08:41:07 am

WHOA did Toady get a LOT in February.

Once again I am back to wondering what exactly Toady spends his money on... Knowing it is probably something boring like food and water.

Major release. I thought it will "generate" more money than DF2010 [..since the playerbase must be much bigger now] but I was wrong, since DF2010's release = 16k income for Toady in that month. Weird. Oh well, it's still a very nice amount of cash.

.31 was released at the first of the month, while .34 was released halfway through the month. I assume some people first want to try out the new version for a few weeks before donating or have been waiting with playing it for whatever reason. I think Toady will make up for the extra 4k next month.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on March 02, 2012, 05:18:39 am

When travelling at night, travel map visibility is reduced to 1 tile, but the zoomed in travel map (which is great by the way) is unchanged. Is this to reflect the greater light sources near to towns or will this change?

Temples in cities appear to have above ground, constructed walls that are also engraved. This seems inconsistent with fortress mode (maybe humans know somthing that dwarves don't). Should we expect a change here?


I've never used the relevant tools to embark in places you're not intended to, but I assume the walls in question aren't actually "constuctions", it's just they look that way when you see them, and not carved into the ground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on March 02, 2012, 05:58:58 am

*dbl post*, loving this laggy net.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on March 02, 2012, 06:03:02 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 02, 2012, 02:04:40 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 01, 2012, 11:37:27 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 01, 2012, 07:06:53 am

Quote from: Rip0k on March 01, 2012, 06:29:40 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 29, 2012, 03:53:37 pm

I would really like he followed his own goals for once. :)
After a long development like this one, it would be nice to have some short feature releases for a time at least. But it looks like big releases are more financially interesting. I can see their reasoning.

Oh C'mon... Really? You think goals that Toady already finished aren't his own? .... and the implication that toady is doing it for money! oh... are you from around here? Do we live in the same world? ...and I don't wanna stir up a discussion, just couldn't believe someone can have so distorted view....

I was referring to Toady setting objectives (for example, Release 1 - towns and markets) that was supposed to be fast, but took 11 months and ended up with much more than what he planned; the fact that he is now considering to change the other planned releases - it is not the first time he does this; and though he aren't doing it for money, he needs it to survive and it is a fact the long development cycles give more money... though I don't think he is doing it on purpose. But if he does, it is his right.
Come on, I'm Bay12's raging fanboy! :)

Maybe you should cite your claims? I haven't actually revisited this since the latest release (because it's a hassle), but by the math I did last time Toady released a big new version and people raised this claim Toady made less money overall when he doesn't update and then drops a big one than when he updates more consistently.

I didn't see the need to cite my claims because it was a casual observation, but here we go:

2011:     $42294.19 (Feature and bugfixes releases, first time annual donations decreased)
2010:     $54501.15 (DF2010 - April,month of the release, got Toady about 30% of the donations of the year)
2009:     $32516.44(no release year - more than the previous year)
2008:     $32318.46(various small releases)

Before the release of DF2010 the donations were dropping greatly, but that was a extreme long release cycle. This time this sharp decrease didn't happen, and this is a good sign.

Someone can prove that I'm wrong, but as I said, this is based on casual observation.

Heh and you begin to wonder....if DF would be more player friendly [IE. Good UI, Fully separated gfx-txt -> proper tilesets, etc.] + the development would be faster -> *Toady turns into Notch*
Ok maybe he still wouldn't earn so much money like the Minecraft developer, but he would earn much more. However I think that Toady is absolutely okay with his current income. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 02, 2012, 10:46:41 am

Okay I just started working with version 0.34.04.

Book names seem to follow a few set patterns as far as I've seen; I've counted multiple instances of the same name and even more instances where the name uses the same overall format but with different nouns.

When using the arena, I got it to crash by attempting to spawn a werebeast grasshopper man with grandmaster level in every combat skill.  It happens every time.

So, I'm assuming that Toady still has a laundry list of bugs to work over, and we should expect a new release soon.

Also, have the kobolds stopped dying of starvation yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 02, 2012, 10:54:59 am

There is a raw folder of book names. There's at least one project which extends the name list somewhat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 01:06:22 pm

Toady turning into Notch is basically my worst nightmare.

It is worth remembering in the casual cash flow estimates that DF has also been getting increased media exposure in recent years- in particular, there was a big spike in donations the month that NY Times article came out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

I missed the whole fight about scripting and about whether DF is heading in a good/bad direction. Maybe it's for the best :P. I'll just make a few points in a (hopefully) factual and non-controversial manner.

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

About the direction in which DF is heading, I just want to chime in with my experience. I'm a long time fan (since before Boatmurdered) and reading the goals for this game used to bring tears to my eyes. However I'm now mostly unable to play (I do try and make one or two fortresses and adventurers every major release), and consequently stopped donating more than a year ago.

Why? It's because I found the game fun when I was still discovering new stuff about it, i.e. the journey from complete noob to seasoned player was fun. However, now that I've explored most of what the game has to offer, and find running a fortress rather easy, I seem to only see the numerous frustrations that doing anything in DF involve. For instance, just in my last session I struggled with all of those problems:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Digging a pit involves tediously designating one level of channels at a time
- Some construction orders get completely ignored, presumably because the game lets you cut off a planned building from the materials used for it without any warning
- Construction jobs get suspended all the time because a dwarf or a building material for another building is sitting on their spot
- Dwarves love locking themselves up or blocking their path to other planned constructions when building stuff or removing floors (the latter in particular has no satisfying workaround)
- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)
- Two years later, the military is still a nightmare to manage. They barely train, they don't reliably pick up equipments, soldiers with the miner/woodcutter profession are buggy.
- Some grazing animals starve to death no matter what you do, and the others don't even have the basic instinct of seeking grass on their own when you don't pasture them (which is really weird given than dwarves will do everything they can to get food, even hunt vermin).
- Burrows are a pain to manage, even though they're better than the old "keep dwarves inside" fiasco where they kept rushing towards the exit. Want to keep digging when under siege? You have to essentially double-designate everything, once for digging, once for burrow. To add insult to injury, it's incredibly easy to delete your whole carefully designated burrow by hitting d, which happened to me 3 times (perhaps because d is used so much for designating, and because the interface seems to be designed to trip you up).
- Dwarves actually still rush straight into danger as soon as another one is killed because they want to retreive their socks. If you're not sure where the body is, forbidding those is really hard.
- Unkillable thralls/undead.

And those are just a sample of those that really infuriated me, there's no point in relisting the whole bugtracker here. Overall, I find that I'm really playing Workaround: The Game and not having that much fun overall. Actually, every time I try to come back to the game, re-learning those workarounds seems less fun. I send one or two fortresses to their doom and laugh as limbs fly everywhere, occasionally wonder at a nifty new feature like migrant vampires and trials, then move on to something else.

The whole point of this post is to show that there are some players who really want to love the game, but can't. They're enthralled by the complexity of the simulation behind it, and are willing to put up with DF's huge learning curve and complexity, absence of graphics/confusing graphics, and even interface (to a degree), but they still get put off by the clunkiness of the gameplay. I think that I'm a representative sample of a large number of players, and that Toady would gain a lot* from adressing these problems agressively.

*as in: money, good will, larger player base, less competition that tries to fill the gameplay void of DF

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 01:06:22 pm

Toady turning into Notch is basically my worst nightmare.

Why? Both are likeable fellas who write the games they want while blissfully ignoring the mainstream.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 02, 2012, 03:29:45 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

Overall, I find that I'm really playing Workaround: The Game and not having that much fun overall.

This. I hope that Toady will squash all new bugs and the worst old ones - then it may be again playable for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 04:01:54 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 01:06:22 pm

Toady turning into Notch is basically my worst nightmare.

Why? Both are likeable fellas who write the games they want while blissfully ignoring the mainstream.

Notch- Gets good idea for game, mass markets the hell out of it, pushes releases out the door, accessibility first development focus, arbitrary "it's done" estimates to justify price increases, and that's without going into the various flaws of the game itself which I feel derive directly from his dev process.

Toady- Gets good idea for game, quietly carves loyal niche fanbase, has releases that may have too much content but never too little, mechanics/gameplay first development focus, game is free and lives on donations, and that's without going into the various virtues of the game itself which I feel derive directly from his dev process.

Or to put it another way, I see Notch as the pop star of the game dev world, whereas Toady is practically a, er, monk. Just about every design decision Notch has made, I would have done differently, and the reverse is true for Toady, something I've said about no other game before or since. It isn't that Notch made "wrong" decisions, it is just that the game he wanted Minecraft to be is not the game I wanted it to be, nor a game I care to play.

I know lots of people wish that DF was more like Minecraft in many respects, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I could fill threads about how I wished Minecraft was more like DF, but this isn't the place to do so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RadHazard on March 02, 2012, 04:26:09 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 04:01:54 pm

... whereas Toady is practically a, er, monk.

This made me laugh :P

I can honestly say that Toady cares a lot about Dwarf Fortress.  People complain all the time that he doesn't fix enough bugs, but I feel that these recent bugfix updates show that he does care enough to devote time to fixing them.  While it's certainly true that he could do a lot more toward fixing certain bugs or improving the interface, it's also true that he could be spending more time adding in new features.

A lot of people are complaining that the most recent release didn't have much in the way of Fortress mode updates. If Toady spent the time to fix every issue in the game, or even just all of the large issues (the dwarven clothing bug, AI stupidity, pathfinding lag, etc.), it would likely take him just as long as this release did, and it would result in exactly zero new features for every mode.  It would certainly make plenty of people happy, but it would also annoy plenty of people who didn't mind the bugs enough to justify devoting a year or more to fixing them all.

It seems to me that no matter what part of development Toady devotes himself to, he's just not going to make everyone happy.  I do think, however, that the current "Feature release, Bug fixes, Feature release, Bug fixes" cycle he's been in recently has allowed him to devote enough time to both sides of the issue to make a reasonably large number of people happy.

I personally would have no problem with it if Toady continued to work like this, even if I personally would like to see certain bugs resolved.  He's making a huge headway in that direction even as he continues to add new and fun things to the game. And who knows? He might just be able to fix, or at least improve, some of these bugs during this current bug fixing cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 04:45:32 pm

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Would I have been happier if the bugs that I run into a lot during play got fixed before the ones I never see/experience? Certainly. But the general development process addresses both my desire for new features and my need for bugfixing, and has done so reliably for the last few years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 02, 2012, 04:47:31 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)\

Channels. Watch out for cave-ins.

Quote

- Burrows are a pain to manage, even though they're better than the old "keep dwarves inside" fiasco where they kept rushing towards the exit. Want to keep digging when under siege? You have to essentially double-designate everything, once for digging, once for burrow. To add insult to injury, it's incredibly easy to delete your whole carefully designated burrow by hitting d, which happened to me 3 times (perhaps because d is used so much for designating, and because the interface seems to be designed to trip you up).

You can change the binding for that.

Quote

- Dwarves actually still rush straight into danger as soon as another one is killed because they want to retreive their socks. If you're not sure where the body is, forbidding those is really hard.

Set the "Forbid items dropped on death" order.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:05:18 pm

Sizik, you've just proved his "Workaround: the game" theory.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 02, 2012, 06:11:44 pm

Spoiler: lots of monk12's posts. (click to show/hide)

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 04:01:54 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 01:06:22 pm

Toady turning into Notch is basically my worst nightmare.

Why? Both are likeable fellas who write the games they want while blissfully ignoring the mainstream.

Notch- Gets good idea for game, mass markets the hell out of it, pushes releases out the door, accessibility first development focus, arbitrary "it's done" estimates to justify price increases, and that's without going into the various flaws of the game itself which I feel derive directly from his dev process.

Toady- Gets good idea for game, quietly carves loyal niche fanbase, has releases that may have too much content but never too little, mechanics/gameplay first development focus, game is free and lives on donations, and that's without going into the various virtues of the game itself which I feel derive directly from his dev process.

Or to put it another way, I see Notch as the pop star of the game dev world, whereas Toady is practically a, er, monk. Just about every design decision Notch has made, I would have done differently, and the reverse is true for Toady, something I've said about no other game before or since. It isn't that Notch made "wrong" decisions, it is just that the game he wanted Minecraft to be is not the game I wanted it to be, nor a game I care to play.

I know lots of people wish that DF was more like Minecraft in many respects, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I could fill threads about how I wished Minecraft was more like DF, but this isn't the place to do so.

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 04:45:32 pm

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Would I have been happier if the bugs that I run into a lot during play got fixed before the ones I never see/experience? Certainly. But the general development process addresses both my desire for new features and my need for bugfixing, and has done so reliably for the last few years.

damn, a logical person, awesome.

anyways one other point.

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 02, 2012, 01:06:22 pm

Toady turning into Notch is basically my worst nightmare.

Why? Both are likeable fellas who write the games they want while blissfully ignoring the mainstream.

Notch is kinda mainstream dude... although Minecraft seems to be slowly turning towards better after recent rockiness, i partially attribute this to Jeb taking over design.


tl;dr this isn't really the 'talk about minecraft thread'.
[/minecraft]


On the note of newer stuff, I am really liking the new interaction system, and the modding possibilities it brings.


P.S. Bay12: the home of derailment itself. (seriously we are horrible bout this.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 02, 2012, 06:12:36 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:05:18 pm

Sizik, you've just proved his "Workaround: the game" theory.

That's not how proof works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 02, 2012, 06:17:25 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on March 02, 2012, 06:12:36 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:05:18 pm

Sizik, you've just proved his "Workaround: the game" theory.

That's not how proof works.

*sigh, yes the game is hard to learn. its an alpha, and in 20-30 years it will be done. play it then i suppose  :)

anyways, yeah the game takes some workarounds to play.
if you are bored of the game itself, try some of the bigger mods, I.E. MasterworkDF (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98196.0)
[/shameless promotion of favorite mod]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:21:22 pm

Okay, a random question that's actually relevant to caravan arc.

Playing adventurer mode, I've noticed there's a lot of stuff everywhere. All kind of items are so common that people seem to live in total excess. Even dungeons and catacombs are full of stuff, and selling loot from a single room can often make you so insanely rich. And there's nothing to spend the money for, because you can get anything very easily and cheap.

So... how much of the enonomy system is already in? I thought economy was already supposed to be in world-gen and adventurer-mode but to be honest, it still doesn't feel right. What is your end goal in terms of item abundance, prices, general feeling of economy?

Optional bonus question 1: As an adventurer in the future, what will I be supposed to spend all my money for? I mean, for all these treasures to have a purpose, I need to have a reason to get them, ideally other than just roleplaying/color. What is this reason?

Optional bonus question 2: Item abundance is even worse in fortress mode, where skilled dwarves can churn items so quickly that material/item availability soon becomes a non-issue. Nothing is ever scarce. Again, what is your final goal: how many items should the dwarves have? How easy should it be to obtain stuff? To use examples: Do you want dwarves running in rags and only nobles being able to afford rich clothes, do you want the players to be able to easily get a full plate mail for everyone, etc. etc.?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 06:53:33 pm

Quote from: RadHazard on March 02, 2012, 04:26:09 pm

If Toady spent the time to fix every issue in the game, or even just all of the large issues (the dwarven clothing bug, AI stupidity, pathfinding lag, etc.), it would likely take him just as long as this release did, and it would result in exactly zero new features for every mode.  It would certainly make plenty of people happy, but it would also annoy plenty of people who didn't mind the bugs enough to justify devoting a year or more to fixing them all.

If the game becomes playable without a workaround for every single gameplay element, I predict an exponential increase in the number of players. The tiny minority who can live with the current bugs and want more features to be piled up instead of fixes can go brood in their corner as far as I'm concerned, 'cause I know that's what they're telling me anyways. See "play the game in 20-30 years" above if you need an example.


Toady, in the current "bugfix arc", are there any plans to devise a system so that dwarves can intelligently place a lot of furniture and/or constructions without blocking each other, locking themselves up or blocking access to some of the designations? (Me, I'd just build a directed acyclic graph with those, taking into account where dwarves have to stand to build each thing, but you're the boss.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on March 02, 2012, 07:20:18 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:05:18 pm

Sizik, you've just proved his "Workaround: the game" theory.

How so? Of the three solutions posted, only the second is a workaround. The first and third problems work exactly as intended and "fixing" these would bring on a whole load of new problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on March 02, 2012, 07:45:23 pm

Posting to watch the thread.  Nothing to see here, move along.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 02, 2012, 07:54:30 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

- Burrows are a pain to manage, even though they're better than the old "keep dwarves inside" fiasco where they kept rushing towards the exit. Want to keep digging when under siege? You have to essentially double-designate everything, once for digging, once for burrow. To add insult to injury, it's incredibly easy to delete your whole carefully designated burrow by hitting d, which happened to me 3 times (perhaps because d is used so much for designating, and because the interface seems to be designed to trip you up).

I found out a couple of neat things about burrows recently. First and foremost, they can be designated across Z-levels (and they could even before multi-z designations were added). Second, they can be designated in areas that haven't been dug out yet. If you designate everything belowground as one massive burrow, you can dig with impunity, knowing your miners are within the burrow no matter how deep they go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 09:09:29 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Sizik on March 02, 2012, 04:47:31 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)\

Channels. Watch out for cave-ins.

I meant drilling a hole in the ceiling from inside a excavated room, for example to drain a lake or to make a creature fall down a level. Without ending up with stairs there. Impossible, as far as the forum threads I read said. Digging should be the base of the game, not arcane knowledge...

Quote from: Keldane on March 02, 2012, 07:54:30 pm

I found out a couple of neat things about burrows recently. First and foremost, they can be designated across Z-levels (and they could even before multi-z designations were added). Second, they can be designated in areas that haven't been dug out yet. If you designate everything belowground as one massive burrow, you can dig with impunity, knowing your miners are within the burrow no matter how deep they go.

I knew that, but pre-designating the whole underground sounds like a good idea - as long as you don't forget to undesignate the caverns when you discover them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 02, 2012, 10:21:32 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 02, 2012, 11:05:15 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 02, 2012, 06:21:22 pm

Okay, a random question that's actually relevant to caravan arc.

Playing adventurer mode, I've noticed there's a lot of stuff everywhere. All kind of items are so common that people seem to live in total excess. Even dungeons and catacombs are full of stuff, and selling loot from a single room can often make you so insanely rich. And there's nothing to spend the money for, because you can get anything very easily and cheap.

So... how much of the enonomy system is already in? I thought economy was already supposed to be in world-gen and adventurer-mode but to be honest, it still doesn't feel right. What is your end goal in terms of item abundance, prices, general feeling of economy?

Well from the Dev Log and from the Development page, none of it is in Adventure Mode or Fort Mode. Right now it's just having Econ happening in World Generation. We probably won't see Econ in Adventure More or Fort Mode until:

Release 2: Villagers/Farmers schedules/activities ~ Which to me says that, during Adventure Mode, the NPCs will actually use what they've made in World Gen.

Release 3: This will probably provide areas for objects to be used up in Adventure Mode

Release 4:  Merchants Moving Around from place to place during play ~ All those trade routes and supply demand will enter into Adventure Mode.
Fairs ~ Fairs are suppose to be for Fort Mode.

Release 5: Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play ~ This will probably be the release that'll we see the Econ really impact Adventure Mode.

Release 6: Dwarf mode trading improvements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc. ~ This will be the big one for Fort Mode.

Release 8: Personality and needs rewrite ~ This will probably let dorfs use their new items more in line with what the con release has done, but that's probably side line for it's main purpose.

Release 9: Adventure mode trading improvements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc. ~ And this will be the big finisher for the Caravan Arc.

Caravan Arc, and the nine release is all about getting the Econ working in the game through "smaller" iterated release. Release 1 wasn't going to incorporate it all into Econ mode into, that was just, on paper,  getting World Gen to have a better econ model, (which also meant that the cities it model also had to be presented in adventure mode ect ect ). And it became what we have today after 11 months.

But yea, looking at the Dev Page we can see somewhat better what is already done, and what's pending.

Spoiler: Site Resources (click to show/hide)

Track resources in quantity instead of just by type
Should depend on trade/tribute relationships as well as available professions and sprawl sites

Spoiler: World Economy (click to show/hide)

Supply/demand based on current available entity resources etc.
Expand on trade/tribute relationships formed in world generation
Realize trade/tribute relationships with actual caravans moving on the map
Ability to get some supply/demand information about nearby locations from travelers and others
Ability to get that information yourself and trade it to merchants, especially as explorer
Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans
Improved dwarf mode trade agreements

We can see that there still a lot left for the World Economy left to be implemented.

Quote

Optional bonus question 1: As an adventurer in the future, what will I be supposed to spend all my money for? I mean, for all these treasures to have a purpose, I need to have a reason to get them, ideally other than just roleplaying/color. What is this reason?

There are money sinks on the planned releases. But this is an interesting issues though, if you look at table top RPG, or cRPG creating money sinks is a real issue. The PC through their shenanigans just acquire wealth for various reasons. Chiefly it's a great easy to understand reward for the player.

Quote

Optional bonus question 2: Item abundance is even worse in fortress mode, where skilled dwarves can churn items so quickly that material/item availability soon becomes a non-issue. Nothing is ever scarce. Again, what is your final goal: how many items should the dwarves have? How easy should it be to obtain stuff? To use examples: Do you want dwarves running in rags and only nobles being able to afford rich clothes, do you want the players to be able to easily get a full plate mail for everyone, etc. etc.?

I bet this question will probably be answer whenever Release 6 and Release 8 are done.

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 06:53:33 pm

Toady, in the current "bugfix arc", are there any plans to devise a system so that dwarves can intelligently place a lot of furniture and/or constructions without blocking each other, locking themselves up or blocking access to some of the designations? (Me, I'd just build a directed acyclic graph with those, taking into account where dwarves have to stand to build each thing, but you're the boss.)

Those aren't really bugs, just frame work that seem to have been ultimately incorrect. But they probably aren't going to get touched during a bug release, because they're Development Items.

Spoiler: Hauling Improvements (click to show/hide)

Being able to haul multiple small objects
Having multiple dwarves involved with item hauling for a job
Being able to move multiple objects with roughly the same destination at once
Wheelbarrows to haul more objects than can be carried
Minecarts
  Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
  Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
Work animals to tow carts and haul objects

Spoiler: Job Priorities (click to show/hide)

Rework dwarf AI to support job priorities
Rework job assignment process to support priorities set on dwarves or for specific important jobs

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 02, 2012, 11:43:22 pm

If it went to a vote, id say focus 75% bugs 25% new stuff for a while, that way the game doesn't get 'old' but at the same time bugs do get fixed instead of lingering for years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:50:26 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 03, 2012, 01:54:30 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:50:26 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

meh, thats the eternal, "is this for fortress mode? or adventure mode?" conflict that Toady faces, he often has to decide whats fun where.

although...if vampires only turn on the full moon why are vampire hunters in movies always attacking them only on the full moon, despite knowing who they are... stupid movies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:55:42 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:50:26 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

Werewolves were one of the bad mechanics I had in mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:56:13 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:50:26 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2012, 01:32:54 am

Quote from: Neonivek on March 03, 2012, 01:01:34 am

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

Werecreatures were one of the bad mechanics I had in mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 03, 2012, 02:41:18 am

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on March 02, 2012, 10:21:32 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

I don't think it's possible at the current time for Toady to plan ahead enough that the raws can handle everything they will eventually need to. I don't think he could even if he had the necessary formal knowledge to make a truly elegant and robust language, which is decidedly non-trivial. I reckon that an eventual rewrite is inevitable, some time between .70 and .90.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 03, 2012, 02:59:14 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 03, 2012, 02:41:18 am

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on March 02, 2012, 10:21:32 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

I don't think it's possible at the current time for Toady to plan ahead enough that the raws can handle everything they will eventually need to. I don't think he could even if he had the necessary formal knowledge to make a truly elegant and robust language, which is decidedly non-trivial. I reckon that an eventual rewrite is inevitable, some time between .70 and .90.

Yea, it seems that Toady & Threetoes have outlines of they want from whatever feature they happen to be working on next, but they dont have a lot of stuff explicitly planned out in fine detail. The raws were rewritten once, and they'll probably get rewritten a few more times during the course of development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 03, 2012, 05:25:29 am

300 Emails! I mean 300 stories/crayons!  :o i am impressed. Not because the shear number (that too) but how fast you handle them and keep the quality on the same level. Thanks! And thanks to Threetoe too! Heck all the creativity that goes into those stories alone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on March 03, 2012, 08:58:13 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 09:09:29 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 02, 2012, 04:47:31 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)\

Channels. Watch out for cave-ins.

I meant drilling a hole in the ceiling from inside a excavated room, for example to drain a lake or to make a creature fall down a level. Without ending up with stairs there. Impossible, as far as the forum threads I read said. Digging should be the base of the game, not arcane knowledge...

That might be because these are dwarves we are talking about. Not spiders or angels. To be able to drill a hole in the ceiling, they must first be able to reach it. I don't know what dwarf lore you have been reading up on, but I don't remember any dwarves being able to cling to ceilings or fly. Stairs are the only logical option at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 03, 2012, 09:44:59 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Sizik on March 02, 2012, 04:47:31 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 02, 2012, 02:56:12 pm

- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)\

Channels. Watch out for cave-ins.

I meant drilling a hole in the ceiling from inside a excavated room, for example to drain a lake or to make a creature fall down a level. Without ending up with stairs there. Impossible, as far as the forum threads I read said. Digging should be the base of the game, not arcane knowledge...

It is possible. All you need to do is build a ramp right below the tile you want to dig up into, then designate it for channeling, and your miners will indeed dig into it from below ^^

Sorry for the off-topic, just felt my input was needed ;P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 03, 2012, 02:40:45 pm

What I'd like to see in the next major release is more types of interactions and NPCs making use of them in actual play (for example, pouring a trail of powdered lignite/flammable substance to someone's house and then lighting the other end to commit arson while giving yourself enough leeway to run away).  I just think it would be interesting to have some random historical character hunt down a megabeast and, rather than slaying it, tie it up and force obedience onto it, then use it to terrorize a local city.  Or turn it into a tourist attraction and make money off it, I dunno.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 03, 2012, 04:03:54 pm

Quote from: jellsprout on March 03, 2012, 08:58:13 am

That might be because these are dwarves we are talking about. Not spiders or angels. To be able to drill a hole in the ceiling, they must first be able to reach it. I don't know what dwarf lore you have been reading up on, but I don't remember any dwarves being able to cling to ceilings or fly. Stairs are the only logical option at the moment.

Spider dwarf, spider dwarf... ♪ ♫  :D

(Agh, to hell with the spoiler tags.) First off, sometimes realism has to take a backseat to gameplay to make the game fun. For instance, dwarves only eat and drink once or twice a month, is that "logical" for you? Second, have you ever heard of steps or scaffolding?

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 03, 2012, 09:44:59 am

It is possible. All you need to do is build a ramp right below the tile you want to dig up into, then designate it for channeling, and your miners will indeed dig into it from below ^^

Sorry for the off-topic, just felt my input was needed ;P

Thanks. This is definitely not common knowledge, as I basically "learned" the contrary from the forums. I still feel like you should be able to remove the ceiling without a ramp (scaffolding implied), though. The whole digging system is not intuitive at all as of now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 03, 2012, 07:43:31 pm

i would like you to remove a 5x5x5 (oft presumed size of a 'tile') cube from above your head, with a pickaxe.

not meaning to bash you or anything but planning ahead is definately a core concept in dwarf fortress, as is dealing with not doing so, so consider how big you want a antechamber or whatever before building it, and work from there.


for already made mistakes, a team of masons can set up a grid of up stairs spaced every 4 spaces, miners can dig a down stair above them, than channel out the surrounding 3x3, then channel the down stair, after which the up stairs can be rapidly torn down, boom, 1 Z-level becomes 2 in under a season.

hope that helps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 04, 2012, 08:27:04 am

Why did the release number jumped from .31 to .34 anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 04, 2012, 10:49:08 am

Quote from: Dutchling on March 04, 2012, 08:27:04 am

Why did the release number jumped from .31 to .34 anyway?

Because Toady estimated that old version is 31% of the mythical 1.00 and new is 34%

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 04, 2012, 10:55:02 am

But is that 3% just a guess or are there actually three things Toady finished, assuming 1.00 means 100 finished goals?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 04, 2012, 11:00:58 am

Iirc toady is now over 100 (power)Goals and the Number in front just represents the number of mayor features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on March 04, 2012, 11:44:54 am

Yea there actually are values for how much toward version 1.0 each finished feature is worth but Toady is the only one that knows them.  There was enough features added to bump it to .34 during that dry spell.    As far as I'm aware the numbers after the main version number just indicate bugfix releases and other features that don't add up to make a full .01 increase.

P.S. The versions 40D and previous were using a different method to calculate version number.  So this only applies to post 40D versions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: YetAnotherStupidDorf on March 04, 2012, 01:43:05 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on March 04, 2012, 08:27:04 am

Why did the release number jumped from .31 to .34 anyway?

Because this is new major release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 04, 2012, 01:59:10 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on March 04, 2012, 10:55:02 am

But is that 3% just a guess or are there actually three things Toady finished, assuming 1.00 means 100 finished goals?

Yes, the +3 means that specific items have been checked off on the dev list:

Quote from: Toady One on February 17, 2011, 05:09:32 pm

[...] on the subject of version numbering, 0.31 referred at the time to 31 of the specific dev 100 core items being finished.  Then we changed dev systems and the version number was on hold for a while.  Now it refers to being 0% complete done with a new list that counts for 0.69 of the version number, but the new slightly unsettled list pretty much corresponds to the old core items, so it's not much of a change.

However, it doesn't necessarily mean exactly 3 items, since some dev items are worth fractional amounts of a version number (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2967708#msg2967708).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 04, 2012, 09:08:34 pm

Since this came up in another thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103636.msg3063919#msg3063919), I'd like to have a simple Word of Toad clarification of a certain subject:

What are bogeymen?

As in, what is their specific nature of existence? Are they fae creatures of another realm that only come to this world when the subject in question is alone?  Or are they a result of a subjective/mythic reality where fear itself creates them from the mind of the people they attack?  Or are they something else entirely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 04, 2012, 11:02:33 pm

You mentioned removing the ability for the vamp to accuse children. Does this mean that child vampires are not possible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 05, 2012, 02:21:30 am

Quote from: Japa on March 04, 2012, 11:02:33 pm

You mentioned removing the ability for the vamp to accuse children. Does this mean that child vampires are not possible?

That can't be right. What about the child vampires I made with my well of unlife? Are they all bugs destined to be consigned to the cutting room floor?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 05, 2012, 02:27:48 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 05, 2012, 02:21:30 am

Quote from: Japa on March 04, 2012, 11:02:33 pm

You mentioned removing the ability for the vamp to accuse children. Does this mean that child vampires are not possible?

That can't be right. What about the child vampires I made with my well of unlife? Are they all bugs destined to be consigned to the cutting room floor?

It was a baby, even as a vampire it shouldn't have ways of killing someone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 05, 2012, 02:58:51 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 05, 2012, 02:21:30 am

Quote from: Japa on March 04, 2012, 11:02:33 pm

You mentioned removing the ability for the vamp to accuse children. Does this mean that child vampires are not possible?

That can't be right. What about the child vampires I made with my well of unlife? Are they all bugs destined to be consigned to the cutting room floor?

And he took away the possibility that the crimes were committed by animals!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i40.tinypic.com/6ozk0g.jpg)

Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.  MUWAHAHAHAHA!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 05, 2012, 07:35:32 am

You're understanding it wrong, I'm sure. Whom vampires can accuse of crime, and who can be a vampire, are two completely separate and absolutely unrelated things.

The change just means that Toady made the AI a bit more clever. Vampires will simply try to accuse people that are most believable as murderers - ie. adults. No same person would ever wrongly accuse a child, because that would sound too unbelievable and would only arouse suspicion. If you were a vampire and wanted to blame a murder on someone else, would you accuse a child or a chicken?

There should be no change in who can be a vampire, and if children could be vampires before, they can be vampires even now. But whenever a child vampire murders anyone, they will blame an adult, not another child.

Sound great, if you ask me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on March 05, 2012, 08:14:16 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 05, 2012, 07:35:32 am

The change just means that Toady made the AI a bit more clever. Vampires will simply try to accuse people that are most believable as murderers - ie. adults. No same person would ever wrongly accuse a child, because that would sound too unbelievable and would only arouse suspicion. If you were a vampire and wanted to blame a murder on someone else, would you accuse a child or a chicken?

Judging by the abundance of little girls in the horror stories, it should be all children.

Also, since even a child can be a vampire, and since children behavior is often mysterious to adults, (at least to humans) it shouldn't be that hard to believe. Also, a lot of people can observe Urist at work, but who watches over the little Urist? I think vampires should be able to put the blame on children on evil creatures and on ghosts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 05, 2012, 09:42:12 am

Odd given that children can be vampires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 05, 2012, 10:08:04 am

So I accidentally pressed F12 while playing DF.

How long has this been in the game, and are there any plans to implement this in the thoughts and interests screen of a dwarf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 05, 2012, 10:10:40 am

Quote from: Dutchling on March 05, 2012, 10:08:04 am

So I accidentally pressed F12 while playing DF.

How long has this been in the game, and are there any plans to implement this in the thoughts and interests screen of a dwarf?

TrueType has been around for a while, and it being fixed was one of the main news parts of 34.01. 34.02 added the TrueType F12 key as one of the top three changelog parts. Yes, it's planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 05, 2012, 10:18:07 am

"stopped various new non-threatening creatures from being threatening" - a great bugfix!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: YetAnotherStupidDorf on March 05, 2012, 12:38:59 pm

*grumbles* and I always "enjoyed" when dorfs was running from ducks...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 05, 2012, 06:21:49 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 05, 2012, 10:18:07 am

"stopped various new non-threatening creatures from being threatening" - a great bugfix!

It'll probably have a new tag associated with it, too...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on March 05, 2012, 06:34:00 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 05, 2012, 10:18:07 am

"stopped various new non-threatening creatures from being threatening" - a great bugfix!

Quote from: YetAnotherStupidDorf on March 05, 2012, 12:38:59 pm

*grumbles* and I always "enjoyed" when dorfs was running from ducks...

I am not sure if the fix applies to fort mode and dwarf AI.
The BugTracker report that was marked as fixed was about creatures that run away from you in adventure mode yet still prevented you from traveling like ambushes do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 05, 2012, 09:48:43 pm

"stopped ghosts from maintaining secret identities"

And here I thought that was a feature. I can just see dwarves scrambling to discover the identity of this mysterious murderous ghost before it kills them all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on March 05, 2012, 09:53:31 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 05, 2012, 09:48:43 pm

"stopped ghosts from maintaining secret identities"

And here I thought that was a feature. I can just see dwarves scrambling to discover the identity of this mysterious murderous ghost before it kills them all.

No, that's Scooby Doo  :)

Blast them meddling kids!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 06, 2012, 05:54:26 am

Quote from: Farmerbob on March 05, 2012, 09:53:31 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 05, 2012, 09:48:43 pm

"stopped ghosts from maintaining secret identities"

And here I thought that was a feature. I can just see dwarves scrambling to discover the identity of this mysterious murderous ghost before it kills them all.

No, that's Scooby Doo  :)

Blast them meddling kids!

It was old dwarf Urist, with a sheet over his head!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 06, 2012, 08:24:56 am

Quote from: Areyar on March 06, 2012, 05:54:26 am

Quote from: Farmerbob on March 05, 2012, 09:53:31 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 05, 2012, 09:48:43 pm

"stopped ghosts from maintaining secret identities"

And here I thought that was a feature. I can just see dwarves scrambling to discover the identity of this mysterious murderous ghost before it kills them all.

No, that's Scooby Doo  :)

Blast them meddling kids!

It was old dwarf Urist, with a sheet over his head!

Would you be surprised to hear that one of the Scoobydoo ghosts are actually EXACTLY that?

Mind you I'd run from a big muscular guy with a while sheet on his head and arms in the strangling possition too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 06, 2012, 09:40:42 am

Yay for 0.34.05!

I wonder if that fix that cleans up syndromes from ghosts gets rid of the necromancer ghosts?

I thought that was a rather neat emergent feature, so I hope not.

EDIT: Shoot, it looks like it did.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MiniMacker on March 06, 2012, 10:26:11 am

I have this compulsory feeling of having to restart and make a new world every update that gets released, to the point where I do something else until the updates start to slow down a little. But it's a pain to not know how many more updates there are going to be.

I need to cut down on the coffee.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 06, 2012, 02:12:21 pm

Quote from: MiniMacker on March 06, 2012, 10:26:11 am

I have this compulsory feeling of having to restart and make a new world every update that gets released, to the point where I do something else until the updates start to slow down a little. But it's a pain to not know how many more updates there are going to be.

I need to cut down on the coffee.

cutting coffee wont help, im like this too and i dont even drink any coffee to begin with

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 06, 2012, 09:34:21 pm

Quote from: Japa on March 04, 2012, 11:02:33 pm

You mentioned removing the ability for the vamp to accuse children. Does this mean that child vampires are not possible?

Toady confirmed in the other thread that child vampires can occur:

Quote from: Berserkenstein on March 06, 2012, 08:19:42 pm

Quote from: Musaab on March 06, 2012, 09:54:12 am

What about child vampires?  Who gets blamed then?

Yes, what happens if a child is a vampire?  Can they not be accused, or can children no longer become vamps by drinking vampire-blood infused water sources?

Quote from: Toady One on March 06, 2012, 08:29:26 pm

Witnesses will still report whatever they saw.  The bug fix only refers to vampires making up stories.  Accusing adults instead of children and especially babies is more credible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 06, 2012, 09:41:19 pm

Although unless people have seen otherwise, I think they probably don't come up in world gen, because they never profane temples.  They will come up through conversions etc. later.  Child vampires created in forts (by your evil management antics most likely) can still be accused by witnesses as it stands, and I haven't done anything to block their creation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

Development log (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)
Development page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/), and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).  Questions and comments about the development page or DF development somewhat more broadly work here, though any contentious topics that lead to derails are discouraged -- there are threads for those too.

If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them all, although it is difficult to respond to everything when it is busy.  I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here.  In the past, we've all found the practice of making questions green works pretty well.  You do that like this:

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions green[/color]


Just fix the god damned bugs...

Anyone who tells you that creating new content/options is better than fixing bugs has never been involved in the software industry. The game is broken. Why modify a broken game?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 06, 2012, 09:51:45 pm

uh

wow

um

what is he doing right now???

Belligerence will not help you when you are demanding that someone do something they are currently doing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 06, 2012, 09:52:46 pm

As first posts go, less than stellar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 06, 2012, 10:05:59 pm

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

The game is broken.

Works for me. You are, obviously, doing something wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 06, 2012, 10:07:05 pm

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Just fix the god damned bugs...

Anyone who tells you that creating new content/options is better than fixing bugs has never been involved in the software industry. The game is broken. Why modify a broken game?

Bug-fixing is already the current focus of development.  You can read about upcoming bug fixes on the devlog (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 06, 2012, 10:10:43 pm

To admit the game IS broken

Just not in the same way he is suggesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on March 07, 2012, 12:18:25 am

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Just fix the god damned bugs...

Anyone who tells you that creating new content/options is better than fixing bugs has never been involved in the software industry. The game is broken. Why modify a broken game?

This is rude.
If you were ever involved in software industry you would know that no software is bugfree.
And Toady is well aware there are bugs and so dedicates several releases to fix the important ones. But some bugs will obviously remain and this can't stop futher development of everything else, partially because some bugs can't be properly fixed without extending the underlining mechanics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 07, 2012, 06:09:11 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on March 07, 2012, 12:18:25 am

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Just fix the god damned bugs...

Anyone who tells you that creating new content/options is better than fixing bugs has never been involved in the software industry. The game is broken. Why modify a broken game?

This is rude.
If you were ever involved in software industry you would know that no software is bugfree.

Yes, but obviously almost all important parts of DF is somehow broken (clothing - 2481 and 3942, nobles - 3453, military - 535, healthcare - 1582, weapons - 2712 and 2327, cleaning - 425, ghosts - 3708, stacks - 3898, dodging - 4550, sieges - 4552 etc)  - and it is not a "mild and funny bug" but a "serious, irritating" - in result game for me is not playable.

Spoiler: buglist (click to show/hide)

bug #2481 - Dwarves will claim new clothes when theirs is worn (xClothesx) but not wear it
bug #3942 - Dwarves owning broken clothing. Clothes don't rot, ANNIHILATES FPS.
bug #3453 - Baron/etc. cannot appoint baron-appointed nobles, such as the Dungeon Master
bug #535 - Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic
bug #1582 - Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors
bug #2712 - weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter
bug #3708 - Ghost names that can't be engraved on a slab and nameless slab engravings
bug #425 - Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood
bug #3898 - Entire Bone Statcks are used in Reactions instead of a single Bone
bug #2327 - Blunt weapons extremely ineffective, extended single combat with groundhog
bug #4550 - Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc
bug #- Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders
bug #4856: Immortal Dwarf (... Yet unconcious) [or any other creature]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MiniMacker on March 07, 2012, 06:33:44 am

And a lot of that stuff has been resolved, just not all of it.

I recall the Healthcare being a death-trap for any and all dwarves. Now we have the occasional stuck patient, but it's far better than before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 07, 2012, 06:39:06 am

We just had a big who ha over bugs, we don't need another one so soon, the new forumite can go back ten or so pages and enjoy the reading.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante3214 on March 07, 2012, 06:59:10 am

The many bugs are an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of the games ambitiousness and intricate design.

I believe Toady has the expertise to deal with any problem that comes up, but I'm sure that even some of the simplest seeming bugs can turn into coding nightmares due to the countless ways objects and forces interact with each other. I might even guess that bug-fixing a modern AAA title could be easier.

Opinions, I know. But Toady clearly seems to be doing the best he can as far as the game goes. [/endapologeticfanboyism]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on March 07, 2012, 07:37:13 am

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Troll is troll. Don't feed the troll.

Toady, have you plans to merge the Interaction and Reaction systems at some point? They do look like they'd go really well together, and I'm honestly not sure why Interactions were made separate in the first place. Mostly I'm just annoyed that Interactions can't be made to require an item, and Reactions can't induce syndromes without using the old 'boiling stone' trick.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on March 07, 2012, 10:12:10 am

Quote from: smirk on March 07, 2012, 07:37:13 am

Quote from: ggg on March 06, 2012, 09:48:24 pm

Troll is troll. Don't feed the troll.

Toady, have you plans to merge the Interaction and Reaction systems at some point? They do look like they'd go really well together, and I'm honestly not sure why Interactions were made separate in the first place. Mostly I'm just annoyed that Interactions can't be made to require an item, and Reactions can't induce syndromes without using the old 'boiling stone' trick.

Oooh, then you could make the hatmakers and lead-forgers all slowly go insane!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 07, 2012, 10:12:28 am

"Fortress knowledge" is awesome concept. Dwarwen science within dwarwen science.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on March 07, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Yeah, that's not so much a 'bugfix' as an 'elegant new feature to replace a buggy, dissatisfying one', which I highly approve of. Dwarven Science hasn't seen any implementation in the game yet, and I'm very happy to see it making an entrance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 07, 2012, 10:32:08 am

Goodbye, Dungeon Master. I won't miss you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on March 07, 2012, 10:33:04 am

Just be glad they don't have to invent medicine in the same way :)

Edit: I will miss the DM. Not as much as the philosopher, but the DM was always a helping hand with metalwork.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 10:45:46 am

Quote from: tfaal on March 07, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Yeah, that's not so much a 'bugfix' as an 'elegant new feature to replace a buggy, dissatisfying one', which I highly approve of. Dwarven Science hasn't seen any implementation in the game yet, and I'm very happy to see it making an entrance.

Yup, that's the kind of thing that might get me playing Fortress Mode again.

Quote from: Kogut on March 07, 2012, 06:09:11 am

Yes, but obviously almost all important parts of DF is somehow broken (clothing - 2481 and 3942, nobles - 3453, military - 535, healthcare - 1582, weapons - 2712 and 2327, cleaning - 425, ghosts - 3708, stacks - 3898, dodging - 4550, sieges - 4552 etc)  - and it is not a "mild and funny bug" but a "serious, irritating" - in result game for me is not playable.

Spoiler: buglist (click to show/hide)

bug #2481 - Dwarves will claim new clothes when theirs is worn (xClothesx) but not wear it
bug #3942 - Dwarves owning broken clothing. Clothes don't rot, ANNIHILATES FPS.
bug #3453 - Baron/etc. cannot appoint baron-appointed nobles, such as the Dungeon Master
bug #535 - Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic
bug #1582 - Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors
bug #2712 - weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter
bug #3708 - Ghost names that can't be engraved on a slab and nameless slab engravings
bug #425 - Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood
bug #3898 - Entire Bone Statcks are used in Reactions instead of a single Bone
bug #2327 - Blunt weapons extremely ineffective, extended single combat with groundhog
bug #4550 - Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc
bug #- Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders
bug #4856: Immortal Dwarf (... Yet unconcious) [or any other creature]

It helps to link to bugs when you're trying to draw attention to them, especially since many of these reports would benefit from 0.34.02+ saves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 07, 2012, 11:03:28 am

Quote from: tfaal on March 07, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Yeah, that's not so much a 'bugfix' as an 'elegant new feature to replace a buggy, dissatisfying one', which I highly approve of. Dwarven Science hasn't seen any implementation in the game yet, and I'm very happy to see it making an entrance.

Hear hear! Finally, a reason to have skilled animal trainers kicking around. Exciting times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 07, 2012, 11:06:54 am

Man, the idea of civ-wide skills is an intriguing one. I wonder what else can work with something like this...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 07, 2012, 11:44:25 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 10:45:46 am

Quote

Spoiler: buglist (click to show/hide)

bug #2481 - Dwarves will claim new clothes when theirs is worn (xClothesx) but not wear it
bug #3942 - Dwarves owning broken clothing. Clothes don't rot, ANNIHILATES FPS.
bug #3453 - Baron/etc. cannot appoint baron-appointed nobles, such as the Dungeon Master
bug #535 - Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic
bug #1582 - Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors
bug #2712 - weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter
bug #3708 - Ghost names that can't be engraved on a slab and nameless slab engravings
bug #425 - Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood
bug #3898 - Entire Bone Statcks are used in Reactions instead of a single Bone
bug #2327 - Blunt weapons extremely ineffective, extended single combat with groundhog
bug #4550 - Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc
bug #- Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders
bug #4856: Immortal Dwarf (... Yet unconcious) [or any other creature]

It helps to link to bugs when you're trying to draw attention to them, especially since many of these reports would benefit from 0.34.02+ saves.

I hope that linking to bugtracker is enough - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/my_view_page.php (there is jump to isssue # on top right).

@providing saves - I prefer to way a bit (there are still new bugs, bugs with new saves and bugs where save is not needed), as it is possible that it will be necessary to again provide saves after breaking savegame compatibility (like in http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4552 ).

@devlog - I really like that taming by spores is gone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 07, 2012, 11:48:28 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 07, 2012, 11:44:25 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 10:45:46 am

Quote

Spoiler: buglist (click to show/hide)

bug #2481 - Dwarves will claim new clothes when theirs is worn (xClothesx) but not wear it
bug #3942 - Dwarves owning broken clothing. Clothes don't rot, ANNIHILATES FPS.
bug #3453 - Baron/etc. cannot appoint baron-appointed nobles, such as the Dungeon Master
bug #535 - Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic
bug #1582 - Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors
bug #2712 - weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter
bug #3708 - Ghost names that can't be engraved on a slab and nameless slab engravings
bug #425 - Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood
bug #3898 - Entire Bone Statcks are used in Reactions instead of a single Bone
bug #2327 - Blunt weapons extremely ineffective, extended single combat with groundhog
bug #4550 - Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc
bug #- Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders
bug #4856: Immortal Dwarf (... Yet unconcious) [or any other creature]

It helps to link to bugs when you're trying to draw attention to them, especially since many of these reports would benefit from 0.34.02+ saves.

I hope that linking to bugtracker is enough - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/my_view_page.php (there is jump to isssue # on top right).

@providing saves - I prefer to way a bit (there are still new bugs, bugs with new saves and bugs where save is not needed), as it is possible that it will be necessary to again provide saves after breaking savegame compatibility (like in http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4552 ).

@devlog - I really like that taming by spores is gone.

I like this list of bugs. If they are fixed, the game would be incredibly improved. However, we don't know what it would take to fix them. We can hope, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on March 07, 2012, 12:44:39 pm

Is it intended for coins to not show up on the trade menus?

It seems like a useful side effect of coins would be that you could use those for automated trading, so that you want something, you give them coins, then you sell stuff to get the coins back.

Of course, this would cause traders to bring in foreign currency and such, but that's almost a bonus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JasonMel on March 07, 2012, 12:55:01 pm

Quote from: From the devlog:

Attempts to tame/train creatures will add to your site's training knowledge of that creature, which augments future training of all creatures of that type.

Does this mean things like wardogs will actually deal more damage and/or take more damage as the site's training knowledge increases?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 12:59:29 pm

Quote from: JasonMel on March 07, 2012, 12:55:01 pm

Does this mean things like wardogs will actually deal more damage and/or take more damage as the site's training knowledge increases?

This is not an attempt to answer the question, but I'd guess that animal training could involve raising the animals' Fighter/Biter/Wrestling/etc. skills.  CAN_LEARN would have to change or be loosened though -- I don't think any basic animals have it right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 07, 2012, 01:18:47 pm

It seem that "notable person tamed some random creatures" became more interesting fact about civ history - now you can have civ that knows how to tame giant eagles thanks to ancient hero!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scarpa on March 07, 2012, 01:23:28 pm

Quote from: JasonMel on March 07, 2012, 12:55:01 pm

Quote from: From the devlog:

Attempts to tame/train creatures will add to your site's training knowledge of that creature, which augments future training of all creatures of that type.

Does this mean things like wardogs will actually deal more damage and/or take more damage as the site's training knowledge increases?

Seems the feature is just in context of exotic creatures, so probably won't have anything to do with war dogs. My guess is 'augments future training' applies to the chance of a successful training attempt for future animals of that type.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 07, 2012, 01:54:22 pm

@devlog

That is... the best possible solution to the dungeon master/exotic pet thing I could think of.  That sounds like a very fun and !!fun!! system.  Better than I hoped - really looking forward to armies of jabberers :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on March 07, 2012, 02:15:43 pm

You mean Animal Trainer skill now actually means something beyond whether that hydra-in-a-cage submits to my authority slowly or quickly?

I'm a bit sad that the DM is now apparently gone for good, but it's not exactly cold turkey :p

Spoiler: I mean, really (click to show/hide)

Have You Seen This Noble?

[Rough sketch in charcoal]

Last seen on April 1st, 2010. Long beard, is wearing 23 leather cloaks, 10 mittens on right hand and 16 on left. Answers to the names Dungeon Master or, alternatively, Mr. Pickles. Please call XXX-XXXX if you have any information.

Anyways...

How, exactly, does the game determine which animals are related? Does it use the currently-existing CREATURE_CLASS system (or a variant thereof), or does it analyze the various creatures' tags/anatomy and compare how similar each one is to the others? Or is it that I'm completely off here and it works in a completely-different manner? How does PET_EXOTIC affect things compared to PET?

Also...

What, exactly, was your motivation to remove the DM completely instead of fixing him? I can think of several good reasons, but I'd rather hear it straight from the Toad's mouth.

Finally, can we expect a similar overhaul of the tax collector's position/role if/when you work out a way to make the dwarven economy function in a sane manner?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 07, 2012, 02:46:46 pm

This sounds like an interesting thing to add. It will probably lead to other similar things, like maybe a dwarf civ that has a inclination to metalworking and another will have an inclination to masonry (or types of masonry). It's almost like a start of a civ-based culture system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 07, 2012, 02:51:56 pm

I've noticed that, as of 34.01, creatures in post-abandonment player fortresses don't randomly gather at meeting hall zones anymore (just stand around, not moving at all from wherever the game decides to put them). Was this an intentional change?

Just asking, because being able to fill our forts with nasties is a pretty big deal in our planned succession world; in the current system, the game doesn't seem to spawn any critters at abandoned forts, and the ones that were already there mostly end up scattered far outside the fortress walls or deep within the cavern system, making the fortresses seem very boring and empty compared to how they were in 31.25 and earlier; for instance, if you end with a forgotten beast in this version, you'll probably never encounter it in adventure mode, because it'll most likely still be hanging out somewhere deep in the caverns by the time you finish exploring the fort (instead of chilling in one of the meeting halls). :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ricree on March 07, 2012, 03:19:43 pm

Quote from: Quatch on March 07, 2012, 10:33:04 am

Just be glad they don't have to invent medicine in the same way :)

Actually, this system sounds like a good fit for when/if syndrome cures make it into the game.

So fortress/civ medical knowledge would be the difference between
"That's just Urist's Bone Rot, I've got a tonic for it back in the workshop" vs "Oh Merciful Armok!  Why did his arm just fall off?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Livonya on March 07, 2012, 03:51:14 pm

The new develop log post is quite interesting.

Is this sort of training knowledge at the civilization and fortress level something that you just came up with for this particular issue, and/or is it something that you had/have planned for other skills?

I am curious if this was a spur of the moment sort of change, or something that you had intended all along?

A great change, which would be interesting if expanded to other skills.

It seems that having multiple fortresses in the same civilization would actually expand that civilization's general knowledge, so this sort of emerging/expanding knowledge base would actually encourage the long term use of an individual world.

I hope more skills and abilities will trend this way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 04:36:57 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on March 07, 2012, 02:15:43 pm

How, exactly, does the game determine which animals are related? Does it use the currently-existing CREATURE_CLASS system (or a variant thereof), or does it analyze the various creatures' tags/anatomy and compare how similar each one is to the others? Or is it that I'm completely off here and it works in a completely-different manner? How does PET_EXOTIC affect things compared to PET?

If you're referring to this part of the devlog:

Quote

Attempts to tame/train creatures will add to your site's training knowledge of that creature, which augments future training of all creatures of that type.

I read "all creatures of that type" as "all creatures of that species".  Setting up relationships between species manually would be a big boring task, and doing it algorithmically would be difficult. 

Quote from: Mr Frog on March 07, 2012, 02:15:43 pm

What, exactly, was your motivation to remove the DM completely instead of fixing him? I can think of several good reasons, but I'd rather hear it straight from the Toad's mouth.

Quote from: Livonya on March 07, 2012, 03:51:14 pm

Is this sort of training knowledge at the civilization and fortress level something that you just came up with for this particular issue, and/or is it something that you had/have planned for other skills?

I am curious if this was a spur of the moment sort of change, or something that you had intended all along?

Toady's main problem with the Dungeon Master was the notion of a skill/ability being magically conferred when a dwarf is appointed to a position.  He's been talking for a couple years about moving that ability to the civilization:

Spoiler: quotes about the Dungeon Master and civ knowledge (click to show/hide)

Feb 2010: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg1047755#msg1047755)

Quote from: Toady One

Yeah, the dungeon master has lost anything you don't see written in the raws there.  The position's whole future is kind of dependent on the outcome of the knowledge discussion, since the dungeon master grants a capability to every dwarf in a strange way.

May 2011: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2281409;topicseen#msg2281409)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Uristocrat

I've heard a lot of talk about "secrets" lately.  Is the Dungeon Master's ability to tame exotic creatures also going to be one of these "secrets"?

It's possible to get sort of tech-treey with it, but I haven't done anything like that, and it's not set up to point to certain positions or to have positions confer any abilities on their own.  The larger questions surrounding knowledge and technology have not been resolved.

Nov 2011: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2764517;topicseen#msg2764517)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Greiger

Is it possible in the new version to link powers to a particular job skill?  Such as giving elven druids some psudo-magical curses, or shapeshifting?

There's nothing like that.  It's the same issue as a dungeon master.  I don't want skills or powers to arise out of nothing if I can help it.

In general, the knowledge system has been planned for a while.  Back in 2009, Toady anticipated using entity raws to control the ability to make plaster casts. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg470592;topicseen#msg470592)  False knowledge and lies also came up, (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg488485#msg488485) along with animal people learning technology from dwarves. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg994813;topicseen#msg994813)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on March 07, 2012, 05:26:42 pm

I'm kinda sad to see the DM go. I wish he could stay as a lore manager or so with a similar research job like the bookkeeper has now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on March 07, 2012, 05:48:21 pm

But now who will wear all my fabulous cloaks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vherid on March 07, 2012, 05:58:43 pm

Quote from: NobodyPro on March 07, 2012, 05:48:21 pm

But now who will wear all my fabulous cloaks?

Should make people with animal trainer skill have the need to wear lots of cloaks

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Livonya on March 07, 2012, 06:15:28 pm

Footkerchief -

Thanks for all the links... I have read all of that stuff before, but I don't always remember everything that Toady has written/said over the years.

So many interesting ideas that it is hard to keep track of them all.

In some ways I will miss the dungeon master... would be cool if it was an appointed position so that the position wouldn't be gone, but rather just the way s/he comes to have the ability's of dungeon master.

It will be interesting to see all the new ways that the player will be able to influence the world.  I can only imagine what will be possible in 10 or 15 years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on March 07, 2012, 06:51:40 pm

Thanks @Footie for the quotes.

I must say that I really like the idea of each civ having different technological/lore levels, especially if there's some way to increase them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 07, 2012, 06:54:10 pm

Quote from: Livonya on March 07, 2012, 06:15:28 pm

Footkerchief -

Thanks for all the links... I have read all of that stuff before, but I don't always remember everything that Toady has written/said over the years.

So many interesting ideas that it is hard to keep track of them all.

In some ways I will miss the dungeon master... would be cool if it was an appointed position so that the position wouldn't be gone, but rather just the way s/he comes to have the ability's of dungeon master.

It will be interesting to see all the new ways that the player will be able to influence the world.  I can only imagine what will be possible in 10 or 15 years.

Perhaps, someday when the prisons in the fort are used more than for dwarves (like people who arrive at the fort taverns) the Dungeon Master will make sure that prisoners from out-of-town are well feed and watered as well as check to see if they are attempting to escape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 07, 2012, 07:06:22 pm

Quote from: Japa on March 07, 2012, 11:06:54 am

Man, the idea of civ-wide skills is an intriguing one. I wonder what else can work with something like this...

Iron/steel making!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 07, 2012, 07:14:04 pm

Quote from: ricree on March 07, 2012, 03:19:43 pm

Actually, this system sounds like a good fit for when/if syndrome cures make it into the game.
So fortress/civ medical knowledge would be the difference between
"That's just Urist's Bone Rot, I've got a tonic for it back in the workshop" vs "Oh Merciful Armok!  Why did his arm just fall off?"

Yeah, this would make awesome addition to medical system. So there would be actually some chance to battle evil rains/mists. Even better if it would randomly generate "cures" from available ingredients, so different plants would actually make some sense.

Quote from: Jiri Petru on March 07, 2012, 07:06:22 pm

Iron/steel making!

Yeah, this too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 07, 2012, 07:15:41 pm

Is there any chance of seeing the dungeon master seeing a return in the form of a highly skilled immigrant? Possibly one of those guys that went and tamed giant eagles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 07:22:06 pm

i never got what the title dungeon master meant. i mean, i knew what he did in game, but never got his title, i associate dungeons with jails and a dungeon master with a master jailer or something, and would rather call the dungeon master beast master or something

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 07, 2012, 07:33:53 pm

Quote from: Japa on March 07, 2012, 07:15:41 pm

Is there any chance of seeing the dungeon master seeing a return in the form of a highly skilled immigrant? Possibly one of those guys that went and tamed giant eagles?

I, personally, have already seen some fairly skilled animal trainers migrating. I'm going to say that anyone who has tamed animals in worldgen will probably be able to tame a few exotics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 07, 2012, 07:36:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 07:22:06 pm

i never got what the title dungeon master meant. i mean, i knew what he did in game, but never got his title, i associate dungeons with jails and a dungeon master with a master jailer or something, and would rather call the dungeon master beast master or something

Dungeons can also be associated with great beasties to fight or be eaten by.

EDIT: Wow, I don't remember these two posts being quite so close together.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 07, 2012, 07:45:10 pm

Quote from: Vherid on March 07, 2012, 05:58:43 pm

Quote from: NobodyPro on March 07, 2012, 05:48:21 pm

But now who will wear all my fabulous cloaks?

Should make people with animal trainer skill have the need to wear lots of cloaks

Absolutely.  Training exotic animals requires extra layers of protection from teeth and claws and horrifying syndromes, and being able to swirl the cloak to misdirect and confuse the creature to be trained is a basic move--so important that it is vital to wear multiple auxiliary cloaks, just in case of a failure in the primaries and secondaries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillHour on March 07, 2012, 09:07:15 pm

Quote from: Toady One on March 06, 2012, 09:41:19 pm

Although unless people have seen otherwise, I think they probably don't come up in world gen, because they never profane temples.  They will come up through conversions etc. later.  Child vampires created in forts (by your evil management antics most likely) can still be accused by witnesses as it stands, and I haven't done anything to block their creation.

The problem with this is that if anyone EVER accuses a child of a murder, you are 100% assured that they are a vampire, as they are never wrongly accused.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on March 07, 2012, 09:31:27 pm

Vampires are going to be pretty obvious for a while; from what I understand that's not the easiest way to identify them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 07, 2012, 10:17:56 pm

Well the new system is nice. Losing another noble position is a bit of a sad thing, though. He could be kept around to study caged [PET_EXOTIC] beasts and teach animal handlers. But I suppose really at this point we'd just be doing things to justify his existence, there's no real reason that any animal handler shouldn't be able to do that.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 07:22:06 pm

i never got what the title dungeon master meant. i mean, i knew what he did in game, but never got his title, i associate dungeons with jails and a dungeon master with a master jailer or something, and would rather call the dungeon master beast master or something

In the game Dungeons and Dragons, a "dungeon" is any subterranean area filled with adversaries (generally monstrous in nature) and the "Dungeon Master" is the player who controls those monsters. That was what I assumed the title's origin was.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 07, 2012, 10:19:17 pm

How do civs gain familiarity with a given creature? Is it a guaranteed thing that if the creature is nearby and PET/PET_EXOTIC, then it will be tamed, or is it a chance/probability thing, or does it rely on historical figures to take a hand in the process?

Will Fort knowledge flow back to the civ in some way? Such that a fort that manages to tame a dragon will be able to impart some measure of knowledge back to the civ, so that if a subsequent fort also catches a dragon it will be easier to tame.

How does this alter the PET_EXOTIC tag? Is it obsolete, or does it signify a creature more difficult to domesticate than another? Speaking of, are some creatures more difficult to tame than others? I imagine if a civ has roughly equal numbers of wild dogs and, say, honey badgers in the area, the dogs would be more readily domesticated. Not that I pretend to any knowledge of what makes a creature easy/difficult to domesticate.


RE: DM disappearance, I'm not that sad. Sure, his idiosyncrasies were cool and all, but I'd rather dorfs be able to figure things out for themselves instead of relying on arbitrary nobles to teach/unlock things. It might be cool to have a Beast Master type noble similar in function to the Chief Medical Dwarf, where the Beast Master would be the guy who takes first crack at the more dangerous animals (thus ensuring that your most talented trainer is on the most valuable job,) but that kind of functionality shouldn't be associated with a random migrant.

I'm halfway tempted to ask if the DM getting the axe is a portent of things to come for the other absent/useless nobles (*coughPHILOSOPHERcough*,) but I suspect that's a bit farther afield than the near term releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 07, 2012, 10:27:04 pm

I like the concept of knowledge flowing back to civs- it increases the whole massively singleplayer effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Catastrophic lolcats on March 07, 2012, 11:20:02 pm

I'm a little sad to see the Dungeon Master go, s/he was a charactor of great mystery. They added quite a lot of flavour to DF and created an aweful lot of DF community lore.
That said I'm not sad to see the training system revamped, it was terrible before and this really looks like a massive improvement.

I do hope we get the Dungeon Master back, which I assume, would be around the Army Arch when we start getting prisoners to torture. The idea of a half-naked dwarf running around my lower fortress wearing a cloak and a gimp mask has always appealed to me rather worryingly much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on March 07, 2012, 11:23:37 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 07, 2012, 10:19:17 pm

I'm halfway tempted to ask if the DM getting the axe is a portent of things to come for the other absent/useless nobles (*coughPHILOSOPHERcough*,) but I suspect that's a bit farther afield than the near term releases.

Nah man, the Philosopher is a cool dude. It's the dozen or so guild nobles and the like that we used to have to dump in lava.

I'd like to see the philosopher back in the game frankly, even if he just wanders around and does nothing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 07, 2012, 11:35:56 pm

I rather hope this new development will also get that "you can't trade tamed animals" bug fixed. Would be a logical accompaniment, and would be pretty sweet to start a fort just to tame, breed, and export rare arctic foxes or whatever, then knock about in adventure mode and see them everywhere.

Which reminds me!

Will you be able to bring the exotic animals your civ is familiar with on embark, and/or request them through the caravan? I could see that embark menu getting rather cluttered if that's true, and it would kinda obsolete the COMMON_DOMESTIC tag, but at the same time it would be lame to have a jungle dwarf civ that has tamed the tigers, but not be able to bring/buy/request any.

How does this affect the Elves? Huge varieties of exotic animals are kinda their thing, but it sounds like a reasonably large civ could have access to as many or more exotic animals than a smaller/more restricted group of Elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 07, 2012, 11:38:25 pm

Elves have [USE_ANY_PET_RACE], which means that EVERY race from EVERY biome they're in will always be tamed by them. Unless you've had over 1000 years of history on a fairly large world, you're probably not going to have as many exotic tamed pets as the elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 11:39:05 pm

Quote from: Karlito on March 07, 2012, 11:23:37 pm

I'd like to see the philosopher back in the game frankly, even if he just wanders around and does nothing.

perhaps he could train up noble children to take up their progenitor's roles. he could once you appinted a baron, and train up the baron's children in some usefull skills that have yet to come up, like diplomacy and fortress management. he could also write books, and these books could be the way fortress level knowledge would be raised to civ level knowledge

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 07, 2012, 11:45:35 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 11:39:05 pm

Quote from: Karlito on March 07, 2012, 11:23:37 pm

I'd like to see the philosopher back in the game frankly, even if he just wanders around and does nothing.

perhaps he could train up noble children to take up their progenitor's roles. he could once you appinted a baron, and train up the baron's children in some usefull skills that have yet to come up, like diplomacy and fortress management. he could also write books, and these books could be the way fortress level knowledge would be raised to civ level knowledge

Would presumably also have a substantial effect on the prestige of your fortress and nobles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 07, 2012, 11:45:55 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 07, 2012, 11:39:05 pm

he could also write books, and these books could be the way fortress level knowledge would be raised to civ level knowledge

Oooh, I like that idea a lot. If I weren't a lazy good-for-nothing, I'd go find that Save the Philosopher thread in the suggestions forum and make sure it is mentioned so Toady sees it when he gets around to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 07, 2012, 11:53:38 pm

On the other hand, he could request other books from other writers from time to time once they are produced elsewhere. Or maybe you could just produce many copies of his books and sell them, making a fortress live around your philosopher.
And with the Tavern sub-arc he could give lectures and such, and people would gather from all around the world to debate with him.

Man, I miss his potential.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 08, 2012, 04:22:15 am

All this talk about books is great, sorry if this has already been asked:

Necromancer secrets are written down in and can be learnt from books.  Will all information or knowledge, including animal taming, be subject to the same mechanic?  Or will only specific skills be spread by pen and paper?

I'd love for this civilization knowledge to be spread physically by giving books or copies of books to diplomats to take back to their own fortress.  Or even from individual to individual within a single fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 08, 2012, 06:09:31 am

Is the Dungeon Master really gone for good as has been suggested or will he maybe return at a later point?
e.g. Is the current knowledge system temporarily more powerful than intended as a fix for the DM?
DM could still be required for taming monstrous creatures and such. :/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 07:03:21 am

Please, the Dungeon Master didn't make any sense before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 08, 2012, 07:11:45 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 07:03:21 am

Please, the Dungeon Master didn't make any sense before.

No. That is true.

But it is just a cool title. :)

DM need not be identical in features as before you know.
DM could be an earned (say from taming a dragon or being a legendary trainer) title the player has no influence over assigning. 
Could be title of animal trainers guildmaster, whatever guilds will be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 07:29:15 am

Yes, but they shouldn't gain any special powers for being a Dungeon Master. The opposite would be cool, though - being elevated to Dungeon Master for training a creature that civilization never trained before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 09:18:23 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 07:29:15 am

Yes, but they shouldn't gain any special powers for being a Dungeon Master. The opposite would be cool, though - being elevated to Dungeon Master for training a creature that civilization never trained before.

Year 1: Urist1 tamed dog. Urist1 was elevated to position of Dungeon Master. Urist2 tamed groundhog. Urist2 was elevated to position of Dungeon Master. (...)

Urist1, Urist2, ..., Uristx mandated construction of slade beds!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 08, 2012, 10:21:23 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 07:29:15 am

Yes, but they shouldn't gain any special powers for being a Dungeon Master. The opposite would be cool, though - being elevated to Dungeon Master for training a creature that civilization never trained before.

I could see a Dungeon Master receiving some additional responsibilities, though.  Imagine sending your Dungeon Master as an envoy to a far-off civilization to learn their training techniques for exotics, or to purchase tame creatures . . . sort of like a merchant/diplomat, but badass.

Or maybe you send him on expeditions off the map or out of your biome to trap wild exotics himself: "Your Dungeon Master has returned from the wilderness, bringing two caged elephants, three tigers, and a rhinoceros."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on March 08, 2012, 10:53:30 am

I'll miss the DM.  That strange strange little..nutcase.  But I miss the Philosopher and the guild nobles too.  Oh well could just mod them back in, even if they don't do much but make mandates.

I do like the idea of the DM being made into your trader for animals and taming knowledge though.  Appoint one from your citizens.  Want one with good diplomacy skills and good caretaking and training (so they actually understand what they are looking at) but just like the broker you can appoint one with no skills at all and have an embarrassingly bad story once in awhile about the entire menagerie escaping/starving in transit, or trying to feed a giant tiger to the human civ's prized peacock as a tragically misinformed gesture of peace...  And coming back with nothing, or nothing but a war declaration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 08, 2012, 10:55:30 am

I recall the DM being an immigrant somehow...(if true, this suggests the player does not assign him)

A suggestion thread is recommended by now. :)
edit: Ah, there it is. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103966.new#new)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyhow, instead of allowing giant hamsters to be tamed, perhaps he should be demanding it.
Or just speed it up/ increase success chances for other trainers.
Perhaps a DM could write those books on the creatures that were tamed in the fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 08, 2012, 11:30:05 am

I am not crying over the loss of the Dungeon Master.

I rarely hear people justify him in ways that arn't "He was glitched and that was funny" and "But he was there before".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 08, 2012, 12:24:56 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on March 08, 2012, 11:30:05 am

I am not crying over the loss of the Dungeon Master.

I rarely hear people justify him in ways that arn't "He was glitched and that was funny" and "But he was there before".

Dungeon Master is a cool name for a noble though. And as a couple people said he doesn't need to serve the same purpose.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I do like the ideas of the DM being a Chief Medical Dwarf type noble, giving him priority over tougher training. As well as the idea about being able to write books that could improve training knowledge for creatures (which could then be traded to improve the knowledge on the civ level).

I really like the potential of the civ/fort knowledge.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I thought of a lot of neat ways it could be used in conjunction with other systems, particularly metal smelting and forging as well as book writing and knowledge trade. Though the idea of civ knowledge effecting quality in the case of metal-smithing, makes me wonder if quality levels need to be redefined. The civ/fort knowledge could also be used as I mentioned earlier to establish a sort of culture between civs. If this ended up being the case the civ you pick as your home civ might become more important in the development of your fort. Farming could also use a similar knowledge-base for the different crops as well.

I'm just really interested as the directions this feature could go in. It is an exciting idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Livonya on March 08, 2012, 12:29:14 pm

I just think it is cool to have government positions to appoint.

I think all people miss is the title and position.

Personally, I would like to appoint all sorts of guild/service masters.

Dungeon Master - handles prisoners, torture, and the containment of wild monsters to fight in my arena

Master of Secrets - handles security, spying on foreign lands, perhaps even the rescuing of stolen children

Master of Arms - handles military security and all issues involving training

Master of Coins - handles your budget once the economy kicks back in

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on March 08, 2012, 12:37:24 pm

I'm not so sure about adding more nobles until the ones we already have do enough work. I liked the idea of cures for common illnesses such as rains/mists. Perhaps the CMD, with his generally large amount of free time, could sit at his desk or alchemy workshop with some whip weed, plump helmets, and a barrel of blood/ichor to concoct a cure for something he's diagnosed more than three times. Then the civ could learn to combat it. Granted this will be much more useful once we get disease and specific infections in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rhenaya on March 08, 2012, 01:03:17 pm

will the new pet stuff also include [MOUNT] tags and mount training for fort mode? :x

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 08, 2012, 02:15:13 pm

Quote from: Rhenaya on March 08, 2012, 01:03:17 pm

will the new pet stuff also include [MOUNT] tags and mount training for fort mode? :x

mounted combat is scheduled for a rewrite in release 7 of the caravan arc (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

The ordering is subject to change, but mount use is planned as a semi-major rewrite so it is unlikely to be bundled with pet training fixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 02:30:13 pm

Experimenting with animal training is seriously cool (especially if our fortress can acquire/write books about it, or even hire elven teachers :P ).

However I'm not too happy that Toady seems to be already succumbing to featuritis, after one full year of it. Some mods like Masterwork already had a functioning Dungeon Master, so if he only wanted to improve the game's playability he would've just put back the DM, fix all the critical bugs and annoyances, and THEN implement this new feature.

If it's the only way he can stay motivated... well, it's his game after all, but I fear I'll never really be able to play this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 02:33:36 pm

IMHO fixing bugs by creating new features is a better than fixing bugs or adding new features. Signed by Kogut, the Bugfixes apostle of Bay12forum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 02:36:49 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 02:33:36 pm

IMHO fixing bugs by creating new features is a better than fixing bugs or adding new features. Signed by Kogut, the Bugfixes apostle of Bay12forum.

At least from a programming point of view, it's a stupid way of approaching things, because those new features inevitably bring bugs themselves. It's a neverending spiral of doom that everybody who has programmed is familiar with.


To be fair, I'm asking for new features myself during this bugfix period, but those are specifically to fix annoyances such as dwarves locking themselves up or blocking their way to designated constructions if they could just do that construction first. Not cool fluff like Toady just added.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 08, 2012, 02:44:41 pm

The bug is that exotics can't be tamed- the fix is making them able to be tamed. Rather than having that be through the outdated "unlock features with your nobles" model which hasn't really been in the game since 40d, it is being fixed with a new flexible system that fits the game as it is, not as it was.

I heartily endorse this event or product.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 03:02:04 pm

"new flexible system" is a synonym for "bugs we'll be experiencing two years from now". Unless by some miracle Toady keeps this system small in scope.

-- isitanos cancels read thread: fanboys have too little foresight --

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 02:36:49 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 02:33:36 pm

IMHO fixing bugs by creating new features is a better than fixing bugs or adding new features. Signed by Kogut, the Bugfixes apostle of Bay12forum.

At least from a programming point of view, it's a stupid way of approaching things, because those new features inevitably bring bugs themselves. It's a neverending spiral of doom that everybody who has programmed is familiar with.

Yeah, I think that DF need about 2 years of non-stop bugfixing, but even sometimes bugged taming is a better than completely broken taming.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 03:11:29 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 03:02:04 pm

"new flexible system" is a synonym for "bugs we'll be experiencing two years from now". Unless by some miracle Toady keeps this system small in scope.

-- isitanos cancels read thread: fanboys have too little foresight --

Every other post about bugs people were complaining about the god damn Dungeon Master, Toady hears their claims and now there is people complaining about the new system without the god damn Dungeon Master or about featuritis.

It just proves that if it is impossible to please everyone, why bother at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 08, 2012, 03:13:32 pm

Well yeah, pretty much every feature is going to be buggy in a few years. The game is a work in progress, so even if a given feature is functioning as intended in the final product (doubtful for many of the systems currently in place) it will become buggy as all the other systems it interacts with update. It's a fact of life for an actively developed game, especially one as incomplete as DF.

Although if you're just going to trivialize and dismiss counterarguments out of hand, then yeah this discussion can be done. We really shouldn't be cluttering this thread with argument to begin with, so I apologize for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 08, 2012, 03:26:17 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 03:02:04 pm

"new flexible system" is a synonym for "bugs we'll be experiencing two years from now". Unless by some miracle Toady keeps this system small in scope.

-- isitanos cancels read thread: fanboys have too little foresight --

Considering bugfixes ALSO introduces more bugs, I'd rather have them being worth it.
As long as a project is ongoing, there will be bugs. Deal with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 08, 2012, 05:32:07 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 08, 2012, 03:11:29 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 03:02:04 pm

"new flexible system" is a synonym for "bugs we'll be experiencing two years from now". Unless by some miracle Toady keeps this system small in scope.

-- isitanos cancels read thread: fanboys have too little foresight --

Every other post about bugs people were complaining about the god damn Dungeon Master, Toady hears their claims and now there is people complaining about the new system without the god damn Dungeon Master or about featuritis.

It just proves that if it is impossible to please everyone, why bother at all?

Exactly, it is getting ridiculous. I wait for "Even bugfixing is wrong because it may create more bugs" and "bugfixing is bad because it reduces amount of <WTF it is hilarious> reactions".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on March 08, 2012, 08:20:35 pm

Re people talking about good things for the philosopher, a thread: SAVE THE PHILOSOPHER! (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=4332.msg817110#msg817110)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 08, 2012, 08:24:26 pm

There it is, thank you Quatch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on March 08, 2012, 08:59:57 pm

Are there plans to extend the new training system to other aspects of the game, such as metalworking?

(Not a suggestion, was simply wondering.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 08, 2012, 09:06:15 pm

"Deteriorating training status and reversion to a wild state" sounds kind of ominous.  Does this mean that domestication is going to wear off after a while?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 08, 2012, 09:07:52 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on March 08, 2012, 08:59:57 pm

Are there plans to extend the new training system to other aspects of the game, such as metalworking?

(Not a suggestion, was simply wondering.)

In the short-term? Not very likely, barring a surprise.

In the long-term? Very likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 08, 2012, 10:04:51 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on March 08, 2012, 09:06:15 pm

"Deteriorating training status and reversion to a wild state" sounds kind of ominous.  Does this mean that domestication is going to wear off after a while?

I must add : If it means that domesticated animals turn back to being untamed after a while, will this be the case after reclaiming an old fortress ? So we could have a succession fortress where hydras were tamed, but the only legendary dresser died, so the hydras were sealed and everyone forgot about them until the fortress collapsed and the reclaim party has to face the newly-freed hydras ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 08, 2012, 10:48:32 pm

Quote from: Toady One

reversion to a wild state

Okay, now thats kind of !!FUN!!. So that tamed dragon at the fort entrance can suddenly go wild and wreak havoc?
All we need is mechanics/traps malfunction and FUN will be everywhere.

Quote from: isitanos on March 08, 2012, 02:36:49 pm

At least from a programming point of view, it's a stupid way of approaching things, because those new features inevitably bring bugs themselves. It's a neverending spiral of doom that everybody who has programmed is familiar with.

From programmer's, who is familiar with maintaining several years old, huge codebase, which suffered several partial rewrites already, point of view it perfectly makes sense. Its stupid to waste time on fixing old, broken code - most of the time its faster and more efficient to rewrite the piece from scratch, to match current project practices, APIs and concepts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 09, 2012, 07:04:32 am

Animal taming/training changes sound cool. Bug vs feature protests because of it are bemusing.

Do you plan any change to the current behaviour of creatures that have killed dwarves prior to being tamed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 09, 2012, 10:05:11 am

Quote from: DG on March 09, 2012, 07:04:32 am

Animal taming/training changes sound cool. Bug vs feature protests because of it are bemusing.

Do you plan any change to the current behaviour of creatures that have killed dwarves prior to being tamed?

The report for that bug is here. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3059)  My guess is that it's very likely to get looked at.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eagleon on March 10, 2012, 12:38:48 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 28, 2012, 06:43:28 pm

is there something like a specific sub-forum for posting real-life data formatted for easy access for toady? like a list of different material properties, or different lists of anatomical specifics for animals?

In a similar vein, since I was tired of mahogany being the same value as tower-cap, I started adding differing material values for wood. Looking up wood I was unfamiliar with brought me here (http://www.thewoodexplorer.com/), which appears to have the physical (shear strength and whatnot) properties of most woods - couldn't find saguaro rib, but eh. Cactus. Would you be interested in a formatted list (and/or a raw file with the properties already added) if I made it, Toady? Has anyone else made it and am I wasting my time? I don't know how this works I'm new here or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 10, 2012, 04:13:25 am

Quote

The war/hunting jobs need tweaking, and I need to do the reinforcement jobs that the dwarves use to keep reverting animals from flipping out and which enhance their training levels. Almost done, and then we'll move on to the next set of old bugs, whatever they might be. Quite a few to choose from!

I hope Toady isn't done with the new bugs. There are a lot of them that is really breaking the new features. That said, I hope he deals with the old clothes issue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 10, 2012, 04:18:21 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 10, 2012, 04:13:25 am

I hope Toady isn't done with the new bugs.

Not at all.  Just wanted to mix it up a bit.  I have a hundred or so new ones I still want to fix, and I'm sure there will be more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 10, 2012, 05:02:07 am

Quote from: Eagleon on March 10, 2012, 12:38:48 am

Quote from: eux0r on February 28, 2012, 06:43:28 pm

is there something like a specific sub-forum for posting real-life data formatted for easy access for toady? like a list of different material properties, or different lists of anatomical specifics for animals?

In a similar vein, since I was tired of mahogany being the same value as tower-cap, I started adding differing material values for wood. Looking up wood I was unfamiliar with brought me here (http://www.thewoodexplorer.com/), which appears to have the physical (shear strength and whatnot) properties of most woods - couldn't find saguaro rib, but eh. Cactus. Would you be interested in a formatted list (and/or a raw file with the properties already added) if I made it, Toady? Has anyone else made it and am I wasting my time? I don't know how this works I'm new here or something.

See this mod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80190.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on March 10, 2012, 06:25:30 am

Toady do you plan to change the way war/hunting animals are assigned to dwarves?
Right now it is not possible to select what kind of animal the dwarf will get, whether it is War Dog or a War Dragon for example.
Also will dwarves become attached to their war animals like they get attached to items?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 10, 2012, 06:49:11 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on March 10, 2012, 06:25:30 am

Toady do you plan to change the way war/hunting animals are assigned to dwarves?

Presumably "Yes, but there's no timeline". Although that would be a valid thing for him to do in these current releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 10, 2012, 07:43:36 am

i find that impolite and disrespectful, both the misuse of limegreen as well as the message itself

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 10, 2012, 11:37:41 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 10, 2012, 07:43:36 am

i find that impolite and disrespectful, both the misuse of limegreen as well as the message itself

I agree. While I have let "suggestionesk" questions by because the difference between a suggestion and a question is often paper thin with large "both" areas.

But remember Cruxal the limegreen is for questions... Using it otherwise is innapropriate and abusing a system Toady is doing for us for no reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on March 10, 2012, 12:40:52 pm

Any plans to do anything with animal health care along with the new training system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on March 10, 2012, 02:54:18 pm

Goodb... errr... good riddance, dungeon master. I will not miss you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 10, 2012, 03:53:20 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 07, 2012, 10:45:46 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 07, 2012, 06:09:11 am

Yes, but obviously almost all important parts of DF is somehow broken (clothing - 2481 and 3942, nobles - 3453, military - 535, healthcare - 1582, weapons - 2712 and 2327, cleaning - 425, ghosts - 3708, stacks - 3898, dodging - 4550, sieges - 4552 etc)  - and it is not a "mild and funny bug" but a "serious, irritating" - in result game for me is not playable.

[spoiler=buglist]
bug #2481 - Dwarves will claim new clothes when theirs is worn (xClothesx) but not wear it
bug #3942 - Dwarves owning broken clothing. Clothes don't rot, ANNIHILATES FPS.
bug #3453 - Baron/etc. cannot appoint baron-appointed nobles, such as the Dungeon Master
bug #535 - Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic
bug #1582 - Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors
bug #2712 - weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter
bug #3708 - Ghost names that can't be engraved on a slab and nameless slab engravings
bug #425 - Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood
bug #3898 - Entire Bone Statcks are used in Reactions instead of a single Bone
bug #2327 - Blunt weapons extremely ineffective, extended single combat with groundhog
bug #4550 - Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc
bug #- Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders
bug #4856: Immortal Dwarf (... Yet unconcious) [or any other creature]

[/quote]

It helps to link to bugs when you're trying to draw attention to them, especially since many of these reports would benefit from 0.34.02+ saves.
[/quote][/spoiler]

As Toady moved to old bugs it may be a good idea to upload saves (more here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104200.0 )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 04:38:33 pm

will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?

And while I'm asking questions

Do you have any plans to combine the civilisation animal training knowledge with book writing and if so will the books be tradeable or would it be for flavour?

For the people complaining about the introduction of the new system, I have to ask if you complained about the switch to 3D? There's no point toady fixing all bugs until the game is fully complete as some bugs won't even need to be squashed as the thing they will get changed.

The animal trainer changes seem great and judging from the progress report toady seems to have already got through most of it.

Edit: due to my phone's moronic predictive txt

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 10, 2012, 05:57:10 pm

Next release is going to be awesome. Any idea of when it's going to be released ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 10, 2012, 07:48:54 pm

Quote from: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 04:38:33 pm

will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?

i actually just came over here to ask this question, im not thinking that truly 'domesticated' animals should ever become wild.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 07:55:24 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 10, 2012, 07:48:54 pm

Quote from: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 04:38:33 pm

will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?

i actually just came over here to ask this question, im not thinking that truly 'domesticated' animals should ever become wild.

I just realised how wrong the phrasing of that question was, seeing as domestication is the complete opposite of natural. I meant creatures which have been bred for domestication

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on March 10, 2012, 08:07:26 pm

I've been reading a bit lately about the attempts to breed foxes for domesticity, and a thought struck me while reading the last dev log -Will the "wildness" of animals be affected by breeding? I.e. will we be able to breed animals that are successively less given to "going wild" over time (also affecting training rates, maybe)?

Though I suppose that would only add to the issues with controlling how your animals breed. Still, I think it could be interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 10, 2012, 08:10:28 pm

Quote from: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 07:55:24 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 10, 2012, 07:48:54 pm

Quote from: werechicken on March 10, 2012, 04:38:33 pm

will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?

i actually just came over here to ask this question, im not thinking that truly 'domesticated' animals should ever become wild.

I just realised how wrong the phrasing of that question was, seeing as domestication is the complete opposite of natural. I meant creatures which have been bred for domestication

ha, didn't notice myself, point was still clear though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 10, 2012, 09:54:11 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 10, 2012, 05:57:10 pm

Next release is going to be awesome. Any idea of when it's going to be released ?

April 27, 2012, at 9:14 US Western Time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 10, 2012, 09:56:45 pm

Really, that late? I was thinking more like March 19- bugfix releases don't tend to drag much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on March 11, 2012, 12:59:30 am

Quote from: monk12 on March 10, 2012, 09:56:45 pm

Really, that late? I was thinking more like March 19- bugfix releases don't tend to drag much.

Well, this is kind of on the border between bugfix and new feature. It sounds like Toady's making decent headway on it, though. I'm guessing he'd already planned an appreciable amount of this in advance -- from the quotes Footie posted, replacing the DM was very much not a decision made on the spot.


Building on Chthonic's and Dae's questions, Is there a certain point where the tamed animals will remain as such permanently without further management, or is it more a matter of 'reverts in a month' versus 'reverts in a decade'?

Furthermore, how much warning will the player get before the cuddly tamed dragon in the meeting hall reverts back to wild and barbecues everyone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 11, 2012, 05:59:13 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 10, 2012, 09:54:11 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 10, 2012, 05:57:10 pm

Next release is going to be awesome. Any idea of when it's going to be released ?

April 27, 2012, at 9:14 US Western Time.

Assuming you are not being sarcastic, I was expecting something sooner.

Well, I guess the wait will be worth it, and we will have the more important bugs fixed.

And I don't think a tamed beast will go back to a untamed state. I think what toady meant was a PARTLY tamed creature would go back to a wild state with time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 11, 2012, 06:09:06 am

Quote from: Naryar on March 11, 2012, 05:59:13 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 10, 2012, 09:54:11 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 10, 2012, 05:57:10 pm

Next release is going to be awesome. Any idea of when it's going to be released ?

April 27, 2012, at 9:14 US Western Time.

Assuming you are not being sarcastic, I was expecting something sooner.

He was being sarcastic. The actual answer is "No".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 11, 2012, 10:38:16 am

"When your dwarf caravan leaves, your civ now picks up a small portion of what you have learned about animal training for future forts"

EDIT: sorry, there was a problem with your civ & you mixup. Question removed, but is quoted below.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on March 11, 2012, 11:21:26 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 11, 2012, 10:38:16 am

"When your dwarf caravan leaves, your civ now picks up a small portion of what you have learned about animal training for future forts"

Why caravan leaving your fort rather than arriving? Is it supposed to encourage lowering mortality of traders or maybe it was just added to caravan_leaving_map function? And - is it "leaves" as in "alive caravan leaves map" or "caravan leaves trade depot"?

Everything the civ finds out about your fortress is done when the trade caravan leaves, even presently. If the traders didn't safely return home, how would the mountainhomes find out anything you've done?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 11, 2012, 01:58:15 pm

The traders have satellite phones?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 11, 2012, 02:06:01 pm

No, it's that one surviving, crippled dwarf that drags themselves back to the Mountainhome, collapsing in the arms of their fellow dwarves as they arrive. And with a gasp, his last words are "They've weaponized......carp. AARRRGGGGGHHHH!!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 12, 2012, 02:06:05 am

Toady is atom smashing nobles! Now it was the Tax Collector.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on March 12, 2012, 03:43:54 am

This has probably been asked a dozen times before, but what is the status of getting dwarves to wear clothes again? Dwarves running around completely naked after the clothes they turn up in fall to pieces has been an issue for a while now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 12, 2012, 03:54:03 am

Quote from: Andreus on March 12, 2012, 03:43:54 am

This has probably been asked a dozen times before, but what is the status of getting dwarves to wear clothes again? Dwarves running around completely naked after the clothes they turn up in fall to pieces has been an issue for a while now.

The status is the same, the bug is still around, but you can see which bugs are fixed for the next version here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.php). Greening questions are for questions about DF development only, not for requesting bugfixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 12, 2012, 07:52:18 am

Holy whoah, I'm a little late on this one but I just realized the significance of fixing animals that were tamed after they killed a dwarf.

That bug's been around since the goddamn Boatmurdered days. Sweet armok, that's an awesome fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on March 12, 2012, 08:13:24 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on March 10, 2012, 06:25:30 am

Toady do you plan to change the way war/hunting animals are assigned to dwarves?
Right now it is not possible to select what kind of animal the dwarf will get, whether it is War Dog or a War Dragon for example.

Quote from: devlog

You can pick specific war/hunting animals for assignment

Awesome!  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on March 12, 2012, 09:02:27 am

I can have a champion with his very own war dragon? I will have to experiment on estimated champion lifespan under these circumstances.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 12, 2012, 02:12:55 pm

Quote from: rex mortis on March 12, 2012, 09:02:27 am

I can have a champion with his very own war dragon? I will have to experiment on estimated champion lifespan under these circumstances.

*dragon breathes fire
*champion fails to parry for some dumb reason
*Urist McLegendaryAxedwarf has bled to death
*cue player rage

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ves on March 12, 2012, 06:45:44 pm

Now that's what I call...

A case of Friendly Fire!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 12, 2012, 07:04:25 pm

Quote from: Ves on March 12, 2012, 06:45:44 pm

Now that's what I call...

A case of Friendly Fire!

*glasses* YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 12, 2012, 07:27:23 pm

While we are still harping on this topic, I'm personally of the same camp that says that this exotic animal taming system is a positive step forward for DF, but at the same time, that the Dungeon Master wasn't a terribly annoying bug, and it wasn't hard to "fix" the problem by simply making it appointed by the mayor so I could just appoint my own Dungeon Master.  As such, there are other priorities I would have rather Toady worked upon first.  Especially when it comes to the more seriously game-crippling problems of micromanagement for lack of decent controls like Standing Orders, lack of ability to re-stack items, or carry more than one item at a time, or throw away trash clothing, which are far more basic features or bug fixes necessary for the foundation of the game.

With that said, however, discussions about the ways in which the exotic pets can be grouped set me to making another suggestion on the matter (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104415.0). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Livonya on March 12, 2012, 09:44:57 pm

03/12/2012 Toady One development post...

"Next up I'm going to mess around with clothing a bit. There are a few obstacles to getting them to pick up clothes, and I've fixed the easy one. I stopped people with injuries from obsessing forever over unusable objects, but I want to make that better so that they don't think about them at all after one initial check. Getting it all to work together with uniforms, current inventory, injuries, available items, modded bodies and layering restrictions is always tricky, but that's the project. I'm also going to handle owned items that just sit out on the floor forever and deal with damaged clothing."

That sounds awesome.  Can't wait for this project to complete.

I have been waiting for just the right amount of bug fixes to fire up a new fortress, and it seems like that moment is coming soonish!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 12, 2012, 09:49:59 pm

Ye, dorfs. I beseech you now, go forth and remove your tattered cloth. Don pants once again and rejoice! Walk naked no more!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 12, 2012, 09:51:22 pm

Fix for owned/damaged clothing sounds even more awesome than animal training. Manually dumping and atom-smashing it was annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on March 12, 2012, 09:54:18 pm

Quote from: Toady One

I'm also going to ... deal with damaged clothing.

I'm curious if that means something such as being able to patch existing worn clothes, vaguely similar to encrusting gems onto pre-existing already-usable items; that would be intriguing.  At the same time, without having an effective and mostly automatic economy system in place, I worry about the management that such a feature might require on the part of the player.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 12, 2012, 10:00:40 pm

First tame exotics, and now clothing bugs. If workshop clutter is next, I'll suspect Toady is just working down my personal wishlist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 12, 2012, 10:21:24 pm

The clothing bug is something I really am glad to see go. 

I hate having to restrict myself on clothing workshops, and it was one of those bugs that severely cut into my enjoyment of the game. 

I really have no complaints if he is making this bug his top priority at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 12, 2012, 10:32:37 pm

Toady, what do you mean when you say "deal with damaged clothing" ? That dwarves will ty and get other clothes when their own are too worn-off ? Will they do so only if there are other ones available ? Will they prefer a xshirtx over a XXshirtXX, or will they go naked if there aren't any new garments ? Will they really care about walking around naked ?

This also has potential intrications with fire : an item on fire is gradually worn, and I suspect at some point a worn, not-owned item will be treated as junk. So on one hand, a dwarf whose clothes are on fire could try to run to the nearest refuse stockpile and drop the items there, protecting himself from too much harm.
On the other hand, every dwarf could also have a sudden urge of getting that !!sock!! properly placed...

It should be fun ! Maybe we'll dwarves getting clothes for themselves in the junkyards when times are tough, and some of them MIGHT catch on fire ! Fun !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 12, 2012, 11:05:42 pm

Finally! I can make a fort where my vulture-beaked blood cultists don ornate ritual robes before sacrificing their war captives!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 13, 2012, 12:57:43 am

Quote from: monk12 on March 12, 2012, 10:00:40 pm

First tame exotics, and now clothing bugs. If workshop clutter is next, I'll suspect Toady is just working down my personal wishlist.

I think he's basing his priorities pretty heavily on this poll: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94802.msg2684472 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94802.msg2684472)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

I removed some of these since they covered bugs that have already been fixed in subsequent releases.  Other questions were answered by people in the thread.  I also removed some questions about timing/short vs. long term/near future, since the answer is almost always "I don't know", and some question-suggestions.

Quote from: nukularpower

Are there any plans to implement a relatively easier way to handle zombies in Fortress mode such as a weapon material weakness, or a type of fire weapon such as a torch that doesn't set fire to terrain, or whatever else? Because I'm not sure how it's intended to be done right now - With how they revive about 10 seconds after death, there isnt even enough time to drag them to a modded "crematorium" or some such thing before you have to kill them again.. and then again.. and then again...

I don't know if embarking in hell is ever supposed to be easy, but there will be changes.  Pulping is the idea we've floated the most, so that heavily defeated zombies would be unraisable mush.  Having the evil regions re-raise with a lower frequency is reasonable, I think, though necromancers are a different matter and that'll depend on how "spell cost" and control-type stuff are handled later.

Quote from: tfaal

I have a quest to go to a mountain hall and kill a dwarven werebeast. Is this currently possible? If not, are such quests a bug?

Yeah, that'd be a bug.

Quote from: Japa

Are adventurers-turned-vampire meant to be friendly towards raised dead?

Yeah, this is how it is supposed to work now.  Zombies are sort of generically against the living.  If they were actually animated under the active power of the necromancer, that would be different, and I imagine there will be other things going on over time.

Quote from: darkflagrance

I remember in 40d many historical figures led the squads that besieged your fort other than the leader of the enemy civilization, so an old fort would end up killing swathes of historical figures. However, it appears to me that the new enemies are mostly generated from the entity population pools.

Now that historical migrants arrive, will we also (someday) see squads of historical enemies where even the common troops are historical figures and not just the squad leader?

I don't know that there's been any change in how squad leaders are selected.  There are plenty of historical figures to go around now in goblin civs, I think.  They survive, at least.  Are there historical squad leaders in 0.34.05?  When we get to the army stuff we can expect more historical army people, but having the whole army be historical might not be possible, at least not for very long.  It's probably more important to save historical goblins for times when their historicalness will matter.

Quote from: Urist_McArathos

Is it confirmed that there is only one "effect" per evil biome?  Because I'd like to have more than one, at times.

There are sometimes two effects in the randomly generated interactions (there can be an animation and a material), but it only picks one interaction per region.  It'll need to have a series of conflict checks as with curses to go beyond that I guess, and it would need to know when to stop.  Eventually we'd hope for all of the regions to have their own character (that sphere region thing is one way to say it), and multiple effects would be required at that time.

Quote from: Aplsos

I'd appreciate an in-depth explanation of the CE:PERIODIC syndrome tag.  Are there valid values for it besides MOON_PHASE?  I'm specifically looking for a way to make werebeasts that transform every night, because currently in adventure mode they're just naked peasants that like to chill out in holes.

I haven't done more than I needed for most of the tags.  It's something that is going to grow over time, but I could only bite off so much at once.

Quote from: Fieari

Was there a specific motivation for removing the "rude" words from the language files?  Just tone of how you want the goblins to sound, or was there pressure from some source, or did you need to cut down on language size?

I got sick of having to exclude them almost everywhere (the latest being the books).  Having them anywhere they didn't belong made the game seem stupid, and it was starting to seem like they didn't really belong anywhere.

Quote from: Urist_McArathos

Are the rapid rates of reanimation a bug or working as intended?  Are items like wool and hair supposed to reanimate, or this is a bug/unintended behavior?

It is working as intended, whether it is a good idea or not (there are two rates you could be referring to -- evil regions or necromancers).  I suppose hair is weirder than skin is weirder than bones, by some measure, even if none of it makes sense (skin makes more sense than bone if you are considering connectivity).  I haven't considered how or if to change it at this point.

Quote from: mctribble

Does vampire feeding pose any actual threat to the victim in adventure mode?  I tried to feed on an unconscious bandit as a combat technique, but after five or six times decided it didn't seem to be doing anything.

The amount you drink depends on how thirsty you are.

Quote from: lastofthelight

Toady, there are reports on the modding forum that any Secret not able to raise the dead will result in wizards/things not able to build towers. Is this is a bug? Could this perhaps be because you linked up the whole 'undead minions' with 'towers' in the code? Even if some code/worldgen limitation prevents them from having towers, is there any chance that you might put in a tag so you could choose to have Secret-creatures dwell in a hut  in the middle of nowhere, or a cave, go back and pretend to be a god, or just live in the forest instead? Those all seem like low hanging fruit, and might enable them to actually have apprentices, so stock-necromancers wouldn't just be over-running everything, which is what happens currently. This is probably on the bottom of the priority list though, sadly.

No, this is intended.  It requires 50 zombies to build a tower right now.  The ones that don't have 50 zombies have camps and zombie "bandit" groups, among the necromancers, in 34.05 anyway.  I'm not sure what happens in 34.05 with other secrets.

Quote from: thvaz

The work on night creatures are finished for now or do you intend to return to them soon? For example, finishing randomly-generated vampires and integrating werewolves back to society.

It's hard to say when I'm going to get to things.  Werewolf integration has some issues to it that aren't easy to overcome without getting to scheduling or some sort of multiple homes/movement.  I was aware at the time of the original release that they are very lame in adventure mode, but fixing it right is a larger project.

Quote from: Cruxador

Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?

Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.

Like bogeymen, I imagine it'll be reduced as we add more stuff.

Quote from: PTTG??

Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.

I have no idea what this would do both with my stuff and with some of my libraries.  I'm not eager to introduce a bunch of strange bugs.  When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Quote from: Mike Mayday

Could animated/ghost creatures stop blinking with N~ once they're assigned proper graphics?

If they have a specific creature animated image, or even in the default animated case?  I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

Quote from: red_29A

Are there any plans to bring back glumprongs and sliver barbs?

It's on the list for this cycle of bug fix releases.

Quote from: Jiri Petru

When creatures attack each other, how does the targeting  work? How do they choose which part to attack and which weapon to use? Does this take into account the strikes of opportunity, or is the selection random? In other words, are strikes of opportunity something only I can do when using the "A" menu in adventurer mode, or are they something all creatures use automatically, even me when I simply attack my opponent using the movement arrows?

EDIT: Footkerchief and the others respond that creatures do use strikes of opportunity. But then why does attacking through keyboard arrows give me different results than attacking via the "A" menu. For example I open the "A" menu and see that I have a "simple strike" opportunity to kick my enemy in the left foot. I close the "A" menu and attack enemy using arrows instead. I would expect my character to kick his foe into the left foot, but he bashes him with mace to the head.

Yeah, they all get the opportunity strikes, and there is a formula the AI (and pressing arrow) uses to pick one.  It values guaranteed strikes, but it also values head shots, and it really likes guaranteed head shots!  It prefers the body if it can get it, but it really doesn't like missing.  So it'll often pick opportunity attacks (the !) but if there's a pretty solid head shot in there, it might win out.  The critters get all the same chances you do.

Quote from: monk12

Is there any particular reason a creature can't be subjected to multiple body transformation effects, such that the most recent would have priority?

I don't recall restricting it.  There's no particular reason I can think of if it is.  It would just be a bug.  If you are talking about a werebeast not becoming another werebeast, that's just part of the curse and I think it should stay that way.

Quote from: Immacolata

Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

Quote

Quote from: eux0r

toady, how much do you think the "Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps" scheduled for the next arc-release will impact the gameplay of the different modes and does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" have any implications for fortress-mode?

Quote from: rex mortis

What does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" entail in the next release? Simple daily activities such as meals and work only? Or do you plan to have things such as attending religious ceremonies at specific locations of worship at specific times? Will farmers make trips to towns to sell food after harvest? Would they halt their activities for a short while to exchange a few pleasantries between friends?

How rigid would the schedules be? Would a farmer postpone the aforementioned town trip if it was raining or would he wait for better weather?

I assume all or at least most of this could be observed in adventure mode, otherwise it would be rather pointless.

I'm not sure how it's going to work out yet or how much ground it'll cover.  It'll all be observable in adv mode.  In the strictest interpretation, the scheduling has nothing to do with fortress mode, but it rarely works out that way.

Quote from: bombzero

Have you considered adding a temporary limitation on just how many times a part can be raised? or will that have to wait until pulping/better damage stacking?

I don't want to put in a counter.  I think related raising interface and other incidental stuff would make it messier than just doing pulping sometime.

Quote from: Shinotsa

Will the improvements to mineral veins and the addition of mine maps have a major effect on worldgen in the number of metal items made? Will that then translate into a larger number of weapon/armor shops and a larger number of metal goods at the market? Will towns closer to major mines have more blacksmiths, miners, furnace operators, and shops containing the products of these jobs? Will there be warehouses full of iron ore/bars/goods in mining towns, or does worldgen space out items through trade too much to see that?

Right now you don't see most of the raw resources in town.  There are too many items to stick in the current warehouse and I want to spread them out among the future industry sites and I'll probably just need to stack them too, as well as adding more warehouses.  There will be automatic effects already when minerals are spread out, and it probably already happens to some extent, though it is hard to notice because they mostly don't work on metal items because they have no reason to.  If they lost metal objects when their armies die out in the wilderness it might contribute, or if they needed tools.  There's just not enough being modeled yet (abstractly or not).  World gen trade does move things around quite a bit, probably more than it would if people were guarding their interests.  I'm not sure if that's going to lead to more weapon/armor shops.  They aren't really thinking of being an adventure game economy right now, and I'm not sure they will at any time.  That said, you should be able to find things easier than you can now, and there are various other things that can be done (paying to have a weapon made for example).

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

When travelling at night, travel map visibility is reduced to 1 tile, but the zoomed in travel map (which is great by the way) is unchanged. Is this to reflect the greater light sources near to towns or will this change?

Temples in cities appear to have above ground, constructed walls that are also engraved. This seems inconsistent with fortress mode (maybe humans know somthing that dwarves don't). Should we expect a change here?

Both of these are inconsistencies that should be changed.  No idea when.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

What are bogeymen?

As in, what is their specific nature of existence? Are they fae creatures of another realm that only come to this world when the subject in question is alone?  Or are they a result of a subjective/mythic reality where fear itself creates them from the mind of the people they attack?  Or are they something else entirely?

Threetoe floated a theory in his last story:

Quote

The people of the dark haunted all lonely places in the black of night. Sudemong spoke of a dimension of darkness haunted by countless legions of these creatures. Knowing no true form, they borrowed their shapes, woven from shadow. Light was poison to them, and they were evil.

Quote from: O11O1

Is it intended for coins to not show up on the trade menus?

They haven't really been integrated into fort mode very much and have basically been left to rot until we get around to economy stuff.

Quote

Quote from: JasonMel

Does this mean things like wardogs will actually deal more damage and/or take more damage as the site's training knowledge increases?

Quote from: Footkerchief

This is not an attempt to answer the question, but I'd guess that animal training could involve raising the animals' Fighter/Biter/Wrestling/etc. skills.  CAN_LEARN would have to change or be loosened though -- I don't think any basic animals have it right now.

I haven't addressed the fundamentals of what the war/hunting animals are.  That's all the same.

Quote from: Mr Frog

can we expect a similar overhaul of the tax collector's position/role if/when you work out a way to make the dwarven economy function in a sane manner?

It's very hard to say what'll happen when I get to that, and I'm not sure in what form taxes will manifest or survive.

Quote from: Spish

I've noticed that, as of 34.01, creatures in post-abandonment player fortresses don't randomly gather at meeting hall zones anymore (just stand around, not moving at all from wherever the game decides to put them). Was this an intentional change?

I don't remember changing anything here, but it has been a while.

Quote

Quote from: Livonya

Is this sort of training knowledge at the civilization and fortress level something that you just came up with for this particular issue, and/or is it something that you had/have planned for other skills?

Quote from: hermes

Necromancer secrets are written down in and can be learnt from books.  Will all information or knowledge, including animal taming, be subject to the same mechanic?  Or will only specific skills be spread by pen and paper?

Quote from: werechicken

Do you have any plans to combine the civilisation animal training knowledge with book writing and if so will the books be tradeable or would it be for flavour?

Quote from: Lord Shonus

Are there plans to extend the new training system to other aspects of the game, such as metalworking?

We haven't thought too much about tech-treeish type expansions for general skills or how exactly books are going to be involved.  Since the world gen economy has gone in, there's been a specialization measure in world gen, and that now controls the quality of the items you find in all of the shops.  I'm not sure how all of this stuff is going to end up merging and intersecting.  I'm just dipping in a few toes for now.

Quote from: monk12

How do civs gain familiarity with a given creature? Is it a guaranteed thing that if the creature is nearby and PET/PET_EXOTIC, then it will be tamed, or is it a chance/probability thing, or does it rely on historical figures to take a hand in the process?

Will Fort knowledge flow back to the civ in some way? Such that a fort that manages to tame a dragon will be able to impart some measure of knowledge back to the civ, so that if a subsequent fort also catches a dragon it will be easier to tame.

How does this alter the PET_EXOTIC tag? Is it obsolete, or does it signify a creature more difficult to domesticate than another? Speaking of, are some creatures more difficult to tame than others? I imagine if a civ has roughly equal numbers of wild dogs and, say, honey badgers in the area, the dogs would be more readily domesticated. Not that I pretend to any knowledge of what makes a creature easy/difficult to domesticate.

Will you be able to bring the exotic animals your civ is familiar with on embark, and/or request them through the caravan? I could see that embark menu getting rather cluttered if that's true, and it would kinda obsolete the COMMON_DOMESTIC tag, but at the same time it would be lame to have a jungle dwarf civ that has tamed the tigers, but not be able to bring/buy/request any.

How does this affect the Elves? Huge varieties of exotic animals are kinda their thing, but it sounds like a reasonably large civ could have access to as many or more exotic animals than a smaller/more restricted group of Elves.

Generally, the idea is that common domestics and PETs available locally will be domesticated by the civ, and local PET_EXOTICs and journey animals will have a mid-level.  All the restrictions on good/evil/cave etc. are still in play, and elves still domesticate all the exotics.

Merchants that leave successfully to your civ transmit some info that way.  It's a pretty small amount, but it saves all the fractions permanently, so you'll be having an effect.

You don't get the exotics in trade or with migrants.

Quote from: Eagleon

In a similar vein, since I was tired of mahogany being the same value as tower-cap, I started adding differing material values for wood. Looking up wood I was unfamiliar with brought me here, which appears to have the physical (shear strength and whatnot) properties of most woods - couldn't find saguaro rib, but eh. Cactus. Would you be interested in a formatted list (and/or a raw file with the properties already added) if I made it, Toady? Has anyone else made it and am I wasting my time?

We used some values for stone, and I'll put in any sourced values that people find eventually if I'm pointed to them, for the existing materials/values in the game.

Quote from: Rafal99

will dwarves become attached to their war animals like they get attached to items?

The trainers become bonded to the animals they are training, but I haven't changed the pet behavior for assigned work animals.

Quote from: Mephansteras

Any plans to do anything with animal health care along with the new training system?

I'd been thinking of them separately, so I haven't scheduled anything, and I haven't really thought about how it should be updated yet.

Quote

Quote from: werechicken

will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?

Quote from: Jheral

Will the "wildness" of animals be affected by breeding? I.e. will we be able to breed animals that are successively less given to "going wild" over time (also affecting training rates, maybe)?

Quote from: Mr Frog

Is there a certain point where the tamed animals will remain as such permanently without further management, or is it more a matter of 'reverts in a month' versus 'reverts in a decade'?

Furthermore, how much warning will the player get before the cuddly tamed dragon in the meeting hall reverts back to wild and barbecues everyone?

Quote from: Chthonic

"Deteriorating training status and reversion to a wild state" sounds kind of ominous.  Does this mean that domestication is going to wear off after a while?

Quote from: Dae

I must add : If it means that domesticated animals turn back to being untamed after a while, will this be the case after reclaiming an old fortress ? So we could have a succession fortress where hydras were tamed, but the only legendary dresser died, so the hydras were sealed and everyone forgot about them until the fortress collapsed and the reclaim party has to face the newly-freed hydras ?

If the civ's knowledge is all the way up at domesticated, the animal becomes Tame as before and never reverts.  As it stands, you can't yet cross the boundary to domesticated from a wild beast, since there's extra infrasture to be dealt with with breeds and all that.  Children inherit their training status from their parents, and if a trainer gets to an animal when it is young, it becomes Tame and never reverts.  The word "trained" is somewhat weird that way.  It doesn't refer to how many tricks the animal knows, but more how acclimated it is to dwarven life.  So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children which can be raised up to tame if you catch them early, but after some years of complete inattention, the masterfully trained parent can revert back down the ladder all the way to semi-wild and wild.  Tame creatures will have tame children that never need basic training.  So you can eventually get up to a population that is essentially domestic, with your trained exotics having trained children which are tamed and then have tamed children for all generations after that.  However, this won't give you "domestic" civ knowledge -- which means that a new exotic of that species which you capture will still have to be trained and reinforced (instead of jumping up to Tame).

You are currently warned about reversions to a semi-wild state.  That should give you a season or so of warning before anything terrible happens, though semi-wilds can be a little nippy on occasion (which can be bad for a dragon).  If you have an assigned tamer and you haven't overloaded the system by assigning one poor guy to 100 animals or something, all reinforcement training is automatic, so you shouldn't have to work too hard to keep your dragon satisfied.

Quote from: Dae

Toady, what do you mean when you say "deal with damaged clothing" ? That dwarves will ty and get other clothes when their own are too worn-off ? Will they do so only if there are other ones available ? Will they prefer a xshirtx over a XXshirtXX, or will they go naked if there aren't any new garments ? Will they really care about walking around naked ?

It's not 100% decided yet.  Their old way of doing things was to update XX with x, and that might stay in.  However, damaged clothing needs to go away, especially if no one wants it.  It might just rot in the refuse pile now, and it'll get there because ownership will be cancelled on it.  I'm going to need to mess around with it a bit first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on March 13, 2012, 01:28:48 am

Will bandits and other sentinent creatures be able to pick up weapons they dropped in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 02:08:36 am

fixing clothing bug...

fixing the clothing bug

finally fixing the clothing bug

TOADY'S FINALLY FIXING THE CLOTHING BUG!!!!

awesome, now i wont have to mod out clothing anymore, and can embrace a fortress draped in pig tail fiber robes.
(if you can't fix the clothing bug, you could just make clothing not degrade until you do)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 13, 2012, 02:23:00 am

Quote

When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Yay! 64bit!

So I'll be able to use all 24 gigs of my work comp for worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 02:24:41 am

Quote from: Japa on March 13, 2012, 02:23:00 am

Quote

When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Yay! 64bit!

So I'll be able to use all 24 gigs of my work comp for worldgen.

..... 24GB? what... why... how... where... when???
that's a bit excessive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 02:54:22 am

Clothing bug being fixed is good. No more giant stocks of *pig tail fiber robes* doing nothing.

Also I would like to see the elves sending back their diplomats. So I can catch and tame large amounts of exotics when they siege me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runiq on March 13, 2012, 02:57:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Immacolata

Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

I am definitely intrigued.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 03:18:22 am

Quote from: runiq on March 13, 2012, 02:57:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Immacolata

Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

I am definitely intrigued.

it's sounding like Toady enjoys his new bugfix method of fixing broken systems by changing them...

on that note, the next release will probably cause great rejoicing among the community.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runiq on March 13, 2012, 03:21:35 am

Quote from: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 03:18:22 am

it's sounding like Toady enjoys his new bugfix method of fixing broken systems by changing them...

on that note, the next release will probably cause great rejoicing among the community.

Absolutely. I'd never have thought I'd be okay with waiting longer for a bugfix release of all things.

Rock on, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 03:33:51 am

I now understand the massive wait before this update, Toady was simply preparing for a great string of epic updates...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Johuotar on March 13, 2012, 04:03:58 am

Good! Those claimed socks of dead dwarves were really getting on my nerves! Bughunt is best hunt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 13, 2012, 04:20:28 am

Great news Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on March 13, 2012, 05:20:07 am

What I like most about Toady working on the clothing bugs is that it actually gives a clothing industry reason to exist besides making and decorating socks for trade or uniform parts for soldiers.  It'll also make the tons and tons of cloth the elves like to bring actually useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 13, 2012, 05:51:56 am

Clothing bug fixed? Too injured spam fixed? Unused, owned items on floor fixed? :) Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 13, 2012, 05:54:50 am

Quote from: runiq on March 13, 2012, 02:57:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

I am definitely intrigued.

I would guess (hope) we're looking at least at part of the Hauling Improvements part of the Dev Page there. That would be the first stab at the Eternal Suggestions Voting items then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snelg on March 13, 2012, 06:02:14 am

These bugfix releases is just getting better and better! Haven't been this excited for any of the larger updates (except maybe the z-level thing, but it's been a while now).

New features is nice and all but the bugs and awkward workarounds were really adding up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 13, 2012, 06:20:07 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 13, 2012, 05:54:50 am

Quote from: runiq on March 13, 2012, 02:57:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

I am definitely intrigued.

I would guess (hope) we're looking at least at part of the Hauling Improvements part of the Dev Page there. That would be the first stab at the Eternal Suggestions Voting items then.

Not really. The underground revamp at 31.01 was part of the Eternal Suggestion Voting. Maybe there are others.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lysabild on March 13, 2012, 07:03:14 am

My reaction to reading the new devlog:
(http://funnypicturesimages.com/images/image/funny-pictures-racoon-yes.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 13, 2012, 07:47:35 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 13, 2012, 05:51:56 am

Clothing bug fixed? Too injured spam fixed? Unused, owned items on floor fixed? :) Thanks!

Yeah, that is one hell of a great fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on March 13, 2012, 08:41:10 am

Quote from: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 02:54:22 am

Also I would like to see the elves sending back their diplomats. So I can catch and tame large amounts of exotics when they siege me.

That, at least, can be easily fixed with modding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on March 13, 2012, 09:11:31 am

Quote

So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children

Is it the mother or father's training status passed on, or some amalgam of both?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 13, 2012, 11:57:33 am

Quote from: Quatch on March 13, 2012, 09:11:31 am

Quote

So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children

Is it the mother or father's training status passed on, or some amalgam of both?

I think the key part to that would be here:

Quote from: Toady One

The word "trained" is somewhat weird that way.  It doesn't refer to how many tricks the animal knows, but more how acclimated it is to dwarven life.

I think "trained" in this case is referring more towards "domestication", except that there is a definition conflict, since "domestic" already means fully domesticated. 

Basically, the way dogs were domesticated was by getting dogs to instinctually see humans as "bigger dogs you should obey" through unnatural selection, and the way that honeybees became safer and tamer (compared to the wild African honeybee) was through specifically breeding the bees that were least aggressive. 

You can't teach a honeybee a trick, but you can breed them for docility.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on March 13, 2012, 12:39:45 pm

Totally expecting Footie to catch this one, 'cuz it's far from a new feature, but what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 13, 2012, 12:45:15 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on March 13, 2012, 12:39:45 pm

Totally expecting Footie to catch this one, 'cuz it's far from a new feature, but what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?

From entity_default:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:CHAMPION]
[NAME:champion:champions]
[SITE]
[NUMBER:1]
[RESPONSIBILITY:BUILD_MORALE]
[APPOINTED_BY:DUKE]
[APPOINTED_BY:COUNT]
[APPOINTED_BY:BARON]
[PRECEDENCE:65]
[MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION]
[PUNISHMENT_EXEMPTION]
[DO_NOT_CULL]
[COLOR:7:0:1]
[ACCOUNT_EXEMPT]
[DUTY_BOUND]
[DEMAND_MAX:1]

It looks like they have an effect in the morale of your dwarves. Maybe they fight better besides a champion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 13, 2012, 12:56:23 pm

It would be nice for there to be a dwarf who goes around and talks to other dwarves and gives them a morale boost depending on his combat skills. Of course, if he goes and gets killed by a random goblin then the whole fort gets depressed...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 13, 2012, 01:20:59 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on March 13, 2012, 12:39:45 pm

Totally expecting Footie to catch this one, 'cuz it's far from a new feature, but what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?

Quote from: thvaz on March 13, 2012, 12:45:15 pm

From entity_default:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:CHAMPION]
[NAME:champion:champions]
[SITE]
[NUMBER:1]
[RESPONSIBILITY:BUILD_MORALE]
[APPOINTED_BY:DUKE]
[APPOINTED_BY:COUNT]
[APPOINTED_BY:BARON]
[PRECEDENCE:65]
[MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION]
[PUNISHMENT_EXEMPTION]
[DO_NOT_CULL]
[COLOR:7:0:1]
[ACCOUNT_EXEMPT]
[DUTY_BOUND]
[DEMAND_MAX:1]

It looks like they have an effect in the morale of your dwarves. Maybe they fight better besides a champion.

That was definitely part of the plan, but I'm not sure whether BUILD_MORALE ever got any functionality attached.  It's possible that nobody except Toady has ever seen it in use.

2009-06-02: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2009.html#2009-06-02)

Quote from: devlog

Finally, the notion of any dwarf gaining a legendary skill becoming a "champion" is going to be replaced by the notion of a single champion that can be appointed/crowned/whatever by the baron/count/duke (one reason to have/keep one). There are various options for what the champion might do, but at the very least, traditional-minded dwarven soldiers (a personality facet) would be bolstered by the presence of the champion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 13, 2012, 01:54:55 pm

I'm pretty sure (but can't prove) that BUILD_MORALE is responsible for the "pillar of society" type thoughts that dwarves can have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on March 13, 2012, 03:51:43 pm

While you were fixing other animal-trading related bugs, did you fix the bug that prevents you from selling animals? (I'm referring to the way in which designating a cage for trading empties the cage first.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 13, 2012, 04:32:58 pm

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Spish

I've noticed that, as of 34.01, creatures in post-abandonment player fortresses don't randomly gather at meeting hall zones anymore (just stand around, not moving at all from wherever the game decides to put them). Was this an intentional change?

I don't remember changing anything here, but it has been a while.

It might've had something to do with keeps, because I recall that soldiers would come running to the lord's house after you talk to him, as opposed to standing guard in the towers and courtyards.

Aye, I can confirm that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2lxnh3.png)

this used happen in 31.25, but doesn't anymore. The cool part about 31.25 is that, in this fortress for example, the goblin siegers would head towards the Meeting Area(s) in small waves, where I would be constantly battling them up and down the hallways, so for longest time I thought it was aggressive AI sending them to kill my adventurer :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 07:23:09 pm

It would also be good to fix that animal caretaker bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: red_29A on March 13, 2012, 07:41:04 pm

Quote from: red_29A

Are there any plans to bring back glumprongs and sliver barbs?

Quote from: Toady One

It's on the list for this cycle of bug fix releases.

Sweet! Thank you sir! i may have to try a life of crime to get you some donation money. And the clothing bug too?!? The old ladies in my neighborhood had better clutch their purses tight when they walk to the market...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 13, 2012, 07:58:44 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 07:23:09 pm

It would also be good to fix that animal caretaker bug.

Animal caretaking isn't really a bug so much as a feature that doesn't exist yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nameless Archon on March 13, 2012, 10:01:11 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 13, 2012, 07:58:44 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 07:23:09 pm

It would also be good to fix that animal caretaker bug.

Animal caretaking isn't really a bug so much as a feature that doesn't exist yet.

It would be not much fun to have to retrain your animals, but be unable to save the results of that work with even a basic healthcare system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Machiavelli on March 13, 2012, 10:27:04 pm

I'd like to gen up another world, but am a little deterred from doing so with all of the big changes coming out.  Will these upcoming bugfixes be compatible with 0.34.05-made saves?

I'm awesomely grateful for all of the hard work to fixing bugs, but I can't really afford a lot of time to play these days and don't want to start down a dead end.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 13, 2012, 10:29:51 pm

Quote from: Machiavelli on March 13, 2012, 10:27:04 pm

I'd like to gen up another world, but am a little deterred from doing so with all of the big changes coming out.  Will these upcoming bugfixes be compatible with 0.34.05-made saves?

I'm awesomely grateful for all of the hard work to fixing bugs, but I can't really afford a lot of time to play these days and don't want to start down a dead end.

Probably, yes.  Save compatibility is generally only broken for really major features or really bad bugs like save corruption (which is not present in the current version, at least not at the severity that caused the 0.34.02 save compat break).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on March 13, 2012, 10:39:35 pm

Quote from: Machiavelli on March 13, 2012, 10:27:04 pm

I'd like to gen up another world, but am a little deterred from doing so with all of the big changes coming out.  Will these upcoming bugfixes be compatible with 0.34.05-made saves?

Well, Toady said that the problem with incompatible saves for v0.34.01 vs v0.34.02+ should be a one time thing, but there is a small chance that some bugfix may force that to happen again.  I'd pretty much bet that the rest of the v0.34.x tree should be backwards compatible with v0.34.02 and higher saves though.

On the other hand, there may be some changes in world gen or such that will solve various problems, but you will only see the fix if you regenerate your world or do some file editing.  Most of these are probably going to be minor inconveniences at this point, but I'd give this a higher probability of having a fix you want.  If you're OK with that though, then go ahead and start playing now.

Or, you could just do what I did, and start a fortress now to just screw around and try some stuff without worrying about all of the stuff you normally would, just so you won't be so rusty when the well-enough-debugged-for-you version is released.  I'm playing around with breaching aquifers now, which was something I had avoided previously, and trying various kinds of squad training.  (Meanwhile the rest of my fortress is way behind where it would normally be at this point in the game.   :P )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NTJedi on March 13, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 02:24:41 am

Quote from: Japa on March 13, 2012, 02:23:00 am

Quote

When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Yay! 64bit!

So I'll be able to use all 24 gigs of my work comp for worldgen.

..... 24GB? what... why... how... where... when???
that's a bit excessive.

Consider the cheap price of ram, I estimate there's many thousands of gamers with 24GBs of ram... eagerly seeking games which can utilize their systems.  I'm also cheering for the move to 64bit!


**QUESTION:
  Any recent plans coming to include the *improved sieges* from the development page?   If I could only add only one thing to dwarf fortress it would be to improve the sieges so the goblins can actually have a chance during mid_game and late_game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on March 13, 2012, 11:22:17 pm

Quote from: HiEv on March 13, 2012, 10:39:35 pm

On the other hand, there may be some changes in world gen or such that will solve various problems, but you will only see the fix if you regenerate your world or do some file editing.  Most of these are probably going to be minor inconveniences at this point, but I'd give this a higher probability of having a fix you want.  If you're OK with that though, then go ahead and start playing now.

Yes, it worth noting that there's a precedent for minor inconveniences that happen between ostensibly save compatible bug fix releases releases. See: that one time all the open air magma tubes flooded your map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 13, 2012, 11:33:11 pm

Quote from: NTJedi on March 13, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Consider the cheap price of ram, I estimate there's many thousands of gamers with 24GBs of ram... eagerly seeking games which can utilize their systems.  I'm also cheering for the move to 64bit!

It's not about how many players can benefit so much as it's about how many players a change will harm. 

Even if you are "only" dropping support for a feature or a platform that only 10% of players need to use, that means you're cutting off 10% of your playerbase when you make that change - and that's why there are Legacy and SDL versions for all three of Windows, Mac, and Linux operating system versions of DF, so as to allow the widest number of players to have access.

Believe it or not, many DF players do play DF from some 4-year-old laptop with really terrible specs. 

Now, as time goes on, there are likely to be less and less people who can't actually run a 64-bit program (I'm not even sure where the cut-off on that would be, and I know there have been 64-bit versions of almost everything since Vista came out), but there's still some lagging population that will get cut off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 13, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: Nameless Archon on March 13, 2012, 10:01:11 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 13, 2012, 07:58:44 pm

Quote from: Naryar on March 13, 2012, 07:23:09 pm

It would also be good to fix that animal caretaker bug.

Animal caretaking isn't really a bug so much as a feature that doesn't exist yet.

It would be not much fun to have to retrain your animals, but be unable to save the results of that work with even a basic healthcare system.

I know, I was just pointing out that calling the inability to treat your wounded donkey a bug is the same as calling the inability to ride it a bug. It's not a broken feature, it's a feature that's never been in the game (but it's definitely planned to get 'em in there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 13, 2012, 11:44:21 pm

Well, it was in the game back in 40d- it was gutted in 2010 with the Health Care overhaul. It's a bug in the sense the Dungeon Master was a bug- useful functionality, but outdated and long enough out of the game that it's more likely to be replaced by a new feature than really "fixed."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NTJedi on March 14, 2012, 12:52:15 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 13, 2012, 11:33:11 pm

It's not about how many players can benefit so much as it's about how many players a change will harm. 

That depends on how far you're looking in the future.  Considering the devotion Toady has placed in the game he's probably wanting to evolve the game for the computers everyone will be using instead of the computers they will be replacing in five years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 14, 2012, 01:01:28 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 12, 2012, 11:05:42 pm

Finally! I can make a fort where my vulture-beaked blood cultists don ornate ritual robes before sacrificing their war captives!

Will you have a workshop that drains them of their essence? ;)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 13, 2012, 11:33:11 pm

Quote from: NTJedi on March 13, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Consider the cheap price of ram, I estimate there's many thousands of gamers with 24GBs of ram... eagerly seeking games which can utilize their systems.  I'm also cheering for the move to 64bit!

It's not about how many players can benefit so much as it's about how many players a change will harm. 

Even if you are "only" dropping support for a feature or a platform that only 10% of players need to use, that means you're cutting off 10% of your playerbase when you make that change - and that's why there are Legacy and SDL versions for all three of Windows, Mac, and Linux operating system versions of DF, so as to allow the widest number of players to have access.

Believe it or not, many DF players do play DF from some 4-year-old laptop with really terrible specs. 
...

It's a bit early to get all excited about this...

Quote

When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Toady doesn't say he's going to be doing this soon. He just says that the aforementioned problem would have to be fixed when he does get to 64 bit. Which may not be planned at all at this point, simply acknowledged as a To-Do.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 14, 2012, 01:19:17 am

Thanks Toady for keeping things relatively simple in the animal training department. I was really afraid you'd go on a tangent and spend a month or two on it, to the detriment of other bugfixes.

If I could express a wish, though, it would be that you fix first the bugs that modders can't fix. With the current clothes issues, that would be the military equipping problems and the profession "uniform" vs military uniform conflicts, such as when you try to have a squad of miners who're supposed to keep their picks for battle. For civilians I already got used to mods with naked dwarves, or rather, abstracted clothes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 14, 2012, 03:04:36 am

Will an animal that goes from tame to wild lose its need to eat? And will it retain war/hunting status or revert back to a normal state?
Will the new taming system have an effect on vermin tameing?

Really excited about the new changes, keep up the good work Toady. Doing great

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 14, 2012, 03:10:56 am

Quote from: isitanos on March 14, 2012, 01:19:17 am

Thanks Toady for keeping things relatively simple in the animal training department. I was really afraid you'd go on a tangent and spend a month or two on it, to the detriment of other bugfixes.

If I could express a wish, though, it would be that you fix first the bugs that modders can't fix. With the current clothes issues, that would be the military equipping problems and the profession "uniform" vs military uniform conflicts, such as when you try to have a squad of miners who're supposed to keep their picks for battle. For civilians I already got used to mods with naked dwarves, or rather, abstracted clothes.

that is not modders 'fixing' anything, its them outright removing a feature. toady is fixing something outright broken that can't be fixed by modders.

may not make much sense to you personally, but you are someone who knows how to mod the game, or wants to download mods. Toady is trying to make vanilla DF something someone can download and play, without mods, and without modding something themselves. therefore, the clothing issue IS a serious bug, has nothing to do with what modders can or can't fix.

(toady also usually fixes them in the source code itself, not the Raws, much cleaner, and often better.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rawrcakes on March 14, 2012, 05:06:23 am

In relation to dwarves replacing old and broken clothing - is there any plan to "incentivise" players to have a functioning clothing industry through, for example, giving negative throughts in Fortress mode to dwarves with worn / broken clothing (or being naked altogether)? In the same thread of thought, do you intend on giving good thoughts to dwarves if their clothes are well-made, or new?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thief^ on March 14, 2012, 05:21:20 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: PTTG??

Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.

I have no idea what this would do both with my stuff and with some of my libraries.  I'm not eager to introduce a bunch of strange bugs.  When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

All LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE requires is that you don't use the highest bit in a pointer for your own purposes. Without LAA the highest bit of any pointer is always 0, so some applications stole it and used it as a flag. As long as you don't do that you're fine to just enable LAA.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 14, 2012, 05:33:41 am

It's worth noting that people have already made Dwarf Fortress an LAA executable. It's an extremely easy hack. I haven't heard of it being buggy for anyone, but it's possible that I might have just not heard since I haven't followed too closely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlueAnchorite on March 14, 2012, 07:59:44 am

Glad to hear about the new animal training and clothing fixes, will be good to train all those exotics  :D
Toady, will a feature conceivably be implemented that allows modders to introduce new skills for adventure and possibly fortress mode? Such a skill that is raised like any normal skill, and can have interactions attributed to it?
I'm new to modding DF, however that was something I would have liked to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 14, 2012, 08:19:54 am

Quote from: rawrcakes on March 14, 2012, 05:06:23 am

In relation to dwarves replacing old and broken clothing - is there any plan to "incentivise" players to have a functioning clothing industry through, for example, giving negative throughts in Fortress mode to dwarves with worn / broken clothing (or being naked altogether)? In the same thread of thought, do you intend on giving good thoughts to dwarves if their clothes are well-made, or new?

<magmawiki thoughts clothes> google search  leads to http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/23a:Thought - so probably bugfixing clothes will result in return of this thoughts

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 14, 2012, 08:47:47 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 13, 2012, 12:57:43 am

Quote from: monk12 on March 12, 2012, 10:00:40 pm

First tame exotics, and now clothing bugs. If workshop clutter is next, I'll suspect Toady is just working down my personal wishlist.

I think he's basing his priorities pretty heavily on this poll: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94802.msg2684472 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94802.msg2684472)

I think that it is quite likely - as he fixed the next bug from this list ("0000231: Body parts from large creatures (bones, meat, leather, tusks, etc) slow workshops down due to clutter").

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on March 14, 2012, 09:27:54 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 13, 2012, 11:57:33 am

Quote from: Quatch on March 13, 2012, 09:11:31 am

Quote from: Toady One

So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children

Is it the mother or father's training status passed on, or some amalgam of both?

I think the key part to that would be here:

Quote from: Toady One

The word "trained" is somewhat weird that way.  It doesn't refer to how many tricks the animal knows, but more how acclimated it is to dwarven life.

I think "trained" in this case is referring more towards "domestication", except that there is a definition conflict, since "domestic" already means fully domesticated. 

I was using "trained" as thats what toady used to describe it in the sentence. Either way you read it though, the question stands. Where is the inheritance from?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yobgod on March 14, 2012, 10:52:30 am

Quote

I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

No. Absolutely the opposite. If I'm in proper rogue/nethack mode, letters become creatures. But if I'm in a visual sprite mode an N looks *extremely* wrong and jarring.
Flipping between two images keeps the same "mode" engaged, while flipping between an image and a letter makes me want to claw out my eyes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2012, 10:55:25 am

Quote from: Yobgod on March 14, 2012, 10:52:30 am

Quote

I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

No. Absolutely the opposite. If I'm in proper rogue/nethack mode, letters become creatures. But if I'm in a visual sprite mode an N looks *extremely* wrong and jarring.
Flipping between two images keeps the same "mode" engaged, while flipping between an image and a letter makes me want to claw out my eyes.

I disagree, but that's what options are for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 14, 2012, 10:55:38 am

Quote from: Yobgod on March 14, 2012, 10:52:30 am

Quote

I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

No. Absolutely the opposite. If I'm in proper rogue/nethack mode, letters become creatures. But if I'm in a visual sprite mode an N looks *extremely* wrong and jarring.
Flipping between two images keeps the same "mode" engaged, while flipping between an image and a letter makes me want to claw out my eyes.

It is sort of why I hope that when full graphical support exists... that the people making the sets have the ability to turn off flashing (possibly just by replacing the sprite period)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 14, 2012, 11:04:59 am

Quote from: NTJedi on March 13, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Any recent plans coming to include the *improved sieges* from the development page?   If I could only add only one thing to dwarf fortress it would be to improve the sieges so the goblins can actually have a chance during mid_game and late_game.

The next seven near term releases are already on the dev page.

But there are a few things on the list that will be used for Improved Sieges whenever it gets done.

Release 2: Schedules ~ I suspect that this we'll be used for when Gobbo or any siegers will go and siegers you. From what I can recall, mediveal sieges happen after planting crops, where the peasant workforce was idle in part.

Release 4: Merchants moving around from place to place during play.  ~ This I'll be will be setting the frame work for Armies to move around the world map during  play. Since one of Toady goal is for Sieges to be drawn from actual populations, and for Adventurers to come across roving armies and or travel with them.

Release 7: Combat move/speed split - Mounted combat rewrite and related changes ~ Obvious, right?

Release 8: Personality and needs rewrite ~ This one major goal, from a question answered from Toady, is to get NPC among the countries reasons to go to war, and for villains to spring up more naturally. (And for inter dwarf fortress criminals!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: idgarad on March 14, 2012, 11:13:43 am

Quote from: bombzero on March 13, 2012, 02:24:41 am

Quote from: Japa on March 13, 2012, 02:23:00 am

Quote

When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Yay! 64bit!

So I'll be able to use all 24 gigs of my work comp for worldgen.

..... 24GB? what... why... how... where... when???
that's a bit excessive.

Excessive? My laptop has 16 and two of my desktops have 32. 24GB of ram is meh.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139930 is only $220.00 and that if for ECC. Non-ECC gets even cheaper for desktops.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 14, 2012, 11:19:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on March 13, 2012, 11:44:21 pm

Well, it was in the game back in 40d- it was gutted in 2010 with the Health Care overhaul. It's a bug in the sense the Dungeon Master was a bug- useful functionality, but outdated and long enough out of the game that it's more likely to be replaced by a new feature than really "fixed."

Really? I could swear that animal caretaking's never done anything since I started playing the game (shortly after the 3D update). Maybe I'm wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2012, 11:31:53 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 14, 2012, 11:19:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on March 13, 2012, 11:44:21 pm

Well, it was in the game back in 40d- it was gutted in 2010 with the Health Care overhaul. It's a bug in the sense the Dungeon Master was a bug- useful functionality, but outdated and long enough out of the game that it's more likely to be replaced by a new feature than really "fixed."

Really? I could swear that animal caretaking's never done anything since I started playing the game (shortly after the 3D update). Maybe I'm wrong.

It was functional in 40d (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Animal_caretaker) in the sense that dwarves would gain the skill by having injured animals assigned to them.  AFAIK it didn't impact healing rates or anything though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 14, 2012, 11:32:08 am

And here I am using 2GB to test high-end industrial software...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 14, 2012, 12:00:06 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 14, 2012, 11:04:59 am

Release 2: Schedules ~ I suspect that this we'll be used for when Gobbo or any siegers will go and siegers you. From what I can recall, mediveal sieges happen after planting crops, where the peasant workforce was idle in part.

That makes sense for humans, but not for goblins.  Goblins don't farm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on March 14, 2012, 12:26:03 pm

Bit late, but Raw answerite! Praise the Toad!

Sort of like Watsst's Q, but more general: If a trained creature completely reverts back to a wild state, is it then functionally-identical to a standard wild critter who's never known life in a fortress? If I leave it outside, will it wander around normally and eventually leave the map? Is it marked as no longer being a member of your fort for trap/kill order purposes?

Relatedly, what sort of AI do semi-wild critters use? How do they decide when/at whom/how often they lash out? (I'm guessing it works similarly to how stray animals start to snap at people when they're feeling crowded -- albeit obviously in a much-shorter time frame -- but I don't really have any evidence to back that hunch up.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on March 14, 2012, 01:27:43 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 14, 2012, 08:19:54 am

Quote from: rawrcakes on March 14, 2012, 05:06:23 am

In relation to dwarves replacing old and broken clothing - is there any plan to "incentivise" players to have a functioning clothing industry through, for example, giving negative throughts in Fortress mode to dwarves with worn / broken clothing (or being naked altogether)? In the same thread of thought, do you intend on giving good thoughts to dwarves if their clothes are well-made, or new?

<magmawiki thoughts clothes> google search  leads to http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/23a:Thought - so probably bugfixing clothes will result in return of this thoughts

Looking back in the dev logs, Toady "turned off clothing rot thoughts (until Bug 323 fix)" on 02/12/2008 (3 days before the release of version 0.27.176.38a), where Bug 323 was "[dwarf mode][jobs][equipment] dwarves put their new clothing on over their old damaged clothing, in many many layers" (possibly related to the Dungeon Master wearing a dozen cloaks?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Stromko on March 14, 2012, 02:02:52 pm

Will Dwarves in cold biomes want to bundle up with multiple layers of clothing (up to the layering limit, naturally), and Dwarves in hot climates will claim less clothes?

I realize this wouldn't matter once they go underground, but it could be a big feature for anyone wanting to build an above-ground fortress with temperature turned on in extreme climates. I seem to recall, at least a few versions ago last I tried it, that dwarves in very cold climates could be injured by the cold.

If dwarves don't get hurt by extreme biome temperatures, then I wouldn't think there's much need for this feature now. It'd be a tricky thing to implement (if your dwarves strip every time they enter or leave your fortress because the outside has a much different temp than underground, it could be a hassle), and personally I'd just as soon have faster-running forts rather than perfect immersion right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nomad_delta on March 14, 2012, 03:33:06 pm

hooooorraayyyyyy! Clothing Bug(s) are going to be fixed? I'm doing a little happy dance!  You can't see it, but it's happening right now.  I hereby pledge to hit the Donation page with a vengeance upon the release of this bug fix.

Quote from: Stromko on March 14, 2012, 02:02:52 pm

Will Dwarves in cold biomes want to bundle up with multiple layers of clothing (up to the layering limit, naturally), and Dwarves in hot climates will claim less clothes?

I agree, it would be awesome for the civilian dwarves to automatically try to claim clothing appropriate to the climate.

Another thought I've had for a while is that it might be nice to be able to designate a standard "Civilian Uniform" that all of your non-military (and perhaps non-noble) dwarves would attempt to wear.

This might be especially useful for the new Evil environments with caustic/deadly Rain and other such environmental effects.  Perhaps if you're in an area with dangerous rain you might deck out all of your civvies with head-to-toe leather rain slicker gear, cloaks and hoods and all that to help protect them from the burning rain?

Another thought I had is that it would be nice for dwarves to get Happy Thoughts from wearing better quality / more valuable clothing.  I think right now they just get Unhappy Thoughts when they're forced to wear xTatteredx clothing?  Adding happiness for better quality (and perhaps better decorated) clothing would add a gameplay reason for running a solid Clothing industry, and since clothes do wear out eventually you'd need to keep making more over time.  Perhaps Nobles would demand exceptionally fancy clothes with fancy decorations?

anyway, I am super excited about this release! THANKS TOADY!

--nomad_delta

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 14, 2012, 04:05:39 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 14, 2012, 03:10:56 am

that is not modders 'fixing' anything, its them outright removing a feature. toady is fixing something outright broken that can't be fixed by modders.

may not make much sense to you personally, but you are someone who knows how to mod the game, or wants to download mods. Toady is trying to make vanilla DF something someone can download and play, without mods, and without modding something themselves. therefore, the clothing issue IS a serious bug, has nothing to do with what modders can or can't fix.

(toady also usually fixes them in the source code itself, not the Raws, much cleaner, and often better.)

Thanks for stating the obvious, I guess? You really seem to have a compulsive need to reply to everything, my friend.


I'm just asking that, when faced between fixing two equally serious bugs, he picks the one that cannot be worked around by fiddling with the raws. It won't hurt those who don't use mods, and for those who do, the game will become hassle-free sooner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mike Mayday on March 14, 2012, 04:33:58 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 14, 2012, 10:55:25 am

Quote from: Yobgod on March 14, 2012, 10:52:30 am

Quote

I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

No. Absolutely the opposite. If I'm in proper rogue/nethack mode, letters become creatures. But if I'm in a visual sprite mode an N looks *extremely* wrong and jarring.
Flipping between two images keeps the same "mode" engaged, while flipping between an image and a letter makes me want to claw out my eyes.

I disagree, but that's what options are for.

but... I don't get it
what's the point in making it flash AT ALL if it's already showing a zombie graphic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 14, 2012, 04:44:13 pm

I could really go for replacing the flash with simply changing the tile/tile color/tile flash color.

When you finally get 200 zombies in your horde, then you realize that half the screen is taken up with blinking, flashing zombies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 14, 2012, 04:47:55 pm

Quote from: isitanos on March 14, 2012, 04:05:39 pm

Thanks for stating the obvious, I guess? You really seem to have a compulsive need to reply to everything, my friend.


I'm just asking that, when faced between fixing two equally serious bugs, he picks the one that cannot be worked around by fiddling with the raws. It won't hurt those who don't use mods, and for those who do, the game will become hassle-free sooner.

ah, sorry, i assumed you were another person going "well i can fix it, that person can fix it, so who cares about the other 10%. its a bit hard to imply inflections on sentences over the internet aint it  :P

anyways, to refine what i was saying, the issue is that the current clothing bug wrecks fps somewhere around year 2, and renders an entire fortress industry worthless.
so the clothing bug is actually very serious depending how long your fort lasts, while some other ones are excusable atm, due to not wrecking the game.

though from the looks of recent releases id say that Toady may be going by the 'Worst bug poll' on the forums, combined with his own opinions.
(Toady probably plays vanilla DF i assume, so id be willing to bet he fixes what bothers him and interrupts his game, while still considering what bothers us.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 14, 2012, 05:08:25 pm

Modders never fixed the clothing bug, they just removed clothes from the game. Toady is putting a feature back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 14, 2012, 05:10:55 pm

^this.

also, im glad that toady is fixing the fort crippling bugs, as im not 100% fond of naked dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 14, 2012, 05:31:42 pm

Quote from: Mike Mayday on March 14, 2012, 04:33:58 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 14, 2012, 10:55:25 am

Quote from: Yobgod on March 14, 2012, 10:52:30 am

Quote

I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.

No. Absolutely the opposite. If I'm in proper rogue/nethack mode, letters become creatures. But if I'm in a visual sprite mode an N looks *extremely* wrong and jarring.
Flipping between two images keeps the same "mode" engaged, while flipping between an image and a letter makes me want to claw out my eyes.

I disagree, but that's what options are for.

but... I don't get it
what's the point in making it flash AT ALL if it's already showing a zombie graphic?

For clarity, it's entirely possible to have a zombie graphic for all races. 

What the hard-coding of the flashing tile does is force the flashing between the specific zombie-of-that-race tile, and a generic undead tile. 

So, even without flashing, we can see things like this:
(http://i39.tinypic.com/34g1uee.png)
Which can be easily recognized as zombies without having to flash to some other tile.

It's getting more and more the case, what with several hundred types of creatures all loaded onto the same letters, that graphics are actually getting much easier to recognize creatures than having to guess whether "s" means rattlesnake, rattlesnake man, copperhead snake, copperhead snake man, slug man, snail man, sparrow man, skunk, skunk man, satyr, siamang, strangler, helmet snake, giant sponge, sponge man, frill shark, squid man, spiny dogfish, and maybe some other things I didn't get in a quick browsing.  (And yes, there are color variations, but most of those are either gray or brown, anyway.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on March 14, 2012, 05:32:43 pm

The BugTracker report:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=231 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=231)
says that Toady fixed the workshop clutter bug.
But he didn't leave any notes so I wonder how he dealt with it, whether body parts cause less clutter now, or the item being currently worked on won't cause cluttler, or whatever other way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 14, 2012, 06:25:27 pm

Quote from: nomad_delta on March 14, 2012, 03:33:06 pm

Another thought I've had for a while is that it might be nice to be able to designate a standard "Civilian Uniform" that all of your non-military (and perhaps non-noble) dwarves would attempt to wear.

This... OH THIS!!     ▲ This! ▲
It would use an existing system and would allow quick changes to an arbitrary amount of dwarves!

Suggestions for Toady:
- Allow civilians to be assigned a uniform in the military screen. I'm sure that they are easy to 'target' by the game from there, because from that screen you can already order a specific order just for civilians, and such.
- Can the uniforms be unhardcoded? And put into a raw form like worldgen profiles and embark profiles?

I'm jealous that you can dress them and undress them with a button!

Quote from: Toady

I've got a basic new clothing claimer-putter-onner function up, and I'm just tormenting my dwarves with various debugging.  Buttons to take their clothes off and <snip>

Yes I know that this is not a bug, but has been mentioned about as frequently, AND could be an additional step in taking away the very relevant clothing headaches.

How much work are these two?

P.S. I also did a danse, but then it started raining outside. Did I do a wrong one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 14, 2012, 08:06:13 pm

I can't wait to make all my civilians wear togas.

Still... I don't suppose that dwarves with clothing prefrences might buy and wear other clothes as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 14, 2012, 08:22:05 pm

The DF community : as thrilled at the prospect of necromancy and lycanthropy as about being able to play dolls with psychotic dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 14, 2012, 08:24:34 pm

Quote from: Dae on March 14, 2012, 08:22:05 pm

The DF community : as thrilled at the prospect of necromancy and lycanthropy as about being able to play dolls with psychotic dwarves.

concerning aint it? just lay back, close your eyes, bite your lip, and EMBRACE THE MADNESS

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on March 14, 2012, 08:33:20 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 14, 2012, 05:08:25 pm

Modders never fixed the clothing bug, they just removed clothes from the game. Toady is putting a feature back.

Nobody is saying that modders fixed the clothing bug.  You and bombzero are misreading what isitanos said.

Quote from: Dae on March 14, 2012, 08:22:05 pm

The DF community : as thrilled at the prospect of necromancy and lycanthropy as about being able to play dolls with psychotic dwarves.

More like thrilled that they don't have to deal with a fortress filled with nekkid dwarves and dwarf soldiers that won't wear their uniforms properly.   ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on March 14, 2012, 08:35:34 pm

For zombies and the like I can see why toady wouldn't give each creature a unique skeleton and zombie designation for tilesets. However could this be what makes the case for switching to tilesets?

I know toady has said he wasn't too keen due to concerns about maintaining an artist throughout the development of the game, but, he could create crude group icons for each type of creature (fish, animals, underground monsters, etc) while making it possible for each creature to have their own icons and then leave that to the modding community.

It's already at the stage where if you're using vanilla you'll usually have to examine a creature tile in order to work out what it is, so even in vanilla this shouldn't change too much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 14, 2012, 09:08:36 pm

i know the standard-letters are just images of letters instead of a real font, but can anyone tell me why he isnt just using different fonts to differentiate a goat-g from goblin-g at first glance? there are tons of fonts which all look kinda different. one could even go as far as using fonts for categories, such as "all fish use this font, all birds use that other one" and in case there are several birds with the same letter: there are fonts which look nearly the same except for some small detail. i already love how capital letters are used for something big and small ones for the small to normal sized variants, there could even be more variation on that by using bold letters too, so there could be 4 different size-categories using small/capital + not-bold/bold alone.
again the main question: does anyone know whether toady ever said something on the matter of fonts?(anyone got any quotes?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 14, 2012, 09:18:59 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 14, 2012, 09:08:36 pm

i know the standard-letters are just images of letters instead of a real font, but can anyone tell me why he isnt just using different fonts to differentiate a goat-g from goblin-g at first glance? there are tons of fonts which all look kinda different. one could even go as far as using fonts for categories, such as "all fish use this font, all birds use that other one" and in case there are several birds with the same letter: there are fonts which look nearly the same except for some small detail. i already love how capital letters are used for something big and small ones for the small to normal sized variants, there could even be more variation on that by using bold letters too, so there could be 4 different size-categories using small/capital + not-bold/bold alone.
again the main question: does anyone know whether toady ever said something on the matter of fonts?(anyone got any quotes?)

Actually, I saw someone make a request on the mod forum about a graphical tileset that actually was something like that... For example, instead of having a tileset where you have a picture of a goblin, you have a "g" with pointy green ears on it.  An "s" that represented a snake has a forked tongue coming out of one end, and an "s" that is a snail looks something like the top half of the "s" is a shell sitting on top of the bottom half. 

Apparently, there are tilesets like that for NetHack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 14, 2012, 09:46:40 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 14, 2012, 09:18:59 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 14, 2012, 09:08:36 pm

<snipping my own jabbering>

Actually, I saw someone make a request on the mod forum about a graphical tileset that actually was something like that... For example, instead of having a tileset where you have a picture of a goblin, you have a "g" with pointy green ears on it.  An "s" that represented a snake has a forked tongue coming out of one end, and an "s" that is a snail looks something like the top half of the "s" is a shell sitting on top of the bottom half. 

Apparently, there are tilesets like that for NetHack.

well, this is certainly interesting, since it avoids the problem all picture-tilesets have: they are inevitably incredibly ugly(for me, they all lie in the uncanny valley, among other inevitable problems). but as long as there is no real font for something like that there will always remain the problem of reverting back to the old problems when playing in text-mode.

edit, before someone can answer: also defining something like "use this font for reptiles and this one for amphibians and..." in the init-file would be way more flexible and would require less work to keep up to date than having to add little details all the time a letter is used again: just by combining different fonts with the basic colours one gets such a large amount of differentiation-options...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:07:23 am

I'm pretty new to the game, and I don't really want to look through 45 pages to find one specific tidbit of information so I'll just ask; Are there any known plans to change the way vampires play? Either by making it so you don't get one with every migrant wave, or adding a vampire hunter noble position or anything, really.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

Quote from: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:07:23 am

I'm pretty new to the game, and I don't really want to look through 45 pages to find one specific tidbit of information so I'll just ask; Are there any known plans to change the way vampires play? Either by making it so you don't get one with every migrant wave, or adding a vampire hunter noble position or anything, really.

OK, I could totally see some kind of Justice screen thing that watches for vampires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:20:17 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

OK, I could totally see some kind of Justice screen thing that watches for vampires.

Yeah, It's not that I want them removed, but I would like some way of preventing four of them running around offing my legendary warriors without any witnesses despite them sleeping in a giant common dormitory (how!?), WITHOUT having to comb through 150+ profiles looking for people with no thoughts about food or drink.

I did notice that you can find most of them pretty quickly by checking who the game claims to be the most suitable for mayor :D.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 15, 2012, 12:38:02 am

Quote from: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:20:17 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

OK, I could totally see some kind of Justice screen thing that watches for vampires.

Yeah, It's not that I want them removed, but I would like some way of preventing four of them running around offing my legendary warriors without any witnesses despite them sleeping in a giant common dormitory (how!?), WITHOUT having to comb through 150+ profiles looking for people with no thoughts about food or drink.

I did notice that you can find most of them pretty quickly by checking who the game claims to be the most suitable for mayor :D.

If they're all asleep who is gonna see? Gotta be awake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:40:31 am

Once, sure. But 8 times? Weird thing is the FIRST vampire I got was caught instantly. And when i accidentally let him out, he got caught again. Twice. But the other four were apparently ninjas as well as vampires... :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 15, 2012, 02:21:01 am

df_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_instruction.txt anddf_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_art.txt are (rather short) listings of hardcoded types of titles. Is it helpful to suggest a new ones (maybe based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_century )?  (I define helpful  as "there is a chance that list like this will be used"). Note: this is not a suggestion but question whatever suggestion will be useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Nice list! I have to add "Codex [PHRASE]" and "Codex [NAME]" now. You'd get stuff like Codex Berevement or Codex Flying Wool.

Maybe also "The [ADJ] book of [NAME]"

Hmmm...

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

Here's a great example of a name, rendered in English as the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea and the old prostitute Celestina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Celestina). I guess that's basically "The [PHRASE] of [NAME] and [NAME] and the [NOUN] of the [NAME]". I'm not sure the parser would like that...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 03:04:09 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Here's a great example of a name, rendered in English as the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea and the old prostitute Celestina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Celestina). I guess that's basically "The [PHRASE] of [NAME] and [NAME] and the [NOUN] of the [NAME]". I'm not sure the parser would like that...

putting that in would make the parser attempt to kill you, probably unsuccessfully, but damn would it try.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on March 15, 2012, 03:40:01 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 15, 2012, 02:21:01 am

df_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_instruction.txt anddf_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_art.txt are (rather short) listings of hardcoded types of titles. Is it helpful to suggest a new ones (maybe based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_century )  (I define helpful  as "there is a chance that list like this will be used"). Note: this is not a suggestion but question whatever suggestion will be useful

OMG! If that isn't a suggestion than I rather not think what's next from You. You didn't even bother with the question mark dude. Now who are you kidding anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 15, 2012, 06:48:47 am

Quote from: Rip0k on March 15, 2012, 03:40:01 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 15, 2012, 02:21:01 am

df_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_instruction.txt anddf_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_art.txt are (rather short) listings of hardcoded types of titles. Is it helpful to suggest a new ones (maybe based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_century )  (I define helpful  as "there is a chance that list like this will be used"). Note: this is not a suggestion but question whatever suggestion will be useful

OMG! If that isn't a suggestion than I rather not think what's next from You. You didn't even bother with the question mark dude. Now who are you kidding anyway?

The question mark is implied by "Is it helpful", which cannot exist in a non-interrogative statement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2012, 08:46:22 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME].

I think NO_ART_NAME just means that the names of works of art are excluded. 

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

Generally Toady doesn't add functionality that isn't used in vanilla:

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

I haven't done more than I needed for most of the tags.  It's something that is going to grow over time, but I could only bite off so much at once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spiderking50 on March 15, 2012, 09:17:32 am

I know someone probably already said this, but i can't go crawling through 40+ pages looking for it, but is there a general idea/schedule for when the next release is released?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on March 15, 2012, 09:26:57 am

34.05 came out less than two weeks ago. 34.06 will probably be out within a month, but the fact is, we don't know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spiderking50 on March 15, 2012, 10:32:07 am

That's what i thought, i'm in no rush. I'm still exploring all the changes from the last release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on March 15, 2012, 11:57:24 am

Quote from: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:07:23 am

I'm pretty new to the game, and I don't really want to look through 45 pages to find one specific tidbit of information so I'll just ask; Are there any known plans to change the way vampires play? Either by making it so you don't get one with every migrant wave, or adding a vampire hunter noble position or anything, really.

From Toady's last post in this thread:

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador

Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?

Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.

Like bogeymen, I imagine it'll be reduced as we add more stuff.

I like your "vampire hunter" idea though.   :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 15, 2012, 12:09:19 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Nice list! I have to add "Codex [PHRASE]" and "Codex [NAME]" now. You'd get stuff like Codex Berevement or Codex Flying Wool.

Maybe also "The [ADJ] book of [NAME]"

Hmmm...

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

Here's a great example of a name, rendered in English as the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea and the old prostitute Celestina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Celestina). I guess that's basically "The [PHRASE] of [NAME] and [NAME] and the [NOUN] of the [NAME]". I'm not sure the parser would like that...

I made a title:
[NAME]: From [ADJ] [NOUN] to [ADJ] [NOUN]
Which give such gems as:
The Dwarf: From Dreamy Cheeses to Charcoal Top (Dreamy Cheeses... sometimes I wonder if the game itself is aware of the community surrounding it.)
The Elf: From Poetic Serpents to Velvety Tightness
Dearthboot: From Short Father to Squeezing Wraths
The Dwarf: From Circumstantial Order to Depressed Chamber (Sounds like someone got atom smashed)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 15, 2012, 12:38:51 pm

Quote from: HiEv on March 15, 2012, 11:57:24 am

Quote from: Rockbird on March 15, 2012, 12:07:23 am

I'm pretty new to the game, and I don't really want to look through 45 pages to find one specific tidbit of information so I'll just ask; Are there any known plans to change the way vampires play? Either by making it so you don't get one with every migrant wave, or adding a vampire hunter noble position or anything, really.

From Toady's last post in this thread:

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador

Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?

Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.

Like bogeymen, I imagine it'll be reduced as we add more stuff.

I like your "vampire hunter" idea though.   :)

As Toady doesn't like hard limits, vampires should usually avoid a fortress famed for identifying and killing vampires. The game already does this with normal migrants.
Ideally, a single vampire in a fortress shouldn't attract your attention unless you were always looking at the health screen for "pale" dwarves.  Single vampires would almost never kill - they would drain dwarves until they were at pale status and leave. But if you got a second vampire, and if it drained a "pale" dwarf, then that dwarf would be killed and the player would know for sure that there were vampires acting in that fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 15, 2012, 12:41:09 pm

Hummm.... I feel a bit like an outsider now. Can someone clarify why the green type is used? My extrapolated guess is that these are aimed directly at Toady as opposed at the others, but I'd rather be sure!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2012, 12:43:02 pm

Quote from: Elone on March 15, 2012, 12:41:09 pm

Hummm.... I feel a bit like an outsider now. Can someone clarify why the green type is used? My extrapolated guess is that these are aimed directly at Toady as opposed at the others, but I'd rather be sure!

It's in the first post of this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 15, 2012, 12:48:51 pm

But I've read the first post!

Oh... I checked again... how did I miss that? Thank you for a speedy response!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 02:52:24 pm

Hi,

I've searched this thread for "threaded", "threads", "multi", "core(s)" but to my big surprise couldn't find what I was almost certain must have been asked before:

Are there any plans at all to make the game engine multi-threaded?

For me personally, this seems to be quite a crucial feature to have in the long run, for obvious reasons:

1. the game already slows down a lot on a not so slow CPU like my C2D running at 3.3 GHz when the number of dwarfs reaches about 100 (I'll admit that that was a major reason of frustration for me after having played several long games last year)
2. there are constantly added new features to the game (which is great!) which are likely to further increase the strain on the CPU for a given number of dwarfs
3. given the nature of the game, there have to be lots of possibilities for parallelism (however not having a lot of practical experience with that, I acknowledge that it may be a lot of work to get it implemented)
4. single-threaded CPU performance is bound to increase at much lower rates whereas the number of cores/threads is still growing quite rapidly (of course a modern CPU with turbo boost technology probably makes quite a difference, but I regard that only as a bridging technology, as do the CPU manufacturers afaik)

If I overlooked a discussion at another place in this form, please direct me to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 02:55:00 pm

Quote from: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 02:52:24 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hi,

I've searched this thread for "threaded", "threads", "multi", "core(s)" but to my big surprise couldn't find what I was almost certain must have been asked before:

Are there any plans at all to make the game engine multi-threaded?

For me personally, this seems to be quite a crucial feature to have in the long run, for obvious reasons:

1. the game already slows down a lot on a not so slow CPU like my C2D running at 3.3 GHz when the number of dwarfs reaches about 100 (I'll admit that that was a major reason of frustration for me after having played several long games last year)
2. there are constantly added new features to the game (which is great!) which are likely to further increase the strain on the CPU for a given number of dwarfs
3. given the nature of the game, there have to be lots of possibilities for parallelism (however not having a lot of practical experience with that, I acknowledge that it may be a lot of work to get it implemented)
4. single-threaded CPU performance is bound to increase at much lower rates whereas the number of cores/threads is still growing quite rapidly (of course a modern CPU with turbo boost technology probably makes quite a difference, but I regard that only as a bridging technology, as do the CPU manufacturers afaik)

If I overlooked a discussion at another place in this form, please direct me to it.

I think this should instead be taken as a sign that our search feature must really suck... one moment.


ESV (eternal suggestion voting) item number 14 atm. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php)
go ahead and vote for it.

(there saved you some trouble footkerchief.  :P)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2012, 03:02:15 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 02:55:00 pm

I think this should instead be taken as a sign that our search feature must really suck... one moment.

Only until you know how to use it (at which point it still kinda sucks due to the lack of substring search and logical operators, but hey).  This thread doesn't mention threading because it's a relatively new FotF thread and threading has been discussed to death in other threads.  Searching the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=YWR2YW5jZWR8J3wxfCJ8YnJkfCd8NXwifHNob3dfY29tcGxldGV8J3x8InxzdWJqZWN0X29ubHl8J3x8Inxzb3J0X2RpcnwnfGRlc2N8Inxzb3J0fCd8cmVsZXZhbmNlfCJ8c2VhcmNofCd8) is a much better approach.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 03:03:46 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 02:55:00 pm

Quote from: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 02:52:24 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hi,

I've searched this thread for "threaded", "threads", "multi", "core(s)" but to my big surprise couldn't find what I was almost certain must have been asked before:

Are there any plans at all to make the game engine multi-threaded?

For me personally, this seems to be quite a crucial feature to have in the long run, for obvious reasons:

1. the game already slows down a lot on a not so slow CPU like my C2D running at 3.3 GHz when the number of dwarfs reaches about 100 (I'll admit that that was a major reason of frustration for me after having played several long games last year)
2. there are constantly added new features to the game (which is great!) which are likely to further increase the strain on the CPU for a given number of dwarfs
3. given the nature of the game, there have to be lots of possibilities for parallelism (however not having a lot of practical experience with that, I acknowledge that it may be a lot of work to get it implemented)
4. single-threaded CPU performance is bound to increase at much lower rates whereas the number of cores/threads is still growing quite rapidly (of course a modern CPU with turbo boost technology probably makes quite a difference, but I regard that only as a bridging technology, as do the CPU manufacturers afaik)

If I overlooked a discussion at another place in this form, please direct me to it.

I think this should instead be taken as a sign that our search feature must really suck... one moment.


ESV (eternal suggestion voting) item number 14 atm. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php)
go ahead and vote for it.

(there saved you some trouble footkerchief.  :P)

Thank you, headed straight over there. :) I should say that I only searched this thread (Future of the Fortress) for those keywords as I thought this is the central place for suggestions, so I wouldn't necessarily blame the search feature. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 15, 2012, 03:32:17 pm

The clothing attention seems to be a big highlight of this update. That too improves the FPS. We waited many years for it, let it finish please XD

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 15, 2012, 03:50:45 pm

Quote from: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 03:03:46 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 02:55:00 pm

Quote from: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 02:52:24 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hi,

I've searched this thread for "threaded", "threads", "multi", "core(s)" but to my big surprise couldn't find what I was almost certain must have been asked before:

Are there any plans at all to make the game engine multi-threaded?

For me personally, this seems to be quite a crucial feature to have in the long run, for obvious reasons:

1. the game already slows down a lot on a not so slow CPU like my C2D running at 3.3 GHz when the number of dwarfs reaches about 100 (I'll admit that that was a major reason of frustration for me after having played several long games last year)
2. there are constantly added new features to the game (which is great!) which are likely to further increase the strain on the CPU for a given number of dwarfs
3. given the nature of the game, there have to be lots of possibilities for parallelism (however not having a lot of practical experience with that, I acknowledge that it may be a lot of work to get it implemented)
4. single-threaded CPU performance is bound to increase at much lower rates whereas the number of cores/threads is still growing quite rapidly (of course a modern CPU with turbo boost technology probably makes quite a difference, but I regard that only as a bridging technology, as do the CPU manufacturers afaik)

If I overlooked a discussion at another place in this form, please direct me to it.

I think this should instead be taken as a sign that our search feature must really suck... one moment.


ESV (eternal suggestion voting) item number 14 atm. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php)
go ahead and vote for it.

(there saved you some trouble footkerchief.  :P)

Thank you, headed straight over there. :) I should say that I only searched this thread (Future of the Fortress) for those keywords as I thought this is the central place for suggestions, so I wouldn't necessarily blame the search feature. ;)

The name is a bit misleading, but this thread is to discuss current developments and asking Toady about them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 15, 2012, 03:58:02 pm

@multithreading

At the risk of contributing to another pages-long angry debate about mutithreading, I would just like to add my two cents on the issue:  (note: the following is just an opinion)

Specifically, unless you are running a small set of completely independent things, multithreading is a lot of work to get right, and in general forcing multithreading into problems that don't lend themselves easily to task division is dangerous, and overall just bad programming practice, because you can actually end up slowing your program down if the tasks aren't large/separable enough. 

In general, wherever possible, a good programmer should try to improve their algorithms, as opposed to relying on hardware growth as a crutch.  If you don't believe me, take a look at the pathing costs in the algorithms compared here (http://niseg.moshela.com/test_maze.html?maze).  Typically, for similar amounts of effort, you'll make much greater gains by trying to compute things in a clever way than trying to multithread them.  Only when you're certain that you've made all possible algorithmic improvements, and things are still too slow should you start appealing to multithreading as a last resort. 

@BACK ON TOPIC:

I am super excited about the opportunity to clothe my dwarves.  I typically turn migration off early and run very long forts which have lots of children, all of whom invariably end up running around in the buff claiming every discarded sock on the ground but never doing anything with them, well into their adult years. 

Not to mention any ulterior motives I might have for wanting to see dwarven clothing bugs fixed...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runiq on March 15, 2012, 04:06:51 pm

Quote from: TallDwarf77 on March 15, 2012, 03:03:46 pm

Hi,

I've searched this thread for "threaded", "threads", "multi", "core(s)" but to my big surprise couldn't find what I was almost certain must have been asked before:

Quote from: bombzero on March 15, 2012, 02:55:00 pm

…

Thank you, headed straight over there. :) I should say that I only searched this thread (Future of the Fortress) for those keywords as I thought this is the central place for suggestions, so I wouldn't necessarily blame the search feature. ;)

You can also use google to search certain sites, like this:

Code: [Select]

site:bay12forums.com threaded threads multi core
Sometimes nets you much better results.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spiderking50 on March 15, 2012, 05:11:45 pm

Ummm for those of us who are uninformed, what is multi-threading in the first place?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2012, 05:21:34 pm

Quote from: Spiderking50 on March 15, 2012, 05:11:45 pm

Ummm for those of us who are uninformed, what is multi-threading in the first place?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_%28computer_science%29#Multithreading

In layman's terms, breaking a program into smaller subprograms that can run at the same time.  Single-threaded programs can only make use of one core (or core's worth) of processing power, multi-threaded programs can make use of more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 15, 2012, 05:26:31 pm

Quote from: Spiderking50 on March 15, 2012, 05:11:45 pm

Ummm for those of us who are uninformed, what is multi-threading in the first place?

Multi-threading is the method whereby a large calculation can be run simultaneously rather than sequentially.  It has mostly come up in personal computer since processors started going multi-core rather than fast single core.  It allows a programmer to say things like "I want these 10 things to be calculated, but they don't need to be done in order".  However, most programmers, including the Great Toad, have not learned how to do those sorts of things efficiently.  The other problem is that multi-threading introduces a whole new host of bugs even if done effectively.  So while there are a couple places where multi-threading might make Dwarf Fortress faster, for the most part it would just introduce a year or two long wait while Toady switched his current code to multi-threaded code for small FPS gains and LOTS more bugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on March 15, 2012, 05:34:13 pm

I hate multicores. :(

I have a superfast single core, yet all current commercial games have multicore a a prerequisite, so I can't run them at all.
Not much of a loss, in my esteem, but I would have liked to sample some of the current crap that is being produced.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

actually it is a trend: I tend to buy games that my system cannot run and play them years later. Happened with Elite First Encounters. Now with The Witcher.

Love simple games that do not require excessive resources.
Love the sockfixes. :D
Love indie games in development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 15, 2012, 05:39:17 pm

Spoiler: offtopic (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Areyar on March 15, 2012, 05:34:13 pm

all current commercial games have multicore a a prerequisite, so I can't run them at all.

Any multithreaded program can run on single core.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 15, 2012, 07:55:28 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 15, 2012, 05:39:17 pm

Spoiler: offtopic (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Areyar on March 15, 2012, 05:34:13 pm

all current commercial games have multicore a a prerequisite, so I can't run them at all.

Any multithreaded program can run on single core.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But depending on how much of the games' graphics are handed off the to processor instead of the GPU, some games may run terribly even on a good single-core processor. Red Orchestra 2, for example, places a ton of graphics processing on the processor, whereas Battlefield 3 places it on the GPU.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on March 15, 2012, 10:12:19 pm

Looks like it'll be time to test a cauldron's effectiveness in a full-scale war between humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 10:13:53 pm

Hexaped dwarves will inhabit my nightmares now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 15, 2012, 10:20:33 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 10:13:53 pm

Hexaped dwarves will inhabit my nightmares now.

In my mind's eye, I can see them, clinging to the ceiling, fiddling with their strangely shaped slippers so that their approach will be silent, adjusting spiked gauntlets to deliver a killing blow with the first strike...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 16, 2012, 12:02:13 am

Somehow, I doubt this will help with things like serpentine creatures that wear pants, though, which is a more complex problem of not having a way to define clothing to only fit certain types of body parts.

I also came across elven bandits living in the sewers of a naga city wearing tail warmers, so this won't help modding in any cases but those that just add multiple "standard" limbs onto creatures.

If, for example, you have a four-armed crab creature with a pair of claw-hands and opposable thumb hands, as well as multiple legs, you still aren't able to define things for clothing except by the GRASP and STANCE tokens, and if you give claw-hands GRASP, you wind up with gloves on your claws.

---

EDIT:
Also, consider a creature with multiple pairs of arms, with one set of arms several times larger than the others - a pair of gloves made by this creature's race will fit all their hands in exactly the same way.

Consider also that some mods create castes with wildly different creature types and sizes.  One mod I saw recently had a female that was several times the size of the male version of the race, and they both wear the same sized clothing.

Then there's the way that some mods have wildly different castes, like that one mod I made where a spider-person with 8 legs and 2 arms was the same species as a serpent person with a tail with STANCE, which was the same species as a minotaur that was several times larger, all living in the same civ.

That elf wearing tail barding and tail warmers? Considering how large a relsize the tail is for those nagas, that tail warmer would cover 2/3s the body of an elf, and the elf was wearing two of them like socks on his feet. 

Clothing currently just doesn't respect relsize very well, and it's going to take a much more complex system to handle all the things modders want to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 16, 2012, 03:17:25 am

Ah, man. My cheerios have been pissed in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on March 16, 2012, 04:53:54 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on March 15, 2012, 12:09:19 pm

I made a title:
[NAME]: From [ADJ] [NOUN] to [ADJ] [NOUN]
Which give such gems as:
The Dwarf: From Dreamy Cheeses to Charcoal Top (Dreamy Cheeses... sometimes I wonder if the game itself is aware of the community surrounding it.)

Heheh, yeah sometimes the game comes up with the most remarkably random stuff.  It add to the coolness factor.

Quote

The Elf: From Poetic Serpents to Velvety Tightness

That sounds vaguely pornographic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 16, 2012, 06:16:53 am

Quote from: orius on March 16, 2012, 04:53:54 am

Quote

The Elf: From Poetic Serpents to Velvety Tightness

That sounds vaguely pornographic.

What? That's not vague at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on March 16, 2012, 09:33:38 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on March 16, 2012, 06:16:53 am

Quote from: orius on March 16, 2012, 04:53:54 am

Quote

The Elf: From Poetic Serpents to Velvety Tightness

That sounds vaguely pornographic.

What? That's not vague at all.

It sounds like a Victorian euphemism.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 16, 2012, 09:34:40 pm

Quote from: werechicken on March 16, 2012, 09:33:38 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on March 16, 2012, 06:16:53 am

Quote from: orius on March 16, 2012, 04:53:54 am

Quote

The Elf: From Poetic Serpents to Velvety Tightness

That sounds vaguely pornographic.

What? That's not vague at all.

It sounds like a Victorian euphemism.

Victorian euphemism sounds like a euphemism too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: red_29A on March 16, 2012, 09:45:43 pm

The Elf: About Poetic Serpents into Velvety Tightness

fixed that one ;)

Also, In Soviet Russia euphemism implies you!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 16, 2012, 10:28:35 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 14, 2012, 09:46:40 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 14, 2012, 09:18:59 pm

Actually, I saw someone make a request on the mod forum about a graphical tileset that actually was something like that... For example, instead of having a tileset where you have a picture of a goblin, you have a "g" with pointy green ears on it.  An "s" that represented a snake has a forked tongue coming out of one end, and an "s" that is a snail looks something like the top half of the "s" is a shell sitting on top of the bottom half. 

Apparently, there are tilesets like that for NetHack.

well, this is certainly interesting, since it avoids the problem all picture-tilesets have: they are inevitably incredibly ugly(for me, they all lie in the uncanny valley, among other inevitable problems). but as long as there is no real font for something like that there will always remain the problem of reverting back to the old problems when playing in text-mode.

edit, before someone can answer: also defining something like "use this font for reptiles and this one for amphibians and..." in the init-file would be way more flexible and would require less work to keep up to date than having to add little details all the time a letter is used again: just by combining different fonts with the basic colours one gets such a large amount of differentiation-options...

I've been hoping for a long time that an artist picks up this idea... it's doable right now in the same way that graphics tilesets are done, and I really don't like much the picture-tilesets.

For reference the Nethack tileset in question is the Abigaba/Chozo one: http://www.multifoliate.com/nh/ (http://www.multifoliate.com/nh/), and here's the modding forum thread I created about this whole idea (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=18617.0) (You can check out the tileset over there, I found a version hosted on google code that I embedded).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jackledead on March 17, 2012, 04:09:36 am

Hey Toady,
I was watching TV over my shoulder just now, and while watching a scene from Jeepers Creepers, I noticed tall grass.
 Do you have any plans on implementing tall stocks of plant matter used to block visibility, but allow safe passage. Or even not safe passage, like with thorns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 17, 2012, 06:16:47 am

Oh, while we're asking about grass, I'm not going to green this because I'm sure it's been brought up before but I can't find in a forum search...  I love that there are so many grass types but it seems strange to me that each tile sports a totally different type of grass when grasses have a mat-like root structure I'd expect the same variety to cover a large area.  Is there any word on whether this might change in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 17, 2012, 06:31:20 am

Hoping next release fixes the military equipment problems. I've become a bit tired of seeing dwarves not being able to equip armor correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 17, 2012, 06:37:38 am

Quote from: hermes on March 17, 2012, 06:16:47 am

Oh, while we're asking about grass, I'm not going to green this because I'm sure it's been brought up before but I can't find in a forum search...  I love that there are so many grass types but it seems strange to me that each tile sports a totally different type of grass when grasses have a mat-like root structure I'd expect the same variety to cover a large area.  Is there any word on whether this might change in the future?

Toady hasnt really spoken about changing above ground features. But there are few pending things that will probably change it.

Pasturing animals is a known half working system (from what I recall its just from poor values for the animals mostly) and farming will eventually get overhauled, probably.

When either one of those these gets looked at again, we'll probably see grass get adjusted as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 17, 2012, 06:54:33 am

Cool, thanks, sounds good.  Oh, and I rather like Jackledead's question, I love it when rather "simple" things like that result in significant and cool changes to gameplay.  Things like lighting, line of sight, or topographical knowledge would be awesome if they could be implemented in some detail, but there certainly would be a major pathfinding rewrite required.  e.g. If a creature walks into a tall-grass field, how do they path out of it?  What does it mean to get lost?  etc... The answer could well be along the lines of what MrWiggles said, or something further off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 17, 2012, 08:18:33 am

Quote from: Jackledead on March 17, 2012, 04:09:36 am

Hey Toady,
I was watching TV over my shoulder just now, and while watching a scene from Jeepers Creepers, I noticed tall grass.
 Do you have any plans on implementing tall stocks of plant matter used to block visibility, but allow safe passage. Or even not safe passage, like with thorns?

This is on the dev page: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Quote from: dev.html

Basic Adventure Mode Skills

    * Wood use
          o Ground debris/sticks/underbrush

Toady expanded on that item in DF Talk: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html)

Quote from: DF Talk 9

Capntastic:   I've got to say I'm really excited about the ... things you would think to be excited about, like the ground debris, sticks and underbrush ... you're like 'oh man, you find a rats nest under a tree and then kick it and rats come out'.
Toady:   The main thing there is up here in a lot of the parts of the Pacific north west where there's been logging recently and the trees ... there's not a whole lot of old growth forest left where I'm at, so there's a bunch of small trees, and when there are small trees there's a crapload of underbrush, and it's hard to go places; a lot of places you have to go around giant bushes and all kind of blackberries and that kind of stuff, you just walk through ... I don't want that to be super annoying, but right now in adventure mode there's a few scattered trees in the forest and they're little teeny trees but they somehow prevented everything but a few strawberry bushes from growing. And there are certain points where you should be walking through this brush and getting scratches all over your body, and mosquitoes ...

It was also touched upon in a FotF thread: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1848408#msg1848408)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Hummingbird

Now that trade routes depend on availability of roads (do they?), will fast-traveling over roads in Adventurer Mode confer reasonable bonuses to traveling speed (or penalties for moving off the road)? For both adventurers and merchants, it would make sense for walking on road to be easier, faster, and safer than hacking through wilderness.

Related: Will dwarven roads over mountains squares be accessible through fast-traveling in Adventurer Mode?

Fast travel speeds aren't going to be different from local travel speeds, for consistency, as close as I can make them anyway.  So if traveling on roads should be faster, it has to be for a local reason.  Right now, traveling on any terrain is the same speed.  When we get to underbrush in the dev page, the movement speeds should be properly impacted.  I'm not sure that we'll get to any of that this time, though the grass density information helps set us up for it.

The visibility part was covered here: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1367464;topicseen#msg1367464)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: ILikePie

Are you planning on making certain 'wilderness' areas a bit more defined? Currently there is hardly any difference between a hill and a forest. Having, for example, denser bushes that, maybe, obscure vision, or multi-tile trees would make the denser forests much more foresty.

Yeah, we've got three things up there that should help a bit with that:

Skills:Wood Use:Ground debris/sticks/underbrush

For some basic variety -- there's nothing like the woods around here where you can hardly walk and end up getting all scratched up.  Now it's more like the older growth forests with the cleaner floors, but with really small trees and inexplicably no underbrush.  Not sure about vision there -- thick underbrush should definitely obscure it, but we might wait for the lighting part to get that all under one umbrella.
[...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 17, 2012, 12:15:35 pm

^^^ THIS!!

Very excited to see how this plays out in gameplay.  Many people can attest that there is a huge difference between concealment and cover.  I can be concealed behind a sheet, but you could shoot right through it.  I could take cover behind bullet proof glass, but you could still see me.  I can definately see it coming into a lighting re-write.  I can easily see LOS being affected by it, as well.

Also, it would be easy to see how underbrush would affect movement speed.  Of course, so should wet sand, sand dunes, muddy tiles, deep snow, etc.  I suppose it's all coming... someday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 17, 2012, 03:18:21 pm

Dont get too far ahead of yourself. For one, I am seeing a bigger problem with existing LOS limitations.

When you're in a foggy area, or when it's just plain night, you do not see very far at all. You'd think that it would be easier to sneak up on creatures, but their LOS is unaffected, so even in complete fog you cannot attempt SNEAK because "somebody can see you". It was a big bummer when it happened in tundra, because I could see animal tracks in the snow!! but couldnt enter the sneak mode to follow them... It would have been very hunterlike. How about changing all creatures' LOS to such as adventurer but adding a nightvision tag? Then add that tag to (some) monsters in a priority order? Bogeymen would come first, I bet.

Oh yeah. Allow force sneaking of some sort! Just because one carp can see me, it apparently means that I am not allowed to sneak up on bandits in their camp =(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 17, 2012, 05:08:00 pm

We've heard you say you knew were-creatures were in an unsatisfactory state when you decided to update, and that they'll require at least another pass to bring them up to where you want. Have you given any real thought to what that'll require, other than some of the lower hanging stuff like "sometimes give them weapons when they're not in were-form"? Changing their transformation rules? Making were-curses grant better attributes out of were-form? Were-creature awesomeness isn't high on my list of desires, but they do make up a large chunk of vanilla content at the moment.

Additionally, do you have plans to make time for Vengeful Ghosts sometime within the Caravan arc releases, or have Night Creatures gotten all the work they're going to for a while?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 17, 2012, 05:19:08 pm

Quote from: hermes on March 17, 2012, 06:54:33 am

Cool, thanks, sounds good.  Oh, and I rather like Jackledead's question, I love it when rather "simple" things like that result in significant and cool changes to gameplay.  Things like lighting, line of sight, or topographical knowledge would be awesome if they could be implemented in some detail, but there certainly would be a major pathfinding rewrite required.  e.g. If a creature walks into a tall-grass field, how do they path out of it?  What does it mean to get lost?  etc... The answer could well be along the lines of what MrWiggles said, or something further off.

I'm not sure where (possibly a DF Talk) Toady mentioned something about rotating the screen in order to disorient the player to emulate loss of direction. I think he mentioned the functionality for it was in the code already (or used to be), but was never used for anything. He also alluded to the hunting/tracking/survival features being a good time to possibly implement it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: trees on March 17, 2012, 05:28:12 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on March 17, 2012, 05:19:08 pm

I'm not sure where (possibly a DF Talk) Toady mentioned something about rotating the screen in order to disorient the player to emulate loss of direction.

Yep, DF Talk 16 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.2).

Quote from: Toady

Now we have that little map, the little town/city map so you can walk right on the roads, you can't just ... you bonk into the buildings and you have to pass around them. If you want to cut through whatever alleys or whatever might exist ... or cut through the sewers, then you have to zoom in, it's really just for going from store to store in a faster way, and to see the city layout as you understand it, because you can get lost very easily. It might be kind of realistic to get lost in the city but you don't have ... it's not like you're looking out of your eyes; you can't see ahead and you can't see large landmarks, and you can't see cross streets way ahead of you as you could in real life, so it's more fair to give you this travel map than to not give it to you, I think, in terms of realism, although you do lose just a bit, the getting lost in the city, but we can always give that back to you by restricting your view on the travel map and then wiping it if you get hopelessly lost, then rotating by ninety degrees in a random direction or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dei on March 17, 2012, 10:04:17 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 13, 2012, 12:45:15 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on March 13, 2012, 12:39:45 pm

Totally expecting Footie to catch this one, 'cuz it's far from a new feature, but what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?

From entity_default:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:CHAMPION]
[NAME:champion:champions]
[SITE]
[NUMBER:1]
[RESPONSIBILITY:BUILD_MORALE]
[APPOINTED_BY:DUKE]
[APPOINTED_BY:COUNT]
[APPOINTED_BY:BARON]
[PRECEDENCE:65]
[MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION]
[PUNISHMENT_EXEMPTION]
[DO_NOT_CULL]
[COLOR:7:0:1]
[ACCOUNT_EXEMPT]
[DUTY_BOUND]
[DEMAND_MAX:1]

It looks like they have an effect in the morale of your dwarves. Maybe they fight better besides a champion.

If that is the case I'm dressing up my champion in a ☼pig tail tunic☼ and ☼rope reed short skirt☼. Because that sounds like the champion is just a glorified cheerleader.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on March 18, 2012, 12:32:30 am

Quote from: dei on March 17, 2012, 10:04:17 pm

If that is the case I'm dressing up my champion in a ☼pig tail tunic☼ and ☼rope reed short skirt☼. Because that sounds like the champion is just a glorified cheerleader.

Think more William Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace) (inspirational war leader type) and less cheerleader.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 12:38:19 am

yeah, its a Kilt! not a skirt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 18, 2012, 01:20:56 am

Quote from: HiEv on March 18, 2012, 12:32:30 am

Quote from: dei on March 17, 2012, 10:04:17 pm

If that is the case I'm dressing up my champion in a ☼pig tail tunic☼ and ☼rope reed short skirt☼. Because that sounds like the champion is just a glorified cheerleader.

Think more William Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace) (inspirational war leader type) and less cheerleader.

Quote from: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 12:38:19 am

yeah, its a Kilt! not a skirt.

I'm not sure if you just made me re-imagine William Wallace, or Cheerleaders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 18, 2012, 02:32:24 am

Will we get a release today? It would be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 04:20:58 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 18, 2012, 01:20:56 am

Quote from: HiEv on March 18, 2012, 12:32:30 am

Quote from: dei on March 17, 2012, 10:04:17 pm

If that is the case I'm dressing up my champion in a ☼pig tail tunic☼ and ☼rope reed short skirt☼. Because that sounds like the champion is just a glorified cheerleader.

Think more William Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace) (inspirational war leader type) and less cheerleader.

Quote from: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 12:38:19 am

yeah, its a Kilt! not a skirt.

I'm not sure if you just made me re-imagine William Wallace, or Cheerleaders.

.... either one leaning towards the other would be more than a bit scary.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 18, 2012, 10:19:52 am

THEY CAN TAKE OUR LIVES... BUT THEY CANNOT TAKE OUR SCHOOL PRIIIIIDE!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 18, 2012, 10:21:47 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 18, 2012, 10:19:52 am

THEY CAN TAKE OUR LIVES... BUT THEY CANNOT TAKE OUR SCHOOL PRIIIIIDE!

There's a sig!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tolisk on March 18, 2012, 12:43:47 pm

I made ramps for an area, then the dwarves didnt use the area, one decided that she cant walk down a ramp and get food and started tantruming, and when i finaly tried stairs, she walks a few steps, goes down a floor then dies of starvation.

Short point: Why is ramp not working like ramp?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 18, 2012, 01:00:49 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 18, 2012, 01:20:56 am

Quote from: HiEv on March 18, 2012, 12:32:30 am

Quote from: dei on March 17, 2012, 10:04:17 pm

If that is the case I'm dressing up my champion in a ☼pig tail tunic☼ and ☼rope reed short skirt☼. Because that sounds like the champion is just a glorified cheerleader.

Think more William Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace) (inspirational war leader type) and less cheerleader.

Quote from: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 12:38:19 am

yeah, its a Kilt! not a skirt.

I'm not sure if you just made me re-imagine William Wallace, or Cheerleaders.

I'm not sure there's a meaningful distinction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 18, 2012, 01:16:46 pm

Quote from: Tolisk on March 18, 2012, 12:43:47 pm

I made ramps for an area, then the dwarves didnt use the area, one decided that she cant walk down a ramp and get food and started tantruming, and when i finaly tried stairs, she walks a few steps, goes down a floor then dies of starvation.

Short point: Why is ramp not working like ramp?

Was there a wall on the side of the ramp they're supposed to be going up to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on March 18, 2012, 01:17:14 pm

Quote from: Tolisk on March 18, 2012, 12:43:47 pm

I made ramps for an area, then the dwarves didnt use the area, one decided that she cant walk down a ramp and get food and started tantruming, and when i finaly tried stairs, she walks a few steps, goes down a floor then dies of starvation.

Short point: Why is ramp not working like ramp?

You probably don't have an appropriately placed wall next to the [up] ramp, along with an appropriately place floor square on the level above (next to the down ramp).  The wiki's page on ramps (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Ramp) should give you more details.

Also, the DF Gameplay Questions subforum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=7.0) is probably a better place to ask this, or to search for previous answers to this and similar questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on March 18, 2012, 03:22:52 pm

Will one artifact boot/gauntlet/sock bug be fixed?
Will there be artifact rewards in the near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 18, 2012, 04:50:36 pm

Quote from: magmaholic on March 18, 2012, 03:22:52 pm

Will there be artifact rewards in the near future?

What do you mean by artifact reward?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 18, 2012, 05:00:17 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 18, 2012, 04:50:36 pm

Quote from: magmaholic on March 18, 2012, 03:22:52 pm

Will there be artifact rewards in the near future?

What do you mean by artifact reward?

I think he means something like "Thank you for killing my vampire cousin! Here, take this sock!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 05:47:25 pm

two questions,

You mentioned a 'Hauling Overhall' as part of this string of bugfixes, would that be more towards the carrying mutiple objects, or just base refinements to the code, or letting multiple stockpiles take from one?

Also, i can't find a mention of it in the devlog, but the ideas been floating around the forums, do you intend to fix the issue where once an animal attacks a dwarf its a permanant civ enemy? causing horrible bugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 18, 2012, 06:27:53 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 05:47:25 pm

Also, i can't find a mention of it in the devlog, but the ideas been floating around the forums, do you intend to fix the issue where once an animal attacks a dwarf its a permanant civ enemy? causing horrible bugs.

Quote from: Dev Log 03/10/2012

I think that problem where tamed animals with dwarf kills still attack you is fixed, but I have to test it, and I also have to check out animals you receive in trade. Various little tests.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 06:35:59 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 18, 2012, 06:27:53 pm

Quote from: bombzero on March 18, 2012, 05:47:25 pm

Also, i can't find a mention of it in the devlog, but the ideas been floating around the forums, do you intend to fix the issue where once an animal attacks a dwarf its a permanant civ enemy? causing horrible bugs.

Quote from: Dev Log 03/10/2012

I think that problem where tamed animals with dwarf kills still attack you is fixed, but I have to test it, and I also have to check out animals you receive in trade. Various little tests.

ah ok, sometimes hard to find small sentences in walls of text.  ::)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 18, 2012, 08:29:19 pm

So will any future bugfix releases for v0.34 break savegame compatibility post v0.34.05? Because between the clothing bugs that will supposedly get fixes in the next release, the bugged plants for good/evil biomes, the disappearing mummy bug, the "crime lord got spawned in a solid wall" bug, and all those other annoyances,  I'm concerned that there's a good chance that fixing any of these might force the player to create a new world in order for these fixes to work and thus lose all of two weeks worth of progress.

Also I really don't like having to modfix unarmed attacks for cave swallow men every time a new release comes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 18, 2012, 08:55:28 pm

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 18, 2012, 08:29:19 pm

So will any future bugfix releases for v0.34 break savegame compatibility post v0.34.05?

Depends on how you define breaking save compatibility. Actually preventing a player from moving a fortress to the new version? Extremely unlikely. The reason compatability broke between 34.01 and 34.02 was there was a very nasty bug in 34.01 that corrupted your worlds and made them unplayable after a while; Toady manually put in a compatability break to discourage people from using that version. To the extent of my knowledge, that's happened once in the six years or so since the first public release (although some bugs certainly were almost as bad. The "press K to crash the game" bug comes to mind).

The other reason total compatability breaks happen is when part of the game becomes so fundamentally altered that Toady can't realistically make a fix that ports old forts over. This has happened 3 times in the last six years, and only in major feature updates.


As for the times where you can upgrade your fort to a new version but some bugfixes and new features won't be there, those are fairly common. It looks like most of the clothing bugfixes are changes to the dwarf AI, though, which should generally work in forts ported to newer versions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

This is a void that I would love to fill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 19, 2012, 01:26:11 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

This is a void that I would love to fill.

This sentence is a HORRIBLE pick-up line.

On topic, I know Toady put the visualize button as a test of something, but I can't really remember what... Without offense, it was quite primitive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:05:04 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

This is a void that I would love to fill.

Try Stonesense or <dwarf fortress visualiser> google search.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 19, 2012, 02:10:37 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:05:04 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

This is a void that I would love to fill.

Try Stonesense or <dwarf fortress visualiser> google search.

Look at the stonesense credits, please >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:12:58 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 02:10:37 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:05:04 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 01:02:58 am

You know what I kinda miss from Dwarf Fortress? The V for Visualize button.

This is a void that I would love to fill.

Try Stonesense or <dwarf fortress visualiser> google search.

Look at the stonesense credits, please >_>

Ouch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ApolloCVermouth on March 19, 2012, 04:39:14 am

A really general question:
Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?

I really appreciate how historical figures now migrate. I can see how this could become a rich part of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 07:12:32 am

Quote from: ApolloCVermouth on March 19, 2012, 04:39:14 am

A really general question:
Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?

I really appreciate how historical figures now migrate. I can see how this could become a rich part of the game.

From df talks ( http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html ):

"You get a lot of migrants yourself, but in those fortresses that don't get a lot of migrants, or especially when migrants start changing over to something that actually has to migrate and come to your fortress"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on March 19, 2012, 07:13:15 am

Quote from: ApolloCVermouth on March 19, 2012, 04:39:14 am

Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?

Sounds like a badly disguised "Can we have smaller migrant waves?" suggestion-question.

Anyways, I can't think of anything that could be called an essential gameplay mechanic in DF, except perhaps "adventuring", "indirect-control 7 dwarves" and "dying horribly a.k.a Losing (which is Fun)". Everything else is gonna be replaced by simulated stuff, until the day when Dwarf Fortress accidentally generates The Lord of the Rings as world history, AND THEN REJECTS IT, because it doesn't have the required number of kitten deaths.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 19, 2012, 08:58:34 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 18, 2012, 08:55:28 pm

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 18, 2012, 08:29:19 pm

So will any future bugfix releases for v0.34 break savegame compatibility post v0.34.05?

Depends on how you define breaking save compatibility. Actually preventing a player from moving a fortress to the new version? Extremely unlikely. The reason compatability broke between 34.01 and 34.02 was there was a very nasty bug in 34.01 that corrupted your worlds and made them unplayable after a while; Toady manually put in a compatability break to discourage people from using that version. To the extent of my knowledge, that's happened once in the six years or so since the first public release (although some bugs certainly were almost as bad. The "press K to crash the game" bug comes to mind).

Yeah, and these problems aren't foreseeable, so for that aspect of compat breaks, the answer can only be "hopefully not".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 19, 2012, 09:06:09 am

Usually what I do if I must keep a save and there is broken save compatability is just to keep the old version of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Disreputable_Dog on March 19, 2012, 10:40:37 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

This is a void that I would love to fill.

This still sounds like a really bed pick-up line.

Quote from: ApolloCVermouth on March 19, 2012, 04:39:14 am

A really general question:
Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?

I always thought it was odd how many migrants would come to your fortress sometimes. It seems like there must be some great propaganda in the Dwarven cities for people to migrate out to some of our god-forsaken hell-holes xD You'd think you'd be able to send word back with the first caravan to tell them to stop sending so many people or something, or even request MORE if, persay, you need helpers to train your dragon (and don't feel like sweeping up the charred bits of dwarfs you actually know) or maybe all the dwarven cities are just insanely over populated and they're kicking people out and they come to our fortresses since there's nowhere else to go?

On something slightly more relevant, is there one day going to be a way to have your fortresses stay alive so you can visit the dwarfs in adventure mode rather then only being able to visit their empty shell of a fortress? or I guess that would also be a good platform for having multiple fortresses active at once, perhaps even trading between eachother! :O Imagine that, being able to have a fortress tucked away somewhere nice and safe, growing lots of food and shipping it off to the towering fortress built into the side of a mountain where they repay the good will with weapons and tools scrounged from the depths of their mountain homes! :O that would be interesting, to say the least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 19, 2012, 11:22:32 am

migration relates to fortress wealth, less masterwork granite thrones and 10000* roasts on your first year means you get smaller waves. it also helps delay ambushes and invasions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 19, 2012, 11:24:06 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 19, 2012, 11:22:32 am

migration relates to fortress wealth, less masterwork granite thrones and 10000* roasts on your first year means you get smaller waves. it also helps delay ambushes and invasions.

It does mean that slower growth is supperior to fast growth.

Mind you there is a lot to be said in going to the old system where once sieges start they will excalate independent to your wealth. Creating an arms race.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 19, 2012, 12:05:40 pm

Will vampires ever respond differently to strange moods than other dwarves? Such as failure to create an artifact causing different effects than melancholy or insanity? Or such as the artifact being different as compared to other artifacts (design, items used) or is it more of a wait until the artifact development arc to see?

I say this as having a 300 year old vampire arrive at a fortress, then after 6 months going suicidal because he couldnt make an earring seems a bit off. And currently an insane vampire will just walk around naked for eternity, not blood sucking people. Not the first picture you have of an insane vampire (more blood sucky and evil kingly).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 19, 2012, 12:08:22 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on March 19, 2012, 11:24:06 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 19, 2012, 11:22:32 am

migration relates to fortress wealth, less masterwork granite thrones and 10000* roasts on your first year means you get smaller waves. it also helps delay ambushes and invasions.

It does mean that slower growth is supperior to fast growth.

Mind you there is a lot to be said in going to the old system where once sieges start they will excalate independent to your wealth. Creating an arms race.

and remember when bees were first implemented?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 12:26:16 pm

Quote from: Watsst on March 19, 2012, 12:05:40 pm

Will vampires ever respond differently to strange moods than other dwarves? Such as failure to create an artifact causing different effects than melancholy or insanity? Or such as the artifact being different as compared to other artifacts (design, items used) or is it more of a wait until the artifact development arc to see?

I say this as having a 300 year old vampire arrive at a fortress, then after 6 months going suicidal because he couldnt make an earring seems a bit off. And currently an insane vampire will just walk around naked for eternity, not blood sucking people. Not the first picture you have of an insane vampire (more blood sucky and evil kingly).

Huh, that's an interesting scenario. You might want to try to put him in a cage by knocking him out over a cage trap and putting him up somewhere. Like your dining hall.

All that said, I for one think it might be interesting if vampires always got fell moods.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 19, 2012, 12:46:31 pm

I saw a dwarf in Legends Mode remarry after her (converted by night creatures) Dwarven husband died. 
Do Dwarves now also remarry in DF mode? Or did they always do this in World Gen / when their night creature spouse die?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 19, 2012, 01:32:08 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2012, 12:26:16 pm

Huh, that's an interesting scenario. You might want to try to put him in a cage by knocking him out over a cage trap and putting him up somewhere. Like your dining hall.

All that said, I for one think it might be interesting if vampires always got fell moods.

It wasnt my vampire, its just something that came up in the topic below that I thought would be good to ask here. As said before, it makes for a great tourist attraction for all to see, the great undead murderous vampire a mear crazy fool.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101181.240

As for always having fell moods, I do agree with the premise of vampires going the murderous route but it does have its problems. It would make it obvious that their a vampire, and also currently fell moods only produce artifact crafts which are practically useless expect for money value.

Overall I do hope Toady doesnt go for "vampires dont get moods"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 19, 2012, 02:31:12 pm

Quote from: Disreputable_Dog on March 19, 2012, 10:40:37 am

On something slightly more relevant, is there one day going to be a way to have your fortresses stay alive so you can visit the dwarfs in adventure mode rather then only being able to visit their empty shell of a fortress? or I guess that would also be a good platform for having multiple fortresses active at once, perhaps even trading between eachother! :O Imagine that, being able to have a fortress tucked away somewhere nice and safe, growing lots of food and shipping it off to the towering fortress built into the side of a mountain where they repay the good will with weapons and tools scrounged from the depths of their mountain homes! :O that would be interesting, to say the least.

In SimCity4 you can settle cities just like in DF, except you can settle multiple cities at once. They found a way to solve the time flow and resource transfer between cities while one of them is being actively played. In other words yeah, it's no fun being only able to visit your dead forts as an adventurer, or have only a single tiny fort in a huge world. Potential wasted!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:44:47 pm

Quote from: Elone on March 19, 2012, 02:31:12 pm

Quote from: Disreputable_Dog on March 19, 2012, 10:40:37 am

On something slightly more relevant, is there one day going to be a way to have your fortresses stay alive so you can visit the dwarfs in adventure mode rather then only being able to visit their empty shell of a fortress? or I guess that would also be a good platform for having multiple fortresses active at once, perhaps even trading between eachother! :O Imagine that, being able to have a fortress tucked away somewhere nice and safe, growing lots of food and shipping it off to the towering fortress built into the side of a mountain where they repay the good will with weapons and tools scrounged from the depths of their mountain homes! :O that would be interesting, to say the least.

In SimCity4 you can settle cities just like in DF, except you can settle multiple cities at once. They found a way to solve the time flow and resource transfer between cities while one of them is being actively played. In other words yeah, it's no fun being only able to visit your dead forts as an adventurer, or have only a single tiny fort in a huge world. Potential wasted!

Suggestion forum is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ghills on March 19, 2012, 04:13:33 pm

Quote from: Disreputable_Dog on March 19, 2012, 10:40:37 am

I always thought it was odd how many migrants would come to your fortress sometimes. It seems like there must be some great propaganda in the Dwarven cities for people to migrate out to some of our god-forsaken hell-holes xD You'd think you'd be able to send word back with the first caravan to tell them to stop sending so many people or something, or even request MORE if, persay, you need helpers to train your dragon (and don't feel like sweeping up the charred bits of dwarfs you actually know) or maybe all the dwarven cities are just insanely over populated and they're kicking people out and they come to our fortresses since there's nowhere else to go?

I always think of it as being because other forts were crashing and burning as dorf forts do, and the huge waves of irritable, penniless migrants we got were the remains of whatever other forts had been in the area. 

Question for Toady:
Do you plan to deal with hauling-related injuries to the hauling overhaul coming up? I'm sure we'll get healthcare improvements at some point, but I'm curious about the timing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 19, 2012, 05:06:34 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:44:47 pm

Suggestion forum is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

Yeah, cause someone had to be internet police about it. Show me your badge please!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 19, 2012, 05:13:01 pm

you're disrespecting the holy gift of the limegreen. if that kind of behavior isn't curbed, or at least kept in check, the toad might decide it's too much of a hassle to sort through all the rubbish and stop answering questions altogether.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 19, 2012, 05:13:38 pm

Quote from: Elone on March 19, 2012, 05:06:34 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:44:47 pm

Suggestion forum is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

Yeah, cause someone had to be internet police about it. Show me your badge please!

Follow the rules and you won't have problems. Now, move on, citizen!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 19, 2012, 05:24:57 pm

Quote from: Elone on March 19, 2012, 05:06:34 pm

Quote from: Kogut on March 19, 2012, 02:44:47 pm

Suggestion forum is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

Yeah, cause someone had to be internet police about it. Show me your badge please!

Did you read the OP?

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

[...] specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 19, 2012, 08:19:27 pm

Right now I'm frantically trying to make a clothing industry in my latest fort(34.05) so I can anticipate and prevent a tantrum spiral when 34.06 comes out.

Hmmm, when was the last time we had a first number change that didn't take a year and a half to do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 19, 2012, 08:50:34 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on March 19, 2012, 08:19:27 pm

Right now I'm frantically trying to make a clothing industry in my latest fort(34.05) so I can anticipate and prevent a tantrum spiral when 34.06 comes out.

Hmmm, when was the last time we had a first number change that didn't take a year and a half to do?

2008, from 0.27.176.38c (February 24th) to 0.28.181.39a (July 13th). 139 days.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Misterstone on March 19, 2012, 10:03:25 pm

I realize that I'm a couple weeks behind the curb here, but I would like to see a Dungeon Master again.  Not THE dungeon master (who was useless and a source of buggyness) but someone with the same title who is somehow integrated into the (awesome-sounding) new animal training system and possibly other things.  Preferably a noble who is useful and eccentric.  Perhaps someone who could kick ass in a pinch, add some color to the hum-drum life of the typical fortress. 

As long as we can tame (or try to tame, with tragic results) crazy animals with or without this noble, then why not have one, since he'd obviously no longer be game-crippling at this point?

Come on, doesn't everyone want to have a creepy dude in cloak and gloves, no shirt, wandering around the fortress?

Who knows, maybe he'll come back in the upcoming release.  I sense that Toady had a fondness for the old @$@#er.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 19, 2012, 11:56:30 pm

Quote from: Misterstone on March 19, 2012, 10:03:25 pm

I realize that I'm a couple weeks behind the curb here, but I would like to see a Dungeon Master again.  Not THE dungeon master (who was useless and a source of buggyness) but someone with the same title who is somehow integrated into the (awesome-sounding) new animal training system and possibly other things.  Preferably a noble who is useful and eccentric.  Perhaps someone who could kick ass in a pinch, add some color to the hum-drum life of the typical fortress. 

As long as we can tame (or try to tame, with tragic results) crazy animals with or without this noble, then why not have one, since he'd obviously no longer be game-crippling at this point?

Come on, doesn't everyone want to have a creepy dude in cloak and gloves, no shirt, wandering around the fortress?

Who knows, maybe he'll come back in the upcoming release.  I sense that Toady had a fondness for the old @$@#er.

You might want to see this thread on saving the DM (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103966.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 20, 2012, 12:22:17 am

Well that was slightly unexpected.

Irrelevance alert. ▼

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's kinda amusing how you all jumped at me, well amusing in a sort of a way, cause I am not trolling and did not plan this ahead.

Quote from: Kogut

Suggestion forum is here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

I know. Mine was very much not the first suggestion, and I was the first one to be called on it. But I'm not a spiteful person so I will let it go.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler

you're disrespecting the holy gift of the limegreen. if that kind of behavior isn't curbed, or at least kept in check, the toad might decide it's too much of a hassle to sort through all the rubbish and stop answering questions altogether.

That makes sense. I was actually thinking whether limegreen is uncalled for and whether I should post a suggestion in here, was called away, returned, and then just clicked post without rethinking. When I figured out the issue, it was too late. Unless it's prefered to retroedit, but that's worse? Kogut would appear fairly silly then.

Quote from: Footkerchief

Did you read the OP?

Now thats a crazy thing there! Whenever I go read that first post, there is more to it! It does not normally happen to me tho =/

All that said, I hold nothing against anyone except that dorf who spilt the lava into my dining hall during a lunch break. I too am waiting for another batch of responses from mister Toady! And here I wondered whether I'm the only one...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 20, 2012, 01:44:50 am

Quote from: Disreputable_Dog on March 19, 2012, 10:40:37 am

Quote from: Japa on March 19, 2012, 01:19:29 am

This is a void that I would love to fill.

This still sounds like a really bed pick-up line.

Seems like it was succesfull in being unique, cheeky and actually putting people in desired mindset.

Fairly good pick-up line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on March 20, 2012, 11:42:14 am

Would civilian dwarves pick up armour. Will there also be an option in the orders screen allowing civilian dwarves to pick up armour. Can we set mandatory wear for dwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 20, 2012, 12:14:03 pm

you can do that now, simply create squads without any assigned barracks. do not assign any weapon to woodcutters and miners

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JasonMel on March 20, 2012, 12:53:42 pm

There is an interesting thread about good (as opposed to evil) biomes (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101741.0) in the suggestion forum. The fulcrum of the discussion is the question, should good biomes be a help or a hindrance to the average fortress, or both? The thread made me wonder what plans, if any, you have for good biomes. What is your vision for what a good biome is or should be?

(Edit: By the way, thank you for your reply to my previous question! This thread is very cool.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 20, 2012, 01:10:26 pm

Frankly Good/Evil is a stand-in I think. From what I recall, the ultimate plan is for regions to have sphere associations, so you could have an area associated with war, for instance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 20, 2012, 03:41:19 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 20, 2012, 12:14:03 pm

you can do that now, simply create squads without any assigned barracks. do not assign any weapon to woodcutters and miners

thats a tedious workaround that clogs up the military interface, he was asking if a uniform similar to the hunters could be put in, with the intent of telling civilians what to wear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 20, 2012, 05:05:11 pm

Quote from: blake77 on March 20, 2012, 11:42:14 am

Would civilian dwarves pick up armour. Will there also be an option in the orders screen allowing civilian dwarves to pick up armour. Can we set mandatory wear for dwarves?

I'm gonna say, the answer to this is: Seems reasonable, but no timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on March 20, 2012, 09:51:53 pm

Toady, could you specify the details of your new PC? - just curious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 20, 2012, 09:54:37 pm

Quote from: Rip0k on March 20, 2012, 09:51:53 pm

Toady, could you specify the details of your new PC? - just curious.

What new PC?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 20, 2012, 09:55:23 pm

New devlog- apparently he's been having internet/hardware issues, which has led to a new PC. Hence the lack of devlogs and mission progress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 20, 2012, 09:57:48 pm

Ah, okay. It wasn't loading for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 21, 2012, 12:40:17 am

Hehe if you have any Job that requires a Computer and a considerable amount of creativity your hardware is constantly at the brink of death. Thats just the genereal anti-technological field of creative people. Artists kill tablets and graphic-cards, Musicians Soundcards and speakers, programmers HDDs and CPUs, heck i know a writer who did go through 5 leopards in 2 years. Naturally you often find mixed types.

 :P and i know this is unscientific.

Anyway good to see that toady is on track again, after the last devblog i was actually expecting the next version. Well got to wait some more days then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 21, 2012, 01:37:50 am

"As a legendary thrower, I can throw arrows from a long range and routinely chip bones, pierce hearts, and pierce skulls and brains." - is it a bug (IMHO this problem is so severe that it qualifies as a bug like #3992 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3992)) or a feature request? I am asking as bug 5684 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5684) was closed as "Requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum.".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 21, 2012, 02:41:13 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 21, 2012, 01:37:50 am

"As a legendary thrower, I can throw arrows from a long range and routinely chip bones, pierce hearts, and pierce skulls and brains." - is it a bug or a feature request? I am asking as bug 5684 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5684) was closed as "Requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum.".

That would be a request for balance change. You can tell because it was closed with the reason "Requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum.".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 21, 2012, 02:54:49 am

There was no need for the snide ending remark.

But... if it was closed as a feature change request, then I'm gonna also agree that it's not a bug, but a feature change request.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 21, 2012, 05:21:33 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 21, 2012, 02:54:49 am

if it was closed as a feature change request, then I'm gonna also agree that it's not a bug, but a feature change request.

I added "IMHO this problem is so severe that it qualifies as a bug like #3992 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3992)".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 21, 2012, 05:49:45 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 21, 2012, 05:21:33 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 21, 2012, 02:54:49 am

if it was closed as a feature change request, then I'm gonna also agree that it's not a bug, but a feature change request.

I added "IMHO this problem is so severe that it qualifies as a bug like #3992 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3992)".

If it's functioning as intended, then no amount of wishing will change it into a bug. A bug is when something isn't working as intended.

EDIT:
Also, this seems to be one of those quirky features that seen as more fun then game distrupting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 21, 2012, 07:44:34 am

Balance changes tread a fine line between bugfix and feature request. They can go either way, really. In the particular example, I would say that it is more of a feature request (I might have given it the benefit of doubt, though), in that it really depends on the ammunition if it is a suitable throwing weapon. An arrow may not be, a sling stone however... so that would be a feature to distinguish suitability for throwing between ammunition classes, and that leads to the question were the other item types are in that regard. (It kind of also intersects with the idea of supernatural fighting styles - a throwing-based supernatural fighting style could well include throwing arrows in a deadly fashion)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 21, 2012, 09:00:45 am

Not to mention that there are specialized thrown weapons like knives, "stars" and darts. The later show some similiarity to bolts. I for one would pack this change into a (hopefully coming) weapon overhaul if anywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on March 21, 2012, 10:50:18 am

Quote from: Heph on March 21, 2012, 12:40:17 am

heck i know a writer who did go through 5 leopards in 2 years.

I see what you did there (http://xkcd.com/1031/).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 21, 2012, 12:28:51 pm

We should also bear in mind here that in DF "LEGENDARY" means just that - if you're a LEGENDARY dodger, you're pretty much Neo, and LEGENDARY masons can carve a masterwork stone table from a heap of rubble in less than a day using nothing but their bare hands. 

If middling throwers are routinely lobbing off peaople's limbs when tossing arrows about, then yeah, that'd be a bug, but you really can't look at the upper echelons of the skills to determine if something is functioning properly or not, because they are all representative of pretty much superhuman ability. 

In any case, that's all likely to be overhauled the next time combat gets looked at, which will be... sometime in the future.  A lot will probably change along with the combat/move speed split, and really, if you're looking for a problem with the current combat system, than that's it right there.  Until then, camels will be deadly ninjas, which is in my mind a much larger issue than imbalance in the throwing skill. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 01:24:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on March 21, 2012, 02:41:13 am

That would be a request for balance change. You can tell because it was closed with the reason "Requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum.".

The difference is, Footkerchief declared it a balance change, and Kogut is now trying to get Toady's opinion.  As in, Kogut wants a second opinion. 

Of course, I doubt Kogut would be bothering with such a thing if suggestions were acted upon with anything approaching the frequency of bug reports, but with the way that Bay12 works, getting things into the bug tracker or not is the difference between whether there is any chance they will ever be worked on or not.

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 21, 2012, 07:44:34 am

Balance changes tread a fine line between bugfix and feature request. They can go either way, really. In the particular example, I would say that it is more of a feature request (I might have given it the benefit of doubt, though), in that it really depends on the ammunition if it is a suitable throwing weapon. An arrow may not be, a sling stone however... so that would be a feature to distinguish suitability for throwing between ammunition classes, and that leads to the question were the other item types are in that regard. (It kind of also intersects with the idea of supernatural fighting styles - a throwing-based supernatural fighting style could well include throwing arrows in a deadly fashion)

There's a difference between something that is simply a balance change, and things that are bizarre and unrealistic in a game that strives to have some realism.  When you can do things like throw vomit that caves in skulls, and a human hand throws things with more force than a weapon specifically designed to project weapons with more force than a human hand possibly can on its own, then it starts getting into the realm of "bug". 

That's why there was a comparison to the super-valuable beehive bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 21, 2012, 02:09:50 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 01:24:20 pm

Of course, I doubt Kogut would be bothering with such a thing if suggestions were acted upon with anything approaching the frequency of bug reports, but with the way that Bay12 works, getting things into the bug tracker or not is the difference between whether there is any chance they will ever be worked on or not.

I don't think it's that simple.  Thousands of bugs have been lying around for years, and many suggestions have been implemented during that time.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 01:24:20 pm

There's a difference between something that is simply a balance change, and things that are bizarre and unrealistic in a game that strives to have some realism.  When you can do things like throw vomit that caves in skulls, and a human hand throws things with more force than a weapon specifically designed to project weapons with more force than a human hand possibly can on its own, then it starts getting into the realm of "bug". 

That's why there was a comparison to the super-valuable beehive bug.

Vomit that caves in skulls is much more of a bug, since it indicates that liquids/powders are having their material properties misapplied (along with mass and/or contact area being off by an order of magnitude).  Beehive value is also off by at least an order of magnitude.  The launcher vs. throwing issue (at least as presented in the report) is not an order-of-magnitude discrepancy -- the strongest claim made in the report is that "throwing is at least as effective".  As such, this is not unbalanced enough to warrant special attention before the ranged combat overhaul.

Also, ammunition has intrinsic problems (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516) that probably make the launching method a moot point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 02:22:54 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 21, 2012, 02:09:50 pm

Vomit that caves in skulls is much more of a bug, since it indicates that liquids/powders are having their material properties misapplied (along with mass and/or contact area being off by an order of magnitude).  Beehive value is also off by at least an order of magnitude.  The launcher vs. throwing issue (at least as presented in the report) is not an order-of-magnitude discrepancy -- the strongest claim made in the report is that "throwing is at least as effective".  As such, this problem is not severe enough to warrant special attention before the ranged combat overhaul.  Also, ammunition has intrinsic problems (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516) that probably make the launching method a moot point.

Arguing that something is not a large enough magnitude to classify as a bug is something much more fuzzy and gray than arguing that any sort of balance change/static value change is inherently a suggestion, and trying to get a second opinion on something that can be classified more as a judgment call is not something that can be as easily dismissed as Cruxador is trying to say.

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 21, 2012, 02:09:50 pm

I don't think it's that simple.  Thousands of bugs have been lying around for years, and many suggestions have been implemented during that time.

Perhaps there's a case to be made there, but I know what the mood is in this forum.  I've had plenty of posts or PMs telling me that people don't use suggestions because there's obviously no point, and that being sent off to the Suggestion Forum is an oblique way of telling an idea to go die. 

Most people don't even know of one suggestion that has been implemented, or if they do, only know of Underground Diversity.  ESV suggestions have not been worked upon (excepting general FPS optimization), and it basically seems like you can count on one hand the number of suggestions that actually were acted upon. 

If you want to argue against the notion that "Suggestions Are Always Ignored", don't do it to me, do it to the rest of the forums.  I'm the one called weird for even trying to use the Suggestion Forums at all anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 21, 2012, 02:34:00 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 02:22:54 pm

Arguing that something is not a large enough magnitude to classify as a bug is something much more fuzzy and gray than arguing that any sort of balance change/static value change is inherently a suggestion [...]

Yes, it's a fuzzy gray area.  Please don't put words in my mouth -- I said "requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum," because most balance problems are not bug-level.  I did not make an absolute statement like "any sort of balance change."

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 02:22:54 pm

Perhaps there's a case to be made there, but I know what the mood is in this forum.  I've had plenty of posts or PMs telling me that people don't use suggestions because there's obviously no point, and that being sent off to the Suggestion Forum is an oblique way of telling an idea to go die. 

Most people don't even know of one suggestion that has been implemented, or if they do, only know of Underground Diversity.  ESV suggestions have not been worked upon (excepting general FPS optimization), and it basically seems like you can count on one hand the number of suggestions that actually were acted upon. 

If you want to argue against the notion that "Suggestions Are Always Ignored", don't do it to me, do it to the rest of the forums.  I'm the one called weird for even trying to use the Suggestion Forums at all anymore.

I was arguing against your statement, which you appeared to be making in your own words.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 03:13:27 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 21, 2012, 02:34:00 pm

Yes, it's a fuzzy gray area.  Please don't put words in my mouth -- I said "requests for balance changes generally go in the Suggestions forum," because most balance problems are not bug-level.  I did not make an absolute statement like "any sort of balance change."

---

I was arguing against your statement, which you appeared to be making in your own words.

Things are not quite that simple.  I was arguing in justification of Kogut's statement in response to your statement against Cruxador's argument.  There's at least four people in this little dance.

Besides that, though, I suppose there might be some merit to the notion that people are now arguing that even bug reports are pointless (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104643.msg3097465#msg3097465).

There is an undercurrent of frustration, bitterness, and negativity on this forum that seriously undercuts much of the creative endeavors, and I see much of that being fed especially by the "face" of Bay 12 in the form of those who are moderators or "old guard" driving people away from the forums, which does not do Toady the service they think they are doing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 21, 2012, 04:27:23 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 03:13:27 pm

There's at least four people in this little dance.

There is an undercurrent of frustration, bitterness, and negativity on this forum that seriously undercuts much of the creative endeavors, and I see much of that being fed especially by the "face" of Bay 12 in the form of those who are moderators or "old guard" driving people away from the forums, which does not do Toady the service they think they are doing.

Five!

I am slightly inclined to agree with the second because of the treatment that I got from some 'big' forum names so far. And only slightly because I have not been here long enough, and it would be too early for me to accuse people of stuff just yet. Not nice!

I always thought that the biggest bit in the bug/suggestion problem is that virtually all bugs should be fixed, whereas majority of suggestions are junk that would please little, displease many, and take away from the bugfixing time.

However, however you look at it, suggestions are not going to get much attention. Whether the suggestions are many and bad, or whether devs dont give it much attention.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on March 21, 2012, 05:03:00 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 03:13:27 pm

There is an undercurrent of frustration, bitterness, and negativity on this forum that seriously undercuts much of the creative endeavors, and I see much of that being fed especially by the "face" of Bay 12 in the form of those who are moderators or "old guard" driving people away from the forums, which does not do Toady the service they think they are doing.

agree on this point, not as pronounced here as with other forums, (speaking of which, i find it funny when older forum users yell at me for knowing nothing about games i have been playing since i was 4, because i just made an account, but i digress.) still brings up an interesting point about assuming based on account creation date.

the main issue seems to be with older players who took a hiatus of some sort, and may have been around at a time in development when things were different, or that they stick to a small portion of the forums and lose scope of what is happening in other areas, (like how i know little about stuff happening on several of the forum subsections.) this i noticed due to some people who act quite hostile towards these 'user-studies' or 'blackbox testing' acts are quite active and polite in another forum section.

i do have a quite simple solution to all of the above issues.

if you don't like the context of a greened question, or a science thread, ignore it, let toady/footkerchief, respond to it, or explain respectfully why you disagree with their idea in the case of suggestions.

saying simply "this is stupid, get off the forum.", or "suggestions never get implemented.", or something like that really doesn't help progress the development of DF, forum goers have fixed several critical bugs in DF, even code related ones, and have actually been a driving force in many subtle ways to DF's development.

so please, think before you post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on March 21, 2012, 05:35:33 pm

I am really excited about these new changes. Especially the taming and potential domestication of exotic pets. However, I had a question about it and I don't know if this has already been answered here or in another forum. I'm going to use Giant Desert Scorpions as an example.

Lets say I make several fortresses in one world over the course of many (in game) decades where I do nothing but capture and tame Giant Desert Scorpions. Now if I am reading what was posted about the new taming rules correctly then eventually my dwarven civ will consider these creatures domesticated. This potentially means that I can trade with my civ for these creatures.

My question stands as this: If I trade for these desert type creatures and I live in a temperate climate will these animals just up and die on me from climate shift?
I use Giant Desert Scorpions in my example, but this could really apply to any exotic creature that occurs only in specific biomes. A yeti caught in an arctic biome and transfered to a desert could be just as relavent.

Sorry if this has been covered/general knowledge. I have looked for it but have not seen it mentioned on these forums or the wiki.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 21, 2012, 05:57:58 pm

Nah, they're scorpions, there are quite resistant to different climates.

Also deserts aren't divided between tropical and nontropical, hence GDS can appear on cold or scorching biomes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 21, 2012, 06:10:05 pm

A minor point:

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on March 21, 2012, 05:35:33 pm

Now if I am reading what was posted about the new taming rules correctly then eventually my dwarven civ will consider these creatures domesticated.

You don't actually get to make exotics "domesticated" all the way, so if you're talking about abandoning an embark, and starting a new one and importing some of your old, tamed, creatures, then, depending on how much time has passed, they might have regressed back down to semi-wild or wild.

Spoiler: Toady Quote (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

If the civ's knowledge is all the way up at domesticated, the animal becomes Tame as before and never reverts.  As it stands, you can't yet cross the boundary to domesticated from a wild beast, since there's extra infrasture to be dealt with with breeds and all that.  Children inherit their training status from their parents, and if a trainer gets to an animal when it is young, it becomes Tame and never reverts.  The word "trained" is somewhat weird that way.  It doesn't refer to how many tricks the animal knows, but more how acclimated it is to dwarven life.  So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children which can be raised up to tame if you catch them early, but after some years of complete inattention, the masterfully trained parent can revert back down the ladder all the way to semi-wild and wild.  Tame creatures will have tame children that never need basic training.  So you can eventually get up to a population that is essentially domestic, with your trained exotics having trained children which are tamed and then have tamed children for all generations after that.  However, this won't give you "domestic" civ knowledge -- which means that a new exotic of that species which you capture will still have to be trained and reinforced (instead of jumping up to Tame).

You are currently warned about reversions to a semi-wild state.  That should give you a season or so of warning before anything terrible happens, though semi-wilds can be a little nippy on occasion (which can be bad for a dragon).  If you have an assigned tamer and you haven't overloaded the system by assigning one poor guy to 100 animals or something, all reinforcement training is automatic, so you shouldn't have to work too hard to keep your dragon satisfied.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 21, 2012, 06:58:42 pm

Putting this into a spoiler for the thread's sake.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

saying simply "this is stupid, get off the forum.", or "suggestions never get implemented.", or something like that really doesn't help progress the development of DF, forum goers have fixed several critical bugs in DF, even code related ones, and have actually been a driving force in many subtle ways to DF's development.

so please, think before you post.

On the other hand, everyone who joins the forums has a creative brainstorm for at least their first month posting here. Pretty much without fail. Some people never stop having brainstorms, they post a new suggestion every week.

When people fall too deeply in love with their own ideas, and stop distinguishing the game and their own ideas, that's what I think gets older forum members hackles up.

I rarely see veteran forums members telling people to shut up, or that their idea is stupid. They DO routinely ask people to put things in the right places though, instead of trying to put their personal issue front and center so they can get the best chance of a response from Toady. That does get pretty annoying, especially when you've seen that behavior repeated for years. And when you stop and consider what was actually said that touched off this debate....it was literally just a link to the right place. It may have been terse, but that's all it was.

So personally, I think creative types need to be just as careful about associating their own ideas too closely with the game, or getting too defensive about it. Because for all the subtle effects our suggestions have on the game, they are simply that at the end of the day. Suggestions that Toady can take or leave. Treating them as more than that is trying to step over the line between player and developer, or asserting you have the right to. And that will eventually annoy someone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 21, 2012, 11:51:55 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh boy... I hate to say it, but these arguments are getting a tad out of hand.

I mean Kohaku, you have some kind of a point in your arguments but it seems you tend to harp on the same complaint over and over again.
By now, we know where you stand on these things and plenty of people seem to agree with certain points you make, but they seem not to agree with the way
you present them (or how often you present them). It seems like to me you tend to get too defensive about rather minute things, granted though I also notice certain people seem to try to provoke you (which succeeds a bit too easily).

You also point out that the vanguards might be causing problems with their dismissing certain questions, but I think people generally take their actions as antagonistic when they are on the receiving end (some of them are rude about it, which doesn't help matters; I have reframed from asking certain questions due to the possibility of it seeming like a "veiled suggestion," but usually in those cases it deals with a feature I assume Toady already has planned but hasn't yet implemented). But honestly, most are trying to help. A suggestion belongs in the suggestion forum, not to die but to grow. There it can be discussed, added to, brainstormed, and ironed out. Here... it will die. It will be lost among the tons of questions and answers and eventually be forgotten. As for suggestions not making in the game, this game is still a mere fledgling compared to the the game it will be someday. Suggestions will be added when the game is more stable. It will take time before Toady can incorporate others' ideas into his own. People already complain about feature creep with Toady adding ideas he was going to add eventually anyway, how about with feature creep from suggestions. But some features, like the tabs in the units screen were suggested by users. So it isn't like Toady doesn't listen, he just has a lot of other stuff to sort out first.

Aside from that, to people complaining about bugs. Remember that not all the bugs need fixing. Some need to be surgically removed like a dead liver and replaced with a functioning one. In the case of animal training for example, it wasn't a mere fix that needed some minor arbitrary recoding but an overhaul of something that was fundamentally broken. Another thing is some bugs, are there and might as well stay until an overhaul happens. For example, Toady mentioned pathing AI needs to be rewritten when moving fortress parts are added in. If he "fixes" pathing bugs now and later on has to overhaul the system anyway, what was gained? Another example with the interface, if he makes a new user interface what happens when it becomes obsolete and needs to be redone yet again (I'm not saying he shouldn't work on the interface at all, just pointing out that even if he does fix it up that it will have to be redone again eventually)? You could say these can be avoided by proper planning, but then again isn't complaining for him to do this stuff earlier than he intends to be breaking his plan anyway?

Finally, on the balance issue vs. bug argument I see balance issues as being bugs, but rather low priority ones. This is not because they aren't important, but because balancing issues need to be studied and tweaked multiple times before the proper balance is found. And balance issues tend to be not problems with the feature not working, just not working perfectly the way intended but functioning as expected.  Sometimes, like above, balancing certain things too early can be wasted time if a future feature upsets the balance anyway.

Altogether, I ain't exactly worried about the game being the perfect game at this point as some people seem to. I mean, the game is still in alpha. Even if you can argue that it is almost a full-fledged game the way it is, this doesn't change the fact the game is still infantile in its growth. I follow DF, not simply because of the gameplay or the community (even though those are major pluses), but because of the ambition behind the project as a whole. I'm here to watch it grow and see how it develops. In all truth, Toady is living my life long dream. He's designing something beyond application, simulation, and even game qualities. If and when he finishes this project calling it a game won't exactly be true, nor would simulation. It would be more like interactive artistic fiction. I would like to see what happens when this project finally reaches that state of existence. This isn't the only game that is reaching for new heights in these terms, but this is the one I decided to watch.

All that said, I notice the dev log mentions site export maps! YAY! I asked about them in the last FotF thread and said he'd put them in, but they were missing so I thought he changed his mind. I wonder how they work though. I won't ask directly though, since it seems we'll be getting the next release soon-ish (according to 3/17's dev log).

Edit: By "how they work," I'm wondering if you export them like any other export map or if you need to select the site first then an export option is there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 12:54:34 am

Also for the sake of the thread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm actually liking this back - forth going on here, it's being done intelligently with some nice responses. Although I would say its probably better it doesn't escalate to much or start pointing fingers and deriding people. My god... what would we do if the 'Future of the Fortress' topic got locked...

Quote from: EmeraldWind on March 21, 2012, 11:51:55 pm

Finally, on the balance issue vs. bug argument I see balance issues as being bugs, but rather low priority ones. This is not because they aren't important, but because balancing issues need to be studied and tweaked multiple times before the proper balance is found. And balance issues tend to be not problems with the feature not working, just not working perfectly the way intended but functioning as expected.  Sometimes, like above, balancing certain things too early can be wasted time if a future feature upsets the balance anyway.

I agree whole heartedly. Many of the major balancing issues are quite well known, but just balancing them now may only work temporarily and be a wasted effort as newer planned features or overhauls are completed. I do think they are important, but fixing them now is more of a patch then a fix and may actually go the opposite way of making it harder in the future if to many raws or features are changed in the vanilla DF.

I'm super keen for the new update. Toady is pulling out some magic fixing up these important areas of the game. I'm interested to know what he's planning to do next. I hope its making it so prisoners get given food and water. I know you can put 2 tile stockpiles in their cells as a fix, but it never seems to work right for me (other people eating there, other stockpiles being prioritized)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 02:07:31 am

There's little point in spoilering things to stop a conversation if you're just going to keep the conversation going, anyway - either you keep mum, or you don't.  (And anyway, this topic shouldn't be too inflammatory...)

Quote from: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 12:54:34 am

I agree whole heartedly. Many of the major balancing issues are quite well known, but just balancing them now may only work temporarily and be a wasted effort as newer planned features or overhauls are completed. I do think they are important, but fixing them now is more of a patch then a fix and may actually go the opposite way of making it harder in the future if to many raws or features are changed in the vanilla DF.

Some issues are easier to fix than others.  Although I obviously don't know the exact composition of the hard-coded aspects of DF, something like projectile velocity (whether it is ballista bolts or thrown objects) is probably something as simple to fix as just changing a single variable.  Even if that effort is "wasted" in the long run, multiplying projectile velocity by twice as much or half as much wouldn't be a significant amount of time wasted.

I'm also not sure how much of a place-holder the throwing code is right now.  Unless Toady wants to put in parabolic arcs over the z-axis on thrown objects, as well as things like catapults (which, granted, he might), this may well be code that sticks around. (Even if he does, he might still use much of the same code for overall initial force calculations.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 02:37:43 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 02:07:31 am

There's little point in spoilering things to stop a conversation if you're just going to keep the conversation going, anyway - either you keep mum, or you don't.  (And anyway, this topic shouldn't be too inflammatory...)

The reason I spoilered it is because it's more turning into a long winded arguement between people about elitist posters and a bugs or suggestion debate, which doesnt fit with the topic. And by keeping it spoilered it keeps the post short, people who dont care for it can ignore it, and it allows for new posts related to the "Future of the fortress" to start back up again.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 02:07:31 am

Some issues are easier to fix than others.  Although I obviously don't know the exact composition of the hard-coded aspects of DF, something like projectile velocity (whether it is ballista bolts or thrown objects) is probably something as simple to fix as just changing a single variable.  Even if that effort is "wasted" in the long run, multiplying projectile velocity by twice as much or half as much wouldn't be a significant amount of time wasted.

I'm also not sure how much of a place-holder the throwing code is right now.  Unless Toady wants to put in parabolic arcs over the z-axis on thrown objects, as well as things like catapults (which, granted, he might), this may well be code that sticks around. (Even if he does, he might still use much of the same code for overall initial force calculations.)

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

Quote from: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 02:37:43 am

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.  Bolts may be slightly too massive for their size, what with the whole "the entire weapon is made of metal instead of just the pointy parts" issue, but things like rocks are generally accurate, for the arbitrary size of rock that you always seem to pick up. 

I am pretty sure that strength and overall body size already does play a part in weapons, in that it determines a maximum velocity based upon the mass of the object being swung.  I have done no testing on this, but it makes sense for this to apply to thrown objects, as well. 

Accuracy is something decoupled/decouplable from the force equation.  Accuracy seems to be based upon whether or not the projectile diverges from the direct flight path to the target tile sufficiently to actually be flying into a different tile from the target or not, with some additional straight skill checks for things like passing through a fortification arrow slit from range or what seems to be an opposed dodge/block roll for the target to evade damage.  When talking about the specifics of accuracy in terms of divergent flight, though, the calibration of the difference between extreme attribute and skill levels may need adjusting, as well. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 03:42:14 am

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 22, 2012, 03:42:36 am

Toady, can you expand on what you mean by more consistent led creature behaviour?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on March 22, 2012, 04:00:23 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 03:42:14 am

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

Yeah, especially against ranged metal armor should deflect a lot of imcoming projectiles if they don't impact with a good angle(90°). At the moment metal bolts pretty much always completely piece any kind of armour making life even for a well armoured adventured excitingly short. A simulated angle based on luck, attacker and defender skill(dodge, armour) might lead to some more deflections.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 11:29:32 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 03:42:14 am

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

I'm fairly sure that's what the armor user skill is for - in adventurer mode, you tend to get a lot of "deflect the blow" reports.

I haven't done testing on the subject, but I am given the impression that, with the "angle of the blow" mechanics, armor user makes the angle less menacing, and I don't know this, but the hardness of the armor should rationally give a bonus in this regard.

(Who feels up for some arena science?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 22, 2012, 11:45:50 am

My understanding of the Armor User skill is that all it does is reduce the speed penalty you get from your armor and clothing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zona on March 22, 2012, 12:06:17 pm

My quick question : Will the dwarves of existing forts put on some clothing come the next update? Or will that fix only effect new forts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 22, 2012, 12:12:09 pm

Quote from: Zona on March 22, 2012, 12:06:17 pm

My quick question : Will the dwarves of existing forts put on some clothing come the next update? Or will that fix only effect new forts?

This question is burning in my brain as well.  If they won't, then my current fort (nestled in a hillside full of chalk and magnetite) would need to be restarted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 12:15:22 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 11:29:32 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 03:42:14 am

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

I'm fairly sure that's what the armor user skill is for - in adventurer mode, you tend to get a lot of "deflect the blow" reports.

I haven't done testing on the subject, but I am given the impression that, with the "angle of the blow" mechanics, armor user makes the angle less menacing, and I don't know this, but the hardness of the armor should rationally give a bonus in this regard.

(Who feels up for some arena science?)

"Deflected" is used for everything then, because there is no other word indicating that the blow failed to trespass the armor.
But I think Untelligent is right, Armor skill only reduce the speed penalty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 02:38:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

Quote from: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 02:37:43 am

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.

Shouldn't this be Energy = Mass x Velocity ^ 2? Because this formula isn't any more complicated, I assume this is the one it uses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 22, 2012, 02:55:48 pm

Quote from: DG on March 22, 2012, 03:42:36 am

Toady, can you expand on what you mean by more consistent led creature behaviour?

Possibly bugs like these. (http://tinyurl.com/7qf4xe8)  We'll have to check on those after the release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:05:59 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 22, 2012, 11:45:50 am

My understanding of the Armor User skill is that all it does is reduce the speed penalty you get from your armor and clothing.

Quote from: thvaz on March 22, 2012, 12:15:22 pm

"Deflected" is used for everything then, because there is no other word indicating that the blow failed to trespass the armor.
But I think Untelligent is right, Armor skill only reduce the speed penalty.

Quote from: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 02:38:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.

Shouldn't this be Energy = Mass x Velocity ^ 2? Because this formula isn't any more complicated, I assume this is the one it uses.

Then I guess I have some more arena science to chalk up on my "to do" list, unless someone has more certain data.

EDIT: Correcting quote screw-up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 03:22:54 pm

Quote from: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 02:38:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

Quote from: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 02:37:43 am

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.

Shouldn't this be Energy = Mass x Velocity ^ 2? Because this formula isn't any more complicated, I assume this is the one it uses.

either youre referencing to E=m*c² for the equation between mass and energy, where c is the speed of light and therefore a constant, not a variable as need to calculate any velocities effect, or youre referring to the kinetic energy where E=1/2 m*v² but energy is generally not used very often to characterise the strength of an attack. one usually uses the force F for that. but as kohaku(edit: kohaku->dree, sry, initial identity-swap was my mistake edit2: and back to kohaku it is, that erroneous quote confused me!) already hinted at, its formula is F=m*a where a is the acceleration which is dv/dt, and which is more problematic than just using m*v as an approximation(although a pretty crappy one).

(edit: the game uses sheer strength and such to calculate the effectiveness of armour. all those are related to forces, not energies)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 04:40:56 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 03:22:54 pm

Quote from: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 02:38:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

Quote from: Watsst on March 22, 2012, 02:37:43 am

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.

Shouldn't this be Energy = Mass x Velocity ^ 2? Because this formula isn't any more complicated, I assume this is the one it uses.

either youre referencing to E=m*c² for the equation between mass and energy, where c is the speed of light and therefore a constant, not a variable as need to calculate any velocities effect, or youre referring to the kinetic energy where E=1/2 m*v² but energy is generally not used very often to characterise the strength of an attack. one usually uses the force F for that. but as kohaku(edit: kohaku->dree, sry, initial identity-swap was my mistake edit2: and back to kohaku it is, that erroneous quote confused me!) already hinted at, its formula is F=m*a where a is the acceleration which is dv/dt, and which is more problematic than just using m*v as an approximation(although a pretty crappy one).

(edit: the game uses sheer strength and such to calculate the effectiveness of armour. all those are related to forces, not energies)

Kinetic energy, yeah (the reason I left out 1/2 was because work doesn't really exist in DF, so units don't matter). What I mean is that the collision of two objects not accellerating (ie, bolts etc.) relates to kinetic energy and not forces. For example, a bolt that becomes embedded in a body part will move the body part even if the bolt were accellerating (ie, no force on the bolt).

m*v (linear momentum) is not a good approximation at all for m*a. Even the units are completely different. Force is measured in kg*m/s^2, while mv is measured in kg*m/s.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 08:38:05 pm

well, yeah, i said its a crappy approximation, i know about the units, also i know that a function usually is not proportional to its derivative, but its at least some kind of dependency and could pose as a placeholder for the real calculations. i dont know how much time toady already invested in this kind of thing since linear momentum is exactly what youre talking about when you dont want to bother about what happens inside the bolt/armour/bodypart.
even when the bolt gets stuck in the target afterwards, its about what kind of forces he applies to the materials involved. its true that the energy to apply the force is just the kinetic energy, but when checking, whether the bolt is piercing the plate or not, its about the forces, their absolute values and directions inside the material and its structure. there can be force applied to a wall too. also, while hitting the target, the bolt is decelerated and the target is being deformed, which is where you see movement even when the bolt gets stuck. if someone wants to know more about forces inside of materials, which can get quite complicated, they best start reading around a little on stress and and all the material values. there is a magmawiki-page on "material science" to get started and find the vocabulary one needs to look things up more thoroughly.

edit: seriously, i need to start thinking about what im doing before hitting enter, or at least read it once myself...
heres the link (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Material_science)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 08:51:21 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 08:38:05 pm

well, yeah, i said its a crappy approximation, i know about the units, also i know that function usually is not proportional to its derivative, but its at least some kind of dependency and could pose as a placeholder for the real calculations. i dont know how much time toady already invested in this kind of thing.

It's not a crappy approximation; it simply isn't an approximation. In practice, almost no functions are proportional to their derivatives; the linear function I gave earlier demonstrates this well. If I shoot an arrow, I'm not applying force to it (well, initially I am, but after it leaves the bow). The force is zero and only the kinetic energy matters.

The approximation isn't even completely fine with hammerstrikes, which most certainly do have force applied. The only time where it applies is when the strikes take exactly the same amount of time each; however, this likely happens in dwarf fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 09:06:39 pm

Quote from: dree12 on March 22, 2012, 08:51:21 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 08:38:05 pm

well, yeah, i said its a crappy approximation, i know about the units, also i know that function usually is not proportional to its derivative, but its at least some kind of dependency and could pose as a placeholder for the real calculations. i dont know how much time toady already invested in this kind of thing.

It's not a crappy approximation; it simply isn't an approximation. In practice, almost no functions are proportional to their derivatives; the linear function I gave earlier demonstrates this well. If I shoot an arrow, I'm not applying force to it (well, initially I am, but after it leaves the bow). The force is zero and only the kinetic energy matters.

The approximation isn't even completely fine with hammerstrikes, which most certainly do have force applied. The only time where it applies is when the strikes take exactly the same amount of time each; however, this likely happens in dwarf fortress.

ok, wait, im having trouble understanding everything you want to say. also, after reading what i wrote again, i realize its kinda sounding strange. what i mean is _not_ to approximate the equation F=m*a with F=m*v _but_ to estimate the damaging potential of a projectile by using its impulse p=m*v.
next: when a bolt is in the air, then youre right, there is no force. but while its in the process of hitting its target, a force is being applied, on both the
bolt as well as the location on the target, where it strikes. the bolt is applying force for a very limited time, yes, but its a finite time which does not equal zero. when swinging a weapon in close combat you can stay in contact with the target much longer, but that does not mean its in any way different from a projectile in regards to applying forces.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 22, 2012, 11:35:44 pm

Ooh, animals trained while children won't revert to a wild state.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on March 23, 2012, 02:22:59 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 22, 2012, 11:35:44 pm

Ooh, animals trained while children won't revert to a wild state.

Not quite the case. Based on what Toady's said: offspring of an animal that has been trained won't revert to a wild state because they inherit some of the tameness from their parent. This means that the "tameness cap" for them is that much higher, making it possible to train them up to the level from which they never regress, a level which animals caught and trained from the wild can't quite reach. If you went and caught a wild horse foal in a cage trap and trained it, it'd be just as unable to make it up to a shelf-stable tameless level as one caught as an adult. But its offspring would be able to get there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on March 23, 2012, 03:17:34 am

Going back to the discussion about Kohaku's "bug" report of thrown bolts...

...I'd say that "bugs" like these deserve to be in the bugtracker because it's basically the only way how to make Toady aware of them. We are the testers, we are supposed to report discrepancies like these. The bugtracker itself is the most pleasant way to do it, and once they're there Toady himself can choose whether and when to fix them. The important thing is that he knows about them. I don't see any sort of pressure being involved in this.

Sure, the line between a reportable unbalanced feature like throwing being too effective, and really just a subjective peeve, is a blurry one. But I'd still think that the fact that thrown bolts are more effective than fired shots is something that Toady would like to be aware of.

Just my two cents.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on March 23, 2012, 04:23:23 am

Quote from: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 09:06:39 pm

ok, wait, im having trouble understanding everything you want to say. also, after reading what i wrote again, i realize its kinda sounding strange. what i mean is _not_ to approximate the equation F=m*a with F=m*v _but_ to estimate the damaging potential of a projectile by using its impulse p=m*v.
next: when a bolt is in the air, then youre right, there is no force. but while its in the process of hitting its target, a force is being applied, on both the
bolt as well as the location on the target, where it strikes. the bolt is applying force for a very limited time, yes, but its a finite time which does not equal zero. when swinging a weapon in close combat you can stay in contact with the target much longer, but that does not mean its in any way different from a projectile in regards to applying forces.

I think the momentum is not good to describe the damage potential. If look at a projectile with a speed v and a mass m you can calculate both the momentum p=m*v and the kinetic energy E=1/2*m*v^2. So if you double the mass, you double energy and momentum but if you double velocity you also double momentum but you quadruple energy. A crossbow bolt (50g, 80m/s) might have the same momentum as a rifle bullet(5g, 800m/s) but the bullet has 10 times the energy and thus penetration/damage potential.

A high impulse(momentum) eventually knocks over but penetrating/damaging armour and tissue is done by energy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 23, 2012, 06:10:40 am

Quote from: Moddan on March 23, 2012, 04:23:23 am

Quote from: eux0r on March 22, 2012, 09:06:39 pm

ok, wait, im having trouble understanding everything you want to say. also, after reading what i wrote again, i realize its kinda sounding strange. what i mean is _not_ to approximate the equation F=m*a with F=m*v _but_ to estimate the damaging potential of a projectile by using its impulse p=m*v.
next: when a bolt is in the air, then youre right, there is no force. but while its in the process of hitting its target, a force is being applied, on both the
bolt as well as the location on the target, where it strikes. the bolt is applying force for a very limited time, yes, but its a finite time which does not equal zero. when swinging a weapon in close combat you can stay in contact with the target much longer, but that does not mean its in any way different from a projectile in regards to applying forces.

I think the momentum is not good to describe the damage potential. If look at a projectile with a speed v and a mass m you can calculate both the momentum p=m*v and the kinetic energy E=1/2*m*v^2. So if you double the mass, you double energy and momentum but if you double velocity you also double momentum but you quadruple energy. A crossbow bolt (50g, 80m/s) might have the same momentum as a rifle bullet(5g, 800m/s) but the bullet has 10 times the energy and thus penetration/damage potential.

A high impulse(momentum) eventually knocks over but penetrating/damaging armour and tissue is done by energy.

i know its a crappy approximation, thats what is said myself. its not that i think its good, its just that since kohaku was convinced that one was being used, i think he probably has some reason for it. so i am only trying to find the reasoning behind using that formula.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 22, 2012, 03:09:06 am

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.

also, one should not underestimate the damage potential of crossbows. even the non-modern ones were sometimes capable of penetrating steel plates, which even some modern firearms cant. so having more kinetic energy does not necessarily mean dealing more damage, since, its the forces involved which actually do anything. its too much about other factors to say which property is best to describe the effectiveness of a projectile before it hits its target. in your example, should the bolt and the bullet be decelerated in the same time, they are capable of applying the same force, but its the question to where and how those forces apply to determine which one is more harmful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on March 23, 2012, 07:03:45 am

No, the only cases where I could follow your thought is when a bullet is deflected(flat impact angle) or wents right through the target without transfering all energy. If both the bolt and the bullet gets stuck in the victim, they transfer their momentum and energy. While the momentum or knockback is about the same, the bullet can do a lot more damage(10 times the energy). Of course it gets complicated with wound channels and stuff, but for overcoming something like a steel plate armour, the bullet wins by a mile. Energy is important there for getting the steel out of the way.

The rifle bullet outperforms the bolt by far in terms of steel penetration. 60 year old 7.62x51mm standard Nato penetrates (source (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1986/MVT.htm)) a standard NATO 3.45 mm steel plate up to 620m. Something my example crossbow would have troubles with at point blank I am sure. Historical plate armours had a thickness of 2-3mm at most if I remember correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 23, 2012, 07:52:26 am

Crossbows just dont shoot only bolts. The big military versions (relativly late) x-bows shot stone, ceramics and lead bullets because a standart bolt would shatter on the impact of the senew. These bows hadsometimes more kinetic power then todays handheld guns (by that i mean plain 9mm stuff, you guncrazy dorfs) therefore you had whinches and mechanics to get themloaded.

A riffle is something different thought not to mention that a riffles bullet is bellshaped which gives it a point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 23, 2012, 07:54:29 am

its not only when deflecting and penetrating right through the target but also when the projectile and the target deform. yes, energy is important, but its also about how it is transformed. a bullet with 10 times the energy of a bolt, may not penetrate a steel plate the bolt can penetrate, when the bullet has a round tip and is made of soft lead while the bolt has a sharp tungsten tip.

also, please note the words i chose:

Quote from: eux0r on March 23, 2012, 06:10:40 am

even the non-modern ones were sometimes capable of penetrating steel plates, which even some modern firearms cant.

"sometimes" and "some", dont go comparing a 7.62mm bullet with wooden crossbow bolts on me... think more of an expanding 9mm bullet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet) against a steel tipped arbalest bolt. in medieval times crossbows were even banned by the church from use against christians, because of their penetration power against armour-clad knights(it was still ok to shoot all those pagans though and in war against christians, the people on the battlefield didnt really care about some weapon-bans).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on March 23, 2012, 08:39:12 am

My argument was that kinetic energy is responsible for target damage and not momentum. I think a FMJ 9mm(8g, 360m/s, 3.2 times the bolt energy) would still penetrate plate armour at close distance - and better than my crossbow. A hollow point bullet might desintegrate and spend its energy on that as well on the bullet fragment's kinetic energy. But if the FMJ bullet manages to transfer a good part of its energy to the target, it will perform better in overcoming the armour than the bolt in my opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 23, 2012, 08:45:33 am

Tangentially related, Mythbusters have done numerous material tests on various projectiles, if you'd like to see video of soft science.

OR you could read some texts on ballistics theory, material sciences, battle field medicine, etc. and get the hard science.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 23, 2012, 09:21:15 am

Quote from: Moddan on March 23, 2012, 08:39:12 am

My argument was that kinetic energy is responsible for target damage and not momentum. I think a FMJ 9mm(8g, 360m/s, 3.2 times the bolt energy) would still penetrate plate armour at close distance - and better than my crossbow. A hollow point bullet might desintegrate and spend its energy on that as well on the bullet fragment's kinetic energy. But if the FMJ bullet manages to transfer a good part of its energy to the target, it will perform better in overcoming the armour than the bolt in my opinion.

you posses a crossbow, and i assume you live in the US? so getting a firearm too, even when just borrowing, shouldnt be a problem? maybe you want to do some !science! on that matter, so we can have clear results?

Quote from: Mr S on March 23, 2012, 08:45:33 am

Tangentially related, Mythbusters have done numerous material tests on various projectiles, if you'd like to see video of soft science.

OR you could read some texts on ballistics theory, material sciences, battle field medicine, etc. and get the hard science.

gotta watch that mythbusters stuff later on, since i already know about the billistics theory and material sciences stuff(which is why i am talking about material-stress all the time)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 23, 2012, 09:53:10 am

Not to ruin your fun here, but remember that this is an official thread, made by the admin, for something else XD I admit that I derailed too, but I used spoilers and I did not write blocks of text while quoting blocks of text which quote a text block =O ! And the topic of discussion is slowly drifting to modern physics and modern firearms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 23, 2012, 10:07:59 am

Well this is a very unsettling thought but I thought I might share it for those who care.

Is there a contingency plan for when Toady is somehow unable to continue working on Dwarf fortress anymore?  I assume that Toady has backup drives and backup drives for those backup drives, but what happens if he somehow gets a crippling illness or has a severe case of sudden death syndrome?  What if both brothers are unexpectedly killed in something as mundane as a car accident?  Who would be left to continue their work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 23, 2012, 10:09:50 am

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 23, 2012, 10:07:59 am

Well this is a very unsettling thought but I thought I might share it for those who care.

Is there a contingency plan for when Toady is somehow unable to continue working on Dwarf fortress anymore?  I assume that Toady has backup drives and backup drives for those backup drives, but what happens if he somehow gets a crippling illness or has a severe case of sudden death syndrome?  What if both brothers are unexpectedly killed in something as mundane as a car accident?  Who would be left to continue their work?

I forget where it was stated, but I remember it being said that captaintastic and footkerchief both have portions of the source, that they will release if toady dies a natural death, and destroy if they suspect any kind of fowl play.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 23, 2012, 10:18:32 am

...Huh. Anyone know where I can sell forty poisonous snakes? I just realized I won't be needing them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 23, 2012, 10:20:58 am

I think I know a guy. said something about a plane.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 23, 2012, 10:33:07 am

Quote from: Japa on March 23, 2012, 10:09:50 am

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 23, 2012, 10:07:59 am

Well this is a very unsettling thought but I thought I might share it for those who care.

Is there a contingency plan for when Toady is somehow unable to continue working on Dwarf fortress anymore?  I assume that Toady has backup drives and backup drives for those backup drives, but what happens if he somehow gets a crippling illness or has a severe case of sudden death syndrome?  What if both brothers are unexpectedly killed in something as mundane as a car accident?  Who would be left to continue their work?

I forget where it was stated, but I remember it being said that captaintastic and footkerchief both have portions of the source, that they will release if toady dies a natural death, and destroy if they suspect any kind of fowl play.

I can't speak for the Capn, but I don't have any source code.

Toady discussed releasing the source in case of his own death.  I don't think it's been discussed what would happen if both brothers met an untimely end:

Quote from: Toady One on October 01, 2008, 07:49:14 am

Yeah, we've mentioned my untimely demise before, most recently because this town has lots of drunks and meth and some of the stupidest ass people that yell at you from vehicles as you might ever encounter (despite warnings from well-meaning people with misgivings about Texas, nothing ever happened down there, whereas up here in Silverdale I've been yelled at or had crap thrown at me or whatever no fewer than fifteen times while shopping, etc., even though I walked more down there), and the idea was to release everything.  I should amend that though -- if there are suspicions of foul play, and the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the death was related to getting the source released, then, well, no source then.  Yes, you will be punished for the wrongdoings of others, so pray for my safety!  No killing for the source!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 23, 2012, 10:36:10 am

Quote from: Elone on March 23, 2012, 09:53:10 am

Not to ruin your fun here, but remember that this is an official thread, made by the admin, for something else XD I admit that I derailed too, but I used spoilers and I did not write blocks of text while quoting blocks of text which quote a text block =O ! And the topic of discussion is slowly drifting to modern physics and modern firearms.

yeah, i guess youre right, its time to drop it, even thought modern physics in principle are the same as those of ye olden times, just that nobody knew about them ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 23, 2012, 10:39:55 am

Doesn't mean you can't talk about it, but it would be better to make a new thread for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 23, 2012, 10:42:04 am

Quote from: Japa on March 23, 2012, 10:09:50 am

I forget where it was stated, but I remember it being said that captaintastic and footkerchief both have portions of the source, that they will release if toady dies a natural death, and destroy if they suspect any kind of fowl play.

The Giant Toad cancels work: Interrupted by a Roc.
The Roc bites the Giant Toad on its coding hand.
The part has been severed.
It sails off in an arc!
The Giant Toad has been struck down.

I wouldn't want the code to be released for anything less.
And thank you for the release, Toady!  The game is, dare I say it, becoming really rather complex.  I'm gonna have to be disciplined and set some clear goals for my next fortress because the list of mechanics I haven't even tried yet is getting rather large, eep.   :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 23, 2012, 11:41:13 am

Funny thing, mere two days ago an outsider friend actually asked me what will happen if the devs die if hit by a bus. I pouted and said that the game will be stuck in a frozen state with not updates ever being made for it, and that the world will virtually never see a similar game again.

But in the new light of the situation, I now wonder whether this event would SPEED UP the development XD as there would now be an army of people working on the game instead of one or two. FPS decay bugs would be the first ones to go >.> interface usability would shoot up after that =P

(resist ewone, resist)

But preferably, dont die! I've read somewhere that this is your life's work, and a true piece of art it is. Like someone said in an earlier post, in a few years we'll be placing bets on when the game will go sentient on us.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 23, 2012, 12:07:56 pm

I still think it happened in 2008.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 02:18:17 pm

Can we stop talking about death? It's morbid.

Besides, any creative expression will always be a direct reflection of the personality of its creator.  Even in something like programming, which you may think of as dry and technical, is an extremely expressive art form.  While some game-making companies are large enough to mask the individual's artistic expression, in a single-programmer developed game, who Toady is bleeds through in everything he codes.

It's not a matter of "it would get out faster" or "it would be stymied", the same game wouldn't get out at all, and at best, some people might look at some of the code while trying to make their own individual games that may be inspired by DF, but aren't actually DF.

I may argue priorities or try to change the angle of the vision, and I honestly don't think that anything "like DF, but not quite" is necessarily a bad thing, and the competition may actually be constructive, but a game not made by Toady is not DF as made by Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 23, 2012, 08:01:10 pm

So yeah...

RELEASE WOOOOO!

I might actually start up my first fort on 2012... up til now I've been goofing off in Adventure Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:38:26 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

There's a new thread for it now (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105372.0), by the way. 

Vote for your favorite flavor!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 23, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Not even a week. Or even a day. There's already thread's discussing/complaining about their personal ire bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:51:12 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Not even a week. Or even a day. There's already thread's discussing/complaining about their personal ire bug.

You say that like it's a bad thing. 

Should we not have a bug tracker at all?  Toady certainly seems to want the bugs removed from his game, and wants to hear from those who have found them.  Why so against Toady's success?

---

EDIT:
Kogut's bug voting thread has been an entirely constructive exercise, in that it both identified the bugs which players most wanted Toady to work upon, and in that it let players be and feel listened to, which is the exact thing that prevents more serious griping.

You can say all you want that people are being unreasonable when their complaints escalate the less they are heard, but in actuality, they are being entirely reasonable.  It is the only reasonable thing to do, when you are yelling "fire", and everyone refuses to listen, or insults you for trying, to make an even more dramatic gesture until you are heard.

The cause of the unrest is not unreasonable players, but the people in this thread who so aggressively try to drive out other players and disdain the playerbase as a whole for wanting to play the game and be heard.  You are the ones at fault for being so unreasonable to people wanting to make their voices heard, especially on an issue that should so obviously be heard as a bug report.

Shoot the messenger all you want, but some confrontations need to be forced.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Livonya on March 24, 2012, 12:09:45 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Not even for one post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on March 24, 2012, 01:33:27 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:51:12 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Not even a week. Or even a day. There's already thread's discussing/complaining about their personal ire bug.

You say that like it's a bad thing. 

Should we not have a bug tracker at all?  Toady certainly seems to want the bugs removed from his game, and wants to hear from those who have found them.  Why so against Toady's success?

You're missing the point.

They aren't saying "don't complain about bugs", they're saying "don't complain that Toady isn't fixing bugs, because he's fixing bugs," even if those bugs don't happen to be your personal highest priority ones.

And saying that they're "against Toady's success" is absurd.  They're just against people saying that Toady isn't doing what he really is doing, probably this very minute.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 24, 2012, 01:41:55 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2012, 11:40:36 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 23, 2012, 11:36:51 pm

That ought to make people stop complaining that Toady doesn't fix enough long-standing bugs for a week or two.

Not even a week. Or even a day. There's already thread's discussing/complaining about their personal ire bug.

I didn't see anyone complaining. Kogut's thread was very useful, and I hope the new one helps Toady to decide which bugs he must focus on.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:51:12 pm

You can say all you want that people are being unreasonable when their complaints escalate the less they are heard, but in actuality, they are being entirely reasonable.  It is the only reasonable thing to do, when you are yelling "fire", and everyone refuses to listen, or insults you for trying, to make an even more dramatic gesture until you are heard.

People are unreasonable when they are just complaining. Complaining about bugs and reporting bugs are two completely different things. A bug in an alpha game is not a fire in the house.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 24, 2012, 03:25:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 24, 2012, 01:41:55 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:51:12 pm

You can say all you want that people are being unreasonable when their complaints escalate the less they are heard, but in actuality, they are being entirely reasonable.  It is the only reasonable thing to do, when you are yelling "fire", and everyone refuses to listen, or insults you for trying, to make an even more dramatic gesture until you are heard.

People are unreasonable when they are just complaining. Complaining about bugs and reporting bugs are two completely different things. A bug in an alpha game is not a fire in the house.

from Dwarf Fortress screen on generating new world: "Report crashes, hangs, lags, bugs and general disappointment at the forums".

I think that polite complaining may be OK - but it is different when people are demanding to do X, sometimes with ridiculous "I donated so...".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 24, 2012, 03:43:39 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 24, 2012, 03:25:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 24, 2012, 01:41:55 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 23, 2012, 11:51:12 pm

You can say all you want that people are being unreasonable when their complaints escalate the less they are heard, but in actuality, they are being entirely reasonable.  It is the only reasonable thing to do, when you are yelling "fire", and everyone refuses to listen, or insults you for trying, to make an even more dramatic gesture until you are heard.

People are unreasonable when they are just complaining. Complaining about bugs and reporting bugs are two completely different things. A bug in an alpha game is not a fire in the house.

from Dwarf Fortress screen on generating new world: "Report crashes, hangs, lags, bugs and general disappointment at the forums".

I think that polite complaining may be OK - but it is different when people are demanding to do X, sometimes with ridiculous "I donated so...".

In my language complaining has a meaning a bit different, so maybe I lost the point. Demanding would be more appropriate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 24, 2012, 03:56:40 am

Oh god, didn't we go through this convo just a week or two ago already?
There is no problem with raising issues which bother people, but seriously, why do people bring them to this thread? It is not intended for ranting, bug reports or suggestions - it is clearly stated so in the OP.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 24, 2012, 06:42:13 pm

I removed the latest posts from the thread.  The argument is unnecessary.  In fact, it seemed resolved, but a few people want to keep pouring fire on it.  I'd appreciate it if everybody could be more relaxed in here.  That goes to everybody making offhand remarks or posting giant derails, on either side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on March 25, 2012, 08:07:57 am

To get things a bit more on track, I'll quote the following:

Quote from: Rockphed on March 22, 2012, 12:12:09 pm

Quote from: Zona on March 22, 2012, 12:06:17 pm

My quick question : Will the dwarves of existing forts put on some clothing come the next update? Or will that fix only effect new forts?

This question is burning in my brain as well.  If they won't, then my current fort (nestled in a hillside full of chalk and magnetite) would need to be restarted.

I too would also like to know if it'll work right, been pondering if I want to switch off my current fort just yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on March 25, 2012, 08:16:02 am

I guess the above can be rephrased: Do you always explicitly say when a regen is required to get all the bugfixes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fniff on March 25, 2012, 08:17:04 am

How will interactions develop? Could we have interactions that allow for a creature that stalks and kills your dwarves/adventurer, or is that reserved for the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on March 25, 2012, 08:38:41 am

Quote from: Fniff on March 25, 2012, 08:17:04 am

How will interactions develop? Could we have interactions that allow for a creature that stalks and kills your dwarves/adventurer, or is that reserved for the future?

Not sure what you mean by "could we have" and "reserved for the future". There's nothing implemented as of this moment that would allow meaningful stalking behavior, excluding the kill-you-while-you-sleep type of stalking the vampires indulge in. Ghosts and monsters that stalk adventurers are planned, and they were initially slated for the big 34.x release with all the new night creatures. Whether they are planned for feature releases in the near future remains an unanswered question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RabblerouserGT on March 25, 2012, 09:33:36 am

ALL adventure mode stuff. Sorry. :(

I hate to bring a question that's been brought to your attention before and to post more than one question, but
Regarding bug #5611 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5611), even though you seem to have acknowledged it in another FotF reply, I'd like to ask if you're aware of the underlying causes or even acknowledge it as a -bug-. An adventure mode world could have TONS of shops, but never an armor/metal-using shops/stoneworking/carpenter shops. The theory is that sites plain-out fail to harvest the raw materials and just aren't making things, that the "warehouses" could be plain-out empty.

Others have answered. Spoiler-tagged, just in case, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also
Is there any plans at all to make equipping weapons and armor in Adventure Mode more streamlined? Not meaning if it's happening anytime soon or even within the next year, but if it's something you think needs working on or if you believe (like some people do) that the complexity is needed. At the risk of sounding like an utter newb/casual player, I find it far more complicated than it needs to be.

Aaaalso
Will we eventually be able to have adventure mode characters make their own items other than sharp rocks? What sort of actions do you think would be nice for adventure mode? For example, I can imagine my character chopping down trees to make items that I could use to trade with shopkeepers. Or is the plan to make the only way of gathering trade items looting the dead?

Lastly, and this is an important one
How important is Adventure Mode for you? As it stands, even with the werebeasties and stuff added, the mode is still pretty bare-bones and unless you raid a DF-mode fort to better kit yourself out, there's little room to improve yourself after you start your journey. And even if you do kit yourself out in DF-mode spoilergear, you've pretty much ruined the experience. I FULLY understand Fortress Mode is the heart and soul of DF, however. I'm just wondering how far below DF mode is Adventure Mode. (:S Though I hate to word it that way.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on March 25, 2012, 10:04:26 am

Quote from: RabblerouserGT on March 25, 2012, 09:33:36 am

Is there any plans at all to make equipping weapons and armor in Adventure Mode more streamlined?

Will we eventually be able to have adventure mode characters make their own items other than sharp rocks? What sort of actions do you think would be nice for adventure mode?

How important is Adventure Mode for you?

Most of these have been asked before so I'll throw out some answers, Im sure others can do it better and if your not satisfied with it or want to know more just say. It's probably better to direct these questions to other forum members who have been here for a while and would know, rather than putting it in green for toady.

1. Yes, its planned. You can probably find it somewhere in here.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

2. Yes Toady plans to incorporate most of the features that are available in fortress mode across to adventure mode, being able to create objects, walls, the like. He plans to allow most if not all of the options available, but he doesnt want to just transfer/copy everything from fortress mode so as to keep the two unique and seperate from each other. Check the link above and you'll find this in there.

3. Toady finds it equally important to fortress mode. While he may work on one more than the other from time to time its not due to preference but where he thinks its important. If your asking if he likes adventure mode more than fortress mode I think thats going more towards personal questions which I dont think fits with the thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RabblerouserGT on March 25, 2012, 10:23:55 am

Thanks for that. I'll work on that post, then. I really only meant to ask the first one anyways, but my mind wandered. :S

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 25, 2012, 12:01:23 pm

I'm a bit curious about something. I searched for it, didn't find where anyone else asked, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone already did and I just missed it. Is it ever going to be reasonable again (possible, for a lot of us) to generate 1050 years on a large map, or will that be taken out and the dragons be made to reproduce at a younger age? Now that it's possible to tame dragons, I'd at least hope it would be possible to find some.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 25, 2012, 12:17:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on March 25, 2012, 12:01:23 pm

I'm a bit curious about something. I searched for it, didn't find where anyone else asked, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone already did and I just missed it. Is it ever going to be reasonable again (possible, for a lot of us) to generate 1050 years on a large map, or will that be taken out and the dragons be made to reproduce at a younger age? Now that it's possible to tame dragons, I'd at least hope it would be possible to find some.

Toady has states that eventually, DF will move to 64-bit. That should resolve any memory-exaustation issues. For now, you can use a LAA-hacked version which doubles the memory space DF can use to generate your worlds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 25, 2012, 12:59:37 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on March 25, 2012, 08:07:57 am

To get things a bit more on track, I'll quote the following:

Quote from: Rockphed on March 22, 2012, 12:12:09 pm

Quote from: Zona on March 22, 2012, 12:06:17 pm

My quick question : Will the dwarves of existing forts put on some clothing come the next update? Or will that fix only effect new forts?

This question is burning in my brain as well.  If they won't, then my current fort (nestled in a hillside full of chalk and magnetite) would need to be restarted.

I too would also like to know if it'll work right, been pondering if I want to switch off my current fort just yet.

It's been answered more than once, and I can say from experience, that yes, they do drop all their rotten clothes and put on new ones as soon as you update. (Looks pretty sweet in stonesense wile it's happening too)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sorcerer on March 25, 2012, 02:31:27 pm

A full body robe only counts as a shirt currently, meaning at the very least four items per dwarf are required.

Are there any plans to make upstep and ubstep work for covering up a dwarf to prevent bad thoughts?
Incidentally, are there any plans for gender specific clothing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 25, 2012, 02:52:36 pm

Quote from: Sorcerer on March 25, 2012, 02:31:27 pm

A full body robe only counts as a shirt currently, meaning at the very least four items per dwarf are required.

Are there any plans to make upstep and ubstep work for covering up a dwarf to prevent bad thoughts?

This probably deserves a bug report.  There's already some known weirdness with UBSTEP and LBSTEP. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1821)

Quote from: Sorcerer on March 25, 2012, 02:31:27 pm

Incidentally, are there any plans for gender specific clothing?

Doesn't quite answer the question, but Toady has touched on this (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15054.msg138669#msg138669) and it doesn't sound like it's a priority:

Quote from: Toady One

Finally, there aren't any gender links to clothing right now, so you might see male dwarves in "dresses" and "skirts" in the new worlds.  Keep in mind that men all over the world wear clothing like this, and that's what is meant by these generic terms.  You can remove the items from the entity raw before you play if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 25, 2012, 03:56:23 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

Really late, but I'm fairly sure NO_ART_NAME means the name can't contain "the", "a", "an", etc. (articles in the English language).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 26, 2012, 04:58:15 am

I would like to see the grazer bugs being fixed, most notably elephants being untameable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 26, 2012, 08:33:53 am

Quote from: Naryar on March 26, 2012, 04:58:15 am

I would like to see the grazer bugs being fixed, most notably elephants being untameable.

Honestly Grazers make herbivours not worth even having in a fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 26, 2012, 10:18:27 am

Sheep are pretty awesome, if you have a little space aboveground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 26, 2012, 10:45:53 am

Quote from: dree12 on March 25, 2012, 03:56:23 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 15, 2012, 02:50:46 am

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

Really late, but I'm fairly sure NO_ART_NAME means the name can't contain "the", "a", "an", etc. (articles in the English language).

Awesome, thanks. I think you're right, I was having some trouble with extra "the"s and that clears that up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 26, 2012, 05:18:46 pm

I've been involved in (and planning to rewrite an old) suggestion threads recently that related to personalities, which in turn means they would be caught up in the overall personality rewrites.

When searching for information on the personality rewrites, however, most recent information that can be gleaned on what they will entail has been rather oblique, and oftentimes referenced the likes of Interactions and usage hints, which imply that the personality rewrites will go beyond merely making personalities merely more useful for determining aspects of worldgen history or just fortress mode criminal dwarves, and into the realm of overtly shaping how the AI decides to use all their abilities at their disposal in the likes of Adventurer Mode and Fortress Mode.

Spoiler: Most informative quotes I could dig up, but I am looking for more in-game AI information than this (click to show/hide)

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1377634#msg1377634

Quote from: Toady One

Personalities come up in world gen, but they are kind of lacking, because the modern system is so non-judgmental, he he he.  There isn't much of any intra-entity strife, so they aren't used for that anyway.  So we're going to end up augmenting it with additional goals and "virtue/vice"-type stuff, and that should let us have people work out their ambitions in a consistent way, and then we should have more meat for the succession/schism stuff.  I'm not sure about the future of the current personality facets.  They are useful for things, but not so much for this.  Freeing up some of the boring professions for entity pop people should also give us more room for personal ambition among the realized people (or appropriate people can be elevated from entity pops if they don't arise -- it's somewhat disappointing not to trace everybody back all the way to the beginning, but it's the only reasonable way at this point).

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1943773#msg1943773

Quote from: Toady One

I tried to find a DF Talk quote too, but the one I was thinking of might be in the one I still have to edit, so I'm confused.  In any case, yeah, I think the current facets I've got are too wishy-washy.  Instead of trying to use them as the basic axes and figuring out how something like "greed" might arise from them, it seems like using a new set which isn't focused on being non-judgmental will be more efficient.  I'm not going over to a yes/no archetype/quirk/trait system.  This will definitely include the foundations for crime, although initially we're thinking less about criminal dwarves and more about villains and their motivations in general for the army arc.  My specific goal at first is just to capture a wider breadth of dispositions, since I had trouble writing world gen AI with the current facets.  From there, I think adding personality effects to the game should be easier.  I think goals and dreams are also a part of this.  The "needs" rewrite is related to that, but we're still working that out.

Quote from: DF Talk 11

So that kind of gets to an additional part of the overall personality rewrite which would be an emotion system. In adventure mode emotions are a tricky thing because you really don't want to get too far ahead of yourself there, getting into the players head, whereas if it's just doing some helpful bookkeeping for you with your favourite hobbies and stuff, that's actually a really good thing, but if it's actually trying to force you one way or another based on what it thinks you should be feeling, that's quite strange. But once you get to the other guys then emotions are a great thing. Right now we just have this slow descent into unhappiness and despair and psychotic breaks for the poor dwarves, and that sucks. They should be able to just snap, throw a tantrum, come back and be the happiest little dwarf that they could be, having worked out their issues, but it's kind of strange now how it's only long term despair and so on being tracked, rather than short term events.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2922258#msg2922258

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Mr Frog

I see that the secret-based interactions have a hint as to what would motivate units to search them out in worldgen. Are there any others besides a fear of dying (as in necromancers) and if so, what are they?
Relatedly, for vampire- and werewolf-style divine-punishment thingies, are there any hint tags besides MAJOR_CURSE and, if so, what do they do?

Nah, that's it for goals.  It's just a little thing that I needed to throttle things before the personality rewrite.  The hints that I've needed so far are MAJOR_CURSE, ATTACK, GREETING, CLEAN_SELF and CLEAN_FRIEND.  There aren't any beneficial vanilla interactions, but as I mentioned in the last answer I could throw in a kind of beneficial catch-all until I have time to work further on magic AI.  It would be cool if there could just be a hint like "AS_NEEDED" or something that'll let it analyze the effects for beneficial/harmful effects or something, but I'm not sure what's going to work out.  The more versatile the effects are, the harder it is for the computer to analyze them.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2629820;topicseen#msg2629820

Quote from: Toady One

As the life of people becomes more complicated, this will be more natural, but right now they don't have lives.  Once they have life goals etc. from the personality rewrite, we'll be at the starting point of one of our overarching conceptual goals, which is to allow you to pick out a person or family and help them indefinitely, as a sort of proof-of-dynamic-world thing, even if it is a strange thing to do.  That still wouldn't necessarily get at the mundane side of life, but it would be related.

Can you give us some idea of how extensive the personality rewrites will be? (As in, how many currently existing systems outside worldgen will be impacted?) 

Basically, how much more complex would the average dwarf or human villager's "brain" be in actual gameplay after this?  Does this stop with things like "My student guidance counselor said my personality test results came back, and my ideal career is as a brigand because I love hurting people and stealing stuff, with a Life Goal of killing 3 or 4 adventurers" and just replace the 30 personality things with more "judgmental" traits, or does it go into breaking down/discarding the current happiness and preferences and the AI systems where dwarves choose what to do at a given moment and rebuilding them with more "moving parts" in action choice? 

Will this include or directly lead to changes in the way you converse with others in Adventurer Mode?  (Personality/mood changing how they talk?)

When trying to go into these discussions, it's best to squirrel away as much information on where you (Toady) are leaning on these issues already.  It's hard to talk about personalities or related systems when you know the ground is going to be shifting under your feet, but you aren't sure how far it will shift.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 26, 2012, 06:51:15 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 26, 2012, 05:18:46 pm

I've been involved in (and planning to rewrite an old) suggestion threads recently that related to personalities, which in turn means they would be caught up in the overall personality rewrites.

-snip-

youre using the plural there? can you, for the sake of convenience, give us a link-list to those suggestions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 26, 2012, 07:16:30 pm

Quote from: eux0r on March 26, 2012, 06:51:15 pm

youre using the plural there? can you, for the sake of convenience, give us a link-list to those suggestions?

I don't see why that's important, but some of the ones from the last month or so...

Adventurer Personality Profiling (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105400.msg3122401#msg3122401)
DF, social classes, emergent behaviors, and the personality rewrites (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105212.msg3114863#msg3114863)
Make vampires feed on the weak (fortress mode) (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103443.0) (Specifically, personality-based targetting of types of dwarves.)
Boredom factor (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102758.msg3037275#msg3037275)
Nobles and their Demands (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=99555.msg2928138#msg2928138) (Specifically, making preferences more "sane")
Regional Effects for Good/Savage Biomes. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101622.msg3006677#msg3006677) (includes good biomes altering personality)
Good regions being painfully good (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101741.0) (Rambling topic, but again involves good regions changing personalities)
Suggestions for dwarf psychology (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60463.0) (Old, but just got revived.)

And the old one of mine I wanted to rewrite was Class Warfare (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg1403850#msg1403850), which involved more types of "happiness", as well.  (My rewrites were going to be more a factor of the internal fortress economics issues, however...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on March 26, 2012, 07:28:28 pm

I think 0.34.06 is absolutely awesome!

I wanted to ask, and I don't mean to come off as ungrateful, just curious: Do you have any plans to allow more exotics to reproduce like GCS or GDS?

I know there are mods that can allow that, but if its vanilla it feels so much more...right. I'm sure you got alot on your plate. I'm just wondering if its under consideration at all for the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 27, 2012, 12:52:30 am

So um, guys I currently don't have much time to play DF, so I'd like to have your opinion : was this round of bugfixing as good as intended ? I know clothing bugs have bothered people for a loong time, and the reintroduction of bad thought about clothes sounds good, but how is it really ? Was it really a before/after moment ?

That MIGHT put fortress mode back near the top of my priorities...
EDIT: I'm wondering if I shouldn't open an other thread with that. I don't think it'll go into a very long discussion, but that really depends on people... I hope it won't start another derail or flame war.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 27, 2012, 12:57:59 am

This update is like warm apple pie.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 27, 2012, 01:55:33 am

Well I expected my fps to go up... It didnt. Back to quitting my each fort on year 3 to lag death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on March 27, 2012, 02:33:32 am

I don't know why FPS would go up, all the clothes are still in the game.  Just being worn now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 27, 2012, 02:54:06 am

Played a fortress up to year 5 (when it was ravaged by the biggest tantrum spiral I ever saw) with 180 dwarves at max, embarx 4X4, and the fps never went below 99. I am very happy with perfomance in fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 27, 2012, 03:53:05 am

Some !!science!! topics which I have read have suggested that dorfs check for claimed clothing every frame, and/or at least the dorfs who lost a bodypart, keep seeking clothing for that bodypart indefinitely (very often). In a way I was hoping that this was THE culprit to the fps decay, and that it's finally over. However the decay still continues for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on March 27, 2012, 06:10:47 am

The release notes for the 34.06 state that they no longer obsess about clothes for lost limbs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on March 27, 2012, 06:21:25 am

Yes, I did not clarify, but that is what I meant. I expected these changes to change a lot of fps issues starting with 34.06.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 10:10:13 am

So hauling a creature will stop a mood? I think thats the first time I've seen something stop a mood. A mood is a mood! You can't just stop one, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 27, 2012, 10:19:54 am

Quote from: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 10:10:13 am

So hauling a creature will stop a mood? I think thats the first time I've seen something stop a mood. A mood is a mood! You can't just stop one, right?

No, mood will not start during leading animals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 27, 2012, 10:24:12 am

Quote

• removed negative clothing thoughts for children

It's amusing that this makes sense both as a bug fix, and as a feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 10:29:30 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 27, 2012, 10:19:54 am

Quote from: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 10:10:13 am

So hauling a creature will stop a mood? I think thats the first time I've seen something stop a mood. A mood is a mood! You can't just stop one, right?

No, mood will not start during leading animals.

So it will happen once the job is finished? So you couldn't try to get everyone hauling animals except the mood you want?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 27, 2012, 10:36:50 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 27, 2012, 10:19:54 am

Quote from: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 10:10:13 am

So hauling a creature will stop a mood? I think thats the first time I've seen something stop a mood. A mood is a mood! You can't just stop one, right?

No, mood will not start during leading animals.

It's interesting that he chose to fix it that way instead of making dwarves just stop leading animals when struck by a mood.  Maybe indicative of the inflexibilities of animal hauling or the job system in general.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on March 27, 2012, 11:00:31 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 26, 2012, 05:18:46 pm

... "My student guidance counselor said my personality test results came back, and my ideal career is as a brigand because I love hurting people and stealing stuff, with a Life Goal of killing 3 or 4 adventurers" ...

sigged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 27, 2012, 12:54:55 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 27, 2012, 10:36:50 am

It's interesting that he chose to fix it that way instead of making dwarves just stop leading animals when struck by a mood.  Maybe indicative of the inflexibilities of animal hauling or the job system in general.

I think that may have been more from the chaos that would be caused if you were attempting to pit a megabeast when the dwarf was struck by inspiration for that fantastic cedar earring and abandoned the creature to go make his masterpiece. It's a kindness to the player, in a sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 01:37:31 pm

Quote from: Keldane on March 27, 2012, 12:54:55 pm

I think that may have been more from the chaos that would be caused if you were attempting to pit a megabeast when the dwarf was struck by inspiration for that fantastic cedar earring and abandoned the creature to go make his masterpiece. It's a kindness to the player, in a sense.

Heh, I don't remember ever being protected from chaos. That would be a new one. DF has mostly been an exercise in extreme chaos, sometimes resulting from the improper use of soap. Doing something like leading around dangerous animals is asking for chaos. Don't tell me Toady's gone soft on us.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 27, 2012, 02:05:09 pm

Quote from: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 01:37:31 pm

Quote from: Keldane on March 27, 2012, 12:54:55 pm

I think that may have been more from the chaos that would be caused if you were attempting to pit a megabeast when the dwarf was struck by inspiration for that fantastic cedar earring and abandoned the creature to go make his masterpiece. It's a kindness to the player, in a sense.

Heh, I don't remember ever being protected from chaos. That would be a new one. DF has mostly been an exercise in extreme chaos, sometimes resulting from the improper use of soap. Doing something like leading around dangerous animals is asking for chaos. Don't tell me Toady's gone soft on us.

He did recently remove all the UNTOWARD words like "rape" and "anus" from the in-game vocabularies...

*shifty eyes*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDagger on March 27, 2012, 05:15:17 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 27, 2012, 02:05:09 pm

Quote from: cephalo on March 27, 2012, 01:37:31 pm

Quote from: Keldane on March 27, 2012, 12:54:55 pm

I think that may have been more from the chaos that would be caused if you were attempting to pit a megabeast when the dwarf was struck by inspiration for that fantastic cedar earring and abandoned the creature to go make his masterpiece. It's a kindness to the player, in a sense.

Heh, I don't remember ever being protected from chaos. That would be a new one. DF has mostly been an exercise in extreme chaos, sometimes resulting from the improper use of soap. Doing something like leading around dangerous animals is asking for chaos. Don't tell me Toady's gone soft on us.

He did recently remove all the UNTOWARD words like "rape" and "anus" from the in-game vocabularies...

*shifty eyes*

Didn't he say that was just because he got tired of having to forbid them in book names? While I just mod them back in every release I gotta admit to being grateful we don't have "Can The Mysterious Anus of Sluts: Fact or Fiction Save the World?" as a potential book title...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on March 27, 2012, 05:28:38 pm

Quote

disallowed moods on dwarves that are leading animals

Why? 
Also, don't you think it's basically a loophole? Because this update contradicts my understand of moods as uncontrollable and not necessarily compatible with sanity. It would make sense as a part of a larger personality moods rewrite, but I don't think it works as a standalone change.

Quote from: Sizik on March 27, 2012, 10:24:12 am

Quote

• removed negative clothing thoughts for children

It's amusing that this makes sense both as a bug fix, and as a feature.

Would be fun if parents got negative thoughts from their children running around naked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on March 27, 2012, 06:04:46 pm

But then the parents would get the immediate unhappy thought when Urist McMom dropped one.

"Odd, I seem to have lost weight.  Oh such a wonderful baby girl...Oh my god she's naked!   Yaaaargh!" *berserk* *throws baby across meeting hall* 

Though I suppose the childbirth thought could just get a counteracting buff and the mom could could go and seek clothing for the little squirt.  Just making nobody give a crap was probably a easier way to fix it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JasonMel on March 27, 2012, 10:19:57 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on March 27, 2012, 05:28:38 pm

Quote

disallowed moods on dwarves that are leading animals

Why? 

Issue 5699. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5699) They would keep towing the animal around while working on their new project. [Edit: Sorry, did you mean, "Why did you fix the issue that way instead of causing the moody dwarf to abandon the animal?"]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 27, 2012, 10:46:31 pm

So my immigrant hunters will bring bows and quivers again?  Happy day!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 27, 2012, 10:48:56 pm

Quote from: JasonMel on March 27, 2012, 10:19:57 pm

Issue 5699. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5699) They would keep towing the animal around while working on their new project. [Edit: Sorry, did you mean, "Why did you fix the issue that way instead of causing the moody dwarf to abandon the animal?"]

"Sure, Urist, why don't you let the wild dragon that was being led into the cage run free in the middle of your fortress because it's so much more important that you just had an idea for a really neat granite sock?  What could POSSIBLY go Fun?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 28, 2012, 03:30:45 am

Well I've seen a case of some dwarf going moody while hauling an animal, and it certainly did finished his hauling job first (while being moody) THEN he claimed a workshop.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on March 28, 2012, 07:20:00 am

Sweet bug fixes. Ghost issues in particular were game breaking at times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on March 29, 2012, 12:40:02 am

Limited number of trophies, nice.  That should cut down on the ridiculousness some.  I wonder if they'll keep just a random selection, or only the best quality/most important ones?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 01:46:44 am

 "stuck announced ghosts without an engraved slab on the very top". Thanks! But is it possible to allow again marking for trading entire stack in fortress mode with single key? Main result of recent change that allowed to trade portions of stacks is that trading single stack requires 2 enters - what results in more pointless clicking and breaks mass trade macros ((enter, arrow down)x20).

EDIT: For example: enter to mark entire object/stack and shift+enter to mark part of the stack

Spoiler: But it is a suggestion! (click to show/hide)

"I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here." - This change is from 0.34.x releases, so I hope that it counts as "current developments".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on March 29, 2012, 02:02:11 am

Quote from: Shinziril on March 29, 2012, 12:40:02 am

Limited number of trophies, nice.  That should cut down on the ridiculousness some.  I wonder if they'll keep just a random selection, or only the best quality/most important ones?

They should just use drawers and select some each day matching their dress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thief^ on March 29, 2012, 02:09:30 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 01:46:44 am

But is it possible to allow again marking for trading entire stack in fortress mode with single key? Main result of recent change that allowed to trade portions of stacks is that trading single stack requires 2 enters - what results in more pointless clicking and breaks mass trade macros ((enter, arrow down)x20).

Say, Shift+Enter to trade all of a stack?
(I see this as fairly minor, personally)

Thankyou Toady for all the fixes recently, you've been making a lot of people very happy!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 02:36:27 am

Quote from: Thief^ on March 29, 2012, 02:09:30 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 01:46:44 am

But is it possible to allow again marking for trading entire stack in fortress mode with single key? Main result of recent change that allowed to trade portions of stacks is that trading single stack requires 2 enters - what results in more pointless clicking and breaks mass trade macros ((enter, arrow down)x20).

Say, Shift+Enter to trade all of a stack?

Shift+Enter to trade part of a stack? (enter to mark single object and shift+enter to mark stack will still break macros)

EDIT: edited my previous post, removed useless colour from this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 29, 2012, 02:55:44 am

that's not what lime-green is for. cut it out guys

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 29, 2012, 03:26:47 am

Yay for the reduction of bone crafts. While it looked badass in my mind, it's just a lot of bother and eats FPS for no large gain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 29, 2012, 10:23:49 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 02:36:27 am

Quote from: Thief^ on March 29, 2012, 02:09:30 am

Quote from: Kogut on March 29, 2012, 01:46:44 am

But is it possible to allow again marking for trading entire stack in fortress mode with single key? Main result of recent change that allowed to trade portions of stacks is that trading single stack requires 2 enters - what results in more pointless clicking and breaks mass trade macros ((enter, arrow down)x20).

Say, Shift+Enter to trade all of a stack?

Shift+Enter to trade part of a stack? (enter to mark single object and shift+enter to mark stack will still break macros)

EDIT: edited my previous post, removed useless colour from this one.

Shift+Enter could work as well for non-stack items, allowing Shift+Enter to trade the whole stack. This would be much more consistant with everything else and less prone to confusion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on March 29, 2012, 11:31:21 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 27, 2012, 10:48:56 pm

Quote from: JasonMel on March 27, 2012, 10:19:57 pm

Issue 5699. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5699) They would keep towing the animal around while working on their new project. [Edit: Sorry, did you mean, "Why did you fix the issue that way instead of causing the moody dwarf to abandon the animal?"]

"Sure, Urist, why don't you let the wild dragon that was being led into the cage run free in the middle of your fortress because it's so much more important that you just had an idea for a really neat granite sock?  What could POSSIBLY go Fun?"

I always have a hard time picturing how a single dwarf can lead a dragon or a hydra anywhere. 20 dwarves working together, maybe, but one ? Maybe if they tie it and put it on some sort of rolling device...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 29, 2012, 11:42:40 am

Okay, so none of these bugs are "Clothing is useless" or "We cannot tame exotic animals", but they all seem pretty boss.  So, when does the next release come out so we can use all these changes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 29, 2012, 12:36:08 pm

Quote from: dree12 on March 29, 2012, 10:23:49 am

Shift+Enter could work as well for non-stack items, allowing Shift+Enter to trade the whole stack. This would be much more consistant with everything else and less prone to confusion.

On the contrary, enter to select the object, no questions asked, is the standard thing to be expected.  What is unusual is the desire to select only a portion of a stack, as you only rarely ever want to do that, and as such, that is what makes more sense as a shift-enter. 

Of course, if any such command is added, it will be custom-key-mappable, so it's a minor concern.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 29, 2012, 12:41:37 pm

Really, it's a fortress/adventure difference, I think. In fortress mode you have the cash to buy things in whole stacks- in adventure mode your resources are more limited (assuming you ignore the many exploits) and you're more likely to only want a dozen berries instead of the entire stack of 87. In my personal experience, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 29, 2012, 01:05:54 pm

Well, I've been playing Adventure Mode recently.  Generally, you need more than you think, unless you want to go through the hassle of picking up several pages of individual animal meats, just taking the whole 87 berries is just a time-saver. 

But that's beside the point, you don't really pick up a portion of a stack all that often, even in Adventurer Mode - you pretty much only do it regarding food.  Stack of coins?  Why would you want anything other than the whole stack?  Stack of bolts? What other kinds of stacks do you interact with?

Since you don't have to use it that often, and you generally are doing it to stop and carefully select something, the extra step of hitting shift makes more sense in that context, since you are already saying you are going to take the extra time to dictate the number you want to pick up, rather than the hasty "grab everything" option, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on March 29, 2012, 07:08:52 pm

Consistancy with the rest of the game, I mean. When building a gigantic floor, one does not usually press Enter 100 times. Even though Shift-Enter is probably 100x more popular than Enter in fortress mode, that's the convention. The same thing should apply for stacks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 30, 2012, 12:30:52 am

Please consider voting for your favored item selection paradigm here. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105985.0)

I for one favor the first, which sets as default the most commonly selected option. I have tried to produce an unbiased poll regardless, please let me know if you disagree.

That said, the entire system should be made moot. ALL identical items in a caravan should be automatically merged in the trade screen. For instance, instead of thirty six separate stacks of plump helmet (5), there will be a single stack labeled Plump Helmet (180). Far, far, far less scrolling, less wear on enter keys, and a much easier way to review the trade caravan's goods.

I would say that if such a change took ten times as long as either of the other changes, it would still be a worthwhile improvement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 30, 2012, 12:44:12 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on March 29, 2012, 02:55:44 am

that's not what lime-green is for. cut it out guys

A thousand times, yes!  You guys have started this conversation in three places now, please do not keep derailing FotF with suggestions.  The whole point of having different forums is that we discuss each topic in its appropriate area, not to discuss the same thing everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on March 30, 2012, 06:06:29 am

Quote from: devlog

mood dwarves ask for metal bars correctly and it says "bones" instead of "body parts"

It's good to see that new players won't be as confused as I was when I got my first moody dwarf. Nice work Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 30, 2012, 06:59:20 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 30, 2012, 12:30:52 am

That said, the entire system should be made moot. ALL identical items in a caravan should be automatically merged in the trade screen. For instance, instead of thirty six separate stacks of plump helmet (5), there will be a single stack labeled Plump Helmet (180). Far, far, far less scrolling, less wear on enter keys, and a much easier way to review the trade caravan's goods.

I don't think we'll get that until the dwarves can stack on their own as well as unstack.  But without respect to stacking, I would really like a trade screen in which you can just trade for items in lots.  Like, the merchant will present a lot containing 25 bins of assorted leather valued at x dwarfbucks, and your trader counters with y value worth of trade goods.  Or you say, "let's see your armor."  He gives you a list containing just armor, you exclude the highly decorated expensive crap, and purchase just the functional bits without scrolling through pages of animal cages and booze and barrels of animal blood and expensive rope.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 30, 2012, 07:03:46 am

I just wish food items, clothing, armor, crafts, bars, blocks and ammo came in bins/barrels just like leather and cloth does.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 30, 2012, 07:54:56 am

I imagine these issues, and more, will be in further releases of the Trade Caravan Arc.  Can't wait! (But I will ;) )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 30, 2012, 08:27:29 am

So how often do these bugfix releases get sent on average?  What is the criteria for determining whether or not a new release should be posted?

Also when will we get proper arthropod reproduction and giant ant colony infestations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 30, 2012, 08:57:51 am

These ponies have gone too far. (http://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/rktvl/dwarf_fortress_03407_released/)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on March 30, 2012, 09:38:51 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 30, 2012, 08:24:29 am

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon,

YUS!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 30, 2012, 09:54:43 am

Quote from: Karlito on March 30, 2012, 09:38:51 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 30, 2012, 08:24:29 am

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon,

YUS!!!

I hope multi-item hauling makes into these hauling changes. I wish for it since I started playing DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 30, 2012, 10:11:24 am

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 30, 2012, 08:27:29 am

So how often do these bugfix releases get sent on average?  What is the criteria for determining whether or not a new release should be posted?

0.34.01 was released on Feb 14.  In the 45 days since then, there have been 5 releases (not counting 0.34.04, which was more of a hotfix).  Those 5 releases fixed 188 issues, averaging 9 days and 37.6 bugs per release.  Unless there's an exceptionally urgent problem, the release criteria is just about a certain amount of stuff having been fixed (something in the neighborhood of 35 or 40 bugs).

Quote from: Gaspa Craftdreams on March 30, 2012, 08:27:29 am

Also when will we get proper arthropod reproduction and giant ant colony infestations?

Timetable/suggestion questions are generally not answerable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 30, 2012, 04:47:14 pm

Well, not answer with any satisfaction, Toady general answer to those questions is:

"Sounds goods. No time table."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on March 30, 2012, 07:29:38 pm

Am glad to see that there will be hauling improvements.

Especially the "hello, I really feel useful hauling ONE SINGLE TOOTH for the fortress"

On the other hand single dwarves can haul dragons, so maybe I should not be complaining...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 30, 2012, 11:34:19 pm

Maybe Foot can answer this one, but:

Is there any desire to update/overhaul artifact descriptions from their perpetual state of menacing spike-itude? Perhaps creating a greater variety of cosmetic descriptions, and/or making item-type appropriate enhancements? For example, a shoe with hanging rings, menacing spikes, inlaid gems and an image as having in-appropriate enhancements for its type.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 31, 2012, 12:33:46 am

Quote from: nenjin on March 30, 2012, 11:34:19 pm

Maybe Foot can answer this one, but:

Is there any desire to update/overhaul artifact descriptions from their perpetual state of menacing spike-itude? Perhaps creating a greater variety of cosmetic descriptions, and/or making item-type appropriate enhancements? For example, a shoe with hanging rings, menacing spikes, inlaid gems and an image as having in-appropriate enhancements for its type.

The short answer is yes, that Artifacts are planned to get revamped. Though from what I recall from the dwarf fortress talks, it was more along the lines of making them more useable for Fort and Adventure Mode, more magical, and badass. He didn't explicitly state that the looks of the Artifacts were going to change, but knowing Toady once he in there mucky around with Artifacts, goodness knows what will be changed.


Though I suspect that Artifacts use the Decoration System, which is a general system. It the thing that covers Handles for Buckets, jewel encrusting, plant images ect. I don't recall any hint about this system being revamped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 31, 2012, 12:46:45 am

I would like to one day see those sorts of descriptions become raw-editable, since they affect so little (and all decorations are worth the same amount), so that you could define your own types of strange junk, like "has protruding knobs of ____." 

You can define what decoration types are common to what cultures, already, so you could make modded civs have civ-specific tastes in different things you add.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 31, 2012, 03:48:35 am

In the development  page, under Adventurer role: Explorer,

*Should not be able to cross every river square from travel map unless there's a bridge

shouldn't it be greened out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on March 31, 2012, 04:00:19 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 31, 2012, 02:13:46 am

Quote from: Raven on March 31, 2012, 01:13:01 am

Quote from: Toady One on March 30, 2012, 08:24:29 am

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon, with fire AI sometime after that (since I promised both of these for the bug fix cycle, along with some other stuff).  Regular bug fixes will also continue.  I might be busy until the first with the typical month-end stuff (crayon etc.).

what do U mean by hauling changes?

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark, and say that Toady is going to be adding in some/all of the Hauling Improvements as listed on the Dev Pages.

Well spotted; so potential Hauling Improvement candidates are:

Quote

•     Being able to haul multiple small objects
•     Having multiple dwarves involved with item hauling for a job
•     Being able to move multiple objects with roughly the same destination at once
•     Wheelbarrows to haul more objects than can be carried Minecarts
•     Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
•     Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
•     Work animals to tow carts and haul objects

And this appears to be where Toady mentioned he might tackle hauling (was there anything prior?):

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Immacolata

Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?

We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases.  That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 31, 2012, 04:11:08 am

He mentioned it yesterday here:

Quote from: Toady One on March 30, 2012, 08:24:29 am

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon, with fire AI sometime after that (since I promised both of these for the bug fix cycle, along with some other stuff).  Regular bug fixes will also continue.  I might be busy until the first with the typical month-end stuff (crayon etc.).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nenjin on March 31, 2012, 10:45:25 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 31, 2012, 12:33:46 am

Quote from: nenjin on March 30, 2012, 11:34:19 pm

Maybe Foot can answer this one, but:

Is there any desire to update/overhaul artifact descriptions from their perpetual state of menacing spike-itude? Perhaps creating a greater variety of cosmetic descriptions, and/or making item-type appropriate enhancements? For example, a shoe with hanging rings, menacing spikes, inlaid gems and an image as having in-appropriate enhancements for its type.

The short answer is yes, that Artifacts are planned to get revamped. Though from what I recall from the dwarf fortress talks, it was more along the lines of making them more useable for Fort and Adventure Mode, more magical, and badass. He didn't explicitly state that the looks of the Artifacts were going to change, but knowing Toady once he in there mucky around with Artifacts, goodness knows what will be changed.


Though I suspect that Artifacts use the Decoration System, which is a general system. It the thing that covers Handles for Buckets, jewel encrusting, plant images ect. I don't recall any hint about this system being revamped.

Mostly I'd just like to see more variety and a higher degree of selection between decorations. After....13 or 14 artifacts in my current fortress, they all sound the same in many ways. As I stop and reflect on the number of decorations, there are actually quite a few already. But they seem to over use available decorations, leaving players feeling less like they've produced some unique artifact and more like it's just a higher tier of the same mass-produced crap dwarves already make. The magic and functionality would certainly help, but aesthetically the descriptions could use an overhaul too, IMO.

Also didn't Toady say that artifacts were going to by and large remain a dwarf civ only thing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 31, 2012, 11:34:33 am

Well that uncommon items get produced helps a bit but i too would like to see more decor. That Bow i got in my latest (now for 34.07 to be abandoned fort) was realy nice. It made the base for a squad of bow dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 31, 2012, 04:20:21 pm

Quote from: nenjin on March 31, 2012, 10:45:25 am

Also didn't Toady say that artifacts were going to by and large remain a dwarf civ only thing?

I don't recall anything like that - artifacts are supposed to become a big motivator in worldgen activities after all. There was something about artifacts being largely how magic should manifest for dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 31, 2012, 07:11:37 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 31, 2012, 04:20:21 pm

Quote from: nenjin on March 31, 2012, 10:45:25 am

Also didn't Toady say that artifacts were going to by and large remain a dwarf civ only thing?

I don't recall anything like that - artifacts are supposed to become a big motivator in worldgen activities after all. There was something about artifacts being largely how magic should manifest for dwarves.

It was "Strange moods" that were going to be a dwarf only thing.

Artifacts that occur in other ways he has no objection to. Though that does mean the majority of artifacts are going to be owned by dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on April 01, 2012, 07:50:09 am

Quote from: Lac on March 31, 2012, 04:00:19 am

And this appears to be where Toady mentioned he might tackle hauling (was there anything prior?):

Ah, improved hauling is top of Eternal Suggestion Voting; that's what I'd missed.  With nearly 1500 votes; and nearly 200 votes more than the second most popular item; no wonder Toady is tackling it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LeeDub on April 01, 2012, 08:21:17 am

I just hope the wait for the next one isn't as long...  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 01, 2012, 09:41:41 am

Quote from: LeeDub on April 01, 2012, 08:21:17 am

I just hope the wait for the next one isn't as long...  ;)

It won't be short though, if he implements everything in under hauling improvements in the development site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LeeDub on April 01, 2012, 10:02:49 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 01, 2012, 09:41:41 am

It won't be short though, if he implements everything in under hauling improvements in the development site.

Well, sure. Nobody can in his right mind expect Toady to suddenly code ten times faster. I just meant I hope to see a couple more of the eternal suggestions implemented within the next two years or so. This would cut into his other plans, of course. Hopefully Toady can find a way to cram them in his schedule.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 01, 2012, 10:31:12 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 31, 2012, 03:48:35 am

In the development  page, under Adventurer role: Explorer,

*Should not be able to cross every river square from travel map unless there's a bridge

shouldn't it be greened out?

Yeah, he just hasn't gotten around to updating that page in a long time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 01, 2012, 02:17:46 pm

These hauling improvemnts will be the right moment for Toady to tackle on those old issues like adventurers carrying dragons in their backpacks 
 or dwarves moving tons of rocks everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 02, 2012, 09:31:32 am

Can't wait what will the new hauling system will be !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 02, 2012, 08:25:25 pm

Quote from: Naryar on April 02, 2012, 09:31:32 am

Can't wait what will the new hauling system will be !

Holy Carp!

They can carry bins and store at the same time!

YES!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 02, 2012, 08:26:28 pm

Quote from: Toadonalog

Seeing a single dwarf clean up a seed-ridden dining room as a single job is a beautiful thing.

Yipes.  Can you believe this is happening?  I don't think there has been a better update within memory.  What on earth are peasants going to do with all this new free time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on April 02, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

Quote from: Devlog

This afternoon there were dwarves running around with bins, bags and barrels, vacuuming up items.

So, bins/bags/barrels: that covers the hauling of pretty much everything but furniture or raw materials. I am excited enough by this that I don't actually care if Toady gets to carts or barrows or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 02, 2012, 08:46:10 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 02, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

So, bins/bags/barrels: that covers the hauling of pretty much everything but furniture or raw materials. I am excited enough by this that I don't actually care if Toady gets to carts or barrows or whatever.

Wheelbarrows are really nothing more than a means to carry more weight with less effort.

There would be some programming effort in how, exactly, such equipment would be assigned, but the real heavy lifting is the thing he just accomplished - the ability for a job to group itself with other, similar jobs.  (Remember, jobs select dwarves, not the other way around in this game.)

I hope this still applies when there are not bins, however. 

With all that said, however, I completely agree with this:

Quote from: hermes on April 02, 2012, 08:26:28 pm

Yipes.  Can you believe this is happening?  I don't think there has been a better update within memory.  What on earth are peasants going to do with all this new free time?

This has been at the top of the ESV for longer than I've been playing DF.  It is a major step forward, both for all the people who wanted to see these improvements made, but also in that Toady is responding to the ESV at all.  It is quite heartening to see player feedback taken seriously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 02, 2012, 08:55:26 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 02, 2012, 08:46:10 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 02, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

So, bins/bags/barrels: that covers the hauling of pretty much everything but furniture or raw materials. I am excited enough by this that I don't actually care if Toady gets to carts or barrows or whatever.

Wheelbarrows are really nothing more than a means to carry more weight with less effort.

There would be some programming effort in how, exactly, such equipment would be assigned, but the real heavy lifting is the thing he just accomplished - the ability for a job to group itself with other, similar jobs.  (Remember, jobs select dwarves, not the other way around in this game.)

I hope this still applies when there are not bins, however. 

With all that said, however, I completely agree with this:

Quote from: hermes on April 02, 2012, 08:26:28 pm

Yipes.  Can you believe this is happening?  I don't think there has been a better update within memory.  What on earth are peasants going to do with all this new free time?

This has been at the top of the ESV for longer than I've been playing DF.  It is a major step forward, both for all the people who wanted to see these improvements made, but also in that Toady is responding to the ESV at all.  It is quite heartening to see player feedback taken seriously.

He was taking it seriously a few years ago, when the a good portion of the top ten ESV made it on the near term development page.  I recall a Toady One post explaining why not every one of the top ten ESV made it to the Dev Page, but my search fu isn't at Fookerchief levels. I wish I could recall the details.

It just seems like a freaken ever because, it has been since the new "Short Term" Dev page was made. Though on the other hand, he is getting to the Top ESV after Release 1 was done for the Caravan Arc, which from that perspective isn't to bad really.

And honestly, I dont know which perspective is more accurate or meaningful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 02, 2012, 09:24:40 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 02, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

Quote from: Devlog

This afternoon there were dwarves running around with bins, bags and barrels, vacuuming up items.

So, bins/bags/barrels: that covers the hauling of pretty much everything but furniture or raw materials. I am excited enough by this that I don't actually care if Toady gets to carts or barrows or whatever.

There will be caveats -- I suspect that dwarves will only multi-grab items that are heading for the same stockpile (I think the problem gets a lot harder otherwise).  Still, this is cool, and it's pretty encouraging that Toady got something working already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on April 02, 2012, 09:41:47 pm

I'm glad to see that Toady is finding the process of bug-fixing/game mechanics overhaul to be beautiful. I think the emotional satisfaction we see him gain from the completion of such goals is a better indicator of whether or not he is likely to handle the other bugs in the ESV in a timely manner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 02, 2012, 09:44:41 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 02, 2012, 09:24:40 pm

There will be caveats -- I suspect that dwarves will only multi-grab items that are heading for the same stockpile (I think the problem gets a lot harder otherwise).  Still, this is cool, and it's pretty encouraging that Toady got something working already.

It's also worth mentioning that this is perhaps the biggest single jump that can be made in the job-assigning system that doesn't add significant amounts of inefficiency in terms of the game being more laggy in exchange for boosted dwarven AI efficiency in terms of making less trips.

In the more complicated models that have been discussed (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78413.0), the degree of lag that gets added has to be balanced with the "intelligence" that the dwarves show in trying to solve the "postman problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_inspection_problem)".

Which isn't to say they aren't worth pursuing, but what Toady is working on now is the lowest-hanging and single most rewarding of the fruits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 02, 2012, 10:07:21 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 02, 2012, 09:24:40 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 02, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

Quote from: Devlog

This afternoon there were dwarves running around with bins, bags and barrels, vacuuming up items.

So, bins/bags/barrels: that covers the hauling of pretty much everything but furniture or raw materials. I am excited enough by this that I don't actually care if Toady gets to carts or barrows or whatever.

There will be caveats -- I suspect that dwarves will only multi-grab items that are heading for the same stockpile (I think the problem gets a lot harder otherwise).  Still, this is cool, and it's pretty encouraging that Toady got something working already.

This problem has existed so long, with so many proposed solutions that Toady almost certainly has been considering solutions in his head for years.  It does not suprise me that he started something and got it rolling quickly.  Hopefully he's considered far enough in advance that there aren't any cliffs ahead  :)  If so, I have confidence that there will at least be something better, even if it's not ideal.

It's so hard to ty to complement Toady without sounding like a fanboi, guess I just have to live with it if people think that of me, lol.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 02, 2012, 11:37:43 pm

Jreengus Christ, that was fast.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on April 03, 2012, 12:31:36 am

I love it. I did not need seeds in my dining room. And hauling them employed many dwarves, who themselves contributed to the seed problem. I hope dwarves can take a bin and go to my craft workshop and fill it with bone crafts. A legendary bone carver could easily churn out crafts fast enough for several haulers -- dozens at times -- depending on the workshop to stockpile distance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 03, 2012, 12:58:46 am

I'm really curious as to HOW Toady did it. The forums have discussed it for years and the best theory I've ever heard is that a dwarf would automatically look for hauling tasks starting and ending in nearby places.

So my question is, erm, how did you do that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on April 03, 2012, 01:03:38 am

Quote

This afternoon there were dwarves running around with bins, bags and barrels, vacuuming up items. Seeing a single dwarf clean up a seed-ridden dining room as a single job is a beautiful thing.

Will the reverse be done?  That is, will a planter be able to carry around a bag of seeds when planting a field, instead of having to make a round trip to bag for each seed planted?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 03, 2012, 01:37:05 am

Being that this is a general hauling overhaul, I will ask this as well. Will there be a one-time command of some sort to consolidate items in stockpiles? So that a whole bin isnt taken up by a single sock, but the sock is placed in a bin where there is some room left?

The reason why I'd think this to be a onetime command thing is twofold. One is that the CPU load might be significant if the checks were made constantly, this way the player can pick the best moment for it to happen (think seasonal, except you can choose it to happen when there isnt a raid or a FB in fort). The other reason is because Toady seems comfortable with this approach, with how he made dwarves dress/undress/dump clothing on command. It would be much like windows defrag, come to think of it XD including the socks moved during the defrag itself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2012, 01:44:09 am

Suggestions best go in the suggestion forum >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 03, 2012, 01:48:58 am

It is awesome! It will be possible to collect gifts from goblins in a efficient way! I hope that there is no need to use bin/bag whatever to haul single item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 02:24:27 am

I think you only made a suggestion Elone.

I'm pretty sure there an entire forum for suggestions. Not sure. But I'm pretty sure this isn't in the suggestion forum.

UNGREEN.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 03, 2012, 02:28:29 am

What really bothers me are the rocks and the loot from invaders (though the loot are mostly fixed now with dwarves carrying bins around).


What about the so called quantum stockpiles? They are currently used to reduce time spent with hauling(among other things) ...do you plan to do something about them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kelvron on April 03, 2012, 02:34:12 am

I can't wait to see how Toady improves hauling. I figure he agrees with the community in having dorfs pick up multiple items in the same area, e.g. cleaning up after an ambush/siege. The DF2012/DF.34.xx has been a blast to play around with. Especially after the worldgen slowdowns/bugs/crashes got improved upon.

Keep up the awesome work!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 03, 2012, 02:42:33 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 03, 2012, 12:58:46 am

I'm really curious as to HOW Toady did it. The forums have discussed it for years and the best theory I've ever heard is that a dwarf would automatically look for hauling tasks starting and ending in nearby places.

So my question is, erm, how did you do that?

My guess is that when a dwarf grabs an item for hauling, it does a quick floodfill to check the surrounding area for another item that has the same destination as the first item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 02:49:23 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 03, 2012, 02:42:33 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 03, 2012, 12:58:46 am

I'm really curious as to HOW Toady did it. The forums have discussed it for years and the best theory I've ever heard is that a dwarf would automatically look for hauling tasks starting and ending in nearby places.

So my question is, erm, how did you do that?

My guess is that when a dwarf grabs an item for hauling, it does some small, inexpensive floodfills to check the surrounding area for other items going to the same place.

I dont think that would work. I think I've read a thread where it shows that Jobs pick dorfs, instead of dorfs picking jobs.

So doing the floodcheck for other items wouldn't work.

I think jobs that can be placed in a shared stock pile are checked against a distance cut off from the previous item with an arbitrary cut off number for the grouping. (I suspect that dorf personality traits can cut off how many objects they'll actually get.) So jobs group themselves into Master Jobs with a collection of Slave Jobs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on April 03, 2012, 03:54:26 am

With more effective hauling, dwarves will have more time to spend on productive working. This means they will produce more. But we already have an overabundance of items in fortress mode, and there's so many of them that many items become virtually worthless (for the player, that is). Dwarfpower is rarely a trouble – on the contrary, it is often difficult to find enough work for all of your lazers. With more effective hauling, we'll have even more lazers. Is this something you recognize as a problem? If yes, have you considered any solutions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Halconnen on April 03, 2012, 04:32:20 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 03, 2012, 12:58:46 am

I dont think that would work. I think I've read a thread where it shows that Jobs pick dorfs, instead of dorfs picking jobs.

So doing the floodcheck for other items wouldn't work.

I think jobs that can be placed in a shared stock pile are checked against a distance cut off from the previous item with an arbitrary cut off number for the grouping. (I suspect that dorf personality traits can cut off how many objects they'll actually get.) So jobs group themselves into Master Jobs with a collection of Slave Jobs.

My assumption would be that whatever manager-function creates the hauling jobs now checks for other nearby items that would match the same stockpile, then creates one new 'bin hauling' job with all the applicable items marked, rather than spamming one job for every item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 04:46:47 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on April 03, 2012, 03:54:26 am

With more effective hauling, dwarves will have more time to spend on productive working. This means they will produce more. But we already have an overabundance of items in fortress mode, and there's so many of them that many items become virtually worthless (for the player, that is). Is this something you have given any consideration to? Are there any plans to reevaluate item abundance, and if yes, what are they? Changing job speed, implementing economy, making items break...?

Yes. Fortress Mode Econ will be eventually getting redone during these Caravan Release. And that will probably touch upon item creation, skill increase, raw materiel consumption.

Release 4 (Particularly Inns and Fairs), Release 5, and Release 6 for Fort Mode integration. Release 8 may also see dorfs using their items differently, possibly even 'consuming' items and tossing them into the bin. Though the personality rewrite is more about having villains and motivation for Necromancers and Wars for the Army Arc.

And during these releases maybe well also see Improved Farming, Fortress Subgroups, (Their demands could totally eat up Forts excess goods to some extend), and Improved Mechanics (which contains a rock crusher on the wish list and it'll also give us more things to use for making forts and for maintaing forts.)

And Toady One has touched upon items breaking done more consistently and universally in Fort Mode, but as we've seen with clothing, that just apparently create lots of issues.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 04:48:44 am

What the heck is Release 5?

Release 5 seems redundant with Release 6 and Release 9. Is Release 5 about getting ready for Release 6 and Release 9?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 03, 2012, 06:56:14 am

Release 5 is a whole different thing from releases six and nine (though yes, they do interlock). It's about moving stuff that only happens during world gen into actual play - using food (and starvation), moving goods between sites, basic succession (so that playing a fortress doesn't guarantee the end of monarchy as dwarves know it), that type of thing. There have been many posts about release 5, its importance for the concept of the game as a whole (playing the world), and the likelihood that the release (along with the personality/needs rewrite from release 8 ) to be earlier than that (I think a recent post in the last FotF thread has that particular bit). There's also a bit in DF Talk #14 about that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 07:08:05 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2012, 06:56:14 am

Release 5 is a whole different thing from releases six and nine (though yes, they do interlock). It's about moving stuff that only happens during world gen into actual play - using food (and starvation), moving goods between sites, basic succession (so that playing a fortress doesn't guarantee the end of monarchy as dwarves know it), that type of thing. There have been many posts about release 5, its importance for the concept of the game as a whole (playing the world), and the likelihood that the release (along with the personality/needs rewrite from release 8 ) to be earlier than that (I think a recent post in the last FotF thread has that particular bit). There's also a bit in DF Talk #14 about that.

Yea, Toady has said that he's considering about reordering the list, but we probably wont see that until this summer, or late spring when he gets done with this cycle of bug fixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

This hauling upgrade is the best thing ever.

It looks like restacking is finally going to exist. All those Plump Helmet Seeds are now Plump Helmet Seed[5]!

Think of the implications for ammo -- dropped arrows could be melted in one job instead of 30! And restackable coins! (If we ever get an economy again.)

Perhaps dwarves will just go "clean up their clothing" in one job, running around the fort finding all their socks and shoes!

BTW, while I'm thinking about random socks, do cabinets in barracks work yet? I set all my barracks to store personal items, but they still leave their socks all over the floor. Maybe they figuring "storing" them on the floor is good enough. Maybe I should make a small adjoining barracks that exists only for storage purposes...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 03, 2012, 08:02:33 am

dunno about cabinets, but I have seen armor stored on armor stands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 03, 2012, 08:53:25 am

Quote from: devlog

Seeing a single dwarf clean up a seed-ridden dining room as a single job is a beautiful thing.

BEST. FIX. EVER.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 03, 2012, 09:15:02 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 03, 2012, 01:44:09 am

Suggestions best go in the suggestion forum >_>

Normally, but I felt that it's rather relevant, what with this topic discussing DF's immediate future, and the immediate future is now hauling. I will go back and ungreen the suggestion part of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on April 03, 2012, 10:23:21 am

Oh god.  Hauling updates.  I'm so, so excited.  You mean my dwarves will finally figure out how to hold a bag in their hand and fill it with seeds as they go along instead of hauling seeds one by one to a bag in a stockpile?  This is like a dwarven cognitive revolution.  It will free up hundreds of dwarf-hours for the dwarves to do actual useful stuff.

Thanks to everyone who voted for this at the ESV thread!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 03, 2012, 10:24:43 am

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

Think of the implications for ammo -- dropped arrows could be melted in one job instead of 30!

I don't think it's going to be that simple for ammo . . . does your masterwork giant kea bone bolt stack with your exceptional giant kea bone bolt?  I'd be happier, I think, if all ammo just disintegrated on firing.

However it works, though, it's going to be awesome.  Hooray for stacking and hauling!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 03, 2012, 11:04:35 am

since ammo is created in stacks, your masterwork giant kea bone bolt would have a lot of twin sisters it could stack with

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 11:17:41 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 03, 2012, 10:24:43 am

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

Think of the implications for ammo -- dropped arrows could be melted in one job instead of 30!

I don't think it's going to be that simple for ammo . . . does your masterwork giant kea bone bolt stack with your exceptional giant kea bone bolt?  I'd be happier, I think, if all ammo just disintegrated on firing.

However it works, though, it's going to be awesome.  Hooray for stacking and hauling!

There are some tricks that can be performed if you segregate out the data cleverly, and you can do something like how the stocks screen works - the game will tell you that there are 1000 or so stones in the play area by simply grouping everything with a "stone" token, and then break them down into individual materials.

You might be able to tell dwarves to pick up 50 "metal bolts", and the dwarves will pick up bronze and iron and steel alike, and with varying item qualities, and display them as a single stack in a "less detailed mode", then tell you that if you look closely, it breaks down into 15 =iron bolts= and 10 steel bolts and 25 *bronze bolts* or something. 

Likewise, almost all bone uses the same material definitions, so you can just declare all "bone" material stackable with other bones, and just keep some separate tags saying where that bone came from.  (Although I still wonder how a dwarf can just look at a bone bolt and tell it came from a water buffalo and not a cow.)

(Although this might cause problems if/when we get to the point where we start having alchemical/magical ammo like acidic or freezing or exploding or healing shiv bolts that get mixed in with "normal" ammo unless there are clear definitions for what gets stacked with what.)

Of course, there already are nauseatingly in-depth threads on these subjects (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78413.0) if you want to go further into the matter outside this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 03, 2012, 02:05:38 pm

This is a great improvement.  We may not need a small army of dorfs just to haul things around any more.  But then, that mean less jobs for the dorfs overall, since the needs for skilled production dorfs isn't that high.  I suppose that could just mean bigger standing armies or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 03, 2012, 02:13:28 pm

Quote from: orius on April 03, 2012, 02:05:38 pm

This is a great improvement.  We may not need a small army of dorfs just to haul things around any more.  But then, that mean less jobs for the dorfs overall, since the needs for skilled production dorfs isn't that high.  I suppose that could just mean bigger standing armies or something.

Definitely bigger army. Also, screw pump exercise rooms. If I'm gonna have vast amounts of dwarf peasants standing around, they can at least keep themselves fit and the traps supplied with magma guest rooms clean and ready for visitors.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 03, 2012, 02:28:34 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on April 03, 2012, 10:24:43 am

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

Think of the implications for ammo -- dropped arrows could be melted in one job instead of 30!

I don't think it's going to be that simple for ammo . . . does your masterwork giant kea bone bolt stack with your exceptional giant kea bone bolt?  I'd be happier, I think, if all ammo just disintegrated on firing.

However it works, though, it's going to be awesome.  Hooray for stacking and hauling!

After use, simply change the ammo into "used bolt, bone" or "used bolt, copper" ?  It's probably not going to be much of a masterpiece after being used?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on April 03, 2012, 03:18:22 pm

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

All those Plump Helmet Seeds are now Plump Helmet Seed[5]!

Is carrying 5 seeds necessarily the same as creating seeds[5]?  Toady has only mentioned improving the logistics of hauling, not the storage/display of items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 03, 2012, 03:45:16 pm

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

It looks like restacking is finally going to exist. All those Plump Helmet Seeds are now Plump Helmet Seed[5]!

In case it's not clear yet: I'm 99% certain that what Toady described in the devlog is not restacking (hence the need for haulers to carry a container).  Restacking is not on the dev page and, if I had to guess, probably won't be implemented during this cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 03:46:13 pm

Quote from: Lac on April 03, 2012, 03:18:22 pm

Quote from: Name Lips on April 03, 2012, 07:57:46 am

All those Plump Helmet Seeds are now Plump Helmet Seed[5]!

Is carrying 5 seeds necessarily the same as creating seeds[5]?  Toady has only mentioned improving the logistics of hauling, not the storage/display of items.

No, it is not. 

The game already allows for carrying virtually unlimited numbers of items in Adventure Mode, and with things like the thousands of trophy bracelets hunters or vampires can wear.  What Toady has changed is the way that jobs used to only be about picking up single items at a time, and made it so that multiple "pick up this item and take it to this stockpile" jobs can "merge" to make a more complex type of job with multiple stops. 

Stacking is a whole other can of worms.  It involves changes to the way that data on objects is stored, and how the game tries to look at that data.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

yeah, a stack of items in the game is actually just a single item with a number attached saying it's part of a stack of x.

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 03, 2012, 04:30:25 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

I could have sworn that drinks had hidden quality levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on April 03, 2012, 04:33:58 pm

I wonder if Toady has been complete enough to make it check whether fetching an empty barrel/bag/bin is quicker than just making two trips, when collecting two items.  (edit: I assumed they would fetch empty ones, but of course maybe they can pick up a half full container).

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine.

Toady said he didn't want a partial solution as it would attract bug reports from people who can't understand why one thing can stack and another can't.  (edit: or maybe that was just in relation to two non-identical same-type items not stacking).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 03, 2012, 04:38:21 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 03, 2012, 04:30:25 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

I could have sworn that drinks had hidden quality levels.

No, according to memory hacking (there are values for types of alcohol).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 03, 2012, 06:43:59 pm

Quote from: Kogut on April 03, 2012, 04:38:21 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 03, 2012, 04:30:25 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

I could have sworn that drinks had hidden quality levels.

No, according to memory hacking (there are values for types of alcohol).

Are you really sure about that?
EDIT: I'm throwing this one to the Toad. Do drinks really have hidden quality levels? If not, then what causes the varying thought strings about "X had a (quality) drink lately"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 03, 2012, 06:45:08 pm

EDIT: Sorry, I hit "quote" instead of "modify" again. I don't know how to delete the double-up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on April 03, 2012, 06:46:42 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

Except that all these things can still have
a) different temperatures
b) different contaminants/coverings
c) different owners

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 03, 2012, 06:50:29 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 03, 2012, 06:46:42 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 03, 2012, 04:28:34 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 03, 2012, 03:55:30 pm

Because of this all items in a stack need to be exact copies, since it's the same item.

Hmm, but even so, there would still be a sufficient bunch of items that would be quite identical, and therefore stack fine. These are drinks, food from traders, seeds, such things that stack but have no quality levels.

Except that all these things can still have
a) different temperatures
b) different contaminants/coverings
c) different owners

I don't know anything about how the temperature system works, but I'd assume once items are in a stack their temperature is handled as if they're a single object.

Different owners are already respected in the sense that they break stacking as it is. Surely you've seen a tile in your food stockpile that has

-Dwarven Flour Roast [23]-
-Dwarven Flour Roast-
-Dwarven Flour Roast-

Where the bottom two are claimed by members of your militia, and automatically prune off the stack even before they come to backpack them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 07:04:21 pm

Quote from: Dante on April 03, 2012, 06:46:42 pm

Except that all these things can still have
a) different temperatures
b) different contaminants/coverings
c) different owners

Not to be too much of a broken record, but once again, there already is a thread covering these exact topics (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78413.0).

a) Objects in the same stack are, as Torchy says, going to just be the same temperature.

b) If you stick an arrow covered in mud and blood into your quiver with all the other arrows, all your arrows are going to be muddy and bloody, although it might divide out the quantity of coverage by the stack.

c) Objects with different owners should just not be stacked at all, since that typically means that nobody but the owner should be handling them, anyway.  That makes it a non-issue.

None of these are serious problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on April 03, 2012, 07:26:04 pm

Quote from: Torchy on April 03, 2012, 06:43:59 pm

Are you really sure about that?
EDIT: I'm throwing this one to the Toad. Do drinks really have hidden quality levels? If not, then what causes the varying thought strings about "X had a (quality) drink lately"?

At least as far as I know, drinks have a quality level - or rather, a monetary value - but it is determined solely by the plant used to make it. Sunshine is the most valuable drink, and gives the happiest thoughts. Neither brewer skill nor random chance at point of brewing affect the quality of the booze, though it would not be unreasonable if it did.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 03, 2012, 07:49:08 pm

Farming will probably eventually become more difficult and work intensive to help use up surplus dwarves perviously destined for hauling. I'm sure they'll be needed elsewhere, too. I don't think spending time balancing it in the short term is important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 08:03:36 pm

Quote from: DG on April 03, 2012, 07:49:08 pm

Farming will probably eventually become more difficult and work intensive to help use up surplus dwarves perviously destined for hauling. I'm sure they'll be needed elsewhere, too. I don't think spending time balancing it in the short term is important.

If we go in that vein, we could also go for mining that takes longer, as well (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24932.0), which will mean that there will be more stone to haul away, and will be more difficult to deal with, slowing down all the major resource generation methods, as well as significantly restricted migrations (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106290.0), so that labor itself is limited.

In fact, making all forms of resources (stone, food, metal, and possibly making wood take up more than one log for furniture the way that metal bars are doing now) more scarce is pretty much mandatory for the economics changes to ever make sense, as there is little meaning in complex trade mechanics when you can produce such tremendous quantities of valuable objects that you can buy out any caravan that ever comes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on April 03, 2012, 09:19:10 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 08:03:36 pm

If we go in that vein, we could also go for mining that takes longer, as well (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24932.0), which will mean that there will be more stone to haul away, and will be more difficult to deal with,

From the devlog that just got posted, it looks like you might be on the right track with that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on April 03, 2012, 09:19:40 pm

Quote from: devlog

You can carve tracks in stone now. I haven't done the wooden/metal constructed tracks yet. I haven't done minecarts either, but that's next. Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps, and it keeps track of the four directions in each tile so that you can have adjacent parallel tracks or carve writing into your fort without using too many tiles. For minecarts to make sense for mining, we'll have to change how mining works, but I want to get the carts moving first. By the time we're done, we're hoping to have the mining system remain about the same for new people, so they don't have to worry about tracks to get started (this might involve default embark wheelbarrows which dwarves would automatically use), but things will be much more efficient for people that use tracks and minecarts, across various industries.

Holy. Balls.

I want minetracks so bad right now. I've been using the same fort design since 40d. But next versions forts are going to be totally differently designed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 09:26:57 pm

Huh. I didn't really think we'd get minecarts or tracks.

I wonder how Toady is going to deal with run away minecarts down hills?

I guess that depends minecarts are moved, and if Toady is going to let them have the ability to be loose and uncontrolled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 03, 2012, 09:39:19 pm

Personally, I'm hoping for mine carts that can be weaponized. I don't generally try to weaponize everything I get my hands on, but mine carts sound especially weaponizable to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 03, 2012, 09:42:48 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 03, 2012, 09:26:57 pm

Huh. I didn't really think we'd get minecarts or tracks.

I wonder how Toady is going to deal with run away minecarts down hills?

I guess that depends minecarts are moved, and if Toady is going to let them have the ability to be loose and uncontrolled.

It could be the start of the physics stuff that Toady's talked about before, where if a boulder falls on a ramp it rolls, and things have physics-defined flightpaths rather than straight out and straight down.
It also occurs to me that there will be some variables there that could change in air-aspected regions, once Toady does more with spheres.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 09:56:23 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 03, 2012, 09:42:48 pm

It could be the start of the physics stuff that Toady's talked about before, where if a boulder falls on a ramp it rolls, and things have physics-defined flightpaths rather than straight out and straight down.
It also occurs to me that there will be some variables there that could change in air-aspected regions, once Toady does more with spheres.

Games like Rollercoaster Tycoon had fairly simple physics (and really, physics with perfectly elastic objects when the only factors are gravity and friction where you only have to solve for one step at a time are fairly easy math problems) that tracked how fast roller coasters would go rolling along different tracks based upon gravity.  If you just have a way of tracking a "forward velocity", and then subtract from that a certain portion due to friction per tile, you are pretty much there.

---

The real problem with minecarts are how to actually get the game to handle setting up jobs where they are used.  This is more complex than even the "hauling more than one type of item at a time to more than one stockpile at a time" problem, in terms of complexity of number of permutations of possible solutions, because it allows you to actually move an "intermediary stockpile" around into numerous different positions in order to potentially optimize tasks, so you have to put together the complexity of finding objects that are going to similar nearby stockpiles and putting them together in a job, then seeing how far away the nearest minecart is, then figuring out where the optimal place to put that minecart is as an intermediate step, then how far you'd have to haul the cart, and then compare that to how much time it would take to just haul everything by hand.  You have to optimize for both processor power and optimize for least dwarf-steps.  It's a rather complex postman problem.

Spoiler: Long quote from previous thread (click to show/hide)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 01, 2011, 06:50:14 pm

Quote from: Symmetry on March 01, 2011, 12:54:47 pm

There is but it's hard to think of an efficient algorithm to solve a problem we don't understand.  If we accept that the only use of minecarts (And related lifts, etc.) is to move things from one or two specific locations or stockpiles, to a few other specific locations, and we think manual control is tolerable, then that sets some fairly easy limits on what the algorithm is actually expected to cope with.  In this case we don't really have to change the algorithm at all, we just have a minecart that create store jobs like a stockpile.

Well, if we don't understand it, it's time to think about it more until we do.   

There shouldn't be any more manual control than absolutely necessary.

OK, let's think logically about how a minecart should probably operate... Unless you want to have the carts pushed around manually waiting at one point or another, then what we need to do is have a way for dwarves to know when it is fine to use a cart as a stockpile, and what areas that cart has connections to when you want to use it as a bulk transport. 

Without having to make your dwarves do a really complicated pathfinding check to see when it is acceptable to try to use a minecart, the only thing I can think of is to make a minecart track create its own zone upon creation.  Presumably, this will be connected to every other piece of track, lest it be useless, so it basically forms a long, snaking zone throughout the areas you have built those tracks, connecting everything together. 

This minecart zone would spread some arbitrary (possibly player-togglable) number of tiles out from the tracks, and when a dwarf tries to take up a job involving hauling, it will check to see if the item to be hauled is within the zone of the tracks, and if the destination is within the zone of the tracks.  Pathfinding along tracks, barring some really kooky behavior on the part of the player, should be very easy, so you could probably do a count of how many tiles it takes to get from start to finish fairly fast, but you could have either a pathfinding check to see what a straight walk would be, anyway, to see how many more tiles one would have to travel by foot, and compare that against the minecart's pathing if you want to be really accurate and save as much dwarf travel time as possible.  (Again, this is a matter of CPU efficiency vs. Dwarf motion efficiency.)  This would have to include the time/tiles it takes a cart-hauling dwarf to actually move the cart into position.

Before using a minecart even makes sense, however, you need to have a set number of items in the area to even make it more useful than just hauling everything by hand. 

This is a possible calculation, of course, it's just a very wierd one, since it means that you have to get the dwarf to calculate how many trips it would take the dwarf back and forth without using the cart vs. how many trips it takes with a cart, plus the amount of time you have to spend getting the cart into position, plus the amount of time it takes to get the dwarf to the cart to start pushing it... and these might have to be done by quick-and-dirty calculations to save on pathfinding time, and prevent a dwarf from just sitting there and making a dozen pathfinding calculations and then winding up just doing the simple pick up the earrings all by himself since it was only very light items type of solution. 

The player might have some sort of ability to interfere with how the zones are set up - letting the player exclude some areas from being in zones, and include larger areas than the cart would normally allow to be in zones, if need be.  It might just be a separate part of the zones menu, or some special cart extension of the zones menu. 

Cart zone tiles would theoretically also be able to include areas that are still walls as part of the zones, so that the yet-to-be mined portions of the mines would already be included in the cart zone... but that causes problems because you don't want zones that are on other sides of walls to be included.  The other solution is to make any tile that is made into a floor with no blocking wall tile take another check when the pathfinding connectivity map is running to see if any adjacent tile is already in a minecart zone, and if so, check for cart tracks within a finite number of steps (flood style) to see if it should be connected to the minecart zone.  This would mean that a tile that was recently mined would declare itself part of a minecart zone, and then tell the stone hauling job of the stone the wall became to become a potential minecart hauling job if its destination is part of the minecart zone's sphere of influence, as well. 

... OK, that's all that a first-blush look at how to make a minecart path will tell me... so could someone blow this idea up for me so I can try to think of a better way to rebuild it?

 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 03, 2012, 10:20:02 pm

Yowzer!  Tracks?  Carts?  Wheelbarrows?  Definitely donating after this release. 

Quote from: Willfor on April 03, 2012, 09:39:19 pm

Personally, I'm hoping for mine carts that can be weaponized. I don't generally try to weaponize everything I get my hands on, but mine carts sound especially weaponizable to me.

Wheelbarrows too   :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 03, 2012, 10:41:54 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 03, 2012, 09:56:23 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 03, 2012, 09:42:48 pm

It could be the start of the physics stuff that Toady's talked about before, where if a boulder falls on a ramp it rolls, and things have physics-defined flightpaths rather than straight out and straight down.
It also occurs to me that there will be some variables there that could change in air-aspected regions, once Toady does more with spheres.

Games like Rollercoaster Tycoon had fairly simple physics (and really, physics with perfectly elastic objects when the only factors are gravity and friction where you only have to solve for one step at a time are fairly easy math problems) that tracked how fast roller coasters would go rolling along different tracks based upon gravity.  If you just have a way of tracking a "forward velocity", and then subtract from that a certain portion due to friction per tile, you are pretty much there.

I know it's fairly simple. That's why I figured we might get a more general system along with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 03, 2012, 11:02:38 pm

I predict folks modding in complex low boiling point temperature stones, with horrible deadly symptoms, loading them all up in a minecart, pushing the minecart off a steep 20 z level tower, into a goblin siege group, possibly actually running one or two over, on a track that takes it over a couple 1z down magma heated tiles at just the right moment.

Now we just need a name for this contraption.  I vote Gravity Powered Syndrome Delivery Device. GPSD2.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on April 03, 2012, 11:37:26 pm

Quote from: Torchy on April 03, 2012, 06:43:59 pm

Do drinks really have hidden quality levels? If not, then what causes the varying thought strings about "X had a (quality) drink lately"?

Drinks currently have no hidden quality level.  A dwarf will only get a good thought from a drink if that's the type of drink that the dwarf prefers, in which case the monetary value controls how good a thought it is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on April 04, 2012, 12:33:06 am

Quote from: devlog

You can carve tracks in stone now.

I just an entire toasted sandwich.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 12:34:29 am

Quote from: NobodyPro on April 04, 2012, 12:33:06 am

I just an entire toasted sandwich.

Please  to type the verbs in your sentences.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 04, 2012, 12:51:56 am

Quote from: Japa on March 31, 2012, 05:03:57 am

My hope is that tracks and minecarts will appear.

Called it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ves on April 04, 2012, 01:34:19 am

How much information do you keep on the Dwarf Fortress creatures that don't have a counterpart in the real world? For example, one of the listed goals for hauling is to have animals chained to minecarts. Assuming (perhaps incorrectly) this will be done via some kind of [CART_HAULER] token, is it just a case of opening up the subterranean creature raws and adding it to whatever makes sense based on body structure and size, or is there a Secret Toady Bestiary that already has this sort of information contained within it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 02:10:35 am

Quote from: Ves on April 04, 2012, 01:34:19 am

How much information do you keep on the Dwarf Fortress creatures that don't have a counterpart in the real world? For example, one of the listed goals for hauling is to have animals chained to minecarts. Assuming (perhaps incorrectly) this will be done via some kind of [CART_HAULER] token, is it just a case of opening up the subterranean creature raws and adding it to whatever makes sense based on body structure and size, or is there a Secret Toady Bestiary that already has this sort of information contained within it?

Or he will use the system already in place for wagon haulers, or he will add the new tag to the raws.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tHe_silent_H on April 04, 2012, 03:17:29 am

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 04, 2012, 03:50:19 am

Quote from: tHe_silent_H on April 04, 2012, 03:17:29 am

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

I would really like for ordinary dwarves to wear backpack into which they will store their property when they do not have storage space for it in their room.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: yarr on April 04, 2012, 03:51:26 am

Hey Toady,

I know you are currently working on wheelbarrows and tracks and stuff :D (which is very nice of course) but is there any chance of seeing the standing production orders idea implented too? I guess it only made 3rd place or so in the eternal vote thing but I like that idea very much :)

Quote

(1288)    Standing production orders
Suggester    ...so you never run out of booze. Such as: Produce BOOZE if(PLANTS > 100 && DRINK < 100)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 04, 2012, 03:59:42 am

That's a suggestion-question, yarr. And you can be sure that he's aware of the forerunners of the ESV. I think he saved the top fifteen when he decided he'd finally start implementing them, ~2 years ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: yarr on April 04, 2012, 04:04:54 am

You're right, it is a suggestion-question :( I'm sorry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 05:41:44 am

Quote from: tHe_silent_H on April 04, 2012, 03:17:29 am

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

Wheelbarrows have been mention by name to be included and seem to be purchasable at the embark screen. I dont think there is a notable/appreciable difference between hand carts/dollies and wheelbarrows though for game mechanics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 04, 2012, 05:45:54 am

So how can we expect to power our carts ? Dwarfpower, animal power, mechanisms ?

Also with the addition of minecarts, will there be notions of speed, inertia, and basic newtonian physics, or do you intend to simply add minecarts with actual inertialess DF movement ?

Hope i'm using lime green right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:06:55 am

One of the better uses of it recently.

I suspect we'll get to know the answers in upcoming dev post when Toady gets to mine carts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 04, 2012, 06:20:26 am

Quote from: Naryar on April 04, 2012, 05:45:54 am

So how can we expect to power our carts ? Dwarfpower, animal power, mechanisms ?

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 04, 2012, 06:21:11 am

Will tracks/carts be able to cross retractable bridges?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 04, 2012, 06:31:53 am

Will it be possible to deploy tracks on build/smothed surfaces? Will dwarves use Minecarts as a form of public transport?

As for getting minecarts up multiple levels i could see mechanicly (powered) winches with chains/ropes (hehe and weights that snap them) and maybe counterweights which draw the carts up multiple levels of ramps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on April 04, 2012, 06:43:04 am

Will it be possible to carve tracks on constructed floors (like fortifications)?

Will it be possible to "seal" a track with a door/bridge/whatever?
(If not, that could lead to some security issues. Not that that's always a bad thing.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:45:55 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 04, 2012, 06:20:26 am

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Ramps seem to be the definite answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 04, 2012, 06:56:16 am

I'm ambivalent about minecarts and tracks so soon (I always felt that so many fundamentals would have to change for them to have a point) but I'm interested in seeing what they look like in action.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 07:01:29 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:45:55 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 04, 2012, 06:20:26 am

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Ramps seem to be the definite answer.

Wouldn't that require us to be able to build/carve tracks into ramps which we currently cant do? Its all so mysterious. If I get to build large railway systems like I did in Tranport Tycoon then it will be BEYOND EPIC. Actually designing everything in TTD probably paved the way for me getting into DF. Toady did say you had to carve it into stone, so does that mean you cant have them on the surface or on built surfaces? Only time will tell I guess

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 07:06:58 am

Quote from: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 07:01:29 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:45:55 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 04, 2012, 06:20:26 am

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Ramps seem to be the definite answer.

Wouldn't that require us to be able to build/carve tracks into ramps which we currently cant do? Its all so mysterious. If I get to build large railway systems like I did in Tranport Tycoon then it will be BEYOND EPIC. Actually designing everything in TTD probably paved the way for me getting into DF. Toady did say you had to carve it into stone, so does that mean you cant have them on the surface or on built surfaces? Only time will tell I guess

Well, of course we can't build or carve tracks in 34.07. Tracks are going to be a new feature for the next release. And since Toady said that we can carve tracks on Ramps, then, I'm going to go on a limb and say that we will be able to do it.

And Toady also said that he hasn't gotten to wooden or metal tracks yet. So that mean it's on the docket. It might be in for the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 04, 2012, 07:07:21 am

Quote from: Greiger on April 03, 2012, 11:02:38 pm

Now we just need a name for this contraption.  I vote Gravity Powered Syndrome Delivery Device. GPSD2.

sorry, no.
Choo Choo Train of Death.

Quote from: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 07:01:29 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:45:55 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 04, 2012, 06:20:26 am

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Ramps seem to be the definite answer.

Wouldn't that require us to be able to build/carve tracks into ramps which we currently cant do?

currently we cant carve tracks anywhere. in the next version we will be able to carve tracks in ramps

Quote

Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps,

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 07:12:42 am

Just saw the new dev post... in which he had answered everything I said. Well now I know. This is gonna inspire many ideas, and require me to massive upgrade my hallway widths

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 04, 2012, 07:30:32 am

Quote from: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 07:12:42 am

This is gonna inspire many ideas, and require me to massive upgrade my hallway widths

From the other threads it seems like many are anticipating making dedicated cart tunnels behind the scenes, keeping the main walkways hauling free and fancy.  These developments could entail really big changes in fortress planning, specific details could not be any more anticipated.  15 hours till next devlog... *gazes at lovely F5*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 08:03:47 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

Um, no it isn't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:39:55 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 08:03:47 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

Um, no it isn't.

I'm waiting for you to elaborate and enlightening us with your profound knowledge off all things DF-related why it isn't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 04, 2012, 08:46:33 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

I'd argue that the underground changes probably had a larger effect, actually, but yeah, it is excellent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 04, 2012, 08:46:33 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

I'd argue that the underground changes probably had a larger effect, actually, but yeah, it is excellent.

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 04, 2012, 09:04:58 am

My first question, so here goes.

Toady, the front page note says that tracks will keep information, by tile, in all four directions.  Does this imply that tracks are uni-directional?  Is that an option at construction?  Will it be able to be re-designated later?  Is it intended to have "main lines" with parallel, uni-directional rails, connecting with "branch lines" carrying lesser traffic volume bi-directionally?  Will mine carts, and wheel barrows for that matter, be able to pass each other in the same traffic square, at a speed cost, similarly to dorfs passing on a same tile?  Or will the mine cart be impassible, like a wall, or a statue?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on April 04, 2012, 09:14:43 am

Mining carts? This is awesome! I was expecting things like carrying multiple seeds in one hand or other small changes but mining carts? I think I just had a dwarfgasm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dr. D on April 04, 2012, 09:49:37 am

Will the minecarts be able to hold liquids? That could be an easy way to transport magma up however many z-levels to get it in a sane place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 04, 2012, 09:53:06 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 04, 2012, 08:46:33 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

I'd argue that the underground changes probably had a larger effect, actually, but yeah, it is excellent.

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Magma on every embark definitelly changed how fortresses are structured (with magmaworks at very bottom or with extensive pump stack in most of them).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 04, 2012, 09:55:13 am

I'm also curious to see if the minecarts will have a dump option, like a tip out or chutes in the bottom like rail cars.  Sounds more like a suggestion than a question, so I won't lime green it.  However, the weaponization of this is immediately apparent.  Build your obsidian mine cart.  Fill with kool-aid, drive it to the top of your parapets, and dump out over the edge onto the elven caravan vile force of darkness on your doorsetp.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 04, 2012, 10:23:41 am

This is going to be an awesome update! Really looking forward to playing around with mine carts!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 04, 2012, 11:11:53 am

^^ we need the option to build stuff in adventure mode! I want my very own intermountainhall railway!

If we can layout tracks (woden or metal) over constructed floors/ramps the code could be later reused for pipes. Anyway i hope we can park a cart under a hole and dump(D-B-D) stuff into it, which would make delivering 1k crafts to the depot very easy. If these things get animal-power we would need a way to feed the animal (unless its not a grazer).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 12:06:48 pm

Going back a couple pages...

Quote from: tHe_silent_H on April 04, 2012, 03:17:29 am

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

Toady said before that he didn't want to make paved roads have a "Speed bonus", but instead wanted to work with adding "underbrush" that would slow normal movement down on uncleared paths, presumably having a greater impact upon carts than other creatures. 

Conveniently, Footkerchief already pulled together some relevant quotes around 20 pages back:

Spoiler: Longish quote of Footkerchief quoting Toady with bonus recursive quoting (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 17, 2012, 08:18:33 am

This is on the dev page: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Quote from: dev.html

Basic Adventure Mode Skills

    * Wood use
          o Ground debris/sticks/underbrush

Toady expanded on that item in DF Talk: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html)

Quote from: DF Talk 9

Capntastic:   I've got to say I'm really excited about the ... things you would think to be excited about, like the ground debris, sticks and underbrush ... you're like 'oh man, you find a rats nest under a tree and then kick it and rats come out'.
Toady:   The main thing there is up here in a lot of the parts of the Pacific north west where there's been logging recently and the trees ... there's not a whole lot of old growth forest left where I'm at, so there's a bunch of small trees, and when there are small trees there's a crapload of underbrush, and it's hard to go places; a lot of places you have to go around giant bushes and all kind of blackberries and that kind of stuff, you just walk through ... I don't want that to be super annoying, but right now in adventure mode there's a few scattered trees in the forest and they're little teeny trees but they somehow prevented everything but a few strawberry bushes from growing. And there are certain points where you should be walking through this brush and getting scratches all over your body, and mosquitoes ...

It was also touched upon in a FotF thread: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1848408#msg1848408)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Hummingbird

Now that trade routes depend on availability of roads (do they?), will fast-traveling over roads in Adventurer Mode confer reasonable bonuses to traveling speed (or penalties for moving off the road)? For both adventurers and merchants, it would make sense for walking on road to be easier, faster, and safer than hacking through wilderness.

Related: Will dwarven roads over mountains squares be accessible through fast-traveling in Adventurer Mode?

Fast travel speeds aren't going to be different from local travel speeds, for consistency, as close as I can make them anyway.  So if traveling on roads should be faster, it has to be for a local reason.  Right now, traveling on any terrain is the same speed.  When we get to underbrush in the dev page, the movement speeds should be properly impacted.  I'm not sure that we'll get to any of that this time, though the grass density information helps set us up for it.

The visibility part was covered here: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1367464;topicseen#msg1367464)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: ILikePie

Are you planning on making certain 'wilderness' areas a bit more defined? Currently there is hardly any difference between a hill and a forest. Having, for example, denser bushes that, maybe, obscure vision, or multi-tile trees would make the denser forests much more foresty.

Yeah, we've got three things up there that should help a bit with that:

Skills:Wood Use:Ground debris/sticks/underbrush

For some basic variety -- there's nothing like the woods around here where you can hardly walk and end up getting all scratched up.  Now it's more like the older growth forests with the cleaner floors, but with really small trees and inexplicably no underbrush.  Not sure about vision there -- thick underbrush should definitely obscure it, but we might wait for the lighting part to get that all under one umbrella.
[...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 04, 2012, 12:15:26 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Same here. None of recent changes did affect my gameplay significantly. This tracks-connecting-stockpiles-to-workshops thing will probably have much more influence for me, as it will actually force me to re-think the approach I used since times of 40d.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deviled on April 04, 2012, 12:34:33 pm

I'm wondering, will we be able to have dwarves ride minecarts? I'm just wondering if we will be able to make dwarven roller coasters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: teethering on April 04, 2012, 12:34:40 pm

Apologies if this has been asked already, did my best to scan the thread.

With minecarts being implemented will mining itself be variable now, in terms of amount of material produced out of a single square?  What I mean by that is that it's hard to see a lot of use in a long track being built to a single vein that's going to be exhausted very quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 04, 2012, 12:37:14 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 04, 2012, 12:15:26 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Same here. None of recent changes did affect my gameplay significantly. This tracks-connecting-stockpiles-to-workshops thing will probably have much more influence for me, as it will actually force me to re-think the approach I used since times of 40d.

How about burrows ? Healthcare ? Advanced military ?

If I recall correctly, a while back a wounded dwarf would just be hauled to a bed (if he was lucky enough not to die of starvation first) and would rest there probably for ever. No crutches so even if considered healed you would sometime see dwarves crawling around, some with their intestines hanging behind, just going about their business. And the military, god the military, so many changes happened it's basically day and night.
I don't know if the carts will have more of an influence. We'll have to wait for the release for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on April 04, 2012, 12:57:00 pm

Minecarts? Cool.


Will we get railroad switches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_switch) linkable to levers? Actually, I'm kind of wondering how you'll handle turns, overall. And will we be able to build long slopes with a small gradient, so that minecarts can get momentum even on a single z-level?

Here's hoping Toady tackles smarter building after this. I'm much more interested in digging a large pit or a tower without having to micromanage the building of each floor so dwarves don't get stuck, than in minecarts or clothing fixes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 01:07:23 pm

Quote from: Deviled on April 04, 2012, 12:34:33 pm

I'm wondering, will we be able to have dwarves ride minecarts? I'm just wondering if we will be able to make dwarven roller coasters.

To my knowledge they did have a device that did this.

They did not ride minecarts to my knowledge.

Though they did in Minecraft... in fact... Roller Coasters are really popular in Minecraft.

I guess that means no one will be happy until Toady adds in exploding cacti men.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 04, 2012, 01:20:21 pm

to my knowledge (i was in some Mines here over the years) the carts were sometimes used for transporting the miners but often they got dedicated carts for people after a while.

Hmmm of miencarts and preasurplates can coop? that would work nicely with the railroad switches isitanos mentioned.

As for traps: i can easely see a trap where a cart rolls down 10 Zs of ramps just to crash in flatten a goblin. After all filled with a ton or two of stone these things would pack some punch. It would also make amusing accidents. To bad it wont roll over dwarfen feet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 04, 2012, 01:39:14 pm

The minecart rolls over Urist McNotPayingAttention's third toe, left foot. The severed part sails off in an arc.

I'm just waiting for your Legendary Lasher to give birth in the dining hall, then cart her baby onto the battle field in one of these things, using it as a tank!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 04, 2012, 02:06:24 pm

Seriously, I know it's great, but I think you're all setting your hopes a TAD too high here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on April 04, 2012, 03:09:13 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 04, 2012, 12:15:26 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Same here. None of recent changes did affect my gameplay significantly. This tracks-connecting-stockpiles-to-workshops thing will probably have much more influence for me, as it will actually force me to re-think the approach I used since times of 40d.

For me the Magma Sea had the biggest impact. Assured magma on every embark at the bottom of the map. This forces you to either build your fortress very deep, to separate your metal and glass industries from the rest of the fortress or to bring up magma to the surface through difficult and time consuming schemes. The hauling revamp will increase the overall efficiency of the fortress, but it won't have as big a change to the core design of your fortress as the Magma Sea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 03:20:20 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 04, 2012, 01:20:21 pm

to my knowledge (i was in some Mines here over the years) the carts were sometimes used for transporting the miners but often they got dedicated carts for people after a while.

Hmmm of miencarts and preasurplates can coop? that would work nicely with the railroad switches isitanos mentioned.

As for traps: i can easely see a trap where a cart rolls down 10 Zs of ramps just to crash in flatten a goblin. After all filled with a ton or two of stone these things would pack some punch. It would also make amusing accidents. To bad it wont roll over dwarfen feet.

That's a very interesting idea - if cart rails can have pressure plates built under them, so that minecarts passing through will be able to do things like open paths or switch tracks, then it also opens the possibilities of "mine cart logic" as well as "fluid logic" or "animal logic" in dwarfputing.

Amusingly, it may open the door to creating a "dwarfputer" where data is transmitted in the form of an automated cart system bearing cargo as its data.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 04, 2012, 03:37:43 pm

Quote from: teethering on April 04, 2012, 12:34:40 pm

Apologies if this has been asked already, did my best to scan the thread.

With minecarts being implemented will mining itself be variable now, in terms of amount of material produced out of a single square?  What I mean by that is that it's hard to see a lot of use in a long track being built to a single vein that's going to be exhausted very quickly.

From the devlog:

Quote

For minecarts to make sense for mining, we'll have to change how mining works, but I want to get the carts moving first.

Variable amounts of produced material (and waste) are things that have been suggested. It's probable that we'll always see material produced but will see a lot of waste and not as much useful rock with low-skill miners.

Quote from: Mr S on April 04, 2012, 01:39:14 pm

The minecart rolls over Urist McNotPayingAttention's third toe, left foot. The severed part sails off in an arc.

I'm just waiting for your Legendary Lasher to give birth in the dining hall, then cart her baby onto the battle field in one of these things, using it as a tank!!

That sort of thing could go in now, but it also might wait until Toady does workplace injuries in general.

Quote from: Dae on April 04, 2012, 02:06:24 pm

Seriously, I know it's great, but I think you're all setting your hopes a TAD too high here.

This is Toady, and since it's the winner of the ESV it's reasonable that he's going to put some time into it. Obviously not every possible thing that people want will happen, but it's reasonable to assume that what we get will be thorough and good.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 03:20:20 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 04, 2012, 01:20:21 pm

to my knowledge (i was in some Mines here over the years) the carts were sometimes used for transporting the miners but often they got dedicated carts for people after a while.

Hmmm of miencarts and preasurplates can coop? that would work nicely with the railroad switches isitanos mentioned.

As for traps: i can easely see a trap where a cart rolls down 10 Zs of ramps just to crash in flatten a goblin. After all filled with a ton or two of stone these things would pack some punch. It would also make amusing accidents. To bad it wont roll over dwarfen feet.

That's a very interesting idea - if cart rails can have pressure plates built under them, so that minecarts passing through will be able to do things like open paths or switch tracks, then it also opens the possibilities of "mine cart logic" as well as "fluid logic" or "animal logic" in dwarfputing.

Amusingly, it may open the door to creating a "dwarfputer" where data is transmitted in the form of an automated cart system bearing cargo as its data.

With a series of pressure plates that only go off at a certain weight or higher we could sort things from a single input according to weight. In a computing situation that means we could make a string of "if-then" statements based on type or quantity of input.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 03:46:16 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 04, 2012, 03:37:43 pm

With a series of pressure plates that only go off at a certain weight or higher we could sort things from a single input according to weight. In a computing situation that means we could make a string of "if-then" statements based on type or quantity of input.

Well, the main obstacle that I'm not sure we will get is that you would have to be able to construct pressure plates and rails in the same tile (or else be capable of not building a tile, and letting a cart skip the rails while going over a pressure plate tile without having massive problems).  Toady thus far has only said he was letting you carve rails in floors and ramps. 

Putting constructed objects in the same tile as one another has not really happened before, so it would be a new step forward if you could put pressure plates "under" another object.

The notion that rail switches would have to be pulled to manage traffic also raises problems, as if you are going to expect dwarves to be capable of navigating on their own, it would essentially require either that dwarves are capable of understanding how to pull those switches to change traffic flow as they require, or else that it would take the capacity to recognize that the tracks they are on can potentially change by the time that they actually get to a turn.  These are potentially much more advanced AI calculations than we actually have in the game right now...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on April 04, 2012, 04:33:59 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps, and it keeps track of the four directions in each tile...

Wait... four directions? Does this mean no diagonal movement? Why?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 04:34:41 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on April 04, 2012, 04:33:59 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps, and it keeps track of the four directions in each tile...

Wait... four directions? Does this mean no diagonal movement? Why?

Simple... It would look very very weird.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on April 04, 2012, 04:49:09 pm

Since Toady has also mentioned wheelbarrows, and dwarves carrying bins, I suspect that the mine cart is going to act like a specialized form a wheelbarrow.  A dwarf pushes a cart to somewhere near stones, loads stones into the cart, then pushes the cart to somewhere near a stockpile and unloads it.  No rail switches, no roller coasters, no cart-based logic engines.  I'm more interested in how the dwarf behavior AI will work.  When will a dwarf decide to use a cart or wheelbarrow instead of jut carrying a single stone at a time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 04, 2012, 05:13:45 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on April 04, 2012, 04:33:59 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps, and it keeps track of the four directions in each tile...

Wait... four directions? Does this mean no diagonal movement? Why?

I think toady meant 4 Geomtric directions like this: | - / \ , thus horizontal, vertical and the two diagonals which should cover all 8 movementoptions.

edit:

so you could build this:

Code: [Select]



  /--\
 /    \
|      |
|      ß
 \    /
  \--/
a truly roughly circular track with a minecart (ß).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 05:41:45 pm

Oddly enough there is no true way to connect diagonals and sideways As Heph proven.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 04, 2012, 06:31:53 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 05:41:45 pm

Oddly enough there is no true way to connect diagonals and sideways As Heph proven.

Hrm

Code: [Select]

   __
  /  \
 /    \
|      |
 \    /
  \__/


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on April 04, 2012, 06:38:39 pm

I would think diagonal tracks would have to connect to either vertical or horizontally adjacent tracks. How would they work otherwise?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 04, 2012, 06:40:01 pm

Problem with diagonals:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Codepage-437.png)

I don't see any here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2012, 06:44:07 pm

There are two. One's between [ and ] and the other is between , and 0.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 04, 2012, 06:46:02 pm

he could just add more symbols... i mean that IS why he switched frameworks a while back isnt it?

though i have seen -|/\ and several variations of the one in between [ and ] in the tileset.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on April 04, 2012, 06:46:34 pm

I didn't expect I will be able to play Railroad Tycoon in DF. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 06:52:36 pm

Quote from: Jiri Petru on April 04, 2012, 04:33:59 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Tracks can be carved in stone floors or stone ramps, and it keeps track of the four directions in each tile...

Wait... four directions? Does this mean no diagonal movement? Why?

Orthogonal movements, does look funny, but it also offer some other problems. Moving Orthogonal distance is ~1.5 times longer then moving in four directions. This would effect travel distance, and all that jazz with cargo cart physics.

There also the question of where the Minecart is when moving Orthogonally.

Code: [Select]

  78
78
8

When Moving North East, the Cargo Cart is traveling along the 8 path, but it'll also technically be in the 7 as well, but only partially in the 7. And Toady gone over this is a tricky problem when he was speaking about multitile vehicles. When a ship is moving orthogonally, there will be tiles that disappear as a part of the area for the vehicles.

Games like TTD simply ignore these issues. I'm pretty sure Roller Coast Tycoon also ignore these issues too.

And Toady is able to ignore it as well, but from the Dwarf Fortress talks it sounded like it was a compromise he wasn't comfortable with making at the time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2012, 07:17:00 pm

Doesn't orthogonally mean up/down/left/right, no diagonal at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 07:44:06 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 04, 2012, 07:17:00 pm

Doesn't orthogonally mean up/down/left/right, no diagonal at all?

In the context of video games and gaming maps, it meant diagonal movements with square grids.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 04, 2012, 07:57:39 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 04, 2012, 07:44:06 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 04, 2012, 07:17:00 pm

Doesn't orthogonally mean up/down/left/right, no diagonal at all?

In the context of video games and gaming maps, it meant diagonal movements with square grids.

i don't think so, no, and i doubt i'm mistaken

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2012, 08:00:15 pm

Rollercoaster Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, etc. have isometric viewpoints, which means that orthogonal movement is seen as diagonal from the player's viewpoint. Up/down/left/right is actually diagonal in that situation, but is perceived as orthogonal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 04, 2012, 08:02:03 pm

that makes sense

carry on then

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 04, 2012, 08:22:33 pm

Minecarts?  I'm liking Toady's current work more and more.

For z-levels, I don't think some kind of crude lift would be out of the question, maybe something like a basic wooden platform with a chain and pulley (mechanisms).  Though there might be something like weight limits and such involved.  A metal chain might be needed to lift heavier loads than a rope.

Carts and such might be able to give us more use for generating power.  Or we could use animals, like donkeys or mules, though they could be a pain with the grazing requirement.  This is where being able to feed the animals directly would come in handy, maybe the Animal Caretaker job might stop being useless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CodexDraco on April 04, 2012, 08:33:18 pm

Orthogonal actually means two lines in 90°, so you are both right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 04, 2012, 09:57:51 pm

I'm pretty sure the "4 Directions" thing means North, South, East, and West.  No diagonals.  From what I've read it does this kind of tracking so that it can tell that 2 parallel tracks in directly adjacent cells aren't connect with each other, but only with cells on the same line.  A cell that represents a corner would have the North and East connection points set for example.  If it didn't do this that lines next to each other would automatically connect in the same way walls do.  If it didn't do this in order to have separate lines you would have to build your rail lines with an additional tile between them to stop them from joining up.  That's what Toady meant when he said it allows you do make writing without using up too many tiles; at least in my interpretation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 04, 2012, 09:59:46 pm

Confirmed mine cart physics for the next release in the devlog. Some of our best fears confirmed. Excellent!

Most excellent...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 10:03:24 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 04, 2012, 06:31:53 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on April 04, 2012, 05:41:45 pm

Oddly enough there is no true way to connect diagonals and sideways As Heph proven.

Hrm

Code: [Select]

   __
  /  \
 /    \
|      |
 \    /
  \__/


Yes exactly they do not connect. The diagonals don't connect with the left and right tracks but the left and right track connects to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 04, 2012, 10:20:39 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on April 04, 2012, 09:57:51 pm

I'm pretty sure the "4 Directions" thing means North, South, East, and West.  No diagonals.  From what I've read it does this kind of tracking so that it can tell that 2 parallel tracks in directly adjacent cells aren't connect with each other, but only with cells on the same line...

Yes, I was confused by the four directions thing, but this makes sense.  The double-lined tiles can then be used for tracks very easily.  Ooh, question, don't know if this has been asked...

If track connections during construction are dependent on the order in which each section is built, does this mean that the order of designation by the player is tracked in "real time" so to speak, or would we have to build a section, wait for it to be constructed, then designate again if tracks run parallel?

edit - though it has just occurred to me that if routes are designated, and given direction connectivity at designation, construction could be carried out automatically along those routes?

Quote from: Willfor on April 04, 2012, 09:59:46 pm

Confirmed mine cart physics for the next release in the devlog. Some of our best fears confirmed. Excellent!

Most excellent...

Hehe, after everyone started fantasizing about minecart physics I'm more relieved than anything that Toady confirmed this!  Only thing we need now is a dwarf hauling task.

Beast of burden hauling, feeding stations?  Man, I haven't even tamed anything yet, slow down the development a bit, Toady.   ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 04, 2012, 10:38:34 pm

I happy to see he's considering making a way to include mine carts in previous versions by putting in a default. I just made a fort and I'd hate to miss such a nice opportunity to fail at DF. (Even if at this point it sounds like a maybe, I'm glad he's thinking about it.)

I wonder though how the mine carts things will work out. I'm thinking it would be good strength training for militia dwarves to haul mine carts filled with stuff instead of letting the poor harmless animals get all workout. I imagine that dwarves will be able to move them in case animals aren't available. It will be interesting to see how forts evolve in structure as well.  I assume that animals will need some kind of special training to be set up to pull mine carts.

Urist McDonkey cancels haul cart: not done eating.
Urist McDonkey cancels haul cart: too stubborn.

The idea of having feed boxes near the tracks for working animals sounds neat too. Hopefully, if you set up feed boxes animals without pastures they can go eat there too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on April 04, 2012, 10:44:46 pm

might be multi-tile designations like walls or bridges now, and in the same way as bridges switch raise-direction
(but with multiple selections) designate the connections for the new segment.

I think I need elephant hauled carts. That or badger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 10:52:29 pm

Quote from: hermes on April 04, 2012, 10:20:39 pm

The double-lined tiles can then be used for tracks very easily. 

That would probably cause problems - those double lines define walls right now, and it would become visually very confusing to have dwarves start walking through "walls" all the time.  You can't overload the same symbols with such radically different meanings.

The single lines, which are only used for rivers on the worldmaps, may not be the ideal solution, but in the absences of other unique tiles, the single lines are the best option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 04, 2012, 11:03:05 pm

Yes you're right, I didn't think about that.  Single lines it could well be, would perhaps make the "fortress writing" more legible too.

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 04, 2012, 10:38:34 pm

I happy to see he's considering making a way to include mine carts in previous versions by putting in a default. I just made a fort and I'd hate to miss such a nice opportunity to fail at DF. (Even if at this point it sounds like a maybe, I'm glad he's thinking about it.)

I had the same feeling, but depending on how drastically the mining changes will affect mining speed and fortress design, it could feel umm, weird to have a fort built using the two different systems. ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on April 04, 2012, 11:07:02 pm

Anyone knows the history of mine carts, wheelbarrows, et cetera?

I've tried searching for it, but all I get are games and 1920s. I wonder if they fit in the 14th century time stop.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ImBocaire on April 04, 2012, 11:11:23 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on April 04, 2012, 11:07:02 pm

Anyone knows the history of mine carts, wheelbarrows, et cetera?

I've tried searching for it, but all I get are games and 1920s. I wonder if they fit in the 14th century time stop.

According to Wikipedia, "wagonways" consisting of wagons running in grooved tracks on stone have been found in ancient Greece. Considering the centrality of mining and quarrying to dwarven culture, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that their minecart technology would be far more advanced than their neighboring sentient races.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 11:25:56 pm

Im gonna have a artifact minecart! I wonder if it will track the kills of people it runs over?

"This artifact minecart is studded with rubies, and made of steel. It has murdered 12 dwarves, due to poor track planning through a dining hall"

That does raise the question, will the minecarts weight effect its speed? Slower on flats, faster down hill if made of metal as compared to a wooden one, that sort of thing. Not a green question, but it will require some !!science!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 04, 2012, 11:47:29 pm

Quote from: Watsst on April 04, 2012, 11:25:56 pm

That does raise the question, will the minecarts weight effect its speed? Slower on flats, faster down hill if made of metal as compared to a wooden one, that sort of thing. Not a green question, but it will require some !!science!!

Science, indeed! There's a good number of well-defined and well-known physics equations relating speed and acceleration and mass and force and energy and momentum and all that. Heavier carts will accelerate down hills at the same rate as lighter ones, not faster than them, for instance (or even slower if you take friction into account. I think? Maybe. Haven't taken basic physics in a while). Also heavier carts should be harder to bring up to speed on flat surfaces, but also harder to stop, but I imagine for the purposes of Dwarf Fortress that'll only matter when you try to stop it by standing in front of it.
 
I can't be arsed to read through the rest of my physics textbook at the moment, but Toady was a math professor before he started working full-time on dwarf fortress, so I'm sure he'll be able to put a reasonably realistic physics simulation in for carts.
 

Ten-page physics discussion initiating in 3... 2... 1...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 05, 2012, 12:54:39 am

Considering that inertia and friction are pretty much the only variables involved with minecart moving, it should be a bit of (relatively) simple math to make a variable equation for cart physics on a per-material basis. All that would need to be added to materials is a friction measure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 05, 2012, 12:59:22 am

Holy crap, Toady. You feeling okay? Since the start of March you've been a machine, and it's not just bugfixing anymore. Not that I can complain! All those terse, bullet-pointed dev posts - Is this Toady the Terminator? Toady 2.0? Toady 2cat.0? Based on when the crusade started I'm beginning to wonder if you didn't spend the big February numbers to circuitry yourself up, become one with the code and all that...
Keep it up Toady. This stuff is great. :)

And if you really are going all Mr. House on us ... That's pretty cool, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kulik on April 05, 2012, 01:59:43 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 04, 2012, 10:38:34 pm

I wonder though how the mine carts things will work out. I'm thinking it would be good strength training for militia dwarves to haul mine carts filled with stuff instead of letting the poor harmless animals get all workout. I imagine that dwarves will be able to move them in case animals aren't available.

I wouldn't be surprised if this would cause bad thoughts to balance things out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Crosu on April 05, 2012, 02:56:26 am

About that beast of burden and feeding station mention.

There needs to be something in the feeding stations. Since beast of burden are most likely guaranteed to be including the ones that drive the caravans at least, that also means that the whole grazer stuff has to be handled differently.

This would mean that grazers dont necessarily need a huge pasture and can be stationed in a small amount of tiles each with a food supply. Seems like this will be the first steps to dwarven industrial livestock farming.
But where does the fodder come from? Suicidal aboveground dwarven scythe-bearing hay gatherers? A new crop for the farms? plump helmets?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 05, 2012, 03:36:04 am

Hmm... Despite this being on top of ESV for a long time, and people really really wanting it, and Toady being nice enough to implement it... I dont see that this would change the gameplay a lot. Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work. And "add more carts" is not a real solution... cause you'll only be able to slowly get closer to the "works right", never quite there; it's much like saying "add more dwarves" which is how it's working now, except without a waste of workforce which has to wait for a free cart. You could of course nerf the dwarves to move slower or carry less so as to encourage carts... but then you wont be able to play WITHOUT carts, and some people wont enjoy it being forced on them (much like the immigrants being forced on players past the cap limit, you dont like it, but you arent given a real choice either, only workarounds).

Also I support the earlier question that says, paraphrased, "why bother with carts during mining, if the vein will be dug up and the minetrack abandoned quickly enough?"

Save for the novelty value, minecarts may very well be too awkward to justify their use.

Thoughts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 05, 2012, 03:47:31 am

Shun the nonbeliever!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 05, 2012, 03:56:53 am

Quote from: Elone on April 05, 2012, 03:36:04 am

Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work.

Probably hauling statues in new version will result in severe speed penalty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 05, 2012, 03:57:04 am

I dont know about carts being equal to none cart labor.

With whats being told us and how it's being presented, it seems like one dwarf is going to be able to do the work of several dwarfs.

If that's true, that already saving us quite a few Dwarf Hours in hauling.

So even if Loading into a Cart and Unloading into a Cart takes roughly the same amount of Time, it's taking less dwarfs to do the same work. So, it's more efficient even if it's not faster.

I dont think that'll need to make dwarf slower or really need to change how many objects a dwarf can carry.(Even though how many objects dwarf can carry is being changed.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 04:12:18 am

Is the new route system based off or related to military patrols, or is it all new?

Also guys, you can ask questions to Toady even about things we're liable to find out soon. It's not like he can't just ignore them if a release drops and invalidates the question.
Are we getting diagonals mine tracks?

Are rails tiles the single lines or something else?

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 04, 2012, 03:46:16 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 04, 2012, 03:37:43 pm

With a series of pressure plates that only go off at a certain weight or higher we could sort things from a single input according to weight. In a computing situation that means we could make a string of "if-then" statements based on type or quantity of input.

Well, the main obstacle that I'm not sure we will get is that you would have to be able to construct pressure plates and rails in the same tile (or else be capable of not building a tile, and letting a cart skip the rails while going over a pressure plate tile without having massive problems).  Toady thus far has only said he was letting you carve rails in floors and ramps. 

Putting constructed objects in the same tile as one another has not really happened before, so it would be a new step forward if you could put pressure plates "under" another object.

Toady said that the rails are carved. I would infer that this is like smoothed/engraved carvings, although that inference might be false. Toady, do rails work like other stone carvings? If not, how do they work?

Quote

The notion that rail switches would have to be pulled to manage traffic also raises problems, as if you are going to expect dwarves to be capable of navigating on their own, it would essentially require either that dwarves are capable of understanding how to pull those switches to change traffic flow as they require, or else that it would take the capacity to recognize that the tracks they are on can potentially change by the time that they actually get to a turn.  These are potentially much more advanced AI calculations than we actually have in the game right now...

I don't think things are that complicated by default. The dwarves just know this is the cart they're supposed to put the rocks (or the glass mugs, or the fresh-caught fish, or whatever) in. When it gets where it's going, then they re-path from there. Changes in the track will doubtless confuse dwarves, but I'm sure some people will be able to figure out more complex systems that are more efficient.

Quote from: Elone on April 05, 2012, 03:36:04 am

Hmm... Despite this being on top of ESV for a long time, and people really really wanting it, and Toady being nice enough to implement it... I dont see that this would change the gameplay a lot. Dwarves are already super fast. You could perhaps double the speed of carts, and perhaps the carts can carry more, but this gain will be all lost during cart filling/emptying phases, and while dwarves more or less have to wait for the cart to be there before they begin work. And "add more carts" is not a real solution... cause you'll only be able to slowly get closer to the "works right", never quite there; it's much like saying "add more dwarves" which is how it's working now, except without a waste of workforce which has to wait for a free cart. You could of course nerf the dwarves to move slower or carry less so as to encourage carts... but then you wont be able to play WITHOUT carts, and some people wont enjoy it being forced on them (much like the immigrants being forced on players past the cap limit, you dont like it, but you arent given a real choice either, only workarounds).

Also I support the earlier question that says, paraphrased, "why bother with carts during mining, if the vein will be dug up and the minetrack abandoned quickly enough?"

Save for the novelty value, minecarts may very well be too awkward to justify their use.

Thoughts?

There are often situations in which a minecart would hugely increase industrial efficiency, especially when a fort is laid out with imperfect efficiency or when a fort is very large for whatever reason. As for mining itself, it would be pointless currently but Toady's said he'll change things, and there have been plenty of mining-related suggestions for him to draw from. I don't think it's going to be as revolutionary as some people are inferring, but I do think it will be a useful tool in many cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 05, 2012, 05:00:51 am

Quote from: Japa on April 05, 2012, 03:47:31 am

Shun the nonbeliever!

 I saw this coming. I still hoped for something that uses the post room better. Yours still has a lot of blank space.

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 05, 2012, 03:57:04 am

I dont know about carts being equal to none cart labor.

With whats being told us and how it's being presented, it seems like one dwarf is going to be able to do the work of several dwarfs.

If that's true, that already saving us quite a few Dwarf Hours in hauling.

So even if Loading into a Cart and Unloading into a Cart takes roughly the same amount of Time, it's taking less dwarfs to do the same work. So, it's more efficient even if it's not faster.

I dont think that'll need to make dwarf slower or really need to change how many objects a dwarf can carry.(Even though how many objects dwarf can carry is being changed.)

But this is more a cause of them having multiple haul jobs merged than carts, so the dwarfpower hauling might be a better option than ever. In other words, this applies to both dwarf haulers and carts, so this does not give an advantage to the carts.

 Let me briefly touch on one further implication. The rocks are currently hardest to haul, because they cannot stack in either the inventories, or the stockpiles. So a cart might have an advantage of carrying multiples whereas dwarf cannot, even with the bin upgrade. However stone hauling is virtually always a dead end job, where you clean up your mined room and the cart tracks become abandoned.
 Now, you COULD use carts for other stuff, like hauling most everything else, but most of those stuff stacks into bins, barrels, bags, for which the dwarves already got a virtual tenfold upgrade. So where the carts would be most useful, a constant repeated use, you're not gonna have much need for them because dwarves already somehow managed those on foot, and with the upgrade, one dwarf can handle even more.

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 04:12:18 am

I don't think things are that complicated by default. The dwarves just know this is the cart they're supposed to put the rocks (or the glass mugs, or the fresh-caught fish, or whatever) in. When it gets where it's going, then they re-path from there. Changes in the track will doubtless confuse dwarves, but I'm sure some people will be able to figure out more complex systems that are more efficient.

Actually even less complexity is required here. Make junctions where dwarves can take any turn, but will take the one that they need the most; just like in the traffic designations. I would say that it is safe to assume that dorfs will switch their junctions as they see fit, even invisibly so, just like we assume that the caves are lit with torches even though we cannot see them in game. Same as I would not want to bother with setting torches on walls too much, I would not want to bother opening a track for that dorf who is too mentally challenged to know to switch his own junction when he comes to it. Think of the aforementioned Transport Tycoon! You can pile up a square with tracks that lead in all eight directions, and the train will take one of those as per the need.

However, with each track having those certain 4 directions... the way that I interpret it, each rail tile will have 4 internal directions which can be set on and off. It would be neat if these directions could be individually forbidden or made oneway... For instance, a direction from the west to east could be set to allowed, to forbidden, to oneway from east, and oneway from west. I imagine this being super simple, and would only need to be done at occasional keypoints.

Keep the thoughts coming! ♥

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on April 05, 2012, 05:24:43 am

Elone: The way I understand it, rock hauling needs to be made significantly harder, so that hauling all rocks manually is no longer a viable option - you can do it, but it would just take too much time. You can use minecarts, which requires some effort and, as you say, some players would like a simpler option. For that, you have beasts of burden which seem to be basically the same as minecarts but without having to prepare tracks. And even simpler, you have wheelbarrows which presumably work the same way as hauling works now, and only allow a dwarf to carry more.

I would assume that you would build tracks mostly just to haul ore to smelters, because in this state of the game, rocks can easily be ignored. But Toady might change this, who knows.

In any case, there is till the point minecarts might end up saving valuable dwarf-hours. The dwarves can then do something else – which means even more production and more items than now. I've already asked Toady if he sees this as a problem, so we'll see what he says.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on April 05, 2012, 07:57:12 am

It will be more efficient when most goods will be moved in bins, bags and barrells.  A single dwarf will empty a workshop into a bin, and empty it into the cart or put the bin in the cart.  Similar at the other end.   If a cart can take a number of bins, then it factors up efficiency much as the current proposal to use containers to move goods does.

Obviously anything not moved by container, such as stone/ore/furniture will need a number of hauling jobs at either end of the cart journey, unless something else changes.  But this should be more efficient, in a similar manner that containers make moving small goods quicker.

I can imagine set ups where tracks run through out a fortress, linking all areas together.  Then mining areas have temporary local stockpiles, to which stones/ore and brought by dwarf.  Then a BoB takes from there to a stockpile next to the tracks, and from there minecarts use the tracks to take the ore down to the smelters.  The the minecarts take the bolts/blocks/furniture back up to the storage levels.

If a minecart can act as a recepticle in a stockpile as a bin or barrel (and even better if it can hold bags / bins), then the loading and unloading is much reduced.  Each time a dwarf empties a craft workshop with a bin, it can put it straight into the cart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 05, 2012, 08:22:46 am

Quote from: JimiD on April 05, 2012, 07:57:12 am

It will be more efficient when most goods will be moved in bins, bags and barrells.  A single dwarf will empty a workshop into a bin, and empty it into the cart or put the bin in the cart.  Similar at the other end.   If a cart can take a number of bins, then it factors up efficiency much as the current proposal to use containers to move goods does.

More like, a dwarf will find two new seeds, put them in a bag, put the bag into a barrel, put the barrel into a cart, and haul the cart away away where it needs to go. Workshops produce constantly, and dwarves haul constantly. There is nothing that would say "Wait until you can fill this cart with more than two seeds before you occupy it and make it unavailable to everyone else". All the 'capacity' and 'efficiency' which seem to be trumpeted over and over again, are going to be moot if dwarves just haul away whatever they have at hand, be it a pair of two seeds and no more, occupying (potentially several) containers for the job, where the carts will be just 'another one of them'. And even for stone, wheelbarrows would be more useful, as they are not restricted to a single path and can go into each dorf's inventory from the looks of it. In which case, I repeat, carts will have no practical advantage over dwarfpower other than some immediate novelty.

And since I foresee someone telling me how dorf carrying capacity itself will be changed in the future, I'll reply that they will still be able to carry pretty much everything aside from mined rock and heavier furniture (and then those in wheelbarrows) unless you weaken them so much that they can barely lift a spoon. Which, this is my best guess, Toady wont do. And you will not route minecart tracks into rooms just to haul furniture to every square where they need to be built.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 05, 2012, 09:55:46 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 08:58:41 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 04, 2012, 08:46:33 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 04, 2012, 07:59:51 am

This hauling update is the single biggest change to fortress mode gameplay since the z-levels way back in 2007.

I'd argue that the underground changes probably had a larger effect, actually, but yeah, it is excellent.

I thought about them, but they didn't change the gameplay that much or influenced the basic design of fortresses.

Probably just a personal thing then. I tend to build massively overcomplicated mazes of spiral and straight ramps anyway, so I guess it'll just make them actually efficient (or at least, as efficient as you can be when going from one side of the entrance floor to the other requires two entirely separate trips through the first caverns).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 05, 2012, 10:13:01 am

Sometime, very soon, someone on the interwebz will release a Urist the Tank Engine mod.

It will happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 05, 2012, 10:58:02 am

I like the mention of Beasts of Burden in the latest devlog! Let's put those grazers to work!

The mention of feeding stations is also pretty cool, since I imagine that would also allow for some grazers to be kept inside or chained up without dying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 05, 2012, 11:09:20 am

Quote from: Mephansteras on April 05, 2012, 10:58:02 am

I like the mention of Beasts of Burden in the latest devlog! Let's put those grazers to work!

The mention of feeding stations is also pretty cool, since I imagine that would also allow for some grazers to be kept inside or chained up without dying.

Yes, feeding stations seem to imply hay harvesting and storage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 11:12:29 am

Quote from: Crosu on April 05, 2012, 02:56:26 am

About that beast of burden and feeding station mention.

There needs to be something in the feeding stations. Since beast of burden are most likely guaranteed to be including the ones that drive the caravans at least, that also means that the whole grazer stuff has to be handled differently.

This would mean that grazers dont necessarily need a huge pasture and can be stationed in a small amount of tiles each with a food supply. Seems like this will be the first steps to dwarven industrial livestock farming.
But where does the fodder come from? Suicidal aboveground dwarven scythe-bearing hay gatherers? A new crop for the farms? plump helmets?

Toady had said he was intending to do something like this when he put grazers in.  When people complained about the elephants all dying off, he said that maybe it would be better when there was animal feed.

Likewise, when he added presses and the rock nut oil, he said the pressed rock nut gunk would become animal fodder, so that's at least one source of feed.  Presumably, you could just feed them longland grass, or maybe when you mill that grass, the stalk becomes fodder material, as well. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 05, 2012, 11:18:48 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 11:12:29 am

Quote from: Crosu on April 05, 2012, 02:56:26 am

About that beast of burden and feeding station mention.

There needs to be something in the feeding stations. Since beast of burden are most likely guaranteed to be including the ones that drive the caravans at least, that also means that the whole grazer stuff has to be handled differently.

This would mean that grazers dont necessarily need a huge pasture and can be stationed in a small amount of tiles each with a food supply. Seems like this will be the first steps to dwarven industrial livestock farming.
But where does the fodder come from? Suicidal aboveground dwarven scythe-bearing hay gatherers? A new crop for the farms? plump helmets?

Toady had said he was intending to do something like this when he put grazers in.  When people complained about the elephants all dying off, he said that maybe it would be better when there was animal feed.

Likewise, when he added presses and the rock nut oil, he said the pressed rock nut gunk would become animal fodder, so that's at least one source of feed.  Presumably, you could just feed them longland grass, or maybe when you mill that grass, the stalk becomes fodder material, as well.

Well, I think it is long overdue to have dwarves (humans, elves) with scythes roaming surface, cutting down grass and letting it dry for few weeks.

Main motivation being, of course, Adamandine scythe wielding milita wearing straw hats.

And straw crafts. And strawmen which we can set on fire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on April 05, 2012, 11:52:00 am

Man, I really need to stop reading the devlog.  I've generated probably the most badass world I've ever seen, but now I don't want to start srsfort for fear of missing out on new potential awesomeness. 

Why does Toady have to keep adding stuff I want so bad?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 05, 2012, 12:38:16 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 11:12:29 am

Likewise, when he added presses and the rock nut oil, he said the pressed rock nut gunk would become animal fodder, so that's at least one source of feed.  Presumably, you could just feed them longland grass, or maybe when you mill that grass, the stalk becomes fodder material, as well.

Longland and Cave-wheat hey would indeed be quite nice. Maye even pressing them to blocks for easy storage ashing or live fertilizer.  Straw and hay can also turned into crafts or be used as building material (say for roofs). Hehe scarecrows XD. Hm thanks to rotting (if it would produce like in Rl) it might be thought a mayor fire hazard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 05, 2012, 01:06:06 pm

Hey, it's some hay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on April 05, 2012, 01:08:02 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 05, 2012, 08:22:46 am

More like, a dwarf will find two new seeds, put them in a bag, put the bag into a barrel, put the barrel into a cart, and haul the cart away away where it needs to go. Workshops produce constantly, and dwarves haul constantly. There is nothing that would say "Wait until you can fill this cart with more than two seeds before you occupy it and make it unavailable to everyone else". All the 'capacity' and 'efficiency' which seem to be trumpeted over and over again, are going to be moot if dwarves just haul away whatever they have at hand, be it a pair of two seeds and no more, occupying (potentially several) containers for the job, where the carts will be just 'another one of them'. And even for stone, wheelbarrows would be more useful, as they are not restricted to a single path and can go into each dorf's inventory from the looks of it. In which case, I repeat, carts will have no practical advantage over dwarfpower other than some immediate novelty.

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know. Apart from that, yes, maybe you are right, maybe any true efficiency increase comes from the implementation of hauling things in bins, whereas carts are just the bins stones use and are more for novelty. It is difficult to say at this point though without more information, so why not pose this as a question to Toady rather than being so pessimistic about it? Although to be honest it might be more sensible to simply wait for what the devlog updates over the next few days reveal.

As for your concern that dwarves might not use the carts etc. to their full potential by not filling them up: even if there is no way for them to wait (which might be implemented in some way for all that we know), as long as items pile up at their point of origin there should be an improvement. You say that workshops produce constantly and dwarves haul constantly, but whether items pile up or not up depends of course on the number of haulers assigned. If the new systems works, then you can assign less haulers and allow for produced items to pile up, temporarily that is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 05, 2012, 01:15:45 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 05, 2012, 01:06:06 pm

Hey, it's some hay.

Shit damn spellchecker!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 01:37:06 pm

Quote from: dreiche2 on April 05, 2012, 01:08:02 pm

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know. Apart from that, yes, maybe you are right, maybe any true efficiency increase comes from the implementation of hauling things in bins, whereas carts are just the bins stones use and are more for novelty. It is difficult to say at this point though without more information, so why not pose this as a question to Toady rather than being so pessimistic about it? Although to be honest it might be more sensible to simply wait for what the devlog updates over the next few days reveal.

As for your concern that dwarves might not use the carts etc. to their full potential by not filling them up: even if there is no way for them to wait (which might be implemented in some way for all that we know), as long as items pile up at their point of origin there should be an improvement. You say that workshops produce constantly and dwarves haul constantly, but whether items pile up or not up depends of course on the number of haulers assigned. If the new systems works, then you can assign less haulers and allow for produced items to pile up, temporarily that is.

There's nothing wrong with a little pessimism, so long as you keep perspective. 

I remember seeing several threads around when people were expecting older major releases to come out, in which posters were encouraged to guess what the new bugs would be for the new features going in.

Something like that might seem rude at first glance, but if Toady actually just read that, and looked at it as a checklist of "make sure this doesn't happen", it would actually be quite helpful. 

Stress-testing an idea before it is fully implemented (and hence, changes are cheaper and easier to make) is more useful than play testing, which is much better than just leaving the bugs in there. 

So never shy away from a good pro vs. con argument.

---

Anyway, yes, from what the devlogs look like, this will be more akin to a "train station" setup, where carts merely have stops, rather than are capable of being moved anywhere the rails allow. 

That could potentially allow for a "loading platform" that acts as a stockpile, itself.  If the objects that are meant to be shipped "miss their train", they just sit in the loading platform until the "next train comes in".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: loose nut on April 05, 2012, 02:36:52 pm

FWIW upon reading the devlog I think minecarts make more sense as furniture-type items produced at the carpenter's workshop or forge than as a craft item. They're big, like bins with wheels, and not in any way delicate! Exciting stuff, though. Looking forward to shipping burning lignite to the front lines :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 05, 2012, 02:43:25 pm

anyone remember the chutes from a few months back?

Here's one such discussion. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4084.50)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 05, 2012, 02:46:28 pm

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on April 05, 2012, 02:49:55 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 01:37:06 pm

There's nothing wrong with a little pessimism, so long as you keep perspective. 

I remember seeing several threads around when people were expecting older major releases to come out, in which posters were encouraged to guess what the new bugs would be for the new features going in.

Something like that might seem rude at first glance, but if Toady actually just read that, and looked at it as a checklist of "make sure this doesn't happen", it would actually be quite helpful. 

Stress-testing an idea before it is fully implemented (and hence, changes are cheaper and easier to make) is more useful than play testing, which is much better than just leaving the bugs in there. 

So never shy away from a good pro vs. con argument.

I never said anything against a pro vs con argument, and I don't see why my suggestion of framing it as a question to Toady wouldn't fulfil the purpose of letting him know about these issues just as well. It was just a minor comment directed at Elone, so let's not get into a general discussion about the merits of pessimism, shall we? :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 03:41:00 pm

Something nobody's asked yet that I'm curious about is how this will all look. Will wheelbarrows and carts all have their own tiles adjacent to the dwarves or beasts that pull them, or what's the deal there?

Quote from: Elone on April 05, 2012, 05:00:51 am

Quote from: Japa on April 05, 2012, 03:47:31 am

Shun the nonbeliever!

I saw this coming. I still hoped for something that uses the post room better. Yours still has a lot of blank space.

A wall of text isn't inherently good.

Quote

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 04:12:18 am

I don't think things are that complicated by default. The dwarves just know this is the cart they're supposed to put the rocks (or the glass mugs, or the fresh-caught fish, or whatever) in. When it gets where it's going, then they re-path from there. Changes in the track will doubtless confuse dwarves, but I'm sure some people will be able to figure out more complex systems that are more efficient.

Actually even less complexity is required here. Make junctions where dwarves can take any turn, but will take the one that they need the most; just like in the traffic designations. I would say that it is safe to assume that dorfs will switch their junctions as they see fit, even invisibly so, just like we assume that the caves are lit with torches even though we cannot see them in game.

It could be that junctions work like that by default unless the player manually attaches it to a lever or other trigger, sort of like how doors work now.

Quote

Same as I would not want to bother with setting torches on walls too much, I would not want to bother opening a track for that dorf who is too mentally challenged to know to switch his own junction when he comes to it.

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Quote

However, with each track having those certain 4 directions... the way that I interpret it, each rail tile will have 4 internal directions which can be set on and off. It would be neat if these directions could be individually forbidden or made oneway... For instance, a direction from the west to east could be set to allowed, to forbidden, to oneway from east, and oneway from west. I imagine this being super simple, and would only need to be done at occasional keypoints.

Ah, yeah that makes sense as an interpretation of what the four directions means. I'm kind of curious what the interface for this could end up looking like.

Quote from: Elone on April 05, 2012, 08:22:46 am

And since I foresee someone telling me how dorf carrying capacity itself will be changed in the future, I'll reply that they will still be able to carry pretty much everything aside from mined rock and heavier furniture (and then those in wheelbarrows) unless you weaken them so much that they can barely lift a spoon. Which, this is my best guess, Toady wont do. And you will not route minecart tracks into rooms just to haul furniture to every square where they need to be built.

Realistically for moving most furniture, you would want to use a furniture dolly. In practice I reckon a wheelbarrow will be more of a hand truck that can be used to move furniture too, rather than the slope-sided wheelbarrows we think of as normal in the modern day.

Quote from: dreiche2 on April 05, 2012, 01:08:02 pm

I would assume there to be some benefits to carts over wheelbarrows the way Toady implements it, we just don't know.

I would guess that wheelbarrow hauling is still based on the strength of the dwarf, with the wheelbarrow making the effective weight of the carried item much smaller.

Quote from: tahujdt on April 05, 2012, 02:46:28 pm

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

I'm gonna guess "no" on this, because it's outside the time period. And also because transferring power from a stationary source like a waterwheel to a mobile source like a cart doesn't really seem possible without advanced technology such as electricity.

Quote from: Heph on April 05, 2012, 01:15:45 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 05, 2012, 01:06:06 pm

Hey, it's some hay.

Shit damn spellchecker!

FYI you also wrote "mayor" instead of "major".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 05, 2012, 04:04:29 pm

Not sure why I haven't done this yet, but I'm PTW.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 05, 2012, 04:12:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 03:41:00 pm

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs and lighting is a computational ball of yarn. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 05, 2012, 04:23:31 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 05, 2012, 04:12:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 03:41:00 pm

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs and lighting is a computational ball of yarn. 

Toady said that after hauling he will add fire awareness for dwarves.

Quote from: Toady One on March 30, 2012, 08:24:29 am

Yeah, although it might depend on how you characterize the hauling changes since some of those'll be coming pretty soon, with fire AI sometime after that (since I promised both of these for the bug fix cycle, along with some other stuff).  Regular bug fixes will also continue.  I might be busy until the first with the typical month-end stuff (crayon etc.).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 05, 2012, 04:44:57 pm

wow... it will be nice once dwarves/adventurer companions know that they are on fire... though that means no more boozeslposions. (yes alcohol doesn't explode in game blablabla.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 05, 2012, 02:46:28 pm

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

Do you perhaps mean powered gears that could propel minecarts that run into them, such as pushing carts up ramps, from which they could use the roll downhill as momentum so that you could move carts without using animal power? 

Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Garath on April 05, 2012, 04:58:15 pm

I worked on a farm for a few months.
it's not compatible with DF as it is now..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 05, 2012, 05:17:00 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 05, 2012, 02:46:28 pm

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

Do you perhaps mean powered gears that could propel minecarts that run into them, such as pushing carts up ramps, from which they could use the roll downhill as momentum so that you could move carts without using animal power? 

Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

I wondered if in the middle ages someone thought of using a spring as a way of storing energy, perhaps even for the purpose of selling it. For example you'd have in times of peace 60 slaves cranking massive springs to their minimum volume, you then block it and haul it to another city where it can be used to power windmill or to quickly recharge a siege weapon... I have close to none physics background but it's one of the most dwarven things I could ever imagine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Langdon on April 05, 2012, 06:08:51 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm

Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

I'm thinking something like how San Francisco cable cars work - cars hook to a cable that runs underneath the rail, being pulled by a large spool/drum situated on one end of the track (driven by the powered axle). In DF terms, we might have "powered" tracks that we can assume have a combination of gears/cables to pull carts in this fashion.

Or even how modern rollercoasters work - a section of track is geared to pull/propel carts up to the top of a ramp, then gravity does the rest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Starne on April 05, 2012, 06:18:19 pm

I think what people are getting at when the mention powered minecarts is something similar to what rollercoasters use. In DF terms, this would be a windmill, waterwheel, or even some kind of turny-spinny thing turned by animals or Dwarves(I forget what those are called) powering a system of ropes or more likely chains connected to hooks on the carts.

A good example of this system that has been used a lot in reality would be to use a system of chains(or ropes) and winches to pull carts up an incline, then letting gravity take them back down.

Say you're building some kind of mega-construction on the surface, but your (stone of choice) deposits are deep underground. You set up a waterwheel 'power-station' on the surface, and connect it to a line of minecarts. System pulls carts loaded with stone to surface, and gravity takes carts loaded with food and booze down to the miners.

This would also allow a player to use minecarts to move large amounts of material long distances without relying on Dwarf-power, animal power, or dangerous(and sometimes impractical) gravity-based setups.


All of that said, when I first read the DevBlog mentioning minecarts, my mind was filled with 'OhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygod', in the Space-Core's voice, of course. 

Edit: Langdon beat me to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 05, 2012, 06:42:25 pm

The walk-powered mill would be a treadmill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 06:49:05 pm

Quote from: Langdon on April 05, 2012, 06:08:51 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm

Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

I'm thinking something like how San Francisco cable cars work - cars hook to a cable that runs underneath the rail, being pulled by a large spool/drum situated on one end of the track (driven by the powered axle). In DF terms, we might have "powered" tracks that we can assume have a combination of gears/cables to pull carts in this fashion.

Or even how modern rollercoasters work - a section of track is geared to pull/propel carts up to the top of a ramp, then gravity does the rest.

Yes, basically, I was just explaining that the same concept behind "modern rollercoasters" is well within the technological boundaries dwarves are already using.  You could even have the flywheel (11th century Egyptians had them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel#History), although they used them for controlling the speed of a thresher, not mine carts, obviously) that propels the minecart on an incline, so that it can slide out of the gear if a minecart is barreling past at a faster rate than the flywheel is spinning, and then let itself slide back in when the cart has passed to prevent the gears from grinding from going too fast.  Simply putting successive sets of powered flywheels up the ramps would be able to propel mine carts up ramps.

Then, you could simply set up your carts on an automated circuit - collecting wood at the surface, rolling downhill to the furnace areas to dump the cargo, then being powered back up to the surface again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 06:49:59 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on April 05, 2012, 11:52:00 am

Man, I really need to stop reading the devlog.  I've generated probably the most badass world I've ever seen, but now I don't want to start srsfort for fear of missing out on new potential awesomeness. 

Why does Toady have to keep adding stuff I want so bad?

This is actually normal for post-large-releases.  Same thing has happened several times.

Big release followed by several small bugfixes and adjustment releases.

It won't be too much longer before Toady starts to work on a big release again, I'd imagine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:00:21 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 04:47:08 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 05, 2012, 02:46:28 pm

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

Do you perhaps mean powered gears that could propel minecarts that run into them, such as pushing carts up ramps, from which they could use the roll downhill as momentum so that you could move carts without using animal power? 

Having wooden axles that transfer power from waterwheels somehow driving minecarts on the move would be basically impossible as a direct means of power transfer, as Cruxador said.

Powered gears used to push objects would also be unusual for the time period, but waterwheel-powered gears are at least possible with that level of technology, and automatically pushed carts would have a coolness factor that would tickle my personal fancy, at the very least.

Eh, not sure why it might be considered impossible to create a screw powered track system.

Rail - Screw - Rail

There is an assembly in the bottom of the cart that meshes with the mid-rail screw.

The mid rail screw rotates, which forces the cart to move one way or the other depending on the direction of rotation of the mid rail screw, which could be reversible with a simple gearbox.

Primitive and crude, but no more so than windmills and waterwheels powering screw pumps hundreds of tiles away.  The mid rail screw is just pushing a mine cart, rather than pumping water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 07:03:13 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:00:21 pm

Eh, not sure why it might be considered impossible to create a screw powered track system.

Yes, that is also a clever and valid idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:14:14 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 07:03:13 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:00:21 pm

Eh, not sure why it might be considered impossible to create a screw powered track system.

Yes, that is also a clever and valid idea.

Not my idea, though I twisted it around a bit.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/screw-drive-vehicle.htm

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 07:14:53 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 05, 2012, 04:12:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 03:41:00 pm

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs

I'm pretty sure that's not directly related.

Quote

and lighting is a computational ball of yarn.

That's why Toady hasn't gotten to it yet, not why we don't have it.

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:00:21 pm

Eh, not sure why it might be considered impossible to create a screw powered track system.

Rail - Screw - Rail

There is an assembly in the bottom of the cart that meshes with the mid-rail screw.

The mid rail screw rotates, which forces the cart to move one way or the other depending on the direction of rotation of the mid rail screw, which could be reversible with a simple gearbox.

Primitive and crude, but no more so than windmills and waterwheels powering screw pumps hundreds of tiles away.  The mid rail screw is just pushing a mine cart, rather than pumping water.

It would waste a lot of power on friction, and it would take a single huge screw which would be difficult to manufacture and which would break down a lot. It also wouldn't be able to handle turns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:22:25 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 07:14:53 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 05, 2012, 04:12:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 03:41:00 pm

This is a poor comparison because the only reason we don't have torches yet is that Toady hasn't yet done lighting. A better comparison would be individual tools, which actually are omitted for gameplay reasons.

Actually another reason is that we dont have a Fire-AI for dorfs

I'm pretty sure that's not directly related.

Quote

and lighting is a computational ball of yarn.

That's why Toady hasn't gotten to it yet, not why we don't have it.

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:00:21 pm

Eh, not sure why it might be considered impossible to create a screw powered track system.

Rail - Screw - Rail

There is an assembly in the bottom of the cart that meshes with the mid-rail screw.

The mid rail screw rotates, which forces the cart to move one way or the other depending on the direction of rotation of the mid rail screw, which could be reversible with a simple gearbox.

Primitive and crude, but no more so than windmills and waterwheels powering screw pumps hundreds of tiles away.  The mid rail screw is just pushing a mine cart, rather than pumping water.

It would waste a lot of power on friction, and it would take a single huge screw which would be difficult to manufacture and which would break down a lot. It also wouldn't be able to handle turns.

Nah you simply design the system to make unpowered turns, and use lots of small screws with gearboxes here and there.

No more complex than what our dwarves already build for water/magma pumps really.

Of course wooden poles transferring thousands of horsepower across hundreds if not thousands of feet is pretty unrealistic.

There are a lot of things in DF that are modeled impressively.  Power generation and transfer is not one of those things (yet?) so I don't see why future tech stuff would need to be any more realistic than past stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 07:45:53 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:22:25 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 07:14:53 pm

It would waste a lot of power on friction, and it would take a single huge screw which would be difficult to manufacture and which would break down a lot. It also wouldn't be able to handle turns.

Nah you simply design the system to make unpowered turns, and use lots of small screws with gearboxes here and there.

You can just line up screws one after another, no different from pump stacks.  And unpowered turns could be facilitated by driving it up a ramp, and then letting it go back down a ramp to build a little momentum to get it by to the next chain of screws.  (The same goes for the wheels.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 05, 2012, 07:48:47 pm

Under what circumstances do you envision minecarts behaving according to minecart physics?

I.e., are they going to break free from time to time?  What would cause that?  How often are they going to go careening off out of control?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 08:05:45 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on April 05, 2012, 07:48:47 pm

Under what circumstances do you envision minecarts behaving according to minecart physics?

I.e., are they going to break free from time to time?  What would cause that?  How often are they going to go careening off out of control?

This just in:

"04/05/2012  I went ahead and just debug-put a cart on a track and debug-pushed it. They gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners, and they fly in little parabolas and crash into the ground when you set them free, either straight off a cliff or launched from a short upward ramp. I've put off updating the rest of the projectiles to have parabolic paths because I don't want to lose time dealing with adv mode targeting etc., but you may well see parabolic unit paths when creatures are unfortunate enough to take flight without wings."

I cannot wait to see what Toady ends up with af final product and what modding is available on these carts, and what people do with them!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 05, 2012, 08:11:15 pm

so umm... enemies flying in parabolic paths after being hit......... all hail Toady! master of minor feature bloat!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 05, 2012, 08:28:45 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 08:05:45 pm

This just in:

That's what I was responding to . . . how often are dwarves going to creep up and give your mine carts a push?  Or is it if the beast pulling the cart gets shot and killed?  Or do gremlins and poltergeists get involved?  Will there be a (P)ush the minecart command?  Will the traces occasionally break, causing your carts to go on a bloodthirsty rampage through your miners?

The questions just pile up!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on April 05, 2012, 08:34:53 pm

The Big Thing for me right now:

Can minecarts injure creatures that happen to be standing in the way while they are moving and, if so, does the mass of the cart and its contents impact the damage caused? Does the AI try to stay out of the way of moving carts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 05, 2012, 08:52:26 pm

New HFS defense.  Minecarts full of lead bars travelling down a 200 z-level ramp to the circus.

Do minecarts currently, or are they planned to have a maximum velocity?   Just a point where no matter how many more ramps you put in front of it, it's just not going to go any faster?  Or is the plan to just use map height limitations or a max 1 tile per tick rule to keep warp speed minecarts from hitting things?

Also in the hitting things vein,  Will minecarts striking folks use the system that ballistas use where they just pick a random number of body parts to wreck when they hit something, or is there another plan in the works?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 05, 2012, 08:53:08 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on April 05, 2012, 08:34:53 pm

The Big Thing for me right now:

Can minecarts injure creatures that happen to be standing in the way while they are moving and, if so, does the mass of the cart and its contents impact the damage caused? Does the AI try to stay out of the way of moving carts?

I'm gonna go with yes, on all accounts here. Except the last one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on April 05, 2012, 08:56:10 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 05, 2012, 08:53:08 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on April 05, 2012, 08:34:53 pm

The Big Thing for me right now:

Can minecarts injure creatures that happen to be standing in the way while they are moving and, if so, does the mass of the cart and its contents impact the damage caused? Does the AI try to stay out of the way of moving carts?

I'm gonna go with yes, on all accounts here. Except the last one.

Welp, looks like danger rooms just became 100% dwarfier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 05, 2012, 09:04:37 pm

This just in: Imma make some rollercoasters in the new version. :Db

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ArkDelgato on April 05, 2012, 09:08:05 pm

Will the parabolic arcs affect catapults before other projectiles or will those all be done together?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 05, 2012, 09:31:06 pm

Quote from: Greiger on April 05, 2012, 08:52:26 pm

New HFS defense.  Minecarts full of lead bars travelling down a 200 z-level ramp to the circus.

I thought of something like this, but a little different (and less reliant on the unknown matter of acceleration being capped or not):

Minecart-based DIY catapults. Say a goblin siege comes to your fort and is waiting outside your sealed-up front entrance. You have a fairly respectable tower built up above the main hall.

Code: [Select]


tower
 _______
|       |
|       |
|       |
|       |
|       |
|       |
|       |________
|                X_/
|                 |
|                     <- main entrance               
|________________                                g  goblins g  g  g


The X_/ is a ledge inaccessible from the ground with an open port leading into the tower, and an upward ramp on the end. This portway is connected to a long straight series of ramps in the (necessarily broad) tower, at the top of which is a stockpile of minecarts and lead bars.
When a siege comes,  and stands waiting outside the fortress main gate loitering, the dwarves are sent up to load a minecart full of lead bars, and push it down the ramp. The cart full of lead bars rockets down the giant tower-ramp until it reaches appreciable speed, then shoots out the port above the entrance hall and sails off the ramp. It flies a distance that I'm hoping will be fairly predictable (and therefore, reproducible) based on the load of the cart and the height of the tower from which it's dropped, and then crashes down into the middle of the goblins, smashing at least one and hopefully several of them to pieces. The dwarves in the tower continue loading lead-filled missiles with impunity until every goblin in range is a chunky splatter.

Depending on how tracks work out - Can you have interconnected track lines, that is to say, a system where a track could have "tributaries" that lead into it and join into the main line? Such that you could have, for example, three starting branches in a line converging into a single ending segment? - you might even be able to have multiple launching stations at varying heights up the tower feeding into the same main ramp, so that you could order the carts deployed from different ones to hit different distances away from the tower. (Depending on if the load of the cart affects the gain in speed, and how much, you could vary your shooting distance this way as well).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 05, 2012, 09:43:43 pm

Quote from: ArkDelgato on April 05, 2012, 09:08:05 pm

Will the parabolic arcs affect catapults before other projectiles or will those all be done together?

As stated in the same dev post, nope.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 10:16:44 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 05, 2012, 07:45:53 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:22:25 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 07:14:53 pm

It would waste a lot of power on friction, and it would take a single huge screw which would be difficult to manufacture and which would break down a lot. It also wouldn't be able to handle turns.

Nah you simply design the system to make unpowered turns, and use lots of small screws with gearboxes here and there.

You can just line up screws one after another, no different from pump stacks.  And unpowered turns could be facilitated by driving it up a ramp, and then letting it go back down a ramp to build a little momentum to get it by to the next chain of screws.  (The same goes for the wheels.)

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 05, 2012, 07:22:25 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2012, 07:14:53 pm

(snip)

Nah you simply design the system to make unpowered turns, and use lots of small screws with gearboxes here and there.

No more complex than what our dwarves already build for water/magma pumps really.

Of course wooden poles transferring thousands of horsepower across hundreds if not thousands of feet is pretty unrealistic.

There are a lot of things in DF that are modeled impressively.  Power generation and transfer is not one of those things (yet?) so I don't see why future tech stuff would need to be any more realistic than past stuff.

Yeah, that's true. Pump stacks are pretty unrealistic too. I guess the realistic way to do it in-game would be to just make each mechanical component subject to a break chance based on the amount of power involved and the piece material. Presumably that'll happen when wear and tear on buildings happens in general.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: caknuck on April 05, 2012, 11:47:03 pm

Only in Dwarf Fortress does "WE WNAT WHEELBARROW" lead to single-variable calculus.

I'm going to load mine carts full of coal, roll them downhill through a magma mister, then make my dwarfs push them around the fort in some demented Olympic torch relay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on April 06, 2012, 12:04:46 am

Minecarts are the best thing ever. So excited for this change!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 06, 2012, 12:23:37 am

Does one remember the Old Gummybears show from disney? They had those underground railway with occasional jumps  :D the only way in and out my fort will be exactly that! For ‼Science‼ (magma-moat not included, for Magma suitable for this product please call you Local dwarfs)

I hope water works as emergency break for this things if one is needed. A cart with leadbars will pack more force and would need more time to come to a standstill then a cart filled with feathertree wood. A reliable way to stop both at the roughly same place would be great. It would also be the softer landing.

If the carts can be powered with chains/gears/screws and if they can carry a certain amount of water i could see a new kind of pump here althought thats still in the stars.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 06, 2012, 12:57:12 am

Quote from: caknuck on April 05, 2012, 11:47:03 pm

Only in Dwarf Fortress does "WE WNAT WHEELBARROW" lead to single-variable calculus.

You're right, we need to make it multivariable. 

Maybe we should start working on formulas for aerodynamic components of the piles in carts - the volume of the cart's interior should be measurable, and so should the goods inside, so when it sticks out the top in a pile of coal or whatever, then it starts adding further drag for the piles of stuff that go up above the rim of the cart.

Likewise, mass should be involved in the friction coefficient.  Naturally, the benefit of metal rails would be lower friction loss.  Adamantine rails should be like launching a cart down soap.

Furthermore, friction is loss of directional energy to heat, so we need to get the temperature system involved in this.  Maybe you could actually ignite the lignite in the cart with enough friction if you put a rough enough patch in there...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: caknuck on April 06, 2012, 01:10:00 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 06, 2012, 12:57:12 am

Quote from: caknuck on April 05, 2012, 11:47:03 pm

Only in Dwarf Fortress does "WE WNAT WHEELBARROW" lead to single-variable calculus.

You're right, we need to make it multivariable. 

Maybe we should start working on formulas for aerodynamic components of the piles in carts - the volume of the cart's interior should be measurable, and so should the goods inside, so when it sticks out the top in a pile of coal or whatever, then it starts adding further drag for the piles of stuff that go up above the rim of the cart.

Likewise, mass should be involved in the friction coefficient.  Naturally, the benefit of metal rails would be lower friction loss.  Adamantine rails should be like launching a cart down soap.

Furthermore, friction is loss of directional energy to heat, so we need to get the temperature system involved in this.  Maybe you could actually ignite the lignite in the cart with enough friction if you put a rough enough patch in there...

Potential bug: lubricating adamantine rails with rock nut oil or giant eagle tallow reduces the coefficient of friction to a negative value, causing the minecart to constantly accelerate. Ladies and gentemen, the Dwarf Hadron Collider. I'm going to load up a minecart full of pitchblende and cause a singularity.

¡¡PHYSICS¡¡

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 06, 2012, 01:31:23 am

Hey hold your horses! We dont know how the cart is formed, it could be a as far as we know a broad low-edge cart, not to mention that it could be just a flat board on two axles. We also dont know how broad the wheels are and furthermore we have to calculate the bending of the wheels relative to a pressure-curve (increasing weight) to get the exact surface area to which friction is applied. But essentially the easyer a material bends/flexes the more friction it creates.

While i see that adamantine makes good rails because they wouldnt bend and thus dont increase surfacearea i would say the roughness of a rail is more important if all rails have the same width. Making the adamantine rails Razor thin wouldnt work sine they would cut right into the material of the carts wheels.

I think oiling the axles of a cart is more usefull then oiling the rails, after all rails already have a minimum of friction.

Good catch on the heat. I could see sparks flying and also loud screeching that annoys nearby dorfs.

I think the higher air resistance in tunnels thanks to the cart compressing the air in front of it (and reducing the space where air can flow - the cart virtually clogs the tunnel) can be left out for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 06, 2012, 04:21:15 am

Is it possible to make loop of death using minecarts?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/61/6127/6WSF100Z/posters/tony-hawk-autographed-loop-of-death-photograph.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 06, 2012, 06:11:21 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 06, 2012, 04:21:15 am

Is it possible to make loop of death using minecarts?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/61/6127/6WSF100Z/posters/tony-hawk-autographed-loop-of-death-photograph.jpg)

This one's easy: Nope. DF tiles don't have any concept of ceiling which makes the upside down part impossible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 06, 2012, 08:24:15 am

Quote from: Heph on April 06, 2012, 12:23:37 am

I hope water works as emergency break for this things if one is needed. A cart with leadbars will pack more force and would need more time to come to a standstill then a cart filled with feathertree wood. A reliable way to stop both at the roughly same place would be great. It would also be the softer landing.

If you want to stop a cart in a hurry, why not just use a wall?

If the carts can be powered with chains/gears/screws and if they can carry a certain amount of water i could see a new kind of pump here althought thats still in the stars.
[/quote]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 06, 2012, 08:47:41 am

When a cart flys off an edge and hits another set of tracks, can it keep going? Can Dwarves ride in minecarts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 06, 2012, 09:00:03 am

Quote from: cephalo on April 06, 2012, 08:47:41 am

When a cart flys off an edge and hits another set of tracks, can it keep going?

I so hope it's possible. I had a dwarfish thought of having cargo carts criss crossing through the air. And depending how in depth the physic model is for the cargo cart, I was going to have diffent levels of landing area for different goods. Sorting by weight.

Quote

Can Dwarves ride in minecarts?

I'm gonna go with no on this, unless there are Tools out there were dwarfs can already ride/enter.  Though...


Toady, will corpses be loadable into Minecarts?

Nevermind on that question. Corpses are more or less containers like bins/barrels. I'm pretty sure those are going to be loadable into cargo carts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 06, 2012, 09:44:04 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 06, 2012, 09:00:03 am

Toady, will corpses be loadable into Minecarts?

(push) 57 goblin corpses into the magma chute... nice. I suppose you don't really need minecarts for that though, you could just dig a deep hole outside somewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on April 06, 2012, 12:07:44 pm

I wonder if there would be stuff like carts going at high speed derailing at corners, perhaps depending on the material of the track and with a way to prevent it by placing walls on the outside of the corner (you could imagine that the track would be built sloped then, or something like that). In addition to being a new cause of accidents, I imagine this actually could also be a way to control damage from runaway carts on very long inclines like a spiral from magma sea to the surface.

Although, I suppose if a runaway cart would always go straight if given the choice, a simple T-junction with a dead end would catch it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: calrogman on April 06, 2012, 01:36:09 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 06, 2012, 06:11:21 am

This one's easy: Nope. DF tiles don't have any concept of ceiling which makes the upside down part impossible.

They might not have a concept of ceiling, but they probably do have a concept of "is tile z++ empty?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dragongutz on April 06, 2012, 01:49:18 pm

I searched, but didn't find anything about it, i were reading about those constructed creatures and thought, should an adventurer lose a limb, will he be able to create a new limb to replace the one he lost?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 02:00:16 pm

Quote from: Dragongutz on April 06, 2012, 01:49:18 pm

I searched, but didn't find anything about it, i were reading about those constructed creatures and thought, should an adventurer lose a limb, will he be able to create a new limb to replace the one he lost?

It was an old dev item (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) so it's on Toady's radar and constructed creatures will definitely bring it closer.

Quote from: dev_single

Bloat35, PROSTHETIC LIMBS, (Future): Prosthetic limbs, could be fitted to individuals. Could be improved with hooks and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkrider2 on April 06, 2012, 04:13:29 pm

Can fluids be put in minecarts?

Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?

If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 06, 2012, 04:15:07 pm

Quote from: darkrider2 on April 06, 2012, 04:13:29 pm

Can fluids be put in minecarts?

Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?

If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?

If it works with one fluid, it'll work with all fluids.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 06, 2012, 04:53:01 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 06, 2012, 12:23:37 am

Does one remember the Old Gummybears show from disney? They had those underground railway with occasional jumps  :D the only way in and out my fort will be exactly that! For ‼Science‼ (magma-moat not included, for Magma suitable for this product please call you Local dwarfs)

I hope water works as emergency break for this things if one is needed. A cart with leadbars will pack more force and would need more time to come to a standstill then a cart filled with feathertree wood. A reliable way to stop both at the roughly same place would be great. It would also be the softer landing.

If the carts can be powered with chains/gears/screws and if they can carry a certain amount of water i could see a new kind of pump here althought thats still in the stars.

Well, it's very easy to handle stopping and starting of a low speed system by basic design.  Gravity speeds it up going downhill, slows it going uphill.  Toady is implementing this to at least some degree.

An ideal cart with no friction and no air resistance will come to a stop on the same track at the same time no matter what it's mass, if gravity is the controlling force.

Dwarf Fortress has perpetual motion machines, so by default there cannot be either friction or air resistance  :)

Something about using the existence of perpetual motion to prove anything just feels... wrong.  LOL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 06, 2012, 05:24:40 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 06, 2012, 04:53:01 pm

Dwarf Fortress has perpetual motion machines, so by default there cannot be either friction or air resistance  :)

Not particularly true; It's just that DF operates by bizarre rounding physics.  By the same token that you can shoot a stack of 25 bolts made from a single bar of metal into single individual bolts that you then melt down into 2.5 bars of metal, watermills give you 100 units of energy regardless of whether you are mounting them on top of Niagra Falls or you have a watermill hooked up to a completely still pool where the only motion comes from a single turtle swimming around the water. 

Since any movement in the water counts as enough movement to power a watermill to 100 power, and pumps that power that only take 10 power, the whole system just has completely absurd constants from the start.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 06, 2012, 06:38:38 pm

We actualy have friction on tracks according to the last devblog:

Quote

[...] They (the carts) gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners [...]

Axles and gears are not 100% efficient either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 06, 2012, 07:22:52 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 06, 2012, 06:38:38 pm

We actualy have friction on tracks according to the last devblog:

Quote

[...] They (the carts) gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners [...]

Axles and gears are not 100% efficient either.

Err, gravity would cause acceleration on ramps, not necessarily friction.  I'm moderately certain that Toady does not do friction calculations.  (Yet?) Agreed that axles and gears are not 100% efficient since they bleed power from systems.

I'm just saying that we shouldn't expect ral world physics to be anything more than a loose guideline for what we end up getting!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 06, 2012, 07:40:39 pm

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the they loose a little speed on flat ground bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 10:07:37 pm

Quote from: devlog

04/06/2012 Toady One I added track "stop" constructions, which greatly increase the friction in a square and cause (most) carts to stop (say, blocks, narrowing grooves, whatever might work). These stopping points will generally be where the hauling jobs take place. There are constructed tracks, and bridges now also act as tracks. Pressure plates can be given a weight range for being triggered by carts. I tested it out by making a retracting bridge system that sorted carts by whether or not they were loaded. I knew it was working when I started making little kerchunk sounds at the screen. There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts in a given direction, up to a point (more than enough to get them up a ramp, anyway). I don't have an engineering sense at all, so you can imagine the rollers to be... whatever you like. Perhaps they even make sense. Carts can also collide with each other, whether they are on the ground or in the air, and are generally one-cart-per-tile, though that can be violated where the code treats them more like general items (I doubt I'll be able to catch all of the cases, but I'll try to get the ones that matter). It will require a bit of tweaking to look good, but I did stack some carts vertically and shot a cart through the air into the middle of the stack, disrupting it, so that was fun.

As a dedicated follower of DF, all I can think is "what the fuck?"  I know Toady can really tear through new features sometimes, but he's been working on mine carts for four days and he's already got physics and collisions and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

Never underestimate the Toad. On good weeks, things like this happen.

Also: since we will eventually be able to use animals to haul things... What about pressing our prisoners into hauling things for us? Since this is slavery, and dwarves are against slavery, I couldn't see this happening with them, but what if you changed the ethics or your civ?

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them? Humans can use their slaves to build monuments or other sites, if they do so eventually. They could force their slaves to fight wars, as cannon fodder for the real soldiers. The possibilities are limitless with slaves!

Since this provides absolutely no real addition to the dwarves, I don't see Toady working on this until a later date. But still, it would be pretty cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 06, 2012, 10:11:53 pm

Clearly, unlike other dwarves, he can have multiple strange moods.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 06, 2012, 10:18:56 pm

The thing about minecarts is that they are not only concrete objects that can be viewed and tested easily in a simple fortress mode start up, they would be remarkably easy to debug. Being physical objects, the parts of their design focus on easily quantifiable things. Combine this with the fact that he seems very excited to be doing this, and the fact that he's likely been planning this part out with ThreeToe for a while -- and what makes what we're seeing the release of a large amount of potential energy against a job that he knows how to do very well.

I'm optimistic about this release's schedule, but realistic about the chances that this will bog down a little if he hits more abstract things on his way to pushing out the Hauling Improvements.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 06, 2012, 10:26:47 pm

Smexy.

We don't have switch tracks yet though. I dont think we'll get OTTD style logic gates, but track switchers and lazy Suzan would be neat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 06, 2012, 10:32:41 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 06, 2012, 10:11:53 pm

Clearly, unlike other dwarves, he can have multiple strange moods.

I think he's been abusing the Planepacked glitch to make DF.


Also, HOLY CARP THIS IS AWESOME. Hell, this isn't just #1 Improved Hauling, this is now a fair stab at #6 Improved Mechanics as well! I really didn't expect to see powered minecarts, but here we are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 10:50:12 pm

Since "rollers" increase the speed of carts, will they require power of some form to operate? It would be pretty hard (well, impossible) to justify a mechanism that adds energy to something like that without requiring energy input, so I'm curious if wind/water power was or is being considered for their operation. Personally, I'd be interested in them requiring power, since if you have to actually significantly worry about whether or not your minecarts can make it up a certain number of z-levels, it adds an element of gravitational logistics to how players plan their fortresses, which would be nice since right now dwarves have no more trouble moving stuff/themselves across the z-axis than they do on the other axes.

EDIT: misread the devlog, never mind

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 06, 2012, 11:04:26 pm

Alright a use for dwarven water reactors realistically designed and placed waterwheels and windmills outside of liquid transport!

Also with the minecarts I'm predicting a huge decrease in the number of fortresses based around a few endless up/down staircase pillars, and more actual ramping setups.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mnjiman on April 06, 2012, 11:07:36 pm

Will minecarts be able to hold water or magma(if the minecart is made of metal of course)?


Edit: darkrider2 already asked the same question :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 06, 2012, 11:07:42 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 10:50:12 pm

Since "rollers" increase the speed of carts, will they require power of some form to operate?

I thought it would be fairly obvious that they would. The only way rollers wouldn't run on wind/water power would be if Toady added in a completely new and awesome way of powering things that nobody saw coming in the next twenty hours or so (donkey treadmill?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 11:10:49 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 10:50:12 pm

Since "rollers" increase the speed of carts, will they require power of some form to operate? It would be pretty hard (well, impossible) to justify a mechanism that adds energy to something like that without requiring energy input, so I'm curious if wind/water power was or is being considered for their operation. Personally, I'd be interested in them requiring power, since if you have to actually significantly worry about whether or not your minecarts can make it up a certain number of z-levels, it adds an element of gravitational logistics to how players plan their fortresses, which would be nice since right now dwarves have no more trouble moving stuff/themselves across the z-axis than they do on the other axes.

Devlog explicitly says (emphasis mine):

Quote

There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts

I don't see another way to read "powered" in context.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 06, 2012, 11:17:03 pm

This'll add a nice natural depth of complication for fort construction if you want to indulge in cargo carts.

There's going to have to be Utility Levels for forts, where there are power axel and mine cart rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 11:24:30 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 11:10:49 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 10:50:12 pm

Since "rollers" increase the speed of carts, will they require power of some form to operate? It would be pretty hard (well, impossible) to justify a mechanism that adds energy to something like that without requiring energy input, so I'm curious if wind/water power was or is being considered for their operation. Personally, I'd be interested in them requiring power, since if you have to actually significantly worry about whether or not your minecarts can make it up a certain number of z-levels, it adds an element of gravitational logistics to how players plan their fortresses, which would be nice since right now dwarves have no more trouble moving stuff/themselves across the z-axis than they do on the other axes.

Devlog explicitly says (emphasis mine):

Quote

There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts

I don't see another way to read "powered" in context.

I do: Skipping over the word accidentally when you read it. So there.

Seriously, I just missed that one word. Whoops. I'll de-green the text now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 06, 2012, 11:26:50 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 10:07:37 pm

As a dedicated follower of DF, all I can think is "what the fuck?"  I know Toady can really tear through new features sometimes, but he's been working on mine carts for four days and he's already got physics and collisions and stuff.

Inspiration and motivation often come in bursts.  Like other kinds of drugs, though, they tend to be followed by a crash.  Often, you get a few days or a week or two of furious activity followed by a couple weeks of "ugh... I don't even wanna get out of bed."

At least, that's how it works for the other artistic types and coders I know.

---

Anyway, this devpage update is glorious.  That's basically everything I could want out of these minecarts - drawbridges can shut the "doors" for minecarts, accelerators, brakes, and pressure plates so that we can play with automated systems.

If we just get track switches, we can make carts into circuit boards! 

I feel a need to just wallow around in this news like a cat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on April 06, 2012, 11:33:29 pm

If a cart leaves the track, and subsequently lands on another track, will it regain on-track satus? e.g. A cart jumps a ramp over a gorge and lands on a new track, which it continues on, unharmed.

Will building destroyers destroy tracks? Carts? Carts in-flight-as-missiles?

Please send us carts!

Also, I received my crayon donation reward last week (Dwarf riding a war-giant-armadillo!!). It came with a pin. Anyone else get one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 11:35:18 pm

Carts with items inside that burst into flame on contact with outside air? (credit to Necro910, he said this but with animals instead of items)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 11:36:53 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 06, 2012, 11:24:30 pm

I do: Skipping over the word accidentally when you read it. So there.

That's what you get for not reading each devlog five times through like me!  I almost wish I was kidding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on April 07, 2012, 12:21:26 am

You know the developer is having fun when he starts making sound effects for a game in ASCII. I can only imagine what sounds he was making when the leaning tower of carts came tumbling down.

Hopefully without things like sponsorship animals to bog development down we'll see more innovative additions to the game, like minecarts, from the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 06, 2012, 04:53:01 pm

Dwarf Fortress has perpetual motion machines, so by default there cannot be either friction or air resistance  :)

No, there is additional possibility - it is possible to produce energy from nothing (what happens in water batteries and organelles of underground plants).

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them?

Unlikely that it is high priority (see The Magnificent Mermaid Farming Nerf).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 07, 2012, 12:52:36 am

I just hope this system could be decently automated, so you design it once and then it does cargo-moving w/out any player involvement. Well, except for these traffic accidents, it seems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 07, 2012, 12:55:32 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

it is possible to produce energy from nothing (what happens in water batteries and organelles of underground plants).

what

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 07, 2012, 01:16:47 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them?

Unlikely that it is high priority (see The Magnificent Mermaid Farming Nerf).

What was this? (don't smite me, Footkerchief :P)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 07, 2012, 01:30:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 07, 2012, 12:55:32 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

it is possible to produce energy from nothing (what happens in water batteries and organelles of underground plants).

what

Kogut is very, very wrong.

There's no such thing as a "water battery", and energy never comes from nothing.

"Water batteries" are batteries with some fuel in them that isn't water ("fuel" in this case being anything with chemical/electrical potential that is used up). You sort of "refresh" them by adding more water, but you can only do so so many times, because the potential is not in the water itself. It's just misleading marketing on part of those producing them, or misleading scientific/tech journalism.

I have no idea what he's talking about regarding plant organelles, but if plant biochemistry violated the principles of thermodynamics then we'd sure as hell know about it by now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2012, 01:33:23 am

Quote from: G-Flex on April 07, 2012, 01:30:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 07, 2012, 12:55:32 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

it is possible to produce energy from nothing (what happens in water batteries and organelles of underground plants).

what

Kogut is very, very wrong.

There's no such thing as a "water battery", and energy never comes from nothing.

"Water batteries" are batteries with some fuel in them that isn't water ("fuel" in this case being anything with chemical/electrical potential that is used up). You sort of "refresh" them by adding more water, but you can only do so so many times, because the potential is not in the water itself. It's just misleading marketing on part of those producing them, or misleading scientific/tech journalism.

I have no idea what he's talking about regarding plant organelles, but if plant biochemistry violated the principles of thermodynamics then we'd sure as hell know about it by now.

Kogut might have meant in-game perpetual motion waterwheels and cave plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 07, 2012, 01:39:25 am

Oh. Right. Reading it in context, that makes more sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 07, 2012, 02:25:59 am

Quote from: Quatch on April 06, 2012, 11:33:29 pm

Also, I received my crayon donation reward last week (Dwarf riding a war-giant-armadillo!!). It came with a pin. Anyone else get one?

I got one too. It looks like a surprise, as Toady never promised them.

About the carts...it looks like it is almost finished.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Being able to haul multiple small objects
Having multiple dwarves involved with item hauling for a job
Being able to move multiple objects with roughly the same destination at once
Wheelbarrows to haul more objects than can be carried
Minecarts
-Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
-Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
Work animals to tow carts and haul objects
 -Feeding stations for burden animals (my inclusion, but Toady said he will have to have it done)
 -hay, etc (same above)

Related to the hauling improvements, there is still the mining rewrite...we don't have plans for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on April 07, 2012, 02:26:44 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 06, 2012, 11:26:50 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 06, 2012, 10:07:37 pm

As a dedicated follower of DF, all I can think is "what the fuck?"  I know Toady can really tear through new features sometimes, but he's been working on mine carts for four days and he's already got physics and collisions and stuff.

Inspiration and motivation often come in bursts.  Like other kinds of drugs, though, they tend to be followed by a crash.  Often, you get a few days or a week or two of furious activity followed by a couple weeks of "ugh... I don't even wanna get out of bed."

At least, that's how it works for the other artistic types and coders I know.

So most artists have bipolar disorder... ?


As for Toady, yeah he surprised us. But I think that he spent lots of time drawing plans, thinking about algorithms, maybe even prepared some code etc. during the recent bugfixing time, so he had already most of stuff prepared now when he started actually coding the minecarts. So he probably spent much more time than those 4 days.

By the way I see begining of an era of minecart logic computing!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 07, 2012, 02:52:36 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on April 07, 2012, 02:26:44 am

By the way I see begining of an era of minecart logic computing!

I think, more important that it could become another universal solution to all problems instead of magma with proper usage of these accelerating rollers and high accelerating towers. Zombies? Use railgun! FBs? Railgun!

Oh, that actually made me wonder.
Is there any limit to the speed of minecart? Will it reach speed of light after going through synchrotron or very, very tall acceleration tower?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gauteamus on April 07, 2012, 06:58:08 am

I am obviously very exited about minecarts, but got abit worried when I read the devlog post on rollers.
How will those work? Where will they get their energy from? If they have to be connected to some power source, be it animal/dwarf powered pumps, wind/water mills, steam engines or whatever, I am more than happy to handwave the engineering problems inside the roller black box.  I am probably worrying needlessly, though, I doubt toady would add a source of energy just out of the blue.


EDIT: Major reading comprehension fail on my part, both in skimming the last couple of pages of this thread, not noticing the other posts on the exact same topic[!]. and in failing to read the powered part of "powered rollers placed in strips".
I'll leave the post as a mark of shame. Ungreened the questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 07, 2012, 07:15:43 am

Quote from: Gauteamus on April 07, 2012, 06:58:08 am

EDIT: Major reading comprehension fail on my part, both in skimming the last couple of pages of this thread, not noticing the other posts on the exact same topic[!]. and in failing to read the powered part of "powered rollers placed in strips".
I'll leave the post as a mark of shame.

Ungreen your question as it is already answered to easy Toady's work while searching for valid ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on April 07, 2012, 07:54:03 am

Question: How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 07, 2012, 09:12:02 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on April 07, 2012, 02:26:44 am

So most artists have bipolar disorder... ?

It's a fairly common condition that artists face. I've seen these tendencies in myself, and in several artists I know -- in cases professionally diagnosed with it, and not.

Unfortunately, there is also a long and sordid history of artists self-medicating, and throwing their bodies and minds into destructive tailspin. I'm quite thankful that Toady has not gone this route.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on April 07, 2012, 09:50:09 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 07, 2012, 01:16:47 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them?

Unlikely that it is high priority (see The Magnificent Mermaid Farming Nerf).

What was this? (don't smite me, Footkerchief :P)

At one point merpeople had bones that were ridiculously valuable. So naturally, players started to build forts to capture, breed, and kill them, collecting their bones and selling them to caravans. Then, at some point in the future, merpeople were changed to have ordinary bones. There's a thread somewhere that documents all this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 07, 2012, 10:56:57 am

Quote from: Karlito on April 07, 2012, 09:50:09 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 07, 2012, 01:16:47 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them?

Unlikely that it is high priority (see The Magnificent Mermaid Farming Nerf).

What was this? (don't smite me, Footkerchief :P)

At one point merpeople had bones that were ridiculously valuable. So naturally, players started to build forts to capture, breed, and kill them, collecting their bones and selling them to caravans. Then, at some point in the future, merpeople were changed to have ordinary bones. There's a thread somewhere that documents all this.

And then somebody went and started doing it with sea monsters instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on April 07, 2012, 11:01:51 am

So with regards to hauling, my current impression is that things might work the following way:

* Dwarves can use bins to collect and haul multiple items at once.
* [speculative?] Stones cannot be hauled in bins (or maybe not at all manually). Wheelbarrows act as bins for hauling stones?
* Minecarts are like wheelbarrows [?], but can be automated (downhill by gravity, uphill by power) and follow tracks. That means no dwarves need to be involved for the hauling part covered by the minecarts at all.

Comments? In particular, presumably because minecarts follow tracks they don't require any pathfinding (other than for loading and unloading items). Could this be a partial solution to our pathfinding FPS woes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 11:34:12 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 07, 2012, 10:56:57 am

Quote from: Karlito on April 07, 2012, 09:50:09 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 07, 2012, 01:16:47 am

Quote from: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 12:39:26 am

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 06, 2012, 10:11:20 pm

About slaves, maybe some civs could make use of them?

Unlikely that it is high priority (see The Magnificent Mermaid Farming Nerf).

What was this? (don't smite me, Footkerchief :P)

At one point merpeople had bones that were ridiculously valuable. So naturally, players started to build forts to capture, breed, and kill them, collecting their bones and selling them to caravans. Then, at some point in the future, merpeople were changed to have ordinary bones. There's a thread somewhere that documents all this.

And then somebody went and started doing it with sea monsters instead.

Sea monsters are not sentient.

Quote from: G-Flex on April 07, 2012, 01:39:25 am

Oh. Right. Reading it in context, that makes more sense.

Hehe. BTW, it may be an interesting explanation how magic works in DF multiverse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 07, 2012, 11:34:54 am

Quote from: dreiche2 on April 07, 2012, 11:01:51 am

Comments? In particular, presumably because minecarts follow tracks they don't require any pathfinding (other than for loading and unloading items). Could this be a partial solution to our pathfinding FPS woes?

Probably not. Every dwarf still needs to pathfind, the minecarts just mean they'll spend less time hauling and more time doing other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on April 07, 2012, 12:35:54 pm

Right, but among these other things are jobs that don't require pathfinding. Less pathfinding jobs means less pathfinding.

Moreover, getting rid of some regular long distance pathfinding jobs might be particularly effective, because the pathfinding algorithm effort grows polynomially to exponentially (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm#Complexity) in the distance (meaning that finding a goal 100 tiles away is way worse than finding a set of 10 goals each 10 tiles away).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nukularpower on April 07, 2012, 01:35:18 pm

Question:

Are there any plans to implement some kind of camera/view lock system, whereby it's possible to have the game automatically follow a moving object/creature, such as a rolling/flying minecart, up and down Z levels?

 This would make the parabolic feature a lot more fun imo, if you could actually see the path things took through the air.  And I'm sure anyone that has embarked on a hilly area knows how frustrating it can be trying to follow a moving creature yourself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2012, 01:52:40 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on April 07, 2012, 01:35:18 pm

Question:

Are there any plans to implement some kind of camera/view lock system, whereby it's possible to have the game automatically follow a moving object/creature, such as a rolling/flying minecart, up and down Z levels?

 This would make the parabolic feature a lot more fun imo, if you could actually see the path things took through the air.  And I'm sure anyone that has embarked on a hilly area knows how frustrating it can be trying to follow a moving creature yourself.

Related: Depth by darkening (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30114.0) and associated ESV entry (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 07, 2012, 02:15:27 pm

Okay, so there was another question like this but not quite the same (although the same answer may or may not cover both)...


How are junctions going to work, if at all?

Will it be abstracted, allowing carts to switch direction freely at any point where more than one rail intersect? Or only at 'stop' tiles? In either case, how will runaway carts coming up to the head of a 'T-junction' from the tail be handled? Will they just derail at that point, or will they be diverted?  In the case of the latter, will the direction be random or constant?

Or will there be splits like on IRL rail lines, where carts coming from one direction are sent in only one of two (or three!) possible directions?  If so, what would happen to carts coming up a secondary rail when its not the one presently being diverted to?

Concerning stops, would they work more like turntables, railheads, or just ordinary stretches of track?  Would it be possible to link a lever/pressure plate to them and disable them, or to power them and launch carts into the system?  Or do the dwarves have to manually send carts off again, unless one designed a system where an empty cart bumps the full one out of the stop?

Lastly: as for the carts themselves, would it be possible to use them as mobile stockpiles?  By that I mean if I filled up some carts with stone and sent them down a dead-end rail to my masons' shops, would they take their stone directly from the carts or must I get some haulers to unload them first?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 07, 2012, 04:51:25 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 07, 2012, 02:15:27 pm

Okay, so there was another question like this but not quite the same (although the same answer may or may not cover both)...


Concerning stops, would they work more like turntables, railheads, or just ordinary stretches of track?  Would it be possible to link a lever/pressure plate to them and disable them, or to power them and launch carts into the system?  Or do the dwarves have to manually send carts off again, unless one designed a system where an empty cart bumps the full one out of the stop?

The Stops from the dev post seem to be for now, just stops. If they were turntables or switch tracks, Toady probably would have mention. So maybe they'll be in in a future dev post.

It seems like Rail and Pressure Plates are going to be stackable, but he's saying Stops & Rollers are constructions. So it's probably unlikely that Stops and Roller can be stacked on top of each other. And it seems pretty reasonable that they'll be have an On and Off position for Stops and Rollers.

I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that dorfs are going to have to manage the cart in some fashion, hopefully it wont be the same as for levers. If it's going to be done like levers, that just might kill the rail system, from  micro mgm difficulty.

Quote

Lastly: as for the carts themselves, would it be possible to use them as mobile stockpiles?  By that I mean if I filled up some carts with stone and sent them down a dead-end rail to my masons' shops, would they take their stone directly from the carts or must I get some haulers to unload them first?

Yea, this sounds totally doable. Especially if you combine it with Burrows to lock out any Rock Hauling dorfs from it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 07, 2012, 05:32:34 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on April 07, 2012, 01:35:18 pm

Question:

Are there any plans to implement some kind of camera/view lock system, whereby it's possible to have the game automatically follow a moving object/creature, such as a rolling/flying minecart, up and down Z levels?

 This would make the parabolic feature a lot more fun imo, if you could actually see the path things took through the air.  And I'm sure anyone that has embarked on a hilly area knows how frustrating it can be trying to follow a moving creature yourself.

Provided by DFhack (creatures in the current version, probably also for minecarts in the next one).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silophant on April 07, 2012, 09:46:35 pm

It's in, as of the last dev log. Also, these hauling routes are shaping up to be awesome.  This update is going to impact Fortress Mode Gameplay waaay more than 34.01 did. I'm excited!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on April 07, 2012, 09:52:53 pm

Quote

So you could get a dwarf to send the minecart along when it becomes full or when it is at least halfway full after two weeks.

Does being in a cart count the same as being in a stockpile, or will rotting occur while perishable items are in the cart waiting to be sent down the line?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 07, 2012, 09:55:02 pm

 :o New dev log... is wow. How is he completing this stuff so quick? I mean, conditions with which to deal with carts being held or moved. That was unexpected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on April 07, 2012, 09:56:22 pm

In terms of automated zones, is "Empty" an option? In other words, can I set up an industry where ore is shipped to the forges, then the empty cart is sent automatically back to the mines?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 07, 2012, 10:04:27 pm

I just read today's dev log...  I actually giggled with excitement while reading it.

I don't know what you all are slipping in to Toady's drinks, but keep it up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 07, 2012, 10:05:58 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 07, 2012, 09:55:02 pm

New dev log... is wow. How is he completing this stuff so quick? I mean, conditions with which to deal with carts being held or moved. That was unexpected.

Some things are easier to code than others. The cart condition/action thing might look complicated, but it seems to me 90% of it consists of systems that already exist in DF (moving carts, inventory, sending jobs to the job list) that just need to be tied together in new ways. The only complicated part would be getting a dwarf to move along with a cart, if even that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 07, 2012, 10:14:48 pm

Quote from: devlog

You can have the camera follow a unit or item, either as a one time thing or as one of the function hotkeys you set up for it. It'll keep following it until you enter another mode, recenter to an announcement, manually scroll, etc. If the followed item is held by a container or by a unit, the camera will center on that.

Quote from: nukularpower on April 07, 2012, 01:35:18 pm

Question:

Are there any plans to implement some kind of camera/view lock system, whereby it's possible to have the game automatically follow a moving object/creature, such as a rolling/flying minecart, up and down Z levels?

 This would make the parabolic feature a lot more fun imo, if you could actually see the path things took through the air.  And I'm sure anyone that has embarked on a hilly area knows how frustrating it can be trying to follow a moving creature yourself.

interesting...

so, you kidnapped scamps or something, nukularpower?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 07, 2012, 10:33:17 pm

Toady, will the physics for the minecarts be detailed/advance enough to maybe construct  minecart version of Newton Balls?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on April 07, 2012, 10:39:11 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 07, 2012, 10:14:48 pm

Quote from: devlog

You can have the camera follow a unit or item, either as a one time thing or as one of the function hotkeys you set up for it. It'll keep following it until you enter another mode, recenter to an announcement, manually scroll, etc. If the followed item is held by a container or by a unit, the camera will center on that.

Quote from: nukularpower on April 07, 2012, 01:35:18 pm

Question:

Are there any plans to implement some kind of camera/view lock system, whereby it's possible to have the game automatically follow a moving object/creature, such as a rolling/flying minecart, up and down Z levels?

 This would make the parabolic feature a lot more fun imo, if you could actually see the path things took through the air.  And I'm sure anyone that has embarked on a hilly area knows how frustrating it can be trying to follow a moving creature yourself.

interesting...

so, you kidnapped scamps or something, nukularpower?

I thought of this, too. This happened before, a few days ago, with minecart physics, which was speculated in this thread. It makes one wonder: is Toady keeping tabs on this thread and implementing "suggestions" he finds interesting, or is the community becoming exceptionally good at predicting the Toad's next move?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 07, 2012, 10:53:05 pm

The camera tracking is very interesting. It sorta seem like a weird ToadyOne addition, but at the same time, it's gotta be fun to just watch minecarts go about their business though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 07, 2012, 10:58:28 pm

i imagine he implemented it as a debug feature to test minecarts

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 07, 2012, 11:39:17 pm

I am deeply amused at how soon after someone mentioned attaching the camera to mobile objects it was announced in the devlog. This next release keeps shaping up to be better and better!

Also, I can't help but wonder if the implementation of rails and stops and powered sections and such might not be laying the groundwork for mobile fortress components.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 07, 2012, 11:42:04 pm

Damn, looks like nukularpower took my advice involving the whole pineapples and nuclear fission thing...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 07, 2012, 11:49:25 pm

Cart loading/departing controls seem to be very close to generic standing orders. Makes me wonder if Toady would consider taking detour to finish off those too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 07, 2012, 11:51:53 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 07, 2012, 11:49:25 pm

Cart loading/departing controls seem to be very close to generic standing orders. Makes me wonder if Toady would consider taking detour to finish off those too.

They're number two on the ESV, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 07, 2012, 11:56:57 pm

Quote

You can have the camera follow a unit or item, either as a one time thing or as one of the function hotkeys you set up for it. It'll keep following it until you enter another mode, recenter to an announcement, manually scroll, etc. If the followed item is held by a container or by a unit, the camera will center on that.

Okay, forget the carts.  That is probably the best random feature ever.

Which is not to say that the carts aren't awesome, but following creatures around is just so very useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 08, 2012, 12:41:52 am

What happens if you follow a bolt that's in a marksdwarf's inventory, which he then fires?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 08, 2012, 01:07:58 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 08, 2012, 12:41:52 am

What happens if you follow a bolt that's in a marksdwarf's inventory, which he then fires?

Well as stated in the Dev Log, you track the item. So, my guess is that you track the item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on April 08, 2012, 01:10:02 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 08, 2012, 12:41:52 am

What happens if you follow a bolt that's in a marksdwarf's inventory, which he then fires?

Individual bolt or stack?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on April 08, 2012, 01:45:28 am

My guess is that either the first or last item of a stack is being followed. The first makes more sense though for bolt kill cams.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nukularpower on April 08, 2012, 01:49:18 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 07, 2012, 10:14:48 pm

interesting...

so, you kidnapped scamps or something, nukularpower?

I'm guessing he just figured it was a pretty obvious thing to want with this new parabolic projectile tech.. he can't possibly have coded it in just since I asked about it.  Unless he has... help... *thunder crash*

This is going to be really fun when he applies the parabolic trajectories to siege weaponry.. lock to the ballista bolt and away we gooooo

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 08, 2012, 02:09:44 am

Quote from: nukularpower on April 08, 2012, 01:49:18 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 07, 2012, 10:14:48 pm

interesting...

so, you kidnapped scamps or something, nukularpower?

I'm guessing he just figured it was a pretty obvious thing to want with this new parabolic projectile tech.. he can't possibly have coded it in just since I asked about it.  Unless he has... help... *thunder crash*

This is going to be really fun when he applies the parabolic trajectories to siege weaponry.. lock to the ballista bolt and away we gooooo

He could've, actually, depending on how he had laid out the framework for camera. If the camera was centered on an abstract invisible object, he could've added a pointer to an object to the camera and said "if this pointer is null, follow abstract target object; else follow pointed object". Everything normally moving the camera would reset the pointer to nothing...
Since the camera already has to move around quite a bit with announcements, zoom to whatever, kill orders, etc, it could be plausible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 08, 2012, 02:11:37 am

Quick, someone call out mass smelting as the next feature!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 08, 2012, 04:42:15 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 08, 2012, 02:11:37 am

Quick, someone call out mass smelting as the next feature!

Done, use manager/repeat orders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 08, 2012, 04:50:30 am

Now I'm anxious to see how much mining will change.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 08, 2012, 05:00:17 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 08, 2012, 02:11:37 am

Quick, someone call out mass smelting as the next feature!

I never had issues with this whatsoever. This is one of those jobs that you can set to repeat (also melting items down), and when you run out of items to smelt, the job cancels and informs you so. No spam either, especially if you queued 30 melt orders but designated only 29 items to smelt. The last one will drive you crazy with cancellation messages.

Quote from: Keldane on April 07, 2012, 11:39:17 pm

I am deeply amused at how soon after someone mentioned attaching the camera to mobile objects it was announced in the devlog. This next release keeps shaping up to be better and better!

Also, I can't help but wonder if the implementation of rails and stops and powered sections and such might not be laying the groundwork for mobile fortress components.

I see what you did there.

As for the follow feature, I wish that it's something easy =/ like middle click on a unit (and if there are units and items, units get priority; if there are multiple units, choose one. iunno). I say this because, fun as it may be... If it's used with many keystrokes, not counting the cursor and unitlist scrolling, I simply wont be bothered to do it.

Keep your devlogs verbose! We like to read them! =D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 08, 2012, 05:04:21 am

Well, we all know that mouse support is totally context aware.

So, I think it'll probably be a key press, cursor comes up on the screen, select tile. Then a menu pops up, and you select an item on the menu.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 08, 2012, 05:19:47 am

New camera tracking feature is awesome ! Hail to the toad !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on April 08, 2012, 06:15:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Each stop gets a list of stockpile parameters, and the stops can be linked to stockpiles and given conditions before the vehicle is set to depart. So you could get a dwarf to send the minecart along when it becomes full or when it is at least halfway full after two weeks.

Reminds me of Transport Tycoon. This makes me wonder, is there any Construction/Simulation game DF isn't going to replace?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on April 08, 2012, 06:31:30 am

Friction. Cause who the hell else codes friction into their fantasy simulation games?
Toady is a mad lovecraftian coding god. I think we should pair him up with David Rosen from Wolfire for a couple of weeks and watch them create self-aware ai.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 08, 2012, 07:05:33 am

Quote from: Naryar on April 08, 2012, 05:19:47 am

New camera tracking feature is awesome ! Hail to the toad !

Hmm, that sounds like a cry of a fanboy XD what with complete disregard the two posts that came before, no actual criticism, and lastly we dont yet know how the feature looks =D

That said, keep it up anyway Toady =3

Quote from: jellsprout on April 08, 2012, 06:15:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Each stop gets a list of stockpile parameters, and the stops can be linked to stockpiles and given conditions before the vehicle is set to depart. So you could get a dwarf to send the minecart along when it becomes full or when it is at least halfway full after two weeks.

Reminds me of Transport Tycoon. This makes me wonder, is there any Construction/Simulation game DF isn't going to replace?

Upon reading your post, I said "Challenge accepted", however I find it hard to think of such a game. Perhaps some obscure oneshot gimmick game or such but I dont count those.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 08, 2012, 08:07:54 am

I'm foreseeing one possible terrible minecart unexpected behavior (not going to call it a bug, because it only kind of is).  Suppose you're moving stone.  Your dwarves move it to a receiving stockpile and throw it from there into the cart.  The cart transports it halfway across the map.  At the initial end, they run out of stone.  Dwarves at the terminus pick up the transported stone and start hauling it all the way back to the initial stockpile to keep it full.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 08, 2012, 08:29:24 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 08, 2012, 08:07:54 am

I'm foreseeing one possible terrible minecart unexpected behavior (not going to call it a bug, because it only kind of is).  Suppose you're moving stone.  Your dwarves move it to a receiving stockpile and throw it from there into the cart.  The cart transports it halfway across the map.  At the initial end, they run out of stone.  Dwarves at the terminus pick up the transported stone and start hauling it all the way back to the initial stockpile to keep it full.

That wouldn't be a bug though. Thats all working as expected. It just defies real world logic and real world common sense.
Plus you could totally stop that from happening with burrows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: waerth on April 08, 2012, 08:33:40 am

In Simutrans forum I reacted that a proposal to include stone layers would make it look like Dwarf fortress. And then today introduces mining railways to Dwarf Fortress.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 08, 2012, 08:41:36 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 08, 2012, 08:29:24 am

Quote from: Chthonic on April 08, 2012, 08:07:54 am

I'm foreseeing one possible terrible minecart unexpected behavior (not going to call it a bug, because it only kind of is).  Suppose you're moving stone.  Your dwarves move it to a receiving stockpile and throw it from there into the cart.  The cart transports it halfway across the map.  At the initial end, they run out of stone.  Dwarves at the terminus pick up the transported stone and start hauling it all the way back to the initial stockpile to keep it full.

That wouldn't be a bug though. Thats all working as expected. It just defies real world logic and real world common sense.
Plus you could totally stop that from happening with burrows.

Well, from the way it's described in today's devlog, it doesn't seem either illogical nor a big problem...

Quote

Each stop gets a list of stockpile parameters, and the stops can be linked to stockpiles and given conditions before the vehicle is set to depart.

Seemingly certain stockpiles shall be linked to routes, so I wouldn't expect the non-sanctioned-stockpile-to-stockpile hauling you mentioned to ever happen.  I could be wrong, but stockpile-to-stockpile hauling doesn't even happen now, right? It seems possible that workshops may prompt hauling from distant stockpiles, but then one would assume that works just as it does now, in which case there wouldn't be any closer material so your fort design was borked in the first place.   There doesn't seem to be much reason to worry here.

What would be rather cool would be if workshops could be linked to stockpiles too, to really lock down the production chain.

(edit - just checked the wiki and I did not know that you can already specify stockpile-to-stockpile hauling, but it does have to be designated by the player, man I feel bad I didn't know that!  :( )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on April 08, 2012, 10:39:04 am

Quote from: hermes on April 08, 2012, 08:41:36 am

(edit - just checked the wiki and I did not know that you can already specify stockpile-to-stockpile hauling, but it does have to be designated by the player, man I feel bad I didn't know that!  :( )

There is one caveat though - you can only specify one target stockpile. This means it works good for collecting resources, but not for distributing produced items to multiple consumption points (or perhaps pushing resources to mini-stockpiles right next to workshops). You also can't remove a link once it has been made. It would be very nice if these restrictions could be removed some time soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on April 08, 2012, 02:07:05 pm

Uh, you can totally remove the "take from stockpile" links?  You just hit the key labeled "delete selected" while looking at the stockpile with "q".  It deletes the take from stockpile order, not the entire stockpile, which may have been why you didn't use it before. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 08, 2012, 02:11:10 pm

Quote from: ag on April 08, 2012, 10:39:04 am

Quote from: hermes on April 08, 2012, 08:41:36 am

(edit - just checked the wiki and I did not know that you can already specify stockpile-to-stockpile hauling, but it does have to be designated by the player, man I feel bad I didn't know that!  :( )

There is one caveat though - you can only specify one target stockpile. This means it works good for collecting resources, but not for distributing produced items to multiple consumption points (or perhaps pushing resources to mini-stockpiles right next to workshops). You also can't remove a link once it has been made. It would be very nice if these restrictions could be removed some time soon.

You can actually remove a link. You just make a one tile stockpile, set that as the one target stockpile (overwriting the original), then delete the one tile stockpile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 08, 2012, 08:49:05 pm

Quote from: Moddan on April 08, 2012, 01:45:28 am

My guess is that either the first or last item of a stack is being followed. The first makes more sense though for bolt kill cams.

I wasn't aware that the individual items in a stack were stored separately, I just assumed that a stack was essentially the same as a single item but with an integer quantity added on.  In that case, I'd presume that you'd just keep watching the stack, at least until the last bolt is fired.

Quote from: MasterMorality on April 08, 2012, 06:31:30 am

Toady is a mad lovecraftian coding god. I think we should pair him up with David Rosen from Wolfire for a couple of weeks and watch them create self-aware ai.

...

URIST9000 looses a roaring laughter, fell and terrible!

...

Yeah, let's not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 08, 2012, 09:47:19 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 08, 2012, 08:49:05 pm

Quote from: Moddan on April 08, 2012, 01:45:28 am

My guess is that either the first or last item of a stack is being followed. The first makes more sense though for bolt kill cams.

I wasn't aware that the individual items in a stack were stored separately, I just assumed that a stack was essentially the same as a single item but with an integer quantity added on.  In that case, I'd presume that you'd just keep watching the stack, at least until the last bolt is fired.

It probably is, but it's probably either coded to follow the first item that gets split off from the stack, or follow the last to get split off from the stack (basically following the stack until it no longer exists as a stack).   

First makes more sense for most things in my opinion, but last is probably easier to code, and there's still reason folks would want to follow a stack until it gets completely split out too instead of following the first to split off.  Probably one of those things Toady had to think about when coding it all in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 08, 2012, 10:41:24 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 08, 2012, 07:05:33 am

Quote from: jellsprout on April 08, 2012, 06:15:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Each stop gets a list of stockpile parameters, and the stops can be linked to stockpiles and given conditions before the vehicle is set to depart. So you could get a dwarf to send the minecart along when it becomes full or when it is at least halfway full after two weeks.

Reminds me of Transport Tycoon. This makes me wonder, is there any Construction/Simulation game DF isn't going to replace?

Upon reading your post, I said "Challenge accepted", however I find it hard to think of such a game. Perhaps some obscure oneshot gimmick game or such but I dont count those.

Sim Earth.

Toady probably won't ever get to expanding the game to cover players actively changing the rate of continental shift or evolving life from a single-celled organism up until you create the dinosaur civilization space program...

but we can always hope.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 08, 2012, 10:45:04 pm

And mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kilroy the Grand on April 08, 2012, 11:02:34 pm

By what amount will mine carts veer off course when they are launched through the air?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on April 08, 2012, 11:40:47 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 08, 2012, 07:05:33 am

Quote from: jellsprout on April 08, 2012, 06:15:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Each stop gets a list of stockpile parameters, and the stops can be linked to stockpiles and given conditions before the vehicle is set to depart. So you could get a dwarf to send the minecart along when it becomes full or when it is at least halfway full after two weeks.

Reminds me of Transport Tycoon. This makes me wonder, is there any Construction/Simulation game DF isn't going to replace?

Upon reading your post, I said "Challenge accepted", however I find it hard to think of such a game. Perhaps some obscure oneshot gimmick game or such but I dont count those.

Spore. Dwarf Fortress will never compete with Spore.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

because Dwarf Fortress is actually good

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 09, 2012, 12:00:11 am

Quote from: Kilroy the Grand on April 08, 2012, 11:02:34 pm

By what amount will mine carts veer off course when they are launched through the air?

Probably no amount at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

A lot of the questions were answered in the thread.  There were several repeat questions, so if you don't find yours by your name, you might find it in another response.

Quote from: Quatch

Is it the mother or father's training status passed on, or some amalgam of both?

It uses the mother's status.

Quote

Quote from: Mr Frog

what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?

Quote from: Knight Otu

I'm pretty sure (but can't prove) that BUILD_MORALE is responsible for the "pillar of society" type thoughts that dwarves can have.

Yeah, that's right.  The champ makes the traditionalists happy and the others a little grumpy.  I think the only thing that'll influence how good they are at their job is making them more friendly/gregarious so they chat with more people.

Quote from: Lord Shonus

While you were fixing other animal-trading related bugs, did you fix the bug that prevents you from selling animals? (I'm referring to the way in which designating a cage for trading empties the cage first.)

I remember testing it out and having it work, but since I didn't have to fix anything, whatever bug there was is probably still there.

Quote from: Watsst

Will an animal that goes from tame to wild lose its need to eat? And will it retain war/hunting status or revert back to a normal state?
Will the new taming system have an effect on vermin tameing?

I don't think it'll need to eat when wild.  It retains the training type/bonuses.  I didn't do anything with vermin.

Quote from: Mr Frog

If a trained creature completely reverts back to a wild state, is it then functionally-identical to a standard wild critter who's never known life in a fortress? If I leave it outside, will it wander around normally and eventually leave the map? Is it marked as no longer being a member of your fort for trap/kill order purposes?

Relatedly, what sort of AI do semi-wild critters use? How do they decide when/at whom/how often they lash out?

It's more like one of those giant spiders that takes up residence and eventually gets a name, I think.  Kill orders probably work but I didn't try them.  Traps work.  Semi-wild critters just occasionally attack like pasture-stacked critters, in moments of random animalness.

Quote from: Kogut

df_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_instruction.txt anddf_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_art.txt are (rather short) listings of hardcoded types of titles. Is it helpful to suggest a new ones (maybe based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_century )?  (I define helpful  as "there is a chance that list like this will be used").

I'm not sure when I'll get back to it, so it's hard to say what the chances are that things will be used.  If I find the suggestion when I next look at book titles, I'm sure it'll be useful.  I can't guarantee anything.

Quote from: PTTG??

Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?

I don't think there are any extra tags.  [NO_ART_NAME] removes the leading article if present.  [PHRASE] generates some nonsense babble.  The others draw from the word list.

Quote from: nenjin

We've heard you say you knew were-creatures were in an unsatisfactory state when you decided to update, and that they'll require at least another pass to bring them up to where you want. Have you given any real thought to what that'll require, other than some of the lower hanging stuff like "sometimes give them weapons when they're not in were-form"? Changing their transformation rules? Making were-curses grant better attributes out of were-form? Were-creature awesomeness isn't high on my list of desires, but they do make up a large chunk of vanilla content at the moment.

Additionally, do you have plans to make time for Vengeful Ghosts sometime within the Caravan arc releases, or have Night Creatures gotten all the work they're going to for a while?

I don't want to focus on the transformation rules, since the transformation rules are pretty traditional and should work before they are randomized.  The reason they don't work is that the were-beast doesn't integrate into a town at all during the non-monster period, and even in cases where it shouldn't, the non-beast is hiding in a cave that you get quest-pointed to and it doesn't run away.  If it were harder to track them to those locations and you had trouble finding them in general, it would be fine to catch them in human form sometimes, and perhaps even bring them back to town as criminals.  It should be made to work without having to change the idea of what the were-beast is (although doing daily or voluntary transforms is all good too).

I don't know what the timing is going to be for the rest of them.

Quote from: ApolloCVermouth

Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?

It's going to change a lot later with scenarios/active world pops/hill dwarves/etc., though I think the idea of a growing fortress is going to be reasonably commonplace.

Quote from: Ghills

Do you plan to deal with hauling-related injuries to the hauling overhaul coming up? I'm sure we'll get healthcare improvements at some point, but I'm curious about the timing.

I fixed some bugs that might align with this in a previous release, but I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to here.

Quote from: Rip0k

Toady, could you specify the details of your new PC?

I'm at my brother's place now, but it's some kind of Toshiba laptop thingy that has better speakers than I expected.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Can you give us some idea of how extensive the personality rewrites will be? (As in, how many currently existing systems outside worldgen will be impacted?)

Basically, how much more complex would the average dwarf or human villager's "brain" be in actual gameplay after this?  Does this stop with things like "My student guidance counselor said my personality test results came back, and my ideal career is as a brigand because I love hurting people and stealing stuff, with a Life Goal of killing 3 or 4 adventurers" and just replace the 30 personality things with more "judgmental" traits, or does it go into breaking down/discarding the current happiness and preferences and the AI systems where dwarves choose what to do at a given moment and rebuilding them with more "moving parts" in action choice?

Will this include or directly lead to changes in the way you converse with others in Adventurer Mode?  (Personality/mood changing how they talk?)

It's difficult to say.  For fort mode, at the very least, it'll rewire the critters enough to handle job priorities, and the current happiness/thoughts system is going to be gutted.  We have various other directions we might lean, but it's a huge area and I don't want to put anything else out there yet as a definitive short-term goal, at least not until we update the dev page.

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants

Do you have any plans to allow more exotics to reproduce like GCS or GDS?

I don't have any particular plans there.  It's a reasonable thing.

Quote from: Khym Chanur

Will the reverse be done?  That is, will a planter be able to carry around a bag of seeds when planting a field, instead of having to make a round trip to bag for each seed planted?

I haven't changed any of the non-haul job behaviors, though I know that one is an annoying case.

Quote from: thvaz

What about the so called quantum stockpiles? They are currently used to reduce time spent with hauling(among other things) ...do you plan to do something about them?

It isn't a big priority right now.  The only ideas I had for that was making a pile of items become an amalgam that you could actually crawl over when it gets really obscene, or increasing pickup times, or making it difficult to spot the smaller objects in adv mode.  I probably won't do anything with it now.

Quote from: Jiri Petru

With more effective hauling, dwarves will have more time to spend on productive working. This means they will produce more. But we already have an overabundance of items in fortress mode, and there's so many of them that many items become virtually worthless (for the player, that is). Dwarfpower is rarely a trouble – on the contrary, it is often difficult to find enough work for all of your lazers. With more effective hauling, we'll have even more lazers. Is this something you recognize as a problem? If yes, have you considered any solutions?

I'm not worried about balancing that out right now.  There are significant disruptions upcoming which'll utterly nullify anything surgical I try to do.

Quote from: tHe_silent_H

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

There will be wheelbarrows and animals will come up somehow.  That's probably it.

Quote

Quote from: Naryar

So how can we expect to power our carts ? Dwarfpower, animal power, mechanisms ?

Quote from: Chthonic

As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines?  Are we getting elevators, too?

Dwarfpower and mechanisms work for carts.  I don't think animals will be necessary since a dwarf can handle them all as it stands, and animals won't be able to think out their paths for themselves without a dwarf, so having an animal would just be a waste.

Any elevator operation that leads to moving fortresses is premature.  We haven't ruled out carting them up with ropes/chains in some sort of mechanized system, but we're not sure what's going to happen.

Quote from: Japa

Will tracks/carts be able to cross retractable bridges?

Yeah, right now they can cross any bridge.  I'm not sure if I'll differentiate them later.  It gets sort of moving fortressey to get into making tile-wise movements work, and I didn't want to get sidetracked into that before the basic system works.

Quote

Quote from: Heph

Will it be possible to deploy tracks on build/smothed surfaces? Will dwarves use Minecarts as a form of public transport?

Quote from: deviled

will we be able to have dwarves ride minecarts?

You can carve them whereever you can detail, and you can place them whereever you can construct floors.

I don't have a final verdict on riding minecarts.  Of course it has to happen, but as for when or how the dwarves actually make that decision...  kind of a can of worms.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

Will it be possible to carve tracks on constructed floors (like fortifications)?

Will it be possible to "seal" a track with a door/bridge/whatever?

A track can be placed like a constructed floor, and you can place constructed stone groves, but you have to remove a previous constructed floor to place a track (you can place one directly on top of the itemless constructd floors that come from constructed walls).

You can place any building on top of a track (at least any building that would work on a stone/constructed floor).

Quote from: Mr S

Toady, the front page note says that tracks will keep information, by tile, in all four directions.  Does this imply that tracks are uni-directional?  Is that an option at construction?  Will it be able to be re-designated later?  Is it intended to have "main lines" with parallel, uni-directional rails, connecting with "branch lines" carrying lesser traffic volume bi-directionally?  Will mine carts, and wheel barrows for that matter, be able to pass each other in the same traffic square, at a speed cost, similarly to dorfs passing on a same tile?  Or will the mine cart be impassible, like a wall, or a statue?

I was just talking about north, south, east and west, within a tile.  The tracks don't have a forced travel direction on them, although you define which way the carts at stops are sent.  Carts cannot pass each other in general.  I have no idea about wheelbarrows.  Carts can be passed by units (moving carts might take exception later, but I haven't done that yet).

Quote from: teethering

With minecarts being implemented will mining itself be variable now, in terms of amount of material produced out of a single square?  What I mean by that is that it's hard to see a lot of use in a long track being built to a single vein that's going to be exhausted very quickly.

There's going to be a change but I don't have any specifics yet.

Quote from: isitanos

Will we get railroad switches linkable to levers? Actually, I'm kind of wondering how you'll handle turns, overall. And will we be able to build long slopes with a small gradient, so that minecarts can get momentum even on a single z-level?

Switchable tracks aren't in yet, but it's on the menu.  I'm not sure what I'll get to though.  I want to stay away from having microslopes anywhere.  It's an added layer of complication to the display/simulation that we don't definitively need yet.

Quote from: hermes

If track connections during construction are dependent on the order in which each section is built, does this mean that the order of designation by the player is tracked in "real time" so to speak, or would we have to build a section, wait for it to be constructed, then designate again if tracks run parallel?

I don't quite understand this one.  I don't think anything depends on the order.

Quote from: Cruxador

Is the new route system based off or related to military patrols, or is it all new?
Are we getting diagonals mine tracks?
Are rails tiles the single lines or something else?
Toady, do rails work like other stone carvings? If not, how do they work?
Will wheelbarrows and carts all have their own tiles adjacent to the dwarves or beasts that pull them, or what's the deal there?

I had considered the old routes, but I decided to just make it new, so there wouldn't be fussing with points.

There are no diagonal mine tracks.  It looks bad, and as people said, it causes rotation issues with larger objects.  Hopefully there will be objects larger than one tile on tracks in the future.

I'm using inverted double lines for rails.  Those'll either be distinguished from the hidden engravings walls through a color convention, or hidden engraving walls will be altered entirely.  I don't like single line rails.

They work like stone carvings, but you have to do them in 1-wide/high rectangular sections to get the connections established between tiles.

I'm not sure how wheelbarrows and beasts will work out.  The minecart pushing job isn't done either, but I'm pretty sure the dwarf will be walking behind the cart there.

Quote from: tahujdt

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

The carts can't be linked, but there are powered sections of the track that go in one of the four possible directions.

Quote from: Chthonic

Under what circumstances do you envision minecarts behaving according to minecart physics?

I.e., are they going to break free from time to time?  What would cause that?  How often are they going to go careening off out of control?

If they hit a corner too fast or hit a bad junction or track end or hit another cart really fast...  lots of opportunities for trouble.

Quote from: Mr Frog

Can minecarts injure creatures that happen to be standing in the way while they are moving and, if so, does the mass of the cart and its contents impact the damage caused? Does the AI try to stay out of the way of moving carts?

I haven't done this yet, but it is assuredly going in before the release.  The mass/speed will matter in the same way as it does with weapons, since it'll likely just call the same function.  People with space will get an excellent chance to dodge out of the way.  Slow carts will probably just bump and stop without trouble.

Quote from: Greiger

Do minecarts currently, or are they planned to have a maximum velocity?   Just a point where no matter how many more ramps you put in front of it, it's just not going to go any faster?  Or is the plan to just use map height limitations or a max 1 tile per tick rule to keep warp speed minecarts from hitting things?

Also in the hitting things vein,  Will minecarts striking folks use the system that ballistas use where they just pick a random number of body parts to wreck when they hit something, or is there another plan in the works?

If I remember, they hit a terminal velocity going down, but it's quite fast.

I haven't planned out a specific new system for the damage.

Quote from: Torchy

Can you have interconnected track lines, that is to say, a system where a track could have "tributaries" that lead into it and join into the main line? Such that you could have, for example, three starting branches in a line converging into a single ending segment?

Yeah, you can set that up -- if a track deadends into a corner without actually forming a T, it'll allow the cart to pass into the corner without disruption, and you can set up tributaries that way.  T's themselves don't have a defined preference for direction, so are useless for a cart that isn't passing along the straight part.  4-way tracks just allow carts to continue on straight.  So as it stands, a T is just an unfinished 4-way intersection.

Quote

Quote from: cephalo

When a cart flys off an edge and hits another set of tracks, can it keep going?

Quote from: Kilroy the Grand

By what amount will mine carts veer off course when they are launched through the air?

As it stands, launching from one track to another is 100% effective, if you have it lined up.

Quote from: darkrider2

Can fluids be put in minecarts?

Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?

If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?

Not as it stands.  I haven't thought of how that might work -- fluids are either going to slow the cart down too much or it is just going to blaze through the falls.  If the cart were stopped under a fall and then powered forward, it might work.  We'll see what happens.

Quote from: Quatch

Will building destroyers destroy tracks? Carts? Carts in-flight-as-missiles?

Building destroyers don't target any of these...  maybe track stops?  Probably not even those.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

They don't interact with them yet.  As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.

Quote from: Arkenstone

How are junctions going to work, if at all?

Will it be abstracted, allowing carts to switch direction freely at any point where more than one rail intersect? Or only at 'stop' tiles? In either case, how will runaway carts coming up to the head of a 'T-junction' from the tail be handled? Will they just derail at that point, or will they be diverted?  In the case of the latter, will the direction be random or constant?

Or will there be splits like on IRL rail lines, where carts coming from one direction are sent in only one of two (or three!) possible directions?  If so, what would happen to carts coming up a secondary rail when its not the one presently being diverted to?

Concerning stops, would they work more like turntables, railheads, or just ordinary stretches of track?  Would it be possible to link a lever/pressure plate to them and disable them, or to power them and launch carts into the system?  Or do the dwarves have to manually send carts off again, unless one designed a system where an empty cart bumps the full one out of the stop?

Lastly: as for the carts themselves, would it be possible to use them as mobile stockpiles?  By that I mean if I filled up some carts with stone and sent them down a dead-end rail to my masons' shops, would they take their stone directly from the carts or must I get some haulers to unload them first?

The carts do not switch freely at junctions.  You can prepare a multitile junction as described above, and there might be switches later as mentioned above.  At stop tiles, where a dwarf sets it on its way, you get a full fourway ability to send it on its way.  Runaway carts hitting a T-junction will not pick a side -- they will continue on in violence.

In the multitile junctions, it doesn't care so much about the direction, so a cart coming up the wrong way will just continue along down the track.

I haven't done links to stops, though that's a reasonable enough thing to do.  The track can't be powered under the stops since we are still stuck with the one building per tile limit, and the powered rollers are a building (like axles and gears).

I haven't finished the hauling jobs, but I think taking items from carts will probably be possible.  Not 100% sure.

Quote from: Dwarfu

Does being in a cart count the same as being in a stockpile, or will rotting occur while perishable items are in the cart waiting to be sent down the line?

I think the items will keep.

Quote from: SirPenguin

In terms of automated zones, is "Empty" an option? In other words, can I set up an industry where ore is shipped to the forges, then the empty cart is sent automatically back to the mines?

Yeah, you can send a cart along after a time if it is empty (or immediately if it is empty).  The timer can also send it along regardless of contents, and you can have as many timers with different conditions running as you want for a single stop.  Once any timer is triggered, the cart will be set to depart.

Quote from: MrWiggles

Toady, will the physics for the minecarts be detailed/advance enough to maybe construct minecart version of Newton Balls?

Yeah, it works that way now, though it only propagates one step per click, so the cart reacting at the far side can take a little while to jump off.  If you have tall ramps on either side, and start it with a cart at the top of one of the ramps, it should run until the friction of the carts moving along the bottom and up the ramps slowly drains it.

Quote from: Sizik

What happens if you follow a bolt that's in a marksdwarf's inventory, which he then fires?

When it splits the stack, the old id number sticks on one of the resulting items...  I don't recall which one.  I suppose people will want it to follow the bolt and then stay where the bolt hit/turn off, even if another bolt is fired?  If it moves with the fired bolt and then resets to the stack until another bols is fired, it might get dizzying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 09, 2012, 12:51:57 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: hermes

If track connections during construction are dependent on the order in which each section is built, does this mean that the order of designation by the player is tracked in "real time" so to speak, or would we have to build a section, wait for it to be constructed, then designate again if tracks run parallel?

I don't quite understand this one.  I don't think anything depends on the order.

I believe he means would you have to designate parallel tracks one at a time to prevent unwanted connections between rails on opposite tracks occurring while they're built? This would be irrelevant if you choose the direction at designation time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:59:59 am

Ah, yeah, I see now.  Yeah, the track connections are between the tiles you designate, and it only lets you designate 1xN and Nx1 rectangles.  Ramps are a little weird -- you have to include the ramp wall or the ramp space when doing the floor above to ensure the connection is placed, but you can tell from the designation symbols how you've done.  You can draw designations through other designations to make 4 way intersections, and designating on top of an active job updates everything correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 01:26:22 am

THANK YOU TOADY FOR THE ANSWERS!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 09, 2012, 01:51:18 am

Quote

You can have the camera follow a unit or item

Great, this was much needed feature!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mnjiman on April 09, 2012, 01:52:45 am

This was a amazing answering session. Thank you! I am very very excited with the new changes being put in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on April 09, 2012, 02:00:59 am

I wonder if there will be some way to construct a sorting yard, i.e. a reasonably compact area which accepts carts from multiple incoming lines, and dispatches to multiple outgoing ones based on their contents (or potentially some kind of a travel plan assigned at the source point) by the manual labor of a shunter dwarf?

When connecting up a very distant area, e.g. maybe forges at magma sea level, having a sorting yard could be more efficient than building a separate line for every connection you want to make. Although perhaps it can already be done well enough using the existing stop trigger mechanics, or by making a hub that simply reloads stuff between carts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 02:05:19 am

So, I think we all misstated our wants for Minecarts. I think we should have just said, OpenTTD Rail mechanics for Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on April 09, 2012, 03:24:49 am

What effect, if any, will craft quality have on a minecart? Will a mastercraft minecart move faster/carry more/hit harder? Will a dwarf pushing a high quality minecart get a happy thought from it?  

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 03:31:04 am

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on April 09, 2012, 03:24:49 am

What effect, if any, will craft quality have on a minecart? Will a mastercraft minecart move faster/carry more/hit harder? Will a dwarf pushing a high quality minecart get a happy thought from it?

The only thing minecraft quality will probably effect is your Fortress wealth. And dorfs will probably get happy thoughts from the minecarts, if they look at them.

But it wont be affect the physical characteristic, at least not with this release, I dont think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 09, 2012, 03:32:06 am

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on April 09, 2012, 03:24:49 am

What effect, if any, will craft quality have on a minecart? Will a mastercraft minecart move faster/carry more/hit harder? Will a dwarf pushing a high quality minecart get a happy thought from it?

Urist has been ecstatic lately, he has admired a fine minecart lately, he has sustained serious injuries recently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on April 09, 2012, 03:32:32 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 03:31:04 am

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on April 09, 2012, 03:24:49 am

What effect, if any, will craft quality have on a minecart? Will a mastercraft minecart move faster/carry more/hit harder? Will a dwarf pushing a high quality minecart get a happy thought from it?

The only thing minecraft quality will probably effect is your Fortress wealth. And dorfs will probably get happy thoughts from the minecarts, if they look at them.

But it wont be affect the physical characteristic, at least not with this release, I dont think.

Stray artifact quality minecart hits unsuspecting troll for x3 blunt damage...

A dwarf can dream...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on April 09, 2012, 04:30:30 am

Now I have ideas for a dwarven cartical accelerator.

So it looks like I can do a setup where I have a power axle coming down from a windmill, and a Hotwheels™ style pair of rollers, the eastbound line going to a turnaround that slams the cart back into the westbound line, which hits another 180 turn into the eastbound line, producing an arbitrary duration loop of acceleration.

With two of these and a lever operated splitter, I can then slam carts into each other largely at will.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 09, 2012, 08:56:03 am

Will tracks impede wagon travel if there's no ramps? I want to build a minecart-based defense system that turns on when goblins hit a pressure plate, but then wagons have to get through when the minecarts aren't running and the track's clear.

Also, will minecarts that hit a wall be irreversibly damaged?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 09:40:22 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 08:56:03 am

Will tracks impede wagon travel if there's no ramps? I want to build a minecart-based defense system that turns on when goblins hit a pressure plate, but then wagons have to get through when the minecarts aren't running and the track's clear.

Wagons haven't been mentioned, so it's a safe bet that they'll keep moving through anything a dwarf can move through, just like before.

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 08:56:03 am

Also, will minecarts that hit a wall be irreversibly damaged?

That's probably waiting on item damage in general.  The only special case there is ammo, which minecarts are not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on April 09, 2012, 10:12:14 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:59:59 am

Ah, yeah, I see now.  Yeah, the track connections are between the tiles you designate, and it only lets you designate 1xN and Nx1 rectangles.  Ramps are a little weird -- you have to include the ramp wall or the ramp space when doing the floor above to ensure the connection is placed, but you can tell from the designation symbols how you've done.  You can draw designations through other designations to make 4 way intersections, and designating on top of an active job updates everything correctly.

Is N limited to a small number?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 10:22:03 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 09:40:22 am

That's probably waiting on item damage in general.  The only special case there is ammo, which minecarts are not.

Don't worry foot, I'm sure we'll change that pretty quick.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 09, 2012, 10:28:29 am

Dwarven Supercolliders are coming.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

Quote from: Quatch on April 09, 2012, 10:12:14 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:59:59 am

Ah, yeah, I see now.  Yeah, the track connections are between the tiles you designate, and it only lets you designate 1xN and Nx1 rectangles.  Ramps are a little weird -- you have to include the ramp wall or the ramp space when doing the floor above to ensure the connection is placed, but you can tell from the designation symbols how you've done.  You can draw designations through other designations to make 4 way intersections, and designating on top of an active job updates everything correctly.

Is N limited to a small number?

If it's anything like roads and bridges and such, I bet N is 10. And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jimi12 on April 09, 2012, 11:02:27 am

What happens to the contents of a cart when a cart crashes? Would they be flung all over the place or would they stay inside the cart? Would this be different if the contents were 15 shoes or a dwarf? Also, do carts take damage after wrecks and collisions? Will it be possible to repair damaged carts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 09, 2012, 11:26:06 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

I figured it was like Fortifications, where the Engraver can carve them in natural stone or your Masons can construct them if the track goes across soil or for color coordination purposes.



And this one goes back a ways, to trying to imagine the speed boosting rollers in a way that makes sense- I've been picturing them like a Hot Wheels track. Just thought I'd share.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gizogin on April 09, 2012, 11:41:14 am

Will minecarts be able to trigger pressure plates while on their tracks?  In general, will there be a way to use minecarts in things like logic or computing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on April 09, 2012, 11:45:52 am

Yes, devlog:

Quote

04/06/2012: [...] Pressure plates can be given a weight range for being triggered by carts. I tested it out by making a retracting bridge system that sorted carts by whether or not they were loaded. I knew it was working when I started making little kerchunk sounds at the screen. [...]

Unless I'm misunderstanding your question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 09, 2012, 12:00:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

Also sounds to me like they will be constructible. Out of stone by masons, out of metal by metalcrafter, out of mermaid bones by the butcher, and whatever profession is appropriate. Hopefully we get multiple track pieces per a metal bar, like in that other incarnation XD . Also, the post spellchecker just tried to change my 'constructible' into 'constructable'.

By the way, after all the questions related to the image below, it only seemed appropriate to go draw it.

Spoiler: Dodge this! (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/UQtnp.png)

Did I portray it accurately? O.o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 12:07:01 pm

I was thinking those cart boosters would look more like those log pushers in the woodcutting mills in skyrim.  Not boosting them off at 50 mph more like hooking onto the undercarriage and pushing up an incline.  Maybe with enough speed to get it up a single ramp.

Minecarts are heavy after all, and if the weight of the minecart exceeds the weight of the water pushing on the wheel the cart is going nowhere.  Any gearing to increase the speed is just going to increase the effective weight of the cart against the system.  Hell it would probably need to be downshifted in reality to get a loaded cart going anywhere.

But I'm not a mechanic so I'm not 100% on all the forces at play.  And at any rate we're talking about a power system with someplace around 500% efficiency, so I guess it's moot anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 09, 2012, 12:15:31 pm

Yes ! We will be able to kill gobbos with minecarts ! YES !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 09, 2012, 12:34:54 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 09, 2012, 12:00:11 pm

By the way, after all the questions related to the image below, it only seemed appropriate to go draw it.

Spoiler: Dodge this! (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/UQtnp.png)

Did I portray it accurately? O.o

I really hope that Toady decides to keep the inevitable dorferry on tracks in the final game.  After all, moderately-intelligent humans do it sometimes IRL, so it'd probably be more unreasonable to expect dwarfs not to.


PS:
Can speeding carts launch off ramps, or only off vertical drops?
EDIT: Never mind, answered below.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 09, 2012, 12:46:14 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 09, 2012, 12:34:54 pm

PS:
Can speeding carts launch off ramps, or only off vertical drops?

From how he answered a similar question previously, I think that a cart will just naturally launch itself off of any track ending when it's going fast enough. It's likely that if you've built a ramp, and hit it fast enough, the cart will skip the end of the track, and it will continue its course in a parabolic arc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 09, 2012, 01:41:40 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 09, 2012, 12:34:54 pm

PS:
Can speeding carts launch off ramps, or only off vertical drops?

Quote from: DevLog_5.4.2012

... and they fly in little parabolas and crash into the ground when you set them free, either straight off a cliff or launched from a short upward ramp.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on April 09, 2012, 04:50:28 pm

This seriously keeps getting better and better.  From simple hauling efficiency fixes, to minecarts, to rollercoasters, to unit/object following!  This is going to be one of the best DF releases ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dhoovr on April 09, 2012, 04:52:07 pm

Quote from: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 12:07:01 pm

I was thinking those cart boosters would look more like those log pushers in the woodcutting mills in skyrim.  Not boosting them off at 50 mph more like hooking onto the undercarriage and pushing up an incline.  Maybe with enough speed to get it up a single ramp.

Minecarts are heavy after all, and if the weight of the minecart exceeds the weight of the water pushing on the wheel the cart is going nowhere.  Any gearing to increase the speed is just going to increase the effective weight of the cart against the system.  Hell it would probably need to be downshifted in reality to get a loaded cart going anywhere.

Well since power is being supplied from a spinning axle, and, since a moving cart will either be slowed down or sped up when going through a "booster" it has to be either a Hot Wheels type accelerator with two oppositely spinning wheels positioned perpendicularly and on either side of the cart, or them positioned parallel but some how able to grip a section of the cart (like a lattice extending on both sides). Since Dwarves don't have rubber or any material that can grab (grind stones maybe?) I'd imagine a lattice on both sides of the cart which spinning "Hot Wheels-esq" gears can grab and accelerate.

The method from "log pushers in the woodcutting mills in skyrim," which I believe is the same method to accelerate aircraft off an aircraft carrier, would stop the moving cart upon hitting the "hook" from behind or require extremely complicated mechanics to get it to extend and grab the cart as it passes...etc.

But yeah proper conservation of energy isn't really a consideration in Dwarven contraptions.

EDIT: So I guess the real question here is:
What items will be required in the construction of a "roller?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 05:29:54 pm

Quote from: jimi12 on April 09, 2012, 11:02:27 am

What happens to the contents of a cart when a cart crashes? Would they be flung all over the place or would they stay inside the cart? Would this be different if the contents were 15 shoes or a dwarf? Also, do carts take damage after wrecks and collisions? Will it be possible to repair damaged carts?

Toady implied that when cart crashes, that it'd lead to FUN, including the contents in the cart. And contents are contents.

It's probably unlikely that Carts take damage. Like Footkercheif was just saying, items in general dont take damage (except for ammo).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 05:35:11 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 09, 2012, 12:00:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

Also sounds to me like they will be constructible. Out of stone by masons, out of metal by metalcrafter, out of mermaid bones by the butcher, and whatever profession is appropriate. Hopefully we get multiple track pieces per a metal bar, like in that other incarnation XD . Also, the post spellchecker just tried to change my 'constructible' into 'constructable'.

By the way, after all the questions related to the image below, it only seemed appropriate to go draw it.

Spoiler: Dodge this! (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/UQtnp.png)

Did I portray it accurately? O.o

It seems like yea for natural stone that Engravers are good bet for it. Though for constructed rails, I think that depends if they count as furniture or tools or constructions. If they're tools then Rails will be built by the craft dorf. If they're furniture or constructions then Mason or Carpentry, or Metal workshop depending on the materiel.

Though I dont think rails previous to Locomotives were made out of metal, and the ties especially weren't made out of metal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 09, 2012, 06:54:00 pm

Quote from: dhoovr on April 09, 2012, 04:52:07 pm

I'd imagine a lattice on both sides of the cart which spinning "Hot Wheels-esq" gears can grab and accelerate.

I think I'll be going with this, mostly because it implies furiously spinning pointy gears at head level.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 08:15:01 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 07, 2012, 02:52:36 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on April 07, 2012, 02:26:44 am

By the way I see begining of an era of minecart logic computing!

I think, more important that it could become another universal solution to all problems instead of magma with proper usage of these accelerating rollers and high accelerating towers. Zombies? Use railgun! FBs? Railgun!

Oh, that actually made me wonder.
Is there any limit to the speed of minecart? Will it reach speed of light after going through synchrotron or very, very tall acceleration tower?

You chose that word, railguns, intentionally and with mischevious intent, didn't you?

Only in dwarf fortress do you get railguns before gunpowder  :)  Of course the railguns shoot mine carts, but who's lawyering here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 09, 2012, 08:33:19 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 09, 2012, 01:41:40 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 09, 2012, 12:34:54 pm

PS:
Can speeding carts launch off ramps, or only off vertical drops?

Quote from: DevLog_5.4.2012

... and they fly in little parabolas and crash into the ground when you set them free, either straight off a cliff or launched from a short upward ramp.

Oops, missed that.  Went back and de-green'd the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:06:45 pm

Quote from: Silophant on April 07, 2012, 09:46:35 pm

It's in, as of the last dev log. Also, these hauling routes are shaping up to be awesome.  This update is going to impact Fortress Mode Gameplay waaay more than 34.01 did. I'm excited!

I would not say that.  Vampires, werecritters, and all the rains and mists and whatnot have made embarking in the wrong place FAR more challenging these days.

I'd say that more fortresses will be impacted by this as time moves forward, but that's because people will embark in fewer evil biomes than before, so the effects of the 0.34 change are less actively noticeable to the average player who doesn't want to fool with the really difficult embarks and simply avoids them.  That doesn't mean the effect isn't as significant :)

Lets not fight over it though, 0.34 and the cart release patch are both world-shakers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:08:27 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 07, 2012, 09:55:02 pm

:o New dev log... is wow. How is he completing this stuff so quick? I mean, conditions with which to deal with carts being held or moved. That was unexpected.

Toady has apparently acquired rights to use a port of Railroad Tycoon and import it into DF.  *grin*

There's a very good chance that most of this has been bubbling in the Toad's head for months if not years waiting for an opportune time to find it's way into code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:34:15 pm

Quote from: monk12 on April 09, 2012, 11:26:06 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

I figured it was like Fortifications, where the Engraver can carve them in natural stone or your Masons can construct them if the track goes across soil or for color coordination purposes.



And this one goes back a ways, to trying to imagine the speed boosting rollers in a way that makes sense- I've been picturing them like a Hot Wheels track. Just thought I'd share.

I can easily imagine a two real world roller systems to accelerate carts.

1) The cart passes between wheels that press against the sides of the cart, grabbing it, and pushing it forward.

2) The cart passes over a roller in the missle of the track which has gears or hooks or something that grab and push the cart forward.


Looked at in the real world, 1 is a more sound solution, as #2 would have a significant possibility of pushing the cart up into the air and dismounting it off the tracks if something goes wrong with the mechanisms.  #1, the wheels can be angled slightly towards the tracks, putting downward force on the cart to hold it on the tracks while it's being accelerated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 09, 2012, 09:36:15 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:06:45 pm

Quote from: Silophant on April 07, 2012, 09:46:35 pm

It's in, as of the last dev log. Also, these hauling routes are shaping up to be awesome.  This update is going to impact Fortress Mode Gameplay waaay more than 34.01 did. I'm excited!

I would not say that.  Vampires, werecritters, and all the rains and mists and whatnot have made embarking in the wrong place FAR more challenging these days.

I'd say that more fortresses will be impacted by this as time moves forward, but that's because people will embark in fewer evil biomes than before, so the effects of the 0.34 change are less actively noticeable to the average player who doesn't want to fool with the really difficult embarks and simply avoids them.  That doesn't mean the effect isn't as significant :)

Lets not fight over it though, 0.34 and the cart release patch are both world-shakers.

It shouldn't be forgotten that 0.34 was intended as an improvement for Adventure mode more than Fort mode. So it's natural that something like this would effect Fort mode more. So really, there is no need to debate about it really.

I'm already planning on using microcline to construct my garbage line. If I make the carts out of microcline, I might just launch the carts and make it a one way trip. Don't ride the Blue Line!

Are the carts constructed onto the tracks or are the added to the track like how a lever is linked?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 09, 2012, 09:41:04 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 09, 2012, 09:36:15 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:06:45 pm

Quote from: Silophant on April 07, 2012, 09:46:35 pm

It's in, as of the last dev log. Also, these hauling routes are shaping up to be awesome.  This update is going to impact Fortress Mode Gameplay waaay more than 34.01 did. I'm excited!

I would not say that.  Vampires, werecritters, and all the rains and mists and whatnot have made embarking in the wrong place FAR more challenging these days.

I'd say that more fortresses will be impacted by this as time moves forward, but that's because people will embark in fewer evil biomes than before, so the effects of the 0.34 change are less actively noticeable to the average player who doesn't want to fool with the really difficult embarks and simply avoids them.  That doesn't mean the effect isn't as significant :)

Lets not fight over it though, 0.34 and the cart release patch are both world-shakers.

It shouldn't be forgotten that 0.34 was intended as an improvement for Adventure mode more than Fort mode. So it's natural that something like this would effect Fort mode more. So really, there is no need to debate about it really.

I'm already planning on using microcline to construct my garbage line. If I make the carts out of microcline, I might just launch the carts and make it a one way trip. Don't ride the Blue Line!

Are the carts constructed onto the tracks or are the added to the track like how a lever is linked?

Quote from: 4/4/12 Devlog

Minecarts are a new tool in the raws. The minecart behavior is determined by the "TRACK_CART" tool use, so you can add your own carts called whatever made of whatever. I'm sticking with wood and metal minecarts called minecarts. Their state as a tool currently has the wooden minecart creation job in the craftsdwarf shop and all carts in the finished goods piles, but I'll likely diversify the tool raws there as well. If it's not too time-consuming to convert the whole eventual system, I'll give the 34.02-7 saves a default minecart tool as well -- as it stands they wouldn't have them.

Considering also that Toady has said that a minecart jumping off of one track and onto another will continue going, I'm guessing that it's more of a "dwarves haul minecart to track" thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 09:41:25 pm

^^^ kinda beaten

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 09, 2012, 09:36:15 pm

Are the carts constructed onto the tracks or are the added to the track like how a lever is linked?

The fact that carts can spontaneously (without a dwarf's intervention) leave tracks and reattach to them indicates that they are just items that move in special ways, not buildings or constructions per se.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 09, 2012, 09:50:13 pm

There needs to be some kind of way of getting the carts where you want them. Otherwise the dwarves might over saturate the tracks with too many carts or transport the cart to the wrong line.

I figured there were two ways of having the dwarves get a cart where you want it, when you want it.

1. Use the build menu to place it on the track. (I used construction inaccurately.)
2. The stops have an add cart job that will cause the dwarves to deliver a cart to that spot.

So I asked the question to see which (if either) is the method.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 10:00:31 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 09, 2012, 09:34:15 pm

Quote from: monk12 on April 09, 2012, 11:26:06 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 10:38:04 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on April 09, 2012, 10:32:05 am

And does anybody know who makes the tracks- is it miners or engravers?

The word Toady used was "carve," which definitely sounds like engravers to me.

I figured it was like Fortifications, where the Engraver can carve them in natural stone or your Masons can construct them if the track goes across soil or for color coordination purposes.



And this one goes back a ways, to trying to imagine the speed boosting rollers in a way that makes sense- I've been picturing them like a Hot Wheels track. Just thought I'd share.

I can easily imagine a two real world roller systems to accelerate carts.

1) The cart passes between wheels that press against the sides of the cart, grabbing it, and pushing it forward.

2) The cart passes over a roller in the missle of the track which has gears or hooks or something that grab and push the cart forward.


Looked at in the real world, 1 is a more sound solution, as #2 would have a significant possibility of pushing the cart up into the air and dismounting it off the tracks if something goes wrong with the mechanisms.  #1, the wheels can be angled slightly towards the tracks, putting downward force on the cart to hold it on the tracks while it's being accelerated.

Oh, for the curious that want to look it up, I finally managed to figure out what #1 is called in real life - it's a "pinch wheel drive" and they are used in some roller coasters and other amusement rides.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DrNightKOT on April 09, 2012, 10:17:16 pm

I am not sure if it was asked, but will the carts, loaded with COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS explosive or combustible stuff, like booze or modded material actually combust on collision with something that doesn't burn, but just of force? It would be awesome to have your dorfs to push the cart into a pit with lots of cave monsters inside, or even more booze and see !!GIANT CAVE SPIDERs!!. And railgun minecarts would be even more combat applicabable.

Which leads to other, very unimportant question about future of exploding materials, but I won't ask it, since it's obviously asked before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gamerlord on April 09, 2012, 10:18:01 pm

Is not being able to butcher certain animals (eg: Tercerine Falcon) a feature or a bug?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 09, 2012, 10:25:34 pm

Quote from: Gamerlord on April 09, 2012, 10:18:01 pm

Is not being able to butcher certain animals (eg: Tercerine Falcon) a feature or a bug?

Well yea some animals wont be butchered if it goes against the Ethics of the Dorf. As for the that particular case. No clue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 09, 2012, 10:33:04 pm

If by "not being able to butcher" you mean "butchering only gives skulls", then yes, that is intentional.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 10:33:55 pm

Some animals are too small to yeild any meat.  Butchers seem to ignore them, probably to make sure they get the actually productive corpses before they rot.  I'm not certain the size of those things off the top of my head, but that may be the reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 09, 2012, 10:51:21 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

The carts do not switch freely at junctions.  You can prepare a multitile junction as described above, and there might be switches later as mentioned above.  At stop tiles, where a dwarf sets it on its way, you get a full fourway ability to send it on its way.  Runaway carts hitting a T-junction will not pick a side -- they will continue on in violence.

In the multitile junctions, it doesn't care so much about the direction, so a cart coming up the wrong way will just continue along down the track.

I haven't done links to stops, though that's a reasonable enough thing to do.  The track can't be powered under the stops since we are still stuck with the one building per tile limit, and the powered rollers are a building (like axles and gears).

Well, that crushes a lot of my hopes and dreams, at least unless/until we get powered stops that can automatically launch carts. 

This basically means we need individual dwarves for every intersection to manage traffic, or else we can only build individual loops, with no complex traffic networks, and it ruins most cart logic operations.

What we really need is an ability to have track switches, or else rollers under stops that launch a cart in a direction that can be changed mechanically, based upon a lever, pressure plate, or rotation of a gear.  Then, we can have some truly wondrous cart mechanics, where destinations are altered based upon cart/water/mechanism logic.

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

I'm using inverted double lines for rails.  Those'll either be distinguished from the hidden engravings walls through a color convention, or hidden engraving walls will be altered entirely.  I don't like single line rails.

And minus an init option, that's basically going to ruin walls for graphics pack users.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 09, 2012, 11:08:54 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 09, 2012, 10:33:04 pm

If by "not being able to butcher" you mean "butchering only gives skulls", then yes, that is intentional.

That's not clear.  See the report. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1047)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: riznar on April 09, 2012, 11:10:27 pm

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 09, 2012, 11:25:34 pm

Quote from: riznar on April 09, 2012, 11:10:27 pm

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Quote from:  devlog

I tested it out by making a retracting bridge system that sorted carts by whether or not they were loaded.

So yeah, it won't be super efficient maybe, but it certainly sounds like it should work fine. And let's face it, there isn't very much efficient about dorfputing in general :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nanomage on April 10, 2012, 01:02:47 am

Quote from: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 10:33:55 pm

Some animals are too small to yeild any meat.  Butchers seem to ignore them, probably to make sure they get the actually productive corpses before they rot.  I'm not certain the size of those things off the top of my head, but that may be the reason.

Size may vary for creatures of different body plans, but it's they same limit for butchers ignoring corpses as it is for slaughter jobs only leaving skulls. While a tame creature only leaves skull, the corpse of the same wild creature will be ignored and will never rot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TSTwizby on April 10, 2012, 02:15:31 am

Are rollers assigned a direction, or do they just accelerate the carts in whichever direction they are already moving?

For example, if I had something like:

      ||
==roller==
      ||
     cart moving up
      ||

could I orient the roller to launch the cart to the right/left, or would it always shoot straight ahead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 10, 2012, 05:06:34 am

Quote from: nanomage on April 10, 2012, 01:02:47 am

Quote from: Greiger on April 09, 2012, 10:33:55 pm

Some animals are too small to yeild any meat.  Butchers seem to ignore them, probably to make sure they get the actually productive corpses before they rot.  I'm not certain the size of those things off the top of my head, but that may be the reason.

Size may vary for creatures of different body plans, but it's they same limit for butchers ignoring corpses as it is for slaughter jobs only leaving skulls. While a tame creature only leaves skull, the corpse of the same wild creature will be ignored and will never rot.

Supposedly, it will rot to skeleton, but skeleton will take very long time (10+ years) to rot to skull and bones.

Well, people claim that happens. I have never seen that happen myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on April 10, 2012, 07:56:25 am

Quote from: DrNightKOT on April 09, 2012, 10:17:16 pm

I am not sure if it was asked, but will the carts, loaded with COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS explosive or combustible stuff, like booze or modded material actually combust on collision with something that doesn't burn, but just of force?

There are no explosive materials at all in DF, so there are no impact-sensitive explosions.  Booze doesn't explode, it just burns and boils.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 10, 2012, 08:25:36 am

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 10, 2012, 02:15:31 am

Are rollers assigned a direction, or do they just accelerate the carts in whichever direction they are already moving?

For example, if I had something like:

      ||
==roller==
      ||
     cart moving up
      ||

could I orient the roller to launch the cart to the right/left, or would it always shoot straight ahead?

Quote from: Toady devlog 4/6/12

There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts in a given direction

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 10, 2012, 08:27:56 am

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 10, 2012, 02:15:31 am

Are rollers assigned a direction, or do they just accelerate the carts in whichever direction they are already moving?

For example, if I had something like:

      ||
==roller==
      ||
     cart moving up
      ||

could I orient the roller to launch the cart to the right/left, or would it always shoot straight ahead?

Toady's wording here ("one of four possible directions", emphasis mine) makes it sound like the rollers are assigned a direction at construction.

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: tahujdt

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

The carts can't be linked, but there are powered sections of the track that go in one of the four possible directions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 10, 2012, 09:29:27 am

Hm, follow-up question then:


What would happen if a moving cart hits a roller pointing perpendicular to its pathway?  Does it aquire a diagonal velocity? Does it just slow down, possibly turning if it's slow enough?  Does it instantly stop moving foreward to go in the new direction? Does it just derail then and there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 10, 2012, 09:40:37 am

So, if I got it right, it will look like this, where the arrows are the rollers, the middle is the station, and that is where the kickstart is needed in the first place.
 
(http://i.imgur.com/pRLF1.png)
 
Can we set the rollers to use a particular force? Just like we can set a variable weight sensitivity to pressure plates? And if no, then please? =3 Otherwise, I imagine them being too strong for some uses and too weak for others.

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 10, 2012, 09:29:27 am

What would happen if a moving cart hits a roller pointing perpendicular to its pathway?  Does it aquire a diagonal velocity? Does it just slow down, possibly turning if it's slow enough?  Does it instantly stop moving foreward to go in the new direction? Does it just derail then and there?

Possibly it will only add speed if the cart was already moving in that direction, otherwise, if the new speed is applied in any way, a cart will not be able to leave a station from the same direction it entered, instead it will need an entrance and an exit, plus it will need bridge mechanisms to create appropriate junctions. That will take much much more room.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EternallySlaying on April 10, 2012, 09:43:35 am

This aught to be lawlsy...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/101/6/3/a_fun_way_to_kill_goblins_by_eternallyslaying-d4vsh4p.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 10, 2012, 10:14:59 am

Will it ever be important to see carts or anything else fly in parabolae? 3d visualizers are cool utilities, but part of what makes DF different from Minecraft or Real-Time Strategy is the ASCII graphics (or primitive substitute of the same layout).

Can minecarts crash into the ceiling if sent rapidly off a ramp in a cave only one storey high (at any given point; obviously above and below the ramp the ceiling is a level higher/lower just as the floor is)?

Will whatever replaces happy/unhappy thoughts be equally hilarious? (E.g., will it still be possible to drink off the gloom of a relative's death? I always thought the weirdness of the system was more realistic than people gave it credit for, much like loyalty cascades, which once fixed so they're not inevitable should be brought back as possible since the concept is a feature, not a bug, in a game that models realistic relationships/loyalties along with realistic everything else.)

I think I had another question, but now I can't recall what it was.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2012, 10:26:32 am

Quote from: riznar on April 09, 2012, 11:10:27 pm

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Actually...

Since bridges can act as tracks and pressure plates can be built onto to a track. If bridges can be built over a portion of track with a turn, you might be able to get a switch track going. A 1*N retractable bridge could effectively turn a 90 degree turn tile into a straight or T tile (doesn't matter which as the cart will always go through the straight portion of the T without turning). That way when the bridge is out the cart will continue straight and when the bridge is retracted it will use the turn.

Granted this will only work if you can built a bridge over top of an existing piece of track and have it stay the way it is. But if it does work, it can work in a single z-level.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SeymoreGlass on April 10, 2012, 10:51:28 am

Granite being a very rough stone, one would expect it to make it more difficult to increase a cart's speed and easier to decrease it. Inversly, obsidian is very slick, which would make increasing speed easier, but decreasing speed more difficult. I guess my question is, will track/break/accelerator(roller?) material/quality have any role in minecart physics. And I mean for this release of course, as I'm positive it will come in at that fabled "eventually" down the road.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Zack on April 10, 2012, 12:36:43 pm

You're doing minecarts, but are you planning on doing anything with other vehicles? Like the wagons you're dwarves bring on embark?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: i2amroy on April 10, 2012, 01:11:31 pm

Edit: Ignore my entire previous diagrams. I didn't quite understand what Toady meant with his "dead end into a corner" statement.

Also a question:
Will we be able to have 1-way stops? So could you have a stop that allowed carts coming from 1 direction to shoot through without being stopped or slowed, but carts from another to be stopped and need to be started again? (Potentially in a different direction?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 10, 2012, 01:16:34 pm

Quote from: SeymoreGlass on April 10, 2012, 10:51:28 am

Granite being a very rough stone, one would expect it to make it more difficult to increase a cart's speed and easier to decrease it. Inversly, obsidian is very slick, which would make increasing speed easier, but decreasing speed more difficult. I guess my question is, will track/break/accelerator(roller?) material/quality have any role in minecart physics. And I mean for this release of course, as I'm positive it will come in at that fabled "eventually" down the road.

No, that won't be in the next version, for a number of reasons:
1. Individual stone types don't have distinct friction values in the raws yet
2. Obsidian can be much "rougher" than granite depending on how they've been smoothed
3. Rolling resistance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance) != kinetic friction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction#Kinetic_friction)

Quote from: Lord Zack on April 10, 2012, 12:36:43 pm

You're doing minecarts, but are you planning on doing anything with other vehicles? Like the wagons you're dwarves bring on embark?

Nope:

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: tHe_silent_H

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

There will be wheelbarrows and animals will come up somehow.  That's probably it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 01:31:52 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2012, 10:26:32 am

Quote from: riznar on April 09, 2012, 11:10:27 pm

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Actually...

Since bridges can act as tracks and pressure plates can be built onto to a track. If bridges can be built over a portion of track with a turn, you might be able to get a switch track going. A 1*N retractable bridge could effectively turn a 90 degree turn tile into a straight or T tile (doesn't matter which as the cart will always go through the straight portion of the T without turning). That way when the bridge is out the cart will continue straight and when the bridge is retracted it will use the turn.

Granted this will only work if you can built a bridge over top of an existing piece of track and have it stay the way it is. But if it does work, it can work in a single z-level.

If it counts as an engraving, that may well work.  If it counts as a construction, it probably won't.  Cart logic dwarfputing or automated logistics systems may well be a matter of whether or not you are working with natural stone, which means that it may require some careful obsidian casting to get right in other locations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 10, 2012, 02:04:54 pm

In response to Roy above, this would be much more easily solved if our levers could send an INVERTED signal to a chosen bridge. Thus one lever could be linked to two bridges, and when you flip the lever, one extends and the other retracts. Looks so easy to do if you're a dev, and so hard if you're a player...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 10, 2012, 02:05:50 pm

Personally I would expect rollers to be usable to change the direction of carts.
But momentum is indeed a possible concern. so logic dictates a not-linearly accellerating roller will null a moving cart and set it moving at the speed and direction of the roller.

You guys seem to assume rollers will be 1x1 tiles. The logical mechanic for roller direction is the same as the rail designation mechanism for setting direction. Strips of 1X(1+n) tiles, (Click on a tile with the rail/roller designation and select the direction+length)

Also, dropping carts onto tracks from a level above would possibly allow junctions of tracks.

[ungreened]
Devlog suggests slopes will add/detract speed. So, do rollers add momentum or set a fixed speed?
Is there an artificial maximum speed (at which point a cart could derail and run amok! LoL) or will cart speed be limited by only computingspeed?
[/ungreened]

My thoughts have totally derailed, heh!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: i2amroy on April 10, 2012, 02:16:09 pm

Quote from: Areyar on April 10, 2012, 02:05:50 pm

Also, dropping carts onto tracks from a level above would possibly allow junctions of tracks.

Assuming your cart have a small amount of momentum then you can join two tracks with a "fake" t-intersection
I=tracks _=ground

Code: [Select]

like this:          or maybe this
________I_          ________I_
________I_          ________I_
IIIIIII_I_          __________
________I_          IIIIIIIII_
________I_          ________I_The "joining" cart should skip across the single tile without tracks under its own momentum, and then join up with the next line of tracks. I think probably the second design is more likely to work then the first one, though it does once again bring up the question of having a cart change directions at a corner. Maybe if a cart hits a sideways roller that makes it so that it has more sideways momentum then forward it should change direction. (4 momentum east and it hits a roller that gives it 10 momentum south, the cart would then begin to travel south.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: riznar on April 10, 2012, 02:27:20 pm

nm

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 10, 2012, 02:30:50 pm

Quote from: Areyar on April 10, 2012, 02:05:50 pm

Devlog suggests slopes will add/detract speed. So do rollers add momentum or set a fixed speed?
Is there an artificial maximum speed (at which point a cart could derail and run amok! LoL) or will cart speed be limited by only computingspeed?

Both of these questions were answered by the initial devlog entry on rollers (emphasis mine): they "increase the speed of minecarts in a given direction, up to a point (more than enough to get them up a ramp, anyway)." (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2012-04-06)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 10, 2012, 02:42:00 pm

Oh yeah, sorry Foot. So many great developments.  :)

@roy: yeah. that would give a single level track.
the first would need some rollers at the intersection though, or carts would just stop (or keep going straight on as there were no wall.)

The second plan should work. . . I'd designate that skip-tile as forbidden to pathing though, to cut down on dwarf casualties.
Hmm. . .
That does give rise to concern for miner safety: have you given this any thought?
(question-suggestions:)
- Could track-tiles be made unfavourable for pathing dwarves by default?
- Will dwarves avoid moving carts? (avoidance in advance that is, dodging an iminent collision seems  obvious.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 10, 2012, 03:12:01 pm

I saw, in earlier answers by Toady just 2 pages ago, that dorfs will have a large chance to dodge a cart, though they might not be immune. Best to designate traffic zones if you know that dorfs will constantly try to test their luck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: i2amroy on April 10, 2012, 03:21:05 pm

The new way to train your military in the difficult skill to teach of dodging. Set up a ton of mine cart pendulums that rush down one side and up the other, then reverse direction for the return trip. Then simply order your military to patrol from one side of the pendulums to the other and back. Along the way they should encounter several mine carts to dodge, having only a small chance of being hurt and a large chance of gaining some dodging xp, which personally I find to be one of the most helpful combat skills in existence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FallingWhale on April 10, 2012, 03:23:24 pm

Will carts work in liquids; if so will they fill?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 03:31:48 pm

Quote from: FallingWhale on April 10, 2012, 03:23:24 pm

Will carts work in liquids; if so will they fill?

Toady answered this in the last response:

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: darkrider2

Can fluids be put in minecarts?

Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?

If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?

Not as it stands.  I haven't thought of how that might work -- fluids are either going to slow the cart down too much or it is just going to blaze through the falls.  If the cart were stopped under a fall and then powered forward, it might work.  We'll see what happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 10, 2012, 04:13:53 pm

Quote from: i2amroy on April 10, 2012, 02:16:09 pm

Quote from: Areyar on April 10, 2012, 02:05:50 pm

Also, dropping carts onto tracks from a level above would possibly allow junctions of tracks.

Assuming your cart have a small amount of momentum then you can join two tracks with a "fake" t-intersection
I=tracks _=ground

Code: [Select]

like this:          or maybe this
________I_          ________I_
________I_          ________I_
IIIIIII_I_          __________
________I_          IIIIIIIII_
________I_          ________I_The "joining" cart should skip across the single tile without tracks under its own momentum, and then join up with the next line of tracks. I think probably the second design is more likely to work then the first one, though it does once again bring up the question of having a cart change directions at a corner. Maybe if a cart hits a sideways roller that makes it so that it has more sideways momentum then forward it should change direction. (4 momentum east and it hits a roller that gives it 10 momentum south, the cart would then begin to travel south

I think you misunderstand how the tracks are designated; my take on it was that they weren't designated by tile, but rather by pair (or stretch) or tiles.

The way I envisioned the fake T design Toady mentioned was this:

Code: [Select]

......C
═══╗╒══
A..║...
...║B..
Everything's to scale, there is no empty tile between the corner and track C; the two track tiles simply aren't connected.

• A cart coming from A will divert to B, unless it is going too fast, in which case it'll either go down C or crash (depends how it's coded, but odds are it'll always be one or the other).
• A cart coming from B will divert to A, unless it is going too fast, in which case it will crash.
• A cart coming from C will continue to A, possibly even if it is going *really* fast.

Also, Toady answered that last question of yours already: the cart would derail.


PS: Two more questions for Toady:

What symbols are you thinking of using for rollers and stops?

Will carts 'bounce' off dead-ends at walls, or will they just stop?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 10, 2012, 05:34:47 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 10, 2012, 03:12:01 pm

I saw, in earlier answers by Toady just 2 pages ago, that dorfs will have a large chance to dodge a cart, though they might not be immune. Best to designate traffic zones if you know that dorfs will constantly try to test their luck.

Or you can designate traffic zones to ENSURE that dwarves will constantly try to test their luck.

 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kaypy on April 10, 2012, 06:57:36 pm

Quote from: i2amroy on April 10, 2012, 01:11:31 pm

Will we be able to have 1-way stops? So could you have a stop that allowed carts coming from 1 direction to shoot through without being stopped or slowed, but carts from another to be stopped and need to be started again? (Potentially in a different direction?)

Assuming that I have the cart logic interpreted right, I think we can rig this up ourselves even if it isnt explicitly coded:

Code: [Select]

<<═══╗═≠≠≠═╗
     ╚═════╚═══>>
Cart from the west takes the south path, missing the stop, then joins back to the rail heading east
Cart from the east takes the north path, stopped at the ≠, sent on as appropriate

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 01:31:52 pm

If it counts as an engraving, that may well work.  If it counts as a construction, it probably won't.

Seems like it should work:

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

You can place any building on top of a track (at least any building that would work on a stone/constructed floor).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 10, 2012, 07:25:54 pm

... we can place workshops on top of tracks.....

I think i may build a soapmakers workshop in the next version...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 10, 2012, 07:26:38 pm

If buildings can be placed on tracks, does that mean you can designate stockpiles on tracks? If so, what happens to the items on the track when a minecart barrels through?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 10, 2012, 07:40:11 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 10, 2012, 10:14:59 am

Will it ever be important to see carts or anything else fly in parabolae? 3d visualizers are cool utilities, but part of what makes DF different from Minecraft or Real-Time Strategy is the ASCII graphics (or primitive substitute of the same layout).

Well, DF has a lot of simulation that isn't directly seen by the player. Good or Bad, it's something that DF has stated to be okay with. So it wont ever be 'important' to the game itself, unless the player wants to see the cart go flying.

Quote

Can minecarts crash into the ceiling if sent rapidly off a ramp in a cave only one storey high (at any given point; obviously above and below the ramp the ceiling is a level higher/lower just as the floor is)?

I think this can be assumed pretty safely to happen. If it didnt happen the minecarts would fly through Z level rock layers, and that's just silly. Given we know that Minecarts can collide with each other, with walls, floors, dorfs (creatures in general), that it can't pass through a floor tile even if coming from under it.

Quote

Will whatever replaces happy/unhappy thoughts be equally hilarious? (E.g., will it still be possible to drink off the gloom of a relative's death? I always thought the weirdness of the system was more realistic than people gave it credit for, much like loyalty cascades, which once fixed so they're not inevitable should be brought back as possible since the concept is a feature, not a bug, in a game that models realistic relationships/loyalties along with realistic everything else.)[/color]

I think I had another question, but now I can't recall what it was.

Well, Toady said he have a lot already planned out for the personality rewrites. He knows his basic goals and what he wants it to do, but it's not 100 percent worked out yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 07:59:02 pm

Quote from: Keldane on April 10, 2012, 07:26:38 pm

If buildings can be placed on tracks, does that mean you can designate stockpiles on tracks? If so, what happens to the items on the track when a minecart barrels through?

I somehow doubt they would be vacuumed up into the cart.

They'll probably be ignored, because I doubt there is code in there for causing a collision with just any random object.  (Of course, there's always the potential for a monarch butterfly's corpse to be left on the tracks, causing a derail that flings projectile ores at any nearby dwarves...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 10, 2012, 08:04:53 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 07:59:02 pm

Quote from: Keldane on April 10, 2012, 07:26:38 pm

If buildings can be placed on tracks, does that mean you can designate stockpiles on tracks? If so, what happens to the items on the track when a minecart barrels through?

I somehow doubt they would be vacuumed up into the cart.

They'll probably be ignored, because I doubt there is code in there for causing a collision with just any random object.  (Of course, there's always the potential for a monarch butterfly's corpse to be left on the tracks, causing a derail that flings projectile ores at any nearby dwarves...)

This makes me think about whether or not living vermin will collide with carts. That could be troublesome!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on April 10, 2012, 08:10:33 pm

Reminds me of that time in Boatmurdered when a monarch butterfly's corpse jammed open a door and let a gobbo ambush in...probably what NW_Kohaku was going for...

Anyhoo, Toady, have you had a chance to playtest this test version? If not, do it sometime--you'll relax (hopefully) and still, technically, be working on DF. If so, how much have you found that these tracks affect your fortress design? Everyone seems to be assuming that it's a huge change, comparable to the shift from 2D to 3D, but is it really? Or is pure dwarven muscle power still the simplest way to haul goods around?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kaypy on April 10, 2012, 08:19:32 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 10, 2012, 07:59:02 pm

They'll probably be ignored, because I doubt there is code in there for causing a collision with just any random object.

That would be the easiest option. Although it would probably also be relatively simple to hook it up to the same flingify routine as bridges use...

What happens if you set a cart to free-roll to its destination but it runs out of momentum? Does a dwarf go collect it (at the players orders or automatically)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fault on April 10, 2012, 08:25:40 pm

if bridges can serve the same purpose as tracks, can they be used to redirect cart flow?

(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv120/pfat417/minecartmodel.png)

this is assuming that minecarts traveling from the south end of figure 1 will turn on the track and head east. If the bridge and floodgate in figure 2 are lowered by a lever or pressure plate, will minecarts start using the straight bridge for direction and head north, or will their pathing still use the track lying beneath the bridge, causing them to turn and barrel into the floodgate?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 11, 2012, 01:38:47 am

Quote from: Fault on April 10, 2012, 08:25:40 pm

(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv120/pfat417/minecartmodel.png)

I foresee many accidental atom smashes or adamantine containing carts :-)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 11, 2012, 01:51:38 am

Quote from: zwei on April 11, 2012, 01:38:47 am

I foresee many accidental atom smashes or adamantine containing carts :-)

Not to mention dwarves, since it's looking like they will be riding along with the carts now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TSTwizby on April 11, 2012, 02:06:40 am

Quote from: Fault on April 10, 2012, 08:25:40 pm

if bridges can serve the same purpose as tracks, can they be used to redirect cart flow?

(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv120/pfat417/minecartmodel.png)

this is assuming that minecarts traveling from the south end of figure 1 will turn on the track and head east. If the bridge and floodgate in figure 2 are lowered by a lever or pressure plate, will minecarts start using the straight bridge for direction and head north, or will their pathing still use the track lying beneath the bridge, causing them to turn and barrel into the floodgate?

'

Wouldn't you only need something like this?

Code: [Select]

+++++
+++++
==_==
+|+++
+|+++
(with = and | as horiz/vert tracks, _ as a bridge).

With the bridge retracted, the cart coming from the left sees a turn downwards, whereas if the bridge is extended it sees a straight path ahead. I'm assuming that since T-junctions won't work, the game doesn't see particular tracks as 'turns', and instead just goes straight at all intersections, and turns when no intersections.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 11, 2012, 02:15:53 am

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 11, 2012, 02:06:40 am

Wouldn't you only need something like this?

Code: [Select]

+++++
+++++
==_==
+|+++
+|+++
(with = and | as horiz/vert tracks, _ as a bridge).

With the bridge retracted, the cart coming from the left sees a turn downwards, whereas if the bridge is extended it sees a straight path ahead. I'm assuming that since T-junctions won't work, the game doesn't see particular tracks as 'turns', and instead just goes straight at all intersections, and turns when no intersections.

My guess is that would be the same as a T intersection with the right branch going in to a wall.  Unless There is special code to "disconnect" a direction when the cell it leads to is a retracted bridge.  Which I don't think is likely from what Toady has been posting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on April 11, 2012, 02:51:00 am

Quote

The carts seem to be grabbing and giving up bins and barrels properly now, so that's good.

How many barrels/bins can a single cart carry?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 11, 2012, 02:52:25 am

Quote from: Khym Chanur on April 11, 2012, 02:51:00 am

Quote

The carts seem to be grabbing and giving up bins and barrels properly now, so that's good.

How many barrels/bins can a single cart carry?

To expand on this, in what terms is a cart's capacity expressed? Is it total volume of items carried, total mass of items carried, number of items, or something else?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 11, 2012, 05:31:39 am

What happens if a hauler loads & launches a cart with orders to ride on it if its route passes out of his/her burrow?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 11, 2012, 07:49:25 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 11, 2012, 05:31:39 am

What happens if a hauler loads & launches a cart with orders to ride on it if its route passes out of his/her burrow?

Perhaps this.

Spoiler: Screw this, I'm outta here (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/i0cH6.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kon on April 11, 2012, 08:57:00 am

Don't know if anyone has asked this yet, but, with dwarfs riding carts, will the sheriff be able to issue DWI's?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Watsst on April 11, 2012, 09:07:46 am

Quote from: Kon on April 11, 2012, 08:57:00 am

Don't know if anyone has asked this yet, but, with dwarfs riding carts, will the sheriff be able to issue DWI's?

Thats hilarious, the whole fort would be imprisoned. I think he would be handing out more DWS's, drinking while sober.

"I see you've been driving, at the speed limit... when was your last drink? You havent enjoyed a drink in a long long time? Deputy ... get my hammer"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 11, 2012, 09:09:09 am

Quote from: Kon on April 11, 2012, 08:57:00 am

Don't know if anyone has asked this yet, but, with dwarfs riding carts, will the sheriff be able to issue DWI'sDWS?

Fixed that.  Driving While Sober.  Public Sobriety is usually considered a hammer worthy offense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: diefortheswarm on April 11, 2012, 09:40:51 am

I assume the current system of powered rails and friction rails are just placeholders until improved mechanisms where they will be replaced with a proper mechanical system.  Am I correct in assuming this?

Is there any advantage to using wood or metal rails as opposed to carved rails other then being able to build on constructed floors.

How will large quantities of stone and ore be stored?  Will you allow stone filled bins in stone stockpiles or will there be something like a stone hopper constructed container?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 10:42:11 am

Quote from: Watsst on April 11, 2012, 09:07:46 am

Thats hilarious, the whole fort would be imprisoned. I think he would be handing out more DWS's, drinking while sober.

"I see you've been driving, at the speed limit... when was your last drink? You havent enjoyed a drink in a long long time? Deputy ... get my hammer"

"BENDER! You're blind, stinkin' SOBER!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xmakina on April 11, 2012, 11:11:13 am

I know the contents of cages become invulnerable, will this be true of mine carts? More specifically, if I drowned a magma safe cart in a pool of magma, will it set the contents on fire/melt them down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 11, 2012, 02:29:00 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on April 11, 2012, 02:15:53 am

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 11, 2012, 02:06:40 am

Wouldn't you only need something like this?

Code: [Select]

+++++
+++++
==_==
+|+++
+|+++
(with = and | as horiz/vert tracks, _ as a bridge).

With the bridge retracted, the cart coming from the left sees a turn downwards, whereas if the bridge is extended it sees a straight path ahead. I'm assuming that since T-junctions won't work, the game doesn't see particular tracks as 'turns', and instead just goes straight at all intersections, and turns when no intersections.

My guess is that would be the same as a T intersection with the right branch going in to a wall.  Unless There is special code to "disconnect" a direction when the cell it leads to is a retracted bridge.  Which I don't think is likely from what Toady has been posting.

I think you misunderstand how tracks work.  From Toady's response, it appears that tracks won't work like Minecraft tracks when it comes to building them.  If you intended that junction to be a corner, then even if the bridge was there the carts would turn.  There's no recalculation of direction at any time as far as I can tell. So, that means if I followed those plans to the letter carts coming up from the 'south' would always derail, and carts going 'east'/'west' would always carry on unless they didn't have enough speed to pass over a one-tile gap.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 02:36:56 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 11, 2012, 02:29:00 pm

I think you misunderstand how tracks work.  From Toady's response, it appears that tracks won't work like Minecraft tracks when it comes to building them.  If you intended that junction to be a corner, then even if the bridge was there the carts would turn.  There's no recalculation of direction at any time as far as I can tell. So, that means if I followed those plans to the letter carts coming up from the 'south' would always derail, and carts going 'east'/'west' would always carry on unless they didn't have enough speed to pass over a one-tile gap.

Northbound carts shouldn't derail so long as the bridge is up.  The bridge should probably cover the "corner" piece of the turn, however, so that it will be treated like a not-intersection when the cart hits the corner if the bridge is either down or up - either it's a normally engraved corner, or it's a bridge where you just continue on the current path forward without it counting as "derailing".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 11, 2012, 04:58:29 pm

Will it be possible to strap a POW into the cart against his/her/its will and send it down the tracks with the cart? I assume this job will require ropes or chains to prevent the prisoner from simply bailing and running off into the sunset.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: khearn on April 11, 2012, 05:10:24 pm

What about brakes? I know we all want carts to be able to go ‼FAST‼, but at time we'll want to slow them down, too. If I need to move stuff down to my forges by the magma sea, 100 z-levels down, I'd like to create a helix of ramps and corners, but it sounds like they'd quickly build up too much speed to make it around the corners. Are there plans for some sort of a "braking section" of tracks to slow carts down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 11, 2012, 05:20:19 pm

Quote from: khearn on April 11, 2012, 05:10:24 pm

What about brakes? I know we all want carts to be able to go ‼FAST‼, but at time we'll want to slow them down, too. If I need to move stuff down to my forges by the magma sea, 100 z-levels down, I'd like to create a helix of ramps and corners, but it sounds like they'd quickly build up too much speed to make it around the corners. Are there plans for some sort of a "braking section" of tracks to slow carts down?

Quote from: Devlog 4/6/12

I added track "stop" constructions, which greatly increase the friction in a square and cause (most) carts to stop (say, blocks, narrowing grooves, whatever might work).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 11, 2012, 05:29:56 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 02:36:56 pm

Northbound carts shouldn't derail so long as the bridge is up.  The bridge should probably cover the "corner" piece of the turn, however, so that it will be treated like a not-intersection when the cart hits the corner if the bridge is either down or up - either it's a normally engraved corner, or it's a bridge where you just continue on the current path forward without it counting as "derailing".

EDIT: On further review, I think you aren't getting it either.

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 11, 2012, 02:06:40 am

Code: [Select]

+++++
+++++
==_==
+|+++
+|+++
(with = and | as horiz/vert tracks, _ as a bridge).

If you designated the horizontal tracks all as one track, and the vertical tracks as one track, and didn't overlap them, there would be no automatic corner.  You'd simply have a track going E/W and stopping before the bridge, and one going N/S stopping before the E/W track.

You'd need something closer to this to get the effect you want:

Quote from: Fault on April 10, 2012, 08:25:40 pm

(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv120/pfat417/minecartmodel.png)

Although, I don't think the floodgate is necessary, and the north track can come a little bit closer to the turn.  I'll write a thread on how I understand rails to work and have Toady verify it as soon as I'm done with this paper I'm working on...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 11, 2012, 05:42:21 pm

Will we be able to remove carved tracks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: khearn on April 11, 2012, 06:32:21 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 11, 2012, 05:20:19 pm

Quote from: khearn on April 11, 2012, 05:10:24 pm

What about brakes? I know we all want carts to be able to go ‼FAST‼, but at time we'll want to slow them down, too. If I need to move stuff down to my forges by the magma sea, 100 z-levels down, I'd like to create a helix of ramps and corners, but it sounds like they'd quickly build up too much speed to make it around the corners. Are there plans for some sort of a "braking section" of tracks to slow carts down?

Quote from: Devlog 4/6/12

I added track "stop" constructions, which greatly increase the friction in a square and cause (most) carts to stop (say, blocks, narrowing grooves, whatever might work).

But I don't want my carts to stop. I just want them to slow down some. They're on their way to the forges down there at level -100 from my hematite mine at level -10. I don't want them to stop at level -11, but I also  don't want them going so fast that they fly off a curve by the time they've gone down 10 ramps to level -20.

(Achievement unlocked: Used they're, their and there properly in the same sentence)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 07:54:33 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 11, 2012, 05:29:56 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 02:36:56 pm

Northbound carts shouldn't derail so long as the bridge is up.  The bridge should probably cover the "corner" piece of the turn, however, so that it will be treated like a not-intersection when the cart hits the corner if the bridge is either down or up - either it's a normally engraved corner, or it's a bridge where you just continue on the current path forward without it counting as "derailing".

EDIT: On further review, I think you aren't getting it either.

Quote from: TSTwizby on April 11, 2012, 02:06:40 am

Code: [Select]

+++++
+++++
==_==
+|+++
+|+++
(with = and | as horiz/vert tracks, _ as a bridge).

If you designated the horizontal tracks all as one track, and the vertical tracks as one track, and didn't overlap them, there would be no automatic corner.  You'd simply have a track going E/W and stopping before the bridge, and one going N/S stopping before the E/W track.

You'd need something closer to this to get the effect you want:

Quote from: Fault on April 10, 2012, 08:25:40 pm

(http://i675.photobucket.com/albums/vv120/pfat417/minecartmodel.png)

Although, I don't think the floodgate is necessary, and the north track can come a little bit closer to the turn.  I'll write a thread on how I understand rails to work and have Toady verify it as soon as I'm done with this paper I'm working on...

I was saying that Fault's idea was the correct idea, that's why I was saying you'd have to change how the bridge was set up so that it covers the "corner".  (And that, no, you wouldn't need the floodgate, and the bridge could be one tile shorter, and that bridge should be displayed while in the "up" position.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 11, 2012, 08:02:47 pm

Why would a bridge be necessary at all? What about only using the floodgate:

Code: [Select]

═══════╦X═══════
 ->    ║
       ║
      |║
      v║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║


Code: [Select]

═══════╦════════
 ->    ║   ->
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║
       ║


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 09:13:11 pm

Quote from: dree12 on April 11, 2012, 08:02:47 pm

Why would a bridge be necessary at all? What about only using the floodgate:

The game may still recognize the "T" intersection as an intersection, instead of treating it as a corner.  In that code that you showed, it still looked like a "T", since you didn't update the graph just because the tile next to it changed.  Would the game be any different?

In that case, the cart would crash into the floodgate, or fly off the rails when approaching from any direction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fault on April 11, 2012, 09:22:51 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 07:54:33 pm

and that bridge should be displayed while in the "up" position

it's been a while since I've used a retracting bridge, but don't they completely dissapear when 'raised'?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 09:28:52 pm

Quote from: Fault on April 11, 2012, 09:22:51 pm

it's been a while since I've used a retracting bridge, but don't they completely dissapear when 'raised'?

No, they have the same "╬" sign as fortifications or cross-junctions in walls when they are one tile wide, or else they have a shape that looks like "╞══╡" when they are multiple tiles wide.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 11, 2012, 09:31:46 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 09:28:52 pm

Quote from: Fault on April 11, 2012, 09:22:51 pm

it's been a while since I've used a retracting bridge, but don't they completely dissapear when 'raised'?

No, they have the same "╬" sign as fortifications or cross-junctions in walls when they are one tile wide, or else they have a shape that looks like "╞══╡" when they are multiple tiles wide.

I think they still completely disappear when raised. Obviously, they are visible when lowered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 11, 2012, 09:34:35 pm

Quote from: dree12 on April 11, 2012, 09:31:46 pm

I think they still completely disappear when raised. Obviously, they are visible when lowered.

No, detractable bridges disappear, while raised bridges leave one edge as wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 10:13:19 pm

Ahhhh, sorry, I was confused by the "raised", and overlooked the "retractable".  Any bridge that can be raised isn't a retractable bridge.   :P

I basically never use retractable bridges, since the wall that forms is often more useful for me, so I just think of all bridges as drawbridges. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 11, 2012, 10:34:50 pm

It's less retracting and more leaving and entering existence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 11, 2012, 11:44:41 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 10:42:11 am

Quote from: Watsst on April 11, 2012, 09:07:46 am

Thats hilarious, the whole fort would be imprisoned. I think he would be handing out more DWS's, drinking while sober.

"I see you've been driving, at the speed limit... when was your last drink? You havent enjoyed a drink in a long long time? Deputy ... get my hammer"

"BENDER! You're blind, stinkin' SOBER!"

"Urist McTeetotaler (bet none of you thought THIS name would ever come up!)!  I can't smell booze on your breath!  Are you secretly a vampire?!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 12, 2012, 12:08:04 am

So apparently someone dedicated their thesis (http://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/s4zru/my_thesis_is_complete_this_is_the_dedication/) in a rather unique way...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 11:58:27 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: Torchy

Can you have interconnected track lines, that is to say, a system where a track could have "tributaries" that lead into it and join into the main line? Such that you could have, for example, three starting branches in a line converging into a single ending segment?

Yeah, you can set that up -- if a track deadends into a corner without actually forming a T, it'll allow the cart to pass into the corner without disruption, and you can set up tributaries that way.  T's themselves don't have a defined preference for direction, so are useless for a cart that isn't passing along the straight part.  4-way tracks just allow carts to continue on straight.  So as it stands, a T is just an unfinished 4-way intersection.

I don't think I properly understand the situation in which this would work, but in the case of a T, wouldn't it be fairly trivial to circumvent this by putting a mechanized accelerator pointing in the right direction?

Not greened because I'm more or less off the grid lately and I didn't read the thread too thoroughly so it's possible that this was discussed and I missed it.

Quote from: diefortheswarm on April 11, 2012, 09:40:51 am

I assume the current system of powered rails and friction rails are just placeholders until improved mechanisms where they will be replaced with a proper mechanical system.  Am I correct in assuming this?

Probably not. These components make reasonable sense in their current states, and generally Toady doesn't implement things he intends to later redo unless it's essential for something else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on April 12, 2012, 12:05:58 pm

With dwarves in carts a horrifying idea came to me. What if we put axedwarves in carts and launch them off ramps at goblin archers? Sort of a primitive drop pod system. We'd have ODST (Orbital Dwarf Shock Troops) thats what.

Even if they would be mulched on impact with the ground I have to wonder:

Will we be able to designate specific carts for specific dwarves or will it only be a first come first served basis?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 12, 2012, 12:18:07 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 11, 2012, 07:54:33 pm

I was saying that Fault's idea was the correct idea, that's why I was saying you'd have to change how the bridge was set up so that it covers the "corner".  (And that, no, you wouldn't need the floodgate, and the bridge could be one tile shorter, and that bridge should be displayed while in the "up" position.)

Oh, my fault (no pun intended) for misinterpreting you.

Also, I think a one-tile retracting bridge at the corner would be enough to make a switch junction.

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on April 12, 2012, 12:05:58 pm

With dwarves in carts a horrifying idea came to me. What if we put axedwarves in carts and launch them off ramps at goblin archers? Sort of a primitive drop pod system. We'd have ODST (Orbital Dwarf Shock Troops) thats what.
[...]
Will we be able to designate specific carts for specific dwarves or will it only be a first come first served basis?

You definately aren't the first to think of that, and even if so you can restrict things with burrows.


EDIT:
There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding how rails work and how they are designated.  I hope to clear this up with some thourough examples and walkthroughs.

NOTE: At the moment, this is only my understanding of how they work; while I feel confident in it I am not infallible by any means.  I hope to get Toady to verify the correctness of this next Future of the Fortress responce. (Unverified conclusions will be marked in green, verified in cyan.)

Example Walkthroughs:

Spoiler: "Parallel Tracks" (click to show/hide)

Let's say you're pressed for space but want to fit multiple tracks through this tunnel:

Code: [Select]

█....█
█....█
█....█
█....█
█....█
█....█
█....█
Well, it's obvious you can fit at least two N/S tracks in:

Code: [Select]

█X...█
█X...█
█X...█
█X...█
█X...█
█X...█
█X...█


Code: [Select]

█║.X.█
█║.X.█
█║.X.█
█║.X.█
█║.X.█
█║.X.█
█║.X.█


Code: [Select]

█║..║█
█║..║█
█║..║█
█║..║█
█║..║█
█║..║█
█║..║█
But you can do better than that, in fact you can fit four full N/S tracks in this tunnel, building them this way:

Code: [Select]

█║X.║█
█║X.║█
█║X.║█
█║X.║█
█║X.║█
█║X.║█
█║X.║█


Code: [Select]

█║║X║█
█║║X║█
█║║X║█
█║║X║█
█║║X║█
█║║X║█
█║║X║█


Code: [Select]

█║║║║█
█║║║║█
█║║║║█
█║║║║█
█║║║║█
█║║║║█
█║║║║█
Now you have four rail lines in a space no more than as many tiles wide.

Conclusion:

Rails designated side-by-side in parallel do not affect each other, and can be placed without leaving a gap in-between.

Spoiler: "Designating Long Straight Tracks" (click to show/hide)

Suppose whatever the maximum length of track that can be designated at once isn't long enough for you, and you end up with this:

Code: [Select]

█...█
█...█
█...█
█.╖.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
You might think that merely desinating another N/S rail NORTH of that will work...

Code: [Select]

█.X.█
█.X.█
█.X.█
█.╖.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
...What's this?! There's a gap in the line!

Code: [Select]

█.║.█
█.║.█
█.╙.█
█.╖.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
It probably won't have much effect besides being a speed bump, but it looks bad and we want it out of there. So we designate a 2-long N/S rail over the gap:

Code: [Select]

█.║.█
█.║.█
█.X.█
█.X.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
And now we have a nice and neat, complete rail line!

Code: [Select]

█.║.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
█.║.█
█.║.█


Conclusion:

In order for straight tracks to link up, they must be designated in overlapping segments.

Spoiler: "Designating a Turn" (click to show/hide)

Suppose we want to have a track come up from the SOUTH and turn EAST just SE of this statue here:

Code: [Select]

...N...
.......
..Ω....
W.....E
.......
.......
...S...
So then, we start by designating a N/S rail like so:

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...X...
...X...
...X...
...X...
After the engraver is finished, the result is such:

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...╖...
...║...
...║...
...║...
Now, your next action would probably be to designate an E/W rail this way:

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...╖XXX
...║...
...║...
...║...
But wait! Let's see what happens when the engraver is finished...

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...╖╒══
...║...
...║...
...║...
That isn't what we wanted at all! Now carts coming from both directions will run off the track and crash. How do we remedy this? Simple, we designate an E/W track like this:

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...XX══
...║...
...║...
...║...
Then our engraver comes to link the two tracks...

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...╔═══
...║...
...║...
...║...
Perfect! We have the turn we wanted now!


Conclusion:

In order for tracks to turn, E/W and N/S must also be designated in overlapping segments.

Spoiler: "'Fake' T-Junctions" (click to show/hide)

Let's say we want to make a simple T-junction next to the statue:

Code: [Select]

...N...
.......
..Ω....
W.....E
.......
.......
...S...
The natural responce would be to designate the rail in two parts:

Code: [Select]

...X...
...X...
..ΩX...
...X...
...X...
...X...
...X...


Code: [Select]

...║...
...║...
..Ω║...
...XXXX
...║...
...║...
...║...


Code: [Select]

...║...
...║...
..Ω║...
...╠═══
...║...
...║...
...║...
But this won't work. The reason why is that a cart coming from the EAST will not choose a direction to travel in, but instead will just keep barrelling WESTwards off the rails.

Instead, start with a corner:

Code: [Select]

.......
.......
..Ω....
...╔═══
...║...
...║...
...║...
Then designate a N/S rail all the way up to but not overlapping the corner.

Code: [Select]

...X...
...X...
..ΩX...
...╔═══
...║...
...║...
...║...
There is no need to leave an empty tile between the end of this rail and the corner.

Code: [Select]

...║...
...║...
..Ω╙...
...╔═══
...║...
...║...
...║...
Carts coming from the NORTH should be able to jump the short gap between rails and continue SOUTH with no trouble, while carts from the EAST will turn SOUTH as well.  Carts from the SOUTH will turn EAST unless going too fast, but it might be very difficult to attempt to make them go NORTH reliably.


Conclusion:

It is possible to make a pseudo-T junction where two tracks 'merge' by carving a rail up to (but not onto) a corner.

EDIT: all verified (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3243511) by Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on April 12, 2012, 12:52:50 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 12, 2012, 12:18:07 pm

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants on April 12, 2012, 12:05:58 pm

With dwarves in carts a horrifying idea came to me. What if we put axedwarves in carts and launch them off ramps at goblin archers? Sort of a primitive drop pod system. We'd have ODST (Orbital Dwarf Shock Troops) thats what.
[...]
Will we be able to designate specific carts for specific dwarves or will it only be a first come first served basis?

You definately aren't the first to think of that, and even if so you can restrict things with burrows.

I may be rather new to the forums but by no means did I mean to imply that I was the first to think about this. I would be deeply suprised if I was. I was simply thinking out loud is all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 12, 2012, 02:40:57 pm

I was immediately drawn to the following comment today:

"Hopefully that code linking vehicles/projectiles and units will also set up some horrifying possibilities for collisions of carts and units, which is also coming up."

Hopefully, lol.  Thank you Toady, for starting my day with a good laugh :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 12, 2012, 03:27:25 pm

Quote

vehicles/projectiles

So vehicles are projectiles, eh? Here's hoping the first minecart versions have size/striking-surface bugs that allow them to stick in goblins like bolts...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 12, 2012, 03:43:06 pm

Quote from: smirk on April 12, 2012, 03:27:25 pm

Quote

vehicles/projectiles

So vehicles are projectiles, eh? Here's hoping the first minecart versions have size/striking-surface bugs that allow them to stick in goblins like bolts...

Carts are raw-editable.  Why hope for a bug, when you can do it on purpose? 

Since dwarves can ride them, you could also your carts skateboards that just happen to grind double-rails continuously for a Tony Hawk Fortress.  Be sure to add jumps so you get more stunt multipliers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on April 12, 2012, 04:42:15 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

That's feature creep that I think most people would be completely ok with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 12, 2012, 05:11:19 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

Ooh, I hope not.  Thankfully since carts are vehicles and steeds are units, we might get to avoid some undue bloating...  I'm more worried about bloats in the mining direction, frankly.  Or in workshops, since Toady might want to give us a reason to use carts (besides for bowling with goblins, of course).


On that topic, I think I've figured out a way to make soldiers ride the tracks:

First, get your soldiers into gear and station them (as civilians) in a 'ready room' isolated from the rest of the fort with burrows.  There should be at least as many stops in this room as there are dwarves in the squad; each should have an empty minecart in it.  Make sure your dwarves have the proper hauling skill enabled, and order each of the stops to push off empty with the dwarf hitching a ride (you may need to stage it to avoid crashes).  Don't forget to activate the squad when it reaches the battlezone.

Similarly, it should be possible to build rollercoasters by simply building one stop on a loop of track and ordering an empty cart to be pushed off every so often with the dwarf hitching a ride.


The specifics will depend on some minor details, namely...

Under which of the following circumstances will a dwarf 'bail out' of a cart, if at all?

• The cart comes to a complete stop, although not on a stop construction.
  
• The cart passes through a stop construction without stopping.
  
• The cart passes off the track.
  
• The cart is flying through the air.
  
• The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart.
  
• The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart, which is flying though the air.
  
• The cart collides with an enemy.
  
• The cart collides with an enemy while flying through the air.
  
• The cart leaves the dwarf's burrow.
  
• The dwarf's squad is activated.
  
• The dwarf's squad recieves an order.
  
• The job is cancelled from the stop the cart launched from.
  
• The cart passes through liquid.
  
• The cart collides with a swimming unit.
  
• The dwarf gets hungry, thirsty, or tired.
  
• The dwarf goes On Break.
  

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 12, 2012, 05:17:55 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on April 12, 2012, 05:11:19 pm

The specifics will depend on some minor details, namely...

Under which of the following circumstances will a dwarf 'bail out' of a cart, if at all?

• The cart comes to a complete stop, although not on a stop construction.
  
• The cart passes through a stop construction without stopping.
  
• The cart passes off the track.
  
• The cart is flying through the air.
  
• The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart.
  
• The dwarf sees an enemy while riding the cart, which is flying though the air.
  
• The cart collides with an enemy.
  
• The cart collides with an enemy while flying through the air.
  
• The cart leaves the dwarf's burrow.
  
• The dwarf's squad is activated.
  
• The dwarf's squad recieves an order.
  
• The job is cancelled from the stop the cart launched from.
  
• The cart passes through liquid.
  
• The cart collides with a swimming unit.
  
• The dwarf gets hungry, thirsty, or tired.
  
• The dwarf goes On Break.
  

Don't forget, "The dwarf sees a particularly nice sock."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 12, 2012, 05:41:43 pm

Oh crap, i can see 'on break' killing dwarves regularly if thats possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 12, 2012, 05:54:29 pm

"Break time! *hops out* Time to see what Urist is up t- *SPLAT*"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 12, 2012, 06:49:17 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

Mounted Combat is a currently Release 7, along with the Combat Speed Split. So, I think it's going to be /very/ unlikely that Toady will starting doing Release 7 stuff.

And from a previous Dev Entry it also seem that Adventure won't be able to ride carts this time around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 08:52:31 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 12, 2012, 06:49:17 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

Mounted Combat is a currently Release 7, along with the Combat Speed Split. So, I think it's going to be /very/ unlikely that Toady will starting doing Release 7 stuff.

He's said already that he's going to re-order those releases. It's possible, although I'd think the mine maps and 3d veins would be a smoother segue.

Quote

And from a previous Dev Entry it also seem that Adventure won't be able to ride carts this time around.

Unless I missed something, I think all he said is that it's not in yet. If it doesn't go in for this release though, it will doubtless be in the release with adventure mode mines.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 12, 2012, 09:11:04 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 12, 2012, 06:49:17 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

And from a previous Dev Entry it also seem that Adventure won't be able to ride carts this time around.

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

They don't interact with them yet.  As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 12, 2012, 09:14:22 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 08:52:31 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 12, 2012, 06:49:17 pm

Quote from: Squanto on April 12, 2012, 03:52:27 pm

Am I the only one that sees this as heading towards mounted combat feature creep?

Mounted Combat is a currently Release 7, along with the Combat Speed Split. So, I think it's going to be /very/ unlikely that Toady will starting doing Release 7 stuff.

He's said already that he's going to re-order those releases. It's possible, although I'd think the mine maps and 3d veins would be a smoother segue.

Quote

And from a previous Dev Entry it also seem that Adventure won't be able to ride carts this time around.

Unless I missed something, I think all he said is that it's not in yet. If it doesn't go in for this release though, it will doubtless be in the release with adventure mode mines.

Even if Release 7 does become Release 2, it still probably wont be happening with this release. Toady said he'll need to reorganize them. And it seems like he wants to bump up Personality Rewrite up sooner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on April 12, 2012, 10:15:48 pm

Oh my goodness the new devlog. 

Antsy pants update dance urge . . . rising

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 12, 2012, 10:19:10 pm

Oh my god that log is amazing. Want level increased by 10,000 points.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 12, 2012, 10:24:40 pm

Agreed.

Is it too much to hope that marksdwarfs in carts full of bolts will reload?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 12, 2012, 10:39:14 pm

Wow...

This game has the best dev logs.  :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on April 12, 2012, 10:42:45 pm

You guys are gonna be so insanely depressed/furious if this just turns out to be one of the most heartless and over-extended April Fools jokes ever.  I mean, seriously:  The degree to which Tarn's dev blog updates follow right behind people's numerous wishful requests is getting kinda creepy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 12, 2012, 10:43:59 pm

Looks like some of you guys, especially Arkenstone, were right on the money.

Quote from: front page

I set a hauler to ride a minecart to its next stop. That happened to take the dwarf down eight ramps and then up a launch ramp into an open cavern. High up in the cavern there was a wide ledge and on the ledge there was a goblin, chilling out right where I had created it. I activated the dwarf's squad, and he had just enough hang-time at the top of the flight arc to get a punch in. The goblin struck back but the dwarf jumped on to the ledge, where they continued to fight as the cart fell down into the darkness. It'll be interesting to see the new contenders for "worst dodge decision" that come out of this, before I tackle that problem, but overall the item riding system seems to be functioning. As we continue to iron out issues there, it might also let caged creatures interact more with their environment later on.

*Dwarf rides a cart that flies off a cliff through mid-air*

"AH! THAT'S where I left my pig tail sock!"

*Jumps out of the cart as soon as he has LOS to the sock, diving 40 z-levels onto the nice, inviting stone floor.*

So, uh, build your dwarven rollercoasters with care, guys.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 12, 2012, 10:44:38 pm

Quote from: Exponent on April 12, 2012, 10:42:45 pm

You guys are gonna be so insanely depressed/furious if this just turns out to be one of the most heartless and over-extended April Fools jokes ever.  I mean, seriously:  The degree to which Tarn's dev blog updates follow right behind people's numerous wishful requests is getting kinda creepy.

Welcome to the land of "good developers." May I take your order?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 10:57:48 pm

The new dev log does sound awesome, but remember that in practice badass stunts like that will be extremely rare. That one required a specifically built track, "random" chance of an enemy in the right place, and possibly also the random chance of the dodge.
The most military utility we'll probably get out of this will be the ability to use tracks to quickly get soldiers from barracks near the entrance to cavern areas where attacks were a foreseen possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 12, 2012, 11:04:55 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 10:57:48 pm

The new dev log does sound awesome, but remember that in practice badass stunts like that will be extremely rare. That one required a specifically built track, "random" chance of an enemy in the right place, and possibly also the random chance of the dodge.
The most military utility we'll probably get out of this will be the ability to use tracks to quickly get soldiers from barracks near the entrance to cavern areas where attacks were a foreseen possibility.

Enemy approach vectors are not random if you know what you are doing. 

I embark on slopes and hills (especially those neat river valleys where they cut cliffs into the landscape) very frequently for a reason - removing ramps on a natural slope selectively lets you basically carve out the only path to your fortress being a giant set of hairpin curves while in full view of my marksdwarf towers. 

The same would go for minecarts - just make the only entrance to your fort be a position that your carts are set up to pass by.  In fact, since we have mechanical accelerators, you could even set up a pressure plate as the switch that launches your dwarven chariot teams, so that you can time your flying cart entrance with precision.

As long as we can control the terrain, we can control the battle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hiiri on April 12, 2012, 11:10:32 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 10:57:48 pm

The new dev log does sound awesome, but remember that in practice badass stunts like that will be extremely rare. That one required a specifically built track, "random" chance of an enemy in the right place, and possibly also the random chance of the dodge.

That specific scenario is extremely rare. But Dwarf fortress is 75% built of random, hilarious, absurd, rare events.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 12, 2012, 11:38:50 pm

Quote from: Hiiri on April 12, 2012, 11:10:32 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 10:57:48 pm

The new dev log does sound awesome, but remember that in practice badass stunts like that will be extremely rare. That one required a specifically built track, "random" chance of an enemy in the right place, and possibly also the random chance of the dodge.

That specific scenario is extremely rare. But Dwarf fortress is 75% built of random, hilarious, absurd, rare events.

I foresee many a cavern-coaster having the military derail to fight giant cave swallows and what all else. As Hiiri said, it's less about having it happen with any frequency, and more knowing it could happen.


I'm much more intrigued by the comment on letting caged creatures do more, since I've got no idea what that might entail. Bears swiping through the bars? Monkeys stealing booze from passersby? Dare I say, prisoner escapes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 12, 2012, 11:46:38 pm

I knew it! He is done with hauling and now he is getting sidetracked. Now we are going to have two or three months while he works on how prisoners can interact with different cage materials

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 12:04:17 am

No, he hasn't gotten side tracked just yet. Minecarts is still part of better hauling.  I suspect that dorfs hoping out of carts was emergent behavior instead of something new to let them purposefully hop out minecarts.

I suspect that he's just about done with Minecarts. Now it's a question if he'll add in switch tracks or lazy susans, and if he'll make minecarts applicable for Adventures to gallivant in.

So yea, he hasnt wonder away from Better Hauling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gilihad on April 13, 2012, 12:09:40 am

Will dwarves be able to shoot from minecarts? Your last post brought to mind that if squads can be activated mid-minecart ride, crossbow dwarves with ammo on them could be use for dwarven drive-by shootings. Would a squad unit jump out of the cart as soon as it was activated though? How does minecart interaction differ between haulers and military units (if at all)?


Just... tell me that I will be able to make a giant ramp off which I launch crossbow dwarves who rain death from above, before splatting into the ground.

Maybe another ramp could be made to catch them, but I don't know how impacting another ramp in a minecart would affect dwarves? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 13, 2012, 12:20:08 am

Thanks for the answers from before, Toady.

What does a dwarf need to hitch a ride on a cart?  One grasp?  Two?  Legs?

Quote

The goblin struck back but the dwarf jumped on to the ledge, where they continued to fight as the cart fell down into the darkness. It'll be interesting to see the new contenders for "worst dodge decision" that come out of this,

So, er, if I'm reading this right, the dwarf was lucky in dodging onto the cliff?  Or did it cancel its own ride?  I wonder if a dwarf could dodge in front of the cart...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 13, 2012, 12:21:21 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 12, 2012, 11:46:38 pm

I knew it! He is done with hauling and now he is getting sidetracked.

Sidetracked?  Is that supposed to be a pun?    ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 13, 2012, 02:53:44 am

I'm bad enough at them in french (or good enough to get threats of being burned each and every time I use them) to not dare make any in english.
But I still accept flowers and presents though ^^

I think we can look for two or three months of dev logs before the release, if toady is fixing the cages overpowering its going to take months. And no carts for anyone before critters get rolls to break their restraints... I hope I'm mistaken, I'm a musician not a programmer...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lordinquisitor on April 13, 2012, 04:54:21 am

I call dibs on the idea of using minecarts as dwarven drop pods. Someone else probably already did, but i don`t care. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 13, 2012, 05:01:06 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 13, 2012, 02:53:44 am

I'm bad enough at them in french (or good enough to get threats of being burned each and every time I use them) to not dare make any in english.
But I still accept flowers and presents though ^^

I think we can look for two or three months of dev logs before the release, if toady is fixing the cages overpowering its going to take months. And no carts for anyone before critters get rolls to break their restraints... I hope I'm mistaken, I'm a musician not a programmer...

Wow, good work in taking one line of today's devlog and extrapolating all the work that will be done in the next 3 months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 13, 2012, 05:11:45 am

Thanks, I'm pulling all of this out of dream I had last night, I was in a strange place where space and time were warped beyond recognition and toady was helped by yog sothoth. He was programing this to free himself from the ancient because he was abducted and had to live like a dwarf

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xmakina on April 13, 2012, 05:44:14 am

Quote from: monk12 on April 12, 2012, 11:38:50 pm

Quote from: Hiiri on April 12, 2012, 11:10:32 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 12, 2012, 10:57:48 pm

The new dev log does sound awesome, but remember that in practice badass stunts like that will be extremely rare. That one required a specifically built track, "random" chance of an enemy in the right place, and possibly also the random chance of the dodge.

That specific scenario is extremely rare. But Dwarf fortress is 75% built of random, hilarious, absurd, rare events.

I foresee many a cavern-coaster having the military derail to fight giant cave swallows and what all else. As Hiiri said, it's less about having it happen with any frequency, and more knowing it could happen.


I'm much more intrigued by the comment on letting caged creatures do more, since I've got no idea what that might entail. Bears swiping through the bars? Monkeys stealing booze from passersby? Dare I say, prisoner escapes?

My suspicion is that cages will stop making their inhabitants invulnerable, based on an assumption that Minecarts are using the same code as Cages to hold things. Cages could just stretch the imagination enough that their contents wouldn't drown (the cage is a sealed box), but there's no way you can explain not drowning when you're sat in a mine cart under 10 urists of water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 13, 2012, 06:48:53 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 12, 2012, 11:04:55 pm

As long as we can control the terrain, we can control the battle.

...This deserves an epic movie quote in response, but sadly I cannot think of any that would fit...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 13, 2012, 07:44:15 am

I would like to know if we will be able to fill a minecart with items, launch it down a ramp, and then throw it at goblins and expect the items in the minecart to spread, hit and possibly damage creatures, like the item was thrown ?

By items i obviously mean throwing *large serrated iron discs*, -goblin bone bolts- x25 or some other ridiculously overblown option like !!giant desert scorpion venom barrels!!

Quote from: Exponent on April 12, 2012, 10:42:45 pm

You guys are gonna be so insanely depressed/furious if this just turns out to be one of the most heartless and over-extended April Fools jokes ever.  I mean, seriously:  The degree to which Tarn's dev blog updates follow right behind people's numerous wishful requests is getting kinda creepy.

Toady wouldn't do this. Especially when he lives on donations by players.

And april fools is just one day, and his devlogs started minecart madness before April.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Stoup on April 13, 2012, 07:48:10 am

Quote from: hermes on April 13, 2012, 12:20:08 am

What does a dwarf need to hitch a ride on a cart?  One grasp?  Two?  Legs?

Ooh, what a fascinating thought.

Following up on this question, will paraplegic dwarves who cannot walk use minecarts to get around? Do you think this might lead into the future-planned mechanical augmentations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 13, 2012, 08:19:50 am

I foresee Crossbow-equipped dwarves launched to air, hailing down bolts and then descending back underound or behind walls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nocker on April 13, 2012, 08:34:06 am

Quote from: Toady

I set a hauler to ride a minecart to its next stop. That happened to take the dwarf down eight ramps and then up a launch ramp into an open cavern. High up in the cavern there was a wide ledge and on the ledge there was a goblin, chilling out right where I had created it. I activated the dwarf's squad, and he had just enough hang-time at the top of the flight arc to get a punch in. The goblin struck back but the dwarf jumped on to the ledge, where they continued to fight as the cart fell down into the darkness.

Damn, Toady, I just arrived at my company and read this. Now how can I work for the rest of the day with all this jizz in my pants?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xmakina on April 13, 2012, 09:03:20 am

Quote from: nocker on April 13, 2012, 08:34:06 am

Quote from: Toady

I set a hauler to ride a minecart to its next stop. That happened to take the dwarf down eight ramps and then up a launch ramp into an open cavern. High up in the cavern there was a wide ledge and on the ledge there was a goblin, chilling out right where I had created it. I activated the dwarf's squad, and he had just enough hang-time at the top of the flight arc to get a punch in. The goblin struck back but the dwarf jumped on to the ledge, where they continued to fight as the cart fell down into the darkness.

Damn, Toady, I just arrived at my company and read this. Now how can I work for the rest of the day with all this jizz in my pants?

It's okay, keeping a spare pair of pants at work is part of the learning cliff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 09:08:08 am

Quote from: Naryar on April 13, 2012, 07:44:15 am

I would like to know if we will be able to fill a minecart with items, launch it down a ramp, and then throw it at goblins and expect the items in the minecart to spread, hit and possibly damage creatures, like the item was thrown ?

By items i obviously mean throwing *large serrated iron discs*, -goblin bone bolts- x25 or some other ridiculously overblown option like !!giant desert scorpion venom barrels!!

I bet this question can be answer with a simple in game experiment. If you drop objects on creatures now, does it hurt them?

It seems like Minecarts physics, it's projectile arcs, and it's ability to hurt things via collision is mostly self contained within minecarts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maggarg - Eater of chicke on April 13, 2012, 09:35:56 am

I somehow find myself envisioning Rollercoaster Tycoon: Dwarf Edition

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 13, 2012, 10:03:59 am

Quote from: Maggarg - Eater of chicke on April 13, 2012, 09:35:56 am

I somehow find myself envisioning Rollercoaster Tycoon: Dwarf Edition

Clearly, we need to give goblins and elves the ability to ride minecarts, then, and we can then make the entrance minecart for free, but have it crash into a plaza where the medical center's band-aids, the concession stand's drinks, snacks, and all the rides are $50 apiece, and there is no way to path back out.

That's how I made MY money, anyway...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 13, 2012, 11:47:59 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 13, 2012, 10:03:59 am

Quote from: Maggarg - Eater of chicke on April 13, 2012, 09:35:56 am

I somehow find myself envisioning Rollercoaster Tycoon: Dwarf Edition

Clearly, we need to give goblins and elves the ability to ride minecarts, then, and we can then make the entrance minecart for free, but have it crash into a plaza where the medical center's band-aids, the concession stand's drinks, snacks, and all the rides are $50 apiece, and there is no way to path back out.

That's how I made MY money, anyway...

Now I want Minecarts to get an update when Toady does Fort Mode taverns/inns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 13, 2012, 01:27:39 pm

Quote from: Stoup on April 13, 2012, 07:48:10 am

Quote from: hermes on April 13, 2012, 12:20:08 am

What does a dwarf need to hitch a ride on a cart?  One grasp?  Two?  Legs?

Ooh, what a fascinating thought.

Following up on this question, will paraplegic dwarves who cannot walk use minecarts to get around? Do you think this might lead into the future-planned mechanical augmentations?

I'm pretty sure that the answer to this will be that there's no specific plans there, and that the systems involved in minecarts are not related to body structures and thus unsuitable for prosthetics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on April 13, 2012, 01:40:21 pm

Did Toady ever say if this was when he was going to make it possible to actually ride mounts?

If not, is this the time you're going to make it possible to actually ride mounts? For the AI to do so?  It seems to me like it'd be the same code for minecarts and mounts both.

This isn't a suggestion (we know it's an "eventually" thing), and it isn't a "when" (we almost never get actual timelines that get followed), it's just a "is it now? because it looks like it might be now but I'm not sure..." question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 13, 2012, 01:49:42 pm

Generally any "when" question receives a "no timeline" answer. Since Toady hasn't mentioned it, it's probably not something he wants to do imminently.

Regarding paid minecart rides as tourism, that sounds like a reasonable thing, and it would be cool if it had a value at least partially dependant on the archtecture and artifacts you see on the ride. Something like that would be a great addition, as would museums and other tourism stuff. I don't know how period-appropriate it is though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 13, 2012, 01:55:05 pm

Quote from: Fieari on April 13, 2012, 01:40:21 pm

Did Toady ever say if this was when he was going to make it possible to actually ride mounts?

If not, is this the time you're going to make it possible to actually ride mounts? For the AI to do so?  It seems to me like it'd be the same code for minecarts and mounts both.

Quote from: Cruxador on April 13, 2012, 01:49:42 pm

Generally any "when" question receives a "no timeline" answer. Since Toady hasn't mentioned it, it's probably not something he wants to do imminently.

Also, as touched on earlier in the thread, it's a Release 7 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) thing.  Even though it's related, I doubt he'll go on that big a tangent right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 13, 2012, 02:06:20 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 13, 2012, 05:11:45 am

Thanks, I'm pulling all of this out of dream I had last night, I was in a strange place where space and time were warped beyond recognition and toady was helped by yog sothoth. He was programing this to free himself from the ancient because he was abducted and had to live like a dwarf

Wow, I had the same dream, except it was Tsathagua, two Elder Gods whose very names invoke insanity, and Loretta Lynn... err, long story.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 13, 2012, 02:59:53 pm

Quote from: Mr S on April 13, 2012, 02:06:20 pm

Wow, I had the same dream, except it was Tsathagua, two Elder Gods whose very names invoke insanity, and Loretta Lynn... err, long story.

Tell us who those gods were?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: khearn on April 13, 2012, 03:56:53 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 13, 2012, 02:59:53 pm

Quote from: Mr S on April 13, 2012, 02:06:20 pm

Wow, I had the same dream, except it was Tsathagua, two Elder Gods whose very names invoke insanity, and Loretta Lynn... err, long story.

Tell us who those gods were?

http://bit.ly/HRN5UC (http://bit.ly/HRN5UC)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 13, 2012, 04:58:36 pm

Can we get a search function for the arena's creature spawning menu? With the recent flood of new creatures and their man/giant versions, finding the right creature takes a lot of page scrolling, even if it's in alphabetical order.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 13, 2012, 05:51:39 pm

Quote from: greatorder on April 13, 2012, 05:50:09 pm

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 13, 2012, 04:58:36 pm

Can we get a search function for the arena's creature spawning menu?

this, so damned much. I find it annoying searching for ages through the 'giant' area, only to find that I missed it and have to go all the way back through it...

Yeah it would be really good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 05:55:34 pm

Quote from: Naryar on April 13, 2012, 05:51:39 pm

Quote from: greatorder on April 13, 2012, 05:50:09 pm

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on April 13, 2012, 04:58:36 pm

Can we get a search function for the arena's creature spawning menu?

this, so damned much. I find it annoying searching for ages through the 'giant' area, only to find that I missed it and have to go all the way back through it...

Yeah it would be really good.

*cough*Suggestion*cough*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on April 13, 2012, 06:24:54 pm

has anybody heard whether our current fortresses will be compatible with the next release? If I'm going to have to start all over again for mine carts, I will be disgruntled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 06:32:01 pm

Quote from: greenwatering on April 13, 2012, 06:24:54 pm

has anybody heard whether our current fortresses will be compatible with the next release? If I'm going to have to start all over again for mine carts, I will be disgruntled.

I dont think he's done anything that is going to break Save Compat, but Toady hasn't said anything yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 13, 2012, 06:37:34 pm

He mentioned adding a default minecart system for pre-existing forts, so they should be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on April 13, 2012, 06:39:15 pm

Quote from: greenwatering on April 13, 2012, 06:24:54 pm

has anybody heard whether our current fortresses will be compatible with the next release? If I'm going to have to start all over again for mine carts, I will be disgruntled.

On the devlog from the 4th, Tarn said:

Quote

If it's not too time-consuming to convert the whole eventual system, I'll give the 34.02-7 saves a default minecart tool as well -- as it stands they wouldn't have them.

So he wants to be able to ensure that it is not just save compatible, but save "upgradeable".  I don't recall him ever saying anything final, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 13, 2012, 06:40:25 pm

generally, unless otherwise stated, newer versions are compatible with old saves. the last version that was planned to break compatibility was 31.00 version, or the first df2010. 34.02 broke compatibility too because of a save corrupting bug with 34.01, however, many of the features and bugfixes usually require a regen, so you might miss out on some stuff. hopefully not minecarts

E:how did i miss so many ninjas?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on April 13, 2012, 07:58:54 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 13, 2012, 06:40:25 pm

how did i miss so many ninjas?

A question often asked, but seldom more than once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 13, 2012, 08:11:35 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 13, 2012, 06:40:25 pm

generally, unless otherwise stated, newer versions are compatible with old saves. the last version that was planned to break compatibility was 31.00 version, or the first df2010. 34.02 broke compatibility too because of a save corrupting bug with 34.01, however, many of the features and bugfixes usually require a regen, so you might miss out on some stuff. hopefully not minecarts

E:how did i miss so many ninjas?

0.34.01 was also intended to break compatibility. It was the only version who could only open its own saves and whose saves could only be opened in it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 13, 2012, 08:29:07 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 13, 2012, 06:40:25 pm

<snip>
E:how did i miss so many ninjas?

Well, they ARE ninjas.  You're supposed to miss them, unless they want you to see them :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 09:31:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

That would be simultaneously awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mine carts have so much !!scientific!! potential.


Any, my question:
Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 09:42:48 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 09:31:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

That would be simultaneously awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mine carts have so much !!scientific!! potential.


Any, my question:
Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Well, in an earlier Dev Log, Toady said that making Adventure ride in carts was easy, and that'd he do that first, but it seems like he carried through with just fort mode. It's probably going to still happen for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 13, 2012, 09:44:44 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 09:31:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

That would be simultaneously awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mine carts have so much !!scientific!! potential.


Any, my question:
Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

They don't interact with them yet.  As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 13, 2012, 09:49:10 pm

Alternative name:
 Underground
 Rail
 Interred
 Shock
 Troops

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nekronuke on April 13, 2012, 09:53:50 pm

Hmm. any plans on adding smaller versions of siege machines? like scorpions and mangonels?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on April 13, 2012, 10:22:49 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 13, 2012, 09:49:10 pm

Alternative name:
 Underground
 Rail
 Interred
 Shock
 Troops

"Welcome to U.R.I.S.T., Urist! I expect the very best from this new division of..."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 13, 2012, 11:07:22 pm

Quote from: nekronuke on April 13, 2012, 09:53:50 pm

Hmm. any plans on adding smaller versions of siege machines? like scorpions and mangonels?

*dons his ToadyOne voice*

Sounds good. But no time line or promises.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 11:54:46 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 13, 2012, 09:44:44 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 09:31:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

That would be simultaneously awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mine carts have so much !!scientific!! potential.


Any, my question:
Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

They don't interact with them yet.  As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.

I remember that quote, but that was before he changed his mind and added fortress dwarves riding in carts for this release. I'm asking if this means anything has changed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 14, 2012, 12:12:08 am

Quote from: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 11:54:46 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 13, 2012, 09:44:44 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on April 13, 2012, 09:31:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 13, 2012, 09:03:35 pm

The latest devlog is really, really, really, cool. I can't wait to launch carts full of marksdwarves over invaders.

That would be simultaneously awe-inspiring and hilarious. Mine carts have so much !!scientific!! potential.


Any, my question:
Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?

They don't interact with them yet.  As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.

I remember that quote, but that was before he changed his mind and added fortress dwarves riding in carts for this release. I'm asking if this means anything has changed.

Goes back to my answer. It was dubbed easy, just the order got reset. I think it's pretty likely that Adventure will be able to ride Minecarts, as I'm sure it's clearly obviously how much fun that can be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on April 14, 2012, 05:17:46 am

He didn't say he didn't add it for adventurers.  It would be strange to add the ability for units to do something like this which requires the complexity of working in the whole dwarf AI, and not have the adventurer be able to do so as well.  In many respects, the adventurer is treated exactly the same as any other random mook, just with a UI.  I guess there's work required to add interface elements, but that's hardly going to be anything groundbreaking - most likely it will just be lumped in with the 'u' functions. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 14, 2012, 06:32:49 am

Quote from: khearn on April 13, 2012, 03:56:53 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 13, 2012, 02:59:53 pm

Quote from: Mr S on April 13, 2012, 02:06:20 pm

Wow, I had the same dream, except it was Tsathagua, two Elder Gods whose very names invoke insanity, and Loretta Lynn... err, long story.

Tell us who those gods were?

http://bit.ly/HRN5UC (http://bit.ly/HRN5UC)

Why didnt I go insane from these? What a ripoff.

Anyway, you are all getting hyped about a) launching carts past enemies, b) riding carts in adventurer mode. Firstly, it's going to be a rare case that you'll have trouble even setting up. Toady managed cause he can place enemies where he likes, and they can be set not to move. More likely your "army carts" will land where the enemies are, than past some exotic ledge with them. But, then again, there's always room for various stupid dwarven tricks. Secondly, I will not be looking forward to such an implementation until a fort can be retired. Currently you need to make a thriving fort, elaborately design everything, then kill off everyone in it and throw all items around in it, just for a rollercoaster ride for your adventurer. And when you've had your fun with that, you'll find it difficult to edit even a single tile afterwards due to need to reclaim and then kill off those dwarves too; and when you wish that there was another way, you'll realise that there are no minetracks available in worldgen either, you'll be limited to your several fort tiles to ride in circles. All in all, you wont see many cart rides as an adventurer, until a fort can be retired, or until you can temporarily take adventurelike control of dwarves during fort mode.

By the way, how do you feel about that last line, fort retirement and/or temporary dwarf control? I paid attention to most recent development but might have missed some long term goals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 14, 2012, 07:04:40 am

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 06:32:49 am

Quote from: khearn on April 13, 2012, 03:56:53 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 13, 2012, 02:59:53 pm

Quote from: Mr S on April 13, 2012, 02:06:20 pm

Wow, I had the same dream, except it was Tsathagua, two Elder Gods whose very names invoke insanity, and Loretta Lynn... err, long story.

Tell us who those gods were?

http://bit.ly/HRN5UC (http://bit.ly/HRN5UC)

Why didnt I go insane from these? What a ripoff.

Anyway, you are all getting hyped about a) launching carts past enemies, b) riding carts in adventurer mode. Firstly, it's going to be a rare case that you'll have trouble even setting up. Toady managed cause he can place enemies where he likes, and they can be set not to move. More likely your "army carts" will land where the enemies are, than past some exotic ledge with them. But, then again, there's always room for various stupid dwarven tricks. Secondly, I will not be looking forward to such an implementation until a fort can be retired. Currently you need to make a thriving fort, elaborately design everything, then kill off everyone in it and throw all items around in it, just for a rollercoaster ride for your adventurer. And when you've had your fun with that, you'll find it difficult to edit even a single tile afterwards due to need to reclaim and then kill off those dwarves too; and when you wish that there was another way, you'll realise that there are no minetracks available in worldgen either, you'll be limited to your several fort tiles to ride in circles. All in all, you wont see many cart rides as an adventurer, until a fort can be retired, or until you can temporarily take adventurelike control of dwarves during fort mode.

By the way, how do you feel about that last line, fort retirement and/or temporary dwarf control? I paid attention to most recent development but might have missed some long term goals.

Um, I'm super sure you can still retire Forts, and the dorfs that live there just migrate somewhere else. And if you were fast enough, you can run into the migrating wave of Dorfs from your old fort.

ToadyOne does plan for Player Forts to remain active after 'retirement', and there even been talk about retiring one fort, then going back to that fort at a latter time.

In Dwarf Talks, and on the old Dev List, there is the tentative plans to take direct control of some dorfs in certain context for short period of times in Fort Mode. Such as playing a Tavern Game, or taking over a Dorf during Sieges and going full on Adventure Mode for a short period of time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 14, 2012, 08:17:44 am

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 06:32:49 am

By the way, how do you feel about that last line, fort retirement and/or temporary dwarf control? I paid attention to most recent development but might have missed some long term goals.

Temporary dwarf control has mainly come up in the context of controlling your military as it attacks off-site locations (emphasis mine): (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

ARMY ARC: You should be able to control patrols and then armies in dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to both go with and command armies. In dwarf mode, you should have the option to control your individual patrol members as you would in adventure mode. Entities should war with each other from bandit and monster raids to full fledged wars. Upset entities could patrol near their sites, leading to new wilderness encounters etc.

Fortress retirement has been touched upon frequently:

Quote from: Toady One on January 07, 2007, 06:41:00 pm

I'd rather handle this properly when I get to it instead of spending time on a half measure that won't necessarily be related to the completed feature.  The adventure mode dwarf fortresses aren't completed and retired player fortresses should work with the same mechanics as these, so I have to do adv mode dwarf fortresses first.  Since I'm going to do those using the mechanics in place from dwarf mode, it might be easier to see the path forward to reversing these procedures when that's done.

DF Talk 16, Sep 2011: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.6)

Quote

Toady:   That's right. So, yeah ... we can definitely improve on that. I guess that leads into ... The dwarf mode legacy is quite similar, because you're creating a new site and that's being left behind, and you're also creating a bunch of dwarves, and when you abandon a site all of those dwarves move somewhere, and they're all being left on site. You're trading goods around the world ... and creating artifacts; those especially are one of the main legacies that a dwarf fortress leaves behind. And then the analogue to ... I mean we've talked about it kind of a lot, but the analogue to retirement in adventure mode would be retiring your fortress, and I think we've gone over that a few times so we can skip it, but it is a very important thing, especially because you'd be able to be, say, the new capital of the whole dwarven kingdom ... when the monarch arrives, if you retired then that would be a huge geopolitical shift there, right, where whatever the old mountainhome was is now some little hamlet or something, or some ghost town, or just a large city without a king that used to have one, and you've got a new one ... So there's that ...
Rainseeker:   Right, so we're thinking that we can retire fortresses and still have them be entities and still have them be technically active, the game considers them not ghost towns anymore?
Toady:   Yeah, the part that we've probably spent the most time discussing is why there are technical hurdles to this, or whatever, so that's the part we'll bypass. But yeah, you'd be able to leave that active mark on your world and you can kind of spread out and cause migration or spread of the dwarven civilization over a few games and then it would actually stick, it wouldn't just be a litter of abandoned fortresses with a few monsters living in them or new places for goblins to live. But I guess that could be part of your legacy; when we get to the army arc decisions of, you know, why did the goblins attack your town? Right now it's because they triggered some kind of 'attack the town' event and then they don't stay there, but if they were attacking your town for a reason, moving over the map and then arriving at your town, then they presumably had some reason to attack your town and it might include staying there, and then you'd have caused that kind of political change to the landscape, where the goblins now have a new fortress that's quite powerful. So hopefully ... I mean some of these changes are coming in the shorter term, and some of them are farther off, but hopefully we'll start seeing some of this stuff ... like I was saying the kind of successiony thing will be the first non-negative changing we see in either of the modes, and that's not too far off now. Yeah, so I guess ... were there any other things about the legacy you guys wanted to talk about?

Dec 2011: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2822443#msg2822443)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote

Quote from: O11O1

With these new upgrades to the city systems, how close are we to having a 'Retire' option, where instead of abandoning the fort, you give it to the gameworld to control, allowing you to, say, start a new fort and trade with the old one?

Quote from: King_of_the_weasels

Probably not until after we have actual dwarf towns being generated, and then some.

Yeah, since the new city system moves us closer to re-enabling dwarf towns, we are at least descending in our orbit around this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 14, 2012, 08:54:54 am

Thank you for the responses!

As is, I end up genning one world per a fort. Thus I always gen tiny worlds, as there is no point of having a huge world if I always make my forts be 1x1 embark sites.

Hmm, taking control is one thing, but "taking temporary control just as in adventure mode"? This has a pleasant scent of ability to step outside of your embark for a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on April 14, 2012, 10:10:34 am

New Devlog says adventurers can now ride carts. He did say that it would be easier to implement adventurers riding carts than Fortress mode dwarfs doing it, so it makes sense.

Anyway, that might actually make adventurer-oriented fortresses more fun. So far I've never gone to a player-made fort in adventure mode, just because it gets to be kind of a pain to get to the part I want (usually I build my forts deep underground, in the cavern layers), so this might make that a bit easier, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 14, 2012, 10:11:28 am

So how will falling in a minecart be implemented? Can a dwarf survive a 7 z-level fall unharmed because he was in a minecart ?

By that I obviously mean dwarven minecart paratrooper marksdwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 10:17:19 am

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 06:32:49 am

By the way, how do you feel about that last line, fort retirement and/or temporary dwarf control? I paid attention to most recent development but might have missed some long term goals.

In addition to what Footkerchief posted, this is already somewhat possible due to DFHack.  You can memory hack the game into switching from Fortress Mode directly into Adventurer Mode and back again.

I'm not quite sure of the full effect of this, however, as I haven't actually tried doing it, but it's possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Quote from: Naryar on April 14, 2012, 10:11:28 am

So how will falling in a minecart be implemented? Can a dwarf survive a 7 z-level fall unharmed because he was in a minecart ?

By that I obviously mean dwarven minecart paratrooper marksdwarves.

As a followup,

Does landing on a ramp mitigate fall damage or decrease the likelihood of projecting cart contents everywhere?  Can we make Dwarven Evel Knievel jumps, where launching from a ramp and landing on a ramp is a perfectly smooth landing and you can just keep going?

I need to start making a !!Lignite Hoop!! to put between ramps, and sticking out of a shark pool.

---

It would also give us the ability to segregate "cart subway" from regular walking hallways for dwarven safety purposes.  Launch a cart from a hallway into a carts-only zone that is inaccessible to normal walkers before leaping another ditch to get back to the walkable areas for their stops. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 11:50:38 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Quote from: Naryar on April 14, 2012, 10:11:28 am

So how will falling in a minecart be implemented? Can a dwarf survive a 7 z-level fall unharmed because he was in a minecart ?

By that I obviously mean dwarven minecart paratrooper marksdwarves.

As a followup,

Does landing on a ramp mitigate fall damage or decrease the likelihood of projecting cart contents everywhere?  Can we make Dwarven Evel Knievel jumps, where launching from a ramp and landing on a ramp is a perfectly smooth landing and you can just keep going?

I need to start making a !!Lignite Hoop!! to put between ramps, and sticking out of a shark pool.

He's said before that landing on a track always works. From that we can infer that it's probably fairly safe, although how much is not yet known.

Quote

It would also give us the ability to segregate "cart subway" from regular walking hallways for dwarven safety purposes.  Launch a cart from a hallway into a carts-only zone that is inaccessible to normal walkers before leaping another ditch to get back to the walkable areas for their stops.

You coulkd also just, you know, route the cart rails through different z-levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deon on April 14, 2012, 12:54:21 pm

Hell yeah, adventure rollercoaster fortresses!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Stoup on April 14, 2012, 01:22:41 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 10:17:19 am

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 06:32:49 am

By the way, how do you feel about that last line, fort retirement and/or temporary dwarf control? I paid attention to most recent development but might have missed some long term goals.

In addition to what Footkerchief posted, this is already somewhat possible due to DFHack.  You can memory hack the game into switching from Fortress Mode directly into Adventurer Mode and back again.

I'm not quite sure of the full effect of this, however, as I haven't actually tried doing it, but it's possible.

I have done precisely this with one of my past fortresses, it causes a loyalty cascade of total proportions. While you could work with it that way, every time you entered the fort the populous would inevitably slaughter itself... Which really doesn't leave it too much better than abandoning, save for the lack of item scattering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 01:38:52 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 11:50:38 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 10:25:20 am

It would also give us the ability to segregate "cart subway" from regular walking hallways for dwarven safety purposes.  Launch a cart from a hallway into a carts-only zone that is inaccessible to normal walkers before leaping another ditch to get back to the walkable areas for their stops.

You coulkd also just, you know, route the cart rails through different z-levels.

But dwarves can always just path into the cart's tracks.  Even if they are restricted dwarven traffic "dodging" mechanics mean that if they find someone blocking their path, they may step into a detour that involves walking over tracks.  By making a jump to a sector that dwarves can't actually path to without flying, it makes the area perfectly safe, barring mid-track collisions at an intersection.  (Oh, how much Fun we will have learning the benefits of avoiding having intersections at all by just using 3d cart paths that look like someone dropped a bowl of spaghetti into your fortress.)  Low odds mean nothing - any probability greater than zero means it WILL happen.  No matter how lucky you are or how much you load the dice, if you keep throwing the dice, eventually, you will crap out.

Of course, I still want the requirements for ventilation systems, water (for irrigation or brewing) piping, and even sewage disposal systems to eventually come into play, at which point fully-fledged fortresses would be positively DIZZYING arrays of interconnected pipes, rails, and hallways.  I get tingles just imagining.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on April 14, 2012, 02:14:15 pm

Well, you could just have the entrance to the main rail area only accessible by bridge, and have a floodgate go up behind the cart when the bridge is down. That should effectively block off any potential foot traffic into the railway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 14, 2012, 02:45:57 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 01:38:52 pm

Low odds mean nothing - any probability greater than zero means it WILL happen.  No matter how lucky you are or how much you load the dice, if you keep throwing the dice, eventually, you will crap out.

Of course, I still want the requirements for ventilation systems, water (for irrigation or brewing) piping, and even sewage disposal systems to eventually come into play, at which point fully-fledged fortresses would be positively DIZZYING arrays of interconnected pipes, rails, and hallways.  I get tingles just imagining.

I always used to say this. It doesnt matter if there's 99% chance to win when you strike the 1%. And I'm sure that those neat cart things will happen, and many of them will be amusing, and maybe the ledge example will happen to someone as well, but I find it unusual to by so hyped about that single example. DF is a generator of awesome events afterall, among other stuff. More will happen.

Also, while you wait, help yourself with a serving of 3D pipes screensaver! =P It looks a lot like what you want to see in DF.

Quote from: Kadzar on April 14, 2012, 02:14:15 pm

Well, you could just have the entrance to the main rail area only accessible by bridge, and have a floodgate go up behind the cart when the bridge is down. That should effectively block off any potential foot traffic into the railway.

We really really need some ingame compact mechanism signal inverters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 03:09:51 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 02:45:57 pm

Also, while you wait, help yourself with a serving of 3D pipes screensaver! =P It looks a lot like what you want to see in DF.

But it's not! Those are just pipes.  Efficiency means nothing in them.  When can build a cartputer, and actually see the actual "data packets" running from one end of a "circuit" to another, and "race conditions" that you have to smooth out in a circuit involves actual racing carts you can follow, it brings out a whole new level of nerd joy. 

Quote from: Elone on April 14, 2012, 02:45:57 pm

We really really need some ingame compact mechanism signal inverters.

What I really, really hope we might get are the ability to have combined-functionality constructions, like those "stops" that have "accelerators" that can be triggered by having a mechanism toggled on and off, like he hinted at adding earlier.  This alone would allow for fully mechanized cart systems. 

A truly ideal situation, however, would allow for a stack of a stop and a pressure plate and an accelerator all in one tile.  This way, the stop will halt a cart and be capable of sending a signal via pressure plate that allows the greater mechanism to understand that a cart is on the stop and ready to go, which can be later sent a "go" signal when the accelerator is powered.

At the minimum, this could allow for "four way stop signs" that have mechanisms to regulate when one cart could go and when others must stop. 

At its best, however, this could allow for carts to behave as "bits" where you just have two stops with accelerators facing one another - launch from one stop to another switches the cart's signal from a "0" to a "1" when it is on a given pressure plate stop. This allows for the replacement of fluid logic entirely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 14, 2012, 04:00:46 pm

Would it be possible, then, to have "two-way stop signs" that we could construct acting as logic gates?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: QDwarf on April 14, 2012, 05:03:02 pm

Loops of track with pressure plates could make for some simple precisely timed repeaters. Adding several plates in a row would let you have a series of events occur in rapid succession.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 05:30:38 pm

@NW_Kohaku: I seedon't your point, but you don't need a fancy ramp setup for that. Just have the cart drop one z off a small cliff.
Also, you're wrong about the irrelevance of low odds. Low odds means that it will happen infrequently and thus dwarven deaths will remain below an acceptable threshold.

Regarding combined functionality constructions and stacking, I don't think that's entirely necessary for any partivular purpose, since you can use directional speed addition from the rollers to direct carts into and out of holding loops. If a stop could provide directional momentum on mechanical trigger, that would make things easier. But stacking would mostly just reduce space needed. Plus it doesn't make much sense from an in-universe logical perspective.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 08:32:56 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 05:30:38 pm

Also, you're wrong about the irrelevance of low odds. Low odds means that it will happen infrequently and thus dwarven deaths will remain below an acceptable threshold.

That's just another way to say "It's OK to be less than perfect". 

NEVAR! 

You aren't truly playing Dwarf Fortress until you have pathologically installed a countermeasure to every conceivable occurance as well as forged it all within a perfectly symmetric geometric fractal fortress.  Floors will be paved or entire layers obsidian cast for symmetry!  Only then will you "finish" a fortress.

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works. 

If you are surprised by anything in DF, you have not done enough Science yet.  Everything is foreseeable, and every problem can be forestalled.

Casualties of any form but old age are a sign of failure to predict and plan.

Quote from: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 05:30:38 pm

Regarding combined functionality constructions and stacking, I don't think that's entirely necessary for any partivular purpose, since you can use directional speed addition from the rollers to direct carts into and out of holding loops. If a stop could provide directional momentum on mechanical trigger, that would make things easier. But stacking would mostly just reduce space needed. Plus it doesn't make much sense from an in-universe logical perspective.

It's as logical as a stop and accelerator could be in the first place to combine the two.  It simply means the stop retracts, and the accelerator starts up.  Alternately, you could use the same gears/wheels used in the accelerator as the stop, as well, by just "shifting gears" from one in a high-friction stopping gear to switching over to a powered gear that pushes a cart along.

EDIT: Alternately, an unpowered accelerator could simply provide a drag that makes it functionally the same thing as a stop, and that solves both problems.  No power - stops cart.  Power - pushes cart along.  You just need to create a cart course that requires no manual stops or starts. 

Powered accelerator stops are also nearly mandatory for full automated cart tracks, as they allow you to push a cart without having a dwarf present at all.  Otherwise, you have to have a dwarf actually sitting there pushing them.  Who wants that? It's like the difference between setting up your traps on a repeater or asking a dwarf to try to sit in a control room and pull all your levers constantly - they take breaks and aren't always responsive.  Full automation means full reliability, and enables perfection. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 15, 2012, 01:10:44 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 08:32:56 pm

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

Quote

If you are surprised by anything in DF, you have not done enough Science yet.  Everything is foreseeable, and every problem can be forestalled.

I intentionally distance myself from the proceedings so that I can still be surprised. Besides when dealing with new systems, at least.

Casualties of any form but old age are a sign of failure to predict and plan.

Quote

Quote from: Cruxador on April 14, 2012, 05:30:38 pm

Regarding combined functionality constructions and stacking, I don't think that's entirely necessary for any partivular purpose, since you can use directional speed addition from the rollers to direct carts into and out of holding loops. If a stop could provide directional momentum on mechanical trigger, that would make things easier. But stacking would mostly just reduce space needed. Plus it doesn't make much sense from an in-universe logical perspective.

It's as logical as a stop and accelerator could be in the first place to combine the two.  It simply means the stop retracts, and the accelerator starts up.  Alternately, you could use the same gears/wheels used in the accelerator as the stop, as well, by just "shifting gears" from one in a high-friction stopping gear to switching over to a powered gear that pushes a cart along.

EDIT: Alternately, an unpowered accelerator could simply provide a drag that makes it functionally the same thing as a stop, and that solves both problems.  No power - stops cart.  Power - pushes cart along.  You just need to create a cart course that requires no manual stops or starts.

Sure, there's logical ways for this stuff. I meant being able to stack many mechanisms on one tile wasn't realistic.

Quote

Powered accelerator stops are also nearly mandatory for full automated cart tracks, as they allow you to push a cart without having a dwarf present at all.  Otherwise, you have to have a dwarf actually sitting there pushing them.  Who wants that? It's like the difference between setting up your traps on a repeater or asking a dwarf to try to sit in a control room and pull all your levers constantly - they take breaks and aren't always responsive.  Full automation means full reliability, and enables perfection.

Perfection is an admirable (albeit ultimately unattainable) goal in reality, but in games it tends to eliminate fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on April 15, 2012, 02:53:47 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 15, 2012, 01:10:44 am

Perfection is an admirable (albeit ultimately unattainable) goal in reality, but in games it tends to eliminate fun.

Ah, but attempting to obtain perfection can be a game in and of itself.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: calrogman on April 15, 2012, 08:24:22 am

Not strictly related to the FotF, but I'm curious...

What text editor do you prefer to use when developing/writing raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 15, 2012, 09:26:46 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 15, 2012, 01:10:44 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 08:32:56 pm

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

Quote from: Dae on April 15, 2012, 09:26:46 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 15, 2012, 01:10:44 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 08:32:56 pm

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 15, 2012, 09:43:43 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 15, 2012, 10:08:41 am

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 15, 2012, 12:08:34 pm

How hard is it to plain simply install a logical gate system into general mechanics?

As someone who has programmed games, I found it very easy as a developer, and as a player, very hard to do while using rudimentary logical operators.

To reinforce my point, I'll say that even though you can create a turing complete computer in DF, or Minecraft, or somesuch, they take too much place. You make them as big megaprojects that are as subtle as a thorn in your eye, when they would have been more useful if you could give them a compact form.

Take the pumps for example. They are fairly complex systems taking only 2 tiles. Screw presses? 1 tile. And I can imagine them being full of little cogs and mechanisms. I would imagine that logical gates (actually the abstracted mechanisms for them) could very easily fit into one square each. Sure the mechanisms are awesome, but they really dont have to take so much space. A gear is huge and takes a whole tile, I find it very conceivable that the notoriously crafty dwarves could make a gear that fits into a single hand, and make a logical gate mechanism that fits into a tile.

Spoiler: This is a suggestion, do not view it (click to show/hide)

An installed mechanism, linking from a trigger (plate, lever) to the target (bridge, floodgate) could be changed to an inverted signal from the T menu, thus opening it when the trigger is closed, and closing it when the trigger is open. This way we could have, for example, airlocks where you flip a (single) lever, and one bridge raises and the other one lowers, while the people in between them wait for them to switch. I imagine that anything more than inverters and times though, would be more complicated (for the necessity of two or more such mechanisms interacting with each other), but even just inverters and timers would do a wonder for the fort designs and their awesomeness levels, while still fitting in universe as well as the current giant versions do.
Also, told you not to view it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 01:36:51 pm

Quote from: bombzero on April 15, 2012, 09:43:43 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

You can't just wing it when you are trying to build a cartputer, though.  Unreliability kills the whole point of the processor. 

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 15, 2012, 10:08:41 am

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

Provided smashing into a door doesn't actually cause a derailment or fling the contents of a cart, and there is never a need to have an actual stop, just tons of accelerators that could actually work. 

Quote from: Elone on April 15, 2012, 12:08:34 pm

This is a suggestion, do not view it

One of the things I remember suggesting a while ago in the big Improved Mechanics/Traps Wishlist thread was a "black box" that could fit into one tile, but be designed in a manner of "pop-up window" that let you designate inputs, outputs, and jam it full of gears, so that you could make a compact form of any sort of gear assembly you could physically manage to make work. 

It would let players retain the ability to design complex gear logic systems manually, thus meaning that actually understanding gear logic was rewarded in play, while making a much simpler and smaller object for the game to track and save FPS (because the whole assembly could be considered one object for temperature and pathfinding and all those other FPS hogging reasons). 

People didn't like the idea of a pop-up menu, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on April 15, 2012, 01:37:44 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

Quote from: Dae on April 15, 2012, 09:26:46 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 15, 2012, 01:10:44 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 14, 2012, 08:32:56 pm

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either.

Well, that's one of the things that makes DF such a great game, isn't it? The forum is teeming with a diversity of players, each with a "correct" playing style. Yours is as valid as anyone else's, not because more people play in that style (and I think you might be surprised to find out how many people don't), but because it's based off of your own concept of goals within the game. I have different goals. Dae and Cruxador have theirs. The beauty of a game as open-ended as DF is that it has no built-in goals - the only "point" in playing rests in the hands and mind of the player.

Likewise, arguments about playing styles and goals are pointless, because such concepts are subjective.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 15, 2012, 02:15:07 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 01:36:51 pm

Quote from: bombzero on April 15, 2012, 09:43:43 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

You can't just wing it when you are trying to build a cartputer, though.  Unreliability kills the whole point of the processor. 

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 15, 2012, 10:08:41 am

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

Provided smashing into a door doesn't actually cause a derailment or fling the contents of a cart, and there is never a need to have an actual stop, just tons of accelerators that could actually work. 

Even if high speed collisions do, you could probably strategically place accelerators, ramps and stop tiles to get it to hit nice and gently, then release at will.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 15, 2012, 05:55:42 pm

What is the third argument in [CDI:TARGET_VERB:2nd:3rd:??? (always NA so far as I've seen)]?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: trees on April 15, 2012, 06:28:05 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 15, 2012, 05:55:42 pm

What is the third argument in [CDI:TARGET_VERB:2nd:3rd:??? (always NA so far as I've seen)]?

It's for if the interaction is mutual, which is only used in head-bumps right now, I think.

Code: [Select]

[CDI:VERB:head-bump:head-bumps:bump heads]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Porpoisepower on April 15, 2012, 10:45:59 pm

I wonder it the all mighty toady, happened to turn on recording when testing the minecart launch, goblin fight...

If so... Please release!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

Will we be able to launch minecarts via the bridge-a-pult?

Also:

Is there any plan to let a player establish a fort, and then take a new starting squad and start another fort after getting the first one up and running, thereby extending the holdings/exportable goods/import needs of the players civilization?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 16, 2012, 01:17:06 am

still no report... armok forbid but, is toady DEAD?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 16, 2012, 01:27:07 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 16, 2012, 01:17:06 am

still no report... armok forbid but, is toady DEAD?

I'm always pleasantly surprised when we get one on a weekend.  Weekends are usually reserved for making ASCII art and crayon drawings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 01:39:42 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

Will we be able to launch minecarts via the bridge-a-pult?

The only known changes to bridges is that they magically act like mine cart rails. There 'tossing' ability, probably hasn't changed at all.

Quote

Also:

Is there any plan to let a player establish a fort, and then take a new starting squad and start another fort after getting the first one up and running, thereby extending the holdings/exportable goods/import needs of the players civilization?

Yep.

That is probably one of the major goals of the Army Arc. It also cross over with the Starting Scenarios for forts too, and the tangential goal of just managing a Civilization.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobaldunderpants on April 16, 2012, 02:02:51 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 01:39:42 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

Will we be able to launch minecarts via the bridge-a-pult?

The only known changes to bridges is that they magically act like mine cart rails. They're 'tossing' ability, probably hasn't changed at all.

Quote

Also:

Is there any plan to let a player establish a fort, and then take a new starting squad and start another fort after getting the first one up and running, thereby extending the holdings/exportable goods/import needs of the players civilization?

Yep.

That is probably one of the major goals of the Army Arc. It also cross over with the Starting Scenarios for forts too, and the tangential goal of just managing a Civilization.

I so want this. I really wanna be able to explore and get into the history of the worlds I create. I just don't want my established forts to turn into dusty dark tombs in order for me to do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on April 16, 2012, 03:02:54 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 01:39:42 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

His 'tossing' ability, probably hasn't changed at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 03:04:48 am

Quote from: Lac on April 16, 2012, 03:02:54 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 01:39:42 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

His 'tossing' ability, probably hasn't changed at all.

?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on April 16, 2012, 03:17:34 am

Sorry; I saw the mis-corrected grammar and couldn't resist.  I did actually feel guilty enough for posting it that I've turned my computer back on to edit in something more constructive.  So, err... Right-angle track turns seem at odds with a realistic physics model.  Either Toady is making the rails extremely grippy, or he's got quite a wide arc going on the tile; I wonder which he has modeled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deon on April 16, 2012, 04:20:53 am

I wonder what will make us to build rails at all? Why not to build bridges, a few tiles from 1 stone, everywhere instead? It's faster and cheaper.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 16, 2012, 04:59:17 am

Possibly you don't need an architect to design a rail system like a bridge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 16, 2012, 05:11:27 am

Quote from: Deon on April 16, 2012, 04:20:53 am

I wonder what will make us to build rails at all? Why not to build bridges, a few tiles from 1 stone, everywhere instead? It's faster and cheaper.

Bridges can't have stops, or accelerators. And bridges might not be able to let Carts turn.

Though this would probably ultimetly look silly, and might just be exploitive of a feature in its infancy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gilihad on April 16, 2012, 06:00:59 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 16, 2012, 01:17:06 am

still no report... armok forbid but, is toady DEAD?

It's been less than two days...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 16, 2012, 07:26:42 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 01:36:51 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 15, 2012, 12:08:34 pm

This is a suggestion, do not view it

One of the things I remember suggesting a while ago in the big Improved Mechanics/Traps Wishlist thread was a "black box" that could fit into one tile, but be designed in a manner of "pop-up window" that let you designate inputs, outputs, and jam it full of gears, so that you could make a compact form of any sort of gear assembly you could physically manage to make work. 

It would let players retain the ability to design complex gear logic systems manually, thus meaning that actually understanding gear logic was rewarded in play, while making a much simpler and smaller object for the game to track and save FPS (because the whole assembly could be considered one object for temperature and pathfinding and all those other FPS hogging reasons). 

People didn't like the idea of a pop-up menu, however.

I very much want this. It's a great idea. And it failed because people could not agree on the final interface? Sad world.

I literally dreamed, last night, (among other stuff) how I was managing some machinery in a very small room. I set the final palm sized gear inside (made of metal, and pressed, not cut), then got the machine started. I do not remember what happened next, but it tasted like success, strawberries, and rainbow, all at the same time.

And omfg, you looked =O Bad syringe psycho, bad!

Spoiler: Dejavu (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Gilihad on April 16, 2012, 06:00:59 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 16, 2012, 01:17:06 am

still no report... armok forbid but, is toady DEAD?

It's been less than two days...

Sounds like just about the right time to start the panic. Mourning starts the day after tomorrow.

That said, I'm having a feeling of dejavu now! I can see some consistency starting to build up on this topic. He is SO hardcore, just like every single creature in his creation, that he refuses to wear his plot armour (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor) for any reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on April 16, 2012, 07:57:38 am

Quote from: Elone on April 16, 2012, 07:26:42 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 01:36:51 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 15, 2012, 12:08:34 pm

This is a suggestion, do not view it

One of the things I remember suggesting a while ago in the big Improved Mechanics/Traps Wishlist thread was a "black box" that could fit into one tile, but be designed in a manner of "pop-up window" that let you designate inputs, outputs, and jam it full of gears, so that you could make a compact form of any sort of gear assembly you could physically manage to make work. 

It would let players retain the ability to design complex gear logic systems manually, thus meaning that actually understanding gear logic was rewarded in play, while making a much simpler and smaller object for the game to track and save FPS (because the whole assembly could be considered one object for temperature and pathfinding and all those other FPS hogging reasons). 

People didn't like the idea of a pop-up menu, however.

Oh my, this would be truly beautiful, altough its usefulness would be somewhat limited right now since we don't have much use for complex mechanics (IE stuff that requires more then just linking a lever to a door/bridge/floodgate/hatch). It would still be pretty fun to mess around with though, specialy with huge megaprojects using many pumps and fluid logic and maybe carts/rails, in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 16, 2012, 08:30:19 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 01:15:50 am

Is there any plan to let a player establish a fort, and then take a new starting squad and start another fort after getting the first one up and running, thereby extending the holdings/exportable goods/import needs of the players civilization?

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 14, 2012, 08:17:44 am

Fortress retirement has been touched upon frequently:

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on January 07, 2007, 06:41:00 pm

I'd rather handle this properly when I get to it instead of spending time on a half measure that won't necessarily be related to the completed feature.  The adventure mode dwarf fortresses aren't completed and retired player fortresses should work with the same mechanics as these, so I have to do adv mode dwarf fortresses first.  Since I'm going to do those using the mechanics in place from dwarf mode, it might be easier to see the path forward to reversing these procedures when that's done.

DF Talk 16, Sep 2011: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.6)

Quote

Toady:   That's right. So, yeah ... we can definitely improve on that. I guess that leads into ... The dwarf mode legacy is quite similar, because you're creating a new site and that's being left behind, and you're also creating a bunch of dwarves, and when you abandon a site all of those dwarves move somewhere, and they're all being left on site. You're trading goods around the world ... and creating artifacts; those especially are one of the main legacies that a dwarf fortress leaves behind. And then the analogue to ... I mean we've talked about it kind of a lot, but the analogue to retirement in adventure mode would be retiring your fortress, and I think we've gone over that a few times so we can skip it, but it is a very important thing, especially because you'd be able to be, say, the new capital of the whole dwarven kingdom ... when the monarch arrives, if you retired then that would be a huge geopolitical shift there, right, where whatever the old mountainhome was is now some little hamlet or something, or some ghost town, or just a large city without a king that used to have one, and you've got a new one ... So there's that ...
Rainseeker:   Right, so we're thinking that we can retire fortresses and still have them be entities and still have them be technically active, the game considers them not ghost towns anymore?
Toady:   Yeah, the part that we've probably spent the most time discussing is why there are technical hurdles to this, or whatever, so that's the part we'll bypass. But yeah, you'd be able to leave that active mark on your world and you can kind of spread out and cause migration or spread of the dwarven civilization over a few games and then it would actually stick, it wouldn't just be a litter of abandoned fortresses with a few monsters living in them or new places for goblins to live. But I guess that could be part of your legacy; when we get to the army arc decisions of, you know, why did the goblins attack your town? Right now it's because they triggered some kind of 'attack the town' event and then they don't stay there, but if they were attacking your town for a reason, moving over the map and then arriving at your town, then they presumably had some reason to attack your town and it might include staying there, and then you'd have caused that kind of political change to the landscape, where the goblins now have a new fortress that's quite powerful. So hopefully ... I mean some of these changes are coming in the shorter term, and some of them are farther off, but hopefully we'll start seeing some of this stuff ... like I was saying the kind of successiony thing will be the first non-negative changing we see in either of the modes, and that's not too far off now. Yeah, so I guess ... were there any other things about the legacy you guys wanted to talk about?

Dec 2011: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2822443#msg2822443)

Quote from: Toady One

Quote

Quote from: O11O1

With these new upgrades to the city systems, how close are we to having a 'Retire' option, where instead of abandoning the fort, you give it to the gameworld to control, allowing you to, say, start a new fort and trade with the old one?

Quote from: King_of_the_weasels

Probably not until after we have actual dwarf towns being generated, and then some.

Yeah, since the new city system moves us closer to re-enabling dwarf towns, we are at least descending in our orbit around this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on April 16, 2012, 09:00:21 am

Quote from: Deon on April 16, 2012, 04:20:53 am

I wonder what will make us to build rails at all? Why not to build bridges, a few tiles from 1 stone, everywhere instead? It's faster and cheaper.

Which brings the question.

If tracks will need to be laid out in lines, will constructed rails function tilewise like walls and floors, or will they work more like axles and bridges?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 16, 2012, 09:09:14 am

he mentioned that they can be built just like constructions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on April 16, 2012, 09:11:05 am

Quote from: Tenebrais on April 16, 2012, 09:00:21 am

If tracks will need to be laid out in lines, will constructed rails function tilewise like walls and floors, or will they work more like axles and bridges?

I don't remember the exact statements, but it sounded to me quite conclusively that constructed rails would be function very similarly to constructed floors.  That would still allow stops and rollers to be built on top of them, along with other ordinary objects, like doors and floodgates.  I would speculate that they would also function as a normal floor for walking purposes, but who knows, maybe not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 16, 2012, 09:43:57 am

Grazi, Footkerchief.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 10:34:19 am

Quote from: Tenebrais on April 16, 2012, 09:00:21 am

Quote from: Deon on April 16, 2012, 04:20:53 am

I wonder what will make us to build rails at all? Why not to build bridges, a few tiles from 1 stone, everywhere instead? It's faster and cheaper.

Which brings the question.

If tracks will need to be laid out in lines, will constructed rails function tilewise like walls and floors, or will they work more like axles and bridges?

One of the things Toady has been saying is that you can engrave rails directly into the floor.  As in, it costs you nothing but time from an engraver. 

Especially if moving stones around becomes harder (and requires, say, rails to do), then that alone would make not needing to move around stones to make bridges valuable. 

Also,

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:59:59 am

Yeah, the track connections are between the tiles you designate, and it only lets you designate 1xN and Nx1 rectangles.  Ramps are a little weird -- you have to include the ramp wall or the ramp space when doing the floor above to ensure the connection is placed, but you can tell from the designation symbols how you've done.  You can draw designations through other designations to make 4 way intersections, and designating on top of an active job updates everything correctly.

In order to preserve directionality, they have to be designated multiple segments at a time, so they are designated in the same way walls, bridges, and roads are designated now.  That means there's nothing hypothetically stopping a "1 stone for 3 tiles of rail" system.

Of course, if we have metal rails as well as stone ones, that implies that there must be some reason for the physical property differences to matter. 

That was why there was talk earlier of things like adamantine rails having almost no friction, and allowing more speed, or else rails requiring maintenance, as that's the only rational reasoning for using metals like steel in rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 16, 2012, 11:38:35 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 10:34:19 am

Of course, if we have metal rails as well as stone ones, that implies that there must be some reason for the physical property differences to matter.

no it doesnt. metal rails are probably as different from stone rails as metal constructed walls are different from stone constructed walls

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 11:44:01 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on April 16, 2012, 11:38:35 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 10:34:19 am

Of course, if we have metal rails as well as stone ones, that implies that there must be some reason for the physical property differences to matter.

no it doesnt. metal rails are probably as different from stone rails as metal constructed walls are different from stone constructed walls

And once we have sieges that involve siege engines that can destroy walls, or we have sapping where people constantly talk about how metal walls would be more difficult to destroy...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on April 16, 2012, 11:52:41 am

i'm certainly hoping for that, but not expecting it anytime soon. i don't think a future goal implies anything about a feature that is being implemented for the next version. i'm figuring toady just thought about what material it might make sense to build tracks out of, or simply enabled any construction material. hell, i'm expecting soap bars to be usable

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Miuramir on April 16, 2012, 11:58:42 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 01:36:51 pm

Quote from: bombzero on April 15, 2012, 09:43:43 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 15, 2012, 09:31:30 am

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

You can't just wing it when you are trying to build a cartputer, though.  Unreliability kills the whole point of the processor. 

I take a somewhat different view, perhaps because I was involved with a real-world megaproject to build a seemingly impossible computer with limited resources and a bunch of idlers (System X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_%28computing%29)), and keep up somewhat with what companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc. are doing.  Once you start building large enough systems, parts fail... not just occasionally, but frequently.  Some are extremely random, like cosmic ray hits to memory; other are more predictable with enough data, like hard drive failure rate curves; other are a serious wildcard, like natural disasters and other people's processes in the same data center going nuts in a way that causes collateral damage.  Designing your system so that it handles minor and routine failures as a routine event, and degrades gracefully under pressure from more extreme events, is a major part of system design. 

"The best way to avoid failure is to fail constantly."  In one particularly interesting example, Netflix has managed to weather problems with AWS far better than other companies, because they designed with failure in mind.  Netflix Tech Blog post: (http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/5-lessons-weve-learned-using-aws.html)

Quote

One of the first systems our engineers built in AWS is called the Chaos Monkey. The Chaos Monkey’s job is to randomly kill instances and services within our architecture. If we aren’t constantly testing our ability to succeed despite failure, then it isn’t likely to work when it matters most – in the event of an unexpected outage.

Also worth reading: Blog post from StackExchange (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the-chaos-monkey.html)
Translated to DF, they deliberately set up the equivalent of a tantruming dwarf in their control center, breaking floodgates, pulling levers, and generally being a pain... and designed the system to work *anyway*.  That's what real system design is; not trying to get to some OCD world of perfection; because not only will you never actually get there, but your system will be brittle when (not if) failure does come. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 12:14:45 pm

Quote from: Miuramir on April 16, 2012, 11:58:42 am

That's what real system design is; not trying to get to some OCD world of perfection; because not only will you never actually get there, but your system will be brittle when (not if) failure does come.

The thing about real-life systems is, however, that you can generally just make things cheap and small and unreliable, so that you can just rely upon having enough back-ups in your RAID to compensate for the failure rate. 

In future technologies, people have speculated about specially grown molecular computers that basically have a fail rate of 70% or so, but compensate by just testing the paths that actually work, and shutting down the others. 

In DF, however, lacking those black boxes I was talking about earlier, every single logic gate is going to take up multiple tiles and have an FPS cost associated with every moving piece.  There's only so much fortress you can build without having the whole thing come to a glacial crawl. In fact, there's only so much fortress you can build, period, without 64 bit memory.

Ultimately, it's not much of a cartputer at all if you have to manually order your dwarves to move the actual bits around.  Somehow rigging a start/stop that works automatically without a dwarf having to manually run up and push is the lowest necessary component of an automated system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Miuramir on April 16, 2012, 12:47:27 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 12:14:45 pm

Ultimately, it's not much of a cartputer at all if you have to manually order your dwarves to move the actual bits around.  Somehow rigging a start/stop that works automatically without a dwarf having to manually run up and push is the lowest necessary component of an automated system.

My personal favorite option is to have the "rollers" take 4 states: powered forward, neutral (aka free-spinning), powered backward, and locked (aka brakes).  Powered forward & backward are obvious, neutral would have only a little more friction than a normal tile, and locked would add a lot of friction.  But DF tends to handle mechanically linked things as having only two possible states; within that limitation it is trickier. 

I think you can partially handle it by having two mechanism-controlled states, "engaged" and "freewheel"; plus the presence or absence of (enough) gear-shaft power.  If "engaged" && "powered", it accelerates; if "engaged" && "no/insufficient power" it is locked and acts as brakes; if "freewheel" it applies neither acceleration nor friction (and consumes only the power of an ordinary gear, rather than however much power the acceleration function costs).  The default option, if not lever (etc) linked, would be "engaged", like the default state for a floodgate is closed.  This should mesh well with the way waterwheels and existing mechanical logic seems to operate.  To use, if you want the cart to sail past the point without stopping, you'd set the mechanism to "freewheel" (off).  If you wanted the cart to stop, you'd set the mechanism to "engaged" (on), but cut the power supply at some upstream point; unless the cart has way too much momentum it would come to stop on the rollers.  You then do whatever you need, and when you want to get it moving, (re)apply power to the rollers and it will get the cart moving again.  Suitable design to handle carts that are out-of-parameters (too fast, too heavy, etc.) should be doable with more work, parts and space, given the above.  This is already drifting into suggestions territory rather than speculation on announced systems, so I'll close this out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 16, 2012, 03:12:19 pm

I've been doing some thinking lately, and I don't believe we need anything new that hasn't been mentioned yet provided the things that do work a certain way.

If it's possible to build bridges on top of tracks after all, then we already have the means to build switch junctions; I've already designed a 'cloverleaf' intersection that would fit in a 6x6 room using 8 1-tile retracting bridges.  But even if not, we still can build rail splits by having pits covered by bridges instead; such that carts will fall onto other rails.


As for mechanical logic, I've postulated about using the cart bumping mechanics and rollers to make cart-based logic systems and even an auto-launch.

First, a simple clock pulse can be made with a 3-tile long straight with walls on each end.  Each side has a roller facing towards the center, where a pressure plate sits.  As long as the rollers are powered, a cart on this track will go back and forth and output a continuous pulse.

A similar setup might work for an SR NAND-equivilent: instead of one cart, two carts of different weights are placed on the line, and power to the rollers are controlled by the inputs.  Only one of the two carts is the right weight to trigger the pressure plate, so when the apposing roller is activated the other cart bumps it off.  While the possibility depends heavily on the (currently unknown) specifics of minecart physics, I am optimistic that with enough tweaking this setup could be made into a very compact JK flip-flop.

To try and catch speedy carts, I've thought of two kinds of brakes.  One is for high speed, and consists of several rollers pointing in the direction of deccelleration.  In between are the 'fake' T junctions; eventually the cart is pushed backwards by one and is sent down the parallel track to the other side of the brake.  The other brake is for places carts shouldn't be going too fast, but you don't want to risk it.  After catching them flying off a corner, it 'drops' them into a 1x1 hole to stop their momentum, then drops them again onto rollers which push it off at a more reasonable speed.

The last thing I had thought worthy of mention is an automatic cart launch system.  The trick would be to have a cart on a roller directly behind the stop: is this roller were to be activated for exactly one tick, then it might push the cart out without itself moving off its tile.  If this is not possible, then the best bet I would think would be to build the stop next to a roller and try to push the cart out of station with the next one in line.


Overall, I don't see anything that can't be done with the tools we currently have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 03:23:30 pm

That's assuming cart bumping works reliably, however, and doesn't just cause derails. 

I think a setup where unpowered accelerators act as stops is not too hard to include, and worth having. 

Pressure plates linked into accelerators so that you can directly measure when something is sitting on an accelerator stop is convenient, even if not necessary.  It is something that can be worked around with additional mechanics, but if we don't need to do that sort of thing, then it's best to just have a tool that just performs that function straight-up.  Like I said before, every moving part in the system is another chunk of fortress real estate and hit to FPS. 

It's like how we can do things with fluid mechanics, but if we could just have a "is this gear powered" sensor that would work like a pressure plate does in triggering other mechanics, then we could construct entirely mechanism logic processors that work significantly faster than fluid logic systems in more compact space and with significantly less FPS drag.  It's the difference between one nut making a working 8-bit processor and a nut making a 16-bit processor.  (Which they did in Minecraft, because it has tools specifically designed to make basic processing possible.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 16, 2012, 03:28:32 pm

Hey, I didn't say I didn't agree that it wouldn't be nice to have all those things; only that they weren't neccessary.  ;)

I'd order every dwarf in my fortress down an addy tube in the buff (and win) if I thought it could get me a gear-controled lever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 16, 2012, 04:00:45 pm

I've been thinking that there might be a now-possible repeater setup:

x-axis is Z, y-axis is X

Code: [Select]

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
▓▓╔.▓╔▓
▓▓▓r▲▓▓
▓▓▓☼▓▓▓
r: roller to the right, pressure plate activates on cart and sends signal
The point is that the roller speeds the cart up until it reaches its destination above the starting z-level, which by then has disappeared. So the cart falls through the open space and speeds up again from the roller. This should be low power and efficient (not to mention with a low minimum speed and high degree of customizability), no?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 04:17:52 pm

Quote from: dree12 on April 16, 2012, 04:00:45 pm

I've been thinking that there might be a now-possible repeater setup:

Or you could just make a cart that goes around a track with accelerators and have a pressure plate at timed intervals. 

Of course, the problem with the pressure plates is that you need to keep the cart ON the plate for 100 ticks to make the pressure plate reset properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chagen46 on April 16, 2012, 05:00:36 pm

I love how the release with minecarts hasnt't even been released and we're ALREADY trying to snap the physics in half.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 16, 2012, 05:34:31 pm

I'm amazed we haven't seen any plans for a magma-powered cart supercollider.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 16, 2012, 07:17:51 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 04:17:52 pm

Quote from: dree12 on April 16, 2012, 04:00:45 pm

I've been thinking that there might be a now-possible repeater setup:

Or you could just make a cart that goes around a track with accelerators and have a pressure plate at timed intervals. 

Of course, the problem with the pressure plates is that you need to keep the cart ON the plate for 100 ticks to make the pressure plate reset properly.

Can't the pressure plate turn on the roller?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 07:22:21 pm

Quote from: dree12 on April 16, 2012, 07:17:51 pm

Can't the pressure plate turn on the roller?

Well, to make sense in a scenario where a cart sitting on a pressure plate turns on a roller that pushes it off that pressure plate, that means that the roller would have to be on the same tile as the pressure plate.  Which is, again, what I've been talking about this whole time.

Otherwise, you have to set up a two-cart system where a cart will stall out on top of a roller, and the second cart causes the launching of the first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 16, 2012, 07:35:49 pm

You know, with how much you talked about these systems and stuff, I've already started wondering if there's some nightly build being passed around, with everyone knowing about it except me. Really, how much CAN you extrapolate from a few devlog?

Also, we really need the easy compact logical gates. Kohaku's FPS concern is already a reason enough on its own, but putting it temporarily aside...

Yes, we can make all kinds of logical gates with the current mechanisms, but in that case we'll be making gates for the sake of making gates, not to speed up our item/personell transport with carts.

You may argue that this is a part of fun, and you may argue that it IS the fun, and that you set it up and it wondrously works on its own afterwards. But I'll see you on your TENTH fort, where you would realise that you need to set everything up anew, headdesk and say "Not AGAIN...."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 08:01:43 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 16, 2012, 07:35:49 pm

You may argue that this is a part of fun, and you may argue that it IS the fun, and that you set it up and it wondrously works on its own afterwards. But I'll see you on your TENTH fort, where you would realise that you need to set everything up anew, headdesk and say "Not AGAIN...."

That's OK, my forts take so long to plan and enact that I only tend to do about one "real" fort every year or two, anyway.  (Nevermind the dozen or so disposable experiment forts built to test all the theories before allowing them to go into practice.)  By then, there's a new feature release.

"Measure 8,000,000,000 times, cut once."

Making the plan and knowing it will work is in some ways more fun than the actual task of carrying it out, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 16, 2012, 08:43:15 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 16, 2012, 08:01:43 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 16, 2012, 07:35:49 pm

You may argue that this is a part of fun, and you may argue that it IS the fun, and that you set it up and it wondrously works on its own afterwards. But I'll see you on your TENTH fort, where you would realise that you need to set everything up anew, headdesk and say "Not AGAIN...."

That's OK, my forts take so long to plan and enact that I only tend to do about one "real" fort every year or two, anyway.  (Nevermind the dozen or so disposable experiment forts built to test all the theories before allowing them to go into practice.)  By then, there's a new feature release.

"Measure 8,000,000,000 times, cut once."

Making the plan and knowing it will work is in some ways more fun than the actual task of carrying it out, anyway.

Lucky you. FPS decay forces me to eventually start a new fort. You can also clearly tell that I plan as I go, instead.

But that aside, you still need systems and gates that take up ungodly amount of space just so that you could raise one bridge while lowering another with a single lever. The way I see it, if the mechanisms take up more room than the project that I am making (and then slightly adjusted by the importance of the project), even if (and also especially) it's a very single timed floodgate, then there is something wrong with the system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 17, 2012, 12:01:08 am

Quote from: front page

I fixed up some high-speed physics problems that caused energy to be created in the carts (so they'd go faster and faster...), confirmed that the Newton's cradle from the FotF questions works

Curses, our hopes of faster-than-light minecarts were thwarted.  You win again, Physics.

NEXT TIME, REALITY, NEXT TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 17, 2012, 12:12:57 am

So it sounds like this release wont encompass all the hauling improvements. Which is cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TSTwizby on April 17, 2012, 12:28:06 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 17, 2012, 12:01:08 am

Curses, our hopes of faster-than-light minecarts were thwarted.  You win again, Physics.

NEXT TIME, REALITY, NEXT TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

Sig'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 17, 2012, 12:39:10 am

Quote

Overall, to wrap up the hauling changes, we still have to do . . . fluid/minecart interactions

Interesting. Wonder if that'll involve using carts as buckets with wheels, or just making water push carts around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on April 17, 2012, 01:11:40 am

Quote from: Deon on April 16, 2012, 04:20:53 am

I wonder what will make us to build rails at all? Why not to build bridges, a few tiles from 1 stone, everywhere instead? It's faster and cheaper.

For my part, it'll be because of tantruming dwarves. And stray magma, assuming magma doesn't wipe out rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 17, 2012, 01:11:53 am

Quote from: Untelligent on April 17, 2012, 12:39:10 am

Quote

Overall, to wrap up the hauling changes, we still have to do . . . fluid/minecart interactions

Interesting. Wonder if that'll involve using carts as buckets with wheels, or just making water push carts around.

Well, there defiantly community pressure for Minecarts to hold liquids, and to dump liquids. Being displaced by liquids shouldnt shouldnt be that much of a hassle. There code already in place of that, and I'd be willing to bet that Tools are already enabled with that compatibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on April 17, 2012, 05:12:10 am

I don't think I saw this asked, so here goes:

Will we need to build supports under constructed tracks that extend into open space?  That is building things like wooden lattices and supports under tracks that cross a canyon or deep underground pit.

Building dwarf roller coasters and underground mine track courses just wouldn't be the same without this sort of thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on April 17, 2012, 05:26:54 am

ToadyOne: installs game mechanics. Inadvertently creates infinite velocity engine. In a mine cart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 17, 2012, 05:29:04 am

Quote from: orius on April 17, 2012, 05:12:10 am

I don't think I saw this asked, so here goes:

Will we need to build supports under constructed tracks that extend into open space?  That is building things like wooden lattices and supports under tracks that cross a canyon or deep underground pit.

Building dwarf roller coasters and underground mine track courses just wouldn't be the same without this sort of thing.

No. Toady hasn't spoken about changing the Cave In Mechanics for this release. Even though World Generated bridges do have suppor arches underneath them, player constructs will probably still follow the overly simple rule of at least one support.

Though reworking the Cave In Mechanics have been spoken of previously, it doesnt seem to be hinted at on the Dev Goal page.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: davros on April 17, 2012, 05:41:52 am

Just a small question, but can minecarts travel over weapon traps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 17, 2012, 05:48:08 am

Happy birthday, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xmakina on April 17, 2012, 07:38:21 am

Quote from: davros on April 17, 2012, 05:41:52 am

Just a small question, but can minecarts travel over weapon traps?

Presumably yes, but without rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on April 17, 2012, 08:50:36 am

hehehe

The naïve implementation of newton's laws on a computer does indeed gain energy over time.  I'm surprised to hear the error was making a visible difference though, so maybe it was something else.  Computational modeling of physical systems is a tricky business :)  I'm looking forward to cave-ins one day returning.  I know a lot of megaproject designers will wail and cry, but I look forward to building scaffolds and supports, and perhaps being forced to look for a certain extra-hard rock layer to build my mountain halls in.  (in fact, I usually pretend that's the case anyway)

Also; Happy Birthday Toady - Hail to the Toad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on April 17, 2012, 09:25:58 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 17, 2012, 05:29:04 am

Quote from: orius on April 17, 2012, 05:12:10 am

I don't think I saw this asked, so here goes:

Will we need to build supports under constructed tracks that extend into open space?  That is building things like wooden lattices and supports under tracks that cross a canyon or deep underground pit.

Building dwarf roller coasters and underground mine track courses just wouldn't be the same without this sort of thing.

No. Toady hasn't spoken about changing the Cave In Mechanics for this release. Even though World Generated bridges do have suppor arches underneath them, player constructs will probably still follow the overly simple rule of at least one support.

Though reworking the Cave In Mechanics have been spoken of previously, it doesnt seem to be hinted at on the Dev Goal page.

Well, Toady said you couldn't construct rails on top of constructed floors, but that the 'free' floor above a constructed wall should be fine; I'd like to think of it as a tressel of sorts...

Also, since there's been a lot of discussion going on here about potential applications of minecarts, I've made a thread for it. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107576.0)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on April 17, 2012, 02:03:02 pm

Quote from: xmakina on April 17, 2012, 07:38:21 am

Quote from: davros on April 17, 2012, 05:41:52 am

Just a small question, but can minecarts travel over weapon traps?

Presumably yes, but without rails.

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

You can place any building on top of a track (at least any building that would work on a stone/constructed floor).

Toady's already mentioned pressure plates being used, so I assume weapon traps can be used too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on April 17, 2012, 02:32:07 pm

If hauling rocks by hand is made harder now that minecarts are in, will hauling rocks on stairs going down be easier than going up?  Or will wheelbarrows be usable on stairs for hauling rocks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on April 17, 2012, 05:55:19 pm

Alternate pathfinding systems in general are a whole can of worms. Wheelbarrows will, barring crazy feature creep, be able to go up and down stairs without difficulty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 18, 2012, 02:52:31 pm

A large point of the minecart addition is that hauling every single rock is already inordinately time-consuming (which, granted, has balanced out the unrealistic ease of churning through walls -- at least, unrealistic unless dwarves know something about picks or their use that we humans don't -- but now that Toady's making it easy to move stuff in minecarts, I hear the mining itself is going to be tweaked/revised). As such, I don't expect the hauling of individual stones to be made harder than it already is. I wouldn't be surprised if their mining were made slower or something -- I don't know what Toady has planned for the mining system/mechanics per se, which I thought was pretty much complete.

And now, to ask about the future of the fortress in an area that isn't the main focus right now (I hope I'm allowed to ask two questions in one round; if not, just let me know and I'll save this for the next)...

Could a solution to the elven stupidity be to add a raw tag that 1) changes the description to suggest an object was grown rather than carved/cut, 2) allows the elves to recognise their own work and trade it back, and perhaps 3) adds a surrounding symbol -- say, "~" -- to the name to let us distinguish a +<<*larch bow*>>+ and an elven +<<*~larch bow~*>>+? It seems to me that given the system already tracks material, quality, encrusting/decoration etc. of individual items it shouldn't in principle be difficult to add elven-ness in this manner (though maybe it's more complicated to change any such things than I realize)? I for one would like to get a *~larch bow~* from the elves, decorate it so it's a +<<*~larch bow~*>>+ and sell it back to them at increased value, whereas currently there is (to my knowledge) no point in larch bows being in Dwarf Mode at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 18, 2012, 05:26:09 pm

apart from the fact, that this is totally a suggestion and not a question which is not meant to be greened... using green instead of limegreen makes my eyes bleed!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 18, 2012, 06:03:20 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 18, 2012, 05:26:09 pm

apart from the fact, that this is totally a suggestion and not a question which is not meant to be greened... using green instead of limegreen makes my eyes bleed!

Seconded, thirded, and fourthed. I've wanted to say this every time I saw the darker green text, and I did not because I felt that it's not in my place and that I'd be just a lone voice. I had to select the text to be able to read it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flaede on April 18, 2012, 07:28:19 pm

I haven't seen any mention of this, but all the talk of rollercoasters and whatnot has me asking:

what about loop-de-loops?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 18, 2012, 07:55:32 pm

I haven't seen any talk that would indicate you could create a ramp with any sort of discernible adjustable angle.  Vertical tracks thus far seem impossible, much less ones that go inverted. 

This is more the up-and-down or hairpin turn type of rollercoaster thus far.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm

Quote from: Flaede on April 18, 2012, 07:28:19 pm

I haven't seen any mention of this, but all the talk of rollercoasters and whatnot has me asking:

what about loop-de-loops?

This has been asked twice, I think so far.

DF Z Levels don't really have ceiling and you can't add constructs to the 'top' of a tile. Which means you can't do Loop De Loops.

But, it seems like, if the minecart physics are as Toady is describing, it should be Physically Possible, just not mechanically possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 18, 2012, 11:36:46 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm

DF Z Levels don't really have ceiling and you can't add constructs to the 'top' of a tile. Which means you can't do Loop De Loops.

Mind you, just because something's not in the game doesn't mean it'll never be in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 18, 2012, 11:51:39 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on April 18, 2012, 11:36:46 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm

DF Z Levels don't really have ceiling and you can't add constructs to the 'top' of a tile. Which means you can't do Loop De Loops.

Mind you, just because something's not in the game doesn't mean it'll never be in the game.

Yeah, but I doubt Toady's going to add ceilings for the express purpose of allowing minecart loop-de-loops :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 19, 2012, 12:29:17 am

Quote from: Untelligent on April 18, 2012, 11:36:46 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm

DF Z Levels don't really have ceiling and you can't add constructs to the 'top' of a tile. Which means you can't do Loop De Loops.

Mind you, just because something's not in the game doesn't mean it'll never be in the game.

In general that's true, but ceilings sound like something that will probably never go in. It would require overhauling some really fundamental stuff, and there's not much gained at all from it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 01:14:57 am

... Do ceilings really need to be in the game? Why can't the game just check whether or not the above tile has a floor/wall material? That seems like it would be sufficient. I don't see why the floor of one tile can't also act as the ceiling of the tile below.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on April 19, 2012, 02:05:02 am

Quote from: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 01:14:57 am

... Do ceilings really need to be in the game? Why can't the game just check whether or not the above tile has a floor/wall material? That seems like it would be sufficient. I don't see why the floor of one tile can't also act as the ceiling of the tile below.

But in this case how would you differentiate a dead end with a ceiling from a sort of loop wher ethe cart is supposed to go up the wall and roll on the ceiling ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 02:09:16 am

A loop where a cart goes up a wall doesn't require ceilings, it requires some kind of inverse ramp. The differentiation isn't between "floors" and "ceilings" (which are fundamentally identical in DF), but between a 90-degree angle between a wall and ceiling/floor and a more gradual curve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 19, 2012, 02:17:37 am

Quote from: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 01:14:57 am

... Do ceilings really need to be in the game? Why can't the game just check whether or not the above tile has a floor/wall material? That seems like it would be sufficient. I don't see why the floor of one tile can't also act as the ceiling of the tile below.

I've seen a post just like this 2-3 pages ago. I dont feel like checking, but it's virtually verbatim. Did you copy/paste? Despite the redundancy, I agree that this sounds like a logical solution... A surface acting as a floor to the room above, and a ceiling to the room below.

That said, I'd rather have a rail system closer to Transport Tycoon, than Rollercoaster Tycoon. Remember people, this is a band of hardy and highly industrial people! They came to build a military and industrial outpost, not to build a themepark. When the novelty wears off, you'll want the carts to be as efficient as possible.

Quote from: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 02:09:16 am

A loop where a cart goes up a wall doesn't require ceilings, it requires some kind of inverse ramp. The differentiation isn't between "floors" and "ceilings" (which are fundamentally identical in DF), but between a 90-degree angle between a wall and ceiling/floor and a more gradual curve.

It requires inverse ramps? There are gradual curves? Did you play some early build before all others? =O

Well tell me then, you decide to make a loop. How do you stop it from being a closed circle? How do you shift the entrance gently to the left, and the exit gently to the right? Imagine taking a pair of 90 degree turns while hanging upside down at the mercy of the gravity.

More importantly, how do you build constructions (any constructions) on the ceiling without rewriting the entire map format and all the little changes that THAT would break?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 19, 2012, 02:20:36 am

I wasn't referring to loops there, just the more general and basic concept of a cart moving in a circle, from floor to wall to ceiling. A loop with an entrance and exit is obviously more complicated, but requires the same basic principles in addition to some others.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on April 19, 2012, 12:22:32 pm

Reposting, sorry.

Quote from: Elone on April 18, 2012, 06:03:20 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 18, 2012, 05:26:09 pm

apart from the fact, that this is totally a suggestion and not a question which is not meant to be greened... using green instead of limegreen makes my eyes bleed!

Seconded, thirded, and fourthed. I've wanted to say this every time I saw the darker green text, and I did not because I felt that it's not in my place and that I'd be just a lone voice. I had to select the text to be able to read it.

Use this javascript bookmarklet to turn green->limegreen. I wrote it for the same reason.


javascript:%20%20%20x%20=%20new%20RegExp('(color:%20green;)',%20'gi');%20%20b%20=%20document.body.innerHTML;%20%20b%20=%20b.replace(x,%20'color:%20limegreen;');%20%20void(document.body.innerHTML%20=%20b);

If you're using the new link, you need to click on the link to the top post (eg. Re: Future of the Fortress), otherwise it will move you to the new "new" post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: simonthedwarf on April 19, 2012, 04:25:36 pm

Toady is there a hardcode that prevents caravans from bringing sea life to your fortress if they have tags like [PET] or [COMMON_DOMESTIC]?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 19, 2012, 05:01:19 pm

They can only domesticate creatures that live in the biomes they build their cities (or equivalent) on or slightly around. 

Sea creatures are generally out what with being out at sea, and there not being any sort of naval aspects to this game yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: simonthedwarf on April 19, 2012, 07:21:21 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 19, 2012, 05:01:19 pm

They can only domesticate creatures that live in the biomes they build their cities (or equivalent) on or slightly around. 

Sea creatures are generally out what with being out at sea, and there not being any sort of naval aspects to this game yet.

This was pointed out to me. I enabled dwarf civs to be able to embark on oceans. They created mountain homes in the middle of the sea. Oil platforms for the win? Anyways, this had no effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flaede on April 19, 2012, 08:31:22 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 18, 2012, 09:57:05 pm

Quote from: Flaede on April 18, 2012, 07:28:19 pm

I haven't seen any mention of this, but all the talk of rollercoasters and whatnot has me asking:

what about loop-de-loops?

This has been asked twice, I think so far.

Thanks for the answer. I did look, but this is a crowded thread. I'm not all that dissapointed. Just a little. It was on for the hilarity that would ensue that I even thought to ask. Epic Jumps and "Drop Ship" style military tracks will be fun enough.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 19, 2012, 11:34:38 pm

It's been three days since the last blog update now. That hasn't happened in a while. Must have been a hell of a birthday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 20, 2012, 08:50:03 am

I don't see the point in making a big deal out of daily reports - sometimes there just isn't anything to report, even without a party. 

Sometimes you spend all day just finding out about a bug, tracking it down, and killing it, and there isn't much reason except for some arbitrary need to tell your twitter followers every individual thing you've eaten on a real-time basis to post to people about how you've solved a problem that you or they never knew existed until this morning.

Besides, some days you just don't feel all that motivated, whether sick or just exhausted, and would rather stay in bed.

If it's just skip a day or lie to us and report only half of what you do on your good days, so that you can have some extra report padding for your bad days, I'd rather he only write posts when he has something to actually say.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AlStar on April 20, 2012, 10:58:21 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 20, 2012, 08:50:03 am

If it's just skip a day or lie to us and report only half of what you do on your good days, so that you can have some extra report padding for your bad days, I'd rather he only write posts when he has something to actually say.

I agree with this, but still feel sad when I go to the updates page and see that it hasn't changed. If for no other reason then because Toady does such a good job of making minor bugs and status updates so darn humorous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 20, 2012, 06:49:16 pm

Even if the report was just "Fixed some tedious bugs, but nothing too interesting." it would be better than no dev log. This way we have no idea what's going on or if something's happened which prevents him from updating. For all we know some great tragedy has occurred.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CodexDraco on April 20, 2012, 06:58:42 pm

Most likely he got burnt out from all the awesomeness of the last weeks and he took a few days off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 20, 2012, 07:55:24 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 20, 2012, 06:49:16 pm

Even if the report was just "Fixed some tedious bugs, but nothing too interesting." it would be better than no dev log. This way we have no idea what's going on or if something's happened which prevents him from updating. For all we know some great tragedy has occurred.

Bah, this last year has everyone spoiled.  We used to go MONTHS without hearing anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 20, 2012, 09:24:43 pm

How much stone can go in one cart? It's currently possible to put a whole mountain of stone into a single tile. Will it be possible to load a cart with so much material that it obliterates everything it touches even while moving slowly?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 20, 2012, 09:58:15 pm

Quote from: ToadyOne

The struck units move in parabolic arcs now (instead of the old fly straight then fall straight down).

Does this apply to units sent flying by weapon hits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 20, 2012, 10:03:35 pm

Quote

This can end up leaving bloody skid marks intermittently as they repeatedly strike the ground.

Dwarves can bounce!

Quote from: Cruxador on April 20, 2012, 06:49:16 pm

Even if the report was just "Fixed some tedious bugs, but nothing too interesting." it would be better than no dev log. This way we have no idea what's going on or if something's happened which prevents him from updating. For all we know some great tragedy has occurred.

4 days isn't enough time to think that, if a week passes then it is possible a vampire got him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on April 20, 2012, 10:31:09 pm

Given that you are in this part of the code, is addressing this "sent flying" bug possible? http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=344

The current state of things is that knockback is inconsistent between its various causes. A bronze colossus can throw a dwarf (using a wrestling move) ~192 tiles (and exploding him against a wall), whereas the colossus can only kick the dwarf back 2 tiles. The same colossus holding a platinum mace can only send a kea flying 2 tiles, and anything larger can't be sent flying at all with the mace.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 20, 2012, 10:35:45 pm

Possible? Yes, even if he wasn't in that bit of code. Did he do it? I doubt it, especially since that bug report is still open. I rather suspect he'll mention it in the devlog if he does do a broad overhaul of knockback.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 21, 2012, 01:15:56 am

Quote from: BradUffner on April 20, 2012, 07:55:24 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 20, 2012, 06:49:16 pm

Even if the report was just "Fixed some tedious bugs, but nothing too interesting." it would be better than no dev log. This way we have no idea what's going on or if something's happened which prevents him from updating. For all we know some great tragedy has occurred.

Bah, this last year has everyone spoiled.  We used to go MONTHS without hearing anything.

Wow, this has to be one of the more absurd things someone said in this forum. Since 2006 I don't think Toady ever spent more than 10 days without a report.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on April 21, 2012, 01:48:01 am

Reworking the catapults to fire with parabolic arcs - not to mention using the new impact code - feels like a real low hanging fruit at this point. Will any work be done to them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 21, 2012, 01:57:35 am

just sayin' that the newest develop is awesome.

Anyone wants to play gobbo bowling ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 21, 2012, 02:24:39 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 21, 2012, 01:15:56 am

Wow, this has to be one of the more absurd things someone said in this forum. Since 2006 I don't think Toady ever spent more than 10 days without a report.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about 10 days - there were pauses back in 2009/2010, IIRC, esp. with those "end of month" things, but "months" is definitely exaggeration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alu on April 21, 2012, 03:03:57 am

What happens if a Minecart runs into a bronze golem or a giant?
Kinda curious if its also calculating in the mass of the colliding object.

also,
Will it be possible to transport magma/water in minecarts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on April 21, 2012, 03:28:10 am

A suggestion, but a very practical and important one:

Toady, could you please make tracks to be automatically designated as a low traffic zone? (So we don't have to do it manually).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 21, 2012, 07:26:52 am

Quote from: Alu on April 21, 2012, 03:03:57 am

What happens if a Minecart runs into a bronze golem or a giant?
Kinda curious if its also calculating in the mass of the colliding object.

also,
Will it be possible to transport magma/water in minecarts?

Toady mentioned it tracks momentum now. So when two objects collide at speed, energy and thus speed will be transferred, depending on their mass ratio.
(If the cart is lighter than the giant, the cart will stop. If the cart is heavier, the giant will be launched in a parabola in the carts direction of travel.)

There has to be a loss of energy as well from inertia, otherwise units would bounce around for ever. (actually; walls, etc. are 100% massive, so should cause a lot of momentum loss in collisions. translated into blunt trauma.) 

@jiri: I posted that as a suggestion-question earlier actually. (Don't post suggestions in green b.t.w) I'm sure that if dodging is not enough or too unrealistically efficient in preventing accidents, Tarn will take time for it.
Though dodging has been a main source of accidental death in my fortresses so far. :/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 21, 2012, 09:00:46 am

Quote from: SirPenguin on April 21, 2012, 01:48:01 am

Reworking the catapults to fire with parabolic arcs - not to mention using the new impact code - feels like a real low hanging fruit at this point. Will any work be done to them?

I dont know if they're actually that low hanging. With the fabled army arc suppose to be introducing myriad of new siege tools, the work on catapults to include this may just be worthless time expenditure, when Sieges are overall redone. Toady stated what tentatively remains for this release, and also explictly stated that he wont be adding in more parabolic arcs to weapons, in particular to avoid the added dev time for working them in Adventure Mode weapons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 10:11:10 am

Quote from: Areyar on April 21, 2012, 07:26:52 am

There has to be a loss of energy as well from inertia, otherwise units would bounce around for ever. (actually; walls, etc. are 100% massive, so should cause a lot of momentum loss in collisions. translated into blunt trauma.) 

Technically, that depends on the elasticity of the collision. 

Hypothetically perfectly immovable objects like areas where all time has stopped, or say, walls in this game would have to hypothetically perfectly reflect all incoming force, as no force can be transferred into them.  They would be like a perfect mirror for all forces (and light).

It is then upon the carts to react to this reflection of force.  Provided they have the structural integrity to not crumple like a house of cards, they should actually just bounce backwards like a rubber ball, although they will probably toss unsecured cargo and lose plenty of energy to friction in the process.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 21, 2012, 12:31:13 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 18, 2012, 06:03:20 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 18, 2012, 05:26:09 pm

apart from the fact, that this is totally a suggestion and not a question which is not meant to be greened... using green instead of limegreen makes my eyes bleed!

Seconded, thirded, and fourthed. I've wanted to say this every time I saw the darker green text, and I did not because I felt that it's not in my place and that I'd be just a lone voice. I had to select the text to be able to read it.

Actually, thanks for pointing that out -- I hadn't noticed limegreen in the color list (or if I had, my brain probably ignored it because in most media lighter shades are the hard to read ones -- but then, that's usually not on a dark background, all of which didn't even consciously occur to me). Future reference, or should I go back and edit my questions for ease of reading?

As for suggestion vs. question... I'm a little unclear how half the things that get asked on this thread aren't borderline suggestion, although I guess a specific solution to a known problem could be taken to be more suggestive than most things; I guess I'll have to dig around the thread and learn better. 8^/ And maybe look into moving that quessuggesttion over to the suggestion forum if there hasn't already been talk there about the possible advantages of something in the raws similar to quality or decoration/encrusting (to be honest, the main reason I asked here was quite simply that I wondered if Toady had any plans for when/how he'd deal with it, having read a thousand comments about the elven problem but little to no reference to Toady's opinion of it; but maybe I'd find that if I kept digging).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 12:54:48 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 10:11:10 am

Technically, that depends on the elasticity of the collision. 

Hypothetically perfectly immovable objects like areas where all time has stopped, or say, walls in this game would have to hypothetically perfectly reflect all incoming force, as no force can be transferred into them.  They would be like a perfect mirror for all forces (and light).

It is then upon the carts to react to this reflection of force.  Provided they have the structural integrity to not crumple like a house of cards, they should actually just bounce backwards like a rubber ball, although they will probably toss unsecured cargo and lose plenty of energy to friction in the process.

I don't see why walls have to be assumed to be perfectly, magically immobile. Sure, they don't move in-game, but it's not as if throwing a rock at a stone wall makes the wall move to any noticeable degree in real life either, even if the rock stops dead. This is a simulation; what matters are reasonable results, and a cart bouncing hilariously backward like a rubber ball off a cavern wall is not a reasonable result.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 01:34:00 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 12:54:48 pm

I don't see why walls have to be assumed to be perfectly, magically immobile. Sure, they don't move in-game, but it's not as if throwing a rock at a stone wall makes the wall move to any noticeable degree in real life either, even if the rock stops dead. This is a simulation; what matters are reasonable results, and a cart bouncing hilariously backward like a rubber ball off a cavern wall is not a reasonable result.

It is all a matter of whether the impact should be elastic or not.

Real-life car with a steel chasis and plastic shell hits a solid reinforced concrete barrier?  Folds like an accordian because the steel can't hold up to the force of a one-ton vehicle decelerating at such incredible speeds.

Matchbox car made of some metal and plastic top hits a wall solid enough not to fracture or otherwise directly absorb much of the impact the way a plaster wall would?  Bounces off "hilariously like a rubber ball" because its internal structure is capable of withstanding the forces of the sudden changed direction of the forces at play.

Basically, physics says that either a high-speed cart has the structural integrity to bounce, or it should be smashed when it hits that wall.  (Barring the admission of walls taking structural damage.)

We already have the data for the forces required to fracture materials carts are made out of, so we can basically just test how much momentum a cart slams into a wall with to see if the material the cart is made of is capable of withstanding that much force. 

Of course, that would be involving the notion that carts can break.  If carts can't break, then physically, having them bounce off is the only thing even remotely physically reasonable is bouncing like a rubber ball.  Just plain stopping dead is even more physically impossible than merely bouncing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 21, 2012, 01:45:48 pm

Will we be able to hook animals to minecarts, and have them pull them along? Or have dwarves PULL (as opposed to push) minecarts at all?
It would be very useful for getting the carts up hills. Since mines often go down, down, into the ground, the uphill tracks to get stone and metal up hill would be hard to get a cart up without giving it energy from an outside source. I guess a dwarf pushing it works, but what if the dwarf tires out?
Will we be able to put any items in minecarts? Possibly including live animals?
Making a loop between the animal pen, the butcher, the tanner, and the leather workers, and putting a cart on those tracks would speed up the clothing industry fourfold. Any way to get more out of the industry would help.
Will we be able to make splits in the tracks, and send carts in different directions?
If in the above example, after the carts visited the butcher, half would go to the left, carrying any skins to the tanner, and the other half of the carts would go to the right, to the kitchens and food stocks. Both would eventually lead back to the start.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 01:51:38 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 01:34:00 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 12:54:48 pm

I don't see why walls have to be assumed to be perfectly, magically immobile. Sure, they don't move in-game, but it's not as if throwing a rock at a stone wall makes the wall move to any noticeable degree in real life either, even if the rock stops dead. This is a simulation; what matters are reasonable results, and a cart bouncing hilariously backward like a rubber ball off a cavern wall is not a reasonable result.

It is all a matter of whether the impact should be elastic or not.

Real-life car with a steel chasis and plastic shell hits a solid reinforced concrete barrier?  Folds like an accordian because the steel can't hold up to the force of a one-ton vehicle decelerating at such incredible speeds.

Matchbox car made of some metal and plastic top hits a wall solid enough not to fracture or otherwise directly absorb much of the impact the way a plaster wall would?  Bounces off "hilariously like a rubber ball" because its internal structure is capable of withstanding the forces of the sudden changed direction of the forces at play.

Basically, physics says that either a high-speed cart has the structural integrity to bounce, or it should be smashed when it hits that wall.  (Barring the admission of walls taking structural damage.)

We already have the data for the forces required to fracture materials carts are made out of, so we can basically just test how much momentum a cart slams into a wall with to see if the material the cart is made of is capable of withstanding that much force. 

Of course, that would be involving the notion that carts can break.  If carts can't break, then physically, having them bounce off is the only thing even remotely physically reasonable is bouncing like a rubber ball.  Just plain stopping dead is even more physically impossible than merely bouncing.

How elastic a collision is has to do with more than how much each object maintains its structure integrity, though; kinetic energy dissipates through other means. A bouncing ball loses energy on each bounce even if it isn't actually damaged.

Also, regardless of the elasticity of it, momentum can be transferred to the wall itself. This is obvious in the fact that if you toss something sticky (for example) at a wall, it stops dead even though  momentum needs to be conserved. The amount of momentum involved is usually just extremely small (from the wall's perspective) as to be unnoticeable.


In this case, the options aren't just "cart breaks" and "cart bounces off"; how well the cart bounces off relies on other factors.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 02:38:17 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 01:51:38 pm

How elastic a collision is has to do with more than how much each object maintains its structure integrity, though; kinetic energy dissipates through other means. A bouncing ball loses energy on each bounce even if it isn't actually damaged.

Also, regardless of the elasticity of it, momentum can be transferred to the wall itself. This is obvious in the fact that if you toss something sticky (for example) at a wall, it stops dead even though  momentum needs to be conserved. The amount of momentum involved is usually just extremely small (from the wall's perspective) as to be unnoticeable.


In this case, the options aren't just "cart breaks" and "cart bounces off"; how well the cart bounces off relies on other factors.

In case you couldn't tell by now, G-Flex, the notion that walls in this game are "areas where time has completely stopped, and no energy can enter or leave" was a joke based upon the properties of the current game physics.  It's simply a reflection of how all energy must start and end in the cart unless it somehow flows outwards into the floor or heat energy or something else.

In the case of, say, throwing silly putty at a wall, it sticks because the material itself deforms quite readily.  Sticky things are really just highly viscous liquids that can deform and mold itself to the shape of its neighboring solids.  These are simply highly deformable substances that suffer no serious problems when they are deformed, unlike a cart, which needs structural rigidity.  That's still keeping the energy inside the projectile, and merely transforming its energy from whole-object kinetic energy into intra-object deformation.

Anyway, I'm not saying that loss of momentum should be completely negligible, but that if we have no deformity or significant friction loss, there is no Conservation of Energy justification for too much of the energy loss, and not modeling Conservation of Energy (as per those perpetual motion carts Toady had to nix) is much more breaking of the fundamental aspects of physics than a cart that bounces off more like a matchbox car than like a wad of silly putty.

That said, I still want to see friction heat capable of temporarily reducing the quality of cart wheels and leading to less efficient carts or brake failures or outright cart failures. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 02:53:51 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 21, 2012, 02:38:17 pm

In case you couldn't tell by now, G-Flex, the notion that walls in this game are "areas where time has completely stopped, and no energy can enter or leave" was a joke based upon the properties of the current game physics.  It's simply a reflection of how all energy must start and end in the cart unless it somehow flows outwards into the floor or heat energy or something else.

In the case of, say, throwing silly putty at a wall, it sticks because the material itself deforms quite readily.  Sticky things are really just highly viscous liquids that can deform and mold itself to the shape of its neighboring solids.  These are simply highly deformable substances that suffer no serious problems when they are deformed, unlike a cart, which needs structural rigidity.  That's still keeping the energy inside the projectile, and merely transforming its energy from whole-object kinetic energy into intra-object deformation.

You missed the point, actually. I was talking about momentum, which is always conserved, not kinetic energy, which sometimes is not. Also, things can hit another object and stick to it without deformation being necessarily involved. If I stick a heavy ball coated in velcro to a velcro-coated wall by throwing it at it, and it sticks, that's one example.

Quote

Anyway, I'm not saying that loss of momentum should be completely negligible, but that if we have no deformity or significant friction loss, there is no Conservation of Energy justification for too much of the energy loss, and not modeling Conservation of Energy (as per those perpetual motion carts Toady had to nix) is much more breaking of the fundamental aspects of physics than a cart that bounces off more like a matchbox car than like a wad of silly putty.

I'm not really sure what you mean here. The only aspect of "Friction loss" that wouldn't be appropriately modeled is whatever minor mechanical vibrations and heat would be generated, and those are often negligible even in the real world, and aren't simulated anywhere else in DF either (the engine doesn't care how much you heat up the ground when you land on it from a fall).

I'm just saying, it's perfectly valid simulation for a cart to hit a wall and bounce back with only a small portion of its original speed, without any kind of (significant or permanent) deformation or breakage being involved. This happens in the real world all the time, and anything being left out (like the conservation of momentum involved when something hits the ground/a wall, or heat due to friction/collision) is inconsequential anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flaede on April 21, 2012, 03:33:40 pm

Taking this in an antirely other direction:
Will dodging minecarts train dodging?

New addition to the danger room: a model train set!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 21, 2012, 03:45:00 pm

Quote from: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 02:53:51 pm

You missed the point, actually. I was talking about momentum, which is always conserved, not kinetic energy, which sometimes is not. Also, things can hit another object and stick to it without deformation being necessarily involved. If I stick a heavy ball coated in velcro to a velcro-coated wall by throwing it at it, and it sticks, that's one example.

I would think that's the ball bouncing off, then the hooks catching on the loops, and the hooks and loops each bending and deforming, and pulling at the ball and wall. The hooks act as friction and deformation. IIRC. it deflects back to the wall, the hooks now deforming the other way when they hit the wall. It keeps going back and forth, faster than the eye can handle, until the energy is all dissipated elsewhere.

In other words, I think the velcro is deforming. Just... very little.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 21, 2012, 04:46:46 pm

JEEEZ.

After the next version comes out, I will not build a cart for WEEKS while I instead use every other hauling improvement given.

The reason is all the minecart talk that I've seen in this thread so far, by now I've had enough of minecarts and minecart physics (which no one has seen yet but everyone knows everything about them) for the times to come.

Nothing personal, it's just the way I see it.

Regarding dwarves hauling multiple items in a bin/barrel, are we going to be able to set the distance which they will check, defining how 'nearby' is nearby? Can we set them to pick up an item, then only look in a 5 square radius for other items? Or 20 so that they check a fairly large area? Or 0 so that they would only get extra items from the same square? Or if not, how is 'nearby' defined?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on April 21, 2012, 05:21:59 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 21, 2012, 03:45:00 pm

I would think that's the ball bouncing off, then the hooks catching on the loops, and the hooks and loops each bending and deforming, and pulling at the ball and wall. The hooks act as friction and deformation. IIRC. it deflects back to the wall, the hooks now deforming the other way when they hit the wall. It keeps going back and forth, faster than the eye can handle, until the energy is all dissipated elsewhere.

In other words, I think the velcro is deforming. Just... very little.

The deformation isn't what actually matters, though. Yeah, there's generally going to be at least some deformation going on regardless of the example I use, but 1) that's not necessarily where the energy is going, 2) it's not a terribly necessary part of the process, and 3) momentum is always conserved anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 21, 2012, 06:02:35 pm

Quote from: Flaede on April 21, 2012, 03:33:40 pm

New addition to the danger room: a model train set!

Danger room?  Dining hall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: h3lblad3 on April 21, 2012, 06:13:12 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on April 21, 2012, 06:02:35 pm

Quote from: Flaede on April 21, 2012, 03:33:40 pm

New addition to the danger room: a model train set!

Danger room?  Dining hall.

Urist McDiner has eaten a masterful train recently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flaede on April 21, 2012, 06:31:07 pm

Quote from: h3lblad3 on April 21, 2012, 06:13:12 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on April 21, 2012, 06:02:35 pm

Quote from: Flaede on April 21, 2012, 03:33:40 pm

New addition to the danger room: a model train set!

Danger room?  Dining hall.

Urist McDiner has eaten a masterful train recently.

Oooh. Like those restaurants with the little train bringing the plates around and around and around for people?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on April 21, 2012, 06:40:32 pm

Are minecarts capable of derailing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 21, 2012, 06:43:38 pm

Quote from: blake77 on April 21, 2012, 06:40:32 pm

Are minecarts capable of derailing?

Yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 22, 2012, 06:36:04 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 21, 2012, 06:43:38 pm

Quote from: blake77 on April 21, 2012, 06:40:32 pm

Are minecarts capable of derailing?

Yes.

[citation needed]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on April 22, 2012, 07:07:03 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 09, 2012, 12:26:30 am

Quote from: Chthonic

Under what circumstances do you envision minecarts behaving according to minecart physics?

I.e., are they going to break free from time to time?  What would cause that?  How often are they going to go careening off out of control?

If they hit a corner too fast or hit a bad junction or track end or hit another cart really fast...  lots of opportunities for trouble.

Quote from: Arkenstone

How are junctions going to work, if at all?

Will it be abstracted, allowing carts to switch direction freely at any point where more than one rail intersect? Or only at 'stop' tiles? In either case, how will runaway carts coming up to the head of a 'T-junction' from the tail be handled? Will they just derail at that point, or will they be diverted?  In the case of the latter, will the direction be random or constant?

Or will there be splits like on IRL rail lines, where carts coming from one direction are sent in only one of two (or three!) possible directions?  If so, what would happen to carts coming up a secondary rail when its not the one presently being diverted to?

The carts do not switch freely at junctions.  You can prepare a multitile junction as described above, and there might be switches later as mentioned above.  At stop tiles, where a dwarf sets it on its way, you get a full fourway ability to send it on its way.  Runaway carts hitting a T-junction will not pick a side -- they will continue on in violence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on April 22, 2012, 08:54:18 am

And, devlog:

Quote

I went ahead and just debug-put a cart on a track and debug-pushed it. They gain speed going down ramps, get slower going up, lose a little speed on the rest of the track, a bit more on corners, and they fly in little parabolas and crash into the ground when you set them free, either straight off a cliff or launched from a short upward ramp. I've put off updating the rest of the projectiles to have parabolic paths because I don't want to lose time dealing with adv mode targeting etc., but you may well see parabolic unit paths when creatures are unfortunate enough to take flight without wings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 22, 2012, 11:40:05 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 21, 2012, 12:31:13 pm

Quote from: Elone on April 18, 2012, 06:03:20 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 18, 2012, 05:26:09 pm

apart from the fact, that this is totally a suggestion and not a question which is not meant to be greened... using green instead of limegreen makes my eyes bleed!

Seconded, thirded, and fourthed. I've wanted to say this every time I saw the darker green text, and I did not because I felt that it's not in my place and that I'd be just a lone voice. I had to select the text to be able to read it.

Actually, thanks for pointing that out -- I hadn't noticed limegreen in the color list (or if I had, my brain probably ignored it because in most media lighter shades are the hard to read ones -- but then, that's usually not on a dark background, all of which didn't even consciously occur to me). Future reference, or should I go back and edit my questions for ease of reading?

light backgrounds are painful. light writing on dark backgrounds is just so much better in general. but whatever.

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 21, 2012, 12:31:13 pm

As for suggestion vs. question... I'm a little unclear how half the things that get asked on this thread aren't borderline suggestion, although I guess a specific solution to a known problem could be taken to be more suggestive than most things; I guess I'll have to dig around the thread and learn better.

(the following should by no means be a form of trying to drive someone away, he simply asked for the differentiation, as far as i understood at least)

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 18, 2012, 02:52:31 pm

Could a solution to the elven stupidity be to add a raw tag that 1) changes the description to suggest an object was grown rather than carved/cut, 2) allows the elves to recognise their own work and trade it back, and perhaps 3) adds a surrounding symbol -- say, "~" -- to the name to let us distinguish a +<<*larch bow*>>+ and an elven +<<*~larch bow~*>>+?

until this part its a just a very suggestiony question, which i have absolutely no problems with: its incredibly hard, if not outright impossible, to ask many things without also suggesting something.

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 18, 2012, 02:52:31 pm

It seems to me that given the system already tracks material, quality, encrusting/decoration etc. of individual items it shouldn't in principle be difficult to add elven-ness in this manner (though maybe it's more complicated to change any such things than I realize)? I for one would like to get a *~larch bow~* from the elves, decorate it so it's a +<<*~larch bow~*>>+ and sell it back to them at increased value, whereas currently there is (to my knowledge) no point in larch bows being in Dwarf Mode at all.

here one can recognize the suggestion/demand by the following: "...it shouldn't..." and "...I for one would like...".
also most sentences not ending in a question mark usually dont need to be greened(exceptions may include, but may not only be limited to, necessary explanations of greened questions). this improves readability a lot. a good exaple:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3215006#msg3215006


edit: gosh, this turned out quite long, sry everyone!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on April 22, 2012, 02:27:42 pm

Actually, it's pretty easy to ask non-suggestion questions. Just ask non-leading/open-ended questions.

e.g. (something I'm very curious about, given the most recent DF talk): What exactly is the 'personality rewrite'? How are personalities going to change, and what sort of personality features are you looking to implement?

Notice I'm not 'suggesting' any particular features.

A beneficial side effect of asking such questions is that—since they generally are not 'yes/no' questions—if Toady chooses to answer them you'll get more complete and complicated answers. Leading questions are excellent in certain circumstances (e.g. adversarial journalism, trial cross-examination), but are less good for getting general information about a subject.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 22, 2012, 03:30:00 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 22, 2012, 11:40:05 am

light backgrounds are painful. light writing on dark backgrounds is just so much better in general. but whatever.

Actually, you and I are in agreement -- but everyone else I know tells me we're also in the minority. *sadface*

As to the rest, thanks for the pointers (you too, Sunday).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 22, 2012, 03:53:28 pm

Quote from: Sunday on April 22, 2012, 02:27:42 pm

e.g. (something I'm very curious about, given the most recent DF talk): What exactly is the 'personality rewrite'? How are personalities going to change, and what sort of personality features are you looking to implement?

I think the personality rewrite was first conceptualized under the old dev system: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote from: dev_single

NEMESIS ARC: The civilization leaders should be fleshed out in many ways. Related to Core11, Core15, Core40, Req161, Req277, Bloat48, Bloat68, Bloat176, PowerGoal98, PowerGoal101, PowerGoal102 and PowerGoal122.

Core15, PRESENTATION OF ENEMY LEADERS AND OTHER IMPORTANT FIGURES, (Future): Enemy leader play an important part in creating a story around otherwise by-the-numbers conflicts that can occur, so the leaders can afford to be presented in such a way that you as the player can learn something about their background, motivations and appearance without digging around in the legends screen. There can be a variety of mechanisms for this. Diplomats and others that visit your fortress could afford the same treatment, as well as the people you talk to and about in adventure mode conversations, etc.

Since then it's been discussed in DF Talk: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/df_talk.html)

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: combined transcript

Rainseeker:   The adventurer growing up, of course, you have a back story. So you could create these ... he's always scared of goblins because his brother was kidnapped by a goblin, so your character has a negative two to some kind of check; maybe you freeze in fear, or something terrible like that.
Toady:   As long as it's in a controlled environment where you can expect it, like if you knew it happened when you saw goblins that'd be cool. It's the kind of thing, like general terror ... that kind of bugs me, it's like you're not allowed to act because the game says you're afraid. You spent all this time going to find the dragon and then it's like 'No, you're just scared. Sorry.' But you spent two years trying to find it, you'd have worked up a little nerve ... So that kind of gets to an additional part of the overall personality rewrite which would be an emotion system. In adventure mode emotions are a tricky thing because you really don't want to get too far ahead of yourself there, getting into the players head, whereas if it's just doing some helpful bookkeeping for you with your favourite hobbies and stuff, that's actually a really good thing, but if it's actually trying to force you one way or another based on what it thinks you should be feeling, that's quite strange. But once you get to the other guys then emotions are a great thing. Right now we just have this slow descent into unhappiness and despair and psychotic breaks for the poor dwarves, and that sucks. They should be able to just snap, throw a tantrum, come back and be the happiest little dwarf that they could be, having worked out their issues, but it's kind of strange now how it's only long term despair and so on being tracked, rather than short term events. This is some distance in the future so we haven't really settled on a system there, we've just been writing up lists of emotions and so on, trying to think about when they might come up or how it might affect how the dwarves work and how we can just get rid of the happiness variable overall.

[...]

Toady:   Yeah, I guess if he's through with it. But then if you want to interrogate them further than that, or if they have some resistance rather, to that, then it can take the location of the bandit's thing ... If you're asking for a thing like 'Where is the store?' 'Where is the bandit's hideout? 'Where is one of these things?', you basically just need to go in and say how do people lie about things; they need to come up with a plausible alternate locations, and plausible alternate locations are basically going to be the bread and butter of bandits moving around to begin with, so it should all tie in very naturally, and the dude could just lie to you and send you to a cave. Now in addition to this you can start getting sinister about it and have him send you to a cave where something dangerous is that he would know about. When you talk about AI there's this thing where you're like, 'Well, don't you want him to just be able to come up with all of this on his own, "Well it's good to send the adventurer into danger so I'll do this" and you can get into this thing where there thing's all going to happen because you've written some sort of revolutionary value-weighting judgement and the guy can just make judgements like that on his own', and I don't think that's how those features on that list are going to work, I'm not going to make some kind of miracle happen. But I'm going to try my best to keep things general and to allow as much crossover as I can so that occasionally you'll get surprised by what they're able to do, that's all I hope for. So if the guy does send you off to a dragon cave, that's fine even if it's totally hard-coded, and if I can slip away from that so that the guy's evaluating danger, the guy's evaluating the goals that he has then that's icing on the cake ... well, it becomes the cake and then the result becomes the icing afterward ... you know what I mean, maybe, or maybe I'm just not making any sense at all. But that's not to say that there's not a basic AI change that's going to happen. With the personality rewrite we're going to be shifting over to a lot more goal-oriented building up of how people conceptualise each action that they take when they're doing things in their day instead of just following a script. So there should be some satisfying things that come out of that; we've written some test software that make people run around a city and do little goals that wasn't impressive at all but it was based on the new system, so I think it'll all work out, I'm pretty happy with it. Hopefully that'll work, but I'm not going to make any big promises because those things always frustrate me when other people do it, when they offer you up the world with artificial intelligence or whatever and give you crap. So this is ... Each feature that I put up there is going to be accomplished in some way, but it's not necessarily going to be done by a miracle. As for ... I don't know if we'll go into the other example as well of people trying to capture you alive. That really feeds into this idea of the personality with goals and so on, because it's more like a military objective, if someone wants to capture you alive there's two starting points there: how did they come up with that idea in the first place, and how are they actually going to carry it out? How they actually carry it out, that's the kind of thing where I don't think it's going to be based on some sort of magic AI, but it's just going to be something that they learn how to do, how to effectively trap you, box you in, and get you ... either use some kind of trap, or surround you and drag you down, whatever they might try.
Capntastic:   There could be the option to surrender of course.
Toady:   It's true, they could just yell at you and scare you and stuff. The new capybara sounds should really lead into a glorious future of people yelling at each other and stuff, that'd be great ... But anyway, the tactics there are probably not going to be interesting. When I get to the combat arc I'm hoping to open that up a little bit, but it's not very interesting now and I'm not sure how interesting it's going to get. But when it comes to the actual goal of 'We want to capture this person this alive for a reason', that's where we're hoping that the personality rewrite, which is basic to the army arc of them coming up with 'What do I want to do with my life?' - and that's not just for military goals, it's more general - but for military goals when they decide 'I want to capture this guy alive, why would I do it?' they'd need to have a reason for that, and that would be one of their goals that pops up, like 'I want to extract information from the adventurer', 'I want to hold the adventurer for ransom', 'I want to do this', 'I want to do that'; that would come up. Hopefully that all just fits into the overall system.

[...]

Toady:   [...] the personality rewrite involves not just coming up with facets of the personality that are more interesting than the current ones, that allow you to tell better stories, but also new categories entirely of things, like what are the dreams of this dwarf, what are the dwarf's lifelong goals and that kind of thing. Then in adventure mode you don't quite have the same thing because you're playing, whereas your dwarves will have those things independent of your existence

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 22, 2012, 04:04:31 pm

Quote from: Sunday on April 22, 2012, 02:27:42 pm

Actually, it's pretty easy to ask non-suggestion questions. Just ask non-leading/open-ended questions.
-snip-
A beneficial side effect of asking such questions is that—since they generally are not 'yes/no' questions—if Toady chooses to answer them you'll get more complete and complicated answers. Leading questions are excellent in certain circumstances (e.g. adversarial journalism, trial cross-examination), but are less good for getting general information about a subject.

well, in general i have to agree with you there, but when you have something specific you want to know, broad questions wont always work that well. recent examples, where i cant think of a broad question whose answer would necessarily contain the answer to what the people want to know, are:
-elones question to whether we will be able to set how nearby "nearby" is in terms of gathering stuff into a container a dwarf is holding in his hands.
-flaborts question to whether animals can be used to pull carts or not.
those are completely fine questions(independent of the way the askers actually formulated them) but can also always be understood as suggestions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on April 22, 2012, 04:30:23 pm

Very true. The more specific/pointed your question, the harder it is to make it sound like not a suggestion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on April 22, 2012, 05:15:10 pm

Spoiler: on suggestions (click to show/hide)

I think the key here is that some legitimate questions can sound like suggestions.  For example I got called out on "suggestions" in the previous thread when I asked about the large increase in mineral frequencies the releases at that time had undergone.  Granted the tone of my question might have conveyed my opinion, but it's hard not to do that: in truth it was simply a change that had occurred to the game which was never mentioned on the devlog, list of changes, or in this thread, so it wasn't clear if it had been an intentional change or what.  Pointed questions are sometimes required.

In general:

• try not to ask "questions" you yourself know are really thinly veiled suggestions
• if someone asks something that could be interpreted as either a suggestion or a question, give them the benefit of the doubt - don't call people out unless you're certain, and even then always be polite

Its hard because suggestions are very tempting to make, but I don't think a similar thread to this one, but "suggestion-based" (on the appropriate forum) could work very well.  While questions can get answered by Toady, frequently without drama, people are very often invested in their suggestions, and it's harder to hear someone shoot down your suggestion than tell you a negative answer to a question.  Forums work best when there is debate, but worst when people feel personally attacked.  Toady himself has frequently mentioned that when he isn't sure about how to go about something, he checks to suggestions forum to see if there's anything helpful there, but at the end of the day there's no way things could be added at the speed people think of them, so it's understandable that people can feel frustrated putting suggestions there, and never knowing if it made a difference.  I guess the point is that sometimes good ideas will get ignored, but that happens everywhere in politics/business/social life, and is certainly not unique to these forums. 

back on topic:

I'm very happy to hear that non-human sites and animal people frequency are going to get looked at sooner rather than later.  The latest DF talk alludes to some pretty neat things that might happen in those sites.  Multitile vegetation is something I've looked forward to for a long time.  I hope the surface animal people get at least the treatment that the underground ones have, with camps and whatnot.  I always enjoy venturing into the underground to bring ant-people with me on adventures (when I can at least).  And who doesn't want capybara-man necromancer raids?  Lots of cool stuff on the horizon. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 22, 2012, 05:21:52 pm

Toady is on a live broadcast right now talking about DF:

http://aigamedev.com/broadcasts/dwarf-fortress/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=promote

edit: I got it at the end. It's over now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 22, 2012, 05:29:23 pm

Damn it. Its concluded. I hope it was recorded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 22, 2012, 05:30:20 pm

About the suggestion-questions, though...

I often ask questions about topics that have already been talked about before, but I want more details.  That means I have to cut off the responses that have already come before, so that I can get to the information that I want.  (Which is why my last question had a whole bunch of quotes to go with it.)  Still, just doing that, I often get claims of it being nothing but a suggestion, since I'm guiding away from specific broad responses. 

After all, it's not "I think I'm asking a veiled suggestion-question" that starts the accusations, it's other people looking for "thinly veiled suggestions" that start the problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 22, 2012, 07:55:41 pm

Quote from: blake77 on April 21, 2012, 06:40:32 pm

Are minecarts capable of derailing?

I have a more specific question:

Will a one tile wide tunnel prevent a cart from derailing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on April 22, 2012, 09:09:14 pm

Quote from: cephalo on April 22, 2012, 07:55:41 pm

Quote from: blake77 on April 21, 2012, 06:40:32 pm

Are minecarts capable of derailing?

I have a more specific question:

Will a one tile wide tunnel prevent a cart from derailing?

Oooh, I sure hope so. It'll be very handy for making our dropchutes and cart cannons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 23, 2012, 01:20:20 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 22, 2012, 05:29:23 pm

Damn it. Its concluded. I hope it was recorded.

It looks like you can access it for the next two weeks if you pay $7.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 23, 2012, 01:33:35 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 23, 2012, 01:20:20 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 22, 2012, 05:29:23 pm

Damn it. Its concluded. I hope it was recorded.

It looks like you can access it for the next two weeks if you pay $7.

Damn it. It cost money. I sure it'll be free.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 23, 2012, 01:55:28 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 23, 2012, 01:33:35 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 23, 2012, 01:20:20 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 22, 2012, 05:29:23 pm

Damn it. Its concluded. I hope it was recorded.

It looks like you can access it for the next two weeks if you pay $7.

Damn it. It cost money. I sure it'll be free.

Hope so, I think we'll have to wait for word from Toady.

In the meantime, anyone wanna take the plunge and see if they can get it from the site?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on April 23, 2012, 08:43:29 am

Posting to follow, and also to express wonderment and delight at the concept of minecarts, and skidding heads.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 23, 2012, 09:56:02 am

Goblin 1: "Hey Krogoblat, why do you think the dwarves carved all these lines across the corridor here?"
Goblin 2: "I dunno, think we can steal them?"
Goblin 1: "Maybe, hand me the crowbar- hey, what's that thundering sou"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on April 23, 2012, 10:05:15 am

If your minecarts aren't supersonic, you're not trying hard enough. I suppose the sound could travel along the rails, but in steel that's only at 6000 m/s.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on April 23, 2012, 12:33:25 pm

Adamantine rails, on the other hand... ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on April 23, 2012, 12:52:44 pm

Then we need relativity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on April 23, 2012, 02:17:30 pm

Mine carts do have a terminal velocity, remember. Although putting too much thought into that hits the problem of defining just how big a tile actually is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nocker on April 24, 2012, 08:24:14 am

Just wondering...

After all the physics engine work done for minecarts, how close we are from generic vehicles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 24, 2012, 09:52:46 am

Generic vehicles such as boats have the problem of often being multi-tile.  In a cube-based game, something like a boat has problems because a multi-tile object that turns causes all sorts of headaches what with objects in the boat translocating relative to the internals of the ship to match the new alignment of the boat.

If you mean things that are just one-tile objects that move around, you might be talking more about mounts, and that's coming up soonish according to the devpages.  (Release 7, although those releases are obviously subject to being changed.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Misterstone on April 24, 2012, 10:14:32 am

Bros I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but I was wondering, will the implementation of object collisions (with minecarts) also be used to update siege engine projectiles?  I mean, so that giant catapult boulders will send people flying or smash them into a pulp when they hit, instead of just bouncing off of their armor?

I would green this question, but I guess someone must have already asked about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 24, 2012, 10:32:34 am

You might as well just green questions, even if you don't know if they've been asked before. If they've been answered, you'll get a reply with the answer. If they haven't been answered but have been asked then you will get lumped in with the other people who asked when it comes time for Toady to answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nocker on April 24, 2012, 01:56:34 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 24, 2012, 09:52:46 am

Generic vehicles such as boats have the problem of often being multi-tile.  In a cube-based game, something like a boat has problems because a multi-tile object that turns causes all sorts of headaches what with objects in the boat translocating relative to the internals of the ship to match the new alignment of the boat.

If you mean things that are just one-tile objects that move around, you might be talking more about mounts, and that's coming up soonish according to the devpages.  (Release 7, although those releases are obviously subject to being changed.)

You're right about multi-tile objects and turning, of course. The idea would be a multi-tile vehicle turning only in 90 degrees increments, pretty much like balistas turn right now.

But when I posted, I was thinking on war chariots (wheel-scythes purely optional). I know they are more a bronze/iron age thing, but I dig them. I had pictured them in game as single tile objects, being dragged behind a mount-animal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 24, 2012, 03:30:13 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 24, 2012, 09:52:46 am

Generic vehicles such as boats have the problem of often being multi-tile.  In a cube-based game, something like a boat has problems because a multi-tile object that turns causes all sorts of headaches what with objects in the boat translocating relative to the internals of the ship to match the new alignment of the boat.

I don't see this problem being particularly solvable in DF.  The easiest way to deal with it would probably be squares.  I'd love to see 3x3 and 5x5 rafts . . . maybe barges as large as 10x10--and then just not bother with having them spin (or if so, just spinning through 90 degree rotations). 

1x2 canoes would probably be doable also without deforming geometry too much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 24, 2012, 03:44:04 pm

Quote from: Misterstone on April 24, 2012, 10:14:32 am

Bros I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but I was wondering, will the implementation of object collisions (with minecarts) also be used to update siege engine projectiles?  I mean, so that giant catapult boulders will send people flying or smash them into a pulp when they hit, instead of just bouncing off of their armor?

I would green this question, but I guess someone must have already asked about it.

EDIT: I didnt mean my answer to sound ambiguous. Yea, the new physic still eventually get applied to the seige weapons, but not for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheWealthyAardvark on April 25, 2012, 12:37:29 am

Quote from: Toady One

I was able to bowl in the arena with a debug cart ball and aardvark pins, with various cascades and skidding. Nothing against aardvarks -- the alphabet just works against them for once.

Murderer! No toad shall survive in my forts, and no court will convict me!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 25, 2012, 10:30:40 am

Quote from: TheWealthyAardvark on April 25, 2012, 12:37:29 am

Quote from: Toady One

I was able to bowl in the arena with a debug cart ball and aardvark pins, with various cascades and skidding. Nothing against aardvarks -- the alphabet just works against them for once.

Murderer! No toad shall survive in my forts, and no court will convict me!

If it's any comfort, I'm sure they were all proletariat aardvarks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 25, 2012, 11:10:33 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 25, 2012, 10:30:40 am

If it's any comfort, I'm sure they were all proletariat aardvarks.

I loves me some out-of-context sigs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: empfan on April 25, 2012, 08:03:03 pm

Any idea when mugs will actually be used?  At this point they're pretty much decorations and useless bobbles taking up my finished good bins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 08:17:44 pm

Quote from: empfan on April 25, 2012, 08:03:03 pm

Any idea when mugs will actually be used?  At this point they're pretty much decorations and useless bobbles taking up my finished good bins.

Mugs, and instruments have been brought up a few times in the dwarf fortress talks.

As for a timeline, this Dwarf Fortress. It doesnt even use Valve Time.

Now, Release 3 & 4, have been stated in Dwarf Fortress Talks, to when Mugs and musical instruments might get used.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 25, 2012, 09:58:37 pm

Yeah, Dorf Mode Inns is probably the most likely for musical instruments, and Taverns is a pretty good shot for Mugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 10:56:42 pm

Skipping on Liquids! Holy crap!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 25, 2012, 11:07:31 pm

I'm liking the idea of filling something full of magma, but I wonder if it will be easier to fill a cart up with magma and fling it at my enemies, or if it will be easier to just build magma cannons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 11:09:00 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 25, 2012, 11:07:31 pm

I'm liking the idea of filling something full of magma, but I wonder if it will be easier to fill a cart up with magma and fling it at my enemies, or if it will be easierDwarfyer to just build magma cannons.

Fixed that for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2012, 11:10:07 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 25, 2012, 11:07:31 pm

I'm liking the idea of filling something full of magma, but I wonder if it will be easier to fill a cart up with magma and fling it at my enemies, or if it will be easier to just build magma cannons.

Well, you need a complex series of 100% magma-safe pumps alongside a system to power all those pumps for a magma cannon, because magma has no natural pressure, while for minecarts, you send a magma-safe minecart through some magma. and out the other side.

Which one sounds easier to you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 25, 2012, 11:15:47 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 10:56:42 pm

Skipping on Liquids! Holy crap!

I smell a new dwarven past-time. I can't wait to see transport systems that require a cart to skip across a lake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 11:29:08 pm

Quote from: monk12 on April 25, 2012, 11:15:47 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 25, 2012, 10:56:42 pm

Skipping on Liquids! Holy crap!

I smell a new dwarven past-time. I can't wait to see transport systems that require a cart to skip across a lake.

Skipping across a lake, and also hitting rollers along the lake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 25, 2012, 11:51:17 pm

Minecarts full of magma skipping across a lake...

...because we can.

Maybe have it all calculated for the minecart to finally fail to skip and fall in instead (realistically an object eventually either slows down or drifts in angle to the point where it fails to skip; you might quibble with the realism of skipping minecarts in the first place, but if you ever go and try skipping big, heavy but flat rocks you'll find it's possible, they just don't skip as many times because they lose more momentum and have greater angular drift per skip due presumably to their greater mass interacting with the water) at a point where you want to cast obsidian in the middle of the lake? Not sure what good could be done, but it might be amusing to build up an obsidian pillar in the middle of a body of water without piping magma through a hole in the ceiling above.

Also, maybe someday magma forges can have a stock of hot magma that can be dumped from minecarts to refill when the current stock gets cool, but so far we haven't heard of any such thing and that would unambiguously be a suggestion and therefore ungreenable. (Maybe I should make it red? I jest.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on April 26, 2012, 02:33:51 am

Moving water and magma with carts would be a nice alternative to pumping. At least, moving small to moderate amounts of liquids might be easier. Or when great precision is required. This would help isolate magma critters from the forges at least. And setting up isolated pockets of water below the water source level without pressure problems would be easy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on April 26, 2012, 03:09:41 am

A steel minecart skipping over a volcano and going all the way, then locking itself into the tracks at the other side of the volcano. Most awesome dwarven rollercoaster stunt ever.

Also, new trap potential ! Make a goblin ambush pass between 2 tiles of magma, drop the former captured ambush in the magma tiles, rejoice as it splashes over passing ambush !

I shall call it the Fires of Irony. Not the most efficient or pratical trap ever, but wicked fun ! Imagine the terror we put the goblins though ! First they will hear the screams of other goblins falling, not that they would care for their well-being but they WILL imagine this happening to them, then slosh ! Gobbo covered in magma ! !!FUN!! for the whole dwarven family !

Now ima go twirl my nonexistent mustache and cackle in a corner, if you permit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 26, 2012, 03:26:31 am

Ah crappit, I'm sure now the release will be out when I'll be back in flippin paris with no internet access... It's just to awesome to be another way. :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knick on April 26, 2012, 07:21:35 am

So what about splashes?  Are they like mists, or something else?

Because I can totally imagine having a watertrap whereby goblins plummet several Z-levels, splash in the water, and make a pleasing mist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 26, 2012, 07:28:31 am

I think they're mists. Some other people seem to think it's actual water movement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 26, 2012, 08:50:28 am

What tile do minecarts use?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 26, 2012, 08:55:34 am

they use an inverse wall tile

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 26, 2012, 09:03:11 am

inverse wall? what is it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on April 26, 2012, 09:06:57 am

Inverse wall = unobscured engraved wall, i.e. dark double lines on a light background.

And that's the tracks, not the cart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 26, 2012, 09:11:23 am

Oh, right, nevermind then.

Though, that said, all indications seem to point to it being A: moddable. and B: another type of unit. (First is confirmed, second is my guess.)

if B is right, then we'll be able to put unique graphics for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 26, 2012, 10:25:55 am

He said they're a type of tool, so the symbol can be changed in the raws.

I'm guessing it's either going to be µ or ◘.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on April 26, 2012, 10:30:19 am

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 26, 2012, 02:12:49 pm

Quote from: greenskye on April 26, 2012, 10:30:19 am

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Amusingly enough, if a liquid is a content of a minecart instead of an actual liquid on the map, it may be possible to put magma and water in the same cart without interaction until Toady actually specifically codes it in.

The obsidian reaction we have now is partially because the map data is hardcoded and so crunched that magma and water cannot coexist in the same tile at any time.  When magma is merely the contents of an extensible item vector, Toady will need to generate an entirely new set of reactions to deal with this. 

Of course, it would cause serious consistency issues if magma and water did not cool to obsidian, but right now, glass objects don't melt in magma when built, but do melt in magma when merely lying in stockpiles, so it's not like there isn't precedent. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 26, 2012, 03:22:56 pm

hrm...

Quote

The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square.

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Put a loop of rail in to connect a cistern with a rail line running through it with a pond you want to keep full?  Allow the cart to move through the water to fill, then dump water in the pond?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on April 26, 2012, 03:44:38 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 26, 2012, 02:12:49 pm

Quote from: greenskye on April 26, 2012, 10:30:19 am

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Amusingly enough, if a liquid is a content of a minecart instead of an actual liquid on the map, it may be possible to put magma and water in the same cart without interaction until Toady actually specifically codes it in.

Until you dump the cart, then fun ensues.

Or crash a water cart and magma cart at cart destroying speeds in the air above a goblin/elf/etc.


As to the cart symbol, perhaps an inverted bed or jug?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 26, 2012, 04:15:26 pm

Will it be possible to water farms using minecarts via some kind of pond-like mechanism? Or will all the DF players likely start purposely crashing minecarts full of water in the area they wish to irrigate? (You know we're considering the possibility.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 26, 2012, 04:22:24 pm

Quote from: Quatch on April 26, 2012, 03:44:38 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 26, 2012, 02:12:49 pm

Quote from: greenskye on April 26, 2012, 10:30:19 am

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Amusingly enough, if a liquid is a content of a minecart instead of an actual liquid on the map, it may be possible to put magma and water in the same cart without interaction until Toady actually specifically codes it in.

Until you dump the cart, then fun ensues.

Or crash a water cart and magma cart at cart destroying speeds in the air above a goblin/elf/etc.


As to the cart symbol, perhaps an inverted bed or jug?

He means if Water and Magma are handled as contaminants instead of Flow tiles, similar to how the contents of buckets work right now. If spilling a cart doesn't turn them back into Flow tiles you'd end up with smears of magma and puddles of water that dorfs would try to clean up. This is an entirely likely outcome, since going further would probably require the long-awaited Liquid rewrite and the code for water/lye buckets is already in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BroCookie on April 26, 2012, 07:52:58 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 26, 2012, 03:22:56 pm

hrm...

Quote

The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square.

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Put a loop of rail in to connect a cistern with a rail line running through it with a pond you want to keep full?  Allow the cart to move through the water to fill, then dump water in the pond?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

So how do we think dumping/removal of liquids in carts could be handled?

My initial thoughts are of a constructed (but not powered) tile with a mechanism that tips the cart without stopping it, emptying it's contents in a direction. This would allow automated filling of ponds/magma ponds and seems pretty intuitive. It could also work with the brake tile, so you could have a "stop and dump" action, but then you would have to get the cart started again.*

Of course an alternative is manual/dwarf labour action to empty a cart in a location. This is a neater option for carts that have been accidentally filled, to avoid a situation where, like buckets, they cannot be used for other purposes until emptied. Although this makes me think of dwarves scooping magma out of a cart with their hands.


*Which is another area i'm unclear as to how it's going to work, do dwarves have to manually push a cart stopped on a brake tile? I know they are not combined brake/booster tiles, but can, for instance, other carts jump-start a stopped cart? Or does simply releasing the brake let the cart on it's way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 26, 2012, 08:02:35 pm

Toady did mention that Newton's cradles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cradle) work so I imagine a cart can bump another cart off a stopper with enough force.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 26, 2012, 08:31:57 pm

Quote from: BroCookie on April 26, 2012, 07:52:58 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 26, 2012, 03:22:56 pm

hrm...

Quote

The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square.

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Put a loop of rail in to connect a cistern with a rail line running through it with a pond you want to keep full?  Allow the cart to move through the water to fill, then dump water in the pond?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

So how do we think dumping/removal of liquids in carts could be handled?

My initial thoughts are of a constructed (but not powered) tile with a mechanism that tips the cart without stopping it, emptying it's contents in a direction. This would allow automated filling of ponds/magma ponds and seems pretty intuitive. It could also work with the brake tile, so you could have a "stop and dump" action, but then you would have to get the cart started again.*

Of course an alternative is manual/dwarf labour action to empty a cart in a location. This is a neater option for carts that have been accidentally filled, to avoid a situation where, like buckets, they cannot be used for other purposes until emptied. Although this makes me think of dwarves scooping magma out of a cart with their hands.


*Which is another area i'm unclear as to how it's going to work, do dwarves have to manually push a cart stopped on a brake tile? I know they are not combined brake/booster tiles, but can, for instance, other carts jump-start a stopped cart? Or does simply releasing the brake let the cart on it's way?

Unloading railcars is actually a very simple process.  Loading them is more complex.  Most bulk railcars are unloaded with gravity feed in some way shape or form, dwarves would likely use levers and screws to open flaps at the bottom of railcars or open valves to allow materials to fall out of the cars.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 26, 2012, 09:24:51 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 26, 2012, 03:22:56 pm

hrm...

Quote

The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square.

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

Quote from: Cobbler89 on April 26, 2012, 04:15:26 pm

Will it be possible to water farms using minecarts via some kind of pond-like mechanism?

Quote from: Dev Log

...but the future of that depends on it being given a use through the hauling interface and having carts being empty-able so they can be reused later.

I'm gonna go with, yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 26, 2012, 10:42:21 pm

Does the filling and emptying of minecarts mean that weirdness with buckets will be resolved?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 26, 2012, 10:47:09 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 26, 2012, 10:42:21 pm

Does the filling and emptying of minecarts mean that weirdness with buckets will be resolved?

Are you talking about the Lye issues?

And also, Toady seem to have implied Minecarts and Cages are more directly related, since working Dorfs jumping out of Minecarts could lead to more active creatures in cages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 27, 2012, 02:17:01 am

The lye/water issues, yes. You know, buckets full of stuff that can't be used.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 27, 2012, 02:53:48 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 27, 2012, 02:17:01 am

The lye/water issues, yes. You know, buckets full of stuff that can't be used.

Do you mean the bug that was resolved on the 16th and is mentioned on the dev log?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on April 27, 2012, 04:22:00 am

Projectiles can now move in parabolic arcs. So does this mean that height will increase projectile distance?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Himmelblau on April 27, 2012, 05:04:06 am

Quote from: blake77 on April 27, 2012, 04:22:00 am

Projectiles can now move in parabolic arcs. So does this mean that height will increase projectile distance?

If by projectiles you are referring to airborne minecarts and units, then yes, probably they will fly further if launched from higher.

Other projectiles will not move parabolically in the upcoming release.

Quote

I've put off updating the rest of the projectiles to have parabolic paths because I don't want to lose time dealing with adv mode targeting etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RabblerouserGT on April 27, 2012, 12:34:31 pm

Since adamantine is so light, will adamantine minecarts be able to "float" on the surface of water? Like act as odd boats? :P Or does DF not have a concept of surface tension or bouyancy?

Lord knows, though, if it doesn't, it's probably best not adding since liquids hurts FPS already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 27, 2012, 12:43:14 pm

Quote from: RabblerouserGT on April 27, 2012, 12:34:31 pm

Since adamantine is so light, will adamantine minecarts be able to "float" on the surface of water? Like act as odd boats? :P Or does DF not have a concept of surface tension or bouyancy?

Nope, no hint at all that buoyancy has been added to the game at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: oven_baked on April 27, 2012, 01:20:55 pm

Well then: Any plans for boats to be added if candy carts sink?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 27, 2012, 01:26:43 pm

Quote from: oven_baked on April 27, 2012, 01:20:55 pm

Well then: Any plans for boats to be added if candy carts sink?

Yep, vehicles of all sorts are planned, and boats themselves have been brought up in multiple DF Talks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on April 27, 2012, 07:25:24 pm

Can the mine carts be fully automated, or do you still need a dwarf to push the cart off the stop?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 27, 2012, 10:54:21 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on April 27, 2012, 02:53:48 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 27, 2012, 02:17:01 am

The lye/water issues, yes. You know, buckets full of stuff that can't be used.

Do you mean the bug that was resolved on the 16th and is mentioned on the dev log?

Probably, I haven't been keeping up that well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 27, 2012, 11:27:48 pm

Wooo, so many improvements! Minecart brakes! Workshops with dedicated stockpiles! Stockpiles that can be used in feeder chains without worry about other clutter! I'm so very very excited about this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 28, 2012, 01:05:34 am

Quote from: Keldane on April 27, 2012, 11:27:48 pm

Wooo, so many improvements! Minecart brakes! Workshops with dedicated stockpiles! Stockpiles that can be used in feeder chains without worry about other clutter! I'm so very very excited about this.

Wow, me too!   I really love that Toady takes the time to implement features right; the hauling changes have been far more sweeping than I had imagined they would be.  Not only that but they sound immensely fun, used either seriously or for Fun.  I probably say this every release, but I cant think of another game in development with features that are so awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 28, 2012, 05:57:25 am

I dont think we can set up real feeder chain with stockpiles yet, but this is defiantly a step in the right direction, but I wouldnt be really surprised if the stockpiles still had the limitation of One Link.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 28, 2012, 10:07:07 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 28, 2012, 05:57:25 am

I dont think we can set up real feeder chain with stockpiles yet, but this is defiantly a step in the right direction, but I wouldnt be really surprised if the stockpiles still had the limitation of One Link.

We couldn't distribute items with stockpiles before, but now if we can limit where the items feed into stockpiles from, we can have multiple 'origin' stockpiles that feed into the next step in the chain which only takes from their associated origin. The reverse was already entirely possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sidhien on April 28, 2012, 03:40:59 pm

Along with the changes to stockpiles and workshops you mentioned, is it possible for multiple smaller stockpiles to take from a single "clearing house" stockpile, essentially creating a centralized distribution network? Last I checked this wasn't possible.

Also, will workshops be able to only take from a designated input stockpile?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 28, 2012, 11:39:53 pm

You've mentioned that you're working how minecarts are stored, as well as optimizing bin usage. Are we going to see little stations that can store minecarts or bins, or whatever, that are different in some way from stockpiles? For example, if you're training up your carpenters on minecarts, the unused, spare minecarts would just be tossed into a stockpile, but you could build a "minecart shed" that was hooked up to the tracks and tell it "OK, I've assigned 7 minecarts to this track, and when you're done with them put them back here." Otherwise, for example, you could have a situation where when Urist McHauler finishes running ten pieces of chalk down to the smelters, he drags the cart all the way to the stockpile, and then when he needs a new one, he goes back to the stockpile and drags it back up onto the tracks, which strikes me as probably sort of inefficient and also possibly leading to congestion if you've got a stockpile set to accept chalk and 15 idle haulers decide "Hey, I'm gonna go drag down some chalk." This way, you'd be able to say, in effect, "No more than 10 carts on the track at a time, and here are the 10 you can use."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 29, 2012, 12:17:59 am

Quote from: Sidhien on April 28, 2012, 03:40:59 pm

Along with the changes to stockpiles and workshops you mentioned, is it possible for multiple smaller stockpiles to take from a single "clearing house" stockpile, essentially creating a centralized distribution network?[/color] Last I checked this wasn't possible.

After rereading it again, the changes done to stockpiles, is that you can make then Exclusive to their One Link. The list of Valid Links were expanded, to include Workshops (output only), & Minecart stops.
So largely stockpiles will function the same.

Quote

Also, will workshops be able to only take from a designated input stockpile?

From the currently available dev log, nope. It says "...to give only", so you'll still have to use close stockpiles.

EDIT: With the Dev Log on April 29th my answers are moot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on April 29, 2012, 02:43:29 am

Quote from: hermes on April 28, 2012, 01:05:34 am

Quote from: Keldane on April 27, 2012, 11:27:48 pm

Wooo, so many improvements! Minecart brakes! Workshops with dedicated stockpiles! Stockpiles that can be used in feeder chains without worry about other clutter! I'm so very very excited about this.

Wow, me too!   I really love that Toady takes the time to implement features right; the hauling changes have been far more sweeping than I had imagined they would be.  Not only that but they sound immensely fun, used either seriously or for Fun.  I probably say this every release, but I cant think of another game in development with features that are so awesome.

I love this and I hope that "only one link" limitation will be removed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on April 29, 2012, 11:41:18 am

After going through the new DF talk I wound up with a few questions unrelated to the current hauling changes, but certainly relevant to the future of the fortress. Now that site continuation after worldgen is being considered, could we get a glimpse into your thoughts on how you are going to implement it? Are you considering something involving an actual continuation of worldgen where cities can expand their walls and wars are waged, or something simpler like checking population, available jobs, need for food, etc. and then recalculating population and goods every year?  

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on April 29, 2012, 04:21:30 pm

Would it be possible to use the rail framework thing to create a way to move siege engines around? I think it was mentioned somewhere in the DF talk but I'm not sure. What else are you planning to use rails with in the future? Are moving wall sections a possibility?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on April 29, 2012, 08:24:37 pm

I wonder if I'm only one who considers proper stockpiles/workshops relation graph implementation (w/out these silly restrictions on count or direction of links) even better than whole minecarts stuff?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 29, 2012, 09:34:05 pm

Quote from: devlog 4/29

Stockpiles can now be set to give items to multiple stockpiles. You can also set stockpiles to give to a workshop, in which case the workshop will only use items from its piles.

Aw hell yeah. Now I can have a Mason's Workshop for all my magma safe stone, and my garbage stone, and training Forges drawing on shit metals... good times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 29, 2012, 11:05:21 pm

Sometimes a big cause of hauling inefficiency is just have too many idle dwarves. Imagine having 50 stones in some distant, deep room and you want to move it to a stockpile in the fort. It would be best to have a couple of guys load up a minecart and send it home along the tracks, but you know it wouldn't work that way, especially if you have 50 or more idle dwarves. Most likely they would all like to pick up a stone, put it in the minecart and then walk all the way back to the dining room empty handed, for a gain of zero efficiency.

Solving this problem sounds technically difficult, so I want to ask:

Are there cases where a busy dwarf will be considered a better job recipient than an idle dwarf? How have you handled this so far?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, we can handle it ourselves by simply having few stone haulers. Heh, maybe this issue does not require complex problem solving.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 29, 2012, 11:55:33 pm

Quote from: TempAcc on April 29, 2012, 04:21:30 pm

What else are you planning to use rails with in the future? Are moving wall sections a possibility?

Yep.

Its listed twice on the Development Page. Even the moving Siege weapons part is.

Quote from: Dev Page

Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)

Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khym Chanur on April 30, 2012, 05:45:42 am

Quote

Stockpiles can now be set to give items to multiple stockpiles.

Wheeee!

Quote

You can also set stockpiles to give to a workshop, in which case the workshop will only use items from its piles.

Wheeee!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on April 30, 2012, 08:10:40 am

Quote from: cephalo on April 29, 2012, 11:05:21 pm

Sometimes a big cause of hauling inefficiency is just have too many idle dwarves. Imagine having 50 stones in some distant, deep room and you want to move it to a stockpile in the fort. It would be best to have a couple of guys load up a minecart and send it home along the tracks, but you know it wouldn't work that way, especially if you have 50 or more idle dwarves. Most likely they would all like to pick up a stone, put it in the minecart and then walk all the way back to the dining room empty handed, for a gain of zero efficiency.

Solving this problem sounds technically difficult, so I want to ask:

Are there cases where a busy dwarf will be considered a better job recipient than an idle dwarf? How have you handled this so far?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, we can handle it ourselves by simply having few stone haulers. Heh, maybe this issue does not require complex problem solving.

Quote from: devlog 04/02/2012

The hauling changes have begun. This afternoon there were dwarves running around with bins, bags and barrels, vacuuming up items. Seeing a single dwarf clean up a seed-ridden dining room as a single job is a beautiful thing.

I don't know for sure, but this devlog suggests a single dwarf loading an entire room of stones into one container (in this case a minecart) as a single job, thereby bypassing the problem of getting one dwarf to do the same job in the same area over and over.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 30, 2012, 10:48:56 am

I have to say, minecarts and hauling have been two of the most demanded changes to fortress mode for years. What's next? Dwarves who realize they're on fire? Lights?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 30, 2012, 11:06:26 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2012, 10:48:56 am

What's next? Dwarves who realize they're on fire?

Unless I'm mistaken, that was the other thing that was supposed to be in this update. I can't access the main page right now, otherwise I'd hunt down the relevant devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 30, 2012, 11:15:57 am

Quote from: Keldane on April 30, 2012, 11:06:26 am

Unless I'm mistaken, that was the other thing that was supposed to be in this update. I can't access the main page right now, otherwise I'd hunt down the relevant devlog.

Not in the next update most likely, but during this cycle of bugfixes (that is, before Toady gets back to the caravan arc releases - it's not quite a bugfix cycle anymore). Also better support of resizing the window, and maybe, maybe, other ESV items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 30, 2012, 11:24:32 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2012, 10:48:56 am

I have to say, minecarts and hauling have been two of the most demanded changes to fortress mode for years. What's next? Dwarves who realize they're on fire? Lights?

"The other thing I said I would definitely do is make dwarves respond a little better to fire"

From the latest df talk ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on April 30, 2012, 12:42:53 pm

I didn't listen to the latest FotF . . . will a dwarf that's on fire cause nearby dwarves to get a "douse flaming dwarf" job?  Are there going to be personality effects?  I can picture a cool-headed dwarf grabbing a bucket of water from a water stockpile (we should totally have water stockpiles) and putting himself out, while a more high strung dwarf might dive into the nearest body of water regardless of egresses or angry inhabitants, and a most nervous dwarf might run around screaming until an ignominious end in the booze stockpile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jervill on April 30, 2012, 01:51:10 pm

Zoning a pond would work too instead of a water stockpile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on April 30, 2012, 03:26:05 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 29, 2012, 08:24:37 pm

I wonder if I'm only one who considers proper stockpiles/workshops relation graph implementation (w/out these silly restrictions on count or direction of links) even better than whole minecarts stuff?

Nope.  WHEEE! Logistical management!

Man, when Toady starts on something, he REALLY goes whole-hog.

I'm just a little disappointed that it doesn't appear as if stacking will become a part of this update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 30, 2012, 03:38:09 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 29, 2012, 11:55:33 pm

Quote from: Dev Page

Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)

Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Quote

boats

Dwarven Pirates, awaaaaay!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jervill on April 30, 2012, 03:50:01 pm

Considering they're dwarven pirates, they would take a break just when the plundering should start and end up failing epically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on April 30, 2012, 03:56:44 pm

I dream of the day I'll be able to build a complex array involving ballistae and walls moving and turning with the use of mechanisms, axles and rails, powered by many waterwheels, controlled by a single dwarf in a room full of levers while he observes the whole thing behind fortifications atop a tower.
In fact, anything that improves the usefulness of mechanics is a huge plus for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on April 30, 2012, 04:18:17 pm

Sometimes i just cant resist, heres a 5 minute sketch TempAcc.

Spoiler: DwarvenGatlingGun (click to show/hide)

(http://tnypic.net/0bb99.png)

missing a few things you said, but hey, its my 5 minute sketch for the day.

Anyways, these new hauling and stockpile changes are gonna alleviate alot of the headaches of fortress management present atm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on April 30, 2012, 04:23:37 pm

Thats not really what I imagined, but your idea is much more awesome so it doesn't matter :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 30, 2012, 05:57:55 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on April 29, 2012, 08:24:37 pm

I wonder if I'm only one who considers proper stockpiles/workshops relation graph implementation (w/out these silly restrictions on count or direction of links) even better than whole minecarts stuff?

On the surface, mine carts are cooler, but for the types of forts I tend to build, the stockpile updates are definitely going to have a greater effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 30, 2012, 06:00:49 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2012, 10:48:56 am

I have to say, minecarts and hauling have been two of the most demanded changes to fortress mode for years. What's next? Dwarves who realize they're on fire? Lights?

Now that there are ramps into and out of natural water sources, perhaps burning dwarves will try to run for the closest water and jump in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on April 30, 2012, 06:02:32 pm

Quote from: Jervill on April 30, 2012, 01:51:10 pm

Zoning a pond would work too instead of a water stockpile.

Adds new zone:  Stop Drop and Roll Pond

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on April 30, 2012, 06:09:42 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on April 30, 2012, 06:00:49 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2012, 10:48:56 am

I have to say, minecarts and hauling have been two of the most demanded changes to fortress mode for years. What's next? Dwarves who realize they're on fire? Lights?

Now that there are ramps into and out of natural water sources, perhaps burning dwarves will try to run for the closest water and jump in?

Then setting Dwarves on fire might be a good way to train them in swimming?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on April 30, 2012, 11:31:54 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on April 30, 2012, 03:26:05 pm

I'm just a little disappointed that it doesn't appear as if stacking will become a part of this update.

Fully agreed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 01, 2012, 04:08:08 am

Thanks to Footkerchief, dreiche2, Putnam, Greiger, MrWiggles, trees, Himmelblau, and anybody I missed for helping with questions not included below.

Quote from: ag

I wonder if there will be some way to construct a sorting yard, i.e. a reasonably compact area which accepts carts from multiple incoming lines, and dispatches to multiple outgoing ones based on their contents (or potentially some kind of a travel plan assigned at the source point) by the manual labor of a shunter dwarf?

Aside from weight, I don't think so (though you all are better at this stuff than I am).  We'll be able to add more conditions and so on as things come up.  It wouldn't be too much work to add a sort of advanced condition setting to a given stop, but handling a bunch of vehicles on the same line is a larger issue we haven't tackled at all.

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants

What effect, if any, will craft quality have on a minecart? Will a mastercraft minecart move faster/carry more/hit harder? Will a dwarf pushing a high quality minecart get a happy thought from it?

It doesn't matter at all right now.

Quote from: Quatch

(regarding track designation size) Is N limited to a small number?

You can designate across the entire map as long as it is a vertical or horizontal line.

Quote from: jimi12

What happens to the contents of a cart when a cart crashes? Would they be flung all over the place or would they stay inside the cart? Would this be different if the contents were 15 shoes or a dwarf? Also, do carts take damage after wrecks and collisions? Will it be possible to repair damaged carts?

Nothing happens at this point.

Quote from: dhoovr

What items will be required in the construction of a "roller?"

It takes a mechanism for every 4 tiles and 1 rope/chain overall.

Quote from: Arkenstone

What would happen if a moving cart hits a roller pointing perpendicular to its pathway?  Does it aquire a diagonal velocity? Does it just slow down, possibly turning if it's slow enough?  Does it instantly stop moving foreward to go in the new direction? Does it just derail then and there?

I haven't tried it, but I think it'll go diagonal and end up off the track.

Quote from: Elone

Can we set the rollers to use a particular force? Just like we can set a variable weight sensitivity to pressure plates?

Not at this point.  That might change.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Will it ever be important to see carts or anything else fly in parabolae? 3d visualizers are cool utilities, but part of what makes DF different from Minecraft or Real-Time Strategy is the ASCII graphics (or primitive substitute of the same layout).

Can minecarts crash into the ceiling if sent rapidly off a ramp in a cave only one storey high (at any given point; obviously above and below the ramp the ceiling is a level higher/lower just as the floor is)?

Do you mean being able to see the whole path at once?  It'll matter the most for adventure projectiles and siege engines when we get to those, because of obstacles and things like that.  The overall annoyance is part of why I haven't started in on those yet.

They hit the ceiling but they'll recover if they land back on tracks.  That might not remain true depending on the nature of the collision.

Quote from: i2amroy

Will we be able to have 1-way stops? So could you have a stop that allowed carts coming from 1 direction to shoot through without being stopped or slowed, but carts from another to be stopped and need to be started again? (Potentially in a different direction?)

The track stop construction applies friction no matter what.  A designated stop on a route with a dwarf guiding the cart can stop it one way and not the other.

Quote

Quote from: Areyar

- Could track-tiles be made unfavourable for pathing dwarves by default?

Quote from: Jiri Petru

Toady, could you please make tracks to be automatically designated as a low traffic zone? (So we don't have to do it manually).

Yeah, it'll set the traffic setting for you.

Quote from: Arkenstone

What symbols are you thinking of using for rollers and stops?

Will carts 'bounce' off dead-ends at walls, or will they just stop?

Rollers go between single and double lines perpendicular to the movement direction.  Stops are an inverted triple line.

They just stop.

Quote from: Keldane

If buildings can be placed on tracks, does that mean you can designate stockpiles on tracks? If so, what happens to the items on the track when a minecart barrels through?

It doesn't care about items in the track.  I'm not sure it ever will, since that might get too annoying to care for.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

how much have you found that these tracks affect your fortress design? Everyone seems to be assuming that it's a huge change, comparable to the shift from 2D to 3D, but is it really? Or is pure dwarven muscle power still the simplest way to haul goods around?

I haven't had a chance to do more than test each of the features out, so I'm really not sure.  Now that we are to the mining changes, we might see dwarven muscle power rendered useless in some cases.

Quote from: kaypy

What happens if you set a cart to free-roll to its destination but it runs out of momentum? Does a dwarf go collect it (at the players orders or automatically)?

Yeah, a dwarf will grab it and move it to the next stop, as with the original track placement.

Quote from: Fault

if bridges can serve the same purpose as tracks, can they be used to redirect cart flow?

Yeah, some of the diagrams I've seen of this would work (where a retractable bridge is placed over a corner for example).

Quote

Quote from: Khym Chanur

How many barrels/bins can a single cart carry?

Quote from: G-Flex

To expand on this, in what terms is a cart's capacity expressed? Is it total volume of items carried, total mass of items carried, number of items, or something else?

Quote from: cephalo

How much stone can go in one cart? It's currently possible to put a whole mountain of stone into a single tile. Will it be possible to load a cart with so much material that it obliterates everything it touches even while moving slowly?

I'm going to homogenize the sizes once I get through the mining changes.  As it stands, way too many.  The conditions are based on % of volume taken up in the cart, but it's more or less just to have it sent along after a while if it is halfway full instead of waiting.  Numbers have the trickiness of bins and how that's interpreted, and mass is less reliable than volume since it depends on material.  Volume has the disadvantage of not being displayed anywhere, not being as game-related as the number and not being implemented consistently.  Hopefully I'll have the third part more or less sorted out before the release.

Quote from: blue sam3

What happens if a hauler loads & launches a cart with orders to ride on it if its route passes out of his/her burrow?

They won't take the job if the designated start and ending stops of the guide/ride aren't in the route.

Quote from: diefortheswarm

I assume the current system of powered rails and friction rails are just placeholders until improved mechanisms where they will be replaced with a proper mechanical system.  Am I correct in assuming this?

Is there any advantage to using wood or metal rails as opposed to carved rails other then being able to build on constructed floors.

I don't think rollers and track stops are utterly unreasonable.  New stuff will continue to be added, but I'm not sure these things will be replaced.  Like I said before, I'm not an engineer and don't have any knowledge of what would be proper.

It doesn't matter yet.  It'd either be that metal > wood > carved in the friction category, or something to do with maintenance.  Might not get to any of that this time.

Quote from: xmakina

I know the contents of cages become invulnerable, will this be true of mine carts? More specifically, if I drowned a magma safe cart in a pool of magma, will it set the contents on fire/melt them down?

It's the same as everything else right now.

Quote from: Jacob/Lee

Will it be possible to strap a POW into the cart against his/her/its will and send it down the tracks with the cart? I assume this job will require ropes or chains to prevent the prisoner from simply bailing and running off into the sunset.

We'd considered the ability to tie people up and place them places, since that comes up with tracks, but ended up not having done it up to this point.

Quote from: Chthonic

Will we be able to remove carved tracks?

Yeah, smoothing the floor removes them.

Quote from: Cobaldunderpants

Will we be able to designate specific carts for specific dwarves or will it only be a first come first served basis?

It works like a haul job right now, but there aren't specific settings aside from which dwarves have "haul vehicle" in which burrows.

Quote from: Arkenstone

Toady, could you verify these quickly please?
(http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3187116#msg3187116)

Parallel tracks can be adjacent.
Long tracks: there is no maximum, and you can join dead ends by carving over them.
Turns: yeah, you need to overlap.
T-junction: yeah, that's all correct as I understand it.

Quote from: Arkenstone

Under which of the following circumstances will a dwarf 'bail out' of a cart, if at all?
(list)

They'll leave when the cart stops, or if they dodge out of it.

Quote from: Gilihad

Will dwarves be able to shoot from minecarts? Your last post brought to mind that if squads can be activated mid-minecart ride, crossbow dwarves with ammo on them could be use for dwarven drive-by shootings. Would a squad unit jump out of the cart as soon as it was activated though? How does minecart interaction differ between haulers and military units (if at all)?

It's difficult to get an armed squad into a cart right now.  Nothing will stop them from shooting if you can manage to do it.  They won't jump out of the cart until it is safe.  In general, I haven't set up an interface to ride squads or random citizen groups around in carts.  The haulers can ride them, but it isn't a full passenger service.  That could happen at some point, but there are things to think through.

Quote

Quote from: hermes

What does a dwarf need to hitch a ride on a cart?  One grasp?  Two?  Legs?

Quote from: Stoup

Following up on this question, will paraplegic dwarves who cannot walk use minecarts to get around? Do you think this might lead into the future-planned mechanical augmentations?

I'm not sure about the injuries, but probably whatever a hauler needs.  There isn't any special AI associated to the carts for moving around injured passengers.

Quote from: Naryar

I would like to know if we will be able to fill a minecart with items, launch it down a ramp, and then throw it at goblins and expect the items in the minecart to spread, hit and possibly damage creatures, like the item was thrown ?

It doesn't do interesting things with the contents at this point, but that's something we thought we'd get to, around the time we resolve the liquid question.

Quote from: Tov01

Since you are allowing fort mode dwarves to ride carts, does that mean that adventurers will be able to ride carts too in this version, or soon after?

Yeah, you can jump in a cart and push it off in a direction, or just push it.

Quote

Quote from: Naryar

So how will falling in a minecart be implemented? Can a dwarf survive a 7 z-level fall unharmed because he was in a minecart ?

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Does landing on a ramp mitigate fall damage or decrease the likelihood of projecting cart contents everywhere?  Can we make Dwarven Evel Knievel jumps, where launching from a ramp and landing on a ramp is a perfectly smooth landing and you can just keep going?

It's a safety happy area at this point.  I'm not sure where it'll be once items start coming out of carts.

Quote from: calrogman

What text editor do you prefer to use when developing/writing raws?

I just use note/wordpad, whatever doesn't mess up the formatting (which seems to depend on the file for me).

Quote from: MaximumZero

Will we be able to launch minecarts via the bridge-a-pult?

They will launch, but they won't be reliably directed (as usual).

Quote from: Tenebrais

If tracks will need to be laid out in lines, will constructed rails function tilewise like walls and floors, or will they work more like axles and bridges?

They are like constructed floors/ramps.

Quote from: Khym Chanur

If hauling rocks by hand is made harder now that minecarts are in, will hauling rocks on stairs going down be easier than going up?  Or will wheelbarrows be usable on stairs for hauling rocks?

I don't think there will be hard restrictions, since that messes with pathfinding.  It might take a long time to drag the wheelbarrow up the stairs though.  We're going to have to mess with it and see what works.

Quote from: Sizik

(regarding parabolas) Does this apply to units sent flying by weapon hits?

Yeah, though they pretty much fly straight back and possibly skid one or more times.

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

Given that you are in this part of the code, is addressing this "sent flying" bug possible? http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=344

The current state of things is that knockback is inconsistent between its various causes. A bronze colossus can throw a dwarf (using a wrestling move) ~192 tiles (and exploding him against a wall), whereas the colossus can only kick the dwarf back 2 tiles. The same colossus holding a platinum mace can only send a kea flying 2 tiles, and anything larger can't be sent flying at all with the mace.

There have been some changes here, of things I noticed when I was putting the arcs into combat, but I don't think it has all been fixed.

Quote

Quote from: SirPenguin

Reworking the catapults to fire with parabolic arcs - not to mention using the new impact code - feels like a real low hanging fruit at this point. Will any work be done to them?

Quote from: Misterstone

will the implementation of object collisions (with minecarts) also be used to update siege engine projectiles?  I mean, so that giant catapult boulders will send people flying or smash them into a pulp when they hit, instead of just bouncing off of their armor?

Nope.  It's the same roughly as the targeting in adventure mode, since they need to hit their targets.  When I feel like doing the targeting, I might end up doing both of those at once.

Quote from: Alu

What happens if a Minecart runs into a bronze golem or a giant?
Kinda curious if its also calculating in the mass of the colliding object.

also,
Will it be possible to transport magma/water in minecarts?

Yeah, the collision should not send a heavy unit flying.  The combat strike portion of it acts like combat.

Liquid transport is still up in the air.  They go into the cart, but they aren't dumpable and they won't continue to go into carts if we don't add some kind of dumping.  Adding dumping depends on time/side issues.

Quote from: flabort

Will we be able to hook animals to minecarts, and have them pull them along? Or have dwarves PULL (as opposed to push) minecarts at all?
Will we be able to put any items in minecarts? Possibly including live animals?
Will we be able to make splits in the tracks, and send carts in different directions?

There is no hooking animals and no pulling.

You can put whatever stockpile item in a cart.  That'll include animal cages.

With a lever?  You can do it with a retractable bridge, but we'd like something more proper at some point.

Quote from: Flaede

Will dodging minecarts train dodging?

Yeah.  It is a dodge roll vs. the speed of the cart, roughly.

Quote from: cephalo

Will a one tile wide tunnel prevent a cart from derailing?

Yeah.

Quote from: Sizik

What tile do minecarts use?

They use an inverted 254 block, I think.  It's settable in the tool raws.

Quote from: greenskye

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Nothing happens at this point.

Quote from: Farmerbob

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Put a loop of rail in to connect a cistern with a rail line running through it with a pond you want to keep full?  Allow the cart to move through the water to fill, then dump water in the pond?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

I'm not sure how liquids are going to turn out.  If you can dump it in a direction once it presumably has a liquid from earlier in the route, that would work, but there's no such dumping order yet.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Will it be possible to water farms using minecarts via some kind of pond-like mechanism?

I haven't done anything with liquid dumping at this point.  It's one of the few remaining items to consider, and I'm not sure what's going to happen.

Quote from: Tov01

Can the mine carts be fully automated, or do you still need a dwarf to push the cart off the stop?

I'm not up on all the mechanical things people have been doing, but as it stands I don't think it would understand which stop you wanted the cart to be in if you kick the cart out by unconventional means.  I could have it try to guess based on where it ends up.  In general, you'd need some kind of timing mechanism to keep the cart at the designated stop for whatever period of time you want it to interact with its piles etc., and you'd need something to kick it out.  You could either tune the friction well before the roller it stops on, or use a normal stop and a second cart to boot it and then roll it out of the way or something.  Or have it stop on ramps down blocked by gates until you power it back to the top.  Lots of ways I guess, but not much support from the hauling stops to let it know what it should be doing.

Quote from: Shinotsa

Now that site continuation after worldgen is being considered, could we get a glimpse into your thoughts on how you are going to implement it? Are you considering something involving an actual continuation of worldgen where cities can expand their walls and wars are waged, or something simpler like checking population, available jobs, need for food, etc. and then recalculating population and goods every year?

We'd eventually like to get everything from world gen and more going on in play, but it'll be an incremental process.  The remaining caravan arc releases are in part an expansion in play of the simple trades going on in world gen, and the army stuff is similar.

Quote from: cephalo

Are there cases where a busy dwarf will be considered a better job recipient than an idle dwarf? How have you handled this so far?

It doesn't do anything with that.  There are plenty of times when job poaching etc. would be a good idea, but it's probably mostly a hard problem.  I haven't thought about it much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 01, 2012, 05:04:34 am

Regarding liquids, I could see a specialized liquid dumping building working, where any minecart that goes over it will dump all of it's liquid contents out. I don't know how that will mesh with what you have already, but it would probably satisfy most uses people would have for hauling liquids in carts.

wait, we already have such a building. just have pumps take from a cart in the input square.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 10ebbor10 on May 01, 2012, 05:41:09 am

Quote from: Japa on May 01, 2012, 05:04:34 am

Regarding liquids, I could see a specialized liquid dumping building working, where any minecart that goes over it will dump all of it's liquid contents out. I don't know how that will mesh with what you have already, but it would probably satisfy most uses people would have for hauling liquids in carts.

wait, we already have such a building. just have pumps take from a cart in the input square.

That or just have the ability to designate tilted rails which would cause carts to dump all their contents in a designated direction unless they are manned/ going faster then a certain (usercontrollable) speed. This would allow to automate cart emptying too.

Pump taking liquids out of carts seems good too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dhoovr on May 01, 2012, 07:07:31 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: 10ebbor10 on May 01, 2012, 05:41:09 am

Quote from: Japa on May 01, 2012, 05:04:34 am

Regarding liquids, I could see a specialized liquid dumping building working, where any minecart that goes over it will dump all of it's liquid contents out. I don't know how that will mesh with what you have already, but it would probably satisfy most uses people would have for hauling liquids in carts.

wait, we already have such a building. just have pumps take from a cart in the input square.

That or just have the ability to designate tilted rails which would cause carts to dump all their contents in a designated direction unless they are manned/ going faster then a certain (usercontrollable) speed. This would allow to automate cart emptying too.

Pump taking liquids out of carts seems good too.

I feel like that should only be possible with a pump operator. Based on the archimedes screw pump design, unless you have fairly advanced machinery to where you can lift the pump then place it in the cart automatically it would just run into the pump. I could see adding the new job to the pump "pump from minecart" which would only be effective if there is a minecart on the tile below the pumping end where the liquid goes.
One could utilize the stacking feature to have the job on repeat and some sort a mechanism that send the cart on its way when it empty so that the carts stacked on top fall down into the spot.
Or since pumping jobs continue even with lack a pump-able material and thus don't need to be set on repeat (as they produce no product and take no product) they would just pump out of the cart when it arrives. This could utilize the conservation of momentum feature to send them away via new carts coming in. Like a crude digestive system.

That or just treat them like giant buckets to be dumped in a specialized pond. But I like things functioning more like an industry than an odd job.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 01, 2012, 07:31:09 am

What's an inverted 254 block look like?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 01, 2012, 07:36:56 am

This:(http://tnypic.net/98176.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 01, 2012, 07:41:40 am

Well OK then.

If I had to think of a good tile for a minecart, I'd probably suggest Å. It looks like a cart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 01, 2012, 07:42:42 am

not really

I can't think of anything that looks more like a cart from above than a hollow rectangle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 01, 2012, 07:46:33 am

Yeah, but Å looks cart-ish, or at least wheelbarrowish; maybe it makes sense for Toady to use it for wheelbarrows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 01, 2012, 07:50:59 am

wheelbarrow yes, but not minecart.

(http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/6276/mains/minecart.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gilihad on May 01, 2012, 08:30:05 am

Quote from: Toady

It's difficult to get an armed squad into a cart right now.  Nothing will stop them from shooting if you can manage to do it.  They won't jump out of the cart until it is safe.  In general, I haven't set up an interface to ride squads or random citizen groups around in carts.  The haulers can ride them, but it isn't a full passenger service.  That could happen at some point, but there are things to think through.

The workaround that immediately comes to mind (for marksdwarves at least) is to assign them to have their equipment on them at all times, then give them (and only them) the hauling job. I don't remember if you can do this in the military screen, or if you need to also give them a hunting job to make sure they always have ammo on them, but it is possible. For nobles random citizens, you might have to turn off all the hauling jobs of the other dwarves until they accept a hauling job, and then you can vault them to wherever you want them, like the middle of the ocean an underwater paradise.

It looks like an automated marksdwarf driveby defense system will be possible, and not even that difficult. I typically burrow my citizens during siege time anyway, so (if I understand Toady correctly) if there were some defense system minecarts which took off from an unburrowed starting point, and the marksdwarves were unburrowed and assigned only hauling jobs, they would jump in the minecarts, take a ride, see an enemy, fire, and repeat. You could even put them on a looped track and have them fire until they ran out of arrows or enemies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Suzuran on May 01, 2012, 08:44:55 am

If selective dumping of liquids from a minecart into a pool or channel becomes possible, does that mean we can create pools of selected liquids that way?
If so, can my dwarves bathe in the inevitable pool of booze?

Drowning unwanted visitors in pools of blood sounds like fun too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 09:07:14 am

Quote from: Suzuran on May 01, 2012, 08:44:55 am

If selective dumping of liquids from a minecart into a pool or channel becomes possible, does that mean we can create pools of selected liquids that way?
If so, can my dwarves bathe in the inevitable pool of booze?

Drowning unwanted visitors in pools of blood sounds like fun too.

There's only two liquids in DF currently. That's water and magma. The other liquids, are psedoliquids (boozes) or contaminants (blood). They can't be be gathered in meaningful amounts like Water or Magma, nor are they capable of having a flow like Water of Magma.

However, there is an item on the Eternal Suggestion Voting, for more liquids, to make booze, and/or blood and various others goodies behave like water and magma, and to have complex interactions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flaede on May 01, 2012, 09:23:05 am

The answer to my question has me ridiculously happy. Model (modded) Trains for the danger-rooms! Or perhaps for the nursery?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 01, 2012, 09:44:34 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady! Should be interesting when the release comes. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kirrian on May 01, 2012, 11:36:37 am

I just someone's idea of pumps being used to empty carts of liquid and for some reason really really like it!  Great idea especially since it makes the whole thing kind of complicated to set up... as it should be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nelia Hawk on May 01, 2012, 11:57:16 am

Quote

Quote

Quote from: Areyar

- Could track-tiles be made unfavourable for pathing dwarves by default?

Quote from: Jiri Petru

Toady, could you please make tracks to be automatically designated as a low traffic zone? (So we don't have to do it manually).

Yeah, it'll set the traffic setting for you.

regarding traffic zones:
might be something to make roads auto high traffic zones and farm-fields/stockpiles/workshops auto low traffic zones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EveryZig on May 01, 2012, 02:06:40 pm

Quote from: Flaede on May 01, 2012, 09:23:05 am

The answer to my question has me ridiculously happy. Model (modded) Trains for the danger-rooms! Or perhaps for the nursery?

You mean they aren't the same thing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 02:41:01 pm

Yeah. I wonder if faster carts give more XP, in which case you would need to modulate the speed of the carts to properly train your dodgers. Otherwise I'd just have a grid of tracks and a set of very slow circulating carts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 01, 2012, 02:47:16 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 02:41:01 pm

Yeah. I wonder if faster carts give more XP, in which case you would need to modulate the speed of the carts to properly train your dodgers. Otherwise I'd just have a grid of tracks and a set of very slow circulating cartsFULL OF BABIES

ftfy

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 01, 2012, 03:23:01 pm

I just designed a system in my head to put up to 10 marksdwarves in circulating carts at the same time that travel up z levels before cycling to the beginning of the track to prevent goblin fire aimed at the first pass from hitting dwarves on the second pass.

It includes a junction to allow it to cycle indefinately but still allow turning it off/marksdwarf reloading.  And an optional set of junctions to allow them to pass under a magma fall to allow dwarven automatic reloading 'flaming oil pot' traps.

I think I'm giddy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 01, 2012, 03:29:44 pm

I'm excited to see what the mystery mining makeover is going to entail.  My guess would be multiple stones created per dug tile, and perhaps stacks of objects on the same tile blocking the path, and maybe stones being too heavy for dwarves to haul at a reasonable speed.  Without something like that in place I can't see minecarts and pack animals being used, apart from as a novelty, and that would be a shame since these sound like some very interesting mechanics being implemented. 

I'm also looking forward to farming/food getting similar treatment at some point.  Feeding the entire fort with a 3x3 underground mushroom farm is kinda lame.  Ditto for meat industry.  I guess something simple like having dwarves eat more units of food per meal (since they only eat once every few months :D) would get things feeling a bit more balanced.  Then maybe we would need to trade to get all the things we need, rather than just producing everything on-site.  I remember the farming stuff being discussed for sometime during the caravan arc, but that's slated for some major reordering, so we'll see I guess. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what Toady has planned for mining changes though. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 04:45:25 pm

I wouldn't mind more demand for supports. Of course, it's practically impossible to simulate rock stresses, but it might be neat if you needed to put in supports to keep your dwarves three dimensional.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 04:54:42 pm

since when is it impossible to simulate rock stresses? remember how Toady made liquid stop checking itself for flow every tick? that could be applied to rocks in that it only checks once something near it is removed.

from there its simply a variable system that could plug into the cave in mechanic applied to each rock type.
seriously, variables are great.

however this seems slightly tangent from current development, it would be a nice 'near' future thing i think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CirrusAF on May 01, 2012, 05:02:09 pm

Question 1
I wondering if later this minecart system will lead into making transport for the dwarfs like to be able to make a train line via using a few minecarts some rope and maybe a coal/dwarf or Animal power to move it around.

Question 2
I'd also like to know if you where planing on adding more ways to go over water like a row boat or something

as u can see my questions are to do with transport and it something i'd like to added to Dwarf fortress but as we all know coding tacks time
and its good to see you back in to the game after so long :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 06:30:42 pm

Quote from: CirrusAF on May 01, 2012, 05:02:09 pm

Question 1
I wondering if later this minecart system will lead into making transport for the dwarfs like to be able to make a train line via using a few minecarts some rope and maybe a coal/dwarf or Animal power to move it around

This was just answered in the last Answer FotF session. The want is known, but no timeline.

Quote

Question 2
I'd also like to know if you where planing on adding more ways to go over water like a row boat or something

Yes, a whole slew of vehicles are planned including boats, and including multi-tile vehicles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 01, 2012, 06:31:16 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 04:45:25 pm

I wouldn't mind more demand for supports. Of course, it's practically impossible to simulate rock stresses, but it might be neat if you needed to put in supports to keep your dwarves three dimensional.

You're depriving the world of sedimentary dwarves!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 06:34:42 pm

I dont think the mining changes will include even more stone to carry away. I think we can safely assume that Toady & ThreeToes are aware of the stone clutter issues, and don't want to add to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 06:39:11 pm

well but if they make stone hauling super efficient, then add some more stone, that also means more ore....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: banned4trolling on May 01, 2012, 07:26:08 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 06:39:11 pm

well but if they make stone hauling super efficient, then add some more stone, that also means more ore....

Even with a single ore or rock per tile the game still slows down a lot with 10000 rock lying around. Adding even more per tile would quicken FPS death.

Instead of multiple stones the one stone is just made much heavier and slower to carry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 07:27:10 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 06:39:11 pm

well but if they make stone hauling super efficient, then add some more stone, that also means more ore....

More ore with less tiles, while possibly a good thing, (and this might happen when NPCs start to mining in world gen and proper play), but more stones in general also means just more stone spam.

And that's not a good thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 07:29:14 pm

but your thinking as though its old disposal methods, now if we get more crap and stone stockpiles still have their fatal flaw of creating as much room for stone as they create stone then i likely wont play DF for a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 07:34:04 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 07:29:14 pm

but your thinking as though its old disposal methods, now if we get more crap and stone stockpiles still have their fatal flaw of creating as much room for stone as they create stone then i likely wont play DF for a bit.

I have to assume old disposal methods, as there hasn't been a hint toward new ways to handle stones for storage or new things to do with stone.

Maybe stone stockpiles will be allowed to use bins, once Volume is reconfigured for minecarts.  That'll help greatly with storage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 07:43:43 pm

well 'mining overhaul' combined with some of toady's responses seem to imply something big is gonna change with mining and stone hauling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 07:45:01 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 07:43:43 pm

well 'mining overhaul' combined with some of toady's responses seem to imply something big is gonna change with mining and stone hauling.

Considering he planning to release in May, I dont think the changes will be that large.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 01, 2012, 07:55:06 pm

I do feel like ores should be smeltable into more than one bar, at least. I mean, a one metre by one metre by one metre (if that's what we're calling a tile-it can't be much less) block of stone certainly contains only enough for a wall section or a door, but a one cubic metre block of hematite contains a hell of a lot more ore than needed for a third of a midget-sized breastplate- that's absolutely ridiculous. While I agree with Toady that maybe weapons and armour should take more than one bar, we need to get more than one bar out of a lump of ore. It might be an idea to make the number of bars you get out of a single piece of ore relate to the skill of the furnace operator (so that finally good furnace operators actually mean something), hopefully at the same ratios of the quality levels. Thus, a normal quality smelt would make one bar, but an exceptional would make five and a masterwork twelve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 08:07:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2012, 04:08:08 am

Quote from: Farmerbob

Are there plans to attach pond filling to cart-available actions?

Put a loop of rail in to connect a cistern with a rail line running through it with a pond you want to keep full?  Allow the cart to move through the water to fill, then dump water in the pond?

Can this be implemented with Magma for Magma ponds? *grin*

I'm not sure how liquids are going to turn out.  If you can dump it in a direction once it presumably has a liquid from earlier in the route, that would work, but there's no such dumping order yet.

If we are moving towards dumping of liquids, will other cart contents be the same?  Can this occur mechanically/automatically (something built on the track is designed to tip cart bins over and dump the contents out when the cart rolls by) or are you leaning towards manual dumping only?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 08:21:49 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on May 01, 2012, 07:55:06 pm

I do feel like ores should be smeltable into more than one bar, at least. I mean, a one metre by one metre by one metre (if that's what we're calling a tile-it can't be much less) block of stone certainly contains only enough for a wall section or a door, but a one cubic metre block of hematite contains a hell of a lot more ore than needed for a third of a midget-sized breastplate- that's absolutely ridiculous. While I agree with Toady that maybe weapons and armour should take more than one bar, we need to get more than one bar out of a lump of ore. It might be an idea to make the number of bars you get out of a single piece of ore relate to the skill of the furnace operator (so that finally good furnace operators actually mean something), hopefully at the same ratios of the quality levels. Thus, a normal quality smelt would make one bar, but an exceptional would make five and a masterwork twelve.

One meter cubes are far too small for dwarves (much less humans, much less dragons) to fit inside. 

With that said, you have to understand that it's called "ore" and not "a big lump of metal" because it's not just that one metal.  In some extreme cases, like gold cyanide seep leeching, they go through multiple tons of soil just to get a few grams of gold. 

Even when we're talking about the banded iron formations that make up much of the good iron ore (thank you ancient sea life for rusting all the iron into one single sedimentary layer at the bottom of ancient seabeds), where you have a huge layer of actually solid hematite, you're still only going to get roughly 1/12th of the mass of the "ore" to be actual iron.

After all, you don't expect that every diamond deposit in the soil is actually just a solid tile's volume (a cubic meter by your estimation, I would aim more at 27 cubic meters) of a giant pure diamond, do you?  Assume that there is a lot of layer stone in that tile with the diamonds or ores.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 08:26:06 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on May 01, 2012, 07:55:06 pm

I do feel like ores should be smeltable into more than one bar, at least. I mean, a one metre by one metre by one metre (if that's what we're calling a tile-it can't be much less)...

I did the math a long time ago and found it was about seven feet tall and about three feet wide. That would mean there's about seven months worth of drinking water in one tile, not counting space for a floor above. But that always starts a fight, so moving on, I see ore seams as the native rock, just shot through with an incursion of the ore. Gems, for instance, aren't a solid 42 cubic foot diamond, just a rock full of a few scattered, normal sized rocks.

I for one want rocks and ore to be unaffected by mining odds (You can always melt rock down for metal, no matter how badly it's chewed up by the miners), but gems are rare enough that a poor miner could destroy them or miss them easily.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 01, 2012, 08:29:49 pm

Thank you for answering my question, Toady!

More on topic with the current conversation, I'm in favor of having a variable number of bars produced from each smelting based on the smelter's skill. In the mean time, one bar guaranteed and a few additional at a 10% chance each can be done with modding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 01, 2012, 08:38:17 pm

i'm satisfied with current stone clutter and would like that mining was made more time consuming. i think it makes some sense that even dwarves would set up some wooden shacks faster than they'd be able to dig out an entire street underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 08:58:54 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 07:34:04 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 01, 2012, 07:29:14 pm

but your thinking as though its old disposal methods, now if we get more crap and stone stockpiles still have their fatal flaw of creating as much room for stone as they create stone then i likely wont play DF for a bit.

I have to assume old disposal methods, as there hasn't been a hint toward new ways to handle stones for storage or new things to do with stone.

Maybe stone stockpiles will be allowed to use bins, once Volume is reconfigured for minecarts.  That'll help greatly with storage.

This would be more easily handled if there were stacking. 

As it stands, 10 stones are 10 unique sets of pointers in several different vectors.  A stack of 10 stones would be one unique set of pointers with a number on the end that says "times 10". 

There was also talk a while ago about having volumes actually matter, and Toady said something earlier in this release cycle about tiles becoming difficult to pass through or possibly even impassible if there was enough junk in the tile.  One suggestion a while ago was to have enough junk in a single tile actually create a "wall" of junk stone, so that if you dumped junk stone into a pit, the pit would eventually become a solid mass of junk stone, and be treated as a wall, rather than an item.  (Which would save on memory and cycle time wasted on iterating through ungodly huge item vectors.)

Currently, item vectors tend to cause subgeometric growth lag problems with item vector size, as vectors are notoriously slow as they become longer than originally intended.  10,000 items will cut your framerate down to a tenth of normal.  100,000 items will cut it down to around 1/400th of normal. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HollowClown on May 01, 2012, 09:07:12 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 08:58:54 pm

This would be more easily handled if there were stacking. 

As it stands, 10 stones are 10 unique sets of pointers in several different vectors.  A stack of 10 stones would be one unique set of pointers with a number on the end that says "times 10". 

Agreed, but in order for stacking to work, the items you're stacking have to be identical.  Based on some of the things that Toady's been saying, I was under the impression that stones (for instance) were going to get less identical -- for instance, there might be a difference between a stone mined by a novice miner and one mined by a legendary miner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 09:11:48 pm

 I havent gotten that impression at all, do you mind showing where you think Toady has implied that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 10:05:01 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 09:11:48 pm

I havent gotten that impression at all, do you mind showing where you think Toady has implied that?

Hmm... now that you ask that, I can't come up with anything.  I thought it was in the frontpage, but I don't see it now when I look back.  Maybe I read it in the old DF Talks in early April and was confused, or I'm just not hitting upon the exact words he used to search for?  (And I'm 504ing a lot right now, so I'm disinclined to try searching more heavily.)

I recall seeing something about Toady saying he would make tiles that had a threshold value of junk lying around in them slow down movement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SeymoreGlass on May 01, 2012, 10:12:54 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 01, 2012, 09:11:48 pm

I havent gotten that impression at all, do you mind showing where you think Toady has implied that?

I'm not one-hundred percent sure on this, but I think it was hinted at in the most recent (as of this reply) DF Talk. He mentioned that it would take more than a dwarf to move a stone big enough to allow a statue to be carved from it. It's a bit of a leap (and it could possibly mean that all stones would be big enough to carve a statue (as is the case now) and are just treated better), but it may mean that we get different sized stones depending on sminer kill.

If it goes that way, I see miners leaving stones ranging from: heaps of twenty or so small stones (small enough to make stone crafts but not large enough to make a nest box), to piles of a less number of medium stones (big enough for a rock pot or a chair let's say), all the way up to one big tile-sized boulder (big enough for a statue or a door or a single-piece wall). It may be that we get quality markers instead, such as stone vs *<-*stone*->*, which could effect final value of the object it is used to make. Theres also that damnable re-stacking issue to account for.

This seems labour spammy at first, but remember that we're getting a change to allow dwarves to carry multiple objects in one hauling job, so twenty small stones won't lead too any extra tasks over what's done right now; which won't lead to a large amount of extra lag since most of it comes from the pathing demands that hauling jobs create (I understand that storing them in vectors is a bit ineficient when we get to that size, but a pile of ten small stones could be abstracted to be a single "pile of ten stones" item until split by use). Also, if one tile is creating the same volume of stone, but in multiple pieces, storage may not change. Put all the small ones in a bin, and let the large ones stay as is.

That was a lot of musing and fantasizing and hand-waving, but could you (Toady) confirm/deny/expand-upon(/contract-upon?) any of what I've said above? You may not do another Future of the Fortress pass before the release, but would you like to expand upon what will happen in later releases? And if or when it does get another visit, what release cycle might it end up in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 01, 2012, 10:46:37 pm

I'd be happy with "Rubble" and "Boulders", of which rubble is only good for smelting and maybe wall building and the boulders are what we have now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Slax on May 02, 2012, 01:14:47 am

With modders more and more diving into firearms, are we going to see any ranged combat updates anytime soon? Aimed shots and such. Something small would suffice for now. Figure it wouldn't be too much work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on May 02, 2012, 02:01:16 am

Quote from: Slax on May 02, 2012, 01:14:47 am

With modders more and more diving into firearms, are we going to see any ranged combat updates anytime soon? Aimed shots and such. Something small would suffice for now. Figure it wouldn't be too much work.

Toady typically doesn't do things by half measures.  As evidenced by turning "make hauling work better" into "implement mine carts with physics".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on May 02, 2012, 03:12:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2012, 04:08:08 am

Quote from: diefortheswarm

I assume the current system of powered rails and friction rails are just placeholders until improved mechanisms where they will be replaced with a proper mechanical system.  Am I correct in assuming this?

Is there any advantage to using wood or metal rails as opposed to carved rails other then being able to build on constructed floors.

I don't think rollers and track stops are utterly unreasonable.  New stuff will continue to be added, but I'm not sure these things will be replaced.  Like I said before, I'm not an engineer and don't have any knowledge of what would be proper.

Quote from: flabort

Will we be able to hook animals to minecarts, and have them pull them along? Or have dwarves PULL (as opposed to push) minecarts at all?
Will we be able to put any items in minecarts? Possibly including live animals?
Will we be able to make splits in the tracks, and send carts in different directions?

There is no hooking animals and no pulling.

Awww... this is the only thing that doesn't make me happy about all of this.  I agree that the rollers and stops are not at all unreasonable... I actually think they are really spiffy!  But if Toady is interested in "what would be proper", animals and people pulling (or pushing) stuff and powering whatever mechanisms are the way to go, if you want to look at real-life examples of old mining technology.  I hope animal power and pulling/pushing are eventually part of the game and are applicable to minecarts.

Other than that, though... wow.  This is gonna be frikkin' SWEET.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 02, 2012, 04:20:14 am

Animal Hauling is already partly in the game. They have Waiting Post, which have feeds and water for them. But in order to push out the release, they'll probably wont be included in this release.

Though when Toady does go back to Improved Hauling, they'll probably get added in too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on May 02, 2012, 04:55:52 am

Quote from: Rockphed on May 02, 2012, 02:01:16 am

Quote from: Slax on May 02, 2012, 01:14:47 am

With modders more and more diving into firearms, are we going to see any ranged combat updates anytime soon? Aimed shots and such. Something small would suffice for now. Figure it wouldn't be too much work.

Toady typically doesn't do things by half measures.  As evidenced by turning "make hauling work better" into "implement mine carts with physics".

This stuff was all in the thread, though. Check it out: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78413.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=78413.0).
Also note this list (presumably from the old dev page) in which the main features were already planned by Toady even before suggestions came up:

Quote from: The Devpage

Hauling Improvements  

• Being able to haul multiple small objects
• Having multiple dwarves involved with item hauling for a job
• Being able to move multiple objects with roughly the same destination at once
• Wheelbarrows to haul more objects than can be carried
• Minecarts
• Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
• Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
• Work animals to tow carts and haul objects

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 06:45:04 am

Spoiler: start of tile-size discussion (click to show/hide)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 01, 2012, 08:21:49 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on May 01, 2012, 07:55:06 pm

(...) I mean, a one metre by one metre by one metre (if that's what we're calling a tile-it can't be much less) block of stone (...)

One meter cubes are far too small for dwarves (much less humans, much less dragons) to fit inside. 
(...)

in my opinion 3x3x3 [m] tiles are faaaaar too large. every wall being at least 3m thick? every _sappling_ of a tree taking 3x3 [m] of space? even a normal tree taking 3x3 meters in space for itself? a multi-tile-tree to be enterable at all needs 3x3 tiles at least, including its walls, that being 9meters wide, to just be able to squeeze inside? tracks for little carts, _not_ including space to walk besides the tracks being 3m wide? a wagon being 9m wide? some small staircase being at least 3m wide? doors being at least 3m wide and taking 3 meters of space in depth(perpendicular to the width)?
i would have to answer all of those with "of course not, obviously!".

i have to agree with you that the tiles need to be assumed to be that large at least to fit everything inside _right_now_. but not everything is as it is desired or as it should be right now. especially since there are no multi-tile creatures. a dragon fitting in one tile right now does not mean the tile is just that large, it just means the dragon isnt multi-tile yet. from what ive heard so far about the plans for large creatures i assume even a dragons head will have its own tile later on.

this all goes for the width of tiles so far, for the height though, i dont think forcing tiles to be cubes is the right solution. rather making them something like 1m x1m x (something less than 1m, at most 0.5m i guess) would be far more reasonable(even though this would force even dwarves to be multitile, but there are giants who are bipeds who need to be multitile anyway and the size-difference between humans and dwarves would be visible like that). this would also make this whole strange story with the floors taking no space finally go away, since floors would only be needed as indicators to whether the tile below is filled with something solid or not. also, stairs/ramps would be able to get different degrees of inclination like that.
just find that one sand-as-liquid-suggestion ive seen, where sand(and even soil?) is being tracked in those x/7 heights to make ramps/walls/whatever, which is exactly like i envision the optimal solution to all tile-handling issues. of course this would also need something like that one suggestion/demand ive seen somewhere where the player is able to see multiple z-levels at once.

as far as i remember toady has mentioned those suggestions somewhere already saying those sound good or something.

edit: added spoiler to shorten

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

Spoiler: Regarding tile size (click to show/hide)

No, the game does operate on cubes already.  Noise is a cube, with noise traveling an equal distance vertically as it does horizontally.  Crossbow range is a cube - 20 tiles omnidirectional range, including vertical.  Travel distance is a cube - one tile up is equal to one tile horizontal.  Everything in the game treats distances in all directions as equivalent.

Does a dwarf take up a full 27 cubic meter volume? No, but neither does a cat take up a full 1 cubic meter volume, nor could a dwarf fit in one, much less a dragon.  That's just an unreality of the way the game treats all creatures as occupying the "upright" portion of a tile, while infinite numbers of creatures can crawl.  Arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is therefore meaningless, because elephants and dragons and giant sperm whales all have to crawl to share space with a rabbit.

Further, one of the major reasons 3 meters is used is because vertical distance is the easiest thing to assume.  3 meters/10 feet is the height of a story of a house.  Each z-level in the game is equal to a full story of a building, and each z-level can house a different floor. 

If you were to put it in terms like Minecraft or Terraria, which have clearly designated areas for their tiles, Minecraft has 1 meter per tile, but needs 2 tiles height for a humanoid, and a floor tile, which adds up to at least 3 meters per floor.  Terraria has 2 foot tiles, and requires 6 feet vertical and 4 feet horizontal clearnace, plus 2 feet of flooring, meaning 8 feet/2.5 meters vertical space per floor minimum, although an extra tile to fit some furniture is common in housing.  Furniture in that game is often quite large, as well, with beds also being 8 feet long/2.5 meters in length.  Fitting one of those beds into a single DF tile would require a horizontal tile length of at least 2.5 meters, if not 3. 

Yes, these are dwarves, not humans, but they're also digging in stone, and having some slightly thicker masonry in the ceiling/floor for support also makes sense for them.

So, you could argue something closer to 2.5 meters, but that winds up making calculations really messy.  15.625 cubic meters instead of a clean 27, for example. 

By the way, although Toady has never confirmed anything, when pressed to think about housing size, he gave 2 meters as his initial guess as to room size, and given the things that must fit inside a tile, 2 meters is definitely the floor, not the ceiling. 
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1511922;topicseen#msg1511922

Quote

I think they are fine given what I've read (that the floor space for a cottage for a family would be between, say, 25 and 125 square meters, depending on affluence and local customs and whatever else).  Throwing out 2m arbitrarily as a tile edge, we'd be at 100m^2 for the floor space and 1536 m between villages, which I'm more or less comfortable with (I read an aerial survey for medieval sites in England which put average nearest village distance at 0.89mi or something, and we talked about how this might be varied earlier).  Since we are on a grid, even with a single room the outer walls take up 24 tiles and the interior is 25, even though the outer walls shouldn't take up a lot of space.  If they are divided into a living and storage area, which might involve an internal partition, then the floor area would be cut down an additional 5 tiles, putting us down to 80m^2.  I don't know how different the cottage shapes are going to be, but within their plot there will end up being variations in terms of overall size, gardens, other structures, furniture, items, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nopil3os on May 02, 2012, 07:54:12 am

idk if this has come up already.. but because i just observed something i was suspecting for a long time:
partying (and maybe weddings?) should be improved.

when i read
"Urist McClothier has organized a party at well"
i always imagined said dwarf hauling some booze to the location, maybe something to eat, some instruments etc etc.
at the very least, i expected said dwarf to actually BE at the location when he announces the party.

but as i just observed, urist mcclothier was nowhere near the well when the message came. only two idling miners

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 09:07:42 am

Spoiler: Regarding tile size (click to show/hide)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

No, the game does operate on cubes already.  Noise is a cube, with noise traveling an equal distance vertically as it does horizontally.  Crossbow range is a cube - 20 tiles omnidirectional range, including vertical.  Travel distance is a cube - one tile up is equal to one tile horizontal.  Everything in the game treats distances in all directions as equivalent.

i guess i wasnt clear about what i meant when talking about tile-height: you are of course right when saying that the game operates in cubes right now, but once again, i think this is not the ideal and certainly not what it should be like in the future. projectile range certainly does not work as it should, the trajectories arent correct yet and travelling vertically should obviously be handled in a more complex manner(toady just mentioned something like that in his last reply here in the context of wheelbarrows on stairs).

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

Does a dwarf take up a full 27 cubic meter volume? No, but neither does a cat take up a full 1 cubic meter volume, nor could a dwarf fit in one, much less a dragon.  That's just an unreality of the way the game treats all creatures as occupying the "upright" portion of a tile, while infinite numbers of creatures can crawl.  Arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is therefore meaningless, because elephants and dragons and giant sperm whales all have to crawl to share space with a rabbit.

isnt that pretty much what i said? arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is meaningless, i was argueing mostly on walls and trees and such stuff, all i said about creatures, is that multi-tile-creatures will make anything creatures have to say about a tile now obsolete. also, im more comfortable saying "there is a cat or rat(or even a cockroach) somewhere on this 1m^2 of space" than i am saying "there is a cat/whatever somewhere on these 9m^2 of space". making the tiles as small as possible without overdoing it is, in my opinion, the best way to go.
(crawling obviously doesnt work as intended, with the stacking of whales and such.)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

Further, one of the major reasons 3 meters is used is because vertical distance is the easiest thing to assume.  3 meters/10 feet is the height of a story of a house.  Each z-level in the game is equal to a full story of a building, and each z-level can house a different floor. 

your argumentation is reasonable, but once again: everything is cubic right now, but i dont think thats the optimum and therefore i think the height of a tile shouldnt define its width(in the future).

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

If you were to put it in terms like Minecraft or Terraria, which have clearly designated areas for their tiles, Minecraft has 1 meter per tile, but needs 2 tiles height for a humanoid, and a floor tile, which adds up to at least 3 meters per floor.  Terraria has 2 foot tiles, and requires 6 feet vertical and 4 feet horizontal clearnace, plus 2 feet of flooring, meaning 8 feet/2.5 meters vertical space per floor minimum, although an extra tile to fit some furniture is common in housing.  Furniture in that game is often quite large, as well, with beds also being 8 feet long/2.5 meters in length.  Fitting one of those beds into a single DF tile would require a horizontal tile length of at least 2.5 meters, if not 3. 

i dont see a problem with a bed occupying 2 tiles and such.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

Yes, these are dwarves, not humans, but they're also digging in stone, and having some slightly thicker masonry in the ceiling/floor for support also makes sense for them.

for dwarves its ok in _most_ cases(e.g. digging around underground) to have ridiculously thick walls, but when you come into a human village in adv. mode do you really want to see them having 3m thick wooden walls for each and every little shed? playing other races is also intended for fortress mode in the future.
when i build a little watchtower near my entrance in dwarfmode, i dont want it to have 3m thick walls. 1m thick walls are already incredibly thick. therefore saying "its ok for dwarves in _some_ situations" isnt a good argument when saying "thats how it should be".

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

So, you could argue something closer to 2.5 meters, but that winds up making calculations really messy.  15.625 cubic meters instead of a clean 27, for example. 

By the way, although Toady has never confirmed anything, when pressed to think about housing size, he gave 2 meters as his initial guess as to room size, and given the things that must fit inside a tile, 2 meters is definitely the floor, not the ceiling. 

i guess 2m tile-width can have a lot of arguments in its favour especially when things like 'furniture occupying only 1 tile' will not be changed and i could also be persuaded to accept 2m, but i think 3m are totally unreasonable(except for the height obviously, but im against cubes anyways).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 10:13:01 am

Spoiler: Tile sizes (click to show/hide)

The problem with your argument is that you aren't really making much of a(n objective) case for why the game shouldn't be made of cubes.  You simply say you don't think cubes are optimal, but don't say why. 

Cubes have the advantage of being simpler, more intuitive, and generally neater to calculate than rectangular prisms.  If we have a 2m*2m*3m rectangular prism, we deal with calculations of distance that become quite strange.  I would also point out that such a rectangular prism isn't terribly far from the 2.5m³ in terms of actual volume, anyway, which isn't quite as neat for easy distance calculations, but at least keeps the advantages of cubes.

Walls are problematic, especially since floors have functionally no volume in the game as currently implemented, but walls have a full tile's worth of volume, but that's a game limitation we are dealing with.  Most games have walls as boundaries to tiles rather than full tiles for a reason, but this game does not work with that - doors are a full tile cube, as well, and it's just as ridiculous to say that a door is a 1-meter cube as it is to say it is a 3-meter cube.  These are the same doors that can open so as to allow traffic in multiple different directions, I will point out, including "four-way doors".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on May 02, 2012, 01:59:40 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 02, 2012, 04:20:14 am

Animal Hauling is already partly in the game. They have Waiting Post, which have feeds and water for them. But in order to push out the release, they'll probably wont be included in this release.

Though when Toady does go back to Improved Hauling, they'll probably get added in too.

Cool.  I just hope we can someday have animals tethered to whatever object of our choosing so that they can pull or push it... it would especially be great for when multi-tile constructions and boats come into the game; imagine underground dwarven canals with animals on flanking towpaths towing underground mining barges... or pulling open huge obsidian gates... but I digress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ninjanomnom on May 02, 2012, 02:17:53 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 I have always assumed that the tiles you see in-game are aranged like so:
x
-
x
-
x
with x being the viewable layers and - the floors of the layer above (and the roof of the layer below)

actual tile sizes though can't really be determined due to all the small stuf which takes a whole square and all the big stuf which takes up the same space.

Layers and tile sizes

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 03:51:57 pm

Spoiler: tile size (click to show/hide)

Quote from: ninjanomnom on May 02, 2012, 02:17:53 pm

I have always assumed that the tiles you see in-game are aranged like so:
x
-
x
-
x
with x being the viewable layers and - the floors of the layer above (and the roof of the layer below)

actual tile sizes though can't really be determined due to all the small stuf which takes a whole square and all the big stuf which takes up the same space.

yeah, thats how it is right now, you see a floor-layer and the corresponding tile above it(there arent any real roofs, only floors, i guess).

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 10:13:01 am

The problem with your argument is that you aren't really making much of a(n objective) case for why the game shouldn't be made of cubes.  You simply say you don't think cubes are optimal, but don't say why. 

oh, i didnt notice, thx for pointing that out.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 10:13:01 am

Cubes have the advantage of being simpler, more intuitive, and generally neater to calculate than rectangular prisms.  If we have a 2m*2m*3m rectangular prism, we deal with calculations of distance that become quite strange.  I would also point out that such a rectangular prism isn't terribly far from the 2.5m³ in terms of actual volume, anyway, which isn't quite as neat for easy distance calculations, but at least keeps the advantages of cubes.

well, for once, i think cubes arent that intuitive at all. its actually quite hard to find something thats truly cubic. for most purposes, height differs quite considerably from width. take trees for example, they usually are like 20 times as high as they are wide. doors are like twice as high as they are wide. a bed is about 3 times longer than it is high.
if you look like 20m ahead of you on a field, one thinks "heh, this distance is nothing", but looking down a 20m tower it goes more like "dafooq! thats high!" it really is a subjective thing, but height and width usually are perceived quite differently and with real cubes being actually quite rare rectangular prisms are more intuitive, at least in my opinion.

its true, that it is easier for people to calculate with cubes, but what calculations are you actually doing when playing? the game does everything, and the computer doesnt care whether the volume of a square is 27m^3 or 4.5836049*pi.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 10:13:01 am

Walls are problematic, especially since floors have functionally no volume in the game as currently implemented, but walls have a full tile's worth of volume, but that's a game limitation we are dealing with.  Most games have walls as boundaries to tiles rather than full tiles for a reason, but this game does not work with that - doors are a full tile cube, as well, and it's just as ridiculous to say that a door is a 1-meter cube as it is to say it is a 3-meter cube.  These are the same doors that can open so as to allow traffic in multiple different directions, I will point out, including "four-way doors".

yeah, i already mentioned the problem with the volume-free floors too, thats why i would want to see something like every 1/7 tile of a liquid being its own z-level. this would make floors and roofs actually tangible with those strange floors we have right now being nothing but a "the square beneath me is/isnt solid".
in a game, where digging is such a fundamental part having completely solid tiles is absolutely necessary. therefore having the edges between tiles being able to be impassable walls with no volume is not necessary. so using tiles as walls is the better solution. but with not having infinitesimal tile-border-walls comes the need to have reasonably thick tile-walls and therefore tile-widths which are far below a reasonable room-height.
i think having those 4-way doors is just doors not working as intended. they are a byproduct of allowing entrance onto the door-tile from a diagonal position. how should such a 4-way door actually look like in real life? i doubt those would be used for normal door-in-straight-wall-type doors.

if youre truly adamant about cubes being more intuitive than rectangular prisms(which is completely valid, "intuitive" is a subjective thing) i still think making them 1m^3 is superior to 3m^3 even though most creatures would become multi-tile. apart from the width-issues i wont mention again right now, there are also advantages to smaller increments in height. one can have the tile below a window or fortification solid with the window/fortification-tile above being passable for light/projectiles. chairs and tables can leave space above them(how i would love for tables to be impassable without moving strangely, i hate my dwarves always standing on top of tables others are eating from to the point where i exclude the respective tiles from the civilian burrows)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 02, 2012, 04:11:38 pm

Spoiler: Tile Size (click to show/hide)

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 04:32:36 pm

Spoiler: tile size (click to show/hide)

Quote from: bombzero on May 02, 2012, 04:11:38 pm

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

i wouldnt call myself a coder and i havent programmed any games but ive worked on programs for scientific evaluation as part of my university course. since every movement gets divided into 3 separate superposing movements in the 3 spatial directions in every case it wont matter if the number for the z-velocity is 5 times higher than for the x- or y-velocities or something like that. the actual numbers dont matter. for all trajectory and volume-related calculations, nothing changes for the computer, but the input numbers.
i have to admit though, that i can imagine quite some difficulties with the pathfinding-ai, but all those difficulties will have to be tackled anyway, since multitile creatures are guaranteed to come in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on May 02, 2012, 04:39:26 pm

Quote from: nopil3os on May 02, 2012, 07:54:12 am

idk if this has come up already.. but because i just observed something i was suspecting for a long time:
partying (and maybe weddings?) should be improved.

when i read
"Urist McClothier has organized a party at well"
i always imagined said dwarf hauling some booze to the location, maybe something to eat, some instruments etc etc.
at the very least, i expected said dwarf to actually BE at the location when he announces the party.

but as i just observed, urist mcclothier was nowhere near the well when the message came. only two idling miners

Perhaps it was a clever plan by Urist to set those two miners up on a date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 05:04:05 pm

Spoiler: Tiles again, although seriously, it's time to consider just making a new thread if this goes on much longer... (click to show/hide)

The thing about having each 1/8th of a cube (counting the "0" level) be their own z-level is that it's going to be nightmarishly hard to actually represent even in a general sense, but especially in a game based upon a severely limited pseudo-ASCII tileset. 

That's basically akin to asking for the game to have 8 times as many tiles in it as it does right now, and to start displaying the game looking at multiple z-levels at once in a format that just simply is NOT prepared to show multiple z-levels at once. 

How, exactly, are you going to show the difference between a dwarf 2/8ths of a tile up as opposed to one 0/8ths of a tile up?  Are we expected to start scrolling through z-levels to see how many z-levels a given creature occupies? 

There simply is no way this game can meaningfully represent multiple z-levels at once (apart from "there's empty space in the next few floors, too", I mean where you can represent a bat flying overhead of a dwarf in a cavern) without having a radical overhaul of the game's graphic engine that is not going to be forthcoming anywhere even remotely soon. 

Large, cubic tiles are necessary for a game like DF just because multi-tile objects need to be minimized as much as possible. 

---

As for four-way doors, maybe it's not just one door?  Maybe it's just an abstract marker for a door area.  If I have a stairwell on one corner, and three small residences hooked off of a four-way-door, then it just represents a small alcove with three (or four) regular doors. 

(Alternately, it could simply be a revolving door.  They are shaped like a "+".)

Maybe walls aren't 3 meters thick, but extra space just doesn't get represented. 

Maybe you should just accept that certain unrealities of size are going to occur in a cube-based (or rectangular-prism-based) game simply because everything stretches or compacts to fit in discrete tile quanta. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CodexDraco on May 02, 2012, 05:06:06 pm

Spoiler: tiles (click to show/hide)

Quote from: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 04:32:36 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 02, 2012, 04:11:38 pm

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

i wouldnt call myself a coder and i havent programmed any games but ive worked on programs for scientific evaluation as part of my university course. since every movement gets divided into 3 separate superposing movements in the 3 spatial directions in every case it wont matter if the number for the z-velocity is 5 times higher than for the x- or y-velocities or something like that. the actual numbers dont matter. for all trajectory and volume-related calculations, nothing changes for the computer, but the input numbers.
i have to admit though, that i can imagine quite some difficulties with the pathfinding-ai, but all those difficulties will have to be tackled anyway, since multitile creatures are guaranteed to come in the future.

Game calculations are different than scientific ones in which performance and simplicity are more important than precision and accuracy. There is no teorical difference between 2.5m^3 and 3^m but in computing doing integral calculations is tipically faster than float operations. Personally I would use 1m^3.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 02, 2012, 05:45:37 pm

I think these tiles post could use their own thread, perhaps Toady or ThreeToes would be able to split and move those post to the tile thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2012, 05:58:04 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 05:04:05 pm

Spoiler: Tiles again, although seriously, it's time to consider just making a new thread if this goes on much longer... (click to show/hide)

The thing about having each 1/8th of a cube (counting the "0" level) be their own z-level is that it's going to be nightmarishly hard to actually represent even in a general sense, but especially in a game based upon a severely limited pseudo-ASCII tileset. 

That's basically akin to asking for the game to have 8 times as many tiles in it as it does right now, and to start displaying the game looking at multiple z-levels at once in a format that just simply is NOT prepared to show multiple z-levels at once. 

How, exactly, are you going to show the difference between a dwarf 2/8ths of a tile up as opposed to one 0/8ths of a tile up?  Are we expected to start scrolling through z-levels to see how many z-levels a given creature occupies? 

There simply is no way this game can meaningfully represent multiple z-levels at once (apart from "there's empty space in the next few floors, too", I mean where you can represent a bat flying overhead of a dwarf in a cavern) without having a radical overhaul of the game's graphic engine that is not going to be forthcoming anywhere even remotely soon. 

Large, cubic tiles are necessary for a game like DF just because multi-tile objects need to be minimized as much as possible. 

---

As for four-way doors, maybe it's not just one door?  Maybe it's just an abstract marker for a door area.  If I have a stairwell on one corner, and three small residences hooked off of a four-way-door, then it just represents a small alcove with three (or four) regular doors. 

(Alternately, it could simply be a revolving door.  They are shaped like a "+".)

Maybe walls aren't 3 meters thick, but extra space just doesn't get represented. 

Maybe you should just accept that certain unrealities of size are going to occur in a cube-based (or rectangular-prism-based) game simply because everything stretches or compacts to fit in discrete tile quanta. 

Spoiler: k, i guess this is the last thing ill say on this topic here (click to show/hide)

well, representing how many z-levels something is below the one the screen is on atm could be done using colour-shades but i dont know how far this is supported by the game, or how far one can go with that and keep things at least remotely clear.

at least 1m^3 tiles can be used that way, so normal humanoids can be seen on their head-level while their leg-level is just 1 shade darker or lighter or whatever(there is a thread for "let us see whats on other z-levels!" somewhere)

in the future you will be forced to go through z-levels to see how big some creatures are anyway.

---

(those lines are awesome, gotta use them more often too)

ive never heard of a revolting door being used in the 14th century and door-areas with multiple doors are possible, but do you use such things for your wooden shed right next to the barn? people do in this game, apparently.

of course i have to accept, that things will never fit perfectly inside quantized tiles, but just waving away those 1.25m on both sides of a 0.5m wall(which is already really thick) is not necessary when one could just have to wave away 0.25m per side instead. just blindly and instantly accepting something is not necessary when one can try to find a solution which is at least a little bit better and _only_then_ be forced to accept it wont improve beyond that.
i just find 1m border-width to be more reasonable to accept than 3m.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on May 02, 2012, 06:01:50 pm

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owly on May 02, 2012, 08:44:17 pm

About how long will it be until the hauling changes are released?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 02, 2012, 08:48:20 pm

Quote from: Owly on May 02, 2012, 08:44:17 pm

About how long will it be until the hauling changes are released?

He's said he aims at getting it done during May, so not too long ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 02, 2012, 09:34:20 pm

re: new devlog

How does the lack of skill-based mining effect ore mining? I don't care much if there are fewer boulders around, but I normally mine around the ore/gems until I can get a 100% drop rate- it'd suck if I'm limited to random chance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on May 02, 2012, 09:36:20 pm

Quote

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates

As in lowered the drop rate?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on May 02, 2012, 09:38:38 pm

I believe it just means that even non-skilled miners will always yield a boulder.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 02, 2012, 09:39:37 pm

Quote from: Urist McDepravity on May 02, 2012, 09:38:38 pm

I believe it just means that even non-skilled miners will always yield a boulder.

It seems more like the opposite:

Quote

so I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 02, 2012, 10:09:52 pm

Yea sounds like everybody's gonna drop boulders at about the same rate now.  And it will be lower than the legendary or near legendary values.  If I had to hazard a guess probably near the current proficient level.

Like monk said I'm a bit worried about ore.  But I guess once you have one vein you usually have a dozen more, and currently two or three iron veins is enough to do most everything one would want to do with iron short of building the titanic, so needing to look around a bit more because yer not extracting as much ore as you used to might not be as terrible as it sounds.

Even then Toady also said larger boulders.  Likely he was just talking about what we currently get as opposed to rubble, but it might mean that he increased size and bar yeild for one chunk of ore instead. Making it basically equal out to the same amount over a mining job, only more compacted.

But that does get me worried about the really small mining jobs, like gems, especially ones that are [CLUSTER_ONE].  Probably close to Monk's question, but what about gems?  Especially the ones that only show up in really small clusters like the colored diamonds?  Will those always drop a chunk?  Or are they subject to the same whims of the RNG as the normal stone, with a high chance of completely ruining that one tile of clear diamond even with a legendary miner?  Something in between?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 02, 2012, 10:21:53 pm

Toady, your recent Dev Updates seem to including language and at times, ideas, from the FotF. How much, if any is the FotF being an influence on Improved Hauling? Or are just using our language to help convey what you two are currently working on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on May 02, 2012, 10:46:20 pm

I read Toady's comment in the dev log where he said, "I don't yet see a way to make something like rubble or different sizes of rocks a net positive for the game," so I thought I'd look up more on mining to see if I could figure out a reason.  I ended up finding out a bunch of other interesting mining stuff.  So...

There is a whole bunch of interesting stuff in the Mining (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining) article at Wikipedia, so now I'm curious.  Are there any plans to add any of the following: hushing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushing) (using water to flush out overburden and reveal rock and ore veins), fire-setting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-setting) (to weaken rock to make it more easily mined, sometimes combined with water to further weaken it due to thermal shock), sluicing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluice) (using water to not only wash away overburden, but also to collect gold, black sands, etc.), reverse overshot water-wheels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_overshot_water-wheel) (which could lift water up multiple z-levels, unlike current "cochlea" pumps we have which only go up one z-level), hydraulic mining (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_mining) (using high-pressure water to dislodge rock and sediment, which could then be sluiced), or arrastras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrastra) (simple mills for crushing rock to recover gold, etc.)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 02, 2012, 11:37:34 pm

Hmm...

After reading and re-reading the devlog, the wording is still ambiguous to me:

Quote from: devlog 05/02/2012

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being.

Does this mean he's removed the feature of skill affecting drop rates, or that he lowered the drop rates?  It sounds more like the first one, but I'm not really sure what the motivation for doing that would be.  It is certainly a change, but I don't see how it is a benefit.  It isn't a disaster either, but it just seems like a change with no strong benefits or drawbacks.  There is probably something clever to do with drop rates, like having some way to toggle if dwarves are trying to mine out stone or trying to hollow out a region, but if that's going to delay the release, why bother changing anything at all? 

Toady, could you clarify the above quote's meaning?  Also, what is the motivation for this change?

Maybe there's some super obvious benefit that's just going over my head here?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on May 02, 2012, 11:51:52 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on May 02, 2012, 11:37:34 pm

Maybe there's some super obvious benefit that's just going over my head here?

It seems to me that the point is that you cannot use unskilled miners to mine out region w/out any waste produced - now you will have to move these boulders around (and you cannot do that without wheelbarrows) no matter what strategy you employ. So it would give wheelbarrows some meaning at game start.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on May 03, 2012, 12:47:49 am

Regarding the latest devlog and skill-based mining: in a less rigid system, making this Raw-based would be a net plus. I.e. a mineral definition would have some entries for specific things the destruction of the tile would yield, with modifiers based on different things, skills included. You could use this system to, for instance, completely omit the CLUSTER_SINGLE placement of gems, instead using a ridiculously low chance of said gem dropping randomly from different relevant minerals, and allow ore and gem veins to produce common stone alongside their usual material, all based on relevant skills of the miner (i.e. if the miner is also a gem expert, he'll have more chance to get better gems, etc).

On dumping things from carts, you could have two kinds of "dump tracks". One would be a mechanically activated "tumbler", a device that turns a stationary cart over without having it leave the track, effectively dumping its contents onto an adjacent tile as defined during placement. Another would be a sort of a "tilted track", a segment of track with railings that keep the cart on while it is turned sideways, dumping its contents alongside the track without the need to stop. This would likely be a fixed length (3- or 5-long) segment with 4 selectable facings. No idea how to represent the tilted track in ASCII, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 03, 2012, 02:21:26 am

I'm disappointed with the mining changes. I was expecting at least:

1)Heavy boulders too heavy for a dwarf to carry
2)Clutter in the floor slowing down movement

Mining skill should determine the amount of boulders a miner generates. Less skilled miners would generate smaller (with less volume) 4-5 boulders (maybe with some loss in mass), while skilled miners would more likely have success in mining full, single boulders. Of course, the industry of rock crafts and furniture and smelting would have to change for this to be fruitful. (Smaller boulders couldn't be made into statues, the loss of volume in ores would impact the amount of metal, etc).

As it is, I may as well just "h"ide the rocks, and use the minecarts only when I am bored, or as death traps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 03, 2012, 02:30:06 am

That may be coming. It didn't seem like the mining changes are finalized yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 03, 2012, 03:51:37 am

Quote from: thvaz on May 03, 2012, 02:21:26 am

I'm disappointed with the mining changes. I was expecting at least:

1)Heavy boulders too heavy for a dwarf to carry
2)Clutter in the floor slowing down movement

Mining skill should determine the amount of boulders a miner generates. Less skilled miners would generate smaller (with less volume) 4-5 boulders (maybe with some loss in mass), while skilled miners would more likely have success in mining full, single boulders. Of course, the industry of rock crafts and furniture and smelting would have to change for this to be fruitful. (Smaller boulders couldn't be made into statues, the loss of volume in ores would impact the amount of metal, etc).

As it is, I may as well just "h"ide the rocks, and use the minecarts only when I am bored, or as death traps.

These probably aren't the full spectrum of initially planned changes or total number of changes for mining this release. Toady seems to feel he's under a time crunch to get this release out. His open stated goal is this month.

Though it does seem that Toady & ThreeToes have looked at rubble, and decided, at least for now, not to include it in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 03, 2012, 06:37:15 am

It seems to me that Toady has to navigate between the diametrically opposed desires of people who want mining that is more realistic (ie what you dig you need to move, and most of what you dig is waste and mining tiles themselves taking much longer) and people who don't want mining to intrude on their current gameplay more than it already does. It won't be easy (impossible?) to make everyone happy. And the same people asking for certain features may be the ones asking for them to be changed back once they realize it's not fun. That's why they're putting a lot of thought into it, on top of all the thought already put in over the years I'm sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 03, 2012, 07:46:50 am

Perhaps I'm interperreting the comments a bit differently, but I had first read Toady's comment about dropping the mining rates as dropping the issue for now.  That would mean suspending any changes to the mining skill to material produced action item until some future development phase.  Could be I'm looking at it wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 03, 2012, 07:58:45 am

Quote from: DG on May 03, 2012, 06:37:15 am

It seems to me that Toady has to navigate between the diametrically opposed desires of people who want mining that is more realistic (ie what you dig you need to move, and most of what you dig is waste and mining tiles themselves taking much longer) and people who don't want mining to intrude on their current gameplay more than it already does. It won't be easy (impossible?) to make everyone happy. And the same people asking for certain features may be the ones asking for them to be changed back once they realize it's not fun. That's why they're putting a lot of thought into it, on top of all the thought already put in over the years I'm sure.

Well, I can speak for me: while certainly what I desire would make the game more fun for me and less for others , I wouldn't never ask to change it back.

But I do agree that what I asked would take a long time (ore boulders smelted into bar relative to their mass for example)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 03, 2012, 08:00:39 am

Quote from: Mr S on May 03, 2012, 07:46:50 am

Perhaps I'm interperreting the comments a bit differently, but I had first read Toady's comment about dropping the mining rates as dropping the issue for now.  That would mean suspending any changes to the mining skill to material produced action item until some future development phase.  Could be I'm looking at it wrong.

Quote from: Dev Log

...I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being. ...

No, I dont think this means that he's dropped the issue. I think it means that skilled-based mining drop rates have been lowered.

I think our issue is that we don't know what 'skill-based mining drop rates' mean. I think we think it means, he's talking about the rocks that miners produce then as they mine. Which in turns mean that even skillless miners will be producing rock spam.

Quote from: Dev Log

...I'm not sure there will be other mining changes for this release. ...

Though this bit does mean, that we've probably been told the brunt of the mining changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on May 03, 2012, 09:06:06 am

Since 99 percent of mining is not to gain materials, but mainly to create rooms, I would hate to have to search through my dwarves to find the least skilled miner just so I don't have to haul rocks for generations. Then you have to pay attention to whos generating too many rocks etc. No thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jerricho on May 03, 2012, 09:12:34 am

What if the options to quarry and to mine were seperate? Quarrying would be with the intention of generating useable stone. Mining would be to supply metals and to clear rooms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on May 03, 2012, 10:45:51 am

Quote from: Jerricho on May 03, 2012, 09:12:34 am

What if the options to quarry and to mine were seperate? Quarrying would be with the intention of generating useable stone. Mining would be to supply metals and to clear rooms.

Well, it makes sense, especially for DF which generally abstracts things less than other games, that you should have to remove the debris that you dig out. It's also nice that this debris has a variety of uses. I could easily see a scenario where you need alot more stone than you thought you did, like for training certain skills. It's good to have stone lying around so you can have a good long while to decide what to do with it.

I have gotten into the habit lately of destroying extra stone with DFHack, and I've regretted it a few times. I think the minecarts solve the problem nicely in a way that suits DF. I think mining should stay the same in terms of drop rates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jerricho on May 03, 2012, 11:00:11 am

Quote

Well, it makes sense, especially for DF which generally abstracts things less than other games, that you should have to remove the debris that you dig out.

It doesn't necessarily need to be so clear cut. Arguably, quarrying useful stone is a skill in itself. Just chipping stone out of the way to get at something particular is going to leave you with useless rubble as a waste material for the most part.

I would suggest that to quarry would really be a careful version of mining. It would produce more useable rock where as mining will be quicker but produce rubble, i.e. less useable rock but the same amount of metals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on May 03, 2012, 11:37:59 am

As regards the reduction in mining drop rates:

Will legendary miners still have a 100% drop rate, or will this be reduced too? Could we have some rough numbers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 03, 2012, 11:45:35 am

Quote from: Caldfir on May 02, 2012, 11:37:34 pm

Hmm...

After reading and re-reading the devlog, the wording is still ambiguous to me:

Quote from: devlog 05/02/2012

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being.

Does this mean he's removed the feature of skill affecting drop rates, or that he lowered the drop rates?  It sounds more like the first one, but I'm not really sure what the motivation for doing that would be.  It is certainly a change, but I don't see how it is a benefit.  It isn't a disaster either, but it just seems like a change with no strong benefits or drawbacks.  There is probably something clever to do with drop rates, like having some way to toggle if dwarves are trying to mine out stone or trying to hollow out a region, but if that's going to delay the release, why bother changing anything at all? 

Toady, could you clarify the above quote's meaning?  Also, what is the motivation for this change?

Maybe there's some super obvious benefit that's just going over my head here?

Given the many interpretations floating around, I think I'll ask the more direct question.

When you say "dropped skill-based mining drop rates," does that mean you've lowered the rate at which stone drops when mined, or that you've eliminated the effect skill has on mining drop rates?

I had thought it was the latter, with the intent to remove rock spam from legendary miners, but you can certainly read it the other way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on May 03, 2012, 12:03:33 pm

I interpreted it as that miners in general will produce less rock (all mining drops are skill-based, as far as I know, so he just dropped the drop rates), but I agree that it would help if Toady clarified what he meant by that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TSTwizby on May 03, 2012, 12:04:47 pm

Quote from: cephalo on May 03, 2012, 09:06:06 am

Since 99 percent of mining is not to gain materials, but mainly to create rooms, I would hate to have to search through my dwarves to find the least skilled miner just so I don't have to haul rocks for generations. Then you have to pay attention to whos generating too many rocks etc. No thanks.

Honestly I'd have to say that more than half of my mining these days is done to gather raw materials for various megaprojects.

I would hate it if most of the time mining didn't generate rock. Sure, housekeeping gets a bit easier, but any kind of metalwork or large construction would become very difficult to next to impossible, depending on how much the rate were reduced by.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 03, 2012, 12:20:03 pm

I too have a question, although a more broad one related to your outlook on the game in general...

Quote

I don't yet see a way to make something like rubble or different sizes of rocks a net positive for the game, so I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

When you say "net positive", what do you consider the positives and the negatives of various rubble and stone sizes?

Is it, as DG hinted, that you would like to make mining slower and more complex by making players have to clear rubble so that mining huge patches isn't easy, and see such complexity as a positive, but that you are both worried about player backlash over a change in the system and that the game lags when more items are added into the game?

Or is it, alternately, that you see slowing down player mining in general as a negative to be avoided, and merely that giving mine carts a use was the positive?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 03, 2012, 01:10:42 pm

Quote from: TSTwizby on May 03, 2012, 12:04:47 pm

Quote from: cephalo on May 03, 2012, 09:06:06 am

-snip-

Honestly I'd have to say that more than half of my mining these days is done to gather raw materials for various megaprojects.

I would hate it if most of the time mining didn't generate rock. Sure, housekeeping gets a bit easier, but any kind of metalwork or large construction would become very difficult to next to impossible, depending on how much the rate were reduced by.

I also have to agree. Maybe it's just because most of my forts don't last long enough to generate truly astronomical amounts of rock, but I would prefer the way it is now. I wanted an easier way to manage the rock that is currently generated. If not much is generated in the first place, then I won't need minecarts quite as badly.

I don't really mind if mining gets more complex, but they are living underground... lack of stone should never really be an issue in my opinion. But honestly I feel like an entire mining overhaul could constitute an arc to itself. There have been a lot of neat suggestions on how to make mining more complex and meaningful, but most of those would require months of work. Toady doesn't like to do things halfway, so I doubt he's going to change very much right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 03, 2012, 02:03:07 pm

Well, it's actually sort of the problem that constructing above-ground houses is harder and more laborious than mining out housing.  This should be reversed if we are talking realism.  Waves of suggestions of "just let me have a button to keep using the same stone when I'm designating large constructions so I don't have to keep fining the slate in the list of stones" come to mind here.

It wouldn't be quite the problem if it wasn't assumed that all expansion in a fort would automatically be "subtractive", or that aboveground forts or castles were "for the challenge" or "for a change of pace" just because the interface for one is simple while the interface of the other is painful.

If you had more construction-focused expansion, then you really would often only be mining stone for quarrying purposes.

Part of why I hoped stacking would be a part of the next release was that it would let this sort of rubble and mullock item stuff just be generic "rubble" or "mullock" or "amalgam" material that could be stackable, and as such, not be as much a problem with causing FPS lag in the already-bloated item vectors. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jothki on May 03, 2012, 05:45:30 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 03, 2012, 02:03:07 pm

Well, it's actually sort of the problem that constructing above-ground houses is harder and more laborious than mining out housing.  This should be reversed if we are talking realism.  Waves of suggestions of "just let me have a button to keep using the same stone when I'm designating large constructions so I don't have to keep fining the slate in the list of stones" come to mind here.

It wouldn't be quite the problem if it wasn't assumed that all expansion in a fort would automatically be "subtractive", or that aboveground forts or castles were "for the challenge" or "for a change of pace" just because the interface for one is simple while the interface of the other is painful.

If you had more construction-focused expansion, then you really would often only be mining stone for quarrying purposes.

Part of why I hoped stacking would be a part of the next release was that it would let this sort of rubble and mullock item stuff just be generic "rubble" or "mullock" or "amalgam" material that could be stackable, and as such, not be as much a problem with causing FPS lag in the already-bloated item vectors.

That and a "construct ceiling" designation.

It would make sense for most forts to start out as aboveground and made of wood and whatever stone you get as mining refuse. A mountainhome would then be a point of pride for dwarves, not an automatic default.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on May 03, 2012, 06:26:48 pm

Quote from: Dev Log

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being.

Can we get some clarification about this statement?  There seems to be some confusion about what this means, exactly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on May 03, 2012, 06:32:49 pm

Jothki and Kohaku: yesplzkthx.  I second that these ought to be considered seriously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Brewster on May 03, 2012, 06:43:49 pm

Quote from: Khym Chanur on April 30, 2012, 05:45:42 am

Quote

Stockpiles can now be set to give items to multiple stockpiles.

Wheeee!

Quote

You can also set stockpiles to give to a workshop, in which case the workshop will only use items from its piles.

Wheeee!

Wheeee!

I'm ready for this release SIMPLY cause of stockpile fixes... finally my doors will all look the same!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 03, 2012, 06:49:28 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 03, 2012, 02:03:07 pm

Well, it's actually sort of the problem that constructing above-ground houses is harder and more laborious than mining out housing.  This should be reversed if we are talking realism.  Waves of suggestions of "just let me have a button to keep using the same stone when I'm designating large constructions so I don't have to keep fining the slate in the list of stones" come to mind here.

It wouldn't be quite the problem if it wasn't assumed that all expansion in a fort would automatically be "subtractive", or that aboveground forts or castles were "for the challenge" or "for a change of pace" just because the interface for one is simple while the interface of the other is painful.

If you had more construction-focused expansion, then you really would often only be mining stone for quarrying purposes.

Part of why I hoped stacking would be a part of the next release was that it would let this sort of rubble and mullock item stuff just be generic "rubble" or "mullock" or "amalgam" material that could be stackable, and as such, not be as much a problem with causing FPS lag in the already-bloated item vectors.

While I agree that in general building above ground forts should be easier, I wonder about how "realism" should be applied to dwarves. Mining purely for stone seems like a reasonable assumption for humans or other surface dwellers, but dwarves spend their entire lives underground and working with stone. It does not seem out of place that mining should be very easy and efficient for a dwarf. There are certain limits to realism when dealing with non-human creatures.

Though I too would like to see stacking handled sooner rather than later. It appears on the surface to represent a large amount of the FPS issues.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 03, 2012, 09:15:12 pm

Quote from: drvoke on May 03, 2012, 06:26:48 pm

Quote from: Dev Log

I've dropped skill-based mining drop rates for the time being.

Can we get some clarification about this statement?  There seems to be some confusion about what this means, exactly.

I've already posted it in the topic. Here, have 8 more.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Quote

I'm just going to stick with the larger intermittent boulders for now to keep things moving.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on May 03, 2012, 09:33:39 pm

Thad does not explain whether the change is lower drop rates, or skill having zero effect. The ONLY things that means are that he hasn't set the drop rate to 100% or added non-boulder mining residue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 03, 2012, 09:42:57 pm

The way I interpret it is that he's dropped the idea of skill-based drop rates, which is what he is planning on implementing with the different boulder sizes and rubble etc, leaving things as they are for now. So there hasn't been any changes, the change was what was dropped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on May 03, 2012, 09:48:28 pm

That is how I read it as well. The statement is, however, grammatically ambiguous that the other interpretation is just as valid, and thus it is erroneous to arrogantly proclaim that there is no possibility of that possible interpretation being the correct one. Nothing is proven until Toady clarifies his meaning, either in a reply post or when more complete information is given in the development log.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

If we are moving towards dumping of liquids, will other cart contents be the same?  Can this occur mechanically/automatically (something built on the track is designed to tip cart bins over and dump the contents out when the cart rolls by) or are you leaning towards manual dumping only?

I'd like to allow automatic dumping of any object.  Quantum stockpiling is exacerbated by this, but I'm not really bothered by that at this stage of the game.

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

Quote

Quote from: monk12

How does the lack of skill-based mining effect ore mining? I don't care much if there are fewer boulders around, but I normally mine around the ore/gems until I can get a 100% drop rate- it'd suck if I'm limited to random chance.

Quote from: Greiger

Probably close to Monk's question, but what about gems?  Especially the ones that only show up in really small clusters like the colored diamonds?  Will those always drop a chunk?  Or are they subject to the same whims of the RNG as the normal stone, with a high chance of completely ruining that one tile of clear diamond even with a legendary miner?  Something in between?

Quote from: Caldfir

Toady, could you clarify the above quote's meaning?  Also, what is the motivation for this change?

Quote from: thvaz

I'm disappointed with the mining changes. I was expecting at least:

1)Heavy boulders too heavy for a dwarf to carry
2)Clutter in the floor slowing down movement

Quote from: blue sam3

Will legendary miners still have a 100% drop rate, or will this be reduced too? Could we have some rough numbers?

Quote from: monk12

When you say "dropped skill-based mining drop rates," does that mean you've lowered the rate at which stone drops when mined, or that you've eliminated the effect skill has on mining drop rates?

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

When you say "net positive", what do you consider the positives and the negatives of various rubble and stone sizes?

Is it, as DG hinted, that you would like to make mining slower and more complex by making players have to clear rubble so that mining huge patches isn't easy, and see such complexity as a positive, but that you are both worried about player backlash over a change in the system and that the game lags when more items are added into the game?

Or is it, alternately, that you see slowing down player mining in general as a negative to be avoided, and merely that giving mine carts a use was the positive?

Quote from: drvoke

Can we get some clarification about this statement?

I didn't like the weird clunky metagame surrounding mining skill, so I made the drop rates uniform.  Gems drop at 100%.  Ore drops like rock, but you get more bars per ore now.  Stone drop is 25% now, I think, but the ore change makes it closer to legendary bar numbers for those.  There seems to be plenty of rock around, and I'm not sure which megaprojects would actually be affected, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm leaning against impossible-to-move rocks as a short term goal because I'd need to change how all of the stone-based jobs work, which would require another smaller rock object for things like crafts (or a wheelbarrow for every crafts job, which is odd).  Theoretically you could have a boulder breaking job that creates smaller rocks when you need them without creating too much spam.  That leaves furniture and construction jobs -- having to use a wheelbarrow for every one of those is sort of a killer too.  The wheelbarrow-to-every-else quotient starts to get high and cluttered looking, similar to not having forks or other little tools for every little thing in fortress mode.  Having wheelbarrows used for just stockpile hauling seems safer.

Regarding rubble, I'm sure people that voted for hauling are all over the place, but it seems like it would create the exact problem I'm supposed to be fixing.  I don't think it would be fun to have to devote a lot of dwarves/infrastructure/anything to building a gigantic useless mound the same size as your fortress every time you play.  The current stone doesn't drop everywhere and it has uses.  I'm not sure what the rubble is supposed to be adding to the game.

Quote from: MrWiggles

Toady, your recent Dev Updates seem to including language and at times, ideas, from the FotF. How much, if any is the FotF being an influence on Improved Hauling? Or are just using our language to help convey what you two are currently working on?

I've been reading it and the other active minecart/hauling threads.  Most of the stuff I've been doing has been kicking around a while, or was already up on the dev page, but I've also put in good ideas as they've come up.  I can answer further if you have more specifics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 03, 2012, 11:26:56 pm

This means that I will need to dig more for my fort.

I'm okay with this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 04, 2012, 01:19:26 am

I'd agree that building a small hut should be easier than digging out an equivalent. I'm not so sure about multistory edifices, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dhoovr on May 04, 2012, 03:18:13 am

Quote from: DG on May 04, 2012, 01:19:26 am

I'd agree that building a small hut should be easier than digging out an equivalent. I'm not so sure about multistory edifices, though.

I see it as tasking a mole with constructing a nest (as in a bird's nest, but not necessarily in a tree). Dwarves are better at digging. Humans are better at constructing. Elves are good for nothing.

Rubble is also good for nothing but for those who need realism and conservation of mass, maybe a mined out floor tile can have an addition description of being "rubble covered" or "dusty" or something of that sort that generally works as a contaminant. Then you can use cleaners (maybe a broom is required) to remove the contaminant before it can be smoothed. Though this might require a new (and useful!) designation to "clean" as opposed to setting the area as a meeting hall and all that nonsense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on May 04, 2012, 04:10:42 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

I didn't like the weird clunky metagame surrounding mining skill, so I made the drop rates uniform.  Gems drop at 100%.  Ore drops like rock, but you get more bars per ore now.  Stone drop is 25% now, I think, but the ore change makes it closer to legendary bar numbers for those.  There seems to be plenty of rock around, and I'm not sure which megaprojects would actually be affected, but we'll see how that goes.

How about economic stones, such as flux, obsidian, kaolinite and etc. ? Would there be an option to "Quarry"  so that stone drop rate is increased. Some megaprojects require plenty of stone, and sometimes stones of a certain colour are rare.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on May 04, 2012, 05:20:24 am

Will it be possible to make a customizable dump? Cuz I really wanna dump all cheap or bad decorated crossbows into magma. As well as bad cloth and other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 04, 2012, 06:35:35 am

I doubt it, since using a dump for anything that doesn't involve getting rid of stuff is an exploit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 06:58:43 am

Quote from: Japa on May 04, 2012, 06:35:35 am

I doubt it, since using a dump for anything that doesn't involve getting rid of stuff is an exploit.

But he does want to get rid of stuff. The only other way I can imagine is a "floating stockpile", so they can float in the air like zones, so you can use a volcano as a stockpile. Stockpiles allow for quality-of-stuff, and can be set to take from other piles...

Stockpiles behaving like zones is a good idea in general, come to think of it. It makes a lot more sense. And having a good idea usually means someone else already thought of it and Footkerchief is on his way to point that and the downsides-why-it-isn't-implemented-yet out to me ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 04, 2012, 07:18:23 am

Yes, but what I mean is that making bolts and cloth go into the magma, while stones go to your workshops goes against what dumping grounds are for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 07:28:05 am

... maybe a stupid question: what ARE they for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 04, 2012, 07:37:23 am

Dumping Zone was originally supposed to be for garbage.  Using it for quantum stockpiling is really useful a common practice a bit of an exploit.

Oh, and if you designate the Dump as a tile at the rim of the volcano, chasm (I know, not the same anymore), deep pit, cliff face, etc. Dorfs will gladly throw the trash over the edge into the void beneath.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 08:06:37 am

One mans' garbage is anothers' treasure (Or in other words: "garbage" is a relative term). Being able to "autodump" based on criteria such as the stockpiles have would be nice. A possibility to do what Rinin_Rus wants is to have a custom "Garbage" stockpile, and manually d-b-dump that entire pile once in a while...

No, my point is that "stockpiles" make no sense. It's something, yet it's nothing. It can stop fires, but is otherwise invisible and intangible. It could be like a tarp on the floor to keep stuff from getting dirty, but everything else in DF has to be built, and needs material. It's actually just a zone, but I guess its implementation predates zones and, because they just work, it hasn't changed much over time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:24:08 am

Oh, a quick response.  Thanks for tamping down on speculation, Toady!

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

If we are moving towards dumping of liquids, will other cart contents be the same?  Can this occur mechanically/automatically (something built on the track is designed to tip cart bins over and dump the contents out when the cart rolls by) or are you leaning towards manual dumping only?

I'd like to allow automatic dumping of any object.  Quantum stockpiling is exacerbated by this, but I'm not really bothered by that at this stage of the game.

Well, that makes me giddy.

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Regarding rubble, I'm sure people that voted for hauling are all over the place, but it seems like it would create the exact problem I'm supposed to be fixing.  I don't think it would be fun to have to devote a lot of dwarves/infrastructure/anything to building a gigantic useless mound the same size as your fortress every time you play.  The current stone doesn't drop everywhere and it has uses.  I'm not sure what the rubble is supposed to be adding to the game.

That, not so much. 

Realism aside, I'd say that rubble adds the same thing that cave-ins add - something to make mining less easy.  We don't ask what HFS adds to the game, or say that sieges are just for collecting goblinite; Adding problems for the player to solve is what the game is for, and what makes it Fun. 

Dwarves that vaporize stone as fast as they can walk and have no chance of cave-ins make mining easy, and hence, boring.  You can designate half the embark for excavation straight from the get-go and not really ever think about it.  Only the chance of hitting caverns or fluids really slows people down. 

Using rubble as a sort of anthill logistics problem where you have to dispose of all the mass you subtract isn't an ideal solution, but it's at least something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 04, 2012, 08:48:57 am

And I still designate mining as though it needed interior supports.  A self-imposed limitation under the current cave-in mechanics, but I like it for play style.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CodexDraco on May 04, 2012, 09:10:44 am

I would vote for quarry mode. I like building stuff of a single color so I wait until my miners are legendary before mining all the microline otherwise I might run out before I'm done with the project.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 04, 2012, 09:48:04 am

Quote from: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 08:06:37 am

No, my point is that "stockpiles" make no sense. It's something, yet it's nothing. It can stop fires, but is otherwise invisible and intangible. It could be like a tarp on the floor to keep stuff from getting dirty, but everything else in DF has to be built, and needs material. It's actually just a zone, but I guess its implementation predates zones and, because they just work, it hasn't changed much over time.

This I like the sound of.  IIRC there has been a small movement calling for everything zoneable (rooms , workshops etc. ) to be brought into an improved zoning menu.  Seems like Toady is leaning in that direction since hospitals were introduced, but while the current system works I guess it might not change for a while.  Perhaps when taverns get tackled?

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:24:08 am

Oh, a quick response.  Thanks for tamping down on speculation, Toady!

+1 for pipe smoking metaphor  8)

Quote

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

I'd like to allow automatic dumping of any object.  Quantum stockpiling is exacerbated by this, but I'm not really bothered by that at this stage of the game.

Well, that makes me giddy.

...

That, not so much. 

This seems like a tough call.  Keeping out rubble is good IMO, but, yeah, mining doesn't have any drawbacks or dangers.  The current overhaul sounds like a great logistical addition, so I agree with not adding even more things to manage in that respect.  But what you say, Kohaku, about a structural or environmental challenge would be good.  More things to manage, but in a different facet of the mining experience.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 04, 2012, 09:54:35 am

To resolve the problem of megaprojects needing stones, how about tweaking the make blocks reaction?

One boulder makes four blocks.

This also means there's actually a point to making block walls instead of rough stone walls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 10:11:00 am

Quote from: Geb on May 04, 2012, 09:54:35 am

To resolve the problem of megaprojects needing stones, how about tweaking the make blocks reaction?

One boulder makes four blocks.

This is actually a really good idea, FPS wise less stone is better, but having the same "quarry" output as you have now wouldn't slow fort-building or rare-color-stone collecting down as much, without having to create a new "quarry" dig action.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 04, 2012, 10:28:17 am

I would vote for rubble or to keep the old mechanics. I like the idea of using smaller "objects" for many crafts but in the way cloth/thread is handled right now. Usage by volume could work nicely with boulders and rubble if rubble gets priority over boulders (which get broken into a volume of rubble) and if certain objects like blocks can only be made from boulders. but that gets suggestiony.


Auto-dumping minecarts sound reasonable, the mechanics behind that are trivial form the once i have seen. Althought i could see 2 types of minecarts, the basic one and one hat needs an additional mechanism to get auto-dump. I refer to carts like this (http://www.railroadmichigan.com/miningdelaware01.jpg) or this (http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_125/1172536365848HUH.jpg) that are supendedon on an axle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on May 04, 2012, 10:29:27 am

Is making boulders give multiple bars of metal going to be a raw-level change or a hard-code change?  Either way, are the mining changes going to create any issues with save games from earlier versions?  If a player with a 34.07 fortress upgrades to whatever the new version ends up being, will ore boulders that have already been mined out now give multiple bars of metal, or still just one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on May 04, 2012, 10:41:42 am

Quote from: Siquo on May 04, 2012, 06:58:43 am

Quote from: Japa on May 04, 2012, 06:35:35 am

I doubt it, since using a dump for anything that doesn't involve getting rid of stuff is an exploit.

But he does want to get rid of stuff. The only other way I can imagine is a "floating stockpile", so they can float in the air like zones, so you can use a volcano as a stockpile. Stockpiles allow for quality-of-stuff, and can be set to take from other piles...

Stockpiles behaving like zones is a good idea in general, come to think of it. It makes a lot more sense. And having a good idea usually means someone else already thought of it and Footkerchief is on his way to point that and the downsides-why-it-isn't-implemented-yet out to me ;)

I already found another way, single tile rooms permits only one dwarf to come, with stockpile tile and self-cleaning system, which use water to move garbage from stockpile tile and atom smasher to disintegrate it. But it's way to complicated, because large fortress needs a lot of such stockpiles and every single use takes about 250 time units.

Why those dwarfs can simply drop their stuff into magma?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:29 am

Quote from: Heph on May 04, 2012, 10:28:17 am

Auto-dumping minecarts sound reasonable, the mechanics behind that are trivial form the once i have seen. Althought i could see 2 types of minecarts, the basic one and one hat needs an additional mechanism to get auto-dump. I refer to carts like this (http://www.railroadmichigan.com/miningdelaware01.jpg) or this (http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_125/1172536365848HUH.jpg) that are supendedon on an axle.

Yeah, I figured that just putting a handle off on the side of that type of cart would be enough - you make a wedge facing the direction the cart comes from, so that when the cart hits the wedge, it pushes the handle upward and tips the cart over as the carriage rolls by, and then drops back down when you go past the wedge. 

If we have auto-dumping, powered rollers, and an ability to fill a cart by just dumping into the tile of the cart, we could have full automation cart cycles.

Quote from: Geb on May 04, 2012, 09:54:35 am

To resolve the problem of megaprojects needing stones, how about tweaking the make blocks reaction?

One boulder makes four blocks.

This also means there's actually a point to making block walls instead of rough stone walls.

This is a good solution - making the smaller (and more numerous) economically valuable stone types simply made on demand. 

That said, I would still prefer waste rubble that has stacking as a logistical matter. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

Quote from: hermes on May 04, 2012, 09:48:04 am

This seems like a tough call.  Keeping out rubble is good IMO, but, yeah, mining doesn't have any drawbacks or dangers.  The current overhaul sounds like a great logistical addition, so I agree with not adding even more things to manage in that respect.  But what you say, Kohaku, about a structural or environmental challenge would be good.  More things to manage, but in a different facet of the mining experience.

Maybe I should work on a suggestion thread, then, to tackle "making rubble a net positive". 

Just from curiosity, if we did have rubble that had to be cleared before mining further into a stone face had to take place, but it was capable of being carried away someplace where you didn't have to worry about it anymore (dumped off-map, atom-smashed, landfilled) simply by having a few hauler dwarves dedicated to clearing rubble or simply by extending your cart tracks a few more tiles, would people still be opposed if it took no particular effort on the part of the player to clean it all up? 

Or in other words, do the people who oppose rubble oppose having to clean it up, (and hence, would not be opposed if cleaning were almost totally automated,) or oppose it for other reasons? 

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

If I'm going to be suggesting something that makes as many happy as possible, I'm not entirely sure what it is people are actually after...

I tend to get the impression that some people are actually just unhappy with change in general.  They might be OK with adding honeybees that do nothing to change most of the game or bugfixes, but don't want the game to actually become more advanced or complex, and want it to stay "legos with ants that move them around" forever. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on May 04, 2012, 11:29:56 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

It could be nice, but only after any changes, which makes constructing outside much easier, not before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Triaxx2 on May 04, 2012, 11:55:26 am

Pumping carts out would be a pretty simple task to work with if liquids changed cart weights and pressure plates could be placed under tracks.

Put a stop in and a pressure plate in the track, with one of the rope/chain Mechanisms to start it again. If it's empty, it doesn't trigger the pressure plate, and keeps going without a hitch. But if it's full of water/magma, it both turns off the Mechanism, and activates the pump. This draws out the water, then when the weight is no longer enough to trigger the pressure plates, the cart is pulled back into motion and continues on it's way.

An alternate method is to have a line of 8-10 single pumps pumping above the tracks, from the track into an empty space above. As the cart passes by, the pumps draw up the water through it, and pump into the empty space, sending it on it's way. Potentially into a 3/7 reservoir to minimize evaporation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 04, 2012, 12:41:07 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

-raises hand- I'm very much a fan of being able to dig out a large area rapidly. Often, I find that having multiple legendary miners working on the same project just doesn't get it done fast enough for my liking already, so adding anything that forced them to work more slowly would frustrate me regardless of whether or not I had to manually do anything to clean it up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on May 04, 2012, 01:06:17 pm

Hmmm. I feel like it might be cool to make mining harder, but it should be harder in a "have to think about ways to work around the limitations" way, rather than just "another subsystem that adds a lot of micromanagement" way.

Rubble seems like that latter—it makes mining more onerous, in that it goes slower and takes more time, but it doesn't make it more interesting.

Cave-ins would be a better solution, IMO, if it were possible to do it in an interesting way. That way it forces you to actually think about how to deal with it in laying out your fort, rather than (as with rubble), just ensuring that things progress more slowly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 04, 2012, 01:07:54 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

Or in other words, do the people who oppose rubble oppose having to clean it up, (and hence, would not be opposed if cleaning were almost totally automated,) or oppose it for other reasons? 

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

I think one of the difficulties with this is the fact that I generally want mining out a room to go as quickly as possible, but don't mind significant slow downs if I'm actually mining for a resource. Especially if my mining operation can be made more efficient and more automated over time.

I would generally like to see a move towards requiring some sort of dedicated mining operation, but I can understand why others might not like that idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on May 04, 2012, 01:22:42 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

Thanks. I'm not trying to pin you into any sort of paradox, and I'm fine with the simplification of the game allowing many things in the same spot. It just seemed like it was a possibility to have it finally answered when physics went in.

I am curious why those values were chosen. Although they are pretty much the 2m cube I was expecting, there is probably a interesting reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 04, 2012, 02:18:13 pm

I don't really mind if stuff slowed down somewhat, and would probably adapt regardless of which method was chosen. However I would really, really like to see it implemented in some way that makes mining always generae something, just so it doesn't just magically clear a way into the mountain when mining with a low skilled miner. Maybe just something simple like 3 size categories with higher skilled miners being able to mine out larger blocks more often and faster, which could be used for larger constructions/statues etc and also be broken down into the smaller categories.

As for a question, will you be leaving mining like this just for this release and then finish it during the cirrent bugfixing/improvement cycle, or will it be left indefinitely until you know what to do and find the time to finish it during later arc portions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 04, 2012, 02:35:08 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

-snip-
If I'm going to be suggesting something that makes as many happy as possible, I'm not entirely sure what it is people are actually after...
-snap-

i vote for the game to be as complex and realistic(or rather consequent inside its own frame of rules, i dont want to exclude magic and stuff by saying "realistic"). more rubble/conservation of mass/energy. more cave-ins and structural challenges. more of everything!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 04, 2012, 03:38:46 pm

If only stone in the ground slowed anyone who passed through it, we would have a reason to remove them, and I would be happy. As it is now, you can just hide then, and you wouldn't ever need to use the awesome cart mechanics Toady spent a month with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hanslanda on May 04, 2012, 05:17:32 pm

 Would it be terribly difficult or time consuming to add a line to descriptions of creatures that went, 'He/she/it is facing N/NW/SSW'?

But that's pretty minor, I'm just curious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on May 04, 2012, 05:19:19 pm

Is that... A SUGGESTION?
Ha! You are surprised? Fair enough, for
No one expects the spanish inquisition!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lac on May 04, 2012, 05:30:28 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

This is a missed opportunity to define the dimensions of a tile once and for all, in terms of the speed of a dwarven minecart (fully laden), rather than metres; which would seem nice and dwarven to me :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 04, 2012, 06:20:01 pm

Quote from: Hanslanda on May 04, 2012, 05:17:32 pm

Would it be terribly difficult or time consuming to add a line to descriptions of creatures that went, 'He/she/it is facing N/NW/SSW'?

But that's pretty minor, I'm just curious.

Old but relevant: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=2287.msg36812#msg36812)

Quote from: Toady One

I'm always wary of a strict facing.  I dislike vision cones and having to change direction manually.  It just doesn't seem that realistic, especially if you are in an alert state.  You have a neck to see all around you, which shouldn't take a turn to move and therefore you shouldn't have to control at all, the ability to use a stance that's more complicated than simply pointing in one direction (for example, how you position your legs can help determine whether you are more prone to being knocked over from the front or from the sides), and the ability to walk in all directions, not just the direction your head/body is facing.  On the other hand, you should be able to sneak up being a lazy guard that's facing away from you (rather than just using a magical sneak mode like we've got now).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on May 04, 2012, 06:47:24 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 11:05:57 am

Or in other words, do the people who oppose rubble oppose having to clean it up, (and hence, would not be opposed if cleaning were almost totally automated,) or oppose it for other reasons? 

How many are opposed to just plain anything that slows mining down for any reason, and like the fast burrowing speeds?

Your ideas might be within the scope of the hauling overhaul, so while I'm personally not opposed to an economical way to clean up useless rubble, we've already got a literal fuckton of garbage with very little to do with it outside of quantum stockpiles, atom-smashers, and the magma sea.  There should be a focus on getting this system together to efficiently export garbage out of our fort first (or getting useful materials to our shiny new stockpiles tied to workshops), before what amounts to a total mining overhaul.

In other words, I think Toady's right for putting it off for now, at least while he hopefully sets up the groundwork for efficiently moving that crap out of the miners way.  It's not a desire for an easy game that makes me say, let's have all the tools in place to potentially solve it before we add another problem for the player to surmount.  Laying tracks and building carts and setting up an even remotely efficient rubble hauling system won't be a free or easy task, without even asking the question of what you do with it after.  I hope that this hauling overhaul covers at least some of that with maybe some kind of improved dumping or whatever, but who knows?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:59:39 pm

Quote from: drvoke on May 04, 2012, 06:47:24 pm

Your ideas might be within the scope of the hauling overhaul, so while I'm personally not opposed to an economical way to clean up useless rubble, we've already got a literal fuckton of garbage with very little to do with it outside of quantum stockpiles, atom-smashers, and the magma sea.  There should be a focus on getting this system together to efficiently export garbage out of our fort first (or getting useful materials to our shiny new stockpiles tied to workshops), before what amounts to a total mining overhaul.

In other words, I think Toady's right for putting it off for now, at least while he hopefully sets up the groundwork for efficiently moving that crap out of the miners way.  It's not a desire for an easy game that makes me say, let's have all the tools in place to potentially solve it before we add another problem for the player to surmount.  Laying tracks and building carts and setting up an even remotely efficient rubble hauling system won't be a free or easy task, without even asking the question of what you do with it after.  I hope that this hauling overhaul covers at least some of that with maybe some kind of improved dumping or whatever, but who knows?

Your concern is fair enough, but at the same time, the ability to discuss solutions to problems while waiting on Toady to implement things is one thing we have in nigh limitless quantities.  This isn't a "he must do it in this release" discussion, it's an ideal solution discussion.  (Toady basically only listens to the ideal solution discussions, and ignores the quick fixes, anyway.)  If we need better means of disposing of garbage, we can just discuss that too. 

I find this newfound idea that we somehow have to "use" something before it goes in rather strange.  What "use" is there for dwarves needing to sleep, and hence, requiring the player build beds and bedrooms?  What "use" are evil clouds that spread contaminants that cause dwarves to vomit their internal organs?  What "use" are sieges (not counting the side-consequence of goblinite) that challenge the player's ability to defend themselves? 

When we've grown accustomed to these things, we don't mind them, but when they are proposed, we ask what's in it for us. 

Spoiler: making a point that goes just a teensy bit long (click to show/hide)

Setting up a hauling system isn't supposed to be a free or easy task - that's the value it has.  Players here laud the challenge in this and other games. 

Further, I believe that if you are actually forced to clean up the rubble before you can continue mining, and leaving trash strewn about has in-game consequences (not counting the meta-game consequences of FPS loss to a bloated vector), then it may cause the reaction in players to actually start working on cleaning up their trash.

There already are suggestions on how to deal with trash items, from dumping them "off-map", to consolidating "amalgam" walls that delete all items in the compacted trash walls, to the old stand-bys of just atom-smashing or magma-dumping everything. 

More realistic suggestions include composting items (which would be more important when we have farming changes) or incinerating them, as well as the aforementioned "just make a solid wall of rubble at the entrance to the mine like an anthill".  So long as they consolidate/compact into walls that delete the items, and there is an in-game incentive to eliminate them (your mining cannot continue until you clear the workplace), then you side-step the FPS drag problem.

I actually see that as a positive, not a negative.  It makes the game "harder", so to speak, as the game goes on without the player actively having to micromanage the rubble.  First tiles you strike into the earth?  You only have to haul rubble a couple tiles away.  Digging straight for the magma sea to try to set up a magma forge early?  You're going to have to haul that stone up 100+ z-levels to find the dump site.  When you are just starting out, it's easy, but the larger and more ambitious your mining becomes, the more you have to negotiate the logistics problem. 

Further, it's a very serious problem that stone is a "free" resource in this game, in the sense that we always have limitless supplies of it on hand to accomplish any task we can use stone to fulfill.  Most city-building or strategy games derive their challenge from the fact that resources are meant to be scarce.  Almost all resources in DF besides maybe wood and iron, depending on embark, are available in such huge quantities that you never need to worry about scarcity, and indeed, the problem is overabundance of resources.  We don't worry about how we are going to feed our dwarves, we worry about how to get rid of the excess food. We don't worry about if we will have enough stone to supply all the walls, mechanisms, doors, tables, chairs, etc. we need for defense and infrastructure, we start building walls and roads to just eliminate excess stone. 

I wrote a pretty massive thread on farming specifically about how we need to make organic resources more scarce and something that can either be available with scarcity if you put little effort into it, or can be available in greater degrees of abundance for greater degrees of effort and understanding of the system, but we need the same thing for inorganic resources, as well.  We need to make mining slow enough and hard enough to give workable stone actual value to a dwarf. 

There's something very wrong with the notion of a game about dwarves that see stone and even gems and precious metals like gold as nothing but trash that they need to get rid of for their excess. 

In fact, I'd actually like to see stone become less useful overall - clay and ceramics were added to the game, but are nearly useless because clay doesn't do anything the excessive stone you are trying to find ways to get rid of isn't already capable of doing.  Glass doesn't fare much better.

We have come to accept and even enjoy elements of the game that don't give us a "benefit", like dwarves needing to sleep and have bedrooms, and incorporate it into our game, and we enjoy the need to solve these problems the game forces upon us. 

The fact that stone and ores and gems are going to be in the landscape isn't going to change, and without making caverns even crazier, the only real changes to them will be the 3d ore veins.  If we are to impose a scarcity of stone, it must be through making the act of mining itself more slow. 

Only then can we have the benefit of the challenge of trying to make a temporary shelter for our dwarves while the slow process of excavating the "true fortress" takes place.  Initial constructed wooden or stone shacks might get buried in rubble amalgam walls, and become "underground" as the fortress below expands. (Of course, hopefully, this goes hand-in-hand with the conservation of soil, and end of limitless sand and clay from floors, as well...)

---

For those who make megaprojects, do you know how the ancient Egyptians made their giant temples and obelisks in an age without cranes and powered machinery?  They used sand.  They carved the obelisk out of one giant piece of stone at the quarry, floated it whole down the Nile on a barge, built a sand ramp to get it up above the podium, and then dug the sand out from under it until it was sitting right-side-up on the podium.  They engraved the columns of their giant temples by piling sand up to the top as a scaffold, and then digging their way down as they completed their engravings...

Making a pyramid in Minecraft Creative Mode is easy.

What the Egyptians did was impressive not just for lasting so long, but for what they accomplished in spite of their limitations.

Likewise, Wieliczka's cathedral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine) is impressive because it was mined out using "realistic" physics models where you had to actually remove the stuff you excavated.  No speedy stone vaporizations for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 04, 2012, 09:52:45 pm

For what it's worth, NW_K, I'd like to see mining go more toward what you envision. I think part of the problem is that people restart fortresses constantly (worlds for that matter) and typically stick to the same plan every time. That would make delving a fortress tiresome after the umpteenth time so you'd want it to be quick. But I don't think making it quick and simple is a good solution. Making fortress building challenging and interesting (in ways that you touch on, amongst others) is the key. But even then it won't mean much until such time as you have more incentive to keep a fortress for a long time. Toady has already stated that as one of his major goals (or maybe more specifically worlds) so I can see support for "difficult" mining changes growing in the future.

Quote from: Lac on May 04, 2012, 05:30:28 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

This is a missed opportunity to define the dimensions of a tile once and for all, in terms of the speed of a dwarven minecart (fully laden), rather than metres; which would seem nice and dwarven to me :)

I think it depends on how many coconuts the cart is carrying and whether it's running on African or European gauge rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 10:39:59 pm

Quote from: DG on May 04, 2012, 09:52:45 pm

Making fortress building challenging and interesting (in ways that you touch on, amongst others) is the key. But even then it won't mean much until such time as you have more incentive to keep a fortress for a long time. Toady has already stated that as one of his major goals (or maybe more specifically worlds) so I can see support for "difficult" mining changes growing in the future.

Speaking long-term, there's already plans for "end-game content" of sorts. 

Currently, there are no ways for a fortress to really interact with the world, and you may as well just play a pocket world with 5 years of history every time.  As world events start to continue on after worldgen is over, and fortresses can do more than just delay the amount of time before they crumble, we'll have a reason to keep a world on after a fortress, rather than genning a new world per fortress. 

We will have reasons to keep fortresses on past when we've actually established a fortress once we have Army Arc changes to go and change the world around us, and Barony/County/Kingdom powers over other settlements. 

Further, there's the potential for new reasons to be emotionally invested in the world with Personality Rewrites.  If the game can actually make dwarves into more than just tokens differentiated only by their color-coded professions, but real personalities that don't take just players forcing their imaginations onto the tabula rasa the game offers up, and continuing villains that aren't just going to bump into your first cage trap and make forts more interesting and unique, then players will be less likely to drop fortresses from boredom or dropping worlds so that they can keep rerolling until they hit the embark with the waterfall they like.

... and now, I've gone from wanting to write about mining to remembering how I need to finish rewriting the Class Warfare thread...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hanslanda on May 04, 2012, 11:48:03 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 04, 2012, 06:20:01 pm

Quote from: Hanslanda on May 04, 2012, 05:17:32 pm

Would it be terribly difficult or time consuming to add a line to descriptions of creatures that went, 'He/she/it is facing N/NW/SSW'?

But that's pretty minor, I'm just curious.

Old but relevant: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=2287.msg36812#msg36812)

Quote from: Toady One

I'm always wary of a strict facing.  I dislike vision cones and having to change direction manually.  It just doesn't seem that realistic, especially if you are in an alert state.  You have a neck to see all around you, which shouldn't take a turn to move and therefore you shouldn't have to control at all, the ability to use a stance that's more complicated than simply pointing in one direction (for example, how you position your legs can help determine whether you are more prone to being knocked over from the front or from the sides), and the ability to walk in all directions, not just the direction your head/body is facing.  On the other hand, you should be able to sneak up being a lazy guard that's facing away from you (rather than just using a magical sneak mode like we've got now).

Thanks Footkerchief. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 12:01:30 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:59:39 pm

-snip-

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

are you considering the long term value of this NW? how will this mechanic feel after you have played with it for a year? will it still be "oh neat, i have to clean up after mining" or will it become "ARGH FUCKING RUBBLE!!!!!"?

so I would be strictly against anything that doesn't ADD to the enjoyability of the game.

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

we still need rebalances in farming, mining, combat, and a few other minor things to balance out the industry. these changes to mining are one giant step in that direction.

however, what does adding rubble, add to the game, that cave-ins, economic rebalances, farming changes, and whatever else is planned over the next decade doesn't?

and also didn't you do some testing a while back that found out that number of individual items = lag? so rubble would create thousands of individual items replacing the removed excess stone.

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 05, 2012, 12:17:27 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 12:01:30 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:59:39 pm

-snip-

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

are you considering the long term value of this NW? how will this mechanic feel after you have played with it for a year? will it still be "oh neat, i have to clean up after mining" or will it become "ARGH FUCKING RUBBLE!!!!!"?

so I would be strictly against anything that doesn't ADD to the enjoyability of the game.

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

we still need rebalances in farming, mining, combat, and a few other minor things to balance out the industry. these changes to mining are one giant step in that direction.

however, what does adding rubble, add to the game, that cave-ins, economic rebalances, farming changes, and whatever else is planned over the next decade doesn't?

and also didn't you do some testing a while back that found out that number of individual items = lag? so rubble would create thousands of individual items replacing the removed excess stone.

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

Not to speak for Kohaku, but I believe the suggestion was that a "rubble wall" would delete the items that made it and just be a "wall". So basically you trade 7 item pointers for one wall pointer. And I personally find the idea of dealing with logistics to be fun, but I realize that many other people prefer combat or some other aspect of DF. I imagine how you deal with the stone would change from fortress to fortress. Sometimes you might prefer to be mostly underground, other times you might build ginormous towers. However I believe the ideal solution would balance the need to clean up with automation, so that with sufficient inital effort, your mining becomes largely micromanagement-free.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 01:12:52 am

well but why add the rubble in the first place? we can already build walls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 05, 2012, 01:54:50 am

The reason people are interested in rubble is that we just got the whole minecart/hauling thing, and it doesn't seem like it will be worthwhile to set up unless there's a butt-ton of stuff to move around. 

I haven't actually played the dev version of the game, so I can't know for sure, but right now it sounds like Toady just added in the minecart system, but nobody's going to bother using it because it is simpler to just set up industry near the mines and have dwarves carry the products away by hand.  I personally just don't want this whole big cool system to sit around without anyone using it. 

I don't know if some kind of rubble is the answer or not, but I would point out that in the real world, gravel is an important construction material, which would fill that role. 

Again though, it's really hard to make a call on this stuff without the current iteration of the game in my hands. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on May 05, 2012, 04:23:43 am

Quote from: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 01:12:52 am

well but why add the rubble in the first place? we can already build walls.

Well, for one, constructed walls don't remove the items in any way - they are still kept for the case the wall is deconstructed back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

Quote from: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 12:01:30 am

well the main point people have is adding rubble, seems to add nothing to the game but time consuming disposal, it is not interesting, it is drudgery just to dig out a room, something you will do 20000000 times while playing dwarf fortress.

...

I simple don't understand your fascination with adding clutter and extra useless items to the game.

What Greenskye and Caldfir are also correct, but there's something else that is important about what I am arguing for:

At a basic level, we need to throw sand in the gears of mining. 

Spoiler: longish argument (click to show/hide)

Hauling itself is not a really tedious problem for players.  There's a big difference in game-costs and player-costs.  It just takes time and the mere effort of designating the place you want the junk to go.

Instead, it is a problem when you can designate a whole mountain, step away from the game to go make yourself a sandwich, and when you come back, a single dwarf has completed a mountain-top removal project. 

What we need is for mining to have some in-game cost that makes it not so easy for players to vaporize whole mountains in an afternoon. 

And to go back to your own quote:

Quote from: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 12:01:30 am

evil clouds: deadly and sometimes frustrating, but creates fun.
less stone next update: no more buying caravans with eight million stone crafts, may actually have to work for something.
sieges: dangerous and badly timed, deadly. but add a purpose for the complex combat mechanics, keep in mind sieges are unfinished atm.

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

Less stone next update affecting caravans?  Why? Who bothers making stone trade junk, anyway, when Large Serrated Steel Discs and Dwarven Syrup Roasts can single-handedly buy whole caravans?  (And right now, caravans are more effort to scroll through their lists of junk than their goods are actually worth, anyway.)

Sieges, meanwhile, do have a definite fun element: They force players to build their fortress with an eye towards defense.  But you aren't showing how this element is in any way really different from mining, as handling sieges typically is about altering the lay of the land and mining.

Water has a fun element: You cannot directly manage where water is going, you have to work with water in dry environments, and use floodgates or pumps to control when water will be in a given chamber.  The indirectness of control makes it more fun.

And yes, there are definitely other systems I want to see added to the game as it becomes more complex that would also be fun, such as sewage systems or ventilation systems which will be fun for the logistical management that we already need to have in managing siege defense and water or magma management, but to say that we should stop at just these things because, arbitrarily, we consider designing the minecart/logistical systems by which we remove rubble not to be fun while designing the systems by which we move water or manage sieger progression are fun. 

---

The reason why we need rubble is, counter to your expectations, it should reduce the number of junk items being generated because it slows down the pace of excavation considerably, as each time you mine a set amount of stone, you have to deal with the excess material generated.  By the time that you are mining again, that rubble should be dealt with and out of memory in some manner or another. 

This isn't the only thing, we should eventually have better cave-in mechanics and requirements for supports or reinforcing walls. 

The ultimate goal should be that mining should no longer just be assumed, that every mineral in a given embark is your Armok-given right to haul out and do with as you see fit - you have to work for your stone, and make do with the resources you can manage to get, rather than simply sitting on tons of waste stone you can ignore forever and probably will never use. 

We, as players, should have to look at the geology that we can see, and start sitting down and trying to guess, as real miners do, where the ideal places to mine will be, and where the physical limitations of their ability to mine and set up the support and safety infrastructure will make mining less of a priority or too dangerous to carry on with.

Further, you can't act as if mining is somehow a separate issue from concepts like sieges or evil clouds or or cave-ins or water management or farming.  Mining is how we deal with all those problems - making mining less fast and easy makes every problem we face more challenging and complex.  If you can no longer just dig down to the magma sea while carving a labyrinth into a mountainside as your only entrance to your fortress and magma drown the first siegers you face because that much excavation becomes a serious obstacle, then suddenly, you've made not just mining harder, but sieges harder, as well. If you can't just burrow underground immediately and stay down there forever when facing an evil cloud, but must either come to the surface to dump excess stone outside, or else face severely cramped conditions as you try to find ways to get rid of stone, (although, granted, currently, this will only matter until you get your atom-smasher running,) it makes evil clouds harder.

DF is a game where the systems are all inter-connected, and the game is only so simple and easy because all the systems are simple and easy.  Make one more complex, and it doesn't mean all that much, but when you make all of them more complex, even slightly, you've introduced a resource and problem-juggling game where you have to triage what problems are most likely to kill you next.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 05, 2012, 06:51:56 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

Instead, it is a problem when you can designate a whole mountain, step away from the game to go make yourself a sandwich, and when you come back, a single dwarf has completed a mountain-top removal project. 

What we need is for mining to have some in-game cost that makes it not so easy for players to vaporize whole mountains in an afternoon. 

I don't see why it's so important to prevent players from mining out vast amounts of stone. Digging out rooms and corridors is fun at the moment. It's very satisfying to be able to be able to draw out rooms and corridors and watch them being mined out. Preventing oversized mines is not enough of a problem that it is worth adding tedium to a very basic aspect of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 06:59:04 am

Quote from: Geb on May 05, 2012, 06:51:56 am

I don't see why it's so important to prevent players from mining out vast amounts of stone. Digging out rooms and corridors is fun at the moment. It's very satisfying to be able to be able to draw out rooms and corridors and watch them being mined out. Preventing oversized mines is not enough of a problem that it is worth adding tedium to a very basic aspect of the game.

Not tedium, delay. 

You not only will still get to designate excavation sites, but also, the "watching it happen" part will become a more intricate dance, as well.  The only thing this really does is make mining slower, and require players to deal with their problems without the infinite secure space and resources they have immediate access to from the start.  All of that is a step in a positive direction.

Besides, by that same logic you are using, I can say that sieges are just ways to add tedium to my collection of iron, or dwarves sleeping and needing bedrooms is a way to add tedium to my creation of a fortress. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phibes on May 05, 2012, 07:29:11 am

I'm glad that Toady is taking a cautious approach to mining changes. It's unavoidable that any given feature or design decision will delight some players and irritate others, but mining is such a basic and fundamental part of the game that it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to turn it into a chore.

I don't want mining to turn out like pastures, a feature that's too irritating to use on a large scale. DF is a complex game, but some balance has to be struck between complexity and playability. This game is already a tough nut to crack for newcomers, and convoluting the most basic game play mechanics isn't going to help.

I'm not opposed to more advanced mining features, as long as the basics remain simple and accessible for players who just want to get on with it. For example, I don't want mine carts to become a de facto requirement for a functional fortress. They seem perfectly suited as a mechanic for improving speed and efficiency, but the player should be able to completely ignore them without catastrophic consequences, especially in the early game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 05, 2012, 07:43:18 am

Can't we all just get along?

Anyway it's not like all that stone is disappearing, the miners are just putting all the stone into one much larger boulder.  I think of it kind of like raking a yard.  You don't make one pile of leaves for every square meter do you?  No, you gather up all the leaves into a single pile for a larger area. 

The miners are just doing that, it just treats it as one boulder for FPS and management's sake

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on May 05, 2012, 08:05:51 am

One cool thing with minecarts is the possibility of placing passengers on them. This may one day allow us to have Dwarven subways where we load up passengers en masse and have a repeating mechanism send them along the track to another area.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 08:31:19 am

I'm already over-arguing this a bit, but a couple quick things...

Quote from: Phibes on May 05, 2012, 07:29:11 am

It's unavoidable that any given feature or design decision will delight some players and irritate others, but mining is such a basic and fundamental part of the game that it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to turn it into a chore.

The difference of opinion here is I don't think rubble adds any chore. 

We already have wheelbarrows, animal-carts, and minecarts and stone to move with them.  Rubble just adds more.

Quote from: Phibes on May 05, 2012, 07:29:11 am

I don't want mining to turn out like pastures, a feature that's too irritating to use on a large scale.

Pastures are annoying because they're bugged into trapping all the creatures in the northwest corner.  Setting up statue gardens and using the meeting zone designation to let grazers roam freely actually solves most of the problems with grazing, and hopefully Toady will eventually make pastures more like meeting zones. 

Many features are bugged when they first come in, but it would be a mistake to say that we should avoid new features because they will be buggy.

The other problems with pastures are micromanagement from a lack of a more automated interface, which wouldn't be applicable to hauling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on May 05, 2012, 09:20:59 am

I am concerned about colored stone. Just because I have a hundred times more granite than anyone could find a use for, doesn't mean that I have enough blue, green or purple stone for paving etc. I tend to use all of a particular available color, and I often don't have enough. Maybe it would be good to start with boulders and have someone crack them into 4 'stones' for jobs. That way if you want to use them you still have them, and if you don't there are less items to dump.

Even that is not ideal for things like rutile, which come in very small clusters. I could easily see someone mining out a cluster of 6 rutile and getting nothing because of the diceroll.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 05, 2012, 09:23:41 am

Quote from: cephalo on May 05, 2012, 09:20:59 am

Maybe it would be good to start with boulders and have someone crack them into 4 'stones' for jobs.

See the latest dev log entry. This is pretty much what we're getting. It looks like we'll be able to make four blocks from one stone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on May 05, 2012, 09:29:27 am

Quote from: Geb on May 05, 2012, 09:23:41 am

See the latest dev log entry. This is pretty much what we're getting. It looks like we'll be able to make four blocks from one stone.

For paving, alot of times I like to use raw stone to contrast different parts of a road. It seems weired that a rough stone road would be 4x more expensive than a smooth stone road. There are quite a few jobs that don't use blocks. For example flux! I do hope a solution can be found for those.

See how I did my training dojos in my Praisegems fort (link in sig.).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 05, 2012, 09:48:23 am

We already know that the ore -> bars reactions have been tweaked to give more bars. I would hope that includes the steel making reactions involving flux too. I'm not sure how that would work neatly though.

4 pig iron + 4 iron + 4 fuel + flux = 8 steel?

That's not pretty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on May 05, 2012, 10:06:03 am

Quote from: Geb on May 05, 2012, 09:48:23 am

We already know that the ore -> bars reactions have been tweaked to give more bars. I would hope that includes the steel making reactions involving flux too. I'm not sure how that would work neatly though.

4 pig iron + 4 iron + 4 fuel + flux = 8 steel?

That's not pretty.

Or alternatively, flux stone blocks could be just as usable as raw flux stone.  In fact, this could apply to a lot of things.  Aside from large furniture, any job that called for 1 raw stone could possibly also work with 1 stone block.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yobgod on May 05, 2012, 10:48:12 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

I'm not sure what the rubble is supposed to be adding to the game.

Well, if it's a matter of thinking up uses for rubble...

Historically, rubble is both the major component of concrete and used as a filler in large walls. We could actually keep most of the workflow the same by simply introducing concrete as an alternate building source for stone constructions and furniture. It gets a little strange if you (properly) require lime, sand and rubble, but I could see it working well as (sand | rubble) -> concrete item, with the lime assumed to magically come from somewhere like the water does for brewing. Really the only thing that changes are the descriptions.

As a bonus, large outdoor piles of rubble would totally piss off the elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 05, 2012, 12:19:46 pm

Rubble is useful for ore but not crafting. In essence, it allows you to have hordes of unskilled coal miners but rewards you for using only the finest miners to extract valuable gems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Immortal on May 05, 2012, 12:45:57 pm

Amazing progress Toady, can't wait to experiment with minecarts.


About rubble

If I had to clear rubble and slow down my hollowing out mountain process to put my towers inside I would probably stop playing. That would absolutely kill the part I enjoy.

I like to create, build, refine the ores, and stockpile valuables while building architectural wonders.
I do not like to be prevented from digging, unless its an enemy or a feature which includes panic. Designating rubble to be moved sounds about as exciting as digging out a room in minecraft...
I currently have no problem with moving the stones from the hallways so it looks nice, but I fully disapprove of anything that functionally stops the mining process, leave the rubble behind and let my dwarves dig please.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 12:59:31 pm

Quote from: Yobgod on May 05, 2012, 10:48:12 am

-snip-

well now your actually making a decent case of how rubble adds to the game in a way greater than building walls, one only needs so many walls.
concrete could have a plethora of applications, while rubble walls... you wont need too many.

yes rubble is something to add time to mining, but i fear it will become too tedious as time goes on, or become completely ignored as everyone simply dumps there rubble in a nice big pile.

but now your contradicting the goal of cutting down on items.

the main issue i see, is the rubble idea seems slated towards current game state, not game state one or two years from now. all those systems NW said adding rubble would make harder are getting somewhat significant overhauls in the coming years, and for now if the game is too easy, tough, Toady is working on it.

NW i think you are too set in your desire for this feature, you see an argument and immediately think, "how can I say this is wrong", instead of "well how is this a good idea". in other words, your becoming a U.S. senator  :P

---

but for now, I think we should simply leave this one up to Toady for if and how it should be implemented, we have discussed it to death across multiple threads and this thread itself, and none of the positive arguments from either side are actually strong enough to persuade me one way or the other. im rather ambivalent about if rubble should be added, but i feel compelled to say no at least for the time being.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bluea on May 05, 2012, 01:05:42 pm

If you think of rubble as "a stack of X stone" treated as a "single object" - much like "pine bolts [25]" is treated as "one object" until items are pealed off and used, that's one way rubble could be used to actually -reduce- the number of distinct items tracked by the engine.

Treated -this- way, "rubble" is just a square with a "stack" of stone that's too full to traverse.

Managing a immediate hovel in the earth -> still easy. Dig a double-size area, shove the stone from one half into the other half. That is: Not 100% rubble-retention.

But it allows a middle-ground between the 10,000 stones in a quantum-stockpile (that is still even passable!) and the one-stone-per-square stockpile.

Instead of thinking this as "OMG, extra work" it instead becomes "So excellent, the goal is to get -stacking- working correctly!"  The only addition being that a -stack- of stone can block a square once it's X high.

On the crafting side: It should use -blocks- anyway. A 2m x 2m x 3m stone converting to a ring is silly. A 'cinderblock' sized block is a decent size for all of the crafts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zombie urist on May 05, 2012, 01:10:12 pm

Will logs and metal bars also give multiple wood and metal blocks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 05, 2012, 01:13:33 pm

Quote from: zombie urist on May 05, 2012, 01:10:12 pm

Will logs and metal bars also give multiple wood and metal blocks?

Logs aren't related to Mining, and these changes are related to the Mining Changes.

I would suspect that Metal Bars won't be creating multiple Metal Blocks due to the fact that Ore will be creating more bars then before. To me, it then going further and creating more blocks is unneeded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JWNoctis on May 05, 2012, 01:25:09 pm

To Immortal: That depends.

If we have to manually designate all the rubble for dumping just to stop the mining process from getting stalled, with an additional thousands of stacks of rubble cluttering the memory, I will stop playing too.

Or, if wheelbarrow-and-shovel equipped dwarves will automatically collect and carry the rubble to the nearest loading station, which routes to an ore selecting station then a designated landfill by rail which then proceeds to turn these clutter into terrain, with barely a slowdown and a whole lot more depth, then I'm all for it -- At least this will give all those idling and freeloading meeting room potatoes something useful to do.

As for early forts, there always are wheelbarrows. I oppose unnecessary micromanagements, and support more depth, especially on some fundamental mechanics that's still somewhat simple like mining.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: Wording.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abramul on May 05, 2012, 03:29:43 pm

Far as rubble goes, I'd favor a strong incentive to clear it (not complete blockage, but say 90% reduction in movement speed through rubbled squares) coupled with easy automation of removal.  Ideal would be the ability to designate a minecart track on unknown stone, with dig->haul->engrave handled automatically.  Probably slower than present, but you'd have the option to conveniently set up a mining path, or ignore it and just make a passage that'll slow everyone down, as desired.

Something else you want to look at is whether rubble would be every square, with some of it resolving into usable stone, or only the 25% drop rate that common stone will get; if it's 25%, a 3x3 passage would probably end up with no blockages.

+edit:  Also, I'd suggest allowing stone blocks to be dyed.  Vegetable dyes might not actually work for this, but that's fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on May 05, 2012, 03:34:08 pm

Here's what I think:

Two different designations: Mining and Quarrying. Mining produces rubble instead of stone. Rubble can be used to build walls, smelt metal, pave roads, and make crafts. Gems dug by mining will always be small when cut.

Quarrying works like mining does now, except when an unskilled dwarf would produce nothing, they produce rubble instead. Stone are as they are now, except slower to carry by hand and to walk over. Ore stones produce the same amount of bars as ore rubble. Quarried gems have the chance to be cut into large gems and crafts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:36:58 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

I'm going to pick on this, specifically.

If you can't come back up once you've dug your initial hole, what do you do with the rubble you excavate?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abramul on May 05, 2012, 03:38:25 pm

Quote from: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:36:58 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

I'm going to pick on this, specifically.

If you can't come back up once you've dug your initial hole, what do you do with the rubble you excavate?

Cavern it.  Which, in turn, means you can't just wall the caverns off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:41:32 pm

Quote from: Abramul on May 05, 2012, 03:38:25 pm

Quote from: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:36:58 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

I'm going to pick on this, specifically.

If you can't come back up once you've dug your initial hole, what do you do with the rubble you excavate?

Cavern it.  Which, in turn, means you can't just wall the caverns off.

Good luck getting to the caverns before your whole party dies to a giant panda zombie.  Especially if your miner needs to carry the rock out after every square.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abramul on May 05, 2012, 03:43:15 pm

Quote from: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:41:32 pm

Quote from: Abramul on May 05, 2012, 03:38:25 pm

Quote from: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 03:36:58 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 05:33:10 am

I don't think you make a good case, here... Evil clouds have one real purpose: The surface is deadly - dig down, dig down immediately, and never come back up.  All caravans and migrants are done for. 

I'm going to pick on this, specifically.

If you can't come back up once you've dug your initial hole, what do you do with the rubble you excavate?

Cavern it.  Which, in turn, means you can't just wall the caverns off.

Good luck getting to the caverns before your whole party dies to a giant panda zombie.  Especially if your miner needs to carry the rock out after every square.

That reminds me.  Could something be done about trap-immune unkillable zombie kobold hands?  (Not strictly unkillable, but they can't be damaged to the point of non-resurrection)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2012, 05:01:18 pm

Maybe it'd be better to use another term for it than rubble? The word rubble itself has a lot of negative connotation to many people, and when they hear the word they just think of its negative aspect of being in the way. Maybe if we just separated it into small rocks, large rocks and boulders (small rocks being sorta equivalent to rubble or whatever you want to call it, and then separate the various items you can construct out of rock to use the different sizes. The smaller rocks would be used for rough roads, crafts and if flux/ore for smelting and more, and the other sizes for other appropriately sized items (blocks, mechanisms for medium sized rocks, statues for large etc). All sizes would obstruct movement to some degree and need to be moved, but they'd all still be useful. The larger ones could be broken down to smaller parts if need be, and the smaller rocks would be stackable and storable in bins to avoid to much item bloat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abysium on May 05, 2012, 05:09:15 pm

Ruble seems a problematic topic for many,
but I think it could be done in a way that would keep everyone happy with adding to the game mechanic.

1)designating it to be cleaned is BAD, rather it should be designated automaticaly if there exists a valid stockpille
1.1)not cleaning it up (via not having a proper stockpille set up) should slow down the movement of dwarves, but not 100%obstruct it, as that would in a way be stupid since dwarves would mine themselves in and couldnt get out
2)there should be a special stockpile for ruble, since that would basicaly be gravel, it only makes sense to pile it up high
3)the question about ruble is really 'how could we use it?' gravel roads, gravel walls?, cement?, landfill
3.1) landfill: i propose a new designation job, an order that when issued would make dwarves haul gravel from its stockpille to the designated area and chuck it in untill its full, (an opposite of 'channel'). Such a tile should as such again be treated as a normal full tile my the game (which in theory should be minable again)
3.2) advanced use of landfill: filling up aquifers?

a totaly off thought: it would be great if dwarves could carry dirt(earth) in buckets or wheelbarells, to designated tiles, which would enable growing forests or farms on constructed floors (maybe just carry mud?)

anyways thats my 2 cents

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:15:31 pm

just wanted to say i want rubble not because i'd have a use for it, but because of the logistic challenges it'd bring. i want it as an enemy, not an ally. i'd also like if mining was slowed down to a believable rate.
i'd like if mining a tile was done in 3 phases, each producing an heavy object pile of rubble that a dwarf would automatically haul using a handcart to a defined zone, and when a stack of 3 rubble items were on the same tile it'd recombine into a natural wall tile called pile of rubble. couple that with realistic sand physics and it's a dream come true.
stone furniture and building blocks should be themselves quarried from a natural stone wall. i think boulders should be removed from game, instead a mechanism could be implemented to move single blocks of natural stone wall using rollers, tracks or rafts and water courses

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 05:24:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:15:31 pm

i'd also like if mining was slowed down to a believable rate.

.... actually, the current calender makes a entire year play out in a matter of minutes, so mining's rates are not too extreme.

you are actually saying you want the entire game slowed down, as right now skilled miners only get a few meters of stone dug out a in game day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 05, 2012, 05:26:50 pm

Quote from: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 05:24:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:15:31 pm

i'd also like if mining was slowed down to a believable rate.

.... actually, the current calender makes a entire year play out in a matter of minutes, so mining's rates are not too extreme.

you are actually saying you want the entire game slowed down, as right now skilled miners only get a few meters of stone dug out a in game day.

Yea, I always found this sorta of request curious. We're told that Fort Mode is 72x faster then Aventure Mode. So, if roughly a 100 times slower (because who can imagine something 72x slower?), then that its 'actual' time, and thats not terribly fast.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:28:06 pm

a few metres^3 of stone in a day with a steel pick...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 05:29:59 pm

working nearly 24/7 just swinging at the wall with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:38:06 pm

i doubt you'd be able to mine one full cubic meter of any but the softer stones in 24 hours using 19th century tools, even if you didn't have to clear away the rubble

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 05:42:40 pm

Ok, since nearly half a dozen pages have been posted in as many hours, with only a scarce few actual questions, I have made a dedicated thread for the rubble/slow mining discussion. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108880.0)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xRDVx on May 05, 2012, 06:02:17 pm

Quote from: bluea on May 05, 2012, 01:05:42 pm

If you think of rubble as "a stack of X stone" treated as a "single object" - much like "pine bolts [25]" is treated as "one object" until items are pealed off and used, that's one way rubble could be used to actually -reduce- the number of distinct items tracked by the engine.

Treated -this- way, "rubble" is just a square with a "stack" of stone that's too full to traverse.

Managing a immediate hovel in the earth -> still easy. Dig a double-size area, shove the stone from one half into the other half. That is: Not 100% rubble-retention.

But it allows a middle-ground between the 10,000 stones in a quantum-stockpile (that is still even passable!) and the one-stone-per-square stockpile.

Instead of thinking this as "OMG, extra work" it instead becomes "So excellent, the goal is to get -stacking- working correctly!"  The only addition being that a -stack- of stone can block a square once it's X high.

On the crafting side: It should use -blocks- anyway. A 2m x 2m x 3m stone converting to a ring is silly. A 'cinderblock' sized block is a decent size for all of the crafts.

This would be a nice solution. Not only for rubble/rock, but for other [stock]piles too. I mean, you can put one barrel on top of another, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alkhemia on May 05, 2012, 06:21:52 pm

I think Toady probable already has a plan for the mining changes so instead of filling the this thread with rubble or no rubble discussion why not ask him?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 06:28:19 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 05:38:06 pm

i doubt you'd be able to mine one full cubic meter of any but the softer stones in 24 hours using 19th century tools, even if you didn't have to clear away the rubble

I don't understand how someone could have MORE fun with a game when everything takes twice as long.  Try setting the FPS cap lower?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 06:36:49 pm

Quote from: xRDVx on May 05, 2012, 06:02:17 pm

This would be a nice solution. Not only for rubble/rock, but for other [stock]piles too. I mean, you can put one barrel on top of another, right?

Quote from: KillHour on May 05, 2012, 06:28:19 pm

I don't understand how someone could have MORE fun with a game when everything takes twice as long.  Try setting the FPS cap lower?

*AHEM*

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 05:42:40 pm

Ok, since nearly half a dozen pages have been posted in as many hours, with only a scarce few actual questions, I have made a dedicated thread for the rubble/slow mining discussion. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108880.0)

~~~~~~

Quote from: Alkhemia on May 05, 2012, 06:21:52 pm

I think Toady probable already has a plan for the mining changes so instead of filling the this thread with rubble or no rubble discussion why not ask him?

Ditto.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 07:30:59 pm

Back on topic, I really like the changes that've been made.  In fact, Toady's gone and solved almost every problem I've had with the game!  (Don't worry, I'm sure my OCD-ness will find more soon enough...)

First I can limit material usage by designating specific stockpiles to feed specific workshops, and then I don't have to worry about using only skilled miners for gems and ores!  In fact, I had a hard time figuring out where to put my third Eternal Suggestion vote (I eventually settled on Religion).

So then, I eagerly await the release!

What's next?!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 08:11:00 pm

I really don't like the removal of skill-based mining rates. While I no longer have to train a legendary miner, I now do have to do four times the mining. It's a tradeoff that's not really worth it and doesn't add anything to the game, it merely makes it more tedious.

Certainly not a severe issue, or one that will destroy my enjoyment of the game... but definitely one that's pointless and makes the game slightly worse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 05, 2012, 08:19:14 pm

What sort of timeline is there for handling sand in a more realistic/fluidic manner? these new mine carts and wheelbarrows seem well placed to extract it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 08:41:08 pm

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 08:11:00 pm

I really don't like the removal of skill-based mining rates. While I no longer have to train a legendary miner, I now do have to do four times the mining. It's a tradeoff that's not really worth it and doesn't add anything to the game, it merely makes it more tedious.

Certainly not a severe issue, or one that will destroy my enjoyment of the game... but definitely one that's pointless and makes the game slightly worse.

Hmmm......  Anyone agree with him? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108890.0)

PS: fyi, the only thing you'll have to do 4x the mining to get is boulders.  Bars come multiple to an ore now, as do blocks (for constructions), and gems drop 100%.  Stone crafts can't be that important, can they?  (Well, it *will* make obsidian farming slower...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: schm0 on May 05, 2012, 08:48:13 pm

Quote from: Geb on May 04, 2012, 09:54:35 am

This also means there's actually a point to making block walls instead of rough stone walls.

I know there's a few more of me out there, but I can't stand people who just smooth walls and floors with ugly colored veins throughout their fortresses. Always build floors/remove/smooth and all walls are constructed unless there is a specific need for engravings. That's the only reason why you shouldn't be using stone to construct floors/walls in the first place, IMO... the interface isn't that great for it, but then again, what interface in this game is?

I'm a bit concerned about the 25% stone returns, but there's 40+ z-levels to dig through before you magma. Seems like plenty of stone to be had there, even if you have to dig through caverns to get to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 05, 2012, 08:54:41 pm

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 08:11:00 pm

I really don't like the removal of skill-based mining rates. While I no longer have to train a legendary miner, I now do have to do four times the mining. It's a tradeoff that's not really worth it and doesn't add anything to the game, it merely makes it more tedious.

Certainly not a severe issue, or one that will destroy my enjoyment of the game... but definitely one that's pointless and makes the game slightly worse.

wait wait wait wait wait. you have to TRY to get stone in the current version? 90% of people are TRYING to get rid of it all

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 09:13:44 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 08:41:08 pm

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 08:11:00 pm

I really don't like the removal of skill-based mining rates. While I no longer have to train a legendary miner, I now do have to do four times the mining. It's a tradeoff that's not really worth it and doesn't add anything to the game, it merely makes it more tedious.

Certainly not a severe issue, or one that will destroy my enjoyment of the game... but definitely one that's pointless and makes the game slightly worse.

Hmmm......  Anyone agree with him? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108890.0)

PS: fyi, the only thing you'll have to do 4x the mining to get is boulders.  Bars come multiple to an ore now, as do blocks (for constructions), and gems drop 100%.  Stone crafts can't be that important, can they?  (Well, it *will* make obsidian farming slower...)

I exclusively build above ground forts. I realize I am a minority in this aspect, but that is basically all this change does. I now have to mine four times the tiles, instead of training a legendary miner.

If your problem is too much stone, then I really don't feel this is a good way to solve that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 09:32:47 pm

i don't care much for the new system, and i don't care much for the old system, so i'm not trying to defend any position here but

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 09:13:44 pm

I now have to mine four times the tiles, instead of training a legendary miner.

you can make 4 blocks out of one boulder in the masonry shop now. one dabbling miner produces as much building stone as a legendary miner in the old system. it's only with furniture, and possibly steel making, that you have to worry now

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: slink on May 05, 2012, 09:37:39 pm

Quote from: schm0 on May 05, 2012, 08:48:13 pm

Quote from: Geb on May 04, 2012, 09:54:35 am

This also means there's actually a point to making block walls instead of rough stone walls.

I know there's a few more of me out there, but I can't stand people who just smooth walls and floors with ugly colored veins throughout their fortresses. Always build floors/remove/smooth and all walls are constructed unless there is a specific need for engravings. That's the only reason why you shouldn't be using stone to construct floors/walls in the first place, IMO... the interface isn't that great for it, but then again, what interface in this game is?

I'm a bit concerned about the 25% stone returns, but there's 40+ z-levels to dig through before you magma. Seems like plenty of stone to be had there, even if you have to dig through caverns to get to it.

What's the point of having an engraver, and a world history to engrave, if you can't engrave the walls because they are all constructed?   ??? 

Luckily for me, the existence of people who construct all their walls doesn't bother me in the slightest.   ;D

Personally, I will wait and see what happens.  My concern over the colors of stone available at only 25% yield was covered by someone else above.  In the worst case, I can change the raws so the available stones have the colors I want for a given construction.  I have to laugh at the outrage some people post over those of us who choose to sell rock crafts/instruments/toys/mugs instead of leather-appliqued pig tail shirts and gem-encrusted lead bins.  Most of my later purchasing is done with blood-spattered silk clothing.  As long as goblins show up fully clothed, I will never want.  In the first couple of years, rock crafts buy what I can't carry with me, but increased embark points will bridge that gap if I can't make the goods in a normal fashion.  And if all else fails, there is the smelter.   :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 09:44:17 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 09:32:47 pm

i don't care much for the new system, and i don't care much for the old system, so i'm not trying to defend any position here but

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 09:13:44 pm

I now have to mine four times the tiles, instead of training a legendary miner.

you can make 4 blocks out of one boulder in the masonry shop now. one dabbling miner produces as much building stone as a legendary miner in the old system. it's only with furniture, and possibly steel making, that you have to worry now

This is only true if you're guaranteed to get one boulder every four tiles mined. If it's actually a 25% chance of getting a boulder for each tile, then the odds are not at all in your favor. It's technically possible, under such a system, to mine out a 10x10 room and not get a single usable stone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 09:46:57 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 05, 2012, 09:32:47 pm

i don't care much for the new system, and i don't care much for the old system, so i'm not trying to defend any position here but

Quote from: Kanil on May 05, 2012, 09:13:44 pm

I now have to mine four times the tiles, instead of training a legendary miner.

you can make 4 blocks out of one boulder in the masonry shop now. one dabbling miner produces as much building stone as a legendary miner in the old system. it's only with furniture, and possibly steel making, that you have to worry now

You're right. I'm very embarrassed to have not noticed that. I guess I stopped reading after clicking the link or my brain zoned out or something.

Still not the ideal solution to the problem, imo... but it's a much more trivial change than I originally understood it to be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on May 05, 2012, 10:41:01 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 09:44:17 pm

This is only true if you're guaranteed to get one boulder every four tiles mined. If it's actually a 25% chance of getting a boulder for each tile, then the odds are not at all in your favor. It's technically possible, under such a system, to mine out a 10x10 room and not get a single usable stone.

Strictly speaking, the odds are exactly as much in your favor as they were before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:27:41 pm

Quote from: Torchy on May 05, 2012, 10:41:01 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 09:44:17 pm

This is only true if you're guaranteed to get one boulder every four tiles mined. If it's actually a 25% chance of getting a boulder for each tile, then the odds are not at all in your favor. It's technically possible, under such a system, to mine out a 10x10 room and not get a single usable stone.

Strictly speaking, the odds are exactly as much in your favor as they were before.

No, not really. Prior to the change, a legendary miner could dig out a 10x10 room and get 100 boulders guaranteed. After the change, a legendary miner could dig out the same space and it's technically possible to get no stone at all, if it's a 25% drop chance per tile. Anyone who plays an MMO can tell you that an item having a 1% drop chance doesn't guarantee you'll get it after 100 kills. =P

As I say, if it's a guaranteed boulder every four tiles, then it's no problem. If it's a 25% chance, then it's luck based and there's no guarantee you'll get as much stone as you want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 11:46:11 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:27:41 pm

No, not really. Prior to the change, a legendary miner could dig out a 10x10 room and get 100 boulders guaranteed. After the change, a legendary miner could dig out the same space and it's technically possible to get no stone at all, if it's a 25% drop chance per tile. Anyone who plays an MMO can tell you that an item having a 1% drop chance doesn't guarantee you'll get it after 100 kills. =P

As I say, if it's a guaranteed boulder every four tiles, then it's no problem. If it's a 25% chance, then it's luck based and there's no guarantee you'll get as much stone as you want.

Do you realize what the odds are of missing a 25% chance 100 times in a row are?

I just ran the numbers... It's 3 trillion to 1. 

Those are basically the odds of being struck by lightning on the same day you win the lottery.

The law of averages is going to catch up with you on anything more than about a dozen of a given type of boulders. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:48:11 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 11:46:11 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:27:41 pm

No, not really. Prior to the change, a legendary miner could dig out a 10x10 room and get 100 boulders guaranteed. After the change, a legendary miner could dig out the same space and it's technically possible to get no stone at all, if it's a 25% drop chance per tile. Anyone who plays an MMO can tell you that an item having a 1% drop chance doesn't guarantee you'll get it after 100 kills. =P

As I say, if it's a guaranteed boulder every four tiles, then it's no problem. If it's a 25% chance, then it's luck based and there's no guarantee you'll get as much stone as you want.

Do you realize what the odds are of missing a 25% chance 100 times in a row are?

I just ran the numbers... It's 3 trillion to 1. 

Those are basically the odds of being struck by lightning on the same day you win the lottery.

The law of averages is going to catch up with you on anything more than about a dozen of a given type of boulders.

The point remains that a string of bad luck can destroy an entire vein with nothing to show for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 05, 2012, 11:57:03 pm

Also a string of good luck means that you get quadruple the normal amount from a vein.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 06, 2012, 12:06:30 am

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:48:11 pm

The point remains that a string of bad luck can destroy an entire vein with nothing to show for it.

By that sort of logic, there's no point worrying about it, because there's a chance for you to die when a meteor strikes your house before the next release comes out. The odds of such an event happening are so astronomically slim that it makes little sense.   

For all the extreme pessimism you are showing, are you considering that if a MMO has a 1% drop rate for item X, then you are actually very likely to have more than one item X if you kill 100 of those enemies?  You have roughly a 1/3rd shot to get exactly one item, 1/3rd chance to get nothing, and 1/3rd chance to get any number more than one.  If you applied that rationale of long odds coming true, you'd wind up with 100 of item X, in spite of the low drop rate.  (The odds of which are 10^200, which is a number so large, I'm not sure if there is a word for it, but googol^2 works.)

Besides, anything you can find 100 of in this game, you can find 10000 of.  How often do you expect to get struck by lightning, anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 06, 2012, 01:03:08 am

I expect to get struck by lighting enough to fix the funny taste from last time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bucketHoolave on May 06, 2012, 01:19:37 am

What I would like to see, is for mine cart stops to have the option to dump the contents of the cart.

The squares next to the stop could be designated as a normal dump.  However, dump tiles would receive a maximum capacity. 

Should the maximum capacity be reached, the items are stored inside a container.

This container is called rubbish.

Rubbish behaves like a liquid.

This liquid grows the more you dump into it.

The larger the rubbish pile, the longer it takes to find the item you were looking for in the rubbish pile, so the arger the pile, the longer it takes a dwarf to retrieve it from the pile.

Also, wear and tear are not calculated on the items in rubbish until they are retrieved.  Once retrieved, they are assigned wear, and there is a random chance that it will be broken.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on May 06, 2012, 01:55:54 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 11:46:11 pm

Do you realize what the odds are of missing a 25% chance 100 times in a row are?

I just ran the numbers... It's 3 trillion to 1. 

Those are basically the odds of being struck by lightning on the same day you win the lottery.

The law of averages is going to catch up with you on anything more than about a dozen of a given type of boulders.

True for veins, but small clusters of ore (like platinum) still have 25%-30% chance to produce nothing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on May 06, 2012, 03:57:10 am

Shouldn't a 1/4 dig chance lead to this overall chance to get at least something out of k squares: sum(3^n/4^(n+1)), neN from 0 to (k-1)) ?
About 58% for 3 squares, 82% for 6 , 94% for 10 and 99,7% for 20.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Triaxx2 on May 06, 2012, 06:08:33 am

Frankly, that's why save scumming was invented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 06, 2012, 06:14:14 am

For so long as save-scumming applies, no law of averages should worry anyone. If you're someone who is worried about a 25% drop rate on a small vein of ore, don't tell me you wouldn't save-scum it.

Fake edit: Ninja'd. What Triaxx2 said.

Also let's try to keep "I'll stop playing if x" statements out of the thread. It's probably not anyone's intention, but they can come off like an ultimatum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on May 06, 2012, 06:30:07 am

Quote from: Rinin_Rus on May 06, 2012, 01:55:54 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 11:46:11 pm

Do you realize what the odds are of missing a 25% chance 100 times in a row are?

I just ran the numbers... It's 3 trillion to 1. 

Those are basically the odds of being struck by lightning on the same day you win the lottery.

The law of averages is going to catch up with you on anything more than about a dozen of a given type of boulders.

True for veins, but small clusters of ore (like platinum) still have 25%-30% chance to produce nothing.

Right, but that element of chance is completely swamped by all the other randomness in the game, such as whether there is a vein in the first place and what its size is.

Let's not make things too complicated, folks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: slink on May 06, 2012, 06:51:38 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 05, 2012, 11:46:11 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 05, 2012, 11:27:41 pm

No, not really. Prior to the change, a legendary miner could dig out a 10x10 room and get 100 boulders guaranteed. After the change, a legendary miner could dig out the same space and it's technically possible to get no stone at all, if it's a 25% drop chance per tile. Anyone who plays an MMO can tell you that an item having a 1% drop chance doesn't guarantee you'll get it after 100 kills. =P

As I say, if it's a guaranteed boulder every four tiles, then it's no problem. If it's a 25% chance, then it's luck based and there's no guarantee you'll get as much stone as you want.

Do you realize what the odds are of missing a 25% chance 100 times in a row are?

I just ran the numbers... It's 3 trillion to 1. 

Those are basically the odds of being struck by lightning on the same day you win the lottery.

The law of averages is going to catch up with you on anything more than about a dozen of a given type of boulders.

Have you ever observed a random number generator in action?  It's not a truly random proces in the first place, and in the second place can get "stuck" under some conditions.  Anyone who has used Craftable Natural Resources in a Neverwinter Nights world can tell you that there are times when the rise and fall of the visibly cyclic "random" results can get stuck on zero.  At those times it's just best to walk away and come back later.  This isn't a unique phenomenum, but it is unusual in that CNR tells you what your 100-sided die roll was.  In other probability based games on the computer you can see the cyclicity in terms of success and failure, but usually not the numeric data.

My point is that the traditional calculation of the probability of getting zero boulders for a 10x10 room mined with a 25% success rate isn't strictly applicable to a random number generator on a computer, because the random numbers generated by a computer are not truly random.  The propensity of computerized random numbers for getting stuck on zero may be the result of a function call returning with no result, as it seems to be associated with a lagging processing of the event queue for a given interval.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on May 06, 2012, 06:53:10 am

So what are the numbers on smelting ore to make metal bars/cutting rough rock to make blocks ? Does mason and furnace operator skill level improve the number of bars/blocks used, so is furnace operator skill important now ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on May 06, 2012, 07:15:10 am

Is there any change in the speed of smelting and/or block making jobs?

Otherwise the same dwarf as now will be ~4 times as productive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jeoshua on May 06, 2012, 09:32:34 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 06, 2012, 12:06:30 am

meteor strikes your house... chances are so astronomically slim...

I see what you did there  ;D

Quote

are you considering that if a MMO has a 1% drop rate for item X, then you are actually very likely to have more than one item X if you kill 100 of those enemies?

Yeah.  Statistics don't work like that at ALL.  It's that 1 out of every 100 is going to have anything at all.  There is about a 50% chance that after 100 trials there will be more results than 1, and a possibility, however slim, that after 1000 trials there will be no results at all.

Statistically speaking, it is that FOR EACH trial, there is a 1% chance.  Flipping a coin means that for each coin toss there is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  The second time?  there is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  The third time?  There is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  etc etc etc ad nauseum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gilihad on May 06, 2012, 09:53:57 am

edit: moved to relevant discussion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: unseenmage on May 06, 2012, 10:14:49 am

Inquiring mind wants to know; why couldn't we have a new set of mining designations for too-big-to-lift stone > furniture grade boulders > blocks > craft grade boulders > rubble > then empty space?

When a dwarf mines a tile he tries his best to achieve the desired designation and fails to a greater or lesser degree. The degree of failure would be based on his skill level and the worse he fails the farther up or down the above size/quality scale the resulting mined material would be.

Also, as an aside, I have always wanted the ability to generate rubble and/or dirt for use in aboveground (and now natural cavern) landscaping.
Rubble could be dumped onto and consumed by tiles that trees/shrubs/grass can't grow on to change them into fertile plantlife supporting tiles.

Aside aside again, buckets. Rubble should probably be carryable in small handfulls, then more in buckets, then a lot more in wheelbarrows. Just a thought.


Thanks for all the awesome Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:28:50 am

Quote from: Gilihad on May 06, 2012, 09:53:57 am

we're no longer discussing this on this thread

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 05, 2012, 05:42:40 pm

Ok, since nearly half a dozen pages have been posted in as many hours, with only a scarce few actual questions, I have made a dedicated thread for the rubble/slow mining discussion. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108880.0)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quantumtroll on May 06, 2012, 01:53:54 pm

This is only tangentially related to the current hauling changes, but:

Toady, what is your opinion of requiring water to brew beer, rum, ale, and similar booze?  Wine and other fermented fruit juices don't require water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on May 06, 2012, 02:26:16 pm

Quote from: Quantumtroll on May 06, 2012, 01:53:54 pm

This is only tangentially related to the current hauling changes, but:

Toady, what is your opinion of requiring water to brew beer, rum, ale, and similar booze?  Wine and other fermented fruit juices don't require water.

I can't find the quote, but he is for it. It's been specifically asked about, and he has answered that he is for it. However, like many questions of this nature, he has no timetable for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 06, 2012, 08:25:54 pm

Hey, so I saw this question over on my derail thread about the changes to the mining system (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108890.0), and noticed it hadn't been posted here yet:

What effect with the new mining drop rate/ore smelt rate have on adamantine, and any modded-in deep metal/stone/gem for that matter?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 06, 2012, 09:09:48 pm

Quote from: Jeoshua on May 06, 2012, 09:32:34 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 06, 2012, 12:06:30 am

meteor strikes your house... chances are so astronomically slim...

I see what you did there  ;D

Quote

are you considering that if a MMO has a 1% drop rate for item X, then you are actually very likely to have more than one item X if you kill 100 of those enemies?

Yeah.  Statistics don't work like that at ALL.  It's that 1 out of every 100 is going to have anything at all.  There is about a 50% chance that after 100 trials there will be more results than 1, and a possibility, however slim, that after 1000 trials there will be no results at all.

Statistically speaking, it is that FOR EACH trial, there is a 1% chance.  Flipping a coin means that for each coin toss there is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  The second time?  there is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  The third time?  There is a 1 in 2 chance that the coin will come up heads.  etc etc etc ad nauseum.

While a true statement about independent trials, it's not the full matter at hand. We're more concerned about a set of independent trials. Taking your coin example, If I'm running bets that no more than 2 out of 5 coins will come up heads, while each toss has a 1/2 chance, when you look through the possible outcomes of all five tosses, the numbers come out differently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 06, 2012, 09:24:49 pm

Since I took my STAT 350 final yesterday, (yes, on a SATURDAY!) I am happy to tell you the odds of getting 0 stones out of a 3x3 room is (9!/(9!*0!))(.25^0)(.75^9) = 19683:262144 = ~7.5%
4x4 room: ~1%
5x5 room: ~0.075%

Look up the Binomial Distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution) for more details.

(Also, carry on this discussion on another thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108890.0)...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 06, 2012, 09:31:34 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 06, 2012, 09:24:49 pm

Since I took my STAT 350 final yesterday, (yes, on a SATURDAY!) I am happy to tell you the odds of getting 0 stones out of a 3x3 room is (9!/(9!*0!))(.25^0)(.75^9) = 19683:262144 = ~7.5%
4x4 room: ~1%
5x5 room: ~0.075%

Look up the Binomial Distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution) for more details.

(Also, carry on this discussion on another thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108890.0)...)

Isn't this overcomplicating things? A simple (1-0.25)^(3*3) would have sufficed, because there is a 0.25 chance of dropping a stone, therefore a 1-0.25 chance of not dropping a stone.

Same formula, but I think the derivation is simpler.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 06, 2012, 09:47:24 pm

That's only because you're looking for 'all failures'.  The formula for a binomial distribution will give you the chance of exactly x successes out of n trials with a one-trial success rate of p, such that:

b(x;n,p) = xCn*(p)^x*(1-p)^(n-x)

Therefore the chances of exactly 5 stone from a 4x4 room is ~18%, or 48361131:268435456 to be exact.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jeoshua on May 06, 2012, 09:49:11 pm

It's an aggregation of multiple trials expressed as an overall percentage chance.  Valid way of looking at things, either way.

You're really looking at the same problem from a different perspective.  Whichever is easier for you to grok, although I think Arkenstone's method yields a more precise answer.  They're both pretty accurate tho.

I didn't make it to STAT 350 tho, and combinatorials make my head spin, so I may not know what I'm talking about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:29:12 pm

some questions, señores

While you have been working on carts and overhauls, what unrelated bugs have been squashed in the meantimes? Any major bugs you've fixed, such as stacking?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:35:52 pm

stacking isnt a bug but an unimplemented feature
you can follow bugs status on the bugtracker, i think it's updated in realtime

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 06, 2012, 10:49:36 pm

As far as the stats things goes. I wrote a very quick little program to simulate it in different ways.  Here are my results for a 10x10 room, with a 25% chance to get a block, through 10000 tests:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

9 stones 1 time(s) = 0.01%
10 stones 2 time(s) = 0.02%
11 stones 5 time(s) = 0.05%
12 stones 3 time(s) = 0.03%
13 stones 9 time(s) = 0.09%
14 stones 27 time(s) = 0.27%
15 stones 38 time(s) = 0.38%
16 stones 89 time(s) = 0.89%
17 stones 156 time(s) = 1.56%
18 stones 252 time(s) = 2.52%
19 stones 347 time(s) = 3.47%
20 stones 539 time(s) = 5.39%
21 stones 623 time(s) = 6.23%
22 stones 751 time(s) = 7.51%
23 stones 795 time(s) = 7.95%
24 stones 973 time(s) = 9.73%
25 stones 957 time(s) = 9.57%
26 stones 870 time(s) = 8.7%
27 stones 826 time(s) = 8.26%
28 stones 677 time(s) = 6.77%
29 stones 574 time(s) = 5.74%
30 stones 419 time(s) = 4.19%
31 stones 337 time(s) = 3.37%
32 stones 265 time(s) = 2.65%
33 stones 180 time(s) = 1.8%
34 stones 111 time(s) = 1.11%
35 stones 59 time(s) = 0.59%
36 stones 49 time(s) = 0.49%
37 stones 28 time(s) = 0.28%
38 stones 19 time(s) = 0.19%
39 stones 7 time(s) = 0.07%
40 stones 9 time(s) = 0.09%
41 stones 1 time(s) = 0.01%
42 stones 2 time(s) = 0.02%

Even with 10,000,000 runs I never get 0 stones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

5 stones 1 time(s) = 1E-05%
6 stones 2 time(s) = 2E-05%
7 stones 10 time(s) = 0.0001%
8 stones 47 time(s) = 0.00047%
9 stones 208 time(s) = 0.00208%
10 stones 648 time(s) = 0.00648%
11 stones 1903 time(s) = 0.01903%
12 stones 5166 time(s) = 0.05166%
13 stones 12274 time(s) = 0.12274%
14 stones 26620 time(s) = 0.2662%
15 stones 52886 time(s) = 0.52886%
16 stones 96256 time(s) = 0.96256%
17 stones 162254 time(s) = 1.62254%
18 stones 253774 time(s) = 2.53774%
19 stones 369368 time(s) = 3.69368%
20 stones 500952 time(s) = 5.00952%
21 stones 636691 time(s) = 6.36691%
22 stones 760012 time(s) = 7.60012%
23 stones 859578 time(s) = 8.59578%
24 stones 914611 time(s) = 9.14611%
25 stones 918676 time(s) = 9.18676%
26 stones 879171 time(s) = 8.79171%
27 stones 797808 time(s) = 7.97808%
28 stones 689801 time(s) = 6.89801%
29 stones 568632 time(s) = 5.68632%
30 stones 448994 time(s) = 4.48994%
31 stones 338469 time(s) = 3.38469%
32 stones 245081 time(s) = 2.45081%
33 stones 170230 time(s) = 1.7023%
34 stones 113124 time(s) = 1.13124%
35 stones 72508 time(s) = 0.72508%
36 stones 44497 time(s) = 0.44497%
37 stones 26590 time(s) = 0.2659%
38 stones 15371 time(s) = 0.15371%
39 stones 8555 time(s) = 0.08555%
40 stones 4535 time(s) = 0.04535%
41 stones 2421 time(s) = 0.02421%
42 stones 1167 time(s) = 0.01167%
43 stones 571 time(s) = 0.00571%
44 stones 294 time(s) = 0.00294%
45 stones 146 time(s) = 0.00146%
46 stones 52 time(s) = 0.00052%
47 stones 28 time(s) = 0.00028%
48 stones 12 time(s) = 0.00012%
49 stones 2 time(s) = 2E-05%
50 stones 3 time(s) = 3E-05%
51 stones 1 time(s) = 1E-05%

If you want to mess with it yourself, download it here www.gumpstudio.com/MiningSimulator.zip (http://www.gumpstudio.com/MiningSimulator.zip).  It has no error checking at all, so any non numbers will crash it.  It requires .net framework 4.

*edit* my math was wrong. fixed up the % calculations

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:50:50 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:35:52 pm

stacking isnt a bug but an unimplemented feature
you can follow bugs status on the bugtracker, i think it's updated in realtime

elaboration:a whole stack (bones, teeth, etc) makes only one craft (figure, crown, bracelet, etc)

must be one weird bracelet made out of 1000 giant whale bones

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kyphis on May 06, 2012, 11:01:31 pm

Why not add a boulder breaking labor to the Mining jobs, whereby boulders get broken into upto say 5 rocks?
Boulders can't be stacked in a pile, but rocks can be stacked, and transported in piles.
Change stonecraft jobs to use rocks, and Masonry jobs to use either single boulders or multiple stones.

This way stoncrafting is a bit more logical, and it is easier to clean up rocks around the fort. Gives miners something to do when no new rooms are being dug, as well. Boulders are big and hefty, so you wouldn't be able to carry more than one at a time, but stones can be arranged to fit more into a given space, so you could store and transport more at once.

It also means than if someone wants to craft an obsidian throne with iron back and gold arm rests, they can.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on May 07, 2012, 03:41:34 am

chains + prisoners/slaves + rocks that need broken... >.>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: micha on May 07, 2012, 06:09:07 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 04, 2012, 08:24:08 am

Using rubble as a sort of anthill logistics problem where you have to dispose of all the mass you subtract isn't an ideal solution, but it's at least something.

finally a use for the cleaning skills. we've got rags and buckets already for the puke..  having to wait for someone to get a broom to sweep wouldn't be all that bad.  and having rubble slow you down wouldn't be bad either.  makes having a cave-in have a few consequences at least. oh yeah and you get cleaning exp.  the more you have the less lordly your hammerlords would appear.  :)

but no, lets not have rubble be something. in my mind the stuff is gone when you dump the bucket.   (and it would never enter the game should it require just one more pointer;  it could get dumped into the concrete mix pile, but who wants concrete? not me)


.. and with the chance for 'extra' blocks or bars,  please don't make them 'free' of the normal processing time.  if something takes x and i happen to get two of that sort, then puhlease, have it take 2x as long to process it.  no casino please!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quantumtroll on May 07, 2012, 06:58:20 am

Quote from: Willfor on May 06, 2012, 02:26:16 pm

Quote from: Quantumtroll on May 06, 2012, 01:53:54 pm

This is only tangentially related to the current hauling changes, but:

Toady, what is your opinion of requiring water to brew beer, rum, ale, and similar booze?  Wine and other fermented fruit juices don't require water.

I can't find the quote, but he is for it. It's been specifically asked about, and he has answered that he is for it. However, like many questions of this nature, he has no timetable for it.

Excellent, thanks! 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on May 07, 2012, 07:49:44 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:50:50 pm

elaboration:a whole stack (bones, teeth, etc) makes only one craft (figure, crown, bracelet, etc)

No, it doesn't.  I've watched my bonecrafters make crafts.  One bone makes one craft.

Decorating with bones uses an entire stack, and artifacts demand entire stacks of bones, so that's kind of bugged there, but making discrete objects like bolts and crafts uses one bone at a time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 07, 2012, 08:37:28 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:50:50 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:35:52 pm

stacking isnt a bug but an unimplemented feature
you can follow bugs status on the bugtracker, i think it's updated in realtime

elaboration:a whole stack (bones, teeth, etc) makes only one craft (figure, crown, bracelet, etc)

must be one weird bracelet made out of 1000 giant whale bones

Quote from: Sphalerite on May 07, 2012, 07:49:44 am

No, it doesn't.  I've watched my bonecrafters make crafts.  One bone makes one craft.

Decorating with bones uses an entire stack, and artifacts demand entire stacks of bones, so that's kind of bugged there, but making discrete objects like bolts and crafts uses one bone at a time.

The "whole stack of bones used for one craft" bug was fixed in either 34.07 or 34.06, I forget which exactly, but that's not exactly the important point. 

Anyway, that's not what people mean by "stacking" usually, so it was likely to confuse people.  Stacking is when you can take, say, 50 individual plump helmets and put them all into the same tile to make plump helmet [50].  Currently, you can split stacks apart, but you cannot stack them back together. 

Combined with the fact that vectors lag the game when an overly large number of items are stored in them, (and a typical fortress can have ten thousand items easily, and that's before you count contaminants like evil cloud stuff,) and stacking is a way to keep FPS up while having more small item types, or have dwarves carry around more small items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SHOCKTrooperM37 on May 07, 2012, 08:50:36 am

According to the Dev log on the main DF page, multiple blocks can be made per boulder.   That should make above ground constructions a lot easier because of the fact that block walls and floors construct faster than boulder walls/floors and provides lots of materials for the floors and roofs.   That will make my construction of my castles and mega towers much easier.  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

Circling back just ever so slightly to the RNG questions (while tapdancing around the drop rate statistical analysis dead horse), the kind of drop wierdness displayed in MMO's, and other types of simulations in general, has a great deal to do with ty KIND of RNG being used.  Sure, you're pocket calculator might just have a random number button on it.  But how good are those random numbers.  Just how random are they?

The reason you see those kind of cyclical drops and why certain times of day are better for certain things in those instances is because of both the type of random number generating function that is used behind the scenes as well as the seeds used for them.  If I use a standard system call for a random number (on a x86 chipset) and feed in the system clock time as the seed, there are only so many possibilities of the outcome.  If I control all of the other variables, such as other processes running, network noise, etc., it is entirely possible to predict an outcome.  That is because there are only so many discrete posibilities of "system clock" value that can be passed in as this seed.  Can it be used as an exploit?  Yes.  That's why for items of higher security encryption, the seed when generating the encryption key is important.

So, that leads to a question:  Toady, just how random is the RNG in DF?  How robust are the seeds?  Have you done, are you planning to do, would you consider outside auditing of the quality of the random numbers the RNG used in game produces?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 07, 2012, 09:27:07 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 07, 2012, 08:37:28 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:50:50 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:35:52 pm

stacking isnt a bug but an unimplemented feature
you can follow bugs status on the bugtracker, i think it's updated in realtime

elaboration:a whole stack (bones, teeth, etc) makes only one craft (figure, crown, bracelet, etc)

must be one weird bracelet made out of 1000 giant whale bones

Quote from: Sphalerite on May 07, 2012, 07:49:44 am

No, it doesn't.  I've watched my bonecrafters make crafts.  One bone makes one craft.

Decorating with bones uses an entire stack, and artifacts demand entire stacks of bones, so that's kind of bugged there, but making discrete objects like bolts and crafts uses one bone at a time.

The "whole stack of bones used for one craft" bug was fixed in either 34.07 or 34.06, I forget which exactly, but that's not exactly the important point. 

It was?  That hasn't come up on the tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2011), although new information is always welcome.  The only related (and recently fixed) bug that I can think of is workshop clutter from huge stacks (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=231).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 07, 2012, 09:44:59 am

Quote from: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

So, that leads to a question:  Toady, just how random is the RNG in DF?  How robust are the seeds?  Have you done, are you planning to do, would you consider outside auditing of the quality of the random numbers the RNG used in game produces?

I'm guessing it's a pretty good Pseudo-RNG. In terrain generation it's very easy to notice periods that are too small.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 07, 2012, 09:47:32 am

That's funny... I haven't exactly started a new fortress in 34.07 yet, but I recall reading of how bone stacks made to give you bone bolts now only take one bone from the stack and give you a stack of [5]. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on May 07, 2012, 10:14:05 am

Quote from: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

Circling back just ever so slightly to the RNG questions (while tapdancing around the drop rate statistical analysis dead horse), the kind of drop wierdness displayed in MMO's, and other types of simulations in general, has a great deal to do with ty KIND of RNG being used.  Sure, you're pocket calculator might just have a random number button on it.  But how good are those random numbers.  Just how random are they?

The reason you see those kind of cyclical drops and why certain times of day are better for certain things in those instances is because of both the type of random number generating function that is used behind the scenes as well as the seeds used for them.  If I use a standard system call for a random number (on a x86 chipset) and feed in the system clock time as the seed, there are only so many possibilities of the outcome.  If I control all of the other variables, such as other processes running, network noise, etc., it is entirely possible to predict an outcome.  That is because there are only so many discrete posibilities of "system clock" value that can be passed in as this seed.  Can it be used as an exploit?  Yes.  That's why for items of higher security encryption, the seed when generating the encryption key is important.

DF doesn't the level of security as encryption. Unless you are able to perform your actions with a millisecond precision, using the clock for the seed is pretty much indistinguishable from a true RNG. Remember, DF is a game. It doesn't need encryption or even Monte Carlo levels of unpredictability.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 07, 2012, 10:48:46 am

Quote from: Siquo on May 07, 2012, 09:44:59 am

Quote from: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

So, that leads to a question:  Toady, just how random is the RNG in DF?  How robust are the seeds?  Have you done, are you planning to do, would you consider outside auditing of the quality of the random numbers the RNG used in game produces?

I'm guessing it's a pretty good Pseudo-RNG. In terrain generation it's very easy to notice periods that are too small.

AFAIK DF uses Mersenne Twister, which is a very good random number generator.
It could be found in Battle Champs source code.

If there are any quirks in the terrain generation they probably come from the imperfection of terrain generation algorithm rather than from short periods of the RNG.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 07, 2012, 12:52:35 pm

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 07, 2012, 10:48:46 am

If there are any quirks in the terrain generation they probably come from the imperfection of terrain generation algorithm rather than from short periods of the RNG.

That's possible, it's a personal experience :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on May 07, 2012, 01:33:27 pm

Quote from: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

Circling back just ever so slightly to the RNG questions (while tapdancing around the drop rate statistical analysis dead horse), the kind of drop wierdness displayed in MMO's, and other types of simulations in general, has a great deal to do with ty KIND of RNG being used. [...]

I'd really like to see some evidence that this is an actual problem in practice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on May 07, 2012, 01:44:51 pm

Quote from: dreiche2 on May 07, 2012, 01:33:27 pm

Quote from: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 09:24:11 am

Circling back just ever so slightly to the RNG questions (while tapdancing around the drop rate statistical analysis dead horse), the kind of drop wierdness displayed in MMO's, and other types of simulations in general, has a great deal to do with ty KIND of RNG being used. [...]

I'd really like to see some evidence that this is an actual problem in practice.

The one MMO that I play has repeatedly had myths about its RNG coming up, primarily around its refining mechanic.  However, every single statistical analysis that's been applied using sufficiently large numbers shows that it always has the same odds regardless of time of day or location in the game where it's done.

In my experience, people see patterns in random noise and assume it's not random because they think that random noise never has patterns in it.  Honestly, if results from a RNG never had patterns in it, that would be proof that it's not random.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 07, 2012, 02:11:43 pm

Quote from: HiEv on May 07, 2012, 01:44:51 pm

The one MMO that I play has repeatedly had myths about its RNG coming up, primarily around its refining mechanic.  However, every single statistical analysis that's been applied using sufficiently large numbers shows that it always has the same odds regardless of time of day or location in the game where it's done.

In my experience, people see patterns in random noise and assume it's not random because they think that random noise never has patterns in it.  Honestly, if results from a RNG never had patterns in it, that would be proof that it's not random.

I remember a story about WWII cryptography where the army was generating random numbers for one time pads by using a group of church ladies pulling bingo balls with the number written on them.  The cypher was eventually cracked because the ladies thought they were making the numbers "more random" by picking a new number if the one they drew was the same as the previous one.  It reduced the entropy enough that the Germans were able to crack the code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 07, 2012, 02:17:20 pm

So... Um, derail thread time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 07, 2012, 03:20:49 pm

BINGO!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 07, 2012, 03:53:02 pm

YAHTZEE!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Captain Crazy on May 07, 2012, 08:48:03 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 07, 2012, 08:37:28 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 06, 2012, 10:50:50 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 06, 2012, 10:35:52 pm

stacking isnt a bug but an unimplemented feature
you can follow bugs status on the bugtracker, i think it's updated in realtime

elaboration:a whole stack (bones, teeth, etc) makes only one craft (figure, crown, bracelet, etc)

must be one weird bracelet made out of 1000 giant whale bones

Quote from: Sphalerite on May 07, 2012, 07:49:44 am

No, it doesn't.  I've watched my bonecrafters make crafts.  One bone makes one craft.

Decorating with bones uses an entire stack, and artifacts demand entire stacks of bones, so that's kind of bugged there, but making discrete objects like bolts and crafts uses one bone at a time.

The "whole stack of bones used for one craft" bug was fixed in either 34.07 or 34.06, I forget which exactly, but that's not exactly the important point. 

Anyway, that's not what people mean by "stacking" usually, so it was likely to confuse people.  Stacking is when you can take, say, 50 individual plump helmets and put them all into the same tile to make plump helmet [50].  Currently, you can split stacks apart, but you cannot stack them back together. 

Combined with the fact that vectors lag the game when an overly large number of items are stored in them, (and a typical fortress can have ten thousand items easily, and that's before you count contaminants like evil cloud stuff,) and stacking is a way to keep FPS up while having more small item types, or have dwarves carry around more small items.

well, uh

* butcher animal in adventure mode
* take bones, make flute
* 13 bones for a single flute

I think it's impossible to seperate a stack of certain things (bones) in adventure mode (throwing it throws the entire stack, dropping it/picking it up gives now "how much?" prompt, etc)

the flute is either silly-straw long, or my guy is just terrible with bones (or it's a bug)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on May 07, 2012, 11:08:15 pm

Toady just confirmed cart dumping and you can do it without stopping the cart. This could make it ridiculously efficient. Might even be able to make a magma dump trap.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 08, 2012, 01:09:23 am

When the contents are auto-dumped, does that include occupants?

And while I certainly like the idea of magma carts, I feel like they're somewhat redundant given that we already have pump stacks.  I'm imagining much more use for dumping stuff into magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on May 08, 2012, 01:38:04 am

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 08, 2012, 01:09:23 am

And while I certainly like the idea of magma carts, I feel like they're somewhat redundant given that we already have pump stacks.  I'm imagining much more use for dumping stuff into magma.

Don't forget this moves magma faster laterally and requires less planning and materials to set up.
Energy efficiency will be through the roof too, only 1-2 rollers would be necessary on a small magma fall circuit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Himmelblau on May 08, 2012, 02:17:50 am

Quote from: Chronas on May 08, 2012, 01:38:04 am

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 08, 2012, 01:09:23 am

And while I certainly like the idea of magma carts, I feel like they're somewhat redundant given that we already have pump stacks.  I'm imagining much more use for dumping stuff into magma.

Don't forget this moves magma faster laterally and requires less planning and materials to set up.
Energy efficiency will be through the roof too, only 1-2 rollers would be necessary on a small magma fall circuit.

I'm not sure what a magma fall circuit means (a kind of a trap?), but I don't see magma carting as an efficient alternative to pump stacks; if every z-level requires a roller and a mechanism, the energy cost is roughly twice that of a pump stack. Unless rollers can be somehow designed to transmit power vertically, or if they spend less than 10 uristwatts, that is. You're right about material efficiency, though.

I also don't know about "moving magma faster laterally". Pumps are pretty fast. Magma carts could be safer, though, and more versatile as they can move through non-empty corridors without leaving 1/7 magma everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on May 08, 2012, 02:26:24 am

Quote from: Himmelblau on May 08, 2012, 02:17:50 am

I also don't know about "moving magma faster laterally". Pumps are pretty fast. Magma carts could be safer, though, and more versatile as they can move through non-empty corridors without leaving 1/7 magma everywhere.

Yah, carts are definitely slower than pumps laterally; as long as you're pumping into a confined tunnel, magma will be teleported to the first open tile. This means that in an empty tunnel, magma travels a number of tiles equal to the number of pump cycles, while in a full tunnel, magma can travel an arbitrary distance in one tick (may be some IRL lag as the computer paths to the free tile though).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sphalerite on May 08, 2012, 08:10:42 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 07, 2012, 08:48:03 pm

* butcher animal in adventure mode
* take bones, make flute
* 13 bones for a single flute

This is impossible in the vanilla game, so you're talking about a modded-in reaction.  Modded-in reactions don't respect stack sizes, this is true.  Making bone crafts in fortress mode is completely different, doesn't use a reaction, and does work properly with only taking a single bone off a stack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 08, 2012, 08:44:12 am

Quote from: Himmelblau on May 08, 2012, 02:17:50 am

I'm not sure what a magma fall circuit means (a kind of a trap?), but I don't see magma carting as an efficient alternative to pump stacks; if every z-level requires a roller and a mechanism, the energy cost is roughly twice that of a pump stack. Unless rollers can be somehow designed to transmit power vertically, or if they spend less than 10 uristwatts, that is. You're right about material efficiency, though.

Could you not use plain dwarf power for most of the lifting? I don't think much has been said about carts being pushed uphill manually, but I assume you can do it. With one manually operated pump by the tracks and a drain I bet you could fill the carts without any mechanical power too.

I wonder what happens if you order a dwarf to push a cart through a magma pool...  Probably not a practical way to fill the cart, but it will be hilarious if the AI doesn't catch that case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 08, 2012, 08:53:54 am

You have struck Asbestos!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on May 08, 2012, 11:48:49 am

what is the "hang bug"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 08, 2012, 11:53:33 am

Quote from: greenwatering on May 08, 2012, 11:48:49 am

what is the "hang bug"?

I'd assume it's a hang bug, as in the game hangs/freezes for some reason related to minecart :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 08, 2012, 03:20:37 pm

The minecart tile is essentially going to be a rectangle with an outline, right?

Does that mean that it would be possible to have minecart tiles with red and blue central colour to represent fluid contents? Or would that put a coloured outline around them too, and end up looking silly?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 08, 2012, 04:03:02 pm

Quote from: Geb on May 08, 2012, 03:20:37 pm

The minecart tile is essentially going to be a rectangle with an outline, right?

Does that mean that it would be possible to have minecart tiles with red and blue central colour to represent fluid contents? Or would that put a coloured outline around them too, and end up looking silly?

Hypothetically, yes.

There are two colors to every tile - the "foreground" color (which is applied with the color layer of the .png or .bmp of the tileset as a mask), and the "background" color (which is applied in the magenta regions or transparent region of a .png).

Toady is using an "inverse" tile, which means he's coloring the foreground black and the background gray or brown or something.  This means the rectangle block will be black and the rest of the tile will be gray or brown.  You can simply change the foreground color to be something if you want to make the inside of that rectangle that color. 

Many of the tilesets take advantage of these features by doing things like having black instead of magenta or transparency, so that they are always black-background in those areas, and then transparency portions only show up when background colors are on.  For walls, for example, the background color only comes up when engraved, so they draw basic walls in black and white, and draw transparencies on the portions that are only going to show up when engraved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 09, 2012, 02:23:32 am

Please allow us to add additional tiles to our stockpiles! Something like painting/erasing tiles in burrows!

Yes, that's a suggestion; but since the hauling changes are underway, there may not be a better moment to say this! Iunno!

Currently you can only remove tiles from a stockpile, even up to dividing a stockpile in two parts that do not touch. However it is impossible to expand a stockpile. At best you can open the settings of a stockpile, memorise what it is that you programmed into it, delete it, and place a new stockpile with a few tiles more (even only one or two), reprogram it with who knows how many custom accepted items and qualities and materials, and afterwards you will also need to relink them to all the previous feeder/receiver stockpiles as well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can this be done, please? Copy some code from burrow painting if it's compatible enough? And this could be applied to other types of zoning tools too, but stockpiles especially suffer from this cause of the mentioned reasons!

Edit: I found it tough to type this all out, feeling that it may be out of place, so I tried to make it compact and easy to read - easily dismissable, if it's not plausible and is unwanted. If this needs more clarification or optimisation, a new thread can be made, but someone has to throw out the idea first... I guess. So, anyone else missing this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on May 09, 2012, 03:34:03 am

In general, it may be nice to merge burrow/zone/stockpile interfaces, there is no good reason to keep it separate (especially zone/burrow)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 09, 2012, 04:20:17 am

It would be awesome if that could be done for things like walls, fortifications, and the other constructions too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 09, 2012, 04:38:53 am

Quote from: Elone on May 09, 2012, 02:23:32 am

Please allow us to add additional tiles to our stockpiles! Something like painting/erasing tiles in burrows!
Yes, that's a suggestion; but since the hauling changes are underway, there may not be a better moment to say this! Iunno!

Currently you can only remove tiles from a stockpile, even up to dividing a stockpile in two parts that do not touch. However it is impossible to expand a stockpile. At best you can open the settings of a stockpile, memorise what it is that you programmed into it, delete it, and place a new stockpile with a few tiles more (even only one or two), reprogram it with who knows how many custom accepted items and qualities and materials, and afterwards you will also need to relink them to all the previous feeder/receiver stockpiles as well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can this be done, please? Copy some code from burrow painting if it's compatible enough? And this could be applied to other types of zoning tools too, but stockpiles especially suffer from this cause of the mentioned reasons!

Edit: I found it tough to type this all out, feeling that it may be out of place, so I tried to make it compact and easy to read - easily dismissable, if it's not plausible and is unwanted. If this needs more clarification or optimisation, a new thread can be made, but someone has to throw out the idea first... I guess. So, anyone else missing this?

Toady reads every post in this thread and see every good suggestion as the recent development shows. Please green only questions. Respect the rules, do not try to bend them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on May 09, 2012, 09:10:08 am

Regarding the dev log on 05/09/2012, does it mean that magma + minecart + ramp = magma rain

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on May 09, 2012, 10:28:19 am

What exactly did Threetoe mean about stockpiling the clay and forming a "mound"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on May 09, 2012, 10:56:43 am

I understood from Toady1's last answerpost that items did not spill from a cart when it crashed. so no magmarain. (unless you engineer a dumping platform above an open space...say, like this:

Code: [Select]

##.....
#^===X.
##.....

#: wall / .:no floor
^:ramp / =:track
X: cart-stop set to dumping >


edit: since may10th devlog states items will now scatter from crashes. cool. :)


I also suspect 3toe is referring to a quantum stockpile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 09, 2012, 10:59:32 am

Actually, it sounds more like Threetoe built the mound a pyramid of clay walls, and put a minecart ramp going down the slope. In order for making a jump (or at least, almost making a jump) to make sense, it would require the speed-up ramp.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 03:30:22 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on May 06, 2012, 10:49:36 pm

As far as the stats things goes. I wrote a very quick little program to simulate it in different ways.  Here are my results for a 10x10 room, with a 25% chance to get a block, through 10000 tests:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

9 stones 1 time(s) = 0.01%
10 stones 2 time(s) = 0.02%
11 stones 5 time(s) = 0.05%
12 stones 3 time(s) = 0.03%
13 stones 9 time(s) = 0.09%
14 stones 27 time(s) = 0.27%
15 stones 38 time(s) = 0.38%
16 stones 89 time(s) = 0.89%
17 stones 156 time(s) = 1.56%
18 stones 252 time(s) = 2.52%
19 stones 347 time(s) = 3.47%
20 stones 539 time(s) = 5.39%
21 stones 623 time(s) = 6.23%
22 stones 751 time(s) = 7.51%
23 stones 795 time(s) = 7.95%
24 stones 973 time(s) = 9.73%
25 stones 957 time(s) = 9.57%
26 stones 870 time(s) = 8.7%
27 stones 826 time(s) = 8.26%
28 stones 677 time(s) = 6.77%
29 stones 574 time(s) = 5.74%
30 stones 419 time(s) = 4.19%
31 stones 337 time(s) = 3.37%
32 stones 265 time(s) = 2.65%
33 stones 180 time(s) = 1.8%
34 stones 111 time(s) = 1.11%
35 stones 59 time(s) = 0.59%
36 stones 49 time(s) = 0.49%
37 stones 28 time(s) = 0.28%
38 stones 19 time(s) = 0.19%
39 stones 7 time(s) = 0.07%
40 stones 9 time(s) = 0.09%
41 stones 1 time(s) = 0.01%
42 stones 2 time(s) = 0.02%

Even with 10,000,000 runs I never get 0 stones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

5 stones 1 time(s) = 1E-05%
6 stones 2 time(s) = 2E-05%
7 stones 10 time(s) = 0.0001%
8 stones 47 time(s) = 0.00047%
9 stones 208 time(s) = 0.00208%
10 stones 648 time(s) = 0.00648%
11 stones 1903 time(s) = 0.01903%
12 stones 5166 time(s) = 0.05166%
13 stones 12274 time(s) = 0.12274%
14 stones 26620 time(s) = 0.2662%
15 stones 52886 time(s) = 0.52886%
16 stones 96256 time(s) = 0.96256%
17 stones 162254 time(s) = 1.62254%
18 stones 253774 time(s) = 2.53774%
19 stones 369368 time(s) = 3.69368%
20 stones 500952 time(s) = 5.00952%
21 stones 636691 time(s) = 6.36691%
22 stones 760012 time(s) = 7.60012%
23 stones 859578 time(s) = 8.59578%
24 stones 914611 time(s) = 9.14611%
25 stones 918676 time(s) = 9.18676%
26 stones 879171 time(s) = 8.79171%
27 stones 797808 time(s) = 7.97808%
28 stones 689801 time(s) = 6.89801%
29 stones 568632 time(s) = 5.68632%
30 stones 448994 time(s) = 4.48994%
31 stones 338469 time(s) = 3.38469%
32 stones 245081 time(s) = 2.45081%
33 stones 170230 time(s) = 1.7023%
34 stones 113124 time(s) = 1.13124%
35 stones 72508 time(s) = 0.72508%
36 stones 44497 time(s) = 0.44497%
37 stones 26590 time(s) = 0.2659%
38 stones 15371 time(s) = 0.15371%
39 stones 8555 time(s) = 0.08555%
40 stones 4535 time(s) = 0.04535%
41 stones 2421 time(s) = 0.02421%
42 stones 1167 time(s) = 0.01167%
43 stones 571 time(s) = 0.00571%
44 stones 294 time(s) = 0.00294%
45 stones 146 time(s) = 0.00146%
46 stones 52 time(s) = 0.00052%
47 stones 28 time(s) = 0.00028%
48 stones 12 time(s) = 0.00012%
49 stones 2 time(s) = 2E-05%
50 stones 3 time(s) = 3E-05%
51 stones 1 time(s) = 1E-05%

If you want to mess with it yourself, download it here www.gumpstudio.com/MiningSimulator.zip (http://www.gumpstudio.com/MiningSimulator.zip).  It has no error checking at all, so any non numbers will crash it.  It requires .net framework 4.

*edit* my math was wrong. fixed up the % calculations

This is very interesting, and shows a nice bell curve if you plug it into a decent spreadsheet program.

What I'm wondering is: does it matter?

Currently, if you create a custom reaction with a 1 in 4 chance of something, you use:

Code: [Select]

[PRODUCT:(percent chance):(number of products):(item token):(subtype*):(material class):(material subtype)]
and write up:

Code: [Select]

[PRODUCT:25:1:WOOD:NO_SUBTYPE:PLANT_MAT:OAK:WOOD]

That's all fine and good, and established mod procedure.

Except that I lied to you. There is no "percent chance" in a reaction. That's more accurately summed up as "percent of object created". What that reaction above does is create one-fourth of an item, so that every fourth reaction will output that item.

I would expect mining to do the same thing. Every tile mined gets you one-fourth of a boulder, which manifests itself as soon as the total reaches 100%.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it is actually a drop chance. But as BradUffner's post shows, that's not a terrible solution, either. I guess we'll just have to wait until the next release to see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on May 09, 2012, 03:45:09 pm

Unless something's changed drastically, it's a chance, not amount. I've messed around a little with custom reactions, and they did not output in the sort of neat pattern that that would produce.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 04:21:13 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on May 09, 2012, 03:45:09 pm

Unless something's changed drastically, it's a chance, not amount. I've messed around a little with custom reactions, and they did not output in the sort of neat pattern that that would produce.

Hmmm. I'll admit that the last time I validated the output of this was back in 0.28.40d, but I haven't seen any differences in my supplies in later versions. I use a cheat reaction to get rid of stone that outputs wood one time in four (or so I thought; I guess it was 25%). Might be some time later in the week to do some !!science!!.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the next release!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 09, 2012, 04:24:22 pm

Quote from: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 04:21:13 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on May 09, 2012, 03:45:09 pm

Unless something's changed drastically, it's a chance, not amount. I've messed around a little with custom reactions, and they did not output in the sort of neat pattern that that would produce.

Hmmm. I'll admit that the last time I validated the output of this was back in 0.28.40d, but I haven't seen any differences in my supplies in later versions. I use a cheat reaction to get rid of stone that outputs wood one time in four (or so I thought; I guess it was 25%). Might be some time later in the week to do some !!science!!.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the next release!

Statistically you would get the same results over a long enough period of time, so unless you were specifically looking for the pattern it could be hard to spot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 09, 2012, 05:33:20 pm

Stockpiles are able to give to a specific workshop, but is the reverse also possible? Can workshop give to a specific stockpile?

That wasn't clear from the dev log, if it's been answered somewhere I'll de-green.

Edit: Reading fail. Thanks for the clarification.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 09, 2012, 05:34:31 pm

Quote from: greenskye on May 09, 2012, 05:33:20 pm

Stockpiles are able to give to a specific workshop, but is the reverse also possible? Can workshop give to a specific stockpile?

That wasn't clear from the dev log, if it's been answered somewhere I'll de-green.

The 4/27 devlog, literally two days before the one that says what you're saying, says yes >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SHOCKTrooperM37 on May 09, 2012, 06:04:55 pm

Can a log be made into several blocks similar to stone with the upcoming changes?
I thought it would be good to make buildings with wooden floors/roofs and with stone walls.   It takes lots of forests to make wood floors for my above ground buildings at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 09, 2012, 06:51:43 pm

I find it pretty interesting that logs get lumped in with stone changes. I guess that shows what players really view them as. Building materiel. I dont think trees have been touched at all though, these changes are about mining and stone hauling. Which I dont think Trees are part of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on May 09, 2012, 08:04:25 pm

There are plans for trees spanning multiple tiles, so any and all wood changes will probably be deferred until then. It's probably coming sooner rather than later to, since I think Toady said he wants to get non-human sites back into the game in the last DF talk.

EDIT: Channeling my inner Footkerchief:

Quote from: Toady, DF Talk 18

One other thing we wanted to move up was ... it's just becoming more and more and more glaring to have the site maps missing for all of the other races, because you're in adventure mode and I imagine a new person that picks up adventure mode would be, like, 'Oh, cool, there's a goblin city,' or, 'Oh, cool, there's an elf city,' when they figure out what those symbols ... once they figure out what those symbols mean, and then they go there and it's just ... there's nothing there. That's kind of strange. So that might get moved up as well. I mean, it isn't even on the caravan list and I think it needs to be moved up. It's pretty important, I think. The only one that's difficult, I think, is the elves. The elves require a, kind of, tree rewrite, so there's some difficultly there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 09, 2012, 08:20:46 pm

Yea, I think that was spoken to in the last DF. With the more dynamic, and large human sites, it's becoming much more a obvious lacking spot in DF to not have gobbo, elf or dwarves sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:22:26 pm

Quote from: SHOCKTrooperM37 on May 09, 2012, 06:04:55 pm

Can a log be made into several blocks similar to stone with the upcoming changes?

I thought it would be good to make buildings with wooden floors/roofs and with stone walls.   It takes lots of forests to make wood floors for my above ground buildings at the moment.

Well, renaming wooden blocks as planks and making them 4 to a log as well would be a logical (and simple) inclusion at this point.  Also, it'd give you more of a reason to build things out of wood from time to time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 09, 2012, 08:40:22 pm

The reason we got four stone blocks per boulder was because the (maximum) boulder drop rate was being reduced.  Wood is not being reduced in frequency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:48:32 pm

No, but my thinking was that wood could use a little boost in availability.  Right now, it's ridiculous how wood is actually harder to build with than stone.  This'll at least even up the score a little bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 09, 2012, 08:50:50 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:48:32 pm

No, but my thinking was that wood could use a little boost in availability.  Right now, it's ridiculous how wood is actually harder to build with than stone.  This'll at least even up the score a little bit.

Not if the woodcutters are legendary. They cut faster than the miners can mine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 09, 2012, 08:52:02 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 09, 2012, 08:50:50 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:48:32 pm

No, but my thinking was that wood could use a little boost in availability.  Right now, it's ridiculous how wood is actually harder to build with than stone.  This'll at least even up the score a little bit.

Not if the woodcutters are legendary. They cut faster than the miners can mine.

Not if you take increased hauling distance and scarcity of wood into account :<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 09, 2012, 08:53:39 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:48:32 pm

No, but my thinking was that wood could use a little boost in availability.  Right now, it's ridiculous how wood is actually harder to build with than stone.  This'll at least even up the score a little bit.

Wood is a more precious resource than stone, currently, thanks to how easy it is to mine, and how trees are more limited, however, that is an entirely unrelated argument to why it would be logical to quadruple wood yields just because stone was changed.

By that measure, anyway, it would make at least as much sense to just get more than one log per tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:54:02 pm

But building with logs is really expensive in terms of resources.  Especially if you factor in the time it took those trees to grow...

Really, blocks have no purpose outside of construction, so all the change'll do is make it easier for those who want to build with wood, for whatever reason.

EDIT: DOUBLE Ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:58:53 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 09, 2012, 08:53:39 pm

Wood is a more precious resource than stone, currently, thanks to how easy it is to mine, and how trees are more limited, however, that is an entirely unrelated argument to why it would be logical to quadruple wood yields just because stone was changed.

By that measure, anyway, it would make at least as much sense to just get more than one log per tree.

I'm making the argument that since now that quadruple returns on blockmaking for stone has set a precedent, this unrelated thing that I think would be nice in the game is hanging so low it's practically on the ground already.

And wooden blocks can't be used for anything but construction, so it wouldn't be unbalancing to change the amount you get (as it would be to change the number of logs per tree).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on May 09, 2012, 09:14:49 pm

Wooden blocks can be used in the construction of one or two workshops if I recall correct -- which may fall under the definition of "construction" or may not, depending on how picky one is about the game's menu's terminology.

On an unrelated note... liquid and solid dumping stops! Sounds as though we're getting "everything we ever," to paraphrase Dr. Horrible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 09, 2012, 09:16:02 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 08:58:53 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 09, 2012, 08:53:39 pm

Wood is a more precious resource than stone, currently, thanks to how easy it is to mine, and how trees are more limited, however, that is an entirely unrelated argument to why it would be logical to quadruple wood yields just because stone was changed.

By that measure, anyway, it would make at least as much sense to just get more than one log per tree.

I'm making the argument that since now that quadruple returns on blockmaking for stone has set a precedent, this unrelated thing that I think would be nice in the game is hanging so low it's practically on the ground already.

And wooden blocks can't be used for anything but construction, so it wouldn't be unbalancing to change the amount you get (as it would be to change the number of logs per tree).

Not true- there's several buildings that use them, though the only ones I can think of right now are screw pumps and wells.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 09, 2012, 09:22:25 pm

Buildings = form of construction

(All right, I know we really go b->C, but all of those buildings can be made out of other things which are far less scarce, just like walls and bridges.  So there's no practical difference.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Belteshazzar on May 10, 2012, 12:27:52 am

Technically trees are supposed to become some sort of larger, branching, multi-tile entities, which would certainly help the wood disparity, and probably make logging a lot more dangerous (imagine causing a collapse cascade within a thick, multistory jungle, or worse, a fire.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on May 10, 2012, 12:37:53 am

Quote from: Belteshazzar on May 10, 2012, 12:27:52 am

Technically trees are supposed to become some sort of larger, branching, multi-tile entities, which would certainly help the wood disparity, and probably make logging a lot more dangerous (imagine causing a collapse cascade within a thick, multistory jungle, or worse, a fire.)

That's the eventual plan, I believe. And I want it so, so much. One day I will run minecarts up a heartwood track and dump magma down on the elves from the center of their own sacred tree. Until then, nothing wrong with some light modding to cut 1 log into 4 planks/blocks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 10, 2012, 03:08:20 am

Quote from: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 03:30:22 pm

Except that I lied to you. There is no "percent chance" in a reaction. That's more accurately summed up as "percent of object created". What that reaction above does is create one-fourth of an item, so that every fourth reaction will output that item.

I would expect mining to do the same thing. Every tile mined gets you one-fourth of a boulder, which manifests itself as soon as the total reaches 100%.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it is actually a drop chance. But as BradUffner's post shows, that's not a terrible solution, either. I guess we'll just have to wait until the next release to see.

I sincerely hope that you are wrong. Otherwise we would micromanage all dwarves to land every 4th hit on an ore tile, which I see in no way entertaining.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Himmelblau on May 10, 2012, 03:54:09 am

Quote from: Elone on May 10, 2012, 03:08:20 am

Quote from: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 03:30:22 pm

Except that I lied to you. There is no "percent chance" in a reaction. That's more accurately summed up as "percent of object created". What that reaction above does is create one-fourth of an item, so that every fourth reaction will output that item.

I would expect mining to do the same thing. Every tile mined gets you one-fourth of a boulder, which manifests itself as soon as the total reaches 100%.

Maybe I'm wrong, and it is actually a drop chance. But as BradUffner's post shows, that's not a terrible solution, either. I guess we'll just have to wait until the next release to see.

I sincerely hope that you are wrong. Otherwise we would micromanage all dwarves to land every 4th hit on an ore tile, which I see in no way entertaining.

I'm fairly sure that if there are going to be fourths of boulders, then it'll work like melting metal objects: different types of stones are tracked separately. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense of any kind.

Somehow that actually sounds nicer than the 25%-chance drop, but I'll manage either way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 10, 2012, 05:46:23 am

Quote from: bluefox on May 09, 2012, 03:30:22 pm

There is no "percent chance" in a reaction. That's more accurately summed up as "percent of object created". What that reaction above does is create one-fourth of an item, so that every fourth reaction will output that item.

That has in my experience never been the case. It has always been random whether a reaction product is generated. I've had 33% reactions that created the object after two uses of the reaction, for instance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 07:15:51 am

In the current system, boulders are dropped by percentile chance for every tile that's mined.

I see absolutely no reason why Toady would have gone to the trouble of adding an entirely new variable to store the required data, finding an place to put it in the code, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 10, 2012, 07:26:10 am

Can anyone help me with this line from the devlog?

Quote

I piled up all the clay I had been collecting (clay stockpiling is now fixed) and laid an iron track down the mound.

Does this mean clay stockpiles into a mound several z-levels high, or that mound was constructed with designations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 10, 2012, 07:42:11 am

The way it reads to me is that ThreeToe built a mound from the clay, then constructed the tracks over it, and as a tangent, he noted that clay stockpiling has been fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SHOCKTrooperM37 on May 10, 2012, 07:46:48 am

When i asked my question i thought the purpose of the quadruple blocks per stone was to make above ground construction easier so you didn't need to dig as many rooms (which adds to stone clutter).   Doing the same to wood makes it even easier i guess and makes wood constructions more viable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 10, 2012, 08:41:29 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on May 10, 2012, 07:42:11 am

The way it reads to me is that ThreeToe built a mound from the clay, then constructed the tracks over it, and as a tangent, he noted that clay stockpiling has been fixed.

Yes, yes.  Most logical!  I tend to get rather excited about devlog entries and misread whatho.  Is anyone else struck by the frivolous violence of Threetoes railway?  Was an iron wall absolutely necessary?  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: khearn on May 10, 2012, 12:57:02 pm

Quote from: hermes on May 10, 2012, 08:41:29 am

Is anyone else struck by the frivolous violence of Threetoes railway?  Was an iron wall absolutely necessary?  :o

Meh. Didn't really notice. I've gotten pretty used to frivolous violence around here. He could have used iron spikes and it still would have seemed fairly normal (for bay12forums values of "normal").

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 10, 2012, 01:39:13 pm

The log does suggest that we can set up death-defying spike-pit jumps. 

This is going to allow for complete fortress segregation.  I always want to have "outdoor" and "indoor" dwarves, to allow me to keep my most important dwarves safe.  With cart-jumps, I can supply the outdwarves with goods provided by the indwarves, without ever having to risk the indwarves and outdwarves mingling, so when the outdwarves are inevitibly horribly killed, the indwarves won't care. 

Also a separate dwarven nursery with food dumped in by a cart would be advantageous. 

(in reality, I probably won't bother - more opportunity for !!FUN!! that way)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 10, 2012, 02:32:25 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on May 10, 2012, 01:39:13 pm

The log does suggest that we can set up death-defying spike-pit jumps. 

This is going to allow for complete fortress segregation.  I always want to have "outdoor" and "indoor" dwarves, to allow me to keep my most important dwarves safe.  With cart-jumps, I can supply the outdwarves with goods provided by the indwarves, without ever having to risk the indwarves and outdwarves mingling, so when the outdwarves are inevitibly horribly killed, the indwarves won't care. 

Also a separate dwarven nursery with food dumped in by a cart would be advantageous. 

(in reality, I probably won't bother - more opportunity for !!FUN!! that way)

And now I want to be able to throw babies and children on the Magic Dorfbus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 10, 2012, 02:50:10 pm

You know, we were talking about this earlier, you only really need a non-ramp drop of 1 tile for carts to get to a place where dwarves can't path normally, but carts will be able to fall.  Spectacular Evel Knievel jumps are just for people who have more attachment to spectacle than their dwarves or cargo.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 10, 2012, 02:52:19 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 10, 2012, 02:50:10 pm

You know, we were talking about this earlier, you only really need a non-ramp drop of 1 tile for carts to get to a place where dwarves can't path normally, but carts will be able to fall.  Spectacular Evel Knievel jumps are just for people who have more attachment to spectacle than their dwarves or cargo.

Your point being?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 04:51:29 pm

Did anyone else notice that the devlog implied that units in carts now take damage from collisions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on May 10, 2012, 05:28:07 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 04:51:29 pm

Did anyone else notice that the devlog implied that units in carts now take damage from collisions?

No, and I've looked the latest one over trying to find anything that might possibly imply such. What are you talking about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 10, 2012, 05:57:20 pm

Quote from: Kadzar on May 10, 2012, 05:28:07 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 04:51:29 pm

Did anyone else notice that the devlog implied that units in carts now take damage from collisions?

No, and I've looked the latest one over trying to find anything that might possibly imply such. What are you talking about?

The last line of the 2nd paragraph is "In the end the cart cleared the wall but just missed the platform and slammed into the side. The dwarf was a casualty, but you know that. "
Which at least seem to indicate the dwarf in the mine cart was killed of injured somehow due to the collision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on May 10, 2012, 06:14:02 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on May 10, 2012, 05:57:20 pm

Quote from: Kadzar on May 10, 2012, 05:28:07 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 04:51:29 pm

Did anyone else notice that the devlog implied that units in carts now take damage from collisions?

No, and I've looked the latest one over trying to find anything that might possibly imply such. What are you talking about?

The last line of the 2nd paragraph is "In the end the cart cleared the wall but just missed the platform and slammed into the side. The dwarf was a casualty, but you know that. "
Which at least seem to indicate the dwarf in the mine cart was killed of injured somehow due to the collision.

Oh, yeah, duh. For some reason I think I must have misread "units" as "items" or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 06:22:16 pm

Oh well, so much for the ODSD.

...Maybe if they landed in water?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exponent on May 10, 2012, 06:45:32 pm

I've gotten the impression from recent devlogs that dwarves don't technically ride in minecarts, but instead hang on behind them.  If this is more or less true in terms of how the code is actually structured, then any assumptions we make about creatures in cages for example can't automatically be applied to dwarves hitching a ride on a minecart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 10, 2012, 07:08:39 pm

"The items and units fly out of carts now on major collisions. It gives the objects a little lift and spread sometimes to make the happenings more entertaining. Accidental grapeshotting of the dining room should be possible now. The debug tests on massed goblins were fairly devastating and left a large conical skidmark."

Sweeeeeeeeeet! :D

So am I interpreting this correctly as in getting hit by stuff getting flung out of a colliding cart deals damage?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: khearn on May 10, 2012, 07:20:52 pm

I love the devlogs. But I'm not sure what he meant by "accidental".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 10, 2012, 07:21:31 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 06:22:16 pm

Oh well, so much for the ODSD.

...Maybe if they landed in water?

Devlogs imply that happens only on a "collision", and if you land on the rails, and don't derail or smack into something, then it won't happen. 

Again, a single tile drop-down to waiting tracks at relatively low velocities should be safe. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 10, 2012, 08:02:01 pm

Quote from: khearn on May 10, 2012, 07:20:52 pm

I love the devlogs. But I'm not sure what he meant by "accidental".

I know, crazy right?  Deliberate booze-barrel grapeshotting of the dining hall should be goal of any self respecting fortress overseer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 10, 2012, 08:05:43 pm

Quote

The debug tests on massed goblins were fairly devastating and left a large conical skidmark.

Mandark_Laugh.wav

Who needs carts full of lead.  Fill them with steel serrated discs!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scarpa on May 10, 2012, 08:44:37 pm

Quote from: hermes on May 10, 2012, 08:02:01 pm

Quote from: khearn on May 10, 2012, 07:20:52 pm

I love the devlogs. But I'm not sure what he meant by "accidental".

I know, crazy right?  Deliberate booze-barrel grapeshotting of the dining hall should be goal of any self respecting fortress overseer.

I certainly wasn't thinking of anything quite that...benign.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on May 10, 2012, 11:00:00 pm

Quote from: hermes on May 10, 2012, 08:41:29 am

Is anyone else struck by the frivolous violence of Threetoes railway?  Was an iron wall absolutely necessary?  :o

Dude, this is Dwarf Fortress.  Frivolous violence is the rule.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kaypy on May 10, 2012, 11:04:16 pm

If you now have flight physics and collisions for items launched from minecarts, does that apply to other circumstances too? eg will dropping an anvil on someone work now? IIRC you had previously said that aiming difficulties were delaying flight physics for siege engines and projectiles so I'm guessing that much hasn't changed.

Edit: Nevermind, I'll check myself 8-) ...

Quote

The ({iron anvil}) strikes The Miner in the lower left leg, bruising the muscle through the (gray langur leather robe)!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 10, 2012, 11:07:19 pm

I like how Toady used the word "grapeshotting".  It bodes well.


Load cart with orthoclase blocks -> fill with magma -> !!Fun!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on May 10, 2012, 11:35:48 pm

Does the stance of a creature have any effect on how a colliding cart affects them?
For example a goblin standing would be knocked further than a crawling one IRL due to a higher center of mass.
I am wondering this because it is impossible for a combatant to charge a crawling opponent (but perhaps only because the only effects of charging being to stun and knock down a small distance away)
Oh and:
While i read somewhere size was a factor in collisions
Does flesh material have an effect on collisions?
Say, a more elastic creature taking less damage from skidding or a less dense creature not being knocked as far, despite its size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristocrat on May 11, 2012, 01:20:04 am

What happens to magma-filled minecarts that are not magma-safe?  Do they take long enough to melt that we can make cannons that shoot globs of molten lead and magma at our enemies?  And do molten minecarts retain their momentum?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 11, 2012, 01:26:53 am

Quote from: kaypy on May 10, 2012, 11:04:16 pm

If you now have flight physics and collisions for items launched from minecarts, does that apply to other circumstances too? eg will dropping an anvil on someone work now? IIRC you had previously said that aiming difficulties were delaying flight physics for siege engines and projectiles so I'm guessing that much hasn't changed.

As in drop on them and cause damage to an ACME victim?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xmakina on May 11, 2012, 03:52:02 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 10, 2012, 02:50:10 pm

You know, we were talking about this earlier, you only really need a non-ramp drop of 1 tile for carts to get to a place where dwarves can't path normally, but carts will be able to fall.  Spectacular Evel Knievel jumps are just for people who have more attachment to spectacle than their dwarves or cargo.

And/or want the cart to be able to get back to where it came from. There have been discussions about using mine-carts to enable segregation which means you'd need the path to be inaccessible to dwarves BUT cart traversable. By my count that means either flooding the track at segregation points or having a jump over an impassable gap.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dreiche2 on May 11, 2012, 05:42:10 am

... or just have a second one-level-drop on a separate track back? Not sure I see the problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kaypy on May 11, 2012, 06:49:05 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 11, 2012, 01:26:53 am

As in drop on them and cause damage to an ACME victim?

Can you think of any other reason to drop an anvil on someone?

Other than maybe "Urist!! Stop goofing off and build the %&^#@$# forge already!" although even then causing damage is still at least a welcome addition...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deimos56 on May 11, 2012, 02:09:08 pm

Quote from: khearn on May 10, 2012, 07:20:52 pm

I love the devlogs. But I'm not sure what he meant by "accidental".

He means we can fill the minecarts with lava and "accidentally" chuck them at the elves and watch them get sprayed down with meltingly hot rock.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 11, 2012, 02:27:44 pm

Quote from: Deimos56 on May 11, 2012, 02:09:08 pm

Quote from: khearn on May 10, 2012, 07:20:52 pm

I love the devlogs. But I'm not sure what he meant by "accidental".

He means we can fill the minecarts with lava and "accidentally" chuck them at the elves and watch them get sprayed down with meltingly hot rock.

Well, considering as derails can occur at a normal turn if you're making the cart move too fast, it's entirely possible you would have an accidental derail at some point if you make your carts go down a long hill and let them pick up enough speed. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 11, 2012, 05:23:16 pm

I'm suddenly seeing dwarven fortresses being full of airborne minecarts.  Not in some way to be fancy, but just for the sake of keeping them from being pathed into by dwarves.

It's Mt. Nevermind.  Only more dwarven, and with more magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 11, 2012, 09:57:45 pm

Ooh, I just thought of something...

Anyone ever execute prisoners by dropping them down a volcano in a magma-proof cage?


What would happen if you put a prisoner's cage on a cart and launched it off the map?  For that matter, what would happen to dwarves that got launched off the map?  Or artifacts?

What if you built a fortress at the edge of the world, and then tried to launch yourself out of it in adventure mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 11, 2012, 10:19:22 pm

Regarding the contents of minecarts flying out and hurting stuff, can this only happen with items launched from a crashing minecart or is this now applied to all falling/flying items?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 11, 2012, 10:37:06 pm

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 11, 2012, 09:57:45 pm

What would happen if you put a prisoner's cage on a cart and launched it off the map?  For that matter, what would happen to dwarves that got launched off the map?  Or artifacts?

What if you built a fortress at the edge of the world, and then tried to launch yourself out of it in adventure mode?

Awww... That would have been a lovely science project to try out when the new release came...

It's always so fun to try testing the things Toady never thought of to see how robust the DF code is. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 11, 2012, 10:45:53 pm

My guess is a non damaging loss of all momentum.  Kind of like what happens currently when a small creature is thrown by something large into the map edge.   They kind of hover there for a moment, apperantly adding to the number of tiles traveled internally without actually going anyplace until they reach the 'distance' they were supposed to be thrown to and then fall harmlessly to the ground.

I've had guard cats and dogs and other such creatures live troll attacks that way.  They get thrown into a map edge, and spend long enough in flying stasis for the troll to find a new target, and then harmlessly go prone, before getting up and fleeing.   Can't be a pleasant experience, but better than exploding against a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mek42 on May 11, 2012, 10:51:25 pm

Could the animal training civilization experience system be expanded to metallurgy?  Maybe we need to learn how to make steel and maybe someday we can learn to smelt cobalt.  And then maybe cobalt steel which is better than steel.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 11, 2012, 11:15:01 pm

Quote from: mek42 on May 11, 2012, 10:51:25 pm

Could the animal training civilization experience system be expanded to metallurgy?  Maybe we need to learn how to make steel and maybe someday we can learn to smelt cobalt.  And then maybe cobalt steel which is better than steel.

There are several suggestion threads that cover the nature of learning or "tech trees", such as this one, which is active now: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109129.0

The thing is, tech tree ideas generally aren't very popular among DF players, although metallurgy is an area where there might be more room than others. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 12, 2012, 12:25:22 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 11, 2012, 11:15:01 pm

Quote from: mek42 on May 11, 2012, 10:51:25 pm

Could the animal training civilization experience system be expanded to metallurgy?  Maybe we need to learn how to make steel and maybe someday we can learn to smelt cobalt.  And then maybe cobalt steel which is better than steel.

There are several suggestion threads that cover the nature of learning or "tech trees", such as this one, which is active now: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109129.0

The thing is, tech tree ideas generally aren't very popular among DF players, although metallurgy is an area where there might be more room than others.

I imagine the biggest trip up with tech trees is that people don't want to have to grind a skill to obtain a level in competence, but I like the idea in someways due to the fact it can be done a little differently than normal.

Like in animal training, eventually training a Black Bear should improve a general Bear training skill which in turn allows you to train other bears, like say Grizzly Bear more easily allowing you to gain skill in the specific species easier. Though this would require defining creatures to a Genus-level (not necessarily a literal scientifically defined Genus, ie Owlbears or Panda Bears can be considered Bears for the purpose of being a Bear-like creature). On that note, it could work like spheres (but spheres players can define if they create a whole new class of creature) and stack several onto a creature to show how it relates and how experience in training grows.  For example, specializing in creatures that are Bears are possible, but bears are also Carnivorous Mammals.  Knowing how to deal with one type of carnivorous mammals should be able to supply some experience with others, but not necessarily a lot of experience. So in my idea, the skill tree works backwards. You train a specific animal, but gain experience in related less specific fields which in turn allows for easier training of other creatures later on.

Granted, this is so complicated I wouldn't expect Toady to pull this kind of overhaul into a system he just added for a while(read: years). But it is food for thought, y'know. This system allows for a lot of interesting potential in how you approach your world if it is further expanded. I said before, this system could be used to give different civs of the same species a unique culture. Even now you can already see a bit of this. My current civ lives on the border of a glacier biome and have adapted to being able to training some of the creatures found there. The other civ I did a check embark on was on the border of a jungle and had a good deal of lion and tiger training going, iirc. (That said, is there a way to check a civs training levels without embarking?)

I'm starting to train some Grizzlies recently, I caught some war Grizzlies when the elves attacked and one had babies. You know the cubs were immediately domesticated! They received their mother's training from the elves, so all I had to do was break the babies born in my fort and they are nice little puppies! Now I can turn all the elves' hard work against them in a single generation! MUWHAHAHAHA! Edit: In fact, I'm planning on making a War Grizzly Production Plant with the War Grizzlies I caught. The cubs are a cinch to train, then I wait until they are old enough for WAR!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 12, 2012, 01:57:40 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on May 11, 2012, 10:19:22 pm

Regarding the contents of minecarts flying out and hurting stuff, can this only happen with items launched from a crashing minecart or is this now applied to all falling/flying items?

My guess is that its stems from the Minecart, so no. This is beside the parabolic arcs, which applies to all things in uncontrolled flight.

I think my guess is pretty right on, because anything else that Toady and Threetoe added, would have parallel in adventure mode, which is something they've stated, (at least explicitly for siege weapons), they wanted to avoid for this release for expediency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on May 12, 2012, 03:27:36 am

Quote from: Greiger on May 11, 2012, 05:23:16 pm

It's Mt. Nevermind.  Only more dwarven, and with more magma.

That really doesn't improve my mental image of it.   :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on May 12, 2012, 10:15:37 am

How difficult would it be to add an Island/Region toggle to "Create New World"?

Island worlds tend to result in caverns that span over a hundred Z-levels, leading to much higher RAM usage (and much earlier FPS death), while "region" worlds are more likely to give shallower embark regions (e.g. 50 Z-levels between the surface and the magma sea); as a result, I have to use Advanced World Gen to make non-island worlds, making it much more difficult to customize other properties such as savagery and mineral scarcity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 12, 2012, 10:40:41 am

Quote from: Quietust on May 12, 2012, 10:15:37 am

How difficult would it be to add an Island/Region toggle to "Create New World"?

Seems that Toady is for it, and it doesn't seem to be hard (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1776138#msg1776138). It's probably just a priority thing.

Quote

Quote

Will we ever be able to choose between Region and Island in the simplified "Create New World Now!" parameters?Currently, if you wanted to gen a region; one must go into the "Advanced Parameters." This is kind of a pain, since you also have to manually change the otherwise simplified parameters. Changing even simple things like history lenght is really confusing for players unaccustomed to world gen stuff (not to mention natural savagery, civ and site numbers).

That seems like a reasonable enough candidate for an option for the simple screen.  I suppose it might be extended to other options once we've got more robust boats (many small islands, two continents, etc.).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on May 12, 2012, 12:32:36 pm

Making a dwarf push a cart all the way was said to give more control than just making it move on its own, so I presume it involves some kind of pathfinding. So, what does that pathfinding take into account about the track, and how would it interact with some advanced track constructs that involve e.g. making a cart 'jump' to the adjacent corner tile without explicit connection (which was for instance suggested as a way of joining tracks, and can also be applied to other simple direction-based routing)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 12, 2012, 05:56:28 pm

Pathfinding will probably be just like the regular pathfinder but only considering areas reachable by track.  So I don't think it'll be able to do what you suggest.  Which will probably be a good thing, as it'll help keep dwarf-guided carts out of your automated systems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on May 13, 2012, 12:42:23 am

Quote from: Arkenstone on May 12, 2012, 05:56:28 pm

Which will probably be a good thing, as it'll help keep dwarf-guided carts out of your automated systems.

Not quite, because it also means you can't make one-way, or proper double track for dwarf-guided carts; otherwise it can be done by adding cross-overs that switch carts going in the wrong direction to the other track here and there, sort of like: ZZZ (carts going on the lower line right to left, or on the top left to right get switched, while the other direction jumps corners and continues on). In the absense of native way to specify one-way track, a 'dead end' pointing directly into a corner could be an idiom for a one-way junction, and interpreted by pathfinding as such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 13, 2012, 03:12:47 am

When multihauling with bins/barrels/bags, how will a dwarf decide what items are close enough, and what items are too far to justify getting them in that trip? Does a dwarf only bother with the items in his tile? Perhaps only his tile and adjacent tiles? Perhaps five, or twenty, or hundred? Is this an INI option? How is performance affected? If this affects performance notably enough, then an INI entry may be a good option (pun intended).

Have player-driven experiments on FPS drop causes, such as this thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104643.msg3094753#msg3094753) given you clues for how to optimize the game? In tests, having item numbers beyond a certain point caused escalating lag, including that the currently game runs at 1/10 speed with 10k items in the fort, and 1/400 speed when there are 100k items. Also, dead creatures apparently cause FPS loss forever after they die, even if their bodies are butchered, as they cannot become ghosts, so their memory continues to linger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on May 13, 2012, 05:26:11 am

Are you looking at expanding the concept of the minecart "object" to other objects that might function similarly with regard to the physics and collision - like boulder traps Indiana Jones style?

For example, the development page lists:
- Stone traps should require the stone be placed above the tile that is targeted
- Stones should be able to roll (perhaps if they are started from or land on a ramp tile)

It seems like low-hanging fruit to get rid of/improve stone-fall traps with the minecart framework with the main difference being no storage allowed in the boulder "minecart".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on May 13, 2012, 08:42:14 am

Well, the devlogs seem to imply that moving objects other than  minecarts can collide now, so that's there already.

You could use just a regular (or modded to be heavier) cart for this sort of trap; if you don't want to store anything on it just don't hook the stop to a stockpile, I'd think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 13, 2012, 03:05:21 pm

Are there any plans to make useless artifacts (like scepters and rings and whatnot) usable, like with the display case mod?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geb on May 13, 2012, 04:50:01 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on May 13, 2012, 03:05:21 pm

Are there any plans to make useless artifacts (like scepters and rings and whatnot) usable, like with the display case mod?

I'd be very happy to see that included. No more using weapon traps to display artifact weapons, or building asheries in noble bedrooms to make use of artifact barrels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on May 13, 2012, 06:57:57 pm

Toady, will multiple forms of government ever be possible? Will we always have to have a baron/count/duke/king, or can we have a republic or a democracy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on May 14, 2012, 01:42:00 am

Since you are tackling bugfixing again, how is the Mantis bug tracker working for you? I know that you've had it at least since early 2010, and that several volunteers help filter out duplicate entries and "not bugs". Are there other ways here that the community could make the system more effective?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 14, 2012, 02:25:26 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on May 13, 2012, 03:05:21 pm

Are there any plans to make useless artifacts (like scepters and rings and whatnot) usable, like with the display case mod?

The short answer, is yes. Toady has spoken about Artifacts in dwarf fortress talks.
Here ya go: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_7_missing_segment.mp3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 14, 2012, 08:15:56 am

Mr S cancels Be Productive This Week, interrupted by release of 0.34.08.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 14, 2012, 08:21:48 am

Of course, it's released when I'm asleep because I have to work in the morning. It'll be about ten hours before I can play. >_<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on May 14, 2012, 08:29:30 am

Alright, well it came out before my finals, so I suppose that's better than during them. Fingers crossed for lack of save corrupting bugs!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacko13 on May 14, 2012, 09:57:51 am

Quote from: tahujdt on May 13, 2012, 06:57:57 pm

Toady, will multiple forms of government ever be possible? Will we always have to have a baron/count/duke/king, or can we have a republic or a democracy?

DORF democracy!  Much happy chuckling in contemplation of this wondrous idea. Can we guillotine all Our nobles in the revolution? ;-)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kirrian on May 14, 2012, 10:50:15 am

Quote from: Keldane on May 14, 2012, 08:21:48 am

Of course, it's released when I'm asleep because I have to work in the morning. It'll be about ten hours before I can play. >_<

Being a responsible adult SUXXORS! =P

I dun wunna work wifey! Lemme stay home, pweeeeesseeee?!

Yeah. And still at least twenty years until retirement when I can take up DF playing full time. =D I wonder if it'll be v1.0 by then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 14, 2012, 01:25:18 pm

Quote from: Jacko13 on May 14, 2012, 09:57:51 am

DORF democracy!  Much happy chuckling in contemplation of this wondrous idea. Can we guillotine all Our nobles in the revolution? ;-)

In further news, the Fortress Overseer's party lost in the second round of elections today as public unrest over their "alcohol austerity" measures reached a fever pitch following a failure to properly oversee still jobs resulted in a solid year of nothing being brewed, culminating in a "military and legendaries only" alcohol rationing system. 

With the ouster of the moderate party, the parties elected were far-left and far-right wing parties which seem to be incapable of finding any middle ground upon which to forge a coalition government, especially on the contentious issues of kitten adoption vs. cat butchering.  If they cannot reach a coalition government, new elections will be held on the 14th of Slate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ninjanomnom on May 14, 2012, 03:04:23 pm

Was reading some posts earlier and got this question:

Is it possible/will there ever be an option to, instead of abandoning a fortress, let it become a full blown town/mountainhome? Like, an option that lets the computer take control of your fortress so that you can trade and interact with npcs in it just like a normal town in adventure mode?

This would make using the same world over again much more fun for adv mode. Also would be cool in fortress mode if you get merchants from your old fortress, trading things which you made. Thus you could trade for the artifacts you made then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenskye on May 14, 2012, 03:09:58 pm

Quote from: ninjanomnom on May 14, 2012, 03:04:23 pm

Was reading some posts earlier and got this question:

Is it possible/will there ever be an option to, instead of abandoning a fortress, let it become a full blown town/mountainhome? Like, an option that lets the computer take control of your fortress so that you can trade and interact with npcs in it just like a normal town in adventure mode?

This would make using the same world over again much more fun for adv mode. Also would be cool in fortress mode if you get merchants from your old fortress, trading things which you made. Thus you could trade for the artifacts you made then.

This is already planned and is a large part of what the current Caravan Arc hopes to achieve (allowing world gen to continue).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 14, 2012, 03:11:09 pm

^^ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 14, 2012, 03:47:42 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 14, 2012, 08:21:48 am

Of course, it's released when I'm asleep because I have to work in the morning. It'll be about ten hours before I can play. >_<

Moe: This truck mounted giant frier can fry a bull in 40 seconds.
Homer: I dont want it in 40 seconds... I want it now!

I cannot play this until DFhack and splintermind's Therapist update. I wish that this wasnt the case though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on May 14, 2012, 03:55:57 pm

Ah yes, you can filter creature names in the arena now. 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on May 14, 2012, 05:06:52 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Can create/assign to squads from v-p

FINALLY!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 14, 2012, 05:12:19 pm

Quote from: irdsm on May 14, 2012, 05:06:52 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Can create/assign to squads from v-p

FINALLY!

Now if we could also switch between units/building/look/designation without losing our cursor or at least without resetting it to the middle...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 14, 2012, 09:49:06 pm

Quote from: Elone on May 14, 2012, 03:47:42 pm

Quote from: Keldane on May 14, 2012, 08:21:48 am

Of course, it's released when I'm asleep because I have to work in the morning. It'll be about ten hours before I can play. >_<

Moe: This truck mounted giant frier can fry a bull in 40 seconds.
Homer: I dont want it in 40 seconds... I want it now!

I cannot play this until DFhack and splintermind's Therapist update. I wish that this wasnt the case though.

splinter's update is already up, I think. So is regular DT. Hack though will probably take a good bit of time to come out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on May 14, 2012, 10:37:46 pm

I generated two worlds in this new update, and both had no flux at all. Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 14, 2012, 10:42:28 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on May 14, 2012, 10:37:46 pm

I generated two worlds in this new update, and both had no flux at all. Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

Flux is always either sedimentary or metamorphic, it's not that unusual, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 14, 2012, 10:45:07 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on May 14, 2012, 10:37:46 pm

I generated two worlds in this new update, and both had no flux at all. Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

This isn't something for the Future of the Fortress thread - it's more of a Fortress Mode Forum thing.

To answer the question, though, if you set minerals as ultra-common, then flux has trouble spawning.  If you set your mineral scarcity low, then put your mineral scarcity back up a little higher, and flux should appear again.

Otherwise, you did something silly to your raws, like copy-paste something over you shouldn't have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on May 16, 2012, 06:28:04 am

Hmm, this is something of a feature suggestion, so no green - but what is the intended way of preventing carts going over-speed when going down a long descent? Placing low-friction stops could be a solution, but from observing speed values change in memory it seems that:

• There is no stop friction value close to the ramp acceleration: the closest values are 500 and 10000, while ramps give 4900 units per frame.
• The cumulative friction effect from stops is proportional to time, and thus decreases with speed. Effectively constraining speed requires something with friction that increases with speed. (Effectively meaning with a stable equilibrium that lets slow carts speed up, but slows fast ones.)

So maybe friction applied by stops should vary within a certain range depending on speed? As it is, it seems the only effective solution to constraining speed is actually abusing the behavior of carts flying into the air when going overspeed, i.e. if you dig you tunnel in the ramp - flat - ramp - flat - ... fashion, about every 3 z-levels the cart flies off the track, bumps into the wall, and falls vertically onto the track with 0 speed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on May 16, 2012, 11:26:08 am

-pushed carts are not considered, these have speed depending on the pusher's strength and the cart/freight's weight.

-Allow riding dwarves to use a handbrake?
requiring either a personality tie-in for what the dwarf considers a safe speed or a riding skill that allows dwarves to estimate when braking is wisest.

-unmanned carts indeed need an external brake.
The stops are the most likely candidate for this, but a brake-activator would still brake a slowmoving cart more than a faster one (all brakes are based on friction). 

It is best not to allow carts to get out of controll at all (by planning): the logical thing is to exponentially increase cart crashchance with higher speeds, even on straight routes, bacause a fast moving cart is more succeptible to small irregularities in the track. And though I'm not an expert on mining classical nor modern, I don't think that any brakes were available in the way you describe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 16, 2012, 12:33:18 pm

Haven't been in here in a long time!  Quick question:

With the new multiple-bar-per-ore smelting, will the reactions for tetrahedrite and galena change?  At the moment, they create 4 bars of the main metal with a percentage chance of an extra 4 bars of the junior metal.

Would it not make more sense for galena to produce two lead and two silver bars every time, and tetrahedrite to produce three coppers and a silver every time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on May 16, 2012, 03:41:11 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 16, 2012, 12:33:18 pm

With the new multiple-bar-per-ore smelting, will the reactions for tetrahedrite and galena change?  At the moment, they create 4 bars of the main metal with a percentage chance of an extra 4 bars of the junior metal.

Would it not make more sense for galena to produce two lead and two silver bars every time, and tetrahedrite to produce three coppers and a silver every time?

Another question about this topic:
 Isn't a bit unbalanced that you can cut a rough stone into four blocks = 4 walls or a single pair of earrings? Maybe there should be another intermediate that than can be cut down into crafts or similar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 16, 2012, 03:57:55 pm

oh hell Aerval is right, that just made the mass conversion for stone even weirder with crafts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 04:38:06 pm

Alternately, just use blocks for crafts.  I don't think we need anything much smaller than a block, anyway.

Of course, at the same time, I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that the purpose of stone crafts is more to just get rid of stone than it is to make the most out of my stone. 

If we want to make infinite crafts, there's always sand and clay, after all.  I usually embark on one or the other nowadays.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 05:06:33 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 04:38:06 pm

Alternately, just use blocks for crafts.  I don't think we need anything much smaller than a block, anyway.

Of course, at the same time, I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that the purpose of stone crafts is more to just get rid of stone than it is to make the most out of my stone. 

If we want to make infinite crafts, there's always sand and clay, after all.  I usually embark on one or the other nowadays.

Stone is so rare now that making stone crafts is unrealistic. Clay and sand crafts require either magma or wood, the latter of which is no better than just making wood crafts. Before magma, I find wood crafts to be simplest (barring bone, which depends on the situation).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Krash on May 16, 2012, 05:26:07 pm

Stone, rare? What are you talking about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Quote from: Krash on May 16, 2012, 05:26:07 pm

Stone, rare? What are you talking about?

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 07:28:24 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sweitx on May 16, 2012, 10:33:56 pm

Dev Log

Quote

* made fresh water kill stagnant water, salt no longer spreads into fresh

 :o
ALL PRAISE TOADY ONE!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 16, 2012, 10:47:06 pm

Quote from: sweitx on May 16, 2012, 10:33:56 pm

Dev Log

Quote

* made fresh water kill stagnant water, salt no longer spreads into fresh

 :o
ALL PRAISE TOADY ONE!

Indeedy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 10:49:55 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 07:28:24 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete.

I never claimed running out of stone, I just claimed that it was impractical to set up a crafting industry with it. An obsidian factory is inherently too slow to sustain a crafting industry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 16, 2012, 10:51:10 pm

That really all depends on your required profits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 16, 2012, 10:58:19 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 10:49:55 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 07:28:24 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete.

I never claimed running out of stone, I just claimed that it was impractical to set up a crafting industry with it. An obsidian factory is inherently too slow to sustain a crafting industry.

You're just not scaling it up to dwarf levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 16, 2012, 11:01:58 pm

Pave the whole sky with obsidian, and then mine it out! You'll be set for a good long time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on May 16, 2012, 11:07:09 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 04:38:06 pm

Alternately, just use blocks for crafts.  I don't think we need anything much smaller than a block, anyway.

Of course, at the same time, I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that the purpose of stone crafts is more to just get rid of stone than it is to make the most out of my stone. 

If we want to make infinite crafts, there's always sand and clay, after all.  I usually embark on one or the other nowadays.

I don't think block can be used for crafts, they're only there for building.  And anyway, making crafts is just a way of cleaning up ston clutter.  Also if there's no sand or clay available for infinite crafts, one can always resort to obsidian farming.

I don't bother with normal stone crafts for a serious profit anyway, there's just there to stick junk games and bones and stuff onto.  The real profit come from crafting stuff from precious metals like silver, gold, and platinum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 17, 2012, 06:38:32 am

Well, I did like to make mechanics, crafting, stonemason and gem cutter shops, filling queue with mechanism, stone jug, block and cut stone/encrust on repeat while disabling those shops for legendaries.

Automated no-oversight needed training which will now be a bit harder. Quarrying for stone might be required to sustain it now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on May 17, 2012, 07:21:59 am

Why would you even care about your dwarves' stonecrafting skill? I find that quality modifiers are only significant in the expensive stuff. Critical only in arms and armour, where even the best is not good enough.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 17, 2012, 08:37:14 am

Quote from: rex mortis on May 17, 2012, 07:21:59 am

Why would you even care about your dwarves' stonecrafting skill? I find that quality modifiers are only significant in the expensive stuff. Critical only in arms and armour, where even the best is not good enough.

obsidian swords for traps and early milita

(i prefer to play in metal starved maps)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 17, 2012, 09:10:36 am

Quote from: zwei on May 17, 2012, 08:37:14 am

Quote from: rex mortis on May 17, 2012, 07:21:59 am

Why would you even care about your dwarves' stonecrafting skill? I find that quality modifiers are only significant in the expensive stuff. Critical only in arms and armour, where even the best is not good enough.

obsidian swords for traps and early milita

(i prefer to play in metal starved maps)

Speaking of which, are obsidian swords still made of wood, as has been speculated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on May 17, 2012, 11:39:26 am

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 10:49:55 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 07:28:24 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete.

I never claimed running out of stone, I just claimed that it was impractical to set up a crafting industry with it. An obsidian factory is inherently too slow to sustain a crafting industry.

I'm currently outputting around 500 excess stone per season with three legendary miners. Note that what you're looking at there is an excess, after my mass production of mechanisms, stone crafts, doors, furniture and other crud.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 17, 2012, 01:50:47 pm

I've seen some talk about this recently, so I'd like to ask directly...

What influenced your decision to attach minecarts to stockpiles? (As opposed to "equipping" them to haulers or dwarves taking up heavy hauling jobs grabbing a nearest cart.)  Do you have plans for further revisions to make more/less involved supply chains using stockpiles, or do you want to just leave things as they are for the foreseeable future? 

Are we going to see a stab at stacking rules added before you go on to other things?


There seems to be a big stumbling block around having to build a large number of specialized stockpiles right away, instead of having giant dump stockpiles, and it may be something that raises the learning cliff a little bit higher to get to learn.  People complain about, for example, seeds not being available because a dwarf collecting a seed from the dining hall brings the barrel that has every seed in the entire fortress inside it to the dining hall. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on May 17, 2012, 02:38:24 pm

Quote from: blue sam3 on May 17, 2012, 11:39:26 am

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 10:49:55 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 16, 2012, 07:28:24 pm

Quote from: dree12 on May 16, 2012, 07:18:59 pm

Now, the amount of stone is rare enough to make any stone industry unsustainable. Mechanisms are extremely stone-heavy, and last time I checked could not be made of wood.

I find the notion that you could run out of stone in this game highly suspect.  Especially since we have unlimited stone in the form of magma and water sources that never deplete.

I never claimed running out of stone, I just claimed that it was impractical to set up a crafting industry with it. An obsidian factory is inherently too slow to sustain a crafting industry.

I'm currently outputting around 500 excess stone per season with three legendary miners. Note that what you're looking at there is an excess, after my mass production of mechanisms, stone crafts, doors, furniture and other crud.

This requires quarrying, which ruins a part of the map. After something is dug out, it cannot be undug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on May 17, 2012, 04:26:58 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 17, 2012, 01:50:47 pm

I've seen some talk about this recently, so I'd like to ask directly...

What influenced your decision to attach minecarts to stockpiles? (As opposed to "equipping" them to haulers or dwarves taking up heavy hauling jobs grabbing a nearest cart.)  Do you have plans for further revisions to make more/less involved supply chains using stockpiles, or do you want to just leave things as they are for the foreseeable future? 

Are we going to see a stab at stacking rules added before you go on to other things?


There seems to be a big stumbling block around having to build a large number of specialized stockpiles right away, instead of having giant dump stockpiles, and it may be something that raises the learning cliff a little bit higher to get to learn.  People complain about, for example, seeds not being available because a dwarf collecting a seed from the dining hall brings the barrel that has every seed in the entire fortress inside it to the dining hall.

Do you mean wheelbarrows or minecarts? If wheelbarrows, I'd second that. We should at least be able to equip them to workshops.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 17, 2012, 05:50:45 pm

Quote from: Aerval on May 17, 2012, 04:26:58 pm

Do you mean wheelbarrows or minecarts? If wheelbarrows, I'd second that. We should at least be able to equip them to workshops.

Wheelbarrows.  Minecarts are attached to their own tracks, obviously.

The way that I (and probably most people) used to set up stockpiles, I would start off by digging some open space in a soil layer, make a "everything but stone" stockpile, and start dumping all my goods from the caravan into it. 

If you do that now, though, only one dwarf can claim a wheelbarrow to do a hauling job at a time, and they'll take a wheelbarrow to carry things that are light enough you don't need a wheelbarrow for them. 

When we were getting wheelbarrows, I was expecting wheelbarrows to just be left lying around most of the time, and only grabbed when a job that was heavy enough to require a wheelbarrow was needed. 

What this does, however, is make players have to spend more time initially setting the stockpiles up, since they need a complicated manually crafted supply chain, but once it's running, it will generally work well, if you micromanaged it down to proper functionality. 

It does, however, make starting the game up a little more annoying, so I'm wondering how much of this is still just a work-in-progress...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on May 17, 2012, 07:50:22 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 17, 2012, 09:10:36 am

Quote from: zwei on May 17, 2012, 08:37:14 am

Quote from: rex mortis on May 17, 2012, 07:21:59 am

Why would you even care about your dwarves' stonecrafting skill? I find that quality modifiers are only significant in the expensive stuff. Critical only in arms and armour, where even the best is not good enough.

obsidian swords for traps and early milita

(i prefer to play in metal starved maps)

Speaking of which, are obsidian swords still made of wood, as has been speculated?

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on May 17, 2012, 08:19:08 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on May 17, 2012, 07:50:22 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 17, 2012, 09:10:36 am

...
Speaking of which, are obsidian swords still made of wood, as has been speculated?

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5346

Obsidian actually isn't sharp enough to cut skin in DF, whereas wood can cut skin.
There is an easy RAW file fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on May 17, 2012, 08:30:04 pm

If so, that must be a newer problem. I've seen them slice elephants in half in the 31.xx series.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on May 17, 2012, 09:24:30 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on May 17, 2012, 07:50:22 pm

Never were. It was a display issue. (Tested this quite a bit myself. A "pine short sword" made from obsidian was far deadlier than a "(pine short sword sword)". It's simply useless against metal armour instead of being on par with steel like it was in 40d/

Actually, you're completely wrong - back in version 0.31.12, a "pine short sword" made at a craftsdwarf's workshop was identical to a "pine short sword" made at a smelter using a custom reaction. You may have thought they were different, but you were simply observing random variance.

All items in Dwarf Fortrress (aside from corpses, body parts, and other things such as fish and vermin) are made of a single material, and that material is used to determine both its appearance and its combat properties.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Captain Crazy on May 18, 2012, 09:25:59 pm

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jeoshua on May 19, 2012, 07:34:25 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 18, 2012, 09:25:59 pm

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

I would like to second ALL of that.  Put it up as a suggestion, it's a good one and pretty far reaching in it's scope for how simple it's principle really is.  In general the Raw format here could stand a lot more stuff like this, using already existing mechanics in new ways.  It would make having multiple races with various feels for their trade goods much easier.

Give Elves [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:ELF_PETS], and set up the elf pets quickly and efficiently, giving them fairies, pixies, wolves, and fluffy wamblers.  You could do the same with Goblins and make it so they only ever have pets like Trolls and Ogres, never Sheep or Peafowl.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 19, 2012, 08:13:35 am

I can say *cough* that the idea of using creature classes for domestic creatures and the like has come up in the suggestions forum at least twice. It is certainly something I'd like to see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 19, 2012, 02:06:40 pm

Great new release! With 0.34.08 I built a test track with the dwarf pushing the cart. On the current version, I tried a few systems where the dwarf rode the cart.

I noticed the stagnant water bug doesn't happen when the brook or stream or river is in a mountain biome, because of the lack of murky pools. I generally try to have a brook because it serves as a source of fish.

Will there be a second major hauling release in short order before the next major release that isn't just a bugfix release? That is, one where we may get increased functionality of wheelbarrows or animal hauling or extra vehicles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 19, 2012, 02:31:54 pm

Quote from: Jeoshua on May 19, 2012, 07:34:25 am

Quote from: Captain Crazy on May 18, 2012, 09:25:59 pm

Any ideas for using Creature Classes for entity's default domestic creatures? Creature Classes could be such a powerful thing if applied more.

Say, you give Beak Dogs, Grimelings, etc, the [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_PET] or [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL_WAR] and put something like [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:EVIL_PET] on the goblin's entity so they'd use that in their sieges. This could allow more customization than the standard evil/good/underground classification. A wierd gnome civ could even have robots with the creature class [CREATURE_CLASS:ROBOT_GNOME] so that they would acquire them automatically, while other entities cannot access them.

Maybe even 'plant classes', too. You could assign specific plants to entities. Dwarves would use their normal line-up. Goblins would use other subterranean plants like 'bloodworts' or 'killer caps' or something, all with the [PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] and associated [ALLOWED_PLANT_CLASS:GOBLIN] with the goblin's entity.

I would like to second ALL of that.  Put it up as a suggestion, it's a good one and pretty far reaching in it's scope for how simple it's principle really is.  In general the Raw format here could stand a lot more stuff like this, using already existing mechanics in new ways.  It would make having multiple races with various feels for their trade goods much easier.

Give Elves [ALLOWED_PET_CLASS:ELF_PETS], and set up the elf pets quickly and efficiently, giving them fairies, pixies, wolves, and fluffy wamblers.  You could do the same with Goblins and make it so they only ever have pets like Trolls and Ogres, never Sheep or Peafowl.

That is a good idea. I like any idea that gives different civ creatures more flavor without going extreme.

That also kind of fits my idea of creating creature groups to allow training of similar animals to be easier. I used the example of grizzly bear and black bear, learning to train one should help experience-wise in training the other. Creature classes could probably act as a system for doing that, if you can apply more than one class to a creature and if you could designate a class to be used or not for training as not all creature classes would be suitable for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 02:47:09 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on May 19, 2012, 02:31:54 pm

That also kind of fits my idea of creating creature groups to allow training of similar animals to be easier. I used the example of grizzly bear and black bear, learning to train one should help experience-wise in training the other. Creature classes could probably act as a system for doing that, if you can apply more than one class to a creature and if you could designate a class to be used or not for training as not all creature classes would be suitable for that.

We have suggestion threads (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104415.msg3087106#msg3087106) for that idea already...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 19, 2012, 07:16:52 pm

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 07:40:36 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 19, 2012, 07:16:52 pm

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv

Well, even if we were to think that Toady might have put things like the minecarts in without it being an ESV winner or talked about, which doesn't seem likely, since I don't recall it being in the old Devpages, then that doesn't mean he would have done the things people had talked about doing with minecarts.  In the course of the 34.08 hauling release, Toady seemed to be pretty obviously reading and considering the things people had discussed and reacting to them, accordingly.

Just because Toady might be thinking of doing something vaguely like what people are talking about doesn't mean that there isn't something that people can argue out through discussion isn't going to make what Toady makes better. 

If you have a quote from Toady where he's talking about how taming/training/creature domestication from worldgen of creatures is categorically or algorithmically handled by means other than just using common domestic tags or other tags we already have, I'd like to see it.  Otherwise, there's no reason to believe it's something he's actively considering at the moment, and that he'll simply not work on it again unless there is some reason he is forced to do so in order to solve some other problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on May 19, 2012, 09:55:57 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 07:40:36 pm

Well, even if we were to think that Toady might have put things like the minecarts in without it being an ESV winner or talked about, which doesn't seem likely, since I don't recall it being in the old Devpages, then that doesn't mean he would have done the things people had talked about doing with minecarts.

It was actually a core item.

Core56, IMPROVED FORTRESS TRANSPORTATION, (Future): Though there's always going to be room for improvement here, some basics are needed the first version. Work animals, carts or wheelbarrows, perhaps some more mechanical options, and the ability to organize stockpiles, workshops and other elements of the fortress so that transport of items can be done with less pain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on May 20, 2012, 01:22:06 am

Quote from: devlog

I adjusted the behavior of some screens when they are resized beyond 80x25 (lots more to do there).

I don't suppose you could elaborate a little more on that? Are we finally getting fullscreen support for menus such as the sitefinder?
That would absolutely make my day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Start of world gen:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/fullsite1.png)

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/fullsite2.png)

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 03:10:21 am

Awesome stuff Toady!

Were any of the list screens expanded too or not yet?
For example Units List, Jobs List, Trade Screen etc. They all like to cut long (dwarf or item) names and would greatly benefit from more space.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 03:19:07 am

I did units and jobs.  Pretty sure I didn't get to trade yet, but almost everything's on the list for the next few releases.  There's a batch of 15 or so screens which are messier because of some technical stuff that makes resizes on the fly a nightmare, but I don't think that includes the trade screen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 20, 2012, 03:37:08 am

This is so cool.

And I think I know why the local map can't be resized.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on May 20, 2012, 03:38:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Start of world gen:
[snip'd]

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:
[snip'd]

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

God damn but that's sexy. Been waiting for this for roughly 3 years, now :D :D :D

...WAIT. Dwarf Fortress's interface is now actively being improved? Is this the part where I wake up and find out that the previous year or so was just an incredibly-elaborate dream? 'Cause I did some important stuff this year :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 20, 2012, 04:35:41 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on May 20, 2012, 03:38:39 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Start of world gen:
[snip'd]

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:
[snip'd]

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

God damn but that's sexy. Been waiting for this for roughly 3 years, now :D :D :D

...WAIT. Dwarf Fortress's interface is now actively being improved? Is this the part where I wake up and find out that the previous year or so was just an incredibly-elaborate dream? 'Cause I did some important stuff this year :(

The UI has received incremental improvements over the last couple of years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on May 20, 2012, 04:43:38 am

This is amazing.
Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 05:18:48 am

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 07:40:36 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 19, 2012, 07:16:52 pm

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv

Well, even if we were to think that Toady might have put things like the minecarts in without it being an ESV winner or talked about, which doesn't seem likely, since I don't recall it being in the old Devpages, then that doesn't mean he would have done the things people had talked about doing with minecarts.  In the course of the 34.08 hauling release, Toady seemed to be pretty obviously reading and considering the things people had discussed and reacting to them, accordingly.

Just because Toady might be thinking of doing something vaguely like what people are talking about doesn't mean that there isn't something that people can argue out through discussion isn't going to make what Toady makes better. 

If you have a quote from Toady where he's talking about how taming/training/creature domestication from worldgen of creatures is categorically or algorithmically handled by means other than just using common domestic tags or other tags we already have, I'd like to see it.  Otherwise, there's no reason to believe it's something he's actively considering at the moment, and that he'll simply not work on it again unless there is some reason he is forced to do so in order to solve some other problem.

for the hauling Sizik pulled out something already. for the training of animals which are similar, like grizzlies and black bears: everyone will think of that and since "everyone" includes toady and threetoe its going into the game. then the esv, look at the next 3 items from the top:

-standing production orders
-improved pathfinder
-workshop material selection

its so incredibly obvious those things will be done anyway at some point(where its reasonable), why do people even waste their votes for that? in those 3 points are 3600 votes not going for something that might not ever get into the game if nobody votes for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 20, 2012, 05:23:43 am

Quote from: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 05:18:48 am

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 07:40:36 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 19, 2012, 07:16:52 pm

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv

Well, even if we were to think that Toady might have put things like the minecarts in without it being an ESV winner or talked about, which doesn't seem likely, since I don't recall it being in the old Devpages, then that doesn't mean he would have done the things people had talked about doing with minecarts.  In the course of the 34.08 hauling release, Toady seemed to be pretty obviously reading and considering the things people had discussed and reacting to them, accordingly.

Just because Toady might be thinking of doing something vaguely like what people are talking about doesn't mean that there isn't something that people can argue out through discussion isn't going to make what Toady makes better. 

If you have a quote from Toady where he's talking about how taming/training/creature domestication from worldgen of creatures is categorically or algorithmically handled by means other than just using common domestic tags or other tags we already have, I'd like to see it.  Otherwise, there's no reason to believe it's something he's actively considering at the moment, and that he'll simply not work on it again unless there is some reason he is forced to do so in order to solve some other problem.

for the hauling Sizik pulled out something already. for the training of animals which are similar, like grizzlies and black bears: everyone will think of that and since "everyone" includes toady and threetoe its going into the game. then the esv, look at the next 3 items from the top:

-standing production orders
-improved pathfinder
-workshop material selection

its so incredibly obvious those things will be done anyway at some point(where its reasonable), why do people even waste their votes for that? in those 3 points are 3600 votes not going for something that might not ever get into the game if nobody votes for them.

While, I agree that those 3 were going to be going into the game eventually, (and number 2 will probably be happening couple more times) the ESV is pretty close to a temperature gauge of the community. Out of these things that'll probably be included in the game at some point (I know that not everything on the esv will eventually be in the game, but a good portion of them will be), which one do you want in sooner then later?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 05:50:58 am

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 20, 2012, 05:23:43 am

Quote from: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 05:18:48 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 07:40:36 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 19, 2012, 07:16:52 pm

isnt stuff like that going into the game later on anyway, even if nobody here ever talks about it? i also think thats the case for like 95% of the esv

Well, even if we were to think that Toady might have put things like the minecarts in without it being an ESV winner or talked about, which doesn't seem likely, since I don't recall it being in the old Devpages, then that doesn't mean he would have done the things people had talked about doing with minecarts.  In the course of the 34.08 hauling release, Toady seemed to be pretty obviously reading and considering the things people had discussed and reacting to them, accordingly.

Just because Toady might be thinking of doing something vaguely like what people are talking about doesn't mean that there isn't something that people can argue out through discussion isn't going to make what Toady makes better. 

If you have a quote from Toady where he's talking about how taming/training/creature domestication from worldgen of creatures is categorically or algorithmically handled by means other than just using common domestic tags or other tags we already have, I'd like to see it.  Otherwise, there's no reason to believe it's something he's actively considering at the moment, and that he'll simply not work on it again unless there is some reason he is forced to do so in order to solve some other problem.

for the hauling Sizik pulled out something already. for the training of animals which are similar, like grizzlies and black bears: everyone will think of that and since "everyone" includes toady and threetoe its going into the game. then the esv, look at the next 3 items from the top:

-standing production orders
-improved pathfinder
-workshop material selection

its so incredibly obvious those things will be done anyway at some point(where its reasonable), why do people even waste their votes for that? in those 3 points are 3600 votes not going for something that might not ever get into the game if nobody votes for them.

While, I agree that those 3 were going to be going into the game eventually, (and number 2 will probably be happening couple more times) the ESV is pretty close to a temperature gauge of the community. Out of these things that'll probably be included in the game at some point (I know that not everything on the esv will eventually be in the game, but a good portion of them will be), which one do you want in sooner then later?

but wouldnt 2 separate voting-lists be more appropriate? one for "this is not planned, but we want to see it in" and one for "wed like to see the planned features rather be implemented in this order than that one". the way it is now those completely different listings interfere with each other.

edit: ive looked at the esv again and i noticed it needs to be refreshed. there are redundancies and obsolete(already implemented) suggestions. so when clearing those things up, one might consider splitting it into a suggestion and a development-priority part at the same time, for more efficiency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on May 20, 2012, 09:09:53 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/fullsite2.png)

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

That looks good.  The region map is kind of the most important for fining a site, or at least it's where I do most of the looking around when I'm picking a site.  A bigger view is great because it feels less cramped and you can see a lot more of what's around the fort. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on May 20, 2012, 09:17:30 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/fullsite2.png)

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

It is great!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 09:23:43 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2012, 02:58:12 am

Finding a site and potentially visiting the elves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/fullsite2.png)

The world map is smaller since it tends to grow in pops (I think so it samples uniform areas, the code is old).  I didn't grow the local one because showing a larger adventure mode view there would lag the cursor, and the larger region map will probably be the most important anyway.

what about the edges of the local field? sometimes a good embark position is with one half on one local map and with the other half on the next, but since moving the local map has no overlapping, those embark-areas can never be used, will this change with your current work?

(edit: also i recommend some rearranging of the maps, so it doesnt look like   .|I   but more like Ii    )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on May 20, 2012, 09:41:37 am

So what is next after the minecart bugfix ? Multi-tile trees and elf retreats ? Animal caretaker being fixed ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 09:56:34 am

Quote from: Naryar on May 20, 2012, 09:41:37 am

So what is next after the minecart bugfix ? Multi-tile trees and elf retreats ? Animal caretaker being fixed ?

Hopefully equipment / military bugs will get fixed. These are the most annoying bugs in current version and they are scoring rank #1 in worst bugs vote for quite some time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 20, 2012, 10:02:40 am

Quote from: eux0r on May 20, 2012, 09:23:43 am

what about the edges of the local field? sometimes a good embark position is with one half on one local map and with the other half on the next, but since moving the local map has no overlapping, those embark-areas can never be used, will this change with your current work?

Toady is working on the display issues with regards to window sizes there. Allowing fortress mode sites to sit between local maps is not related to that, so it's unlikely that he did any work with that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on May 20, 2012, 10:03:14 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 09:56:34 am

Quote from: Naryar on May 20, 2012, 09:41:37 am

So what is next after the minecart bugfix ? Multi-tile trees and elf retreats ? Animal caretaker being fixed ?

Hopefully equipment / military bugs will get fixed. These are the most annoying bugs in current version and they are scoring rank #1 in worst bugs vote for quite some time.

It may be quite complex as there are legions of subbugs (#535 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=535) is with 31 open children).

EDIT: -green

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on May 20, 2012, 04:45:07 pm

for the trade screens, how about allowing rotation to two horizontal panes, rather than the current two vertical?

Can you now zoom with the mouse scroll on the site finder?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 20, 2012, 05:41:56 pm

Actually, for the actual trade screen, having a categorical view, like the one in the stocks/stockpile/trade negotiation screen would be a godsend. 

Currently, looking through the trade screen can take a half hour or even an hour of looking through various items to find the ones you want if there are enough goods for trade.  Even scrolling through a large enough caravan's goods can take a couple minutes. 

Having a one button "mark for trade all metal bars" or "mark for trade all steel bars" would make trading much easier. 

(Of course, I still think having a "standing order for this material type" would be an even better solution, especially with tavern visitor trade coming up...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 07:40:05 pm

I agree with what Kohaku said.
Trade Screen is the most tedious to use part of the UI atm. One caravan can easily have hundreds of items and browsing it all with the current UI is a real pain. Any sort of sorting / grouping / filtering / mass selecting would be great.
The "Bring items to Depot" screen is quite good already and is a nice example - has 2 sorting options, grouping and filtering by string.

Quote from: Kogut on May 20, 2012, 10:03:14 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 09:56:34 am

Hopefully equipment / military bugs will get fixed. These are the most annoying bugs in current version and they are scoring rank #1 in worst bugs vote for quite some time.

It may be quite complex as there are legions of subbugs (#535 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=535) is with 31 open children).

Yes I know all this. It only shows how bugged the military and equipment is once you try to use its features.
But a lot of the bugs is already quite well tested and understood so this can help Toady a lot once he starts fixing them.

Some of them that bother me personally the most:
#1451 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1451) Military equipment interferes with civilian equipment (one dwarf can't use the same axe for both woodcutting and axedwarfing, miners and woodcutters can't wear their military uniform when civilian)
#4932 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4932) Dwarves try to equip armor in order of its production instead of in order specified by uniform (this means they end up with cloaks instead of with breastplate)
#5485 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5485) Assigning "specific weapon / armor" doesn't show which items are already assigned
#4530 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4530) Marksdwarves won't train with training bolts unless combat bolts all used up

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ApolloCVermouth on May 20, 2012, 09:51:25 pm

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 07:40:05 pm

#5485 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5485) Assigning "specific weapon / armor" doesn't show which items are already assigned

Oh please let me see what eqipment has already been assigned!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on May 21, 2012, 04:58:33 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 20, 2012, 07:40:05 pm

I agree with what Kohaku said.
Trade Screen is the most tedious to use part of the UI atm. One caravan can easily have hundreds of items and browsing it all with the current UI is a real pain. Any sort of sorting / grouping / filtering / mass selecting would be great.
The "Bring items to Depot" screen is quite good already and is a nice example - has 2 sorting options, grouping and filtering by string.

And it would be nice to have the same/similar screen for the same/similar things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 21, 2012, 12:17:37 pm

Quote from: Kogut on May 21, 2012, 04:58:33 am

And it would be nice to have the same/similar screen for the same/similar things.

And unified keybindings! As is, their layout is sometimes fairly arbitrary. For example, viewing a unit is Z in some places, V in others, and something else in others. BUT since thats something which we can fully customize at this point, I'm not complaining.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 21, 2012, 01:44:08 pm

I think what Toady needs to do is have a new type of equip called "Clothe" where the adventurer or dwarf instead of trying to put on socks over shoes they instead go "Huh, if I put this sock under my shoes it will fit"

BOOM! done... complete. No hassle. Enough of this layer play in both modes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on May 21, 2012, 05:28:20 pm

I can only agree with what's been said already. The biggest problem with DF's interface and controls is consistency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jeoshua on May 21, 2012, 07:14:18 pm

What are the chances that the 0.35.x series will be a "Fix the Things That Have Broken Over The Years" arc?

We have plenty of game mechanics that were once in the game but have been broken, removed, or taken out.

Blood Splatter
Mountainhomes and Dark Fortresses
The Economy
Cave-ins and Support
etc etc

There are plenty of examples and it would be nice to see some of the complexity they showed be revisited or fixed up for the current game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 21, 2012, 08:27:02 pm

The economy didn't so much "break" as Toady just admitted it was always not really working without a proper supply/demand model so that dwarves wouldn't go broke from you making the housing too nice for them to afford, or that whole coin management fiasco. 

Mountainhomes and dark fortresses I eagerly await, but they weren't so much "broken" as just not really functional and removed when the new city stuff was being implemented. 

They're both things that are supposed to be coming "soon" with the caravan arc things that are still at least hypothetically in the near future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on May 21, 2012, 08:40:34 pm

Do you have a vague idea of what's going to be next after this round of bugstomping?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Finn on May 22, 2012, 12:53:13 am

Re: modeling s/d economies.  I have a little experience with that from my thesis work and various personal experiments later in life.  It is easiest to do in a multi-player environment, like the almost forgotten Ultima Online, although the economy tended  to be highly volitile.  For games like Everquest, Star Wars Galaxy and later, WoW, their economies were more regulated behind the scenes to create stability.   WoW appeared to be relatively heavily monitored compared to the others..  For a stand-alone simulation like DF you would need to model the consumption of the individual "off map" dwarves, along with their ability to supply themselves.  (You can't have the player be the sole source for stone goblets in the world.). You also need to model the production/ supply of whatever is being used for currency, because in the end it's all barter and Dwarfbucks might as well be gold, sea shells, or dirt.

Sorry, I know I'm rambling.  I was drinking and watching the V8 supercars race from the weekend.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 22, 2012, 01:06:46 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on May 21, 2012, 08:40:34 pm

Do you have a vague idea of what's going to be next after this round of bugstomping?

Something from the remaining eight Caravan Arc release goals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abitbol on May 22, 2012, 01:43:09 am

Worldgen moved to actual play would be a nice feature

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 22, 2012, 04:30:54 am

that wouldn't be "a" feature but a bazillion of them. many things happen in an abstracted way during worldgen and they'd probably need a serious rewrite to work with fortress mode or adventurer time

Quote from: Jeoshua on May 21, 2012, 07:14:18 pm

Mountainhomes and Dark Fortresses
The Economy
Cave-ins and Support

these too would have to be completely rewritten, they wouldn't  be a "fix something that is broken" but a "write a completely new system"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 22, 2012, 03:45:29 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 22, 2012, 04:30:54 am

that wouldn't be "a" feature but a bazillion of them. many things happen in an abstracted way during worldgen and they'd probably need a serious rewrite to work with fortress mode or adventurer time

Quote from: Jeoshua on May 21, 2012, 07:14:18 pm

Mountainhomes and Dark Fortresses
The Economy
Cave-ins and Support

these too would have to be completely rewritten, they wouldn't  be a "fix something that is broken" but a "write a completely new system"

They're not broken to begin with. Each of those system are working as intended, or removed as intended.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: raiker123 on May 22, 2012, 07:22:21 pm

Quote from: Naryar on May 20, 2012, 09:41:37 am

So what is next after the minecart bugfix ? Multi-tile trees and elf retreats ? Animal caretaker being fixed ?

From the DF talk or fortress talk or whatever Toady sounded like he's going to be working on bugs for quite a while. as in, not just the bugs tied in to the minecart stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 22, 2012, 07:27:11 pm

Quote from: raiker123 on May 22, 2012, 07:22:21 pm

Quote from: Naryar on May 20, 2012, 09:41:37 am

So what is next after the minecart bugfix ? Multi-tile trees and elf retreats ? Animal caretaker being fixed ?

From the DF talk or fortress talk or whatever Toady sounded like he's going to be working on bugs for quite a while. as in, not just the bugs tied in to the minecart stuff.

Meaning what's actually going to happen is we get bug-fixes from random places until something sparks the creativity of the toad, and he start feature building again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on May 23, 2012, 03:32:38 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 22, 2012, 03:45:29 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 22, 2012, 04:30:54 am

that wouldn't be "a" feature but a bazillion of them. many things happen in an abstracted way during worldgen and they'd probably need a serious rewrite to work with fortress mode or adventurer time

Quote from: Jeoshua on May 21, 2012, 07:14:18 pm

Mountainhomes and Dark Fortresses
The Economy
Cave-ins and Support

these too would have to be completely rewritten, they wouldn't  be a "fix something that is broken" but a "write a completely new system"

They're not broken to begin with. Each of those system are working as intended, or removed as intended.

I think he means we used to have semi-working placeholders, will we get those back? And the answer is probably: no, you'll get something way better that actually works, but that'll take a bit of time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abitbol on May 23, 2012, 07:08:55 am

The way dark fortresses work is quite abstract to me. Is there some kind of conflict if the population of non-goblins is important ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on May 23, 2012, 11:42:30 am

Quote from: MaximumZero on May 21, 2012, 08:40:34 pm

Do you have a vague idea of what's going to be next after this round of bugstomping?

Actually, he mentioned a lot of stuff in the DF talk.

Basically he sort of wants to continue with the caravan stuff but the  lack of sites for non-human races is feeling like an eyesore to him now. And he mentions that first he'd need to do multi-tile trees...

So I'd guess multi-tile trees. and then worked out sites for non-humans. and then maybe, just maybe three dimensional veins?

EDIT:I guess that means dark fortresses are probably gonna be worked on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Courtesy Arloban on May 23, 2012, 02:02:46 pm

Are the multitile trees going to use the single line rivers, or the double line rivers, and can we change them?  My tileset would look fine with the single line rivers as branches(I already use them for wormy tendrils), but the double lines would look horrible.

Also how would the trees be differentiated from each other?  And what would be done with the current tree tiles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 23, 2012, 02:43:13 pm

Quote from: therahedwig on May 23, 2012, 11:42:30 am

and then maybe, just maybe three dimensional veins?

I would hope not. I dont like the idea of having to destroy multiple levels (eyesorewise) instead of just one. I also am not thrilled about having to deal with 3D mines, because I am currently being able to view the world only in a single 2D layer at once (and only in x and y).

I do hope that this will be a worldgen option, though. That way everyone gets something they like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on May 23, 2012, 03:41:06 pm

I really hope dwarf sites get mine carts zipping around in adventure mode.  Mine carts have become the number one cause of hilarity injury in my fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 23, 2012, 05:49:26 pm

Quote from: Elone on May 23, 2012, 02:43:13 pm

Quote from: therahedwig on May 23, 2012, 11:42:30 am

and then maybe, just maybe three dimensional veins?

I would hope not. I dont like the idea of having to destroy multiple levels (eyesorewise) instead of just one. I also am not thrilled about having to deal with 3D mines, because I am currently being able to view the world only in a single 2D layer at once (and only in x and y).

I do hope that this will be a worldgen option, though. That way everyone gets something they like.

I dont think it can be.  It'll probably be a change in the raw to direct control their generation. So you'll probably need to swap out raws.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 23, 2012, 06:18:59 pm

It'll probably be a total rewrite of the way veins work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on May 23, 2012, 10:22:31 pm

This is a bit of a complicated question.

1. Toady, do you have any plans as to when (i.e. which caravan arc release) you will reintroduce dark fortresses, mountain halls, and forest retreats?
2. If not, what kinds of things will you add before reintroducing them? I recall you saying that forest retreats would probably wait for multi-tile trees, but are there similar "requirements" for before you re-add in mountain halls and dark fortresses?
3. Once you add them back in, how much will mountain halls, dark fortresses, and forest retreats benifet from the sorts of changes you made to towns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 23, 2012, 10:25:04 pm

1. By the time the caravan arc is over. Toady doesn't do timelines :P
2. Probably multi-layer veins for mountain halls and I'm not sure for dark fortresses.
3. Probably lots. I'd be interested in seeing underground markets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 23, 2012, 11:25:35 pm

I'd really like to see as much raw-control over the new city types as possible, though.  I hope that we can have the ability to mod distinct civs that have slight variations in architecture.  In fact, I'd like to see a control where you can have civs procedurally react to different climates or other stimuli where they will build their houses one way in hot climates and another way in cold climates (like having steeply sloped roofs in places where heavy snowfall occurs). 

For that matter, I'd like to see more rules for the procedural generation of the caverns, so that they don't all look so much alike.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 24, 2012, 02:16:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 23, 2012, 11:25:35 pm

I'd really like to see as much raw-control over the new city types as possible, though.  I hope that we can have the ability to mod distinct civs that have slight variations in architecture.  In fact, I'd like to see a control where you can have civs procedurally react to different climates or other stimuli where they will build their houses one way in hot climates and another way in cold climates (like having steeply sloped roofs in places where heavy snowfall occurs). 

For that matter, I'd like to see more rules for the procedural generation of the caverns, so that they don't all look so much alike.

We probably won't see that until after we see the first script-able procedural creature generators at the very least. Toady still needs to actually figure out a standard by which to structure whatever kind of script he comes up with for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 24, 2012, 03:23:23 am

If he comes up with one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 24, 2012, 10:40:01 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on May 24, 2012, 02:16:28 am

We probably won't see that until after we see the first script-able procedural creature generators at the very least. Toady still needs to actually figure out a standard by which to structure whatever kind of script he comes up with for that.

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 24, 2012, 03:23:23 am

If he comes up with one.

Which is why I'd like to bring the topic up from time-to-time.  This whole thing would be much easier if he builds the procedural rules while keeping in mind the notion that he would want to make this raw-modifiable eventually, if not from the outset. 

We have some control over how caverns are formed in the worldgen options, after all, so having some parameters for player control isn't unprecedented, here. 

Raw-editable changes to the procedures for generating procedural creatures would be nice, and all, but changes to the way procedural citybuilding (or, say, procedural magic systems) takes place would have a much greater impact upon the ability for the player to really make their worlds feel different and reactive to the way they set their worlds up.

One of the major reasons I stopped modding DF was that I really couldn't create any sort of civ or creatures that weren't basically just humans or dwarves, because the game just isn't built to handle anything but dwarves with slight variations. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on May 24, 2012, 07:50:10 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on May 23, 2012, 10:22:31 pm

1. Toady, do you have any plans as to when (i.e. which caravan arc release) you will reintroduce dark fortresses, mountain halls, and forest retreats?

Unless something has changed since he last discussed it, there is no plan that specific.

Quote

2. If not, what kinds of things will you add before reintroducing them? I recall you saying that forest retreats would probably wait for multi-tile trees, but are there similar "requirements" for before you re-add in mountain halls and dark fortresses?

He has not mentioned any other requirements. It is reasonable to assume that none are particularly large endeavors, at least not on the level of multi-tile trees.

Quote

3. Once you add them back in, how much will mountain halls, dark fortresses, and forest retreats benifet from the sorts of changes you made to towns?

It is probable that they will be quite different, to the extent that most layout code won't be reused, but code regarding the tracking of goods and whatnot will probably be the same.
[/quote]

Quote from: Putnam on May 23, 2012, 10:25:04 pm

1. By the time the caravan arc is over. Toady doesn't do timelines :P

Toady does timelines. There's one on the dev page right now. It doesn't include non-human cities, but it's going to be reworked. It would be accurate to say that Toady doesn't stick closely to his timelines, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 24, 2012, 07:51:19 pm

No, I mean "in x weeks" or "in x months".

His timelines are "a while" and "soon".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 24, 2012, 09:49:06 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 24, 2012, 07:51:19 pm

No, I mean "in x weeks" or "in x months".

His timelines are "a while" and "soon".

With the definition of "soon" being "the next year or so"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on May 25, 2012, 12:31:06 am

Quote from: monk12 on May 24, 2012, 09:49:06 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 24, 2012, 07:51:19 pm

No, I mean "in x weeks" or "in x months".
His timelines are "a while" and "soon".

With the definition of "soon" being "the next year or so"

All devs are generally pretty notorious for that. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thief^ on May 25, 2012, 03:28:50 am

Quote from: Chronas on May 25, 2012, 12:31:06 am

Quote from: monk12 on May 24, 2012, 09:49:06 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 24, 2012, 07:51:19 pm

No, I mean "in x weeks" or "in x months".
His timelines are "a while" and "soon".

With the definition of "soon" being "the next year or so"

All devs are generally pretty notorious for that. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon)

Most notably Valve: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 27, 2012, 12:09:35 am

I guess I have a question for Toady

Toady have you ever felt like you would rather keep a placeholder in the game as it was, instead of doing the planned updates later? I am actually reminded of the Good and Evil lands and how you actually seem to have a more solid idea of how they work then the planned Sphere lands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 27, 2012, 09:24:13 pm

Quote from: devlog

wall/floodgate/etc. builders often make more reasonable decisions about where to stand to avoid walling themselves in

Quote from: devlog

builders make reasonable decisions to avoid walling themselves in

Quote from: devlog

builders avoid walling themselves in

...

<builds temple of the Great Toad>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 27, 2012, 09:29:18 pm

I... but.... what... HOW!

No, really, how do wall/floodgate/etc builders make a decision about where to stand?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on May 27, 2012, 09:34:12 pm

Btw:

Do dwarves who deconstruct floors or bridges or do similar actions also make better decision where to stand to avoid ending on isolated "island"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 27, 2012, 09:52:19 pm

My guess is that when they chose where to stand for building it, they pretend the wall is built when pathing, thus ensuring they will be able to go back to wherever they were before building the wall.

At least, that's how I'd do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 27, 2012, 10:04:31 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 27, 2012, 09:52:19 pm

My guess is that when they chose where to stand for building it, they pretend the wall is built when pathing, thus ensuring they will be able to go back to wherever they were before building the wall.

At least, that's how I'd do it.

Suggesting that if you wall off a north passage that's two tiles wide, and both masons go handle it together, they'll each thing they'll finish before the other, and -both- get walled in!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on May 27, 2012, 10:04:52 pm

now if only miners would pick the closest mining job instead of the one to the northwest and didn't walk all the way around a wall just to mine something from the "correct" side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 27, 2012, 10:21:03 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on May 27, 2012, 10:04:31 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 27, 2012, 09:52:19 pm

My guess is that when they chose where to stand for building it, they pretend the wall is built when pathing, thus ensuring they will be able to go back to wherever they were before building the wall.

At least, that's how I'd do it.

Suggesting that if you wall off a north passage that's two tiles wide, and both masons go handle it together, they'll each thing they'll finish before the other, and -both- get walled in!

They keep track of the first valid square they walk through from the beginning of the job, and then use that when they have the material.  That stops it from taking the hit on doing extra pathing checks, but I don't think it would be easy to avoid many simultaneous jobs that have a potentially complicated configuration from walling people in.  Outside factors can still cause trouble.  That's virtually unavoidable.  In the two wall case, if one of the walls is finished while the other dwarf is still fishing for stone off in the dead-end AND the first square they walked in wasn't the good square but the other wall's square, then they will still make the mistake.  Doing the extra pathing calculation is not possible without killing the processor the way things are set up, but they'll also often make the correct decision in multi-wall cases (whereas they'd often be systematically failing them before).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 27, 2012, 10:25:08 pm

Very interesting! I do like hearing about this kind of stuff, though I'm hardly the first to say so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on May 28, 2012, 03:15:02 am

Hm, I'm wondering if the whole problem of dwarves selecting items by linear distance, without taking obstacles into account, could be slightly improved without additional fps cost simply by applying a fixed weight multiplier (or increment; possibly configurable) to z axis movement. The rationale is that moving between z levels often involves additional distance due to stairs or ramps never being placed on every single tile. I.e. count every z level as equivalent 2-3 horizontal tiles, or something like that. This should at least prevent dwarves running all the way to the layer immediately below, when there is an item 2 tiles away.

Edit: the most flexible distance tweak formula is probably base cost + smaller multiplier * z delta; it sort of accounts for the fact that once you get to the staircase it gets easier to navigate, so a lot of the cost is in the initial decision to move vertically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on May 28, 2012, 03:22:05 am

Quote from: ag on May 28, 2012, 03:15:02 am

Hm, I'm wondering if the whole problem of dwarves selecting items by linear distance, without taking obstacles into account, could be slightly improved without additional fps cost simply by applying a fixed weight multiplier (or increment; possibly configurable) to z axis movement. The rationale is that moving between z levels often involves additional distance due to stairs or ramps never being placed on every single tile. I.e. count every z level as equivalent 2-3 horizontal tiles, or something like that. This should at least prevent dwarves running all the way to the layer immediately below, when there is an item 2 tiles away.

hmm... this seems like a decent idea, might cause a little extra preformance overhead, but it could work for those short trips turning into 3 mile trips.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on May 28, 2012, 04:02:44 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on May 27, 2012, 09:24:13 pm

Quote from: devlog

wall/floodgate/etc. builders often make more reasonable decisions about where to stand to avoid walling themselves in

Quote from: devlog

builders make reasonable decisions to avoid walling themselves in

Quote from: devlog

builders avoid walling themselves in

...

<builds temple of the Great Toad>

This alone makes whatever Toady's working on worth it.

The current version of DF is giving us some damn good fixes and nice new stuff to play with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on May 28, 2012, 05:10:01 am

Quote

wall/floodgate/etc. builders often make more reasonable decisions about where to stand to avoid walling themselves in

HOLY CHRIST!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on May 28, 2012, 05:57:46 am

An era ends.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://s14.directupload.net/images/120528/wdn5pnx9.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: vidboi on May 28, 2012, 06:08:54 am

Will the new 'where to stand' mechanisms apply to mining, smoothing and engraving designations as well as constructed buildings?

Something I'd like to see is miners mining the square next to them from where they are rather than running round a whole load of tunnels to get a better position, or engravers actually smoothing and engraving from inside the fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 28, 2012, 10:47:12 am

That would be cool but it could also be an opportunity to rework how which side to smooth/engrave from works in general.  Because only the side engraved from gets the value bonus from engravings, it can be a pain in the ass to get engravers to engrave a noble's room and not the other side of the bloody wall. 

Currently if you want to completely engrave a room you have to make the walls 2 tiles thick on the north and west sides, or block access to the other side of the wall.   And if you screw it up, theirs no backsies, best you can do is tear down the wall, and either use a utility to cheat in some obsidian to try again, or replace the wall with some valuable materiel constructed walls.

I can't think of a good way to do that without complicating the way to designate engravings by 5 though.  Maybe if they preferred to smooth or engrave from another tile designated for smoothing or engraving... but that wouldn't catch all cases...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 28, 2012, 12:27:21 pm

Quote from: Greiger on May 28, 2012, 10:47:12 am

That would be cool but it could also be an opportunity to rework how which side to smooth/engrave from works in general.  Because only the side engraved from gets the value bonus from engravings, it can be a pain in the ass to get engravers to engrave a noble's room and not the other side of the bloody wall. 

Are you sure? I don't think that's true...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 28, 2012, 12:38:20 pm

Quote from: vidboi on May 28, 2012, 06:08:54 am

Will the new 'where to stand' mechanisms apply to mining, smoothing and engraving designations as well as constructed buildings?

Something I'd like to see is miners mining the square next to them from where they are rather than running round a whole load of tunnels to get a better position, or engravers actually smoothing and engraving from inside the fortress.

As how Toady has describe it, it doesnt have any application for those jobs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on May 28, 2012, 01:29:27 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 28, 2012, 12:27:21 pm

Quote from: Greiger on May 28, 2012, 10:47:12 am

That would be cool but it could also be an opportunity to rework how which side to smooth/engrave from works in general.  Because only the side engraved from gets the value bonus from engravings, it can be a pain in the ass to get engravers to engrave a noble's room and not the other side of the bloody wall.

Are you sure? I don't think that's true...

That's what I was thinking.  As far as I'm aware, the wall is completely engraved on all sides, even though it's the same image from any perspective, thus all adjoining rooms that include the engraved wall get the value bonus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 28, 2012, 01:45:31 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 28, 2012, 12:27:21 pm

Quote from: Greiger on May 28, 2012, 10:47:12 am

That would be cool but it could also be an opportunity to rework how which side to smooth/engrave from works in general.  Because only the side engraved from gets the value bonus from engravings, it can be a pain in the ass to get engravers to engrave a noble's room and not the other side of the bloody wall. 

Are you sure? I don't think that's true...

From an old post from Toady, at least it used to be true. Whether it still is, I don't know. The test would be to have a bedroom with a locked door, check its relative value in the Rooms screen, then smooth its walls (which would then be engraved from the outside), then check the resulting relative value, and then repeat with engraving. I want to say that I think I've seen the engravings to both sides, but again, I don't know for sure. It might have just been smoothing.

Title: Dwarf AI
Post by: Uristocrat on May 28, 2012, 03:26:57 pm

Love the work on fixing the dwarven AI!

Have you had any luck fixing the cases where dwarves have a valid square right next to them, but insist on mining it out from the other side because of the set order in which they consider valid squares?  If I'm not mistaken, most of the time that would be fixable by having them prefer the closest valid square, where "closeness" is defined as abs(dwarf.x - destination.x) + abs(dwarf.y - destination.y) + abs(dwarf.z - destination.z), which is much simpler than a full path.  Or is there some case where that heuristic fails?  It seems to work for the common cases I have where you're mining out hallways, at least.  There are other possible AI improvements, too, like having your miners get "first dibs" on any new mining jobs created when they mine out a square.

And speaking of AI, what if the goblin squads automatically "promote" the next goblin in line whenever the leader is killed or unable to move (caged, no legs, etc.)?  Then they could keep their follow the leader logic and just have a new leader to follow.  Or are there complications that make those ideas unworkable?

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: Willfor on May 28, 2012, 03:31:16 pm

Quote from: Uristocrat on May 28, 2012, 03:26:57 pm

And speaking of AI, what if the goblin squads automatically "promote" the next goblin in line whenever the leader is killed or unable to move (caged, no legs, etc.)?  Then they could keep their follow the leader logic and just have a new leader to follow.  Or are there complications that make those ideas unworkable?

Speaking from a simulational aesthetics point of view, I would rather this only happen if there is a goblin with a leadership-type personality to take over. If there is no goblin with a clear leadership personality left, they shouldn't do this. Or if there are many, but without a clear mandate, they should have a small power struggle before they can regroup, causing dissension in the ranks.

I know this doesn't sit well with the "game" side of it, but if he's going to change it, I'd want it moved more towards the simulation/story aspect than toward the game aspect.

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: Chronas on May 28, 2012, 06:57:56 pm

Quote from: Willfor on May 28, 2012, 03:31:16 pm

Speaking from a simulational aesthetics point of view, I would rather this only happen if there is a goblin with a leadership-type personality to take over. If there is no goblin with a clear leadership personality left, they shouldn't do this. Or if there are many, but without a clear mandate, they should have a small power struggle before they can regroup, causing dissension in the ranks.
I know this doesn't sit well with the "game" side of it, but if he's going to change it, I'd want it moved more towards the simulation/story aspect than toward the game aspect.

I'd consider that a game aspect. Drop a minecart loaded with a forgotten beast onto their leader and watch them kill each other over who gets to lead everyone down the corridor of deathtraps they seem so keen to stand on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 29, 2012, 01:10:26 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on May 28, 2012, 01:45:31 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 28, 2012, 12:27:21 pm

Quote from: Greiger on May 28, 2012, 10:47:12 am

That would be cool but it could also be an opportunity to rework how which side to smooth/engrave from works in general.  Because only the side engraved from gets the value bonus from engravings, it can be a pain in the ass to get engravers to engrave a noble's room and not the other side of the bloody wall. 

Are you sure? I don't think that's true...

From an old post from Toady, at least it used to be true. Whether it still is, I don't know. The test would be to have a bedroom with a locked door, check its relative value in the Rooms screen, then smooth its walls (which would then be engraved from the outside), then check the resulting relative value, and then repeat with engraving. I want to say that I think I've seen the engravings to both sides, but again, I don't know for sure. It might have just been smoothing.

That's a greenable question. From what I recall, only one side of the wall is actually "engraved", but I am not sure how that works mechanically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 29, 2012, 01:15:39 am

From some forays into memory hacking, each engraving keeps track of which sides of the wall it's engraved on. You can see which sides those are in stonesense, but I'm not sure how that effects room value.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 29, 2012, 09:57:04 am

Well, at least now I don't feel stupid for making sure all my walls are at least two tiles thick.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 29, 2012, 12:19:04 pm

Interestingly enough, it is possible for an engraving to be on more than one side of the wall at a time. It just doesn't happen in normal play.

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: nidpants on May 29, 2012, 08:01:12 pm

You've addressed some of the clumsiness of stockpiles by adding additional features and making lists scale beyond the native window size (PHEW). Is this just incidental to bugsweeping and implementation of hauling improvement, or is this part of a larger near-future framework of increasing usability in the next few releases? I realize you have a total usability overhaul planned for after the caravan arc at least, but I absolutely love the improvements you made to stockpiles and hauling so far in 0.34.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 29, 2012, 11:04:37 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 29, 2012, 12:19:04 pm

Interestingly enough, it is possible for an engraving to be on more than one side of the wall at a time. It just doesn't happen in normal play.

If you hack in a quadruple engraved wall, and then look at it with 'k' while in normal game, what happens? Does only the first/last show up? Do all four show up one after the other? Does the game simply crash?


It makes me wonder if we could have multi engraving added in at some point. Perhaps the interface can be as simple as "when you designate an area to be engraved, any tile with one accessible surface gets an engraving." Thus, in a manner not unlike how strait tracks can be carved into t-junctions and then cross junctions, the "engraved" pillar just starts blinking again until the carver gets up to the clean face. Floors seem like they would only have the one clean surface to engrave, which would have the side-effect of encouraging pillars in your dining halls, for more engravable, value-raising planes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on May 30, 2012, 01:19:15 am

Quote from: Devlog

creatures not safe from fire will run out of lethally hot squares

Is this related to my dwarfs not getting out of the way of oncoming magma?

I wasn't sure if the new, suicidal behavior my miners and masons were exhibiting was a bug or not.  Same as for making "safe" waterflow (no aquatic monsters get through), I carve fortifications into the sides of magma tubes to let the magma into the tunnels and channels for my forges and smelters.  Previously legit dwarf behavior (carving the fortification, getting out of the way of oncoming magma) turned into incredibly insane behavior (carving the fortification, waiting for oncoming magma to catch them on fire before running around, setting other things on fire, and dying of terminal immolation).  It makes bringing magma into the fortress incredibly tricky, but it wasn't so unbalanced (given the benefits that safe magma access provides) that I thought it was definitely unintended behavior.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 30, 2012, 01:20:59 am

Lucky for you eventually you won't have to worry about that.

Magma will instantly kill your dwarves. (Heat and cold are rather weak and too powerful at the same time)

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: MrWiggles on May 30, 2012, 04:01:02 am

Quote from: nidpants on May 29, 2012, 08:01:12 pm

You've addressed some of the clumsiness of stockpiles by adding additional features and making lists scale beyond the native window size (PHEW). Is this just incidental to bugsweeping and implementation of hauling improvement, or is this part of a larger near-future framework of increasing usability in the next few releases? I realize you have a total usability overhaul planned for after the caravan arc at least, but I absolutely love the improvements you made to stockpiles and hauling so far in 0.34.

Source on the usability overhaul?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on May 30, 2012, 06:16:28 am

Next bugfix is gonna be awesome, great job Toady !

Finally no more of dwarf deconstructing stupidly a floor when trying to provoke a cave-in !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on May 30, 2012, 07:29:09 am

Regarding choosing an adjacent job square, generally you will have to find a path at some point to complete the job. Why not generate a path to the actual job target and then remove the last step? That should be even less expensive than making a straight line distance calculation, and also it would be more effective.

There may be a million reasons why that won't work but it seems logical to me.

Never mind, I guess that's basically whats happening.

Quote

They keep track of the first valid square they walk through from the beginning of the job, and then use that when they have the material.  That stops it from taking the hit on doing extra pathing checks, but I don't think it would be easy to avoid many simultaneous jobs that have a potentially complicated configuration from walling people in.  Outside factors can still cause trouble.  That's virtually unavoidable.  In the two wall case, if one of the walls is finished while the other dwarf is still fishing for stone off in the dead-end AND the first square they walked in wasn't the good square but the other wall's square, then they will still make the mistake.  Doing the extra pathing calculation is not possible without killing the processor the way things are set up, but they'll also often make the correct decision in multi-wall cases (whereas they'd often be systematically failing them before).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

Quote from: O11O1 on May 29, 2012, 11:04:37 pm

If you hack in a quadruple engraved wall, and then look at it with 'k' while in normal game, what happens? Does only the first/last show up? Do all four show up one after the other? Does the game simply crash?

I meant that a single engraving can be on up to 8 sides of a pillar.

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on May 30, 2012, 11:34:24 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

I imagine that like those reported entire copy of the bible on a single grain of rice things.  Only with blades of grass, and with more pictures of melting elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on May 30, 2012, 12:51:11 pm

Now I'm glad that I dont engrave. You cant smooth the engravings back with the smoothing designation, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 30, 2012, 01:18:54 pm

Quote from: Elone on May 30, 2012, 12:51:11 pm

Now I'm glad that I dont engrave. You cant smooth the engravings back with the smoothing designation, right?

No, you can't.

However, that's no reason to not engrave - if nothing else, you can always engrave the floor and always know it's going to be the "up" side of the floor. 

It's ultimately such a minor thing that I usually just don't worry about it, myself.  If I do worry, and it's a noble's bedroom next to a non-noble's or something, then you can just lock the door to the room on whose side you don't want the engraving.

Doors are your traffic-control friend.

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: nidpants on May 30, 2012, 01:57:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on May 30, 2012, 04:01:02 am

Source on the usability overhaul?

ToadyOne has mentioned it in DF Talks before, tied in with a UI overhaul, which he admits is a huge barrier to new players sticking with the game.

Title: Re: Dwarf AI
Post by: Uristocrat on May 30, 2012, 03:38:47 pm

Quote from: Uristocrat on May 28, 2012, 03:26:57 pm

Have you had any luck fixing the cases where dwarves have a valid square right next to them, but insist on mining it out from the other side because of the set order in which they consider valid squares?  If I'm not mistaken, most of the time that would be fixable by having them prefer the closest valid square, where "closeness" is defined as abs(dwarf.x - destination.x) + abs(dwarf.y - destination.y) + abs(dwarf.z - destination.z), which is much simpler than a full path.

Given that the 05/29/2012 devlog now says "relevant designation jobs use the nearest square instead of starting at top left", I will consider this question answered :)  Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 31, 2012, 01:06:47 am

Quote from: Greiger on May 30, 2012, 11:34:24 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

I imagine that like those reported entire copy of the bible on a single grain of rice things.  Only with blades of grass, and with more pictures of melting elves.

We call that the Old Testament.                          :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 31, 2012, 09:28:41 am

Quote from: Greiger on May 30, 2012, 11:34:24 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

I imagine that like those reported entire copy of the bible on a single grain of rice things.  Only with blades of grass, and with more pictures of melting elves.

and we call that half a grain of sugar.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

a team of nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa were able to etch some 300,000 words (Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible) onto a minuscule silicon surface "less than half the size of a grain of sugar."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 31, 2012, 01:24:45 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 31, 2012, 09:28:41 am

Quote from: Greiger on May 30, 2012, 11:34:24 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

I imagine that like those reported entire copy of the bible on a single grain of rice things.  Only with blades of grass, and with more pictures of melting elves.

and we call that half a grain of sugar.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

a team of nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa were able to etch some 300,000 words (Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible) onto a minuscule silicon surface "less than half the size of a grain of sugar."

I thought WE called that "Planepacked"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 31, 2012, 02:48:39 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 31, 2012, 01:24:45 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 31, 2012, 09:28:41 am

Quote from: Greiger on May 30, 2012, 11:34:24 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2012, 10:34:23 am

That said, with hacking it's possible to have 20 engravings on a single tile of grassy soil, but that's just silly.

I imagine that like those reported entire copy of the bible on a single grain of rice things.  Only with blades of grass, and with more pictures of melting elves.

and we call that half a grain of sugar.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

a team of nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa were able to etch some 300,000 words (Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible) onto a minuscule silicon surface "less than half the size of a grain of sugar."

I thought WE called that "Planepacked"?

That would be if each individual word had a picture of the half grain of sugar itself embedded in it. And if it menaced with spikes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 31, 2012, 09:41:25 pm

Quote from: doh log

added ability to set up generic armor options in uniforms (like the ones the defaults have)

Oh man, I've spent the past couple of years assuming that was possible but that I couldn't use the military screen right to set it up.  Hehe, well it's a great addition!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on June 01, 2012, 02:35:44 am

The fixes are amazing! Better AI, less micromanaging, better interface - I am not sure what is the best.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Garath on June 01, 2012, 03:06:06 am

Quote

•made armor stop lack of clothing thoughts

awesome

Quote

•stopped aspects of the game from advancing when designations were placed

ok, now I need help: how do I stop human and dwarf caravans from crashing into eachother

Maybe I can get the humans to arrive in spring and the elves in summer

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on June 01, 2012, 03:08:43 am

Quote from: hermes on May 31, 2012, 09:41:25 pm

Quote from: doh log

added ability to set up generic armor options in uniforms (like the ones the defaults have)

Oh man, I've spent the past couple of years assuming that was possible but that I couldn't use the military screen right to set it up.  Hehe, well it's a great addition!

Well, that was the case - it was possible to have "any armor headgear" or "any body armor", but only default uniform added this option.

Icredibly usefull when you have mix of helmets/caps or leggins/greaves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on June 01, 2012, 06:29:50 am

All the new stuff is gonna be awesome. Especially the kill order cancel, that was annoying. Although does it cancel some parts of the kill order when some creatures selected are killed ?

Also, villains... Will they cackle and twirl their long, greasy, handlebar mustaches and make slightly ridiculous plans and be generally incompetent ?

And more importantly, when will WE adventurers be able to take up a defined villain role other than wanton, pointless slaughter ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 07:11:16 am

The dev page has changed. The following updates will be full of awesomeness :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on June 01, 2012, 07:21:08 am

Quote

•cleared kill orders after completion

This is good.  Removes another aspect of micromanagement.

The hero role stuff sounds promising too.  Right now there isn't a lot to really do in adventure mode except monster killing quests and exploring tombs and towers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 01, 2012, 08:14:26 am

Quote

Responding properly to personal fire issues (all modes)

That is a lovely way of putting it. /newspeak

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on June 01, 2012, 08:30:59 am

Will these:

Quote

Not being able to hit a giant in the head, hitting a dragon in the head as a reaction when it attempts to bite

Combat styles involving weapons or natural attacks with associated stances and moves

Certain moves may only be available as specific counters, while others might just be regular attacks

Also include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 08:39:35 am

Quote from: Vattic on June 01, 2012, 08:30:59 am

Will these:

Quote

Not being able to hit a giant in the head, hitting a dragon in the head as a reaction when it attempts to bite

Combat styles involving weapons or natural attacks with associated stances and moves

Certain moves may only be available as specific counters, while others might just be regular attacks

Also include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

This reminds me the fact that every creature occupies one square even the largest. Is it planned to make the largest creatures occupy more that one square(sounds complicated) ? Or change the range of the largest creatures melee attacks ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 01, 2012, 08:47:36 am

Quote from: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 08:39:35 am

This reminds me the fact that every creature occupies one square even the largest. Is it planned to make the largest creatures occupy more that one square(sounds complicated) ? Or change the range of the largest creatures melee attacks ?

The pathfinding cost would be nuts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 01, 2012, 09:30:57 am

Quote from: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 07:11:16 am

The dev page has changed. The following updates will be full of awesomeness :)

Oh, wow.  Not a few eternal suggestions have made that list, and the Hero/Villain arc is really promising.  Reading through the goals, it feels like a lot of the Villain and other entries will rely on NPC personalities, and I'm wondering if the personality rewrite we've heard about is going kick-off this next dev arc.  Anyway, a great list of features.  The non-lethal submission system also sounds interesting, is that going to be like throwing booze at a dwarf to get him off you?

(Footkerchief quoted the relevant personality rewrite info in this post (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3218079#msg3218079).)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on June 01, 2012, 11:15:25 am

Quote from: Vattic on June 01, 2012, 08:30:59 am

Will theseAlso include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

Also known as the "thrashing" or "stop, drop, and roll" attack...

It would be a step towards curing the problem of elephants dying from 3 hoary marmots nibbling them to death (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4590).

The current relative size issues mean that small creatures in great numbers often have much sharper teeth, relatively, than larger creatures (hence, giant cave spiders have teeth so large that they become so blunt they can't chew through a helmet), and as such, attrition beats power and mass.  Letting a dragon that is being climbed upon like a jungle gym by a dozen axe dwarves simply roll over and crush its tormentors would go a long way towards putting the fangs back in a largely defanged megabeast.

---

Quote from: Chronas on June 01, 2012, 08:47:36 am

Quote from: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 08:39:35 am

This reminds me the fact that every creature occupies one square even the largest. Is it planned to make the largest creatures occupy more that one square(sounds complicated) ? Or change the range of the largest creatures melee attacks ?

The pathfinding cost would be nuts.

The pathfinding costs would not be "nuts", they would require entirely new connectivity maps, which in turn require new pathfinding code. 

Just like how fliers can't fly using the current connectivity maps that are only built for dwarf-like walkers, and swimmers can't swim, and magma-swimmers can't magma-swim.  (The creatures that do so pathfind by brute-force flood-filling, which is horribly inefficient for long-distance pathfinding, so all fliers or swimmers lose the ability to fly or swim when they are tamed.)

It's just a flat truth that at some point, Toady's going to have to overhaul pathfinding, and put in a more robust system if he's going to have all the things he wants to put into the game work properly.  Those new connectivity maps are going to have to include flying, swimming, magma-swimming, and two-tile-wide and three-tile-wide etc. paths for each permutation. 

Given that he's going to have to do that, then a modular hierarchical system that doesn't have to recalculate the connectivity of the whole friggin' map every time a bridge is raised would be the logical next step, and overall reduce connectivity update times.  Hierarchical pathfinding itself would be a massive time-saver for normal long-distance pathfinding, and jump point search could fill in at close-range pathfinding. 

---

Quote from: hermes on June 01, 2012, 09:30:57 am

Quote from: Abitbol on June 01, 2012, 07:11:16 am

The dev page has changed. The following updates will be full of awesomeness :)

Oh, wow.  Not a few eternal suggestions have made that list, and the Hero/Villain arc is really promising.  Reading through the goals, it feels like a lot of the Villain and other entries will rely on NPC personalities, and I'm wondering if the personality rewrite we've heard about is going kick-off this next dev arc.  Anyway, a great list of features.  The non-lethal submission system also sounds interesting, is that going to be like throwing booze at a dwarf to get him off you?

(Footkerchief quoted the relevant personality rewrite info in this post (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3218079#msg3218079).)

That's the same devpage we've had since 2010, but with the "short term release schedule" removed.  Did you guys forget what had been on there? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on June 01, 2012, 11:30:25 am

So Caravan Arc is dumped?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 01, 2012, 11:59:17 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on June 01, 2012, 11:15:25 am

That's the same devpage we've had since 2010, but with the "short term release schedule" removed.  Did you guys forget what had been on there?

...Yes. Also, apparently I loaded it from cache :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on June 01, 2012, 01:26:02 pm

Quote from: Kogut on June 01, 2012, 11:30:25 am

So Caravan Arc is dumped?

I think it's just part of "Adventure Role: Trader" now, or something...  Basically, shuffled in with other things. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 01, 2012, 01:26:44 pm

Everyone should make sure to Ctrl+R the dev page -- when I first went there, I was still seeing the old one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 01, 2012, 01:28:46 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on June 01, 2012, 11:15:25 am

That's the same devpage we've had since 2010, but with the "short term release schedule" removed.  Did you guys forget what had been on there?

And a bit rearranged (though yes, that's mostly from the hero role being upped).

Quote from: Kogut on June 01, 2012, 11:30:25 am

So Caravan Arc is dumped?

Several caravan arc goals have been shuffled into the other development goals (the 3d minerals/mine maps and villager schedules of the former release 2 have been added to the Trader role, for instance). There's a number I can't find, but I guess they're counting as goals that were already on the list. And since Toady hasn't quite gone by just the goal groups, I'd say that Caravan Arc continues along with the hero stuff, or after that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 01, 2012, 03:56:14 pm

It's a shame we've lost the more concrete and linear plan for the caravan arc. It was real handy to be able to point people at it and say "this is the current plan". It might not have been all that solid of a plan in how closely actual development correlated to it, but the huge list of features doesn't tell you anything about what's planned for the near future compared to what might still be a few years out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on June 01, 2012, 04:01:56 pm

Toward the end of its life it was basically spreading misinformation about where development was going next. People who only saw the list and didn't pay attention to the DF Talks thought certain features were going to be put off for a very long time (notably, bringing the world gen only progress to the rest of the modes). This, in turn, led to gripes.

While this new setup has less listing functionality, it is also far less constricting. I kinda like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on June 01, 2012, 04:02:30 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 01, 2012, 03:56:14 pm

It's a shame we've lost the more concrete and linear plan for the caravan arc. It was real handy to be able to point people at it and say "this is the current plan". It might not have been all that solid of a plan in how closely actual development correlated to it, but the huge list of features doesn't tell you anything about what's planned for the near future compared to what might still be a few years out.

I'm assuming Toady is going to put up something more akin to a "this is what we are doing next" once he has a better idea of what it actually is. 

As it stood, Toady only did one of the things on that list of releases, and wound up doing other unrelated things with most of his time while rearranging what he was going to do, when.  I think Toady is just plain not going to try to guess what he's going to be doing more than one or two releases out from now on, since he seemed to admit that he lets himself get taken by the moment too often to really be able to plan that far out. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 01, 2012, 08:38:15 pm

Can you move the military equipment presets into an init file, just like how embark profiles are now? This would be an easy way to spread them to all forts as a sort of default, and enabling players to rearrange the entries, and edit them with additional ease. I can imagine this change being particularly well received.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 01, 2012, 08:51:42 pm

I don't really care how much of a suggestion-question that is, it's still a great idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on June 01, 2012, 09:01:13 pm

Quote from: Elone on June 01, 2012, 08:38:15 pm

Can you move the military equipment presets into an init file, just like how embark profiles are now? This would be an easy way to spread them to all forts as a sort of default, and enabling players to rearrange the entries, and edit them with additional ease. I can imagine this change being particularly well received.

I'm keen on that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

Some questions were addressed by the intervening releases and dev logs, so I left those off.  Thanks to people that answered some of the other questions (MrWiggles, Willfor, Footkerchief, Rafal99, thvaz, NW_Kohaku, Putnam, Knight Otu, Greiger, Arkenstone, greenskye, and thems what was missed).

Quote

Quote from: Kogut

So Caravan Arc is dumped?

Quote from: Knight Otu

Several caravan arc goals have been shuffled into the other development goals (the 3d minerals/mine maps and villager schedules of the former release 2 have been added to the Trader role, for instance). There's a number I can't find, but I guess they're counting as goals that were already on the list. And since Toady hasn't quite gone by just the goal groups, I'd say that Caravan Arc continues along with the hero stuff, or after that.

Everything from the previous release list should be contained somewhere on there.  The hero role has seven or so additions, and I've fleshed out the tavern/inns.

Quote from: Chronas

Does the stance of a creature have any effect on how a colliding cart affects them?
Does flesh material have an effect on collisions?

Grounded units have more trouble dodging, but it doesn't change anything else I can remember.  The collisions are resolved as combat strikes, so all the standard material/size stuff matters.

Quote from: Uristocrat

What happens to magma-filled minecarts that are not magma-safe?  Do they take long enough to melt that we can make cannons that shoot globs of molten lead and magma at our enemies?  And do molten minecarts retain their momentum?

I'm not sure.  There's ostensibly a container/item temperature interface that should cause something to happen, but I have no idea if it works.  If the cart actually became a glob...  it probably doesn't work.  I imagine it has to remake the projectile if the item changes type, and it probably loses all the momentum information there.

Quote from: Calathar

Are you looking at expanding the concept of the minecart "object" to other objects that might function similarly with regard to the physics and collision - like boulder traps Indiana Jones style?

Rolling boulders were one of the things we didn't get to, but the vehicles are set up with those in mind, since we know we'll do them at some point.

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

Since you are tackling bugfixing again, how is the Mantis bug tracker working for you? I know that you've had it at least since early 2010, and that several volunteers help filter out duplicate entries and "not bugs". Are there other ways here that the community could make the system more effective?

I'd defer to the judgment of the tracker managers on the overall technical aspects of the system -- their efforts have made it work to the extent that it does.  I think it is going okay, but I don't have a lot of experience with this kind of software, in terms of knowing what other features would help.  It works better than the forum section did.  The saves that get put on dffd and linked from the tracker are probably the most valuable resource, since they both confirm the circumstances of the bug and cut the bugfixing time down by many times in some cases (I know there's been a new push to put equipment bug saves up there, and I'm still planning to get to those before I move on).

Quote from: eux0r

what about the edges of the local field? sometimes a good embark position is with one half on one local map and with the other half on the next, but since moving the local map has no overlapping, those embark-areas can never be used, will this change with your current work?

Sites can now overlap the edges in general (like the large town sites do), but I think there are still complications with allowing this in dwarf mode, since the older code portions like to have one world map tile coordinate.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady have you ever felt like you would rather keep a placeholder in the game as it was, instead of doing the planned updates later? I am actually reminded of the Good and Evil lands and how you actually seem to have a more solid idea of how they work then the planned Sphere lands.

I think it's natural that the existing idea would be more solid, since good/evil lands have been in the game a long time and have various associated features.  I still think it's better to have more interesting things going on.

Quote from: Vattic

Will these [combat arc dev items]
Also include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

When people are attacking large beasts in the new ways, it would be fair to give the beasts more options as well, but it's hard to say how it'll play out.  I think it would fit the feel of the game if a large creature could utterly obliterate a small critter into a paste item as long as they got a shot to dodge out of the way.  With the reaction moments, it would also be a chance for you to jump on the leg (or attempt something borderline foolish like holding a pointed weapon up at the bottom of the foot).  Charge attacks from large creatures already give a very large chance for the smaller creature to be knocked over.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on June 02, 2012, 03:39:34 am

Quote from: Chthonic on June 01, 2012, 09:01:13 pm

Quote from: Elone on June 01, 2012, 08:38:15 pm

Can you move the military equipment presets into an init file, just like how embark profiles are now? This would be an easy way to spread them to all forts as a sort of default, and enabling players to rearrange the entries, and edit them with additional ease. I can imagine this change being particularly well received.

I'm keen on that.

Oh my, me too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 02, 2012, 03:45:56 am

Quote

I think it's natural that the existing idea would be more solid, since good/evil lands have been in the game a long time and have various associated features.  I still think it's better to have more interesting things going on.

I was worried that my question would be misunderstood for a question on whether or not Toady would be switching up the good/evil lands... This wasn't really what I was asking. Unless of course Toady actually had no answer for my question.

Which is possible

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on June 02, 2012, 03:57:27 am

Were you asking if I could think of an example?  I think there are things like that which have come up before, but I can't think offhand of a plan actually being trashed, rather than some random thing just becoming accepted as part of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 02, 2012, 04:03:14 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 02, 2012, 03:57:27 am

Were you asking if I could think of an example?  I think there are things like that which have come up before, but I can't think offhand of a plan actually being trashed, rather than some random thing just becoming accepted as part of the game.

I'll take that as the answer.

Thank you toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogut on June 02, 2012, 04:21:28 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

Quote from: Kogut

So Caravan Arc is dumped?

Everything from the previous release list should be contained somewhere on there.

But there are no longer planned to be done in the near future, right? (Poor, poor 3D veins :( )

Quote from: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

The saves that get put on dffd and linked from the tracker are probably the most valuable resource, since they both confirm the circumstances of the bug and cut the bugfixing time down by many times in some cases (I know there's been a new push to put equipment bug saves up there, and I'm still planning to get to those before I move on).

Examples of bugs without saves:

0001445: Weapon Racks do nothing. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1445

0000417: Axedwarf with missing hand wields shield and axe in same hand. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=417

0000756: Haulers try to store clothing dropped by militia, mass confusion ensues  http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=756

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 02, 2012, 04:59:07 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

The saves that get put on dffd and linked from the tracker are probably the most valuable resource, since they both confirm the circumstances of the bug and cut the bugfixing time down by many times in some cases (I know there's been a new push to put equipment bug saves up there, and I'm still planning to get to those before I move on).

Nice!
I will try to create some fresh saves for the bugs I experienced.


Edit:
Ninja'ed by Kogut.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on June 02, 2012, 05:10:42 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

Quote from: Vattic

Will these [combat arc dev items]
Also include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

When people are attacking large beasts in the new ways, it would be fair to give the beasts more options as well, but it's hard to say how it'll play out.  I think it would fit the feel of the game if a large creature could utterly obliterate a small critter into a paste item as long as they got a shot to dodge out of the way.  With the reaction moments, it would also be a chance for you to jump on the leg (or attempt something borderline foolish like holding a pointed weapon up at the bottom of the foot).  Charge attacks from large creatures already give a very large chance for the smaller creature to be knocked over.

Thank you for the quick reply. Personally I think it would be good if there was a size check for these kinds of attacks. Then smaller critters might jump on your human adventurers leg and try and climb you like you would a giant. Being able to stomp on anything smaller would mean you could stomp on fluffy warblers or a goblin shrunk by magic mushrooms (or even someone's toes). I should have been more specific but I meant to ask more about this kind of size check in relation to "special" attacks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: isitanos on June 02, 2012, 12:34:39 pm

Just wanted to chime in to thank Toady for the recent bugfixes and improvements to dwarf behavior when building/removing stuff. He addressed quite a few things I had been complaining about, and those fixes sound like they'll make the game a lot more enjoyable. I'm especially excited about less micromanagement of large constructions (and large holes?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on June 02, 2012, 01:05:45 pm

Quote from: Vattic on June 02, 2012, 05:10:42 am

Thank you for the quick reply. Personally I think it would be good if there was a size check for these kinds of attacks. Then smaller critters might jump on your human adventurers leg and try and climb you like you would a giant. Being able to stomp on anything smaller would mean you could stomp on fluffy warblers or a goblin shrunk by magic mushrooms (or even someone's toes). I should have been more specific but I meant to ask more about this kind of size check in relation to "special" attacks.

And if it also checks stance, next stop, curb stomping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on June 02, 2012, 01:10:09 pm

joy.




may i suggest SEEING caravans traveling roads?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristocrat on June 02, 2012, 03:28:55 pm

Quote from: isitanos on June 02, 2012, 12:34:39 pm

Just wanted to chime in to thank Toady for the recent bugfixes and improvements to dwarf behavior when building/removing stuff. He addressed quite a few things I had been complaining about, and those fixes sound like they'll make the game a lot more enjoyable. I'm especially excited about less micromanagement of large constructions (and large holes?).

I agree, we've had a lot of great improvements lately, hopefully with many more to come.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 02, 2012, 08:29:43 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on June 02, 2012, 01:10:09 pm

joy.




may i suggest SEEING caravans traveling roads?

Quote from: dwarves/dev

Realize trade/tribute relationships with actual caravans moving on the map

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 03, 2012, 09:35:53 pm

Hurrah!

Toady marked as Fixed several equipment bugs that I was waiting for fix since 0.31, also some newer bugs.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.php (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.php)
(7 bugs at the top were fixed today)

The next devlog is going to be awesome!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 03, 2012, 10:00:36 pm

What do dwarves do now after completing a kill order? Head back to civilian life if allowed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on June 03, 2012, 10:05:43 pm

Awww, kinda disappointed about losing the "Designations cause liason meetings" one. I know it was a bug, but it used to make trade meetings really easy to control.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 04, 2012, 11:12:01 am

I hope this kind of cat get implemented somehow...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuk9GS7l8SA[/youtube]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on June 04, 2012, 03:02:06 pm

"[Adventure Mode -- Sleep] Sleeping on a melting iceberg results in waking up as a demon or other underground creature."

Dwarf Fortress has the best bugs. I'm going to have to try this now. How do I find a melting iceberg?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 04, 2012, 04:37:37 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on June 04, 2012, 03:02:06 pm

How do I find a melting iceberg?

The way to do it is described in the bug report:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4181 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4181)
(look at "Steps To Reproduce" field)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 04, 2012, 07:45:08 pm

Yeah, I went through those steps a couple times, worked every time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on June 05, 2012, 09:08:25 am

I would like to see the eternally fire-immune undead bug go away. It may be great !!FUN!! but it's a bit annoying, also a bit... off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on June 05, 2012, 12:43:17 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on June 04, 2012, 03:02:06 pm

"[Adventure Mode -- Sleep] Sleeping on a melting iceberg results in waking up as a demon or other underground creature."

Dwarf Fortress has the best bugs. I'm going to have to try this now. How do I find a melting iceberg?

It's based upon the fact that the adventurer drowns or is frozen in ice or otherwise is eliminated from the game somehow, but you don't actually die on-screen, so the game isn't ended normally.  When you are supposed to wake up, and the game can't find your character anymore, it just finds the next creature in the list of creatures in the area, and makes you that creature, instead. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on June 06, 2012, 06:26:57 am

Actually, not quite - the game's release notes explain it a bit better:

Quote

Stopped adventurer from turning into an underground creature when solid ground for placement couldn't be found

What's actually happening is that going to Sleep temporarily offloads the region (which is why sleeping doesn't take as long as it did in 40d), and when it reloads it, it can't find any solid ground to put your player on (because it's underwater) - it aborts, your character ceases to exist, and you are given control of the first creature in the unit list (which happens to be a cave creature or fish).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 06, 2012, 03:52:19 pm

New release! Likely I will not be able to try this out for a bit because of vital commitments. Its good to see all these bugs getting fixed though.

How much is going to happen before the next "big" release starts coming along?

Is the next major future release likely to take as long as "Release 1" or are we more likely to get a number of shorter term "major" releases (i.e. a few weeks to a month or so) where each time one or two of the goals is dealt with (like 3D veins)?

As far as I remember, each major feature of DF2012 took around a month to finish, suggesting this kind of release method might be possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 06, 2012, 05:07:29 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 06, 2012, 03:52:19 pm

New release! Likely I will not be able to try this out for a bit because of vital commitments. Its good to see all these bugs getting fixed though.

How much is going to happen before the next "big" release starts coming along?

Is the next major future release likely to take as long as "Release 1" or are we more likely to get a number of shorter term "major" releases (i.e. a few weeks to a month or so) where each time one or two of the goals is dealt with (like 3D veins)?

As far as I remember, each major feature of DF2012 took around a month to finish, suggesting this kind of release method might be possible.

No timelines. Toady has gone often stated "yeah, no idea how long this will take."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 06, 2012, 07:01:22 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 06, 2012, 05:07:29 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 06, 2012, 03:52:19 pm

New release! Likely I will not be able to try this out for a bit because of vital commitments. Its good to see all these bugs getting fixed though.

How much is going to happen before the next "big" release starts coming along?

Is the next major future release likely to take as long as "Release 1" or are we more likely to get a number of shorter term "major" releases (i.e. a few weeks to a month or so) where each time one or two of the goals is dealt with (like 3D veins)?

As far as I remember, each major feature of DF2012 took around a month to finish, suggesting this kind of release method might be possible.

No timelines. Toady has gone often stated "yeah, no idea how long this will take."

Quicker releases were the goal with the last release schedule.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 06, 2012, 09:46:19 pm

Quote

Dwarf Fortress started October 2002, this log was started around the same time as the "back to the dwarf game" thread.

SO, 10 year anniversary sometime?

Quote from: Toady One on September 02, 2004, 03:42:00 pm

<P>Hell, I think 10 months might be possible.  Who knows anymore...<P>You mean what's the game gonna be like inside the mountain fortress?  Or what's the dragon gonna be like?  I could make an inside movie.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Genoraven on June 07, 2012, 12:06:03 am

sfkjhsiusmidfhdrhbembhebe


DAT DEVBLOG!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 07, 2012, 12:20:04 am

Well, this was to be expected with the reorganizing of the dev page.

No less cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on June 07, 2012, 12:45:29 am

Finally! adventure mode is gonna become fun, eventually...  :P

Though hopefully Toady can keep up his recent impressive pace with new stuff and fixing old stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 07, 2012, 01:35:22 am

The devlog we've all been waiting for!   :D

I was particularly taken with this phrase...

Quote from: Log of Gold

I'm currently taking the preliminary step of detailing entity claims to sites based on purpose, location, time of day, and so on.

This is an ingenious way to look at the AI surrounding NPC scheduling, and I can see it has great potential for generalisation.  Hope Toady enjoys programming this as much as we anticipate it!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 07, 2012, 02:36:17 am

That wall of text sounds promising as hell!
Can't wait to get into a fist fight where people can go two hits without getting their skulls caved in.
Could you please give a little definition for 'entity claims to sites'

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on June 07, 2012, 03:20:52 am

I sure am getting excited about DF again after reading that devblog!
Man, a real, not-real, growing, changing world to have the dwarves and other races adventure in.
It's gonna be amazing. I'll have to learn DF all over again.

That was the best part last time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on June 07, 2012, 03:28:06 am

I am so sad that 3D veins changed from "in next version" to "in the future"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 07, 2012, 08:27:02 am

Quote from: Toady

It's time to activate the world now.

I think I love him!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 07, 2012, 09:30:00 am

Excellent. New development in progress!

Does this mean we're going to have worldgen progress in actual play?

So here's the rephrase of the question I asked earlier:

Might we get releases for every feature or two that comes out (as with minecarts and hauling) in this coming release? The idea being that instead of taking ten months or so to get the big release out with many features, we'd have the features (i.e. worldgen progression during fortress play, 3D veins) as they are done individually. The equivalent would be if we had gotten cities and the individual night creatures out as they were individually finished. Its not a question on whether the features will be finished faster, but rather whether the features will come out more individually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on June 07, 2012, 10:56:32 am

How does Toady manage to consistantly outdo himself on the main page like this?  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 07, 2012, 11:25:33 am

Oh my yes, I've been waiting for this for some time. I recall in one of the DF Talks he said this (moving worldgen activities to play) would "test the very premise of the game."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on June 07, 2012, 12:15:37 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 07, 2012, 09:30:00 am

Might we get releases for every feature or two that comes out (as with minecarts and hauling) in this coming release? The idea being that instead of taking ten months or so to get the big release out with many features, we'd have the features (i.e. worldgen progression during fortress play, 3D veins) as they are done individually. The equivalent would be if we had gotten cities and the individual night creatures out as they were individually finished. Its not a question on whether the features will be finished faster, but rather whether the features will come out more individually.

The primary problem I see with this is the fact that he's very likely going to have to break the game on a fundamental level, and the first release he'd do would be his attempt to put it back together. It's not going to be as big of a break as turning everything to 3D was, but the game is going to be non-functional as something playable for a longer period than it will be functional -- at least so I believe. It's a lot of interconnected parts, and they all have to be capable of working before it can put out there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 07, 2012, 02:51:32 pm

Quote from: Willfor on June 07, 2012, 12:15:37 pm

The primary problem I see with this is the fact that he's very likely going to have to break the game on a fundamental level, and the first release he'd do would be his attempt to put it back together. It's not going to be as big of a break as turning everything to 3D was, but the game is going to be non-functional as something playable for a longer period than it will be functional -- at least so I believe. It's a lot of interconnected parts, and they all have to be capable of working before it can put out there.

From what's up there now, finishing the continuing of worldgen in gameplay might be a good point to release.

It looks like we might also be getting the opportunity to retire our forts soon too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 07, 2012, 02:58:32 pm

Wow... Toady is sooo close to getting to the genuin potential of Dwarf Fortress.

I can hardly believe my eyes that Toady is actually finally getting onto the living world aspect of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Peacemaker636 on June 07, 2012, 03:27:17 pm

This is incredible news!  I think this will be a fundamental restructuring of the game.  Where before we were merely scratching our marks on the pre-built generated world, now we will be tearing down, building up, waxing and waning. The world is about to come alive.

Does anyone happen to know what is meant by "entity claims"?  Are these meant to be rudimentary thoughts for classes of citizens or even entire civilizations (presumably similar to other raw tokens)?  If this is what it means...can you imagine the possibilities? Syndromes could be tied in and can change entity claims!  A noxious cloud sweeps through a town, turning the dead into zombies which then flock by the hundreds to a necromancer's tower, swelling his undead army's ranks.

I cannot wait to see where this goes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 07, 2012, 03:29:24 pm

Entity Claim as in "This is mine". Right now a necromancer meerly lives inside his tower. He doesn't own it in anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmperorNuthulu on June 07, 2012, 03:55:04 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 07, 2012, 03:29:24 pm

Entity Claim as in "This is mine". Right now a necromancer meerly lives inside his tower. He doesn't own it in anyway.

 I can already see the hilarious bugs.
 "Human mcHunter has claimed the empire of dawn!"
 "Human mcHunter has been struck down by Human McSurgeon!"
 "Human mcSurgeon has claimed the empire of dawn!"

 And so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Peacemaker636 on June 07, 2012, 04:14:26 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 07, 2012, 03:29:24 pm

Entity Claim as in "This is mine". Right now a necromancer meerly lives inside his tower. He doesn't own it in anyway.

Ok that makes sense now that I think about it.  Very exciting indeed.  There appears to be a strong possibility that retired forts will now actually be useful.  The current dwarven populace can simply become its own entity upon retirement, with the claim to the site.  Then it seems quite natural for new entities to try to move in.  Imagine a chieftain taking the place by storm and raiding your armory...we could get goblin axe lords wandering the land in full steel-plate armor and wielding adamantine battle axes.  That would be quite the challenge for an adventurer, and would make the end-stage of fortresses more strategic.  Do you melt down your weapons to avoid the risk or keep them for an adventurer to take?  We may even soon see adventurer-owned hovels or even castles if you are so ambitious!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 07, 2012, 07:13:16 pm

Wow... Just as I feel like Toady couldn't crank out something even just a little more amazing than what he has done he blows me off my feet with that dev post. This is a new era for Dwarf Fortress!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 07, 2012, 07:38:23 pm

I keep feeling that I dont have the proper mindset for this, but I dont see how these changes will much affect the overall game in practice. I mean, I'm sure that it's there, just that I dont see it. The DF mode is a bit too slow to really see a worldgen progress during its existence, which actually would not be too slow, if lag decay did not force me to abandon every single forth by the year 6 (at most). The performance solutions interest me greatly. What will be done about that?

But if this means being able to retire your fortress, then I can finally stop creating one pocket world per fortress, so this is a great thing.

Also, the 3D veins got pushed back, so that's also a bonus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on June 07, 2012, 08:08:38 pm

Dwarf mode is set to see expansions where your fortress has an effect on world politics by sending groups of your own out into it. This is the first hurdle that has to be overcome before that can become a reality. However, it's going to have a drastically profound effect on Adventure Mode almost immediately. I'm very, very excited to see those things be put into effect for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 07, 2012, 08:11:23 pm

Quote from: Elone on June 07, 2012, 07:38:23 pm

I keep feeling that I dont have the proper mindset for this, but I dont see how these changes will much affect the overall game in practice. I mean, I'm sure that it's there, just that I dont see it. The DF mode is a bit too slow to really see a worldgen progress during its existence, which actually would not be too slow, if lag decay did not force me to abandon every single forth by the year 6 (at most). The performance solutions interest me greatly. What will be done about that?

But if this means being able to retire your fortress, then I can finally stop creating one pocket world per fortress, so this is a great thing.

Also, the 3D veins got pushed back, so that's also a bonus.

It probably wont really change anything really, at least not greatly. Right now, quests sorta just pop into existence, and vampires sorta do their thing, and Necromancer just build towers blindly but they dont acknowledge they actually own it.

The wars and trade during World Gen lack actual reason behind them. They just happen. It does a good job of looking like there depth, but there isn't. Trade is bit better recently.

They lack the ability to form motives, goals and relationship with each other and with objects.

What this change will do, is allow the NPCs to be their own person, and set up their own goals and try to achieve them. With, probably a surprising few rules and systems (assuming their scalable), you can have Thief guild run on the system as a city council or a King of an entire kingdom.

So yea, now you'll have folks deciding to do things based on motives, goals and relationships. Which will then provide a great back drop, and stories behind the actions for Dwarf Fortress. You'll get more real actions, and unexpected results.

This'll get put into actual play for Adventure Mode and Fort Mode. The goblins wont be attacking you, because you've hit arbitrary wealth requirements, but because they want something. They'll have a goal. If they have a goal, then they can function in smarter ways.

This isn't about really effecting game play. This is about getting the world to be living, and breathing, reacting and thinking independently from the players working on its. Its about letting  DF actually grow and change as the player plays, which has been a long term goal for DF.

DF overall goal has been about being a Fantasy World Simulator. Its about being a tool for generating narratives.

And with these changes, it'll /finally/ start to be a Fantasy World Simulator.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on June 08, 2012, 02:45:13 am

Improved Hauling is marked on http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php as [IN PROGRESS] and "This item is currently being developed. Votes will be cleared when the next version is out.". What else will bring the next version? Stacking? Maybe better decisions for using bins ("Same goes for fisherdwarves. They catch a fish, go get a barrel, put the fish in, go get a wheelbarrel, get the barrel, and take it to the stockpile." - bug #5895 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5895)). Or maybe it is finished and votes should be cleared?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 08, 2012, 04:16:13 am

Exciting stuff in the devlog. 

I am sad that very likely the worldgen-based trade modifications reaching fort mode seems to have gotten pushed off because of this, but overall I would agree with most other people here that getting the world to continue existing after worldgen is getting very important.  I've been playing several adventurers/forts in a single world at the moment, and it really does start to get strange when you're wandering around a town and everyone historical dies of old age as you approach. 

I wonder if the current "claims" are going to end up extending to civilization borders.  I remember some mention in an old DF-Talk that the way civilizations will just build sites in any old hodgepodge around each other was on the list of things to fix.  If a civs can "claim" a region and "contest" regions that belong to others, you can get decent border-disputes happening.  Then you can end up starting wars by plopping down fortresses in the middle of another kingdom.

Stuff to look forward to as always. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 08, 2012, 06:07:09 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 08, 2012, 02:45:13 am

Improved Hauling is marked on http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php as [IN PROGRESS] and "This item is currently being developed. Votes will be cleared when the next version is out.". What else will bring the next version? Stacking? Maybe better decisions for using bins ("Same goes for fisherdwarves. They catch a fish, go get a barrel, put the fish in, go get a wheelbarrel, get the barrel, and take it to the stockpile." - bug #5895 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5895)). Or maybe it is finished and votes should be cleared?

My guess, is that Hauling is done with, with this release cycle. Toady has one more promise to fullfil with the next release, and thats more sane behavior of dorfs that are set on fire. Though that was slated for the last bug release cycle, and that seems to be over.

Stacking is a none trivial issue. Adding Minecarts, and its associated physics, was probably easier to do then reworking on how DF stacks and unstack items. (It was also probably more fun to.) My bet is that it wont be touch until either World Gen Trading is integrated into Fort Mode and or Inn are put into place. That'll probably highlight Dorfs behaviors in choosing Bins and Wheelbarrows and Stacking issues.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: malvado on June 08, 2012, 06:50:41 am

If only Dwarves could use backpacks to gather some items then return them to the stockpile.
Would need them to que up a few actions i guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 08, 2012, 07:22:31 am

Quote from: malvado on June 08, 2012, 06:50:41 am

If only Dwarves could use backpacks to gather some items then return them to the stockpile.
Would need them to que up a few actions i guess.

Essentially that what using Bins do. Its just that, they dont use them well enough. They use them correctly, but without fore thoughts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 08, 2012, 10:32:16 am

I would like to the squad members eat and drink when on duty out of their backpacks and flasks instead of waiting to be out of it. But meh, that's something I can live with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on June 08, 2012, 11:55:46 am

This is entirely awesome in so many different ways. This will probably take a long time but will be the biggest step in development since the 3D update. It will add tons of depth to both game modes and bring adventurer mode to a whole new level of complexity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kaiser Reinhard on June 08, 2012, 12:10:49 pm

"It's time to activate the world now."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/JHNrC.png)

I had to post this

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on June 08, 2012, 02:08:01 pm

Yea

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 07, 2012, 02:51:32 pm

From what's up there now, finishing the continuing of worldgen in gameplay might be a good point to release.

It looks like we might also be getting the opportunity to retire our forts soon too.

Being able to retire forts would be a great feature to add to a living world.  Instead of just building forts, the player can choose to build an entire dwarven civilization.  It also goes nicely with the recent training changes adding to civilization knowledge as a whole.  It gives the player a reason to become the Mountainhome now, instead of becoming the Mountainhome only to see that effort wasted when the fort crumbles or is abandoned, a player can take the time to build a truely majestic capital.  Or build a series of forts creating a great empire across the world, and take full advantage of the potential of the largest world map sizes.  Maybe if your civ is at war with the goblins, you can deliberately create a war fort right in their territory to crush them. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on June 08, 2012, 02:40:32 pm

A huge step in the evolution of Dwarf Fortress. Right now, the game's only end is death - be it by goblin, flood, "Doh! Wrong Lever" or worse. Of course, you can retire, but that basically means you will either return to that person and die with him or find him and you have two options: Kill or recruit and die together!
After this, I can see a limitless cycle. I've enjoyed RPG games where you start as no one and become a king, seems like Dwarf Fortress is getting there.

I didn't even dream of seeing this for a long time now, even though it was quite evident. We're all with you, Toady!

By the way, a question: Will it be possible to become say, the mayor of a town and control it? If so, would it be by switching into Fortress mode or by ordering people + waiting?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on June 08, 2012, 04:09:58 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on June 08, 2012, 02:40:32 pm

By the way, a question: Will it be possible to become say, the mayor of a town and control it? If so, would it be by switching into Fortress mode or by ordering people + waiting?

The answer to that likely depends on how much control over towns mayors end up actually having, when they get around to having control. Wait n' see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 08, 2012, 05:12:12 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on June 08, 2012, 04:09:58 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on June 08, 2012, 02:40:32 pm

By the way, a question: Will it be possible to become say, the mayor of a town and control it? If so, would it be by switching into Fortress mode or by ordering people + waiting?

The answer to that likely depends on how much control over towns mayors end up actually having, when they get around to having control. Wait n' see.

Toady has talked about the Player being able to control a site, and have folks work under them, and to construct buildings. (There few other things associated with these abilities in Adventure mode.)

And Toady has talked about gaining favor with Entities.

So, even if its not an explicit goal, it might be an emergent capability.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on June 08, 2012, 06:59:18 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 08, 2012, 10:32:16 am

I would like to the squad members eat and drink when on duty out of their backpacks and flasks instead of waiting to be out of it. But meh, that's something I can live with.

Well, this bug was listed as fixed in v0.34.11:

Bug #2486 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2486): Soldiers don't eat from backpacks while on duty

Quote from: Toady One

made soldiers eat from backpacks/drink from waterskins earlier

Is that what you were looking for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Richards on June 08, 2012, 07:28:02 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Toady One It's time to activate the world now. The overall idea is that entities such as town governments, bandit gangs, criminal organizations, necromancer cults, etc., will have goals and act to carry them out, replacing losses and reacting to your acts as you arise to interfere or aid them, with a generous helping of tension between historical figures frosted with beast antics.

Some initial work is required, but we're going to try to move through it quickly this time. I'm currently taking the preliminary step of detailing entity claims to sites based on purpose, location, time of day, and so on. Then the plan is to use these to get entity representatives such as guards and dirt bags out on the streets, along with regular citizens with varying views on the entity claims, and to get them all interacting with each other and adventurers a bit. That'll set the stage for the visible realignment of entity claims as the game progresses, and it'll give you some material to work with. Specific quests are going to start to drop out of the game as we proceed, to be replaced by you doing what you want with respect to the various groups and reacting to their direct intervention in your affairs. Now that we'll have the site control situation a little more fleshed out, we're also going include a bit of exposition, both for your home town when you start and when you talk to people in places you visit, though you might still happen upon trouble before you hear anything.

Part of the entertainment will include learning information about the locations of villains, starting with the simple bandit gangs that have thugs harassing people in town. To this end we'll be including non-lethal combat and a recognition by participants and bystanders of the various stages of escalation in the confrontations. Killing a town's miscreants won't generally be sound practice if you don't want to be feared yourself. A sufficiently outmatched opponent will be able to surrender to you, and that should allow you to come through to the villain's hideout or to send a message to the villain. The mechanics included will be general and apply to anybody that can surrender and speak. We'll be improving bandit hideouts for the larger groups, and those groups will divide the time of their members between patrols, guard duty, and their active goals.

These relatively simple setups will give rise to more complicated games as we increase the number of plots and allegiances available for critters. The foundation of an active world which can handle sustained play is the regular advancement of history through birth, death and succession, so we're also going to tackle these early on in the process. More details as we go!

Wow! That sounds great Toady!

I would like to congratulate you on realizing these goals; I know you can do whatever you plan on doing and I hope you don't get side-tracked like you usually do! 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

How long do you think this will take to accomplish?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 08, 2012, 07:43:36 pm

No timelines!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 08, 2012, 07:56:45 pm

It's done, when it's done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on June 08, 2012, 07:57:58 pm

Quote from: Meansdarling on June 07, 2012, 03:20:52 am

I sure am getting excited about DF again after reading that devblog!
Man, a real, not-real, growing, changing world to have the dwarves and other races adventure in.
It's gonna be amazing. I'll have to learn DF all over again.

That was the best part last time.

I echo this sentiment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 08, 2012, 08:00:16 pm

Weren't initial estimates for reaching DF 1.0 of the order of like 10 months or so?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 08, 2012, 08:02:00 pm

Quote from: Japa on June 08, 2012, 08:00:16 pm

Weren't initial estimates for reaching DF 1.0 of the order of like 10 months or so?

Not with how the game is now. When the game was first conceptualized, yea something like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on June 08, 2012, 10:51:41 pm

That's sort of what "initial" means.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 08, 2012, 11:25:07 pm

Only 2 days and he has the basic bits of the banditry bolted down. I'm surprisingly optimistic about how quickly this update will come despite its size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 09, 2012, 12:02:18 am

Will the moving bandit groups raid fortresses or is that not on the menu at this point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 09, 2012, 03:52:06 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on June 09, 2012, 12:02:18 am

Will the moving bandit groups raid fortresses or is that not on the menu at this point?

I don't think that will happen until Toady gets to Army Arc and adds siege goals beyond just "kill everything".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 09, 2012, 05:37:43 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on June 09, 2012, 12:02:18 am

Will the moving bandit groups raid fortresses or is that not on the menu at this point?

Right now, they're not even moving. But yea, thats totally on the docket. With the end of goal of anyone that can reach you, and ascertains the goals to go to your Fort will be able to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 09:09:09 am

If groups are actively tracked across the world during gameplay, I think this means fortress mode may feature raids. Be prepared to face general insanity with the next release.

Is the new release going to have the current worldgen stuff (population change, successions, settlements, wars) actively run during gameplay?

I suspect we may also be getting all the old structures (forest retreats, dark fortresses, and mountain halls) back in, though I can see this not being necessary... yet. If we get forest retreats, expect multi-tile trees.

I'd also like to promote the idea of boats here, at least in an abstract way. There should be a way for a bandit group from some island to raid you on a different continent.

Similarly, I think it should be possible for groups to traverse mountains and mountain peaks to get to you. It shouldn't be easy, but it should happen occasionally.

If the "group" happen to be necromancers, mountains and oceans shouldn't be an obstacle. Imagine being on an ocean fortress, and having hundreds of zombies crawl out of the ocean to lay siege to your fortress.

My predicted timescale would allow one month for each major feature. We can expect our next release at the end of June if Toady chooses to release just after he "activates the world", so we have worldgen progress in play, along with the timing features for bandit groups.

Adding forest retreats, mountain halls, and dark fortresses may take a month or two, including multi-tile trees.

I'd put an estimate of a week on non-lethal combat, which I consider to be a overestimate unless Toady decides to add in some of the "other aspects" of non-lethal combat, in which case it will take a month or so, likely to be wrapped into the taverns. Adding heroes, villains, taverns may take one to three months based on past experience from Release 1 and the Hauling changes, where each "feature" took around a month to work on.

Overall this leaves the estimate to the next release at between one and six months, with the "complete" release with the said features taking three to six months to finish.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on June 09, 2012, 09:29:51 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 09:09:09 am

My predicted timescale would allow one month for each major feature. We can expect our next release at the end of June.

you haven't been here very long have you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 09, 2012, 10:23:42 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on June 09, 2012, 09:29:51 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 09:09:09 am

My predicted timescale would allow one month for each major feature. We can expect our next release at the end of June.

you haven't been here very long have you?

I giggled here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on June 09, 2012, 10:51:21 am

I've been away for a while, and I haven't actually returned, but I noticed that, whilest checking up n updates today, there was a big epic post on the sixth about activating the world.
The sixth is my birthday.  And honestly, that "Oh, nothing much, guys, just doing some small scale mass entity movement interaction stuff" was kinda like a birthday present.
Cheers Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on June 09, 2012, 11:50:41 am

A slightly similar question than the previous, but What will this arc give to fortress mode ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 12:02:29 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 09:09:09 am

Overall this leaves the estimate to the next release at between one and six months, with the "complete" release with the said features taking three to six months to finish.

If Toady finished the single major feature and then released, we might get the new version by the end of June or beginning of July. Each of the features for "Release 1" took around a month or so to finish, so its not unreasonable. Carts and the Hauling release took around a month and a half to get out. The reason "Release 1" took so long was Toady added a large quantity of individual features (cities, night creatures, bridges and roads, all the new world constructions...) and that took a long time.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on June 09, 2012, 09:29:51 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 09:09:09 am

My predicted timescale would allow one month for each major feature. We can expect our next release at the end of June.

you haven't been here very long have you?

I've been here quite a while, actually.

Quote from: Naryar on June 09, 2012, 11:50:41 am

A slightly similar question than the previous, but What will this arc give to fortress mode ?

You should really green this.

My opinion is you might get armies or caravans moving through your fortress embark, and you might get raided by bandits. At the moment, the only raids we have are from hostile civilisations and from necromancers, but not from bandits. Nonlethal combat can and probably should include a "subdue" order for capturing wild animals or hostiles alive. If worldgen is continued during gameplay then you will have proper successions to positions, which might occur during the game and within your fortress. It could also sort out the issue where historical figures loose their position when leaving your fort, so you might get two sieges lead by the same general each time, and continue to get the same Outpost Liason each year. If worldgen continues during gameplay, you might also have roads built to your fortress, and you may also be able to retire your fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Richards on June 09, 2012, 04:15:44 pm

I found this really weird bug report on the tracker, apparently fat dwarves cause massive slow-downs. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5971

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monkeyfetus on June 09, 2012, 04:47:01 pm

What happened to the personality rewrite? I was under the impression it was a precursor to all this stuff about entities interacting with each-other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on June 09, 2012, 05:13:26 pm

Quote from: monkeyfetus on June 09, 2012, 04:47:01 pm

What happened to the personality rewrite? I was under the impression it was a precursor to all this stuff about entities interacting with each-other.

I would assume it is part of all this and the rewrite is just being rewritten as the interactions come along.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 09, 2012, 07:33:11 pm

Apparently entities will now have goals. Not sure if this will count towards personal goals, but it could.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on June 09, 2012, 08:50:40 pm

It'd be fun to have caravans that didn't trade with you just passing through your embark in fortress mode that you could let pass through, or even hold up or slaughter completely if you were desperate for something. This could be expanded to allowing "rest stops" or the like to be made, where caravans would buy food from you for a small amount of money or their wares. Over the years, you could turn your fortress into a large-scale trading center if you played your cards right. That would only be possible, of course, by building a road through your fortress, or building on a major river, and perhaps just like in Sim City, there would be "road ends" at the edge of the map that it would behoove you to link up. This would make it less of a good idea to embark in an isolated spot- you'll get a hell of a lot more trade if, for example, you built your fortress on the road between two major cities. You, too, can influence the overworld through trade this way. For example, if there were a part of the world that had a lot of very prosperous towns and cities, you could get trade by building on the edge of that region- but if you're prosperous enough other civilizations will build settlements just beyond your fortress because you attract trade and trade that comes to you will also come to them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 09, 2012, 09:16:46 pm

Quote from: Naryar on June 09, 2012, 11:50:41 am

A slightly similar question than the previous, but What will this arc give to fortress mode ?

Presumably everything that the Caravan release were going to give Fort Mode, but they're just reorganized and some of the releases were expanded upon. From those 9 releases, nothing was taken away, just reshuffled.

If the next release is bandits owning sites, and raiding other sites, then Forts might be getting ambushed from bandits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on June 09, 2012, 09:26:11 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on June 09, 2012, 08:50:40 pm

It'd be fun to have caravans that didn't trade with you just passing through your embark in fortress mode that you could let pass through, or even hold up or slaughter completely if you were desperate for something. This could be expanded to allowing "rest stops" or the like to be made, where caravans would buy food from you for a small amount of money or their wares. Over the years, you could turn your fortress into a large-scale trading center if you played your cards right. That would only be possible, of course, by building a road through your fortress, or building on a major river, and perhaps just like in Sim City, there would be "road ends" at the edge of the map that it would behoove you to link up. This would make it less of a good idea to embark in an isolated spot- you'll get a hell of a lot more trade if, for example, you built your fortress on the road between two major cities. You, too, can influence the overworld through trade this way. For example, if there were a part of the world that had a lot of very prosperous towns and cities, you could get trade by building on the edge of that region- but if you're prosperous enough other civilizations will build settlements just beyond your fortress because you attract trade and trade that comes to you will also come to them.

Or, if your a bastard, you can destroy cities's wealth by settling on there major roads and mugging the caravans, or taxing them for entering your land.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

(Might as well put this here.)

I'd like to see the ability to assign rooms/locations to certain jobs. You know, "the current mayor/manager/militia commander gets this and this and this" instead of having to manually assign stuff to an individual dwarf every time there's a management change. This already on the to-do list or am I a radical new thinker?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 03:20:57 am

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

<suggestion unrelated to current development>

This is a suggestion that is not related to current development, so there is absolutely no reason to post it here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 10, 2012, 03:30:46 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 03:20:57 am

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

<suggestion unrelated to current development>

This is a suggestion that is not related to current development, so there is absolutely no reason to post it here.

And its been suggested so heavily, that its on the Eternal Suggestion Vote.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on June 10, 2012, 05:34:11 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 10, 2012, 03:30:46 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 03:20:57 am

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

<suggestion unrelated to current development>

This is a suggestion that is not related to current development, so there is absolutely no reason to post it here.

And its been suggested so heavily, that its on the Eternal Suggestion Vote.

Since he did not greened out his suggestion, I think he is in his right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 05:36:55 am

Quote from: thvaz on June 10, 2012, 05:34:11 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 10, 2012, 03:30:46 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 03:20:57 am

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

<suggestion unrelated to current development>

This is a suggestion that is not related to current development, so there is absolutely no reason to post it here.

And its been suggested so heavily, that its on the Eternal Suggestion Vote.

Since he did not greened out his suggestion, I think he is in his right.

"The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments." - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on June 10, 2012, 08:30:59 am

Quote from: Corai on June 09, 2012, 09:26:11 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on June 09, 2012, 08:50:40 pm

It'd be fun to have caravans that didn't trade with you just passing through your embark in fortress mode that you could let pass through, or even hold up or slaughter completely if you were desperate for something. This could be expanded to allowing "rest stops" or the like to be made, where caravans would buy food from you for a small amount of money or their wares. Over the years, you could turn your fortress into a large-scale trading center if you played your cards right. That would only be possible, of course, by building a road through your fortress, or building on a major river, and perhaps just like in Sim City, there would be "road ends" at the edge of the map that it would behoove you to link up. This would make it less of a good idea to embark in an isolated spot- you'll get a hell of a lot more trade if, for example, you built your fortress on the road between two major cities. You, too, can influence the overworld through trade this way. For example, if there were a part of the world that had a lot of very prosperous towns and cities, you could get trade by building on the edge of that region- but if you're prosperous enough other civilizations will build settlements just beyond your fortress because you attract trade and trade that comes to you will also come to them.

Or, if your a bastard, you can destroy cities's wealth by settling on there major roads and mugging the caravans, or taxing them for entering your land.

Which would hopefully provoke the massive deployment of force onto the outskirts of your settlements, preventing you from harassing the caravans and eventually starving you out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on June 10, 2012, 08:53:49 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 05:36:55 am

Quote from: thvaz on June 10, 2012, 05:34:11 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 10, 2012, 03:30:46 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 10, 2012, 03:20:57 am

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

<suggestion unrelated to current development>

This is a suggestion that is not related to current development, so there is absolutely no reason to post it here.

And its been suggested so heavily, that its on the Eternal Suggestion Vote.

Since he did not greened out his suggestion, I think he is in his right.

"The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments." - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.0

this is his post before you misquote him

Quote from: Slax on June 10, 2012, 03:18:38 am

(Might as well put this here.)

I'd like to see the ability to assign rooms/locations to certain jobs. You know, "the current mayor/manager/militia commander gets this and this and this" instead of having to manually assign stuff to an individual dwarf every time there's a management change. This already on the to-do list or am I a radical new thinker?

he questioned if his idea was part of the current development plan, he didn't suggest anything. keep your hate for greened suggestions, those are the dangerous ones, the ones that need to be kept in check

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Richards on June 10, 2012, 02:56:24 pm

Looks like the build is coming along fine... Hey everyone! Let's have a wave of Jean Luc Picard facepalms! Woo!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on June 10, 2012, 03:49:46 pm

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-38Or80_CcWg/T2GKmR2YIBI/AAAAAAAAJwE/K2jN2vtuex8/s1600/618px-JeanLucPicardFacepalm.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on June 10, 2012, 05:28:39 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on June 10, 2012, 03:49:46 pm

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-38Or80_CcWg/T2GKmR2YIBI/AAAAAAAAJwE/K2jN2vtuex8/s1600/618px-JeanLucPicardFacepalm.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on June 10, 2012, 05:31:29 pm

Quote from: TempAcc on June 10, 2012, 05:28:39 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on June 10, 2012, 03:49:46 pm

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-38Or80_CcWg/T2GKmR2YIBI/AAAAAAAAJwE/K2jN2vtuex8/s1600/618px-JeanLucPicardFacepalm.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 10, 2012, 07:55:09 pm

Spoiler: Engage (click to show/hide)

(https://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/images/devcentral_f5_com/weblogs/macvittie/WindowsLiveWriter/UsersuseApplications.ApplicationsuseClo_372A/DoubleFacePalm_thumb.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on June 10, 2012, 07:56:48 pm

i think one was enough. stop that now, it's annoying

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 10, 2012, 08:02:15 pm

Sure, you're the only one who gets to have fun :P  Hopefully we get a new devlog to discuss tonight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Zack on June 10, 2012, 08:53:06 pm

Does "replacing losses" mean births in the world after world gen (rather than just in you're fortress?

If so I suppose that might lead into entities founding new sites (need to have someplace to put all those new citizens) or reclaiming abandoned ones. Might be reading too much into it I suppose but that sort of thing is planned right? The question is though, will it be sooner or later?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 10, 2012, 09:05:11 pm

Quote from: Lord Zack on June 10, 2012, 08:53:06 pm

Does "replacing losses" mean births in the world after world gen (rather than just in your fortress?)

Yes. The entire sentence is talking explicitly about entities other than you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on June 10, 2012, 09:35:18 pm

I have a world gen question.

For the tile counts in designating good/evil regions, for a given map size, what exactly is a small, medium or large region?

I'd like to see that configurable actually, maybe even with a cap on the large region size so it isn't always the ocean. Large evil mountain ranges are hard to come by because of that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on June 11, 2012, 01:04:00 am

Semi-off-topic twofer, because I'm not good at staying away from caffiene.

A) How often do you look at mods?
B) Do you ever look at the forums and think to yourself "What the hell is my playerbase on?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 11, 2012, 01:16:42 am

Toady mentioned before that he only looks at mods when somebody sends him a bugged save that uses them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on June 11, 2012, 04:56:12 am

Yay ! More enemies to slay !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on June 11, 2012, 05:13:07 am

I find it awesome how the systems Toady has created in the past are usable for new features. In retrospect, a militia squad and a bandit gang are nearly the same thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on June 11, 2012, 06:42:58 am

The bandit gang will probably have a more functional moral compass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 11, 2012, 04:56:45 pm

With these new features, are we actually going to have more interactions between civilisations? For instance, if we embark next to a gigantic city, or on a road, we might end up in conflict with the humans?

It sounds like we will finally be able to haul thugs into the local jail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 11, 2012, 05:44:01 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 11, 2012, 04:56:45 pm

With these new features, are we actually going to have more interactions between civilisations? For instance, if we embark next to a gigantic city, or on a road, we might end up in conflict with the humans?

It sounds like we will finally be able to haul thugs into the local jail.

That's the eventual goal. The Caravan Release, was more about getting the world more living, and thinking on its own. From my understanding, the only real interaction is going to be largely trading.
The Army Ark is more about Civs interacting between each other. After the Caravan Arc is done, the world will hopefully be progressing and changing after World Gen is done. And from there, civilizations will be able to realize that there is a Dorf Fortress on their Sites and then decided what to do with it. That might include military action.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Heedicalking on June 11, 2012, 06:30:16 pm

Will local thugs be aware of what you are wearing? A guy with a knife shouldn't pick a fight with someone armored head to toe in steel.
Will we be able to increase the danger level in confrontations? For example, if a guy starts punching me, and I draw my sword and stab him once, will he start spilling the beans quicker than he would in fist-fight?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 11, 2012, 06:41:24 pm

Quote from: Heedicalking on June 11, 2012, 06:30:16 pm

Will local thugs be aware of what you are wearing? A guy with a knife shouldn't pick a fight with someone armored head to toe in steel.

There is an eventual goal for NPCs to be aware of what you're wearing, and what each other are wearing. There a plethora of associated game play capabilities and interactions with wearing different clothing effecting the world. (Such as but not limited to: Disguises, Uniforms, and being recognized as a Foreigner.)

Quote

Will we be able to increase the danger level in confrontations? For example, if a guy starts punching me, and I draw my sword and stab him once, will he start spilling the beans quicker than he would in fist-fight?

For your specific example of interrogation, yes. In a more general sense, like, say in a bare fisted Bar Fight, then you pull out a sword. I dont know. I'd imagine that the answer is yes, eventually. But I dont recall any goal where that is explicitly stated. That might be emergent behavior from the interrogation stuff though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King_of_the_weasels on June 12, 2012, 05:24:27 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 11, 2012, 06:41:24 pm

Quote from: Heedicalking on June 11, 2012, 06:30:16 pm

Will local thugs be aware of what you are wearing? A guy with a knife shouldn't pick a fight with someone armored head to toe in steel.

There is an eventual goal for NPCs to be aware of what you're wearing, and what each other are wearing. There a plethora of associated game play capabilities and interactions with wearing different clothing effecting the world. (Such as but not limited to: Disguises, Uniforms, and being recognized as a Foreigner.)

Pants? What are ya a woman?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eataTREE on June 12, 2012, 10:47:35 am

So with the new complex faction interactions, will it be possible during Fort mode play for, say, some humans (for example) to show up on your map, without your being sure of what their intentions are; ie, you wouldn't know at first whether they were peaceful traders or bandits come to attack you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: UristMcWanderer on June 12, 2012, 03:43:26 pm

Will we be able to embark on other settlements anytime soon? I noticed I was able to embark on top of human towns way back in 40d, but the game wouldn't let me embark onto sections of them in 31.25 up through now.

_{I'd like to be able to use the houses in human towns so I don't have to do the work of chopping down trees/gathering a ton of clay to build all the houses myself.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 12, 2012, 03:54:23 pm

Quote from: UristMcWanderer on June 12, 2012, 03:43:26 pm

Will we be able to embark on other settlements anytime soon? I noticed I was able to embark on top of human towns way back in 40d, but the game wouldn't let me embark onto sections of them in 31.25 up through now.

Not anytime soon, no. Apart from the weirdness that you're invading a settlement without retaliation, there are, or at least used to be, other issues with embarking on towns that more or less break those sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 12, 2012, 09:39:18 pm

New devlog.

Are personality traits going to affect exactly how different people react in combat situations? For example, someone who easily cracks under pressure might be likely to run away, and someone who gets angry very easily would be more likely to bring it on?

Will these kinds of reactions be added to Dwarf Fortress mode? For example, nervous dwarves would be more likely to run away from those starting first fights, whilst others might decide to actively participate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on June 12, 2012, 10:03:56 pm

Sheaths for swords would be a cool addition, though they weren't explicitly mentioned. It'd be cool to send the town hooligans running after knocking them around with your scabbard a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 12, 2012, 10:28:47 pm

Quote from: eataTREE on June 12, 2012, 10:47:35 am

So with the new complex faction interactions, will it be possible during Fort mode play for, say, some humans (for example) to show up on your map, without your being sure of what their intentions are; ie, you wouldn't know at first whether they were peaceful traders or bandits come to attack you?

Yep. Eventually.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 12, 2012, 09:39:18 pm

New devlog.

Are personality traits going to affect exactly how different people react in combat situations? For example, someone who easily cracks under pressure might be likely to run away, and someone who gets angry very easily would be more likely to bring it on?

I think that what the Dev Log pretty much says. So, yes.

Quote

Will these kinds of reactions be added to Dwarf Fortress mode? For example, nervous dwarves would be more likely to run away from those starting first fights, whilst others might decide to actively participate.

Probably yea. The personality for Adventure Mode and Fort are more less the same system. Though the personality system of old, is being entirely tossed out. From what Toady said in DF Talks, its not suited for whats needed for the Army Arc.

I'm hoping that dorfs in an the army, trained together wont flee. But I hope that dorfs you assign in a 'on the fly' militia should freaken flee. On the bright side, hopefully civilian dorfs wont run away from fuckin everything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on June 12, 2012, 10:51:21 pm

Yea some kind of sheath or weapon strap would be cool.   Having your sword out all the time seems kind of overly aggressive, probably enough to keep the annoying kids and petty thugs away, but drawing a lot of attention from the guards.  But it seems kind of absurd to always stow your sword in your backpack every time so a place to stow your weapon and only your weapon seems like a good thing.

Bonus points for a simpler way to take it out then the current method too.  Having to (r)emove it from a long inventory list every time I want to use it or have to find the weapon strap in the inventory every time I want to put it away sounds like it would get old fast.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 12, 2012, 10:54:03 pm

Maybe an addition to "g" (like campfires) or "R" (I.E shift+r, which IIRC doesn't do anything)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on June 13, 2012, 12:35:14 am

Is there going to be any kind of "desensitization" to the fear of fighting that slowly builds up?  I can see hardened troops who have made it through dozens of battles being less likely to run away than the fresh from the fields farmer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on June 13, 2012, 12:37:50 am

Is there going to be combat realism with this release, meaning if you say, murder a entire kingdom and go to another, they will run in fear. And if yes, what of soldiers? If you slaughter a army alone, would hardened elites you fight later on flight or fight?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 13, 2012, 12:42:22 am

Quote from: BradUffner on June 13, 2012, 12:35:14 am

Is there going to be any kind of "desensitization" to the fear of fighting that slowly builds up?  I can see hardened troops who have made it through dozens of battles being less likely to run away than the fresh from the fields farmer.

As far as I know, this already exists? Like the "Is getting used to the tragedy" and "Does not really care about anything anymore". It does not directly remove fear, but it does that which you seem to want. Even if the whole current system is thrown out, I'm sure that this element will not be overlooked, and that dwarves and people will simply start getting used to seeing hostiles and death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 13, 2012, 01:03:58 am

Quote from: Greiger on June 12, 2012, 10:51:21 pm

Having your sword out all the time seems kind of overly aggressive, probably enough to keep the annoying kids and petty thugs away, but drawing a lot of attention from the guards. 

*Looks at Greiger's avatar*

 :o

Stop right there, criminal scum!

But seriously, great devlog.  I've always wanted NPCs to assess player appearance.  Wonder if a ragged beggar would get different responses from an armoured knight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 13, 2012, 01:05:12 am

It'd be funny if our super legenedary adventurers eventually get whacky skills like pulling out and sheathing their swords so fast they can cut someone in two without seeming to touch their weapon. The only indication would be an eerie whistling sound...And the spurting blood, I guess. It'd be like a cheap kung fu movie.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 13, 2012, 01:19:55 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 12, 2012, 10:54:03 pm

Maybe an addition to "g" (like campfires) or "R" (I.E shift+r, which IIRC doesn't do anything)?

Why not add it as an option in 'A'?

It could have an option to "Draw Sword" or "Draw Dagger". It makes sense for it to be in the attacking options. Sheathing the weapon can have a similar mechanic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 13, 2012, 05:14:59 am

Will the new lethality aversion effect the behavior of military dwarves? What about your civilian dwarves? Right now military dwarves are always totally cool with risking their necks and civilian dwarves always turn tail at the first sight of trouble, but only adventure mode stuff has been mentioned in the devlog.

Quote from: Elone on June 13, 2012, 12:42:22 am

Quote from: BradUffner on June 13, 2012, 12:35:14 am

Is there going to be any kind of "desensitization" to the fear of fighting that slowly builds up?  I can see hardened troops who have made it through dozens of battles being less likely to run away than the fresh from the fields farmer.

As far as I know, this already exists? Like the "Is getting used to the tragedy" and "Does not really care about anything anymore". It does not directly remove fear, but it does that which you seem to want. Even if the whole current system is thrown out, I'm sure that this element will not be overlooked, and that dwarves and people will simply start getting used to seeing hostiles and death.

Being used to tragedy is not the same as being down for a lethal confrontation at the drop of a hat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on June 13, 2012, 07:22:27 am

Would we be able to designate primary and secondary weapons?

It would be nice if in fort mode we could assign melee weapons to ranged squads as backup weapons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cartmann on June 13, 2012, 07:50:08 am

Would fighting animals, that can't wield weapons be considered as non-lethal fighting? Would it go as far as saying that fighting a Hydra be non-lethal as it has no weapons?

I can just imagine how much of a kick in the balls it'd be to go up to a hydra, but everyone decides that its non lethal and starts wrestling and shit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on June 13, 2012, 08:53:31 am

Converse to the above;

Can we, as an adventurer, choose to initiate unarmed combat with wildlife?

Imagine setting up a fort with dozens of cage traps, then going in as an adventurer and personally knocking various forms of interesting wildlife unconcious and wrangling them over to the cages! :D

Ohh also; are there any plans to be able to restrain our enemies after we subdue them? Either in terms of affixing them to actual restraints that we have in fortmode (like chains etc.), hogtying them, or tying them up but being able to walk?

 I figure this is likely, given you talk about things like;

Quote from: Dev Goals

Ability to hold somebody and immobilize them

...but some clarification would be awesome!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on June 13, 2012, 09:35:51 am

Quote from: BradUffner on June 13, 2012, 12:35:14 am

Is there going to be any kind of "desensitization" to the fear of fighting that slowly builds up?  I can see hardened troops who have made it through dozens of battles being less likely to run away than the fresh from the fields farmer.

That depends. I can see some people slowly going insane from the horror of seeing their comrades fall and such, so it could depend on the sorts of battles he's seen. If he's seen a demon rip apart a man and kill two others with the pieces, then he'd prob have enough of battle. Unless he's one of those avenging or 'I'll get better' types and doesn't give up just to stop this from happening to others...
If these could actually be implemented...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on June 13, 2012, 09:48:06 am

i see a problem with weapon recognition: what about other things not really considered a weapon? i thinks its documented history of this game to kill things with something else than a weapon.
also: when i use the 'unsheathe my sword'-button, how does the game decide one the weapon when i have multiple ones? i think a specialized button is not necessary, i took on the habit of taking a quiver and putting my weapons in there. that way i dont have to search my whole backpack all the time and its fast to access when youre not wearing a dozen other containers at the same time. So my question is:

how will the game handle nonweapon-weapons?

i can imagine a npc looking at what youre holding in hands and calculating a theoretical hit with this item on themselves in the background to estimate the damage. also it would be cool if observing-abilities would make one over- or under-estimate the power the other one is wielding as well as self-confidence-levels affecting the estimated own toughness for the theoretical hit.
to shorten the last part: npcs thinking: 'what would happen if that guy hit me with this thing in his hands?'

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 13, 2012, 01:12:41 pm

If I hit someone with the flat of my blade, does that count as a lethal or non-lethal attack according to the game?

For the uninformed, adventurers have the option of intentionally hitting someone with the flat of the blade, and its very weak compared to even hitting someone with the pommel of the sword, much less stabbing or slashing (which is why the AI almost never uses the attack).  Kicks or punches are more lethal at this point, although there's the counter argument that people might just assume you're trying to kill them because you're using a sword.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on June 13, 2012, 01:19:01 pm

How particularized are the different sorts of fear going to be to individual thoughts, personalities, and histories?

In other words, obviously some people might be willing to engage in fistfights but not lethal combat. However, would that extend to different sorts of lethal combat, so that a person might be willing to fight another human to the death, but not a dragon/demon? Or might be unwilling to fight a sort of animal that that dwarf "likes"? Also, would someone who is generally unwilling to enter lethal combat be willing if their opponent were an "enemy" subject to special and particular enmity (e.g. a troll that abducted the person's spouse)?

Sorry for the long question. I'm just interested in how the personality system and this stuff will interact. It seems like it could be a cool set of systems (indeed, this is the sort of stuff I've wanted the most since I started playing DF), but it could also be really overcomplicated and resource intensive if EVERYTHING is tracked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 13, 2012, 01:47:33 pm

Quote from: Sunday on June 13, 2012, 01:19:01 pm

How particularized are the different sorts of fear going to be to individual thoughts, personalities, and histories?

As an extension to this question, will the concepts of "natural enemy" found in D&D and phobias get in the personnality rewrite ? I'm thinking, for example, about a certain knight very keen on slaughter leaving a fight because he fears fire after being severely burnt as a child.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 03:52:37 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Logically, unless the weapon in question was an artifact I doubt they'd have ever heard of it or would recognize it as having killed goblins before :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 13, 2012, 04:20:36 pm

Related, I'm hoping that goblins will learn to fear the Misc Object User when he brandishes a backpack at them. Particularly if it is a named backpack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on June 13, 2012, 05:40:39 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 03:52:37 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Logically, unless the weapon in question was an artifact I doubt they'd have ever heard of it or would recognize it as having killed goblins before :>

Yeah, but it would be a nice for artifacts to have an effect like that.

At this point Gandalf fell behind, and Thorin with him. They turned a sharp corner. “About turn!” he shouted. “Draw your sword, Thorin!” There was nothing else to be done; and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying round the corner in full cry, and found Goblin Cleaver and Foe Hammer shining cold and bright right in their astonished eyes. The ones in front dropped their torches and gave one yell before they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back knocking over those that were running after them. “Biter and Beater!” they shrieked; and soon they were all in confusion, and most of them were hustling back the way they had come.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 05:47:39 pm

Precisely the effect I was wondering about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:15:26 pm

Quote from: Karlito on June 13, 2012, 05:40:39 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 03:52:37 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Logically, unless the weapon in question was an artifact I doubt they'd have ever heard of it or would recognize it as having killed goblins before :>

Yeah, but it would be a nice for artifacts to have an effect like that.

At this point Gandalf fell behind, and Thorin with him. They turned a sharp corner. “About turn!” he shouted. “Draw your sword, Thorin!” There was nothing else to be done; and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying round the corner in full cry, and found Goblin Cleaver and Foe Hammer shining cold and bright right in their astonished eyes. The ones in front dropped their torches and gave one yell before they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back knocking over those that were running after them. “Biter and Beater!” they shrieked; and soon they were all in confusion, and most of them were hustling back the way they had come.

Well yes, artifacts definitely, and it would add a lot to both usefulness and coolness value if artifacts could have effects such as that. A random +Iron Short Sword+ with 100 goblin kills that's been named still wouldn't be recognizeable or mean much to the goblins though ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on June 13, 2012, 06:48:52 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:15:26 pm

Well yes, artifacts definitely, and it would add a lot to both usefulness and coolness value if artifacts could have effects such as that. A random +Iron Short Sword+ with 100 goblin kills that's been named still wouldn't be recognizeable or mean much to the goblins though ^^

I don't know. A named sword that killed 100 goblins surely belongs to a fearsome goblin slayer who has taken it upon himself to hunt down members of the goblin race in some capacity. It would make sense for such a weapon to have fear-inducing associations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 13, 2012, 06:53:55 pm

Well, as long as the goblins can tell the difference between a sword that's killed 100 goblins, and a dagger that's killed 100 rabbits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 13, 2012, 06:56:29 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on June 13, 2012, 06:48:52 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:15:26 pm

Well yes, artifacts definitely, and it would add a lot to both usefulness and coolness value if artifacts could have effects such as that. A random +Iron Short Sword+ with 100 goblin kills that's been named still wouldn't be recognizeable or mean much to the goblins though ^^

I don't know. A named sword that killed 100 goblins surely belongs to a fearsome goblin slayer who has taken it upon himself to hunt down members of the goblin race in some capacity. It would make sense for such a weapon to have fear-inducing associations.

Agreed. The fear doesn't come because it's exceptionnally well-made, but because it slained many before. Though artifacts should be more instantly recognizable whereas maybe you'd have to boast the name of your sword before fear is induced, if it's just a normal sword.

Which makes me think : any chance we get the option to boast a kill or two as our enemies do (which I *think* you mentionned somewhere), in this next round of psychological warfare ? Will the boasting of an enemy have an effect on our followers, distinct from the effect of getting rounded by 6 people in the wilderness ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:56:46 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on June 13, 2012, 06:48:52 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:15:26 pm

Well yes, artifacts definitely, and it would add a lot to both usefulness and coolness value if artifacts could have effects such as that. A random +Iron Short Sword+ with 100 goblin kills that's been named still wouldn't be recognizeable or mean much to the goblins though ^^

I don't know. A named sword that killed 100 goblins surely belongs to a fearsome goblin slayer who has taken it upon himself to hunt down members of the goblin race in some capacity. It would make sense for such a weapon to have fear-inducing associations.

My point was more that it wouldn't make sense for goblins to be able to recognise weapons such as that unless they were truly unique in appearance somehow, such as for example artifacts, especially if these further on may be given visual magical effects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 13, 2012, 10:27:41 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:56:46 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on June 13, 2012, 06:48:52 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 06:15:26 pm

Well yes, artifacts definitely, and it would add a lot to both usefulness and coolness value if artifacts could have effects such as that. A random +Iron Short Sword+ with 100 goblin kills that's been named still wouldn't be recognizeable or mean much to the goblins though ^^

I don't know. A named sword that killed 100 goblins surely belongs to a fearsome goblin slayer who has taken it upon himself to hunt down members of the goblin race in some capacity. It would make sense for such a weapon to have fear-inducing associations.

My point was more that it wouldn't make sense for goblins to be able to recognise weapons such as that unless they were truly unique in appearance somehow, such as for example artifacts, especially if these further on may be given visual magical effects.

Well, there's always the chance that goblins could get a bad vibe off of a blade that has slayed a hundred of their kind regardless of if the blade actually looks unique. Granted said bad vibe can emanate from the slayer as well.

Plus there's always a chance that the sword itself could react in a way that makes itself known. IE. The swords in The Hobbit glowed around goblins/orcs normally due to them being made for a war against the goblins. Bilbo's sword is a nameless and non-unique weapon besides the fact it also glows. Later on when Bilbo is kicking spider-assthorax, the sword begins to glow in the presence of the spiders and rightly scares the shit out of the spiders. Which the spiders provide Bilbo with inspiration for the sword's name, if not the name itself.

The sword almost seemed to gain an affinity for dealing with spiders (which actually gets nodded to at the end of the book The Two Towers during Frodo and Sam's fights with Shelob). Granted though, it still was an elven-made dagger and was unique enough that the main characters never see anything like it and that  the enemies typically didn't like elven stuff no matter what it was.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kaiser Reinhard on June 14, 2012, 01:03:42 am

Here's an idea.

How about implementing meteors in the game? Every few years or so you'll get an announcement, and a meteor will fall somewhere on the map, causing fires and maybe punching in a hole though the ground level and killing everything underneath. The remains can then be mined out for some ore inside on the level of candy, or at lease some kind of ore.

Maybe if gods are implemented in the game more a meteor shower could come just as the goblin siege are breaking through your front gates, saving you and providing you with metal from the heavens for defending yourself more adequately next time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 14, 2012, 01:47:16 am

Quote from: Kaiser Reinhard on June 14, 2012, 01:03:42 am

Here's an idea.

How about implementing meteors in the game? Every few years or so you'll get an announcement, and a meteor will fall somewhere on the map, causing fires and maybe punching in a hole though the ground level and killing everything underneath. The remains can then be mined out for some ore inside on the level of candy, or at lease some kind of ore.

Maybe if gods are implemented in the game more a meteor shower could come just as the goblin siege are breaking through your front gates, saving you and providing you with metal from the heavens for defending yourself more adequately next time.

The problem with that is that events are eventually supposed to follow logical cause and effect.  So, for example, we're moving from sieges just randomly happening to having them be drawn from an existing faction, or no siege at all if you aren't at war with anyone.  The army arc will let you engage in diplomacy or counter attacks to stop further sieges.  The point is, what we want is that the siege (the effect) happens because you were at war (the cause) and you can attempt to protect yourself from it (the gameplay).

Your idea, while not bad, runs counter to that sort of cause and effect.  Even unexpected or unavoidable dwarven deaths are supposed to happen for a reason, not just cause the RNG got angry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 14, 2012, 03:33:08 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2012, 03:52:37 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Logically, unless the weapon in question was an artifact I doubt they'd have ever heard of it or would recognize it as having killed goblins before :>

Which reminds me how you can tell where there is donkey and dwarf and dragon blood mixed together, just by glancing at the puddle.

Quote from: Kaiser Reinhard on June 14, 2012, 01:03:42 am

How about implementing meteors in the game? Every few years or so you'll get an announcement, and a meteor will fall somewhere on the map, causing fires and maybe punching in a hole though the ground level and killing everything underneath. The remains can then be mined out for some ore inside on the level of candy, or at lease some kind of ore.

Played Terraria much (http://wiki.terrariaonline.com/Meteorite_%28biome%29)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 14, 2012, 03:42:44 am

Quote

Played Terraria much?

Hardly the first game to do it and especially not the first form of fiction to do it.

In fact you can trace "Meteor strikes" back years before Terraria.

So... I guess I have to say

Played Terraria too much?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 14, 2012, 03:45:13 am

And what about worms <_<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on June 14, 2012, 04:25:20 am

Is combat going to be revamped with this as well? Say elf E and goblin G are in a fight, and elf E pulls a dagger out. Will goblin G disarm the elf, and will the elf attempt to pickup said dagger again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 14, 2012, 04:43:26 am

Quote from: Corai on June 14, 2012, 04:25:20 am

Is combat going to be revamped with this as well? Say elf E and goblin G are in a fight, and elf E pulls a dagger out. Will goblin G disarm the elf, and will the elf attempt to pickup said dagger again?

Yea, I think its pretty safe to say that Combat and most if not all interconnecting system will get integrated with the new current changes, so that they can actually make use of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 14, 2012, 04:49:46 am

"No Stozu! Get back! Do you not recognise the famed killer of a thousand goblins before you?"
"Lolz! It's ok! He's using a different sword!"

Enemies fearing a specific mundane weapon is kind of silly, I think, and not just because of the question of how they would recognise it. If someone got famous by killing a lot, it stands to reason they didn't manage it simply because of a certain weapon. Chances are they would do just as well with another weapon, maybe even a different type of weapon.

But if a weapon was made famous by someone, then others would likely try to gain possession of it for the status. And if there's competition for a particular weapon for the status, it's probable that the person who eventually ends up with it is better than average. And then people would be wary of anyone seen using that weapon. Sort of like heron-mark blades from the Wheel of Time series, if you're familiar with it.

So I guess I'm saying that it's silly to fear a specific weapon if the person using it is the one who made it famous, but if it becomes a status symbol after their death/retirement it might be a good way of seeing who's better than average. I'll shut up now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 14, 2012, 05:14:57 am

Quote from: DG on June 14, 2012, 04:49:46 am

"No Stozu! Get back! Do you not recognise the famed killer of a thousand goblins before you?"
"Lolz! It's ok! He's using a different sword!"

Enemies fearing a specific mundane weapon is kind of silly, I think, and not just because of the question of how they would recognise it. If someone got famous by killing a lot, it stands to reason they didn't manage it simply because of a certain weapon. Chances are they would do just as well with another weapon, maybe even a different type of weapon.

But if a weapon was made famous by someone, then others would likely try to gain possession of it for the status. And if there's competition for a particular weapon for the status, it's probable that the person who eventually ends up with it is better than average. And then people would be wary of anyone seen using that weapon. Sort of like heron-mark blades from the Wheel of Time series, if you're familiar with it.

So I guess I'm saying that it's silly to fear a specific weapon if the person using it is the one who made it famous, but if it becomes a status symbol after their death/retirement it might be a good way of seeing who's better than average. I'll shut up now.

Eh?

Weapons can be come famous in Fort Mode, I think in Adventure Mode. They become psedo artifacts, and get historical information. So its a combination of both. If your Victim is aware of your Reputation, then that will probably effect them, or if they recongize the famous that effect them too. And the keyword here, is eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 14, 2012, 06:53:34 am

Quote from: Lord Shonus on June 13, 2012, 03:20:32 pm

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa159/Drunken_gun/escalation.png)
It's meant to be a sock.

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 14, 2012, 05:14:57 am

Eh?

Weapons can be come famous in Fort Mode, I think in Adventure Mode. They become psedo artifacts, and get historical information. So its a combination of both. If your Victim is aware of your Reputation, then that will probably effect them, or if they recongize the famous that effect them too. And the keyword here, is eventually.

I know but I think it would be silly if they started fearing your weapon specifically unless it became magical. But now I'm not even certain if anyone was advocating that, that's why I shut up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 14, 2012, 07:24:39 am

See, I thought you were replying to the post above yours

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pokey McFork on June 14, 2012, 08:38:21 am

Seeing that non-lethal combat is being implemented, will we be seeing non-lethal weapons at all?
i.e.: blackjacks, brass knuckles, etc.

If so, what kind of response would drawing one in a fight get?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on June 14, 2012, 09:24:57 am

Quote from: DG on June 14, 2012, 04:49:46 am

"No Stozu! Get back! Do you not recognise the famed killer of a thousand goblins before you?"
"Lolz! It's ok! He's using a different sword!"

Enemies fearing a specific mundane weapon is kind of silly, I think, and not just because of the question of how they would recognise it. If someone got famous by killing a lot, it stands to reason they didn't manage it simply because of a certain weapon. Chances are they would do just as well with another weapon, maybe even a different type of weapon.

But if a weapon was made famous by someone, then others would likely try to gain possession of it for the status. And if there's competition for a particular weapon for the status, it's probable that the person who eventually ends up with it is better than average. And then people would be wary of anyone seen using that weapon. Sort of like heron-mark blades from the Wheel of Time series, if you're familiar with it.

So I guess I'm saying that it's silly to fear a specific weapon if the person using it is the one who made it famous, but if it becomes a status symbol after their death/retirement it might be a good way of seeing who's better than average. I'll shut up now.

I don't think it's a matter of the weapon itself being perceived as having any special properties; it's just the intimidation value of its reputation. It isn't logical, it's psychological.

For a real-life example - You'd be unlikely to pick a fistfight with a guy who you know is a Navy SEAL. You'd be less likely, I'd wager, to pick a fistfight with a guy who you know is a Navy SEAL and is in uniform as such. It's not because you think the uniform gives him +20 Strength or something; it's just a persistent, very visible reminder that he can probably kick your ass. (That it's not even a thing that applies practically to combat, as the legendary weapon would be, reinforces the point I think).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 14, 2012, 10:07:37 am

Quote from: Kaiser Reinhard on June 14, 2012, 01:03:42 am

Here's an idea.

How about implementing meteors in the game? Every few years or so you'll get an announcement, and a meteor will fall somewhere on the map, causing fires and maybe punching in a hole though the ground level and killing everything underneath. The remains can then be mined out for some ore inside on the level of candy, or at lease some kind of ore.

Maybe if gods are implemented in the game more a meteor shower could come just as the goblin siege are breaking through your front gates, saving you and providing you with metal from the heavens for defending yourself more adequately next time.

Meteors are frequently suggested in the Suggestions forum. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB4CyyRogDULakz28C7Gbv4rxsfLV0LUWRedNMhYq62W-HbE5cjoMBt0hh3UHdf8_MLSXdzEKqLRL1aCjO94ELxQMiz2xNJeP8Ityw..)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on June 14, 2012, 07:58:09 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on June 14, 2012, 10:07:37 am

Meteors are frequently suggested in the Suggestions forum. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB4CyyRogDULakz28C7Gbv4rxsfLV0LUWRedNMhYq62W-HbE5cjoMBt0hh3UHdf8_MLSXdzEKqLRL1aCjO94ELxQMiz2xNJeP8Ityw..)

It's also item #126 on the DF Eternal Suggestion Voting (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php) page.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 15, 2012, 07:12:51 am

Quote from: rex mortis on June 11, 2012, 05:13:07 am

I find it awesome how the systems Toady has created in the past are usable for new features. In retrospect, a militia squad and a bandit gang are nearly the same thing.

Yep, the joys of OOP¹ :)

¹ OOP = Object-Oriented Programming - C++ ftw :D

Quote from: DG on June 13, 2012, 01:05:12 am

It'd be funny if our super legenedary adventurers eventually get whacky skills like pulling out and sheathing their swords so fast they can cut someone in two without seeming to touch their weapon. The only indication would be an eerie whistling sound...And the spurting blood, I guess. It'd be like a cheap kung fu movie.

YOHOHOHOOO  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ5YxpfLDew)I freaking love that series :]

Quote from: Torchy on June 14, 2012, 09:24:57 am

(...)

See, the problem is to differentiate Omnom, the +iron sword+, that has killed a thousand goblins from a random +iron sword+ that killed a fluffy wambler.
Now if the sword had a certain composition of hanging rings that it is adorned with, which mark it as the sword of a certain civilization, people might react appropriately: Flee, if it's the sword of a certain exceptionally badass civ, or laugh, if it's the sword of a weak civ. The status of the piece of equipment would have to be noticeable to other people. This system would be equivalent to your example with the navy SEAL equipment.

Also, I don't think that equipment reputation should do nothing at all, it's just... What makes a *sword* that has killed 10 goblins better for goblin slaying than a *sword* that is newly produced? Sure, a piece of old equipment from a famed warrior might induce fear because you most likely have to be a good fighter to get it, but

1) The sword needs to be known and identifiable to the enemy, however, the rusty iron armor of king PROTOS THE SLAYER should give your companions a nice moral boost

2) it needs to be actually good, so a famous -copper sword- shouldn't induce more fear (or probably no fear at all) than an ¤adamantine sword¤ without reputation, because obviously the guy who made that sword famous could have done it with any sword laying around.
Thus said, the copper sword might have curiousity value, as in, it's interesting for a museum, but enemies shouldn't fear it, because it is not hard for someone with a it of money to get hold of the sword, while the adamantine sword would be hard to get, because such swords are seldom and can only be given to people who know how to use them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gordogomez on June 15, 2012, 02:02:45 pm

Unless it's a magical sword which increases the wielder's stats, effectively making him a better fighter, and therefore, subject of fear. I can't think of any real life analogy when magic is involved...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 15, 2012, 02:04:26 pm

Perhaps you could think of it as a kind of successive identity weapon--whoever holds that sword shall be known as Kittenblossoms, slayer of goblins or something like that. Think like the Gray Fox's cowl in the Elder Scrolls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on June 15, 2012, 02:10:45 pm

Maybe more a suggestion.... so I won't green it. :-X

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 15, 2012, 02:13:31 pm

That was via a magical effect.  The complete identity of the previous Grey Fox was utterly erased, you may recall.  So, that kind of throws that one back into the realm of Magical Weapons.

You could play pass the hat with identity in a manner like Green Lantern (not Magic, per se, but extra-terrestrial pseudo-magi-techno-essence stuff) or The Shadow even.  Maybe The Phantom.  But the latter two prized their anonymity, so a reputation preceding you might not work like you'd want in that case.   Hmmmm........

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Headhanger on June 15, 2012, 02:53:23 pm

The discussion of weapons with reputations reminds me of Gandalf, in The Hobbit, revealing Glamdring and scaring the goblins. I know that Emeraldwind already made a Tolkien reference - I'm just adding my tuppence' worth.

Imagine there was a dwarf that went on a human-killing spree a hundred years ago. He died, eventually, but his axe was never recovered. All of the stories about the dwarf feature "his dreaded black axe, decorated with gemstones the colour of dusk". Then you see a dwarf the next day, and he's holding a black axe with gemstones the colour of- oh wait just a second!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on June 15, 2012, 08:25:55 pm

Perhaps a mere *Steel Mace* wouldn't be unique enough to really gain much reputation, but a  *«+Steel Mace+»* just might be, with it's hanging rings of bone and the image of a burning elephant on the shaft. Thus, once it becomes a Named Weapon, it's various multipliers could factor into how quickly it builds up a notable reputation.

The Spear That Slayed The Forgotten Beast also seems like something that would develop a reputation almost instantly, but the effect's potency might vary by how decorated and unique it is. A subtle encouragement to bling out our gear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ZzarkLinux on June 15, 2012, 08:28:40 pm

I have a question about the recent devlogs.
Maybe somebody has more insight.

Quote

we'll be including non-lethal combat and a recognition by participants and bystanders of the various stages of escalation in the confrontations

Quote

I've shut off immediate enemy recognition so that people don't start fighting to the death in the streets.

Will this feature also fix the loyalty cascade issue when a dwarf attacks a were-dwarf or a husk-dwarf?
So maybe killing a were-civilian or a husk-civilian doesn't result in "fight-to-the-death" loyalty cascade.

I think it would be really cool if Toady implemented the new "recognition/escalation" issue and also chopped out these few bugs with the same stroke.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 15, 2012, 08:41:32 pm

Quote from: Areyar on June 15, 2012, 02:10:45 pm

Maybe more a suggestion.... so I won't green it. :-X

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

Why is it blue?

And yea, there are plans to have internal drama for Forts. With Family Clans and Guilds bickering between themselves. I also asked a question a bit ago, weather this would also allow more In Fort Crime. (Thieves and murders), and Toady said that the  the personality rewrite could allow for that, but its main use was for the Army Arc.

A good rule of thumb, I think is that if something can have application in Adventure & Fort Mode, then it probably will be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on June 15, 2012, 08:43:49 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 15, 2012, 08:41:32 pm

Quote from: Areyar on June 15, 2012, 02:10:45 pm

Maybe more a suggestion.... so I won't green it. :-X

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

Why is it blue?

And yea, there are plans to have internal drama for Forts. With Family Clans and Guilds bickering between themselves. I also asked a question a bit ago, weather this would also allow more In Fort Crime. (Thieves and murders), and Toady said that the  the personality rewrite could allow for that, but its main use was for the Army Arc.

A good rule of thumb, I think is that if something can have application in Adventure & Fort Mode, then it probably will be.

A police would finally be important. Without one the families would be fighting for dominance, like a gang war.

...Oh god, the military just got even more dangerous to be in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vherid on June 15, 2012, 08:46:28 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 15, 2012, 08:41:32 pm

weather this would also allow more In Fort Crime. (Thieves and murders)

I think a little expansion on the justice system would be quite nice. I'm not sure if the feeding/drinking bugs are still in place, maybe those could be fixed and then possibly add a few new crime types, and maybe more forms of punishment/imprisonment. Though one of the main problems with the justice system is the fact that hammer-striking the shit out of a vampire means nothing pretty much. Maybe some kind of stake burning like a witch or something.

Is there any plans to improve upon the effectiveness of punishing a vampire? Punishing them for murdering just about always ends up giving them a few bruises and that's about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 16, 2012, 12:28:11 am

I don't think a weapon's kill count should inspire fear at all.  I would think an item should only inspire unusual fear if A. It is actually more dangerous (this artifact sword causes goblins to burst into flame!) or B its part of a uniform for a group that inspires fear (this brooch is the symbol of a group of renowned goblin slayers).  Even if the fort champion's axe is distinctive and has thousand of kills, if some fisherdwarf ends up using it no one will be afraid of him because the fort's enemies are really just afraid of the champion, not his axe.  On the other hand, it should be possible to inspire fear by wielding a Hammerer's hammer, because having that associates the wielder with a dangerous position.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on June 16, 2012, 01:27:23 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on June 16, 2012, 12:28:11 am

I don't think a weapon's kill count should inspire fear at all.  I would think an item should only inspire unusual fear if A. It is actually more dangerous (this artifact sword causes goblins to burst into flame!) or B its part of a uniform for a group that inspires fear (this brooch is the symbol of a group of renowned goblin slayers).  Even if the fort champion's axe is distinctive and has thousand of kills, if some fisherdwarf ends up using it no one will be afraid of him because the fort's enemies are really just afraid of the champion, not his axe.  On the other hand, it should be possible to inspire fear by wielding a Hammerer's hammer, because having that associates the wielder with a dangerous position.

so to sum that up...

A weapon is only scary if the weapon IS what makes the wielder scary?
i.e. hammerer's hammer, the hammerer is not that scary, the hammer is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on June 16, 2012, 03:31:43 am

From the devlog:

Quote

Right now the new stuff just applies to what I've been working on, so that critters will generally feel terror when people are trying to kill them, unless they are oddly constituted, and in order to continue fighting they need to master their fear. Failure to master emotional states leads to forced actions like running away or attacking in rage, although running away can also occur as a rational action if the critter gets to that stage.

Will the player's character be affected by fear etc. and subject to forced actions, or will it be left to roleplaying?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 16, 2012, 06:16:21 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on June 16, 2012, 03:31:43 am

Will the player's character be affected by fear etc. and subject to forced actions, or will it be left to roleplaying?

Good question, Toady talked about this on DF talk one time and It'd be interesting to hear what decision was made.  As long as one can become accustomed to fear then perhaps it isn't any more restrictive than any other skill determined action?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on June 16, 2012, 06:32:28 am

terror seems nice, looking forward to that. itll most certainly change how the game feels when played a lot.

what changes to combat are at the doorstep right now? (details below not coloured, but still part of the question)

-since running at someone with your weapon readied is more fearsome than crawling towards them, will the combat-movement-speed-split previously seen on the to-do-list be part of the terror-in-combat-changes?

-since less lethal combat mostly relies on techniques in real live, how much of work will go in that direction? will the long planned stances be introduced now?(putting your leg behind your enemies leg to poke them to the ground easily as an example of a stance used in less lethal combat)

-following stances, once they get in(even if thats not now), will they replace the _random_ opportunity-strikes and to-hit-difficulties we have now with _logical_ opportunities and difficulties?(a wide swing with your right arm can leave your right side open; stepping forward with your left leg makes it a far easier target than your right leg)

-will things which dont have attack entries in the weapons raw-file see some changes concerning less lethal combat?(think of shield-bashing and fist attacks while wearing gauntlets and the likes)

-how much will be done concerning lesser injuries and 'status-effects' in the wake of less lethal combat? right now outright killing your opponent has the same difficulty as, or at least doesnt take longer than, reducing their fighting power little by little, so nobody aims at less lethal points.

-you already explained what terror does concerning decision-making, but what effects will terror have on skills and abilities?(e.g. someone shaking in fear wont react as quickly or precisely on a fight, or will have trouble sneaking because of a loss of concentration)

-anything i havent thought of

---

i always thought the killcount we see on weapons in fortress-mode right now is nothing but fooling around... it doesnt even distinguish between 1 dwarf killing 100 goblins in a single fight from 100 dwarves killing 1 goblin each and dying themselves in a hundred separate sieges.

---

edit: i just realized:

Quote from: devlog 15.06.2012

Failure to master emotional states leads to forced actions...

what other emotions and actions than does this include?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 16, 2012, 06:59:11 am

Quote from: eux0r on June 16, 2012, 06:32:28 am

---

i always thought the killcount we see on weapons in fortress-mode right now is nothing but fooling around... it doesnt even distinguish between 1 dwarf killing 100 goblins in a single fight from 100 dwarves killing 1 goblin each and dying themselves in a hundred separate sieges.

---

I might be wrong on that, but doesn't it actually list the slayer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 16, 2012, 08:59:07 am

Does the [SKILL:SWORD] tag on the weapon raws determine which weapons can be found upright made out of spoilermetal in the unique spoiler entrance to the spoilers?

Its been brought up in the Gameplay questions, and this stuff is hardcoded, so I decided to put it here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spinning Welshman on June 16, 2012, 10:05:03 am

Quote from: EvilTwin on June 16, 2012, 06:59:11 am

Quote from: eux0r on June 16, 2012, 06:32:28 am

---

i always thought the killcount we see on weapons in fortress-mode right now is nothing but fooling around... it doesnt even distinguish between 1 dwarf killing 100 goblins in a single fight from 100 dwarves killing 1 goblin each and dying themselves in a hundred separate sieges.

---

I might be wrong on that, but doesn't it actually list the slayer?

Indeed it does. And If I remember right it also details when that slayer died, if he did.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on June 16, 2012, 11:07:22 am

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Spinning Welshman on June 16, 2012, 10:05:03 am

Quote from: EvilTwin on June 16, 2012, 06:59:11 am

Quote from: eux0r on June 16, 2012, 06:32:28 am

i always thought the killcount we see on weapons in fortress-mode right now is nothing but fooling around... it doesnt even distinguish between 1 dwarf killing 100 goblins in a single fight from 100 dwarves killing 1 goblin each and dying themselves in a hundred separate sieges.

I might be wrong on that, but doesn't it actually list the slayer?

Indeed it does. And If I remember right it also details when that slayer died, if he did.

oh, my bad, i forgot it does, but i think it still doesnt matter when it comes to naming the weapon. or am i wrong again?
edit: i just looked into the wiki, apparently a dwarf names his weapon when he reaches enough kills or at least one notable kill with it himself. forget i ever said anything about that

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blake77 on June 16, 2012, 11:36:25 am

Would the next update deal with "when creatures should flee"? For example, dwarves behind fortifications, dwarves dealing with untamed creatures like rabbits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 16, 2012, 01:34:07 pm

Quote from: Areyar on June 15, 2012, 02:10:45 pm

Maybe more a suggestion.... so I won't green it. :-X

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

This may not exactly be a proper question, but it does have a non-suggestion-question equivalent.
How will these new thought-systems interface with the upcoming groups system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 16, 2012, 02:02:47 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 16, 2012, 08:59:07 am

Does the [SKILL:SWORD] tag on the weapon raws determine which weapons can be found upright made out of spoilermetal in the unique spoiler entrance to the spoilers?

Its been brought up in the Gameplay questions, and this stuff is hardcoded, so I decided to put it here.

I've never seen a non-SWORD there, and I've seen quite a few modded ones, so I would have to say yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: drvoke on June 16, 2012, 05:24:46 pm

The idea of terror and stressors with long-term personality consequences is something I hoped for with the personality rewrite, and it looks like this may be part of it.  It sounds like a good approximation of real psychology, and manages to add another layer of complexity to gameplay now, which I assume will carry over to Fortress Mode and how our dwarfs conduct themselves in combat, so..

Toady, how have you been approaching the implementation and design of personality stuff as this bit of the project moves forward?  Have you been consulting with anybody who specializes in psychology, or is this basically the result of wiki-diving and/or astute induction?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 16, 2012, 06:47:25 pm

This posits two correlary (but non-greenable, methinks) questions.

1) With the nerfing of fall damage, will drip feeding kittens from 10+z into your dining hall give sufficient tragic exposure due to the little buggers trying to crawl away on little broken legs just as much as gory explosions of craft goods poor little kitteh parts?

2) Besides spending a couple of days of knap/throw to become a Legendary Thrower in Adventure, will we now have to spend days wrestling terrifying hoary marmots to get our Adventurers immune to fear?

I can't wait to see how this will play out.

Add them both up and we'll have the army danger rooms now include pitting recruits in a 1x1 with angry finches for months of training, similarly to Dwarven Child Care.

Or just do what REAL Armies do, have the Drill Sergeants mound psychological stress on trainees to get them accustomed to stress, because you can't set off live grenades in the barracks.  (Note: That last prohibition is very disappointing, I might add)

New Military Labor!!  Durim McBrownRound has become a Drill Sergeant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on June 16, 2012, 07:04:17 pm

Quote from: Mr S on June 16, 2012, 06:47:25 pm

1) With the nerfing of fall damage, will drip feeding kittens from 10+z into your dining hall give sufficient tragic exposure due to the little buggers trying to crawl away on little broken legs just as much as gory explosions of craft goods poor little kitteh parts?

Considering that damage from things dropped on your dwarves has been... uh... the opposite of nerfed, if you're dropping cats into your busy dining area I think you'll get tragic exposure, just not the kind you were expecting.

Bug #5945 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5945): Collision damage can be very exaggerated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 16, 2012, 08:19:13 pm

Quote from: blake77 on June 16, 2012, 11:36:25 am

Would the next update deal with "when creatures should flee"?For example, dwarves behind fortifications, dwarves dealing with untamed creatures like rabbits.

Presumably. Toady generally does a good job at using a unified frame work for both Adventure mode and Fort Mode. The biggest issue Toady has expressed with this, is that Fort Mode is x72 faster then Adventure Mode.

The post about this even includes that there room for reword of Job Priorities, so ToadyOne is clearly thinking of Fortmode with this system and its implementation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 17, 2012, 03:05:04 am

When surrender is implemented, are the only options available going to be interrogate then kill/spare?
Would be cool to have a use for that iron chain to bring them to the local lawgiver.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 17, 2012, 04:19:11 am

Quote from: Chronas on June 17, 2012, 03:05:04 am

When surrender is implemented, are the only options available going to be interrogate then kill/spare?
Would be cool to have a use for that iron chain to bring them to the local lawgiver.

Hrm...
There nothing explicit in the Dev Notes, however it does state that you'll be able to Surrender in Adventure Mode, and to stay in 'Surrender Mode' you have to follow orders, including Follow and Drop your weapon.

So its defiantly planned for PCs, which probably means, that its also planned for NPCs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacko13 on June 17, 2012, 05:31:07 am

Quote from: Mr S link=topic=100851.msg3379332#msg3379332

New Military Labor!!  [color=limegreen

Durim McBrownRound has become a Drill Sergeant.[/color]

Love the idea!  I know we have squad leaders but they seem kinda useless to me at the moment. This would be a superb way of kicking of recruit training (without danger rooms) methinks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 17, 2012, 02:46:13 pm

I love the new stuff and psychology  :D . I hope that secondary thoughts play a role. Like a woman fighting for her children instead of running away or a thief fighting over his bag of money etc. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 17, 2012, 11:37:55 pm

Quote from: Heph on June 17, 2012, 02:46:13 pm

Like a woman fighting for her children

I hope not.
Baby shields are hilarious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on June 18, 2012, 12:06:02 am

Quote from: Chronas on June 17, 2012, 03:05:04 am

When surrender is implemented, are the only options available going to be interrogate then kill/spare?
Would be cool to have a use for that iron chain to bring them to the local lawgiver.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
Tying people up is on the dev list, but it was grouped under "the adventurer is breaking into a place" rather than "capturing and interrogating villians". IMO it would be necessary if you want to bring someone in, but you have to sleep and don't want them shanking you or running off during the night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 18, 2012, 01:26:47 am

I agree that the tools needed to bring folks to  location against their will, are there, even if its not explicitly stated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NobodyPro on June 18, 2012, 02:05:20 am

Really enjoying these devlogs. Madness and Morale have always been two things I've liked in simulation games, we're getting one and possibly the other (PTS/personality changes).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kulik on June 18, 2012, 09:12:40 am

Quote

"...should generally make combat a bit more vibrant. I'm going to try not to get too carried away with all of the possibilities..."

Oh please please get carried away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 18, 2012, 09:19:51 am

Quote from: kulik on June 18, 2012, 09:12:40 am

Quote

"...should generally make combat a bit more vibrant. I'm going to try not to get too carried away with all of the possibilities..."

Oh please please get carried away.

I'll second this.
Tangents are where the magic happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on June 18, 2012, 10:41:12 am

Quote from: Chronas on June 18, 2012, 09:19:51 am

Quote from: kulik on June 18, 2012, 09:12:40 am

Quote

"...should generally make combat a bit more vibrant. I'm going to try not to get too carried away with all of the possibilities..."

Oh please please get carried away.

I'll second this.
Tangents are where the magic happens.

im ambivalent on this, if he gets carried away, next update will be awesome.... when we see it in a year and a half.  :P

however, I am most excited about this

Quote from: Dev Log

the split between movement/combat actions as well as reaction moments.

finally, dwarf fortress takes another giant step away from traditional roguelike combat, adventure mode is sounding more fun by the day, and the fortress mode implications are going to be shocking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 18, 2012, 10:47:15 am

I love DF feature creep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Headhanger on June 18, 2012, 11:32:45 am

Every devlog update gives me a nerdgasm. This one was no different.

Separating movement and attacks? My anticipation is palpable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 18, 2012, 11:36:40 am

Next version is sounding better and better.  Adv. Mode has been blossoming in so many directions since I first started playing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 11:46:12 am

Now that multiple attacks can be used at the same time, does that mean weapon traps will attack with all their weapons at the same time now? Are we going to get riders and riding in the new release given that you've mentioned that on the devblog, or is this still just regarding fortress mode invasions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 18, 2012, 11:54:45 am

Combat flow and mounts (move/attack split) are still part of the Hero Role on the Dev page, so it's not like it's a big departure from the Hero Role stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Igfig on June 18, 2012, 03:03:53 pm

Do the changes to how entities claim sites mean that sites and lairs and the like are going to work in a more unified fashion?

I mean, right now you've got towns, fortresses, camps, caves, sewers, towers, tombs, etc, and they all work differently. But is there any reason why a successful bandit group couldn't use a fortress as its base instead of a camp, or a civilization couldn't live in towers and shrines instead of hamlets? Or heck, why night creatures couldn't lair in towns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dradym on June 18, 2012, 03:37:42 pm

since multiple attacks will be implemented, will heroes, sufficiently skilled, be able to dual wield and attack twice at the same time?

not that this NEEDS to be put in, but its Chuck Norris awesome...also, if not wielding weapons...kickx2, punchx2, headbutt, bite...etc at the same time?...like Chuck Norris

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 03:41:08 pm

If we get mounts in Dwarf mode with this update, this will likely mean some way to feed animals will be included.

Also, abandoned fortresses may get taken over by bandits.

I really hope this release puts mountain halls, dark fortresses, and elven retreats back in. It would also be good to have camps actually show up in gameplay, so you might come across a bandit-built fortification in adventure mode. Alternatively, you might embark near or on top of one in dwarf fortress mode.

Quote from: Dradym on June 18, 2012, 03:37:42 pm

since multiple attacks will be implemented, will heroes, sufficiently skilled, be able to dual wield and attack twice at the same time?

not that this NEEDS to be put in, but its Chuck Norris awesome...also, if not wielding weapons...kickx2, punchx2, headbutt, bite...etc at the same time?...like Chuck Norris

Those multiple-armed creatures you mod in will became a lot more dangerous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: trees on June 18, 2012, 06:01:41 pm

How will movement and attack speed be determined for different types of creatures? To clarify - will the game recognize that a hydra has many heads to bite with and automatically give it a faster attack speed, or will creatures like that need to have an equivalent of the current SPEED token? I suppose they could be tied to different attributes, too.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 11:46:12 am

Now that multiple attacks can be used at the same time, does that mean weapon traps will attack with all their weapons at the same time now?

I'm pretty sure that this already happens. Once a creature steps on to a weapon trap it's instantly attacked by everything in it; this is why you sometimes get weird behavior with goblins dodging multiple tiles away from one trap (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=97469.msg2824107#msg2824107).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 18, 2012, 08:15:14 pm

I rather hope combat styles sneak in with the combat speed split. I'm quite pleased we're on to new and shiny features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 18, 2012, 08:53:47 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 11:46:12 am

Now that multiple attacks can be used at the same time, does that mean weapon traps will attack with all their weapons at the same time now? Are we going to get riders and riding in the new release given that you've mentioned that on the devblog, or is this still just regarding fortress mode invasions?

The villains stuff will impact Adventure Mode much more then Fort Mode, but it'll lead to more reasons behind sieges in Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 18, 2012, 11:56:22 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 18, 2012, 08:53:47 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 11:46:12 am

Now that multiple attacks can be used at the same time, does that mean weapon traps will attack with all their weapons at the same time now? Are we going to get riders and riding in the new release given that you've mentioned that on the devblog, or is this still just regarding fortress mode invasions?

The villains stuff will impact Adventure Mode much more then Fort Mode, but it'll lead to more reasons behind sieges in Fort Mode.

I think we might have the whole villain thing influence fort mode more than we can imagine right now... For instance, once Toady has the whole system nailed down, it's probably just a few lines of code to make our dwarves steal random stuff. And that would be quite amazing.

But yeah, I don't think the whole riding-and-attacking thing will really influence fortmode all that much, at least not right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on June 19, 2012, 10:05:31 am

Going back a couple of pages about weapon kill lists being intimidating or not... this could be a function of personality, with superstitious and/or traditionally minded individuals being more effected by it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Miuramir on June 19, 2012, 03:04:50 pm

Quote from: bombzero on June 18, 2012, 10:41:12 am

Quote from: Dev Log

the split between movement/combat actions as well as reaction moments.

finally, dwarf fortress takes another giant step away from traditional roguelike combat...

Quite a few Roguelikes have adopted variable-energy action cost systems of one sort or another, as a way to better organize the old "multiple blows", "multiple shots", "extra attacks" and "increased speed" systems into something more unified.  This helps allow for the aforementioned "cheetah" case (runs very fast, but doesn't attack much faster than typical), the "hydra" case (large, slow-moving creatures with many attacks if you're unwise enough to get within its range), and a wide variety of other interesting possibilities.  I'm quite pleased that DF is getting something along these lines, as it opens up both better simulation and more interesting game possibilities. 

This can also be a useful input into weapon balancing.  Even with the simplest of fixed-energy system (single value in weapon raws, for instance), hopefully we'll finally be able to have slower-firing but more powerful cranequin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranequin)-equpped crossbows and the like.  Historical siege defender crossbows evolved for longer range and better armor penetration at the expense of easy portability and rate of fire; given the sort of besieging monsters one can get in DF and dwarven mechanical aptitude, it's been an obviously missing part of the balance. 

Once you have a variable energy system, there are even more interesting possibilities.  The energy required to attack with a melee weapon could well be derived from a comparison of the wielder's size and the weapon's size, a comparison of the weapon's weight and the wielder's strength, whether it's being used multi-grasp or not, and possibly some sort of "wieldiness" or "balance" constant from the weapon raws modified by the weapon's quality.  This would allow for much better and more natural handling of oversized weapons (sure, your adventurer can lift that minotaur-scale great axe, but are they strong enough to swing it quickly enough to be useful in combat?), sufficiently large & strong creatures able to dual-wield two-handed weapons of lesser creatures with ease, and so on. 

Toady, how does the movement/combat split affect creature, weapon, etc. raws? 

Are weapon attack speeds entirely based on raw constants, calculated based on a mix of raw constants and internal code, or entirely generated from internal code?

Does weapon quality affect attack speed?

My hope would be that the quality of actual weapons would help their attack speed somewhat (one of the most common positive descriptions of superior-quality real world weapons is some variant of "superbly balanced"), but the quality of non-weapons used to bludgeon things should not make a difference.  This might help with "beaten to death with a sock" problems, as purpose-crafted weapons of any reasonable quality would be distinctly better at being a weapon, and hopefully at some point creatures would be aware of that. 

Will creature movement speed be variable by caste, gender, etc.?
Near-sessile queens and fast-moving drones would be the obvious natural example here, but there are many uses. 

Will movement speed for dwarves be affected primarily by the existing Agility attribute, or will there be a split so that dwarves have differing attributes that control how fast they move and how efficiently they accomplish actions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 19, 2012, 08:29:11 pm

Quote from: Miuramir on June 19, 2012, 03:04:50 pm

hopefully we'll finally be able to have slower-firing but more powerful cranequin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranequin)-equpped crossbows and the like.

I'd say that's a greenable one on its own right. Toady, will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode and on enemies and VERY inconvenient as a beginner adventurer due to the fact you automatically reload right after firing (instead of doing something more useful, like fleeing or dropping your crossbow and pulling out a sword) ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on June 20, 2012, 12:11:54 am

By the end of this update arc, will DF be able to handle all the births and age-related deaths behind the scenes? In other words, if we have a world we spend a lot of time with (like, say, 300 years), will we still have to worry about all the humans dying out from old age after a certain point?

And while we're on the subject of nonlethal combat, are there any plans to reduce the lethality of blows to the head? So that a heavy fist upside the head would be more likely to just render one unconscious most of the time? It would certainly make hand-to-hand and brawling a lot more fun, IMO.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on June 20, 2012, 01:14:41 am

Quote from: Dae on June 19, 2012, 08:29:11 pm

will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode

[citation needed] - I am not sure is it realistic but it is balanced, it is impossible to kill invaders using crossbows (hurt yes, but killing is almost impossible). I can even say that it is one of few examples where DF is balanced.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 20, 2012, 03:35:14 am

Oh boy! Now all we need is attack speed slowdown in the weapon raws, and crossbows will stop acting like Gatling guns. It'll be nice to see them acting a bit more reasonable.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 18, 2012, 03:41:08 pm

If we get mounts in Dwarf mode with this update,

This is pretty unlikely since adding interfaces to Dwarf Mode is unrelated to the stuff he's been working on and talking about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 20, 2012, 06:41:26 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 20, 2012, 01:14:41 am

Quote from: Dae on June 19, 2012, 08:29:11 pm

will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode

[citation needed] - I am not sure is it realistic but it is balanced, it is impossible to kill invaders using crossbows (hurt yes, but killing is almost impossible). I can even say that it is one of few examples where DF is balanced.

If there isn't any way of defending yourself against an invader usign a crossbow, no matter how well-prepared you are, then it's not balanced. I don't agree with that statement anyway.

My point was more concerned with Adventure mode.
There when you fire with a bow or a crossbow, you stand still for several turns unable to do anything to simulate the "reload". So you can't carry a crossbow around, fire a shot at an enemy when you see one then drop it immediately to unsheath yout sword and, after the fight is over, reload your crossbow.
It's also annoying that your fire rate using a crossbow is severely lowered if you take a blow to the ankle (although that can be explained by saying you typically need to be standing when you reload a crossbow).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on June 20, 2012, 12:11:50 pm

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 20, 2012, 01:14:41 am

. . . it is impossible to kill invaders using crossbows (hurt yes, but killing is almost impossible). I can even say that it is one of few examples where DF is balanced.

If you are not laying waste to entire sieges with crossbows, that just means you need moar crossbows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 20, 2012, 12:23:27 pm

Quote from: Spish on June 20, 2012, 12:11:54 am

By the end of this update arc, will DF be able to handle all the births and age-related deaths behind the scenes? In other words, if we have a world we spend a lot of time with (like, say, 300 years), will we still have to worry about all the humans dying out from old age after a certain point?

At the very least, that's a goal for this update cycle, as per "Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play" from the Dev page. So I'd say chances are good.

Quote from: Spish on June 20, 2012, 12:11:54 am

And while we're on the subject of nonlethal combat, are there any plans to reduce the lethality of blows to the head? So that a heavy fist upside the head would be more likely to just render one unconscious most of the time? It would certainly make hand-to-hand and brawling a lot more fun, IMO.

Yes. Blows to the head came up in DF Talk #13 at least:

Quote

The tavern release will have non-lethal fighting because there'll be bar fights and we don't want bar fights to be like 'You punch him in the face, jamming the skull into the brain, killing him instantly' or whatever. We're going to have to change combat a bit to make fist fights work because right now fist fights are way too dangerous, but it should work out in the end.

Quote from: Miuramir on June 19, 2012, 03:04:50 pm

Will creature movement speed be variable by caste, gender, etc.?
Near-sessile queens and fast-moving drones would be the obvious natural example here, but there are many uses.

Almost certainly. SPEED and SWIM_SPEED (and IMMOBILE) already are caste-level tokens, so any attack speed differentiation most likely will be as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 20, 2012, 03:09:59 pm

Now that we're moving into dealing with heroes and villains, are we going to have some "generic" content added? For example, certain heroes may have radically different fighting styles, some villains may live behind a vast array of traps and minions, and heroes may have their own varying moral codes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 20, 2012, 03:25:30 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 20, 2012, 03:09:59 pm

Now that we're moving into dealing with heroes and villains, are we going to have some "generic" content added? For example, certain heroes may have radically different fighting styles, some villains may live behind a vast array of traps and minions, and heroes may have their own varying moral codes.

That's pretty much all on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) for the hero role:

Quote

Combat styles
Hideouts with some basic fortifications/Breaking into fortified locations
Expansion of personality system to support more value-judgment-based properties such as bravery vs. cowardice/apathy/recklessness

The personality and hideout changes are likely to come in with the next release/next few releases. I wouldn't hold my breath for combat styles, though the combat flow changes may help in that regard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on June 21, 2012, 01:35:47 am

Quote from: Dae on June 20, 2012, 06:41:26 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on June 20, 2012, 01:14:41 am

Quote from: Dae on June 19, 2012, 08:29:11 pm

will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode

[citation needed] - I am not sure is it realistic but it is balanced, it is impossible to kill invaders using crossbows (hurt yes, but killing is almost impossible). I can even say that it is one of few examples where DF is balanced.

If there isn't any way of defending yourself against an invader usign a crossbow, no matter how well-prepared you are, then it's not balanced. I don't agree with that statement anyway.

My point was more concerned with Adventure mode.
There when you fire with a bow or a crossbow, you stand still for several turns unable to do anything to simulate the "reload". So you can't carry a crossbow around, fire a shot at an enemy when you see one then drop it immediately to unsheath yout sword and, after the fight is over, reload your crossbow.
It's also annoying that your fire rate using a crossbow is severely lowered if you take a blow to the ankle (although that can be explained by saying you typically need to be standing when you reload a crossbow).

Problem with realistic fire rate is that game does not support realistic equipment and behavior in this regard: It would have been great if it took considerable time to reload in dwarf mode, but for that to work, you would also need to give crossbowdwarves secondary melee weapon which they would draw when approached in melee.

Adventure mode npcs would suffer this too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 21, 2012, 04:00:26 am

Quote from: zwei on June 21, 2012, 01:35:47 am

Problem with realistic fire rate is that game does not support realistic equipment and behavior in this regard: It would have been great if it took considerable time to reload in dwarf mode, but for that to work, you would also need to give crossbowdwarves secondary melee weapon which they would draw when approached in melee.

Adventure mode npcs would suffer this too.

That seems like a pretty easy AI script:  Keep using crossbow, if melee-attacked drop it or stow it and equip melee weapon, if not being attacked start using crossbow again.  Ideally there'd be a proximity trigger on the weapon switch, but that'd be more involved.  Are cancelled attacks part of the combat goals?  Current goals?  If so then that could go towards better crossbow usage, i.e. cancelling reloading to defend self.

I'm dying for the combat/movement-speed split.  Literally.  Stupid horses killed my adventurer the other night by dancing all over the place and throwing a thousand horsey-boxing punches before I could so much as wave my sword around.  Sneak... sneak... sneak.... *bumps into horse* death!  I don't know about you guys, but even with absolutely zero training with a sword, if you put one in my hand, in a field with a horse, I'd fancy my chances.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 21, 2012, 04:09:31 am

Quote from: hermes on June 21, 2012, 04:00:26 am

I don't know about you guys, but even with absolutely zero training with a sword, if you put one in my hand, in a field with a horse, I'd fancy my chances.

Against a hostile horse, I'd bet your chest getting caved-in, but you could probably wound the horse during the process. Or if attacked from behind, your lower jaw cracked into your skull.
Horses are tough sons of bitches unless you cut off a leg.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 04:17:47 am

It would not be about sword training but more about general combat training. Knowing how to move quickly, keep your balance and all of that. sword training would help of course (clean blows that severs legs as an example and dont get stuck in) but the main problem would be avoiding getting your skull crushed and chest caved in as DAE pointed out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacko13 on June 21, 2012, 04:40:35 am

Quote from: Dae on June 21, 2012, 04:09:31 am

Quote from: hermes on June 21, 2012, 04:00:26 am

I don't know about you guys, but even with absolutely zero training with a sword, if you put one in my hand, in a field with a horse, I'd fancy my chances.

Against a hostile horse, I'd bet your chest getting caved-in, but you could probably wound the horse during the process. Or if attacked from behind, your lower jaw cracked into your skull.
Horses are tough sons of bitches unless you cut off a leg.

I have trained with a longsword and I would not fancy my chances against a charging horse. They look big on the telly or standing in a field somewhere. When moving fast in your direction...oh mummy save me! ;-)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 05:01:46 am

Swords are just not made for fighting  horses, better use a spear or a halberd. I'd rather use the latter because you can jump out of the way AND slash its legs whilst it's  charging. With a spear you can put the butt into the ground and level the blade at the horse's chest. Its more dangerous (you are more likely to miss) if you are alone but when you are within a small infantry unit against charging cavalry its definitely better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacko13 on June 21, 2012, 05:04:41 am

^
^
^
What he said!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on June 21, 2012, 06:13:03 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 05:01:46 am

Swords are just not made for fighting  horses, better use a spear or a halberd. I'd rather use the latter because you can jump out of the way AND slash its legs whilst it's  charging. With a spear you can put the butt into the ground and level the blade at the horse's chest. Its more dangerous (you are more likely to miss) if you are alone but when you are within a small infantry unit against charging cavalry its definitely better.

you can use a spear to slash sideways too, since the tip is long enough and also sharpened at its sides(like a knife or dagger) and swinging such a long pole makes the tip go at quite the high speeds. actually, thats an even more common use of the weapon than actual stabbing in some combat forms and can easily be more effective(logically that depends on a lot of factors). i always mod in such an attack too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 06:27:02 am

Indeed you can slash with the tip, but a halberd blade is heavier so it make it easyer if the goal is to cut off the horse's leg. Of course if you just want to open the throat or make it die from bleeding the spear will do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 21, 2012, 07:01:45 am

no need to cut off the leg entirely, just disable it.. That's not harder than cutting the throat, depending on your anatomy knowledge it might even be a lot easier to pull off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 08:07:29 am

Spear is enough ay, but against an armored horse, better use a halberd. Unless you are skilled enough to stick the spear between the plates the weight of the halberd will alow you to hack through them with inertia.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 21, 2012, 12:44:00 pm

Halbard also has a bit of the crossbar implied. You don't want the whole boar problem, and I think a charging horse is heavy and fast enough that the inertia will carry it through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 21, 2012, 04:32:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 08:07:29 am

Spear is enough ay, but against an armored horse, better use a halberd. Unless you are skilled enough to stick the spear between the plates the weight of the halberd will alow you to hack through them with inertia.

Nobody is skilled enough to stick a spear between plates. They overlap specifically to prevent that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spinning Welshman on June 21, 2012, 04:55:17 pm

Come on guys, let's not derail the thread.

With the additions to AI starting in the next update, will we eventually have things like Forgotten Beasts with more specific goals than just killing everything?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 21, 2012, 06:33:10 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 21, 2012, 04:32:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2012, 08:07:29 am

Spear is enough ay, but against an armored horse, better use a halberd. Unless you are skilled enough to stick the spear between the plates the weight of the halberd will alow you to hack through them with inertia.

Nobody is skilled enough to stick a spear between plates. They overlap specifically to prevent that.

A spear with solid tip which has a triangular or Diamond crosssection and is very pointy tip digs into metal like a hot knife through butter if you hit the horse frontal (yes i exaggerate). Many helbards hat such a spike iirc.  I mean the tin openers late knights used (iirc like the estoc) were just that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Peacemaker636 on June 21, 2012, 10:01:29 pm

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle  :-\  I hope all is going well Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 22, 2012, 01:56:52 am

I was not clear about "sticking between the plates". I meant sticking it at joints, where the plates do not cover.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: i2amroy on June 22, 2012, 02:07:12 am

The main way of disabling a horse with a spear actually works best against a charging horse, and it works fairly well actually (one of the reasons the age of the knights ended was due to a spreading prevalence of pikemen, which if well trained can really devastate cavalry). You simply stick the but of the spear on the ground and brace it in front of you, and then wait for the charging horse to impale itself on it. Even if you don't have a very sharp weapon when you have over 1,000 pounds of horse moving towards you the sheer amount of force will cause your spear to go through any armor they might be wearing. Of course this then has the drawback of over 1,000 lbs of horse continuing to fall on top of you, but that problem can be easily remedied by having a longer weapon.

Really if you are on the ground and are facing someone on a horse, the only two good ways to counter them, the first being with a bow, and the second being with a long spear or other pole arm. Else wise they are just going to run roughshod over you and there won't be really much you can do about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 22, 2012, 03:06:53 am

Reading all this makes me wish we had cavalry charges and infantry formations in DF...
Too bad formations were taken out of DF2010 release, but the game probably didn't have the necessary framework to implement them anyway.
Now with the combat flow and unit AI improvements perhaps there would be a bigger chance for them again, but unfortunately it seems formations are not planned anytime soon, since they don't appear in the Development page.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Elone on June 22, 2012, 03:24:50 am

Very well.

Everyone interested in defeating a horse in melee, which is indeed a challenging endeavour, should look at this thread specifically made for combatting equines.

The thread is ►here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111948.0)◄.
I'm serious. Check it out. And, if you want to further discuss horses, use it!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gordogomez on June 22, 2012, 07:02:38 am

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 21, 2012, 10:01:29 pm

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle  :-\  I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 22, 2012, 08:24:53 am

Quote from: gordogomez on June 22, 2012, 07:02:38 am

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 21, 2012, 10:01:29 pm

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle  :-\  I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

He has been unhappy lately. He has been accosted by terrible lack of devlog recently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on June 22, 2012, 10:43:22 am

Quote from: gordogomez on June 22, 2012, 07:02:38 am

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 21, 2012, 10:01:29 pm

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle  :-\  I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

Not once this release hits! Then you'll just get knocked out, captured, and stuck in a black cell somewhere unpleasant! :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Peacemaker636 on June 22, 2012, 10:50:49 am

Quote from: Rafal99 on June 22, 2012, 08:24:53 am

Quote from: gordogomez on June 22, 2012, 07:02:38 am

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 21, 2012, 10:01:29 pm

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle  :-\  I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

He has been unhappy lately. He has been accosted by terrible lack of devlog recently.

I got quite the good chuckle out of that, thanks for the playful humor  :D

And a few questions born out of my thinking in the horse thread...
Is there currently any code handling velocity of creatures?  A charging horse is not dangerous simply because it can reach you quickly, but because of the projectile-like force you receive when it hits you.  If not, are there currently plans to add anything like this into combat?

I looked at the dev page and it doesn't mention anything like this, but it seems like it could be a consideration given the ongoing minor (major?) combat overhaul.

(Edited for clarity, and later to de-green due to questions being answered)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 22, 2012, 12:02:18 pm

Inasmuch as collision physics, yes, it's there.  Is there room for refining that process?  Sure.

Those collisions physics are what cause a falling kitten to knock the teeth out of the unfortunate dwarf undrneath said downward flight path.  Likewise, Combat announcements of:

Creature X has collided with Creature Y, sending Creature Y tumbling to the ground.
Creature Y skids along the floor, the Third Finger, Right Hand taking the full force of the blow.  x29

There may (likely?) be further fine tuning to this as the speed/combat split continues.  Not a guarantee, mind you, but a pretty natural fit, one might think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: trees on June 22, 2012, 12:04:15 pm

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 22, 2012, 10:50:49 am

If not, are there currently plans to add anything like this into combat?

I think that sort of thing falls under this, from the dev page:

Quote

Mounts

    Movement speeds, turning and inertia
    Combat effects (velocity addition, body part selection, trampling)

It was also brought up in DF talk 9 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript.html):

Quote

Toady:   So it's not a hard problem, I think we can have pretty cool velocities for the horses, and then you can do stuff like having the velocity of your animal add to the velocity of the strike - the strikes all have velocity numbers now anyway - it's just a trivial kind of one-line thing to tag that on there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on June 22, 2012, 12:35:24 pm

oh shi, mounts are going to be so much fun. if we could train war mounts or buy them in adv mode: it's going to be so sick riding some underground dragon thing with big teeth bought from the trainers of the mountainhome around those big towns!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robosaur on June 22, 2012, 01:58:19 pm

With the whole multiple attacks stuff does that mean that we can have 4 armed warriors quadruple wield weapons and have them fight better than a warrior with only 2? What about someone with 2 swords and 2 shields?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 22, 2012, 04:57:42 pm

Quote from: Elone on June 22, 2012, 03:24:50 am

Very well.

Everyone interested in defeating a horse in melee, which is indeed a challenging endeavour, should look at this thread specifically made for combatting equines.

The thread is ►here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111948.0)◄.
I'm serious. Check it out. And, if you want to further discuss horses, use it!

I'm quite disappointed, I thought people had already opened a thread to discuss this question in the past and you had dug it up. Well, that sets up the situation for the next time we talk about mounted fight I guess.
So, in a few months (maybe) when Toady starts working on mounts and the derail happens again, we'll have that thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Peacemaker636 on June 22, 2012, 06:45:00 pm

Quote from: trees on June 22, 2012, 12:04:15 pm

Quote from: Peacemaker636 on June 22, 2012, 10:50:49 am

If not, are there currently plans to add anything like this into combat?

I think that sort of thing falls under this, from the dev page:

Quote

Mounts

    Movement speeds, turning and inertia
    Combat effects (velocity addition, body part selection, trampling)

It was also brought up in DF talk 9 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript.html):

Quote

Toady:   So it's not a hard problem, I think we can have pretty cool velocities for the horses, and then you can do stuff like having the velocity of your animal add to the velocity of the strike - the strikes all have velocity numbers now anyway - it's just a trivial kind of one-line thing to tag that on there.

Oh I only looked in the "Combat" section, not the mounts.  Thanks for the answer!  I de-greened the question as I think it's been adequately answered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on June 22, 2012, 07:08:27 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 20, 2012, 12:23:27 pm

Quote from: Spish on June 20, 2012, 12:11:54 am

And while we're on the subject of nonlethal combat, are there any plans to reduce the lethality of blows to the head? So that a heavy fist upside the head would be more likely to just render one unconscious most of the time? It would certainly make hand-to-hand and brawling a lot more fun, IMO.

Yes. Blows to the head came up in DF Talk #13 at least:

Quote

The tavern release will have non-lethal fighting because there'll be bar fights and we don't want bar fights to be like 'You punch him in the face, jamming the skull into the brain, killing him instantly' or whatever. We're going to have to change combat a bit to make fist fights work because right now fist fights are way too dangerous, but it should work out in the end.

Probably nonlethal "most of the time" would be fine, but Toady shouldn't overdo it (http://www.onepunchcankill.qld.gov.au/).  That said, as I understand it, head striking hard ground is the fatal blow more often than the punch itself in these cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on June 22, 2012, 07:14:39 pm

Will things like evil weather be tracked when off screen/cross-region? As it is, it seems that it only queues up the evil weather to run it's course when you enter the area it's designated for. I thought this might go hand-in-hand with continuing history since weather events may play a part in this, at some point. The end result would be something like: If you embark in an area that rains a repulsive sludge, the ground will already be covered with it if it has been raining it there for some time. As opposed to: You embark in the area, and it is completely clean of sludge, but it quickly becomes covered with it when it rains. It doesn't make sense for time to freeze in terms of this kind of weather in some areas until you get there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 22, 2012, 07:40:32 pm

Quote from: Auning on June 22, 2012, 07:14:39 pm

Will things like evil weather be tracked when off screen/cross-region? As it is, it seems that it only queues up the evil weather to run it's course when you enter the area it's designated for. I thought this might go hand-in-hand with continuing history since weather events may play a part in this, at some point. The end result would be something like: If you embark in an area that rains a repulsive sludge, the ground will already be covered with it if it has been raining it there for some time. As opposed to: You embark in the area, and it is completely clean of sludge, but it quickly becomes covered with it when it rains. It doesn't make sense for time to freeze in terms of this kind of weather in some areas until you get there.

I don't think there's weather events in world gen, the kind of thing you are talking about is actually "populating the biome" or "local terrain generation" or something along those lines. Anyway, it's not related to world gen. Also, it's a really minor thing Toady hopefully doesn't get sidetracked on now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on June 23, 2012, 04:27:06 am

Quote from: EvilTwin on June 22, 2012, 07:40:32 pm

Quote from: Auning on June 22, 2012, 07:14:39 pm

Will things like evil weather be tracked when off screen/cross-region? As it is, it seems that it only queues up the evil weather to run it's course when you enter the area it's designated for. I thought this might go hand-in-hand with continuing history since weather events may play a part in this, at some point. The end result would be something like: If you embark in an area that rains a repulsive sludge, the ground will already be covered with it if it has been raining it there for some time. As opposed to: You embark in the area, and it is completely clean of sludge, but it quickly becomes covered with it when it rains. It doesn't make sense for time to freeze in terms of this kind of weather in some areas until you get there.

I don't think there's weather events in world gen, the kind of thing you are talking about is actually "populating the biome" or "local terrain generation" or something along those lines. Anyway, it's not related to world gen. Also, it's a really minor thing Toady hopefully doesn't get sidetracked on now.

Well, I said "since whether events may a part in this (history), at some point." Since in the future there will hopefully be natural disasters and the like to be accounted for. But yes, it is a very minor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on June 23, 2012, 10:39:31 am

I was fairly certain the reasons for the lack of a devlog were the ones stated in the new devlog entry, but it's always nice to have the confirmation. Having once tried to set up a combat system myself, I can easily imagine how much code is involved. Especially given the complexities in comparison to my own.

Looking forward to being able to be a D&D 3.5 dual-wielding ranger in DF. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 23, 2012, 12:13:34 pm

Quote from: devlog

I did manage to explode myself by having a goblin load up five overlapping swings with the same sword that all struck in erroneous and rapid succession.

Pulping?  Probably not, but a man can dream.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on June 23, 2012, 12:25:02 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on June 23, 2012, 12:13:34 pm

Quote from: devlog

I did manage to explode myself by having a goblin load up five overlapping swings with the same sword that all struck in erroneous and rapid succession.

Pulping?  Probably not, but a man can dream.

Sounds more like the goblin cut off all possible limbs, and they all flew off in a bloody arc, giving the "explosion" effect similar as when creature hits a wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on June 23, 2012, 01:51:20 pm

it'd be a great time for pulping, what with charging horses and crashing minecarts, every scenario is in place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on June 23, 2012, 01:52:38 pm

Armok... the combat system rehaul is looking incredibly awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 23, 2012, 06:11:38 pm

Prediction with the combat rewrite: because you are allowed to make multiple attacks at the same time with a penalty to your chance to hit, and unconscious opponents always have opportunities maxed out, you will be able to use every available attack you have to simultaneously strike every downed opponent near you in the head with no chance of failure, finishing off half a dozen or more opponents in one turn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 23, 2012, 06:47:29 pm

Toady, you talked about penalties when attempting to attack with two weapons, or two targets simultaneously. Does that mean the entrance of some "ambidextry" or "multitasking" skills ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Funk on June 23, 2012, 07:05:51 pm

we have stats for that, Kinaesthetic Sense and Spatial Sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on June 24, 2012, 02:50:03 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on June 23, 2012, 06:11:38 pm

Prediction with the combat rewrite: because you are allowed to make multiple attacks at the same time with a penalty to your chance to hit, and unconscious opponents always have opportunities maxed out, you will be able to use every available attack you have to simultaneously strike every downed opponent near you in the head with no chance of failure, finishing off half a dozen or more opponents in one turn.

I'm imagining a DDR player bending down to press all 4 arrows at once with hands and feet. Only, instead of pressing arrows, he's bashing in skulls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on June 24, 2012, 02:54:04 pm

how exactly will the penalties for multi-strikes be handled? do we have to expect the same penalty for kicking with both legs at the same time as for poking someones eyes with the index and the middle finger simultaneously? is there a difference in penalty for attacking 2 different people with 1 attack each or 1 person with 2 attacks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on June 24, 2012, 04:30:16 pm

Quote from: eux0r on June 24, 2012, 02:54:04 pm

how exactly will the penalties for multi-strikes be handled? do we have to expect the same penalty for kicking with both legs at the same time as for poking someones eyes with the index and the middle finger simultaneously? is there a difference in penalty for attacking 2 different people with 1 attack each or 1 person with 2 attacks?

Hmm... It would only be realistic to have the two-legged kick be easier than the eye poke, seeing as dwarven wrestling is basically the result of cross-breeding Chuck Fu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f67LgpJBPPE) and Kirkrate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPuOMDpiNtM)...
Anyway, I doubt it, it would be rather difficult for the game to determine which limbs are easier  used together in which way than others. If Toady did that, he would most likely have to add a lot of stuff to the raws.
As for splitting the attacks up on one or two persons, I don't know, but I suspect it would be the same penalty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on June 24, 2012, 04:40:33 pm

Quote from: eux0r on June 24, 2012, 02:54:04 pm

how exactly will the penalties for multi-strikes be handled? do we have to expect the same penalty for kicking with both legs at the same time as for poking someones eyes with the index and the middle finger simultaneously? is there a difference in penalty for attacking 2 different people with 1 attack each or 1 person with 2 attacks?

wouldn't turning the lists of dwarven body parts into an actual object (with orientations and distances and that can interact with another, also moving list of body parts) would be a huge tangent for Toady right now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hesuchia on June 24, 2012, 04:52:38 pm

Quote from: Funk on June 23, 2012, 07:05:51 pm

we have stats for that, Kinaesthetic Sense and Spatial Sense.

True, but attributes like that seem very background-mechanic-y and general than a specific skill.  Like, we have a wrestling skill for grappling where those stats plus Strength, Endurance, etc would apply. I think ambidextry would be nice, though maybe based on some kind of in-born trait (since it is difficult to learn to use your off-hand effectively for some people). It could be learned but slower for impatient dwarves and strongly capped for clumsy ones, etc. Though we probably need a foolproof fix for those military equipment bugs before any of that would be feasible :P.

It would be interesting to make 'assassin-style' boots with retractable blades or even just studs that could provide bonuses to damage from kicks specifically. Steel-toed boots would need strength to be wieldable and more to be usable and effective in combat :o. Heck now I'm starting to think even a "kick-boxing" type of skill would be kind of badass >.>.

Monsters with multiple arms like octopi could just have an even chance with all their arms (or preferred arm(s) if Toady really wanted).

Now I'm dreaming of an elite assassin squad that can sneak behind an enemy, break their necks, and beat-down the rest of the squad in an emergency ;). Ninja-dwarves.

Will there be ninja-dwarves? >.>

If not, once the combat update is out, I'm probably learning to mod :).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on June 24, 2012, 05:21:36 pm

Quote from: Funk on June 23, 2012, 07:05:51 pm

Quote from: Dae on June 23, 2012, 06:47:29 pm

Toady, you talked about penalties when attempting to attack with two weapons, or two targets simultaneously. Does that mean the entrance of some "ambidextry" or "multitasking" skills ?

we have stats for that, Kinaesthetic Sense and Spatial Sense.

I'm pretty sure he means "trainable skill."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on June 24, 2012, 05:26:57 pm

Quote from: Spish on June 24, 2012, 05:21:36 pm

Quote from: Funk on June 23, 2012, 07:05:51 pm

Quote from: Dae on June 23, 2012, 06:47:29 pm

Toady, you talked about penalties when attempting to attack with two weapons, or two targets simultaneously. Does that mean the entrance of some "ambidextry" or "multitasking" skills ?

we have stats for that, Kinaesthetic Sense and Spatial Sense.

I'm pretty sure he means "trainable skill."

Yes, I'm pretty sure too, although stats can develop I was thinking of something more direct and less coincidental.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 24, 2012, 06:45:08 pm

Quote from: Hesuchia on June 24, 2012, 04:52:38 pm

Will there be ninja-dwarves? >.>

If not, once the combat update is out, I'm probably learning to mod :).

There will be stealth and fancy moves: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Quote from: dev.html

Breaking into fortified locations

    Having locations alerted, being able to yell for help
    Disguises and impersonation through use of entity uniforms
    Closed doors and passwords
    Sneaking mechanics
        Making hiding impossible in wide open areas (at least in adv mode)
        Vision arcs for patrolling guards
    Gagging people and tying them up
    Allowing constructions to burn, use of kindling/hay/etc. where reasonable
    Responding properly to personal fire issues (all modes)
    Fleeing burning buildings
    Fighting fire (all modes)
    Designation to set item or tile on fire in dwarf mode

Combat styles

    Combat styles involving weapons or natural attacks with associated stances and moves
    Ability to learn moves, etc. from others with whom you have a high enough reputation
    Certain moves may only be available as specific counters, while others might just be regular attacks
    Ability to create new moves/styles when highly skilled

However, none of that is currently planned for the immediate upcoming version.  Even when it's implemented, the term "Ninja" won't show up in-game without player intervention.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arkenstone on June 25, 2012, 10:33:35 pm

So does this release make much progress to us being able to start cracking some 'eads together? (From multiple grappled creatures I mean, rather than like an ettin or hydra.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfMeister on June 26, 2012, 10:41:42 am

Not to complain- I like the new release, but I think that the process of building minecart tracks and setting up routes isn't intuitivve enough. The game doesn't really explain (or make obvious) the uses of the different parts, like rollers (I KNOW what they are for, by the way.). New players may be unaware that the tracks need rollers to work properly (Wait... Do they? This might be a bug...). In fact, the ONLY reason that I am aware that rollers are supposed to go with the tracks is because they appeared in the SAME release as the minecarts. New players wouldn't be aware of that, unless they studied the Wiki.

Just my two cents.

Keep up the good work!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on June 26, 2012, 12:10:00 pm

Quote from: DwarfMeister on June 26, 2012, 10:41:42 am

New players wouldn't be aware of that, unless they studied the Wiki.

This could be said about almost every aspect of Dwarf Fortress.  The Wiki is practically the instruction manual.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 26, 2012, 01:47:54 pm

Quote from: DwarfMeister on June 26, 2012, 10:41:42 am

New players may be unaware that the tracks need rollers to work properly (Wait... Do they? This might be a bug...).

I have never used rollers and have never had a problem. I just have them guide on the way up and push on the way down (Only one minecart-related accident so far!).

No, the main problem is that you need to put track stops on top of tracks; both being constructions, this is pretty counter-intuitive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on June 26, 2012, 04:02:28 pm

Quote from: Spish on June 24, 2012, 05:21:36 pm

Quote from: Funk on June 23, 2012, 07:05:51 pm

Quote from: Dae on June 23, 2012, 06:47:29 pm

Toady, you talked about penalties when attempting to attack with two weapons, or two targets simultaneously. Does that mean the entrance of some "ambidextry" or "multitasking" skills ?

we have stats for that, Kinaesthetic Sense and Spatial Sense.

I'm pretty sure he means "trainable skill."

Kins. and Spatial are trainable. Both also affect combat rolls even now.
The stuff Toady is talking about in the devlog now is just the kind of thing they're made for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on June 26, 2012, 07:20:12 pm

Can we have a choice in where to throw an opponent when wrestling? I was playing around in the arena as a bronze colossus, namely skipping elves across lakes and bowling with kobolds against racks of elves. I realized that throwing is completely random, one time I did a Newton's Cradle-style thing where I threw my kobold ball to the left instead of up and he hit the middle one, sent him flying to the right, who then slammed into the right one and sent him flying where he then skidded across the floor multiple times. Just now I threw an elf to my right into myself, which made me realize how much we need it the option of choosing our throwing direction...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 26, 2012, 09:41:03 pm

This seems to actually be a step towards having the Combat system start

Where every move has an effect on your reaction time and sense of balance.

Toady will you be combining movement and attacks into one for specific attacks like charges, tackles, and moving stabs in this release? Will that actually be a thing?

It would be a great way to make some huge creatures more threatening against hoards of small monsters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 26, 2012, 09:43:03 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 26, 2012, 09:41:03 pm

This seems to actually be a step towards having the Combat system start

Where every move has an effect on your reaction time and sense of balance.

Toady will you be combining movement and attacks into one for specific attacks like charges, tackles, and moving stabs in this release? Will that actually be a thing?

Yep. Momentum from being mounted is in planned, and already in, in some respects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 26, 2012, 09:51:59 pm

Well in concept it is bit more then momentum on its own it is about moves that are only done on the run. A lot of attacks I can think of can only be done in a sprint (one quite vicious one in kick boxing involves dashing up someone's leg) or in a single bound.

A few also can only be done on a moving opponent

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfMeister on June 27, 2012, 10:47:52 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 26, 2012, 01:47:54 pm

Quote from: DwarfMeister on June 26, 2012, 10:41:42 am

New players may be unaware that the tracks need rollers to work properly (Wait... Do they? This might be a bug...).

I have never used rollers and have never had a problem. I just have them guide on the way up and push on the way down (Only one minecart-related accident so far!).

No, the main problem is that you need to put track stops on top of tracks; both being constructions, this is pretty counter-intuitive.

Good point.

I am aware of that (the part about the track stops). What I wasn't aware of, is the fact that there was an "N" track and an "NS" track. Shouldn't ALL the tracks just move in multiple directions? What I mean is, instead of having a N,E,S,W,NS,NE,NW, etc, just have a NS,NE,NW, etc. track instead. It would lead to less confusion among the players. And with the multiple direction tracks, we can still choose to only use ONE direction anyway, so it seems pointless to have so many track types. Know what I mean?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on June 27, 2012, 11:23:28 am

I haven't yet tried my hand at tracks yet, but intuitively I'd guessed that tracks were like walls, conforming to the connections around them. rollers logically would have only one direction, which should be determined at construction. stops can be as complex or as simple as ToadyOne desires, allowing for all kinds of jobs and choices. .  . should check it out soonish. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on June 27, 2012, 12:02:37 pm

Designating tracks is actually a bit closer to building roads in the old sim city games.  You would designate a line of track and it would connect up to any track that are also in the designation area.

The big primary diffrence is that existing track(or previously designated track) has to be part of the designated space in order to be linked up to it.  Adjacent tracks don't automatically link up, to allow for more compact complicated track systems.

And yea in practice just setting your carts to guide seems 1000 times better.  Not like you have a shortage of dwarfpower.  Push and ride cart systems are cooler and more efficient in the long run, but they are so much harder to set up.  A fully functional relatively safe automated cart system of more than a short length is like a small megaproject in itself with all the power infrastructure required. Even downward trips will stall on long runs if they are any less than 90% downward ramp.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Walter Sullivan on June 27, 2012, 08:21:11 pm

New development log:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One

I got my first reaction moment today. I was in a fistfight with a goblin thug that was harassing the town, and due to my fighting/situational awareness/wrestling skills, I was able to choose the option of catching a goblin's incoming punch with my left hand, a move which was then turned into a wrist lock. We'll probably make it harder to initiate wrestling from scratch, so that just jumping in and grabbing people will be hard to do without inviting a reaction against you. All in all, the rewrite is going a little slower than I'd like, but I'm continuing along with it.

Oh man, the more I read those development logs the more I want this update. It's gonna be freakin' awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on June 27, 2012, 08:27:06 pm

My next adventurer will be Jun Fan. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 27, 2012, 08:34:53 pm

Mine will be either Goku or Kenshiro.

Should I punch people till they explode, or give everyone a second chance if my first punch to their chest didn't play billiards with their ribs already?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 27, 2012, 09:47:10 pm

My first adventurer will be MZ's daughter :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on June 27, 2012, 09:58:02 pm

Quote from: Japa on June 27, 2012, 09:47:10 pm

My first adventurer will be MZ's daughter :P

Curse you, Japa! I nearly choked on my candy!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on June 27, 2012, 11:25:39 pm

These new combat reactions sound awesome.
I wonder how many years it will be before there will be procedurally generated combat disciplines -stuff like how karate focuses on blocking and striking, judo with grappling and throws and krav maga which would likely be be a favorite of adventurers in its focus on disabling an opponent as fast as possible using a large range of incredibly violent moves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 28, 2012, 04:34:03 am

Quote from: Chronas on June 27, 2012, 11:25:39 pm

These new combat reactions sound awesome.
I wonder how many years it will be before there will be procedurally generated combat disciplines -stuff like how karate focuses on blocking and striking, judo with grappling and throws and krav maga which would likely be be a favorite of adventurers in its focus on disabling an opponent as fast as possible using a large range of incredibly violent moves.

I wouldnt be shocked if something like this happen with the Combat Style stuff. Very excited, but not shocked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on June 28, 2012, 09:14:03 am

Quote from: DwarfMeister on June 27, 2012, 10:47:52 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 26, 2012, 01:47:54 pm

Quote from: DwarfMeister on June 26, 2012, 10:41:42 am

New players may be unaware that the tracks need rollers to work properly (Wait... Do they? This might be a bug...).

I have never used rollers and have never had a problem. I just have them guide on the way up and push on the way down (Only one minecart-related accident so far!).

No, the main problem is that you need to put track stops on top of tracks; both being constructions, this is pretty counter-intuitive.

Good point.

I am aware of that (the part about the track stops). What I wasn't aware of, is the fact that there was an "N" track and an "NS" track. Shouldn't ALL the tracks just move in multiple directions? What I mean is, instead of having a N,E,S,W,NS,NE,NW, etc, just have a NS,NE,NW, etc. track instead. It would lead to less confusion among the players. And with the multiple direction tracks, we can still choose to only use ONE direction anyway, so it seems pointless to have so many track types. Know what I mean?

A North track is the track that forms the extreme southern end of a line, a track from which it is only possible to travel North (as it forms an end of a track and does derail-y things if relevant).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: miauw62 on June 28, 2012, 09:26:27 am

Okay, i cant be bothered to search the first few pages to see if this was already asked but...


Will the "living world" update re-introduce dwarven/goblin sites?


If so, it would be very awesome.
Finally getting around to killing that over-5000-kills-law-giver-clown would be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 28, 2012, 09:32:52 am

Quote from: miauw62 on June 28, 2012, 09:26:27 am

Okay, i cant be bothered to search the first few pages to see if this was already asked but...


Will the "living world" update re-introduce dwarven/goblin sites?


If so, it would be very awesome.
Finally getting around to killing that over-5000-kills-law-giver-clown would be nice.

Yep.

And Toady has recently spoken about Gobbo, Elven, and Dorf Sites being barren or plain missing is becoming more and more of an eye sore.

But like most of ToadyOne and ThreeToes machinations, there is no time table.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pirate Bob on June 28, 2012, 12:59:17 pm

Quote from: Walter Sullivan on June 27, 2012, 08:21:11 pm

New development log:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One

I got my first reaction moment today. I was in a fistfight with a goblin thug that was harassing the town, and due to my fighting/situational awareness/wrestling skills, I was able to choose the option of catching a goblin's incoming punch with my left hand, a move which was then turned into a wrist lock. We'll probably make it harder to initiate wrestling from scratch, so that just jumping in and grabbing people will be hard to do without inviting a reaction against you. All in all, the rewrite is going a little slower than I'd like, but I'm continuing along with it.

Oh man, the more I read those development logs the more I want this update. It's gonna be freakin' awesome.

I think for my next adventurer I will need to add [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] to bat men :P.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 29, 2012, 04:24:59 am

Quote from: miauw62 on June 28, 2012, 09:26:27 am

Okay, i cant be bothered to search the first few pages to see if this was already asked but...


Will the "living world" update re-introduce dwarven/goblin sites?


If so, it would be very awesome.
Finally getting around to killing that over-5000-kills-law-giver-clown would be nice.

It's not inherent, as in that's not what "living world" means. But it would be fairly reasonable to include with other general site changes, and Toady has mentioned wanting to do it before too many years pass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Redrick720 on June 30, 2012, 10:17:10 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on February 15, 2012, 03:51:13 am

I know "don't embark on evil areas" is a solution to that.. but, well, is that really an improvement to the last version?  Not being able to use evil areas at all?

...

I guess that my feeling is that they just reanimate too fast, and too many times.  Everything that dies becoming immortal and hostile doesnt seem sustainable, given how DF works, and assuming that this is how it is meant to be, I guess I just prefer the old evil biomes that were playable, if hard.

Those biomes are for people who want battles early in the game (i'm one of those)
you do know how to deal with those dead guys right?
also, they're a great way to train your militia
(unless you're at war with a civilization upon embarking at an evil biome, in that case, you're just screwed)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: scriver on July 01, 2012, 07:08:29 am

...That post is over 5 months old, Redrick ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on July 02, 2012, 03:51:27 pm

Quote from: Pirate Bob on June 28, 2012, 12:59:17 pm

Quote from: Walter Sullivan on June 27, 2012, 08:21:11 pm

New development log:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One

I got my first reaction moment today. I was in a fistfight with a goblin thug that was harassing the town, and due to my fighting/situational awareness/wrestling skills, I was able to choose the option of catching a goblin's incoming punch with my left hand, a move which was then turned into a wrist lock. We'll probably make it harder to initiate wrestling from scratch, so that just jumping in and grabbing people will be hard to do without inviting a reaction against you. All in all, the rewrite is going a little slower than I'd like, but I'm continuing along with it.

Oh man, the more I read those development logs the more I want this update. It's gonna be freakin' awesome.

I think for my next adventurer I will need to add [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] to bat men :P.

Ant men drones are better. They can fly and have four arms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on July 02, 2012, 08:04:55 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on July 02, 2012, 03:51:27 pm

Ant men drones are better. They can fly and have four arms.

But they're also tiny and get charged down easily, by everything. I'm going to assume they also suck at wrestling, due to their size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on July 03, 2012, 01:21:29 am

Giant Ant men drones?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kriby on July 03, 2012, 02:01:31 am

Will the non-lethal system shouting wake nearby sleeping creatures?

Making nightly raids less of a slaughter..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 03, 2012, 03:39:31 am

That's an interesting question. I dont know how sound is propagated in Adventure Mode at all. Its pretty much N/A in fort mode, and the things that do produce sound, produce way to much of it, and doesnt get effected through the medium its traveling through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: chronicpayne on July 03, 2012, 05:59:11 am

Im having a brain anurism watching the same few peices of refuse re animate OVER AND OVER AND OVER filling up another whole stockpile with their new undead remains.
This is dumb. Period. What is the fun in something that just spams itself over and over and dies in a single shot?

Once is enough

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on July 03, 2012, 07:26:57 am

Quote from: chronicpayne on July 03, 2012, 05:59:11 am

Im having a brain anurism watching the same few peices of refuse re animate OVER AND OVER AND OVER filling up another whole stockpile with their new undead remains.
This is dumb. Period. What is the fun in something that just spams itself over and over and dies in a single shot?

Once is enough

Evil biome or necromancer? In the former case, magma it; in the latter case, find it, then magma it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nocker on July 03, 2012, 08:35:19 am

Regarding 07/02's update, isn't this a perfect time to tackle editable multi-racial entities and review the limits of what goes into the race definition and what goes on the entity definition? For example, the profession names currently go into the racial files and that's alright, but I keep thinking that it'd be awesome if entities could have adequate names for these too (with the entity names having priority). So if I have a dwarf with a spear, he can appear as a "Speardwarf" or as a "Dwarf Legionary".

Personality traits also go entirely on the racial definition, which supports a purely "by nature" model. Civilizations (representing the "nurture" aspect) could have their own set of personality modifiers, and each individual creature would have a personality that was some product of nature and nurture.

Finally, Ethics go currently on the racial file, which is entirely unjustified. They define the social contract, so their place should be on the Entity files.

EDIT: Nevermind about the Ethics, I got confused by the wiki saying that they're used "to determine how races feel about various issues". Which is another point showing how race and civilization are strongly coupled right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 03, 2012, 09:27:50 am

Quote from: nocker on July 03, 2012, 08:35:19 am

Finally, Ethics go currently on the racial file, which is entirely unjustified. They define the social contract, so their place should be on the Entity files.

Ethics already are in the entity files.

Whether this is a good time to change multiracial entities and expanding entity limitations, I'm not really convinced. I mean, all of that is certainly up to review (or even part of) in the coming works, not just the Hero role, but also what used to be the caravan arc releases and army arc, but at the moment we're just at entity claims to sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Makbeth on July 03, 2012, 12:01:35 pm

With the changes to site ownership recently, will evil and good stop being attributes of biomes and instead be the result of good or evil historical figures spreading their influence, so that their extent changes over time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on July 03, 2012, 12:07:54 pm

Quote from: Makbeth on July 03, 2012, 12:01:35 pm

With the changes to site ownership recently, will evil and good stop being attributes of biomes and instead be the result of good or evil historical figures spreading their influence, so that their extent changes over time?

Doesn't sound like it :>

Current dev page: "Scrap good/evil lands for lands with more variety"

and:

Core94, RANDOMIZED REGIONS AND THEIR FLORA/FAUNA, (Future): The current good/evil regions should be scrapped and replaced by a system that aligns a region to varying degrees with a set of spheres. In this way you could end up with a desert where the stones sing or a forest where the trees bleed, with all sorts of randomly generated creatures and plants that are appropriate to the sphere settings. It's important that randomly generated objects be introduced to the player carefully during play rather than just being thrown one after another to allow for immersion, though there's also something to be said for cold dumping the player in a world with completely random settings, provided they can access enough information by looking/listening and having conversations, etc. Requires Core92.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 03, 2012, 12:29:49 pm

Apart from Manveru's post, there are also the issues that a) this would mean introducing one way to spread evil biomes when a dedicated development could include that and other ways to spread them, and b) it has no direct relation to the current development of site claims, and so it would be an unneeded sidetrack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on July 03, 2012, 04:22:45 pm

Toady, you said you were "replacing [the current site ownership system] with a system of claims of varying purpose and effectiveness" ; what do you mean by "effectiveness" ?
Also, how much ground will be covered by what's planned for next time ? Religious claims, business claims, battles over the line of succession ?
Who will be entitled with a right to consult these claims ? You already mentioned important historical people, but do you plan on establishing some sort of statistical representation of the overall population's state of mind, as that would be needed for things such as revolutions ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on July 03, 2012, 05:58:26 pm

In my mind, the effectiveness of a claim would fall solely on the entity's ability to enforce the claim either by force or treaty. Probably more by force. Some claims wouldn't be mutually exclusive either, I think, but there will likely be many that are highly mutually exclusive. High mutual exclusivity is the birther of conflict, and conflict is the birther of story.

I'm so very excited about this release, you have no idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kriby on July 04, 2012, 09:55:38 am

I'm excited about DF growth in general, especially in the adventure mode department. Nethack, dungeon crawl etc. all set up a backstory for why you are trawling through a dungeon with a snowballs chance in hell to make it.. Dwarf fortress might one day be so complex and deep you're actually deciding for yourself that you want to crawl down an incredibly vast evil dungeon full of procedurally generated monsters and men, with randomized magic in play and god knows what else.

Can't wait! :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 04, 2012, 08:28:14 pm

Why did you change the reclaim mechanic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 04, 2012, 11:25:44 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 04, 2012, 08:28:14 pm

Why did you change the reclaim mechanic?

What are you referring to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 05, 2012, 12:49:09 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on July 04, 2012, 11:25:44 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 04, 2012, 08:28:14 pm

Why did you change the reclaim mechanic?

What are you referring to?

When you reclaim sites, you used to get a proportional number of dorfs and equipment to your old forts wealth. Now when you reclaim, you get 7 dorfs. I dont know when these changes happen, but I know it happens in 40d.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 05, 2012, 02:42:10 am

It was changed before 31.25, I know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 05, 2012, 02:58:50 am

Quote from: Putnam on July 05, 2012, 02:42:10 am

It was changed before 31.25, I know.

And I cant find it mention on the change log or the dev log. I find it pretty curious that Toady would make a change to the game without acknowledging it somewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 05, 2012, 06:41:55 am

Seen here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2010.html#2010-03-18).

Quote

I also ended up making reclaim civilian, at least for now, since there were too many issues with starting out a bunch of pre-made squads. This also messed up soldier migrants, but I've compensated for that by giving migrants higher and more varied skills in general, including the skills of a former soldier at times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 05, 2012, 08:50:19 am

Oh, thank you Knight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Girlinhat on July 05, 2012, 11:16:25 am

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?
With sites soon changing hands during play, and combatants able to give up and submit to their opponent, then we basically have the chance for your militia to give up crying and the goblins to instal themselves as the owner of your site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on July 05, 2012, 01:42:26 pm

Quote from: Girlinhat on July 05, 2012, 11:16:25 am

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?
With sites soon changing hands during play, and combatants able to give up and submit to their opponent, then we basically have the chance for your militia to give up crying and the goblins to instal themselves as the owner of your site.

That would be so awesome!

I can imagine gameplay: You stop recieving elf/human/dwarf caravans and instead start recieving goblin caravans. You will get quotas to fill for export of weapons/armor/food/luxuries. If you do not meet quotas, random dwarves will be executed.

You military will be turned off (or rather, goblin happening on dwarf wielding weapon will raise alarm, kill offender and then the random executions/jailings will happen). Every so often, you will get migrant wave - goblin military reinforcements along with few new slaves.

Of course, accidents with goblin fatalisites will be met with retribution.

Dwarves will siege your outpost and if they happen to win, you will get reinstated.

Whole game would become about sabotaging goblin military and forming "la resistance" to strike from inside in apropriate moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on July 05, 2012, 01:57:24 pm

Hmm. That does sound interesting.

But if sites could have multiple entities controlling them, I'd guess the first issue we run into is kobolds/criminals/animal people turning up and trying to live in your fort, making themselves a general nuissance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on July 05, 2012, 02:17:31 pm

I, personally, wouldn't mind having animal people live in my fort. That is, just as long as they can hold a sword (or axe or hammer or mace or spear or whip or pike or maul or morningstar or scourge or crossbow...) and perform other tasks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on July 05, 2012, 02:45:06 pm

It seems most people are missing the other fact that this is a buildup to separate controlling groups within your own dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on July 05, 2012, 02:53:41 pm

Quote from: bombzero on July 05, 2012, 02:45:06 pm

It seems most people are missing the other fact that this is a buildup to separate controlling groups within your own dwarves.

I never realized that! Now we can have Guild Wars!

Toady, will dwarves ever try to assasinate people(outside of tantrums)? Will we find fighting factions within our forts?

Fighting factions for our forts? Forsooth, I fain would fare failingly. Fuck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on July 06, 2012, 04:20:49 am

Quote from: Girlinhat on July 05, 2012, 11:16:25 am

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?

Unlikely to be planned, see http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Dwarf#Ethics "They are entirely opposed to torture of any sort for any reason", "some crimes such as (...) slavery and treason are punishable by death".

And it is quite obvious that Toady is not happy with "kill, torture and murder everything and please add feces" people (nerfing of mermaid farming etc).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 06, 2012, 05:42:25 am

I'm not sure that's what he meant. The page you linked to is dwarven ethics.

Goblins, on the other hand, are perfectly fine with enslaving our dwarves, which is what they presumably want to do when they invade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on July 06, 2012, 06:54:17 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on July 06, 2012, 04:20:49 am

Quote from: Girlinhat on July 05, 2012, 11:16:25 am

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?

Unlikely to be planned, see http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Dwarf#Ethics "They are entirely opposed to torture of any sort for any reason", "some crimes such as (...) slavery and treason are punishable by death".

"Goblin slave camp" as in owned by goblins and dwarves are slaves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 06, 2012, 07:01:23 am

Quote from: tahujdt on July 05, 2012, 02:53:41 pm

Quote from: bombzero on July 05, 2012, 02:45:06 pm

It seems most people are missing the other fact that this is a buildup to separate controlling groups within your own dwarves.

I never realized that! Now we can have Guild Wars!

Toady, will dwarves ever try to assasinate people(outside of tantrums)? Will we find fighting factions within our forts?

Fighting factions for our forts? Forsooth, I fain would fare failingly. Fuck.

As an explicit goal, I don't think that's been actually stated, but yea ToadyOne does plan to have more internal fort conflicts, between families and between Guilds. I asked ToadyOne if the personality rewrite would include more Fort Mode dorf crime, and he said that it could but not its main goal.

I think its perfectly reasonable to assume that dorfs will be able to murder each other, at some point. Murder is a great story hook, and ToadyOne and ThreeToes want DF to generate its own narratives.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on July 06, 2012, 01:22:48 pm

Quote from: bombzero on July 05, 2012, 02:45:06 pm

It seems most people are missing the other fact that this is a buildup to separate controlling groups within your own dwarves.

Indeed, but I was also considering how foreign groups could also gain the potential to try to covertly invade and take a piece of the pie for themselves, such as criminal/animal man gangs that bully your populace into accepting and furthering them rather than just killing dwarves, much like they might do in human cities.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Thanks to Willfor, MrWiggles, Putnam, Cruxador, Japa, and Knight Otu for answering some of the questions I didn't include below.

Quote

Quote from: Chronas

Could you please give a little definition for 'entity claims to sites'

Quote from: Dae

Toady, you said you were "replacing [the current site ownership system] with a system of claims of varying purpose and effectiveness" ; what do you mean by "effectiveness" ?
Also, how much ground will be covered by what's planned for next time ? Religious claims, business claims, battles over the line of succession ?
Who will be entitled with a right to consult these claims ? You already mentioned important historical people, but do you plan on establishing some sort of statistical representation of the overall population's state of mind, as that would be needed for things such as revolutions ?

When an entity is doing something with a site, or decides that it wants to, it makes a claim on the site.  A part of it is an expansion of the old site link system -- there are number of overlapping purposes (residency, capital, monument for the dead, banditry, trade partner, etc.), and it now also tracks the location, any special buildings involved, the time of day, and entity position involvement.  Once I'm further along in this release, it'll also track the effectiveness/seriousness of the claim to allow other entities to respond and to allow the critters living in the town that only have a generic affiliation to the area to take sides reasonably and so on.  It'll also let people in the town talk to you about the overall situation (in a way inflected by their own feelings on the matter).

Only the entity leadership knows about the claim until it becomes public through the first action the entity takes, then it's common knowledge.  Before the first action it's just an AI helper.  If you have multiple effective claims, the idea is to split up the entity populations all sorts of ways so that each individual person you meet will fall in along a spectrum of taking sides or not in each thing there is to care about.  It can only track it with a certain degree of precision for the non-historical people, but once you talk to somebody (and thereby make them historical), it has everything it needs consistently for the life of that person, so it should work out more or less.  We should have this in before we do the part where you can bring people along with you motivated for vengeance and when you are trying to hide from vengeful posses.

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Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Does this mean we're going to have worldgen progress in actual play?
--
Is the new release going to have the current worldgen stuff (population change, successions, settlements, wars) actively run during gameplay?
--
With these new features, are we actually going to have more interactions between civilisations? For instance, if we embark next to a gigantic city, or on a road, we might end up in conflict with the humans?

Quote from: EmeraldWind

Will the moving bandit groups raid fortresses or is that not on the menu at this point?

Quote from: Naryar

What will this arc give to fortress mode ?

Quote from: eataTREE

So with the new complex faction interactions, will it be possible during Fort mode play for, say, some humans (for example) to show up on your map, without your being sure of what their intentions are; ie, you wouldn't know at first whether they were peaceful traders or bandits come to attack you?

Pieces of it, and eventually all of it.  The next release won't have everything.

As entities start thinking about things to do in play, the location of your fortress will become more and more relevant.  Since I'm pretty close to having a goblin army marching over to wipe out a village, having the armies that attack your fort go about it in that way is a much lower hanging fruit now.  Having the bandit thug harassers come is a little more involved, since there'd be a non-lethal component to that which needs to be thought out in relation to the fort, and I haven't done that yet.  When we do dwarf mode taverns and inns, you'll suddenly have a mess of critters hanging out and supported, and it'll probably be easier to work some neat stuff in then.

The real prizes of having you send out dwarven armies and having more interesting trade agreements and so on are intimately related to what's going on (since the world will be active) but aren't impending features in the same way.  We still need to do hill dwarves and more trade stuff for that.

Quote from: monkeyfetus

What happened to the personality rewrite? I was under the impression it was a precursor to all this stuff about entities interacting with each-other.

Parts of it have already happened, but I'm not doing it as an independent large push in the way I thought, so I haven't particularly noted it -- there are lots of other things wrapped up with the personality changes that we're still going to do later.

Quote from: cephalo

For the tile counts in designating good/evil regions, for a given map size, what exactly is a small, medium or large region?

It looks like small is 1-24, medium is 25-99, and large is 100+, for any map size.

Quote from: MaximumZero

Do you ever look at the forums and think to yourself "What the hell is my playerbase on?"

I try not to generalize when I see something particularly messed up, he he he.

Quote from: Heedicalking

Will we be able to increase the danger level in confrontations? For example, if a guy starts punching me, and I draw my sword and stab him once, will he start spilling the beans quicker than he would in fist-fight?

The beans from his stomach?  If the combat jumps up to lethal and he's not willing to go there and can't run, you'll get your yield faster, yeah.  You don't even need to stab him.

Quote from: BradUffner

Is there going to be any kind of "desensitization" to the fear of fighting that slowly builds up?  I can see hardened troops who have made it through dozens of battles being less likely to run away than the fresh from the fields farmer.

I'm not sure everyone that has been through a bunch of battles will respond the same way, and I'm not sure if the current simple PTSD/hardness variable we have will survive at all, but we are hoping to have various changes occur and to have various mitigators to combat terror before the release.  Having a previous experience with terror seems like a fair mitigator, I think, though anecdotes are all over the place -- from people becoming more effective to totally breaking down later on if they didn't the first time.  We certainly aim to keep the game in a playable area with respect to companions and dwarves.

Quote from: Corai

Is there going to be combat realism with this release, meaning if you say, murder a entire kingdom and go to another, they will run in fear. And if yes, what of soldiers? If you slaughter a army alone, would hardened elites you fight later on flight or fight?

These are specific things related to reputation, and though we'll be expanding reputation stuff as we go, up to the point that people will know who you are and help you or hunt you down, I'm not sure exactly where the line will be drawn this release.

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Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will these kinds of reactions be added to Dwarf Fortress mode? For example, nervous dwarves would be more likely to run away from those starting first fights, whilst others might decide to actively participate.

Quote from: Cruxador

Will the new lethality aversion effect the behavior of military dwarves? What about your civilian dwarves? Right now military dwarves are always totally cool with risking their necks and civilian dwarves always turn tail at the first sight of trouble, but only adventure mode stuff has been mentioned in the devlog.

I haven't gutted the dwarven brain yet to incorporate these things, but it should all come up.  There'll have to be some control to keep the game usable, but that can probably be afforded by the general dutifulness of being in the dwarven military with orders, so that most dwarves act roughly as expected, with the deviations being most often caution or overreacting.

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Quote from: cartmann

Would fighting animals, that can't wield weapons be considered as non-lethal fighting? Would it go as far as saying that fighting a Hydra be non-lethal as it has no weapons?

Quote from: Osmosis Jones

Can we, as an adventurer, choose to initiate unarmed combat with wildlife?

I don't think there'll be a non-lethal state for them at first at all, though I imagine we can think of a few reasons to have one later.

Quote from: Osmosis Jones

are there any plans to be able to restrain our enemies after we subdue them? Either in terms of affixing them to actual restraints that we have in fortmode (like chains etc.), hogtying them, or tying them up but being able to walk?

Yeah, it's up on the dev page.  Gagging people and tying them up was originally envisioned as a way to deal with certain guards when you infiltrate a villain's site, and it might also come up when you force people to lead you somewhere.  That led to various stuff you might do in dwarf mode with relation to mine carts and all that.  When we allow you to tie people up, I'd expect it to probably all be done at once.

Quote from: eux0r

i see a problem with weapon recognition: what about other things not really considered a weapon? i thinks its documented history of this game to kill things with something else than a weapon.

Right now it errs on the side of judging things lethal.  Once we get to actual barfights, there'll have to be more wiggle room.

Quote from: EnigmaticHat

If I hit someone with the flat of my blade, does that count as a lethal or non-lethal attack according to the game?

It's a lethal attack right now.  That seems like a reasonable thing to think unless the attacker tells you what's going on and you trust it, or you've been hit by the flat several times and realize what happened.  Aside from just wanting to knock somebody out, there's a weird place that kind of attack is supposed to occupy where you beat the enemy into submission I guess, but the lethality state doesn't matter there as long as the defender thinks they have an option to yield and they don't get killed.

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Quote from: Sunday

How particularized are the different sorts of fear going to be to individual thoughts, personalities, and histories?

In other words, obviously some people might be willing to engage in fistfights but not lethal combat. However, would that extend to different sorts of lethal combat, so that a person might be willing to fight another human to the death, but not a dragon/demon? Or might be unwilling to fight a sort of animal that that dwarf "likes"? Also, would someone who is generally unwilling to enter lethal combat be willing if their opponent were an "enemy" subject to special and particular enmity (e.g. a troll that abducted the person's spouse)?

Quote from: Dae

As an extension to this question, will the concepts of "natural enemy" found in D&D and phobias get in the personnality rewrite ? I'm thinking, for example, about a certain knight very keen on slaughter leaving a fight because he fears fire after being severely burnt as a child.

None of that stuff is going to come up at first, but the more details we have to differentiate people the better off we'll be over all, and we've toyed around with various of those ideas in the dev pages.  Dunno when though.

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Quote from: Lord Shonus

Will the exact weapon you're carrying make any difference beyond simple material/quality/type? For example, will there be cases where a well-used sword that has killed many goblins is more intimidating to a goblin than a human?

Quote from: Dae

any chance we get the option to boast a kill or two as our enemies do (which I *think* you mentionned somewhere), in this next round of psychological warfare ? Will the boasting of an enemy have an effect on our followers, distinct from the effect of getting rounded by 6 people in the wilderness ?

There was a lengthy discussion in response to the first question and I don't think I have much to add to it.  We've got items that gain names and everything has its stats tracked, and if you can somehow convey this information to the critters or if they can recognize the weapon, it'd be a fair and funny thing to do.

There's going to be quite a bit more talking to critters in this version, but I switched to my current site claim stuff right before I started that (partially so there conversations would be more intelligible and have better options).  So I'm not quite sure how it'll manifest.  If your boasting bothers enemies, enemy boasting will bother your friends in the same way, assuming we get them put in the same framework.  The current enemy boasting appears to be more public than it actually is (it's actually a conversation with you), and some work needs to be done to pull conversations out of their own space to get them to occur more like market chatter, but that's a little messy.

Quote from: Corai

Is combat going to be revamped with this as well? Say elf E and goblin G are in a fight, and elf E pulls a dagger out. Will goblin G disarm the elf, and will the elf attempt to pickup said dagger again?

Some things have changed, which I've posted in the log, and adding more is part of the hero role.  The loss of equipment by your companions is particularly annoying, but I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen.

Quote from: Pokey McFork

Seeing that non-lethal combat is being implemented, will we be seeing non-lethal weapons at all?
i.e.: blackjacks, brass knuckles, etc.

If so, what kind of response would drawing one in a fight get?

I haven't thought about it much yet.  Bar fights will probably be our first round of worrying about some of the item possibilities, but I'm not sure.

Quote from: Vherid

Is there any plans to improve upon the effectiveness of punishing a vampire? Punishing them for murdering just about always ends up giving them a few bruises and that's about it.

It's silly how it works now, but I don't have a timeline.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

Will the player's character be affected by fear etc. and subject to forced actions, or will it be left to roleplaying?

As people brought up, there's been a lot of discussion about this over the years -- the current position is that there will be very little if any forced actions from the player's emotional state.  It relies on the computer getting things correct, and a single screwup blasts immersion.

Quote from: eux0r

(log)Failure to master emotional states leads to forced actions...(/log)
what other emotions and actions than does this include?

I haven't gone through and done much with it at this point.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Does the [SKILL:SWORD] tag on the weapon raws determine which weapons can be found upright made out of spoilermetal in the unique spoiler entrance to the spoilers?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Quote from: blake77

Would the next update deal with "when creatures should flee"? For example, dwarves behind fortifications, dwarves dealing with untamed creatures like rabbits.

I'm not specifically handling every broken situation right now.

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Quote from: Areyar

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

Quote from: Cruxador

How will these new thought-systems interface with the upcoming groups system?

Quote from: tahujdt

Toady, will dwarves ever try to assasinate people(outside of tantrums)? Will we find fighting factions within our forts?

Having factions/religions/guilds in the fortress is something we're holding in mind as we work with the thought/personality/emotion rewrite and the entity claims.  The new systems are basically the framework of the personality rewrite we've been going on about forever and the dwarf mode interface there with groups is all of the sort of decision making we've been talking about.  However, I still need to gut the dwarven brain in the same way I've gutted the adventure mode critter brain to get them to be able to use the new stuff, and the old dwarven brain is large and messy. 

The upside of that was also being able to support things like custom job prioritization and better for decision making, but I haven't embarked on this yet, so I'd hesitate to say I've truly begun the personality rewrite.  The adventure mode dabbling should make the dwarf mode rewrite a lot easier when it happens, since I've gotten a chance to prepare an AI function more like what I'm imagining the dwarf will have now.  Once a dwarf is allowed to weigh actions and can take a free action a little easier, they'll be able to think about doing something for their various allegiances, whether it's killing another dwarf or something a lot less extreme.  It's important that the game isn't constantly disrupted to the point of unplayability, but there should be room for stuff.

Quote from: drvoke

Toady, how have you been approaching the implementation and design of personality stuff as this bit of the project moves forward?  Have you been consulting with anybody who specializes in psychology, or is this basically the result of wiki-diving and/or astute induction?

Zach and I have mostly just been talking situations out as we come to them.  Some reading online back when we were hashing some of the new categories out, but nothing in particular.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that multiple attacks can be used at the same time, does that mean weapon traps will attack with all their weapons at the same time now? Are we going to get riders and riding in the new release given that you've mentioned that on the devblog, or is this still just regarding fortress mode invasions?

Do the weapon traps not work like that now?  There's simultaneity in terms of attacking on the same phase, and then simultaneity in terms of actually rewriting the strike code to somehow make two items hit a creature at one time.  The latter isn't going in in any way, since it's messy and unimportant.  We have multiple attacks now in the sense that you can have two attacks started that resolve a few phases later on the same phase, but in that one phase they are still resolved in a sequence.  Riders are just being supported -- they are slated for the hero role but I'm not sure when they are coming in.

Quote from: Igfig

Do the changes to how entities claim sites mean that sites and lairs and the like are going to work in a more unified fashion?

I mean, right now you've got towns, fortresses, camps, caves, sewers, towers, tombs, etc, and they all work differently. But is there any reason why a successful bandit group couldn't use a fortress as its base instead of a camp, or a civilization couldn't live in towers and shrines instead of hamlets? Or heck, why night creatures couldn't lair in towns?

The site claims don't impact the map structures, which are more unified in towns, sewers, towers and tombs than is apparent.  Caves are really old, and camps, fortresses and lairs haven't been updated.  I'm not sure when it'll change, but ideally they'll get treated the same at some point.

Quote from: Dradym

since multiple attacks will be implemented, will heroes, sufficiently skilled, be able to dual wield and attack twice at the same time?

Yeah.

Quote from: trees

How will movement and attack speed be determined for different types of creatures? To clarify - will the game recognize that a hydra has many heads to bite with and automatically give it a faster attack speed, or will creatures like that need to have an equivalent of the current SPEED token? I suppose they could be tied to different attributes, too.

Each head will be able to engage in a separate attack with the same speed as, say, a dragon's single bite attack.  The attacks begin, strike, and finish concurrently (with the strike damage all happening in rapid succesion during the same tick, a few ticks after the attacks are initiated), and it won't be able to attack any faster than a normal biting creature (unless we decide it deserves a bonus for whatever cobra-strikey reason).  You won't need to calculate to find a proper timing.

Quote from: Miuramir

Toady, how does the movement/combat split affect creature, weapon, etc. raws?

Are weapon attack speeds entirely based on raw constants, calculated based on a mix of raw constants and internal code, or entirely generated from internal code?

Does weapon quality affect attack speed?

Will movement speed for dwarves be affected primarily by the existing Agility attribute, or will there be a split so that dwarves have differing attributes that control how fast they move and how efficiently they accomplish actions?

I have yet to muck around with the raws, but it'll come up very soon once I go back to that stuff once I'm done messing with entity claims.  I imagine attack raws will need basic speeds, perhaps broken into the pre/post strike periods, and that these'll be subject to attribute/skill improvements in many cases.

There are also two notions of attack speed -- the finer tuned velocity with which the strike damage, and the basic tick numbers, which by their nature have very little resolution to mess with (though it is possible to add resolution there in limited ways).  So if one sword swing hits at 100 and another hits at 120, they might both take 2 ticks to resolve, but the 120 will hit harder.  More importantly, when "heavy" and "fast" strikes are distinguished, the heavy strike will have a longer tick pre-strike period, but will actually be harder (higher velocity) when it hits, where the "fast" strike will have a short pre-strike period but hit with a lower damaging velocity.  These are distinctions which will certainly be in by combat styles, perhaps before.

I think weapon quality effects the strike velocity.  I'm not sure if there's enough resolution in the ticks to mess with the pre-strike period much.

In the currently released version, movement speed is affected by strength and agility equally, though strength also bulks muscled parts which decreases speed so agility is better overall.  I don't have a plan to change that.  When it comes to jobs, everything is up in the air now that movement is an action -- doing jobs is now utterly independent of the movement action, but I think it still feeds them the movement delay.  That'll definitely be changed for this release, and like you suggest, it'll likely be replaced either by a constant or something more appropriate for the job.

Quote from: Dae

Toady, will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode and on enemies and VERY inconvenient as a beginner adventurer due to the fact you automatically reload right after firing (instead of doing something more useful, like fleeing or dropping your crossbow and pulling out a sword) ?

I haven't changed them yet, but the special firing delay variable is up for the chopping block now that they can be merged with the other actions.  And yeah, that'll give us some more freedom, since we couldn't make the post-fire delay very slow in the old system.

Quote from: Spish

By the end of this update arc, will DF be able to handle all the births and age-related deaths behind the scenes? In other words, if we have a world we spend a lot of time with (like, say, 300 years), will we still have to worry about all the humans dying out from old age after a certain point?

Yeah, we're hoping to get that part done for this release if we can.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that we're moving into dealing with heroes and villains, are we going to have some "generic" content added? For example, certain heroes may have radically different fighting styles, some villains may live behind a vast array of traps and minions, and heroes may have their own varying moral codes.

We'd like to add differences between critters, but we're trying to stick with the basic moving around and so on at first.  Somewhere in here we're going to flesh out villains a bit, to some basic minimum, but I'm not sure what we'll get to yet.

Quote from: Spinning Welshman

With the additions to AI starting in the next update, will we eventually have things like Forgotten Beasts with more specific goals than just killing everything?

There's a dev item in the hero role for giving some of the megabeasts intelligent behavior, but it's unclear how it'll manifest.  When we first activate megabeasts out on the world map, it'll likely be to get them to do things they do at random currently (like appearing at your fort).

Quote from: Auning

Will things like evil weather be tracked when off screen/cross-region? As it is, it seems that it only queues up the evil weather to run it's course when you enter the area it's designated for. I thought this might go hand-in-hand with continuing history since weather events may play a part in this, at some point. The end result would be something like: If you embark in an area that rains a repulsive sludge, the ground will already be covered with it if it has been raining it there for some time. As opposed to: You embark in the area, and it is completely clean of sludge, but it quickly becomes covered with it when it rains. It doesn't make sense for time to freeze in terms of this kind of weather in some areas until you get there.

The actual husking cloud events are tracked more closely, and it knows how deep the snow is in advance, but, yeah, residual rain products aren't handled at all.  I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

Quote from: Dae

Toady, you talked about penalties when attempting to attack with two weapons, or two targets simultaneously. Does that mean the entrance of some "ambidextry" or "multitasking" skills ?

I think that's reasonable, though I don't have a particular plan at this point.

Quote from: eux0r

how exactly will the penalties for multi-strikes be handled? do we have to expect the same penalty for kicking with both legs at the same time as for poking someones eyes with the index and the middle finger simultaneously? is there a difference in penalty for attacking 2 different people with 1 attack each or 1 person with 2 attacks?

I'm not sure how it'll work yet.  I think it's reasonable to decrease the penalty for having only 1 target, but part of the penalty should always apply, since you'll almost always be spreading your power around and trying to be accurate in more than one way when doing multiple attacks.

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Quote from: Arkenstone

So does this release make much progress to us being able to start cracking some 'eads together? (From multiple grappled creatures I mean, rather than like an ettin or hydra.)

Quote from: Jacob/Lee

Can we have a choice in where to throw an opponent when wrestling?

The situation at this point remains unchanged.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady will you be combining movement and attacks into one for specific attacks like charges, tackles, and moving stabs in this release? Will that actually be a thing?

Yeah, this will be a thing.  The old charges have been gutted, and everything's going under the new action framework.

Quote from: Kriby

Will the non-lethal system shouting wake nearby sleeping creatures?

When we do infiltrating the compound etc. as we progress with villains, I think the silliest things will be managed, and it'll slowly be improved like the rest of everything.  There's a specific dev item for raising the alarm.

Quote from: Girlinhat

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?

Ideally we'll be able to do that.  There's a lot of specific interface etc. associated to being in that position though.  It's similar to bandits messing with your site beyond murder and stealing (which we have), but even more complicated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on July 07, 2012, 06:22:36 am

Thanks for the WoT, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on July 07, 2012, 07:09:09 am

How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
     *Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?
     *How will you deal with the brain-punch problem? (Lower punch force? Higher skull strength?)
     *Will occasionally lethal punches still be possible?
     *How will this affect blunt weapons like maces and warhammers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 07, 2012, 07:27:58 am

Quote from: tfaal on July 07, 2012, 07:09:09 am

How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
     *Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?
     *How will you deal with the brain-punch problem? (Lower punch force? Higher skull strength?)
     *Will occasionally lethal punches still be possible?
     *How will this affect blunt weapons like maces and warhammers?

I dont think we'll be seeing a hit point system due to ToadyOne disdain for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ZzarkLinux on July 07, 2012, 07:58:12 am

Thanks for the large response Toady.

When the devlog said "I've shut off immediate enemy recognition so that people don't start fighting to the death in the streets",
does this mean that Tantrum Spirals Loyalty Cascades will be affected?

So if a dwarf attacks another dwarf, or if a dwarf attacks a civilian/werebeast who went back to human mode, what will happen?

EDIT: I meant Loyalty Cascades, not tantrums.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 07, 2012, 09:28:22 am

Since goblin armies moving across the map to attack will be tracked as a replacement for a goblin army just popping up on your doorstep, is this going to scrap the grace period that you have with the goblins for the first year and a half or so? I would imagine that if you're halfway between a goblin fortress and the Mountainhome it is attacking, you'd be attacked even if you were a very young fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 07, 2012, 09:33:33 am

Quote

Seeing that non-lethal combat is being implemented, will we be seeing non-lethal weapons at all?
i.e.: blackjacks, brass knuckles, etc

I find it a bit funny that Brass knuckles... a definate lethal weapon, got into this list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 07, 2012, 09:48:38 am

Thanks, Toady!

Quote from: ZzarkLinux on July 07, 2012, 07:58:12 am

When the devlog said "I've shut off immediate enemy recognition so that people don't start fighting to the death in the streets",
does this mean that Tantrum Spirals Loyalty Cascades will be affected?

Unlikely. The recognition that Toady mentioned apparently deals with the bandits in town, and likely is an adventure-mode-only system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 07, 2012, 09:49:58 am

is there going to be more chat randomness? repeated questions get a bit annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 07, 2012, 09:54:58 am

Aww, really?

(http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/143/3443cdcf0982448ebba0ec7e6fc8c163/l.jpg)

has a certain old-time appeal to it...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 07, 2012, 10:03:40 am

yes but its kindof anoying to tell people "You look like a mighty warrior indeed!" and such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DarthBoogalo on July 07, 2012, 10:09:45 am

Will units be able to block with weapons rather then attack by the next release? And will two units be able to get into a deadlock with their weapons, struggling to either get clear of the attacker or get a strike in himself?
On the note of cool duel-y things like that, would a hero be able to march into a bandit camp and challenge the leader to a one-on-one battle? If the bandits don't just shoot the hero down first anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 07, 2012, 10:39:47 am

Duels would be frickin' epic. That, of course, would requite a segway into coding in honor...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runlvlzero on July 07, 2012, 10:43:07 am

Looks like there is some really impressive stuff going on with this game =) good to see the torch still lit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 07, 2012, 10:51:42 am

Quote from: runlvlzero on July 07, 2012, 10:43:07 am

Looks like there is some really impressive stuff going on with this game =) good to see the torch still lit.

It isnt, no lighting and Fire-setting yet. But we have nagma-ignited bits of Lignite and coal :P

Thanks toady for the vast number of answered questions.

Will there be claims that dont interfere with each other? Say a Political claim on a city by a warlord and a religious claim by on or another religion? Will factions engage in Site-trades where it is viable say as reparation after ending a long-term war?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MoonLightBird on July 07, 2012, 02:30:56 pm

If I attack someone in town with a non-lethal attack, would the town try to subdue me, or would they just kill me like they do now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 07, 2012, 03:09:07 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 07, 2012, 10:39:47 am

Duels would be frickin' epic. That, of course, would requite a segway into coding in honor...

Honor would just be one addition to the new brain. Recognizing the honor of others would be tougher, I suppose, but it's not immediately essential. Potentially more involved would be the AI describing how characters would respond to a duel in progress. Ideally that would involve civ ethics since there's several different cultural attitudes towards it that are valuable to explore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 07, 2012, 04:11:33 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 07, 2012, 09:28:22 am

Since goblin armies moving across the map to attack will be tracked as a replacement for a goblin army just popping up on your doorstep, is this going to scrap the grace period that you have with the goblins for the first year and a half or so? I would imagine that if you're halfway between a goblin fortress and the Mountainhome it is attacking, you'd be attacked even if you were a very young fortress.

It was never really a grace period, but an arbitrary artificial trigger. I suspect those triggers will still be in place until ToadyOne gets to 'Starting Scenarios' for your fortress to better communicate the  immediate danger of invasion. But yea, eventually Entities are suppose to attack your fort in the furtherance of their goal, instead of arbitrarily like it does now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: peskyninja on July 07, 2012, 05:21:13 pm

Do you have any plans to add more complex and advanced search options to the site finder? Like searching for an specific kind of ore or stone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 07, 2012, 08:41:53 pm

Quote from: devlog

I'm now having civilizations decide to attack other sites in play, starting with some straightforward examples that should lead to the complete destruction of cities.

Does this mean that, in Fort mode, your civilization (or others) could be wiped out during play? Presumably this would affect caravans and such as well.

Does this also apply to megabeast attacks? Which, in particularly crazy worlds, could lead to every civilization being wiped out in play.

I'd also ask whether the claims system will allow new civs/entities will arise during play, but I'm willing to bet the answer is "it'll happen, no timeline."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DavionFuxa on July 07, 2012, 08:47:20 pm

Note sure if these have been brought up but, for the new system:

How many weapons/objects would we be able to carry under the new system? Will Our Avatar's Hand's become full for example?
If there will be a limit to the amount of things our Hands can hold, will it be a percentage based thing or will each hand only be able to hold to independent objects (IE, Your Shield Requiring only 80% of your hand to hold it, and you can hold a Large Copper Dagger with the other 20%; maybe with some items also requiring more then 100% to hold or attack with like a Great Axe for example

Additionally, on the attacks themselves?

Would our character be able to mix different types of attacks together? I would assume we can bash a Goblin in the Head with the Shield while Hacking the Left Lower Leg off with the Battle Axe; but could we also throw the Battle Axe while attacking with the Shield, or try a Wrestling Move with our Leg while doing an Attack?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Guylock on July 07, 2012, 11:29:49 pm

I have sum questions to ask...
Yes... their unusual questions... some are suggestions as well, maybe I should post them in suggestions later...


- Is it possible for the NPC's to reproduce during actual play? I herd they don't after world gen play; which sucks; because then they die off from old age...
- Will it be possible for a dead civilization to rebuild it's self aka if a race or kingdom went extinct and you make a adventurer and retire, is it possible to make them become an actual NPC peasant or sum ranked noble (like a king) that will rule over and give orders to the people so they can either rebuild or make a new civilization? (this kind of concept would work well if you gen a world with no civs, great for a Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for a player adventurer to be able to retire anywhere? (tied to the second question which relates to the Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for if say a Hord of demons from underworld or a Forgotten beast were to break free and slaughter your fort; be able to roam the world freely and attack or destroy or take over civs?


I apologize if I made suggestions during my questions, I just wonder if such concepts would be included.
If they were to get added I'd have a ton of fun experimenting with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Murphy on July 07, 2012, 11:57:12 pm

Quote from: tfaal on July 07, 2012, 07:09:09 am

How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
     *Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?

I'm not Toady, but I'd speculate that it could be handled by the existing system, since people can pass out from exhaustion (it just doesn't happen as often as passing out from pain/suffocation). Just have to make it so bruises are fatiguing on the receiving side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: InfiniVide on July 08, 2012, 02:35:36 am

Will our adventurers be able to join a particular religious group?

I've noticed that when I look through Legends on a particular world and look at a religious sect or any other particular group, there's a point where basically all the members leave and then a long line of leaders until the "present" time.  What I'm wondering is, will these groups at some point actually cease to exist/function?

At some point, might there be an option to progress time on a world that has already been generated? i.e. I create a world, play a fortress in that world which eventually dies out, could I then go into something like the world gen again with that world and progress the timeline in that way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 08, 2012, 02:39:57 am

Adventurers already are able to join religions. Once you do, you can even talk to 'god' Not that he/she ever responds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 08, 2012, 02:48:16 am

It seems whenever Toady posts in here it proves the adage about creating more questions than you answer.  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 08, 2012, 04:59:37 am

Quote from: Guylock on July 07, 2012, 11:29:49 pm

- Is it possible for the NPC's to reproduce during actual play? I herd they don't after world gen play; which sucks; because then they die off from old age...

Not yet, but that is an explicit goal of activating the world, so it should come in during this series of releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on July 08, 2012, 07:34:51 am

Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 08:55:00 am

Quote from: iceball3 on July 08, 2012, 07:34:51 am

Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?

I think your question might be more productive, if it succinctly stated as, "What changes do you think you'll need to make to allow for none lethal combat and what steps are you taking to have an outcomes where none death is more likely then death?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on July 08, 2012, 09:07:30 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 08:55:00 am

Quote from: iceball3 on July 08, 2012, 07:34:51 am

Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?

I think your question might be more productive, if it succinctly stated as, "What changes do you think you'll need to make to allow for none lethal combat and what steps are you taking to have an outcomes where none death is more likely then death?

Probably so, I have gotten a little suggest-y there haven't I?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on July 08, 2012, 10:31:50 am

IIRC there's a mod out there somewhere that makes skull and brain damage pretty realistic, by changing skull size and thickness to make it more realistic. That almost might be something that can be partly fixed in the raws (though obviously non-lethal combat will change things).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 10:58:05 am

Quote from: iceball3 on July 08, 2012, 09:07:30 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 08:55:00 am

I think your question might be more productive, if it succinctly stated as, "What changes do you think you'll need to make to allow for none lethal combat and what steps are you taking to have an outcomes where none death is more likely then death?

Probably so, I have gotten a little suggest-y there haven't I?

I dont think it was really suggestive, but detrimentally limting the scope of the question from what I think you want to know about, EI, the changes to combat to allow non-lethal combat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cthulufaic on July 08, 2012, 06:57:34 pm

Toady, I don't think you need to worry about non-lethal weapons just yet, because I assume that the most lethal object in most Dwarven barfights will be a Pick stool or chair. (Which could actually be pretty lethal if it's made of stone or metal  ???).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 09:59:41 pm

Quote from: Cthulufaic on July 08, 2012, 06:57:34 pm

Toady, I don't think you need to worry about non-lethal weapons just yet, because I assume that the most lethal object in most Dwarven barfights will be a Pick stool or chair. (Which could actually be pretty lethal if it's made of stone or metal  ???).

Oh wow, there's something to really consider. Furniture items are pretty stuck where they're placed. (With  few means for them to be moved around/destroyed without player direction). That could be a hairy problem to solve. Dorfs should be able to arrange the bar/inn furniture objects to their initial placement. But what would dorf do if a furniture object is broken during a bar/inn fight? Telegraphing that info to player may be tricky. But that could be a pretty interesting frame work. Dorfs being able to arrange the furniture on their own. Setting up barricades? There might be other nifty applications.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on July 08, 2012, 11:40:20 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 09:59:41 pm

Quote from: Cthulufaic on July 08, 2012, 06:57:34 pm

Toady, I don't think you need to worry about non-lethal weapons just yet, because I assume that the most lethal object in most Dwarven barfights will be a Pick stool or chair. (Which could actually be pretty lethal if it's made of stone or metal  ???).

Oh wow, there's something to really consider. Furniture items are pretty stuck where they're placed. (With  few means for them to be moved around/destroyed without player direction). That could be a hairy problem to solve. Dorfs should be able to arrange the bar/inn furniture objects to their initial placement. But what would dorf do if a furniture object is broken during a bar/inn fight? Telegraphing that info to player may be tricky. But that could be a pretty interesting frame work. Dorfs being able to arrange the furniture on their own. Setting up barricades? There might be other nifty applications.

Maybe it could be something along the lines of the player can designate the bar area and the dwarves in charge of it go an collect the allowed amount of stuff. Similar to the hospital, but uses to a couple furniture items, mugs, and food/drink. This way the bar could have a more fluid set up. 

I guess this also begs the question of what a dwarven bar would look like. Maybe they all sit on the floor instead of sitting in chairs. Perhaps dwarves prefer to move around while they drink to get drunk and furniture just gets in the way. Do they have a bar keeper or something else? If yes, what kind of job is bar keeper? Dwarven barkeeps could be considered servants or possibly nobles. Is the bar a place for children or just the adults? Young dwarves drink, but perhaps there needs to be one place where children can't go so adults can just relax. Or do the young dwarves go and listen to the stories the drunk old farts tell by the fire? Would there be fires in the bar? I don't think it would be far fetched to find a couple fire pits that the dwarves could gather round. They could double as lighting for visitors.

I don't know, but I got an interesting image in my head after that. I think the bars will be quite a while though. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on July 09, 2012, 12:21:43 am

As sites now change occupation with other races as well as civilizations as the world plays will we have to worry about a language barrier at some point? Will dwarfs have issues trading with humans because they do not speak the same language, and when the time comes will we need to look for a dwarf with a skill in said language to trade effectively?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 09, 2012, 01:32:52 am

I dont think language barriers has been brought up before by ToadyOne. There a few features that seem to imply that there is no lang. barrier, such as being able to read all the books you find, and exploration adventure role. There certainly hasn't be any sort of lang. barrier in the game so far.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on July 09, 2012, 02:01:05 am

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only language barrier that exists in the game is the fact that kobolds can only speak gibberish. Other than that, everything that speaks can understand each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on July 09, 2012, 02:41:02 am

During play, how often will the game update to account for events occuring in the world?

Dwarf Mode is somewhat removed from the world, so I guess that could be handled seasonally, but in Adventure Mode a significant change in the area you are in might be jarring.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 09, 2012, 06:02:42 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 09, 2012, 01:32:52 am

I dont think language barriers has been brought up before by ToadyOne. There a few features that seem to imply that there is no lang. barrier, such as being able to read all the books you find, and exploration adventure role. There certainly hasn't be any sort of lang. barrier in the game so far.

Toady has talked about nearly everything at this point. Language barriers are in DF Talk 10, and language is also briefly discussed in DF Talk 17. It's in the questions segment both times. The short version of it is that Toady does intend to have some sort of language barrier, but he doesn't intend to make the player learn randomly generated languages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 09, 2012, 07:10:46 am

Quote from: Cruxador on July 09, 2012, 06:02:42 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 09, 2012, 01:32:52 am

I dont think language barriers has been brought up before by ToadyOne. There a few features that seem to imply that there is no lang. barrier, such as being able to read all the books you find, and exploration adventure role. There certainly hasn't be any sort of lang. barrier in the game so far.

Toady has talked about nearly everything at this point. Language barriers are in DF Talk 10, and language is also briefly discussed in DF Talk 17. It's in the questions segment both times. The short version of it is that Toady does intend to have some sort of language barrier, but he doesn't intend to make the player learn randomly generated languages.

While that's  true, the language talk has mostly concentrated on Adventure mode rather that Fortress mode, which is where darklord's question points.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: goukaryuujin on July 09, 2012, 08:50:06 am

Since some mega beast are going to be intelegent, will it be possible to say, have a friendly forgotten beast wander onto site, or a neutral dragon pass through some time in the coming versions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: stolide on July 09, 2012, 10:57:14 am

Quote from: goukaryuujin on July 09, 2012, 08:50:06 am

Since some mega beast are going to be intelegent, will it be possible to say, have a friendly forgotten beast wander onto site, or a neutral dragon pass through some time in the coming versions?

Or better yet, megabeasts that have demands that can be met in return for sparing your fort. Perhaps that wandering hill giant won't ransack your fort, and potentially die, if you give him a few barrels of alcohol and some cattle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Miuramir on July 09, 2012, 02:04:44 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 09:59:41 pm

Quote from: Cthulufaic on July 08, 2012, 06:57:34 pm

Toady, I don't think you need to worry about non-lethal weapons just yet, because I assume that the most lethal object in most Dwarven barfights will be a Pick stool or chair. (Which could actually be pretty lethal if it's made of stone or metal  ???).

Oh wow, there's something to really consider. Furniture items are pretty stuck where they're placed. (With  few means for them to be moved around/destroyed without player direction). That could be a hairy problem to solve. Dorfs should be able to arrange the bar/inn furniture objects to their initial placement. But what would dorf do if a furniture object is broken during a bar/inn fight? Telegraphing that info to player may be tricky. But that could be a pretty interesting frame work. Dorfs being able to arrange the furniture on their own. Setting up barricades? There might be other nifty applications.

Somewhat bizarre (but IMO oddly workable) thought: use a modification of the "Pasture" function to handle furniture in certain rooms, such as a bar, etc.  As long as the furniture is inside the room, it's OK to be moved around by whatever means.  If it ends up outside the room, a job gets generated for a furniture hauler to move it back inside. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on July 09, 2012, 02:52:48 pm

if were allowed to ask more than one question >.>

Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on July 09, 2012, 03:34:13 pm

Quote from: Miuramir on July 09, 2012, 02:04:44 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 08, 2012, 09:59:41 pm

Quote from: Cthulufaic on July 08, 2012, 06:57:34 pm

Toady, I don't think you need to worry about non-lethal weapons just yet, because I assume that the most lethal object in most Dwarven barfights will be a Pick stool or chair. (Which could actually be pretty lethal if it's made of stone or metal  ???).

Oh wow, there's something to really consider. Furniture items are pretty stuck where they're placed. (With  few means for them to be moved around/destroyed without player direction). That could be a hairy problem to solve. Dorfs should be able to arrange the bar/inn furniture objects to their initial placement. But what would dorf do if a furniture object is broken during a bar/inn fight? Telegraphing that info to player may be tricky. But that could be a pretty interesting frame work. Dorfs being able to arrange the furniture on their own. Setting up barricades? There might be other nifty applications.

Somewhat bizarre (but IMO oddly workable) thought: use a modification of the "Pasture" function to handle furniture in certain rooms, such as a bar, etc.  As long as the furniture is inside the room, it's OK to be moved around by whatever means.  If it ends up outside the room, a job gets generated for a furniture hauler to move it back inside.

Interesting idea, but you could end up with stone thrones moved away from tables in dining room, or cabinets blocking the exit in rooms if you only consider getting the furniture back in. This could probably be handled better through a job similar to cleaning, with a low priority except when it's out of the room, and as high as the lowest order requiring use of that object.
But anyway this requires fighting against the current framework right now. Rooms are made from these objects, around these objects and assume that they are fixed.
For all we know, a built throne could even be a totally different object than a being-carried-throne, rendering the idea non-trivial to say the least.

Let's hear what Toady has to say about it first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on July 09, 2012, 03:48:18 pm

I remember seeing some talk of having all rooms work similar to hospitals, where you have a zone designated for it and it uses the appropriate items within that zone. From what I remember it is a non-trivial task to convert all of the areas over to that framework, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on July 09, 2012, 05:34:33 pm

I think it would be worth it, if only to make designating rooms less of a pain. Even if an empty room gave absolutely no bonuses, it would make micromanaging a lot easier. You could just plot out everyone's room at once, for example, and then just install beds as they're produced.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 09, 2012, 05:58:39 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on July 09, 2012, 02:52:48 pm

if were allowed to ask more than one question >.>

Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?

The Hammer is using a lethal weapon. So, I suppose if you take way the Hammer's hammer, then yea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: vertinox on July 09, 2012, 06:08:39 pm

Wow the two things I am looking forward to the most is the dwarven inns and the ability to send out your military from the fort on missions!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 09, 2012, 06:23:38 pm

Quote from: vertinox on July 09, 2012, 06:08:39 pm

Wow the two things I am looking forward to the most is the dwarven inns and the ability to send out your military from the fort on missions!

Yea, those should be pretty things when they happen, but those are still marked as soon-then-later features. And ToadyOne isn't currently coding them. Though getting folks to move around live after world gen, and making goals for themselves are needed for you to be able to send out your armies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hatman on July 09, 2012, 09:42:25 pm

Regarding attack speeds: Are there any plans to implement variations on the speed of readying your weapon again after a blow? I would imagine that after swinging a giant axe blade or granite throne one would require a lot of time to bring it back up to a readied/guard position compared to a more conventional weapon, to give an extreme example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 10, 2012, 01:42:54 am

Quote from: Hatman on July 09, 2012, 09:42:25 pm

Regarding attack speeds: Are there any plans to implement variations on the speed of readying your weapon again after a blow? I would imagine that after swinging a giant axe blade or granite throne one would require a lot of time to bring it back up to a readied/guard position compared to a more conventional weapon, to give an extreme example.

I am fairly certain that such things are already in the process of being implemented.  See this section of the recent FotF reply by Toady One.

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: trees

How will movement and attack speed be determined for different types of creatures? To clarify - will the game recognize that a hydra has many heads to bite with and automatically give it a faster attack speed, or will creatures like that need to have an equivalent of the current SPEED token? I suppose they could be tied to different attributes, too.

Each head will be able to engage in a separate attack with the same speed as, say, a dragon's single bite attack.  The attacks begin, strike, and finish concurrently (with the strike damage all happening in rapid succesion during the same tick, a few ticks after the attacks are initiated), and it won't be able to attack any faster than a normal biting creature (unless we decide it deserves a bonus for whatever cobra-strikey reason).  You won't need to calculate to find a proper timing.

Quote from: Miuramir

Toady, how does the movement/combat split affect creature, weapon, etc. raws?

Are weapon attack speeds entirely based on raw constants, calculated based on a mix of raw constants and internal code, or entirely generated from internal code?

Does weapon quality affect attack speed?

Will movement speed for dwarves be affected primarily by the existing Agility attribute, or will there be a split so that dwarves have differing attributes that control how fast they move and how efficiently they accomplish actions?

I have yet to muck around with the raws, but it'll come up very soon once I go back to that stuff once I'm done messing with entity claims.  I imagine attack raws will need basic speeds, perhaps broken into the pre/post strike periods, and that these'll be subject to attribute/skill improvements in many cases.

There are also two notions of attack speed -- the finer tuned velocity with which the strike damage, and the basic tick numbers, which by their nature have very little resolution to mess with (though it is possible to add resolution there in limited ways).  So if one sword swing hits at 100 and another hits at 120, they might both take 2 ticks to resolve, but the 120 will hit harder.  More importantly, when "heavy" and "fast" strikes are distinguished, the heavy strike will have a longer tick pre-strike period, but will actually be harder (higher velocity) when it hits, where the "fast" strike will have a short pre-strike period but hit with a lower damaging velocity.  These are distinctions which will certainly be in by combat styles, perhaps before.

I think weapon quality effects the strike velocity.  I'm not sure if there's enough resolution in the ticks to mess with the pre-strike period much.

In the currently released version, movement speed is affected by strength and agility equally, though strength also bulks muscled parts which decreases speed so agility is better overall.  I don't have a plan to change that.  When it comes to jobs, everything is up in the air now that movement is an action -- doing jobs is now utterly independent of the movement action, but I think it still feeds them the movement delay.  That'll definitely be changed for this release, and like you suggest, it'll likely be replaced either by a constant or something more appropriate for the job.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: miauw62 on July 10, 2012, 04:16:31 am

 Will this update re-introduce goblin/dwarven/elven sites to adventure mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 04:33:17 am

Quote from: miauw62 on July 10, 2012, 04:16:31 am

Will this update re-introduce goblin/dwarven/elven sites to adventure mode?

Current signs point to no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 10, 2012, 07:12:17 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 04:33:17 am

Quote from: miauw62 on July 10, 2012, 04:16:31 am

Will this update re-introduce goblin/dwarven/elven sites to adventure mode?

Current signs point to no.

But it is one of the things Toady said that he wants to bump up, so it might be in subsequent releases. If we're lucky.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 07:31:40 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on July 10, 2012, 07:12:17 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 04:33:17 am

Quote from: miauw62 on July 10, 2012, 04:16:31 am

Will this update re-introduce goblin/dwarven/elven sites to adventure mode?

Current signs point to no.

But it is one of the things Toady said that he wants to bump up, so it might be in subsequent releases. If we're lucky.

*nods* I think the last possible moment ToadyOne can stall on putting in those sites, is when we're able to send armies across the map, then view the battles that'll take place on those sights. At that time, it'll be very crucial to have those actual sites. So yea, anywhere between the release after, and before that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greendogo on July 10, 2012, 05:50:22 pm

Toady:
1) Will we ever get to see families fleshed out more, such as humans creating noble Houses.

2) If megabeast AI is improved, will we ever get to see things like Giants herding/riding Mammoths and Elephants, or Cyclops herding sheep and cattle (ala the Odyssey)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 07:15:15 pm

Quote from: Greendogo on July 10, 2012, 05:50:22 pm

Toady:
1) Will we ever get to see families fleshed out more, such as humans creating noble Houses.

Yep, families are planned to be better fleshed out. I recall ToadyOne speaking about Fort Mode famalies over NPC famalies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Comatose on July 10, 2012, 08:19:03 pm

Dear Toady,
Last night I was listening to the DF Talk #16 and I had a few questions.

In the DF Talk, you were discussing legacys, both for Adventure and Fortress mode.
Regarding Adventure mode, you wanted to give more options to leave a creative/constructive legacy behind. Many of the ideas that the Podcast was throwing around were reliant on the current "activating worldgen in gameplay" that you are currently programming.

Where are constructive Adventurer tasks on your list of priorities?

I imagine positive adventurer actions as things like site creation (Houses, Camps, Shops), and leading adventure mode entities (bandit groups, roving bands of monster hunters, paladins of a god, etc.)

With adventurer entites becoming an increacing possibility;
Will there be more in-depth NPC interactions and conversations?

During the podcast, you also mentioned more interesting seiges and raids from gobbos.
In long, protracted seiges can we expect to see goblins building shelters, and receiving food and materials from their point of origin?

PS (Thanks for the continued development updates!  :D)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 10, 2012, 08:36:10 pm

Quote from: Comatose on July 10, 2012, 08:19:03 pm

Where are constructive Adventurer tasks on your list of priorities?

I imagine positive adventurer actions as things like site creation (Houses, Camps, Shops), and leading adventure mode entities (bandit groups, roving bands of monster hunters, paladins of a god, etc.)


During the podcast, you also mentioned more interesting seiges and raids from gobbos.
In long, protracted seiges can we expect to see goblins building shelters, and receiving food and materials from their point of origin?

PS (Thanks for the continued development updates!  :D)

PLEASE

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on July 10, 2012, 10:44:03 pm

10 July 2012 devlog - it's good to see that the goblins are becoming a credible threat again. The night creature additions and removal of dark tower sites had downgraded them to mook status.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronomancer on July 10, 2012, 11:22:25 pm

How will this affect Fortress Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 11:25:54 pm

Quote from: Chronomancer on July 10, 2012, 11:22:25 pm

How will this affect Fortress Mode?

How will what affect Fort Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hatman on July 11, 2012, 06:01:47 am

Quote from: Rockphed on July 10, 2012, 01:42:54 am

Quote from: Hatman on July 09, 2012, 09:42:25 pm

Regarding attack speeds: Are there any plans to implement variations on the speed of readying your weapon again after a blow? I would imagine that after swinging a giant axe blade or granite throne one would require a lot of time to bring it back up to a readied/guard position compared to a more conventional weapon, to give an extreme example.

I am fairly certain that such things are already in the process of being implemented.  See this section of the recent FotF reply by Toady One.

I interpreted the "pre-strike period" he mentioned as meaning time taken winding up for an attack, rather than recovering from the last one. I don't know how necessary it will be in his new combat plans to differentiate between the two, but I can imagine that being able to do so would be useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on July 11, 2012, 07:38:44 am

Touching up on worldgen fights and adding new types of combat and enemy activity makes me wonder...

Will the system of large worldgen battles being concluded as a series of one on one duels be touched upon this update? If not, do you see it as being necessary in this set of world persistence updates, or will it wait until external military actions by the player are possible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 11, 2012, 11:25:11 am

So, if I'm reading the devlog right, which I'm quite possibly not, does this mean we'll be getting Metal Gear Fortress: Tactical Goblin Action for the next release?  If the "Breaking into fortified locations" section of the Hero-dev pages is relevant, then this will be pretty exciting.  I've always wondered how tracking and guard LOS could work in a 2D game, so I'm eager to see what becomes of this.

Apologies if these questions have been floated before...

Will goblin harassment have any repercussions beyond death and destruction such as installing goblin leaders or taking over sites (as per the July 2nd devlog), or is harassment just harassment?  Kind of answered by devlog.

Re: The June 15th devlog, this entry seems to indicate that at least in the heat of battle, personal qualities, motivations and emotional reactions are going to have more of an effect.  Now that you're tackling group movements in more detail and at all scales, will these get the same treatment as you go along, or will you add them in at a later date?

Don't know why, but I think the psychological difference it would make as a player to know that the goblins were harassing for some reason, nomatter what that reason is, would be really exciting.  So I'm hoping it makes an early appearance!   :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chagen46 on July 11, 2012, 01:50:35 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 07:31:40 am

*nods* I think the last possible moment ToadyOne can stall on putting in those sites, is when we're able to send armies across the map, then view the battles that'll take place on those sights. At that time, it'll be very crucial to have those actual sites. So yea, anywhere between the release after, and before that.

This raises a question...

Toady, when you can send your armies out and watch them, can you also manage the fort at the same time or can you only do one thing (either watch the battle or manage the fort) at a time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on July 11, 2012, 09:03:05 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on July 10, 2012, 07:12:17 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 04:33:17 am

Quote from: miauw62 on July 10, 2012, 04:16:31 am

Will this update re-introduce goblin/dwarven/elven sites to adventure mode?

Current signs point to no.

But it is one of the things Toady said that he wants to bump up, so it might be in subsequent releases. If we're lucky.

I'm hoping it will, at least for the goblins and dwarves.  The elves are supposed to have tree cities which will probably require more work, but I'm not sure the tree-huggers will actually have anything useful in their towns. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 11, 2012, 09:29:07 pm

Quote from: orius on July 11, 2012, 09:03:05 pm

I'm hoping it will, at least for the goblins and dwarves.  The elves are supposed to have tree cities which will probably require more work, but I'm not sure the tree-huggers will actually have anything useful in their towns.

Other than the multitude of elf shaped autonomous training dummies?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on July 11, 2012, 11:21:35 pm

Given the Gods' more active state in recent releases (with curses and such), what are your plans for adventurers concerning conversations with their deity of choice? Even if it is something as simple as an occasional "Leave me alone, mortal, I have more urgent matters to attend to."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 12, 2012, 05:27:33 am

Quote from: hermes on July 11, 2012, 11:25:11 am

So, if I'm reading the devlog right, which I'm quite possibly not, does this mean we'll be getting Metal Gear Fortress: Tactical Goblin Action for the next release?  If the "Breaking into fortified locations" section of the Hero-dev pages is relevant, then this will be pretty exciting.

It sounds like that's the goal, but I wouldn't necessarily expect ever aspect of it to go in for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mercanthyr on July 12, 2012, 06:26:46 am

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: Girlinhat

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?

Ideally we'll be able to do that.  There's a lot of specific interface etc. associated to being in that position though.  It's similar to bandits messing with your site beyond murder and stealing (which we have), but even more complicated.

When I read this, I though... yeah when ARE we going to get to enslave goblins to work in our mines? I'm not sure that is what you meant though?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 12, 2012, 06:46:30 am

Quote from: Mercanthyr on July 12, 2012, 06:26:46 am

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: Girlinhat

Will it be possible for your fortress to become a goblin slave camp while you play?

Ideally we'll be able to do that.  There's a lot of specific interface etc. associated to being in that position though.  It's similar to bandits messing with your site beyond murder and stealing (which we have), but even more complicated.

When I read this, I though... yeah when ARE we going to get to enslave goblins to work in our mines? I'm not sure that is what you meant though?

I'm pretty sure the question was, 'Can we still run our Fort, even when it gets taken over by invaders?'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 12, 2012, 08:05:13 am

And arrange for some unfortunate accidents for the Goblin Overlords on a grand scale!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on July 12, 2012, 01:11:05 pm

Quote from: orius on July 11, 2012, 09:03:05 pm

The elves are supposed to have tree cities which will probably require more work, but I'm not sure the tree-huggers will actually have anything useful in their towns.

Eventually, I would hope that my adventurer will be able to wander into an elf village on foot and leave riding a grizzly bear or a giant eagle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on July 12, 2012, 02:25:47 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on July 12, 2012, 01:11:05 pm

Quote from: orius on July 11, 2012, 09:03:05 pm

The elves are supposed to have tree cities which will probably require more work, but I'm not sure the tree-huggers will actually have anything useful in their towns.

Eventually, I would hope that my adventurer will be able to wander into an elf village on foot and leave riding a grizzly bear or a giant eagle.

THIS.
DO WANT.

This is also the thing that can make the tree-huggers dangerous in a war, all the pets they bring.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 12, 2012, 06:17:30 pm

Quote from: Hatman on July 11, 2012, 06:01:47 am

Quote from: Rockphed on July 10, 2012, 01:42:54 am

Quote from: Hatman on July 09, 2012, 09:42:25 pm

Regarding attack speeds: Are there any plans to implement variations on the speed of readying your weapon again after a blow? I would imagine that after swinging a giant axe blade or granite throne one would require a lot of time to bring it back up to a readied/guard position compared to a more conventional weapon, to give an extreme example.

I am fairly certain that such things are already in the process of being implemented.  See this section of the recent FotF reply by Toady One.

I interpreted the "pre-strike period" he mentioned as meaning time taken winding up for an attack, rather than recovering from the last one. I don't know how necessary it will be in his new combat plans to differentiate between the two, but I can imagine that being able to do so would be useful.

There was also a post-strike period mentioned.  That said, I think he isn't done with it yet.

Quote from:  Toady

I have yet to muck around with the raws, but it'll come up very soon once I go back to that stuff once I'm done messing with entity claims.  I imagine attack raws will need basic speeds, perhaps broken into the pre/post strike periods, and that these'll be subject to attribute/skill improvements in many cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on July 12, 2012, 09:09:23 pm

I don't know why this just struck me now, but I always wanted to mod in smaller and larger crossbows.  You know, low power high reload speed vs, punch a hole in adamantine 2 days to reaload things.

The way it currently stands I had to settle for making the heavy crossbow two handed.  But the way it's looking we'll be able to set relative weapon speeds!  Yay! Finally, the ability to make repeating crossbows that can't penetrate copper but fill the air with bolts!

And with that, a completely off topic question: Does two handedness of a crossbow(or any ranged weapon) have any effect on the rolls when being fired, like it does with melee weapons?  It only matters for mods since vanilla crossbows are apperantly always used as one handed weapons, but when I tried to ‼science‼ it myself my results came up really inconclusive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 13, 2012, 08:40:25 pm

Ok question time!

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 13, 2012, 08:43:04 pm

Justice of the peace?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 14, 2012, 12:05:39 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 13, 2012, 08:40:25 pm

Ok question time!

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

The real problem only arises if a snake can do their strike and then move a significant distance before striking again.  There is a quote from toady mentioning that attacks will probably get pre-strike and post-strike wait times.  So a snake will probably have no pre-strike time, and a post strike time similar to the current crossbow firing delay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on July 14, 2012, 02:26:22 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 13, 2012, 08:40:25 pm

Ok question time!

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

Presumably the preacher need also be a ninja just to survive the ceremony.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 14, 2012, 02:44:24 am

Quote from: O11O1 on July 14, 2012, 02:26:22 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 13, 2012, 08:40:25 pm

Ok question time!

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

Presumably the preacher need also be a ninja just to survive the ceremony.

He used the word correctly, sir.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on July 14, 2012, 04:50:37 am

Quote from: Chagen46 on July 11, 2012, 01:50:35 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 10, 2012, 07:31:40 am

*nods* I think the last possible moment ToadyOne can stall on putting in those sites, is when we're able to send armies across the map, then view the battles that'll take place on those sights. At that time, it'll be very crucial to have those actual sites. So yea, anywhere between the release after, and before that.

This raises a question...

Toady, when you can send your armies out and watch them, can you also manage the fort at the same time or can you only do one thing (either watch the battle or manage the fort) at a time?

I know there has been much rumor about this ever since df exists but maybe this is the point where he implements some kind of multicore support. Since your army and your fort would be independent games (to some point) each of them could run on a different core. They just would have to be kept synchronized slightly and the the fusion process might get difficult. Everything else is just two different instance of df running on the same world

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 14, 2012, 04:53:25 am

I'm pretty sure Muti threaded support is an all or nothing sorta of deal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bulwersator on July 14, 2012, 04:54:35 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 14, 2012, 04:53:25 am

I'm pretty sure Muti threaded support is an all or nothing sorta of deal.

Eee, no. Even current version of DF is sligtly multithreaded (graphics/everything else).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 14, 2012, 05:05:08 am

Quote from: Bulwersator on July 14, 2012, 04:54:35 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 14, 2012, 04:53:25 am

I'm pretty sure Muti threaded support is an all or nothing sorta of deal.

Eee, no. Even current version of DF is sligtly multithreaded (graphics/everything else).

Ah, that's true.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on July 14, 2012, 10:52:10 am

Yep just have two lists (one of orders being sent to the troups, the other of news from the battlegrounds), a mutex around each one and once every X days make the troups check for orders and let the fort check for news...u

Admittedly, apart from things that come from your caravan and depart from your fortress, what happens outside of your fort is virtually independant of what happens inside of it. Could totally be multithreaded.
Only exceptions would be caravans or sieges. You could have a queue of entities coming to your fort that the map would check once a day, so an army moves on the map until it reaches your fort, is put in the waiting queue (mutex'ed) and at the following "midnight" the map would check that list (preventing the world from writing while the map reads it) and pop the siege.
There would be a slight delay but at the speed of the game it would be almost un-noticeable and very practical to do.

It would work differently in adventure mode, but if Toady has put the framework so that a method simulates a portion of the world at a certain scale for a certain in-game time, it would be trivial. Adventure mode would simulate local area for a tick every step the player has, greater area for 12 in-game hours every 12 in-game hours, etc while in fort mode you'd simulate continuously in another thread.

Anyway, since it can be deferred, I don't think simulating the world is going to be THAT much of a performance killer. Maybe once an in-game day you'd have half a second of freeze.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on July 14, 2012, 12:10:00 pm

Toady, when do you intend to have another Animal Drive, or something like it? Would it be shortly after this next release, or several releases down the line?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 02:33:52 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on July 14, 2012, 12:10:00 pm

Toady, when do you intend to have another Animal Drive, or something like it? Would it be shortly after this next release, or several releases down the line?

I highly highly doubt it given that he hasn't even finished the current batch of animals. Sure he added them all to the game but he didn't finish them all in depth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 14, 2012, 03:03:58 pm

i sincerely hope it wont happen anytime soon, and not without it being seriously rethought

in my opinion, it was a massive investment of development time on a pile of superficial content. dwarf fortress dev goals list is already bloated enough without toady having to cater to everybody who donates 5 bucks for a pet feature. if it happens i hope toady takes pledges instead, and only works on the item that got the most pledges, returning the rest of the donations

as i said, df already has plenty of awesome goals, and although i'd welcome any opportunity to throw loads of money to the man's face, i don't want him buried on piles of superficial content hindering proper development

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 03:12:33 pm

What he can do is next time he should just lower the amount of creatures involved.

For example if he does a Megabeast drive... limit it to 10 megabeasts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on July 14, 2012, 06:04:39 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on July 14, 2012, 03:03:58 pm

i sincerely hope it wont happen anytime soon, and not without it being seriously rethought

in my opinion, it was a massive investment of development time on a pile of superficial content. dwarf fortress dev goals list is already bloated enough without toady having to cater to everybody who donates 5 bucks for a pet feature. if it happens i hope toady takes pledges instead, and only works on the item that got the most pledges, returning the rest of the donations

as i said, df already has plenty of awesome goals, and although i'd welcome any opportunity to throw loads of money to the man's face, i don't want him buried on piles of superficial content hindering proper development

I think you're forgetting what the Animal Drive did for the game. The addition of X breeds of animals W, Y, and Z may not have done much for the gameplay in themselves, but the secondary benefits were huge: the Animal Drive resulted directly in us getting Beekeeping, Eggs - and the notion of hatching animals in general as a consequence of that - as well as catalyzing the material-breath rewrite (which in turn, spurred along the general interaction rewrite) because of things like Octopus Ink.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 14, 2012, 06:11:32 pm

yeah, i find most of those superficial. and it isn't like toady would idle around doing nothing if he didn't had to do the animals. the secondary benefits of implementing superficial content might have been huge, but i hold that the primary benefits of implementing core features would have been bigger

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 14, 2012, 06:15:16 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on July 14, 2012, 06:11:32 pm

yeah, i find most of those superficial

Then you aren't a modder.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 06:16:03 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on July 14, 2012, 06:11:32 pm

yeah, i find most of those superficial. and it isn't like toady would idle around doing nothing if he didn't had to do the animals. the secondary benefits of implementing superficial content might have been huge, but i hold that the primary benefits of implementing core features would have been bigger

I agree and many of those features as they are currently implimented are more of a headache then a benefit... With Eggs laying being frustratingly broken and requiring more features and Beekeeping somewhat pointless and contextually flawed. Material Breaths as well havn't really been fully fleshed out and other then a few rare superbeasts they havn't really been put to great use.

They feel more like the first step towards a genuin feature then as grand features on their own... but then again that is the way Dwarf Fortress just seems to be, a lot of features but never complete features.

It is actually getting to the point where it is disheartening because it takes away from the excitement of any new feature. "Ohh Toady is adding proper fairies? Well... I'd be excited but I know they will be broken and barely functional indefinately".

Quote

Then you aren't a modder

You would have to be a modder to get the bang out of many of those features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 14, 2012, 10:18:01 pm

Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 10:34:57 pm

Quote from: Japa on July 14, 2012, 10:18:01 pm

Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?

Ok I see the question... but what exactly IS the question? I mean the answer is yes of course, but I am sensing that you arn't looking for yes and no.

Are you asking how long it will be until we have wall destroying invaders?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vherid on July 14, 2012, 11:27:35 pm

I suppose a simple light question:

Will we be able to adorn our forts with bodies impaled on spikes, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on July 15, 2012, 01:19:11 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 10:34:57 pm

Quote from: Japa on July 14, 2012, 10:18:01 pm

Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?

Ok I see the question... but what exactly IS the question? I mean the answer is yes of course, but I am sensing that you arn't looking for yes and no.

Are you asking how long it will be until we have wall destroying invaders?

It's a pretty legit question, but the answer may not be as straight forward as a yes.
Toady has mentioned in the past a hesitation with enemies digging through the dirt to get into the fort, due to there be no real defense against that and the fact some players would get cranky if the invaders' tunnels screw up their OCD layout.

Having invaders damage walls also have the potential to screw up players' plans and strategies in ways that the players will deem not fun. So it is possible that invaders might not be able to damage walls in a fort strictly for keeping the game fun.

It can tilt either way really.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 15, 2012, 01:23:26 am

Quote

It can tilt either way really

No it really can't. We will have wall destruction eventually.

Digging enemies as well was confirmed by Toady as going into the game eventually with an option to switch them off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 01:30:24 am

And there can be several novel solutions for stopping digging enemies from breaking into forts. Players can think creatively and on a meta level. My cursory digger defense include honeycomb pockets of magma. I think I saw someone else post, wanting to make a water wall, under a lot of pressure from a cistern sitting on a very high point.

The OCD thing is totally an issue, but not unsolvable. I think in one of the DF Talks, someone brought up being able to paint brush  tiles back to being undiscovered.  And ToadyOne was fine with that kind of concept. That's not a total solution but a partial one.
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 05:44:04 am

It would not be fair to pit us against diggers without means to defend ourselves. I love the waterwall idea, but if you get diggers in the first siege, will your wall be set up already?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 05:50:41 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 05:44:04 am

It would not be fair to pit us against diggers without means to defend ourselves. I love the waterwall idea, but if you get diggers in the first siege, will your wall be set up already?

From how ToadyOne has spoken about improving sieging, I dont suspect we'll get diggers as the first wave of invaders.

ToadyOne has spoken about invaders from the same entity learning about the fort their invading and setting up different goals for breaching into the fort. I also dont suspect they'll /only/ be digging. As in, enter the map while already underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on July 15, 2012, 05:52:02 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 05:44:04 am

It would not be fair to pit us against diggers without means to defend ourselves. I love the waterwall idea, but if you get diggers in the first siege, will your wall be set up already?

It wont happen. It wont happen for the same reason that the goblins don't turn up with an army of trolls in their first attack and rip through all of your building destroyer vulnerable defences.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on July 15, 2012, 10:51:01 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 15, 2012, 01:23:26 am

Quote

It can tilt either way really

No it really can't. We will have wall destruction eventually.

Digging enemies as well was confirmed by Toady as going into the game eventually with an option to switch them off.

..can't wait for "proper" siegers personally. I want walldestroyers, diggers, everything what will enhance the siege gameplay! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 11:45:18 am

There should be a way to prevent the diggers from effectively destroying the defenses every time they strike. water walls and magma honeycomb are fine by me but you cant deny that they are quite megaprojects like in what they involve. Bringing the magma up, digging the water wall. Putting it under pressure. All of it seems like a giant finger to the newbies. Yes we can turn it off, but as for now you can enjoy invaders without having to turn them off. I fear overpowered diggers to be able to destroy even most advanced fortress if their overseer hasnt engaged in a form of megaproject like waterwall...
Now just try a thoguht experience : newbiehalls dwarf fortress. Tell me, shall we have to spend 5 years only preparing a pumpstack for a magma moat? How would a newbie perceive that?
Kind of "yeah I managed to get everything up and running, it took me five years but now my dwarves have food and beer. Lets focus on the military...
Aaah crap a tunnel has opened, the fort entrance has caved in, my poorly trained marksdwarves are getting skewered, my defense plans screwed because I could not set up a magma pumping system fast enough!

Maybe I'm not dwarven enough to find it fun but making the game require a mini megaproject from the player for him to see a new feature... Is it an improvment? Those diggas are kind of all or nothing and currently with how maconry works if they pierce your inner walls you are screwed. If we had barricades, we could prepare primary and secundary fall back position, in case all walls are breached but then, why would not they be able to dig straight down ten level and open a tunnel right into the hospital?
I dont like to be a doom sayer but I foresee an overpowered game breaking feature that only most advanced players will be able to deal with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on July 15, 2012, 12:13:34 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 11:45:18 am

There should be a way to prevent the diggers from effectively destroying the defenses every time they strike.

(Do you happen to play some kind of mmo? You sound exactly like someone who heard their character will get one percent DPS nerf and decided to launch preemptive qq strike.)

And why do you think that is what would exactly happen?

You know nothing about how many of them will there be per siege. How fast will one of them will dismantle wall or dig. It will likely not be one giant wave of 100 legendary miners.

It is feature designed to discourage turtling. They will work slowly enough to provide opportunity for counterattack or for placing squad on the breach point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 15, 2012, 12:17:17 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 15, 2012, 11:45:18 am

Kind of "yeah I managed to get everything up and running, it took me five years but now my dwarves have food and beer. Lets focus on the military...
Aaah crap a tunnel has opened, the fort entrance has caved in, my poorly trained marksdwarves are getting skewered, my defense plans screwed because I could not set up a magma pumping system fast enough!

But you can only do that currently because siegers don't have a non-suicidal way of getting into your fortress. A military should be one of the things you get within the first year.

If you are 5 years into the game and you don't have a functional defense or military in what the game calls a Fortress then you really deserve to be killed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 12:45:18 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on July 14, 2012, 02:33:52 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on July 14, 2012, 12:10:00 pm

Toady, when do you intend to have another Animal Drive, or something like it? Would it be shortly after this next release, or several releases down the line?

I highly highly doubt it given that he hasn't even finished the current batch of animals. Sure he added them all to the game but he didn't finish them all in depth.

I'm super sure he has finish up all the animals form the last animal drive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on July 15, 2012, 02:26:00 pm

Double super sure about finishing the animals. I believe he also said something along the lines that he'd think twice before doing something similar again without seriously considering how to make it less intrusive on the game's development.

As for the diggers, they will most certainly have a major drawback. Just think of the resources it takes to reinforce a tunnel that wasn't crafted my expert dwarven hands. Not to mention the time it will take even the most skilled goblin to dig as compared to a neophyte dwarven miner. Plus, it would be counterproductive to have to feed a whole army as the diggers work for half a year, so perhaps the diggers would come ahead of time and regular patrols around the walls would discover them or their work. There are a million different ways to balance diggers that wouldn't detract from the gameplay. Toady has made an amazing game, have a little faith that he'll put some thought into game changing additions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on July 15, 2012, 07:40:38 pm

Will we ever be able to arrest tantruming dwarves again? Personally, I don't like seeing civilians go unpunished for crippling craftsdwarves and destroying furniture.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on July 15, 2012, 08:05:43 pm

I'm fine with wall destroyers provided we get the opportunity to dump boiling oil or pitch on them -- and have the ability to light it on fire too.  Or if that's not nasty enough, molten lead should also be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 09:30:23 pm

A few questions:

I think right now monsters and hostile NPCs can't do much if they can't reach the dwarves inside the fortress. Am I wrong about this? Can they target a closed door to break it, or a draw bridge?

Because it would be interesting instead to give every different material a kind of resistance/hit point value. As far as I know right now a rock bed is identical to one made of wood. But if NPCs could target items and structures to destroy them, and if the material played a role in how much resistant an object is then the system would become suddenly much more interesting.

Why until now monster never had an active role, for example trying to reach dwarves inside instead of just looking harmless?

I think digging is not equally interesting because it gets too easy, but letting monsters trying to attack the paths and structures already built could open the game a lot and make it a lot more interesting (while also putting some gameplay value in having a million of different materials that have no effect at all on gameplay).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 09:50:59 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 09:30:23 pm

A few questions:

I think right now monsters and hostile NPCs can't do much if they can't reach the dwarves inside the fortress. Am I wrong about this? Can they target a closed door to break it, or a draw bridge?

A creatures can destroy buildings. Its currently a special tag on the creature in their raw.

Quote

Because it would be interesting instead to give every different material a kind of resistance/hit point value. As far as I know right now a rock bed is identical to one made of wood. But if NPCs could target items and structures to destroy them, and if the material played a role in how much resistant an object is then the system would become suddenly much more interesting.

I would really shy away from any sorta of hit point system due to the disdain that ToadyOne has for them. He seems to only use them as time saving place holders. Right now, beside a few select circumstances constructed items are invincible and natural terrain is aways invincible.
I dont know what ToadyOne has planned for destroyable buildings or removing natural terrain. Other then it being a goal, I dont think any sort of mechanic has been spoken about.

Quote

Why until now monster never had an active role, for example trying to reach dwarves inside instead of just looking harmless?

It wasn't a needed dev item.

Quote

I think digging is not equally interesting because it gets too easy, but letting monsters trying to attack the paths and structures already built could open the game a lot and make it a lot more interesting (while also putting some gameplay value in having a million of different materials that have no effect at all on gameplay).

I think, when siege overall is done all sorts of that stuff is to be expected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:04:01 pm

First you say certain creatures can destroy buildings, then that constructed items (I guess buildings too) are invincible.

So what buildings can actually be destroyed? Doors? Walls?

The hit point system is meant solely to give a purpose to the hundreds of material that clutter the game (and the color display) for no reason at all. Giving each material a different resistance would make the diversity of materials a nice feature instead of pointless clutter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 15, 2012, 10:06:54 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:04:01 pm

First you say certain creatures can destroy buildings, then that constructed items (I guess buildings too) are invincible.

So what buildings can actually be destroyed? Doors? Walls?

The hit point system is meant solely to give a purpose to the hundreds of material that clutter the game (and the color display) for no reason at all. Giving each material a different resistance would make the diversity of materials a nice feature instead of pointless clutter.

...why don't you look it up? Constructed items are invincible. Constructed items are items under the b-->C menu. Buildings are not. Workshops, doors, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:10:46 pm

And there a qualifier on that sentence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:12:24 pm

So a creature CAN destroy a door/draw bridge/whatever else, but a solid wall would be invincible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:12:55 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:12:24 pm

So a creature CAN destroy a door/draw bridge/whatever else, but a solid wall would be invincible?

Yep.
But not all creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:15:20 pm

Ok, then my point is that instead of a flag on the creature, this should depend on the material.

Say a stone door should be harder to take down than a wooden one. Giving all materials different properties.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on July 15, 2012, 10:16:04 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:04:01 pm

First you say certain creatures can destroy buildings, then that constructed items (I guess buildings too) are invincible.

So what buildings can actually be destroyed? Doors? Walls?

The hit point system is meant solely to give a purpose to the hundreds of material that clutter the game (and the color display) for no reason at all. Giving each material a different resistance would make the diversity of materials a nice feature instead of pointless clutter.

All buildings apart from the pure constructions (Fortification, Floor, Stairs, Ramp, Wall) can be destroyed, the exception being those constructed with artifact items, such as an artifact door for example, which are also indestructible. Bridges are also relatively indestructible when raised, only being vulnerable to dragonfire.

(also ninjaed I guess ^^)

I have faith that Toady will come up with a good way to solve this issue, there's no need to get up in arms about what "might" when all the info we have shows he knows of our concerns and are planning ways to deal with it. Much of this would be better put in one of the suggestion threads on the subject regardless ;P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:30:45 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:04:01 pm

First you say certain creatures can destroy buildings, then that constructed items (I guess buildings too) are invincible.

So what buildings can actually be destroyed? Doors? Walls?

The hit point system is meant solely to give a purpose to the hundreds of material that clutter the game (and the color display) for no reason at all. Giving each material a different resistance would make the diversity of materials a nice feature instead of pointless clutter.

I'm not saying a hit point system can't work, but what I was saying that ToadyOne isn't in favor of them. And its overall against how the game has been progressing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 15, 2012, 10:36:09 pm

Quote from: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:15:20 pm

Ok, then my point is that instead of a flag on the creature, this should depend on the material.

Say a stone door should be harder to take down than a wooden one. Giving all materials different properties.

Stone doors already are harder to take down than wooden ones--Giant Cave Spiders can only destroy wooden doors, while Trolls can destroy all doors. See the BUILDINGDESTROYER (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token) tag.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abalieno on July 15, 2012, 10:46:01 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 15, 2012, 10:36:09 pm

Stone doors already are harder to take down than wooden ones--Giant Cave Spiders can only destroy wooden doors, while Trolls can destroy all doors. See the BUILDINGDESTROYER (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_token) tag.

It only says it makes distinction between furniture and everything else, not between materials.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:47:11 pm

I surprised we havent gotten bitchy for this being more or less a suggestion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 16, 2012, 12:40:37 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:47:11 pm

I surprised we havent gotten bitchy for this being more or less a suggestion.

It isn't, though. It's a question directly relating to the last devlog, where he was talking about goblins destroying towns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on July 16, 2012, 02:02:54 am

Isn't the current behavior of doors and building destroyers is the the BD comes up a attacks it until the wear quality goes down to x, xx, then destroyed?

How is that actually tracked internally?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on July 16, 2012, 03:14:12 am

unless "workshop was toppled by troll" is any different with doors, i believe it's a one hit wonder for anything a BD attacks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 16, 2012, 03:59:12 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 15, 2012, 10:47:11 pm

I surprised we havent gotten bitchy for this being more or less a suggestion.

ehhh we get a suggestion poorly disguised as a question at least once every one or two weeks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on July 16, 2012, 12:29:17 pm

How do the new attack phases effect the analysis of how square/easy the hit will be, etc., since circumstances may change in the time between the execution of the strike and the following through of it? I.E; You aim an attack at a goblin's lower body and it is shown to be very square. This may change to just square, or maybe even a direct hit opportunity by the time the strike lands.

When will the multiple layer thick trees be added? I recall you mentioning this as it may be required for elven sites (if I my memory is correct). Will this be applied to other things, such as all trees? Will trees be made to extend over one z level?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 16, 2012, 12:49:46 pm

Quote from: Auning on July 16, 2012, 12:29:17 pm

You said: "As people brought up, there's been a lot of discussion about this over the years -- the current position is that there will be very little if any forced actions from the player's emotional state.  It relies on the computer getting things correct, and a single screwup blasts immersion." I assume this means that in the future, your characters personality may have more of an effect on gameplay. If so, does this mean we will want to keep our characters happy? What would be a drawback of an unhappy character?

You just contradicted the sentence you just quoted. It means that character personality /won't/ have an effect, because it would break immersion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on July 16, 2012, 03:07:53 pm

I like that last update, as it is violent and bloody. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on July 16, 2012, 06:05:02 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on July 16, 2012, 03:14:12 am

unless "workshop was toppled by troll" is any different with doors, i believe it's a one hit wonder for anything a BD attacks.

No, not quite. Doors, floodgates, and the like undergo quality wear in the process of being destroyed and it you're watching you can see them taking damage as the Troll or whatever works on them.

Trade Depots and such do explode instantly but I'm guessing that's because they're made of stone or blocks or whatever and those don't have condition modifiers to drop

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on July 16, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

Quote from: Japa on July 16, 2012, 12:49:46 pm

Quote from: Auning on July 16, 2012, 12:29:17 pm

You said: "As people brought up, there's been a lot of discussion about this over the years -- the current position is that there will be very little if any forced actions from the player's emotional state.  It relies on the computer getting things correct, and a single screwup blasts immersion." I assume this means that in the future, your characters personality may have more of an effect on gameplay. If so, does this mean we will want to keep our characters happy? What would be a drawback of an unhappy character?

You just contradicted the sentence you just quoted. It means that character personality /won't/ have an effect, because it would break immersion.

Sorry. It appears I misinterpreted what he said. I'll delete the section from my post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on July 18, 2012, 06:36:59 am

When Goblins or anybody else attack a town, will normal peasants start locking their doors and/or even built barricades to stop the goblins from plunder their part of the city? Especially locked doors would interest me, since you can currently go in every house as you want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 18, 2012, 10:09:11 pm

As of the latest devlog, it seems like we'll have temporary army camps around the world. Will we have armies "just passing through" our fortress in the coming release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:11:36 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 18, 2012, 10:09:11 pm

As of the latest devlog, it seems like we'll have temporary army camps around the world. Will we have armies "just passing through" our fortress in the coming release?

This would be pretty cool, but the current dev. focus is adventure mode actualization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 18, 2012, 10:17:55 pm

FINALY! Tents!  8) i waited years for that :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:22:31 pm

Adventurers might not get tents even if the armies can use tents. Tents were brought up during the addition of the Night Creatures, so it might not be that low hanging of a fruit. For this release. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 18, 2012, 10:24:21 pm

Nice! Evasion on the Travel Map level should be exciting too.

I'm hesitant to green this since somebody probably already knows, but do armies exist in peacetime? I know there's professional soldiers hanging out in castles and town walls and whatever, but I don't know if DF is rolling with the whole "mass conscript of peasants as soldiers are needed" method.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:52:43 pm

I think it depends on the balance between realism and fantasy. Fantasy novels tend to have standing armies. The historically there were professional soldiers, but majority of an army was composed from conscripts from peasants.

I dont think ToadyOne has stated one or the other. All we know for sure is that Armies are limited size from the entity population count.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on July 18, 2012, 11:09:50 pm

Quote from: monk12 on July 18, 2012, 10:24:21 pm

Nice! Evasion on the Travel Map level should be exciting too.

I'm hesitant to green this since somebody probably already knows, but do armies exist in peacetime? I know there's professional soldiers hanging out in castles and town walls and whatever, but I don't know if DF is rolling with the whole "mass conscript of peasants as soldiers are needed" method.

I think it was in one of the DF talks where Toady got into how when we've got the army arc implemented we'll be able to call in extra troops from the hill dwarves living outside your fortress, so I'd imagine much of the dwarven armies are much like what you said, dwarf conscripts called in during time of war. Going by the legends also supports this (depending on how much one can trust its representation of the world), as only a small part of dwarves fighting in wars are listed as having actual military professions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 11:14:09 pm

ToadyOne also spoke about sending off folks from your fort to train soldiers in the hill dorfs to get an army though. I think its a little bit ambiguous if those are standing armies from the hill dorf or conscripted peasants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 18, 2012, 11:32:13 pm

I'd assumed the "soldiers training hill dorfs" thing was like making a militia- dorfs who have skill with a weapon without being soldiers, who tend to be first responders to attacks in the boonies and the first guys conscripted when big armies are made. Do we know much about army composition- do people with combat skill get drafted first, or is it a random selection, or what?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kaypy on July 19, 2012, 08:47:06 am

Do tents have any differentiating features or are they just something like cloth-block hovels at this stage?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 19, 2012, 08:57:28 am

Like what?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 19, 2012, 11:52:41 am

Are refugees going to show up at our fortress demanding shelter if there are wars in the vicinity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on July 19, 2012, 01:40:14 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 19, 2012, 08:57:28 am

Like what?

It could, for example, be one tile construction that shelters from weather and can be slept in line a bed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 19, 2012, 01:50:55 pm

It could also mean that we can set up wall and ceilings made from cloth of variaous kinds which dont resist any stress or support other stuff. It would be a nice feature i think. 

How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 19, 2012, 03:41:48 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:52:43 pm

I think it depends on the balance between realism and fantasy. Fantasy novels tend to have standing armies. The historically there were professional soldiers, but majority of an army was composed from conscripts from peasants.

Not entirely accurate. While it's true that sometimes peasants were conscripted, this was only for the largest and most important of wars. Most wars involved professionals only. Drafting the peasants was very economically costly and it was rare that wars were over something that was worth the lost harvest. Of course, the very big battles are the ones you usually hear about, and those did include peasant militiamen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 19, 2012, 03:45:09 pm

Quote from: Heph on July 19, 2012, 01:50:55 pm

It could also mean that we can set up wall and ceilings made from cloth of variaous kinds which dont resist any stress or support other stuff. It would be a nice feature i think. 

How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?

Tents in DF would be good for setting up shelter to begin with. Sleeping in a tent would give bad thoughts except for military dwarves, on the order of bad thoughts from sleeping rough underground, but not as bad as sleeping outside in the rain. Outside tents would also provide protection from deadly weather.

Tents would be useful, for example, to set up a military camp in the caverns, without waiting to carve out a barracks down there. They might also be useful on setting up camps on large maps, when the FPS optimisation goes in.

Armies should be an entity option. Historically, there were standing armies, conscripted armies, and militias. Militias are pretty much standard in Dwarf Fortress. Conscripted armies would be grabbed from the entity population in time of war, and would afterwards be dissolved. Standing armies would either be made up of professional soldiers (varying depending on the economy and amount of war present). There are also warrior nobility such as knights. Some beings such as wizards (when we get more magic in the game) would be capable of immediate participation in war if necessary.

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:22:31 pm

Adventurers might not get tents even if the armies can use tents. Tents were brought up during the addition of the Night Creatures, so it might not be that low hanging of a fruit. For this release. 

The question is whether it should be possible to entirely evade bogeymen by sleeping in a tent. That's a difficult one to deal with; it appears to eliminate one challenging aspect of the game, but then bogeymen were only added around half way through DF2010, and it seems reasonable.

Quote from: O11O1 on July 16, 2012, 02:02:54 am

Isn't the current behavior of doors and building destroyers is the the BD comes up a attacks it until the wear quality goes down to x, xx, then destroyed?

How is that actually tracked internally?

Actually I don't think it is. I've had buildings destroyed, but they then exploded into their constituent components, possibly with some wear. Well most of my experience has been with forgotten beasts; the one or two times I've had trolls, the general solution was drowning or resorting to their own stupidity. Then I've green'd it for you.

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 11:14:09 pm

ToadyOne also spoke about sending off folks from your fort to train soldiers in the hill dorfs to get an army though. I think its a little bit ambiguous if those are standing armies from the hill dorf or conscripted peasants.

The deal is that if the population is not consisting of historical figures, when you get to view the battle you will likely have named dwarves fighting. This means you'll end up generating historical figures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 19, 2012, 04:11:29 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on July 19, 2012, 03:41:48 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 18, 2012, 10:52:43 pm

I think it depends on the balance between realism and fantasy. Fantasy novels tend to have standing armies. The historically there were professional soldiers, but majority of an army was composed from conscripts from peasants.

Not entirely accurate. While it's true that sometimes peasants were conscripted, this was only for the largest and most important of wars. Most wars involved professionals only. Drafting the peasants was very economically costly and it was rare that wars were over something that was worth the lost harvest. Of course, the very big battles are the ones you usually hear about, and those did include peasant militiamen.

Our town militia was conscripts on a regular basis. Every citizen had to train and stay in Militia for a certain time. *edit* What i am trying to say is that many placed had enough militia do some police work with a draft enacted when ever there was a war.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on July 19, 2012, 08:27:36 pm

Quote from: the devlog of Toady One

The next steps are messing with guards and alarm/stealth in camps, being chased around by the soldiers you rile up (including at the travel map level as you try to evade the consequences of your actions), and interacting a bit with refugees.

Will we see the armies on the travel map?

Also, will we get the addition of "Outer" or at least "Outside" to the dwarven language file so we can use the new sneaking and refugee mechanics to reenact Metal Dwarf -- er, I mean, Metal Gear? No matter how many minecarts I nickname "Rex" and "Ray", I can't have adventurers Therleth and Giken infiltrate Outer Heaven with the help of Urist McOtaku if I can't build an appropriate fort named "Outer Heaven" in the first place. (And I know I could add the word myself, but it doesn't feel like the real word that way, y'know?)

[ETA] Hey, just noticed I can't find a Dwarf language entry for Fox either. "Gray Dog" doesn't have the same ring as "Gray Fox", now does it? Metal Dwarf has at least a couple different problems here. [/ETA]
[ETAA] (That's "Again" at the end of the acronym.) I also realized later I need "Big Boss", "Liquid" and "Solid" -- only "big" exists in the dwarven language file, so we're really in trouble here. That brings the list of words we need to: "Fox", "Boss", "Liquid", "Solid", "Outer"/"Outside". I've also heard that the name Moses means "Rescued from the Waters", so having a word for "Rescue" might help ("Shedim Moses" or "Moses Shedim" only would work if forts, like adventurers, could have words manually entered for their names -- last I checked I didn't notice any possibility of doing that). Yeah, I'm pretty serious about wanting a series of Metal Dwarf crossovers even though I know this isn't the suggestion thread and even though it's really just silly. And I don't want to make up my own words because that just doesn't count. [/ETAA]

Okay, okay, I know that's not a real question. *ungreens*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 20, 2012, 01:49:39 am

Anyone ever ask a question, then later realise you are asking the same question?

I almost asked Toady "Will the game differ the speed of attack from the rate of attack" three times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on July 20, 2012, 02:15:45 pm

Nope, never happens to me.  Why do you ask?   While we're on the subject, is there a reason for your question?  Also, what is the root motivation for that question?


 ;)






OK, fine, it was funnier in my head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on July 22, 2012, 12:32:18 pm

Will the refugees from failed forts make camp? I ask because I recently noticed that the dwarves who abandon do not, as I assumed, scatter in all directions, but actually form a group.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on July 22, 2012, 05:17:11 pm

I don't think it's worth greening, because it obviously isn't happening anytime soon, but I'm curious about whether Toady's going to expand the "site claims" idea to personal property.

Right now it's clear that the system is limited to land. However, it sounds like a pretty flexible system, and I wonder how hard it would be to port over. So that, for instance, muggers could end up holding a "claim" on the coins in your pocket, and assault you for them.

It just seems like it would be possible to do, and it would add a lot of fun and excitement to adventure mode, and also end up making for a lot of theft, bad blood, and general fun in Fortress mode.

You could even add a sort of rudimentary bona fide purchaser system without much difficulty. Thus, if a thug beats you up (nonlethally, with the new system), and steals your gold or your blade, then under all non-goblin civilizations your claim would be better than his, and you could reclaim your property without violence against you from groups unaffiliated with the thug. However, if he resold your sword to a weapons shop, or used the cash he stole to buy food, then the merchant's claim would take precedence over yours (and obviously over the thug's), because the merchant is a bona fide purchaser for value. All you'd need is a claim priority system (that could even be modifiable!).

A claim priority system could also make for more diversified civilizations even without getting into land-use law. For example, goblin civilizations could basically have the strongest able to lay claim on whatever they want. Despotic human civilizations could have it so that higher ranking humans can lay claims on any property owned by a lower caste. Elves could not really have much of a claims system at all. Dwarves could have a super complicated system with lots of usury, loans of property (a claim limited in time), and interests secured on personal property (e.g. "I'll give you food today, but if you don't pay me back in a month I get your sword").

Anyway, obviously only artifacts would keep track of a ton of claims on any given item (which would in turn facilitate fun wars over artifacts), but during play it seems like it would be possible to keep some claims on some important items (e.g. anything the adventurer owns or tries to steal, or in dwarf mode property that has been claimed as personal property by a dwarf, since most property isn't claimed, so the system wouldn't be too resource-intensive hopefully, particularly if the claim just became a property of the time for a time).

Welp, that was longer than I intended. Ah well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 22, 2012, 05:22:28 pm

It hasn't been greened yet, so Do tents provide protection from bogeymen at night?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 10terrapin01 on July 22, 2012, 11:17:08 pm

Now that civs will begin claiming sites, is there a possibility that there might be new world constructions like great walls to keep out enemy factions?  Or possibly Towers to help defend smaller areas?  In adventure mode it would be great to know that you are passing into a new kingdom by going through large gates, and sneaking past guards into an enemy kingdom seems like a great bit of Fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on July 23, 2012, 08:07:00 am

Ok so a fort is made at the border of another factions land, they make a claim on your site. (a player made fort is a site, right) and destroy you with an army, will you be able to reclaim that fort, will it become a part of that entity, will individuals live at your now dwarfless fort.

Basically, how will forts be affected, if at all, by site claiming?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 23, 2012, 08:09:02 am

Quote from: Phlum on July 23, 2012, 08:07:00 am

Ok so a fort is made at the border of another factions land, they make a claim on your site. (a player made fort is a site, right) and destroy you with an army, will you be able to reclaim that fort, will it become a part of that entity, will individuals live at your now dwarfless fort.

Basically, how will forts be affected, if at all, by site claiming?

Thats a very interesting question.

More broadly are player created Sites under the normal rules for Site Claiming? So lets say you lose a fort through Not Invasion, and you spend a year or two in adventure mode. Will the Site be up for grabs like normal?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on July 23, 2012, 05:50:38 pm

Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?

It might get a bit weird when you ask the local plump helmet merchant if he has any family and he says "I was among the first Dwarves forged in the fires of Armok's smithy!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 23, 2012, 06:03:23 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on July 23, 2012, 05:50:38 pm

Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?

It might get a bit weird when you ask the local plump helmet merchant if he has any family and he says "I was among the first Dwarves forged in the fires of Armok's smithy!"

You aren't likely to see dwarves who were the first of their kind in a normal world. Characters with no relatives are more likely to be non-historical figures taken from the entity population and made historical when you speak to them. If the game generated more historical figures to fill spaces when you asked about family, that would solve this problem fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on July 23, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on July 23, 2012, 06:03:23 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on July 23, 2012, 05:50:38 pm

Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?

It might get a bit weird when you ask the local plump helmet merchant if he has any family and he says "I was among the first Dwarves forged in the fires of Armok's smithy!"

You aren't likely to see dwarves who were the first of their kind in a normal world. Characters with no relatives are more likely to be non-historical figures taken from the entity population and made historical when you speak to them. If the game generated more historical figures to fill spaces when you asked about family, that would solve this problem fine.

I see them quite regularly though because I usually play one or two years after the end of the age of myth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on July 23, 2012, 08:15:20 pm

Are those cones of vision? I guess Toady changed his mind about them, I could swear I remember him saying he didn't like them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 23, 2012, 08:41:01 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on July 23, 2012, 08:15:20 pm

Are those cones of vision? I guess Toady changed his mind about them, I could swear I remember him saying he didn't like them.

Yes they are.  They were discussed in the DF Talk 9 bonus section: (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html)

Quote

Then there's the whole thief mechanics, I haven't played a lot of those Thief games so I'm not up on the technology there ... a lot of it is about which way are they looking, like vision arcs, and that's something that I'm not comfortable with as a concept in general, I don't like it when you're walking around and you can only see half the screen, because that's not how it works, or at least if you were paranoid enough in a fantasy game you have to worry about getting attacked you'd be like 'step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder' so it should just show you everything. But when you're sneaking you shouldn't be able to ... when someone's sneaking at least if it's you or if the target of the sneaking is not the player, then there should be things like vision arcs so that you can have a guard walking down a hallway and then you can run down the hallway behind him ... There are going to be visions arcs then, but they just don't apply to you, I don't want to put them in for you ... Someone should be able to do that to you too theoretically, like you're walking down a hallway and then they can run up behind and either attack you or run down the hallway, but if we put in vision arcs strictly then you'll constantly have to stop and be paranoid about looking over your shoulder, and as realistic as that might be it would not be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on July 23, 2012, 10:33:39 pm

I'm guessing then that the brown/yellow parts of the cone represent the guard's peripheral vision, and the red is more directly in line of sight.  Because it didn't seem like the character was much in trouble until he entered the red part of one of the cones.

Toady's comments in that DF Talk quote is one of the things I don't like much about first-person games, the field of veiw feels very restricted.  Some people might think it's realistic, but I've never cared for it much.  IRL, you might have a sinilar field of view, but you're also relying on your other senses as well, and games don't provide the full sensory experience when they go into first person.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 23, 2012, 10:49:11 pm

Quote from: orius on July 23, 2012, 10:33:39 pm

I'm guessing then that the brown/yellow parts of the cone represent the guard's peripheral vision, and the red is more directly in line of sight.  Because it didn't seem like the character was much in trouble until he entered the red part of one of the cones.

Quote from: Toady One 7/23/2012

The guards don't actually care if you are there yet, so in the first video, I get spotted, drop my spear, and continue wandering around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 23, 2012, 10:49:39 pm

Well not to mention you can look left and right so fast and see everything in them that your "effective field of view" is actually greater then your field of vision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 24, 2012, 03:56:02 am

Damn, I knew adventure mode stealth needed an update, but I didn't expect it so soon or in such detail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 24, 2012, 04:21:18 am

I wonder how power levelling ambusher will impact the new system. Currently you can kill a whole army without being noticed if you are legendary...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on July 24, 2012, 04:35:18 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 24, 2012, 04:21:18 am

I wonder how power levelling ambusher will impact the new system. Currently you can kill a whole army without being noticed if you are legendary...

I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty legendary to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 24, 2012, 04:50:45 am

Do multiple eyes, eyes in the back of your head, flexible eye stalks, and the like work with this system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on July 24, 2012, 05:48:50 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on July 24, 2012, 04:21:18 am

I wonder how power levelling ambusher will impact the new system. Currently you can kill a whole army without being noticed if you are legendary...

or you could... try it normally? dunno, I think this kinda kills any slim amount of fun that possibly could have been obtained from powerleveling ambusher, as it no longer seems like getting spotted is a % check per turn when near an omniscient being, so you shouldn't need to crank ambusher up to legendary before walking out of a town if you are dead set on having an invincible character for whatever reason.


at any rate. two questions for Toady.
Toady, does ambusher actually have any effect other then speed improvement with this new update? can it protect you from being spotted?

have you considered attempting to nerf some of the major grinding options in adventure mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 24, 2012, 08:25:16 am

Holy fucking shit, that sneaking movie looks awesome.

Is the display of enemy field of vision, sounds and alert status dependent on your sneak and/or perception skill?
I think it would be great if there'd be some sort of fairly inaccurate "base information" about the enemy FoV and alert status, but if you'd get more and more precise information if your perception skill was higher. For example only show the status (searching, alert, normal or whatever) and a short direction indicator as default, but with a high perception skill you see the range and how long the guards will stay alert.
EDIT: same for sound obviously.
Will there be a way to toggle sound perception? Say, it's only visible in sneaking mode or in listen-carefully-mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 24, 2012, 09:06:51 am

So in the video with sound, the yellow mist shows where noise is coming from?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on July 24, 2012, 09:19:33 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 24, 2012, 09:06:51 am

So in the video with sound, the yellow mist shows where noise is coming from?

I wonder if it's where noise come from or just the approximate position of people from what you can hear.
If it's the different sounds, I hope there is some way to differentiate what sounds come from where.

To what extent are sounds going to expanded ? Will there be some things like a way to hear to stomping of a dragon in a cave ? I'm thinking of minotaurs' labyrinth too, where there is a basic placeholder for the beast's voice echoing through the corridors.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on July 24, 2012, 03:12:42 pm

How will the new sneaking system work with companions? Hopefully we won't have our companions lumbering through the camp while we are trying to stealth. How will this be handled? Perhaps a placeholder "Wait here." kind of system, or will they somehow stealth as well?

How will sound be further applied in adventure mode, if at all, besides the army camps and other infiltration situations in the future? What specific attributes/skills will tie in with all of this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 24, 2012, 03:23:24 pm

Quote from: Auning on July 24, 2012, 03:12:42 pm

This may have been asked in some form earlier. Will adventurers have a more semi-limited field of view, just like everything else in the game? As it is, we have an all-seeing perspective (in all directions at once). Will this be altered as a result of this update, or in the future? On a similar note, how will sound be further applied in adventure mode, if at all, besides the army camps and other infiltration situations in the future? Will there be attributes/skills that tie in with all of this?

It was. Earlier on this page (by my reckoning), in fact:

Quote from: Footkerchief on July 23, 2012, 08:41:01 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on July 23, 2012, 08:15:20 pm

Are those cones of vision? I guess Toady changed his mind about them, I could swear I remember him saying he didn't like them.

Yes they are.  They were discussed in the DF Talk 9 bonus section: (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html)

Quote

Then there's the whole thief mechanics, I haven't played a lot of those Thief games so I'm not up on the technology there ... a lot of it is about which way are they looking, like vision arcs, and that's something that I'm not comfortable with as a concept in general, I don't like it when you're walking around and you can only see half the screen, because that's not how it works, or at least if you were paranoid enough in a fantasy game you have to worry about getting attacked you'd be like 'step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder' so it should just show you everything. But when you're sneaking you shouldn't be able to ... when someone's sneaking at least if it's you or if the target of the sneaking is not the player, then there should be things like vision arcs so that you can have a guard walking down a hallway and then you can run down the hallway behind him ... There are going to be visions arcs then, but they just don't apply to you, I don't want to put them in for you ... Someone should be able to do that to you too theoretically, like you're walking down a hallway and then they can run up behind and either attack you or run down the hallway, but if we put in vision arcs strictly then you'll constantly have to stop and be paranoid about looking over your shoulder, and as realistic as that might be it would not be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on July 24, 2012, 04:58:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 24, 2012, 03:23:24 pm

It was. Earlier on this page (by my reckoning), in fact:

Quote from: Footkerchief on July 23, 2012, 08:41:01 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on July 23, 2012, 08:15:20 pm

Are those cones of vision? I guess Toady changed his mind about them, I could swear I remember him saying he didn't like them.

Yes they are.  They were discussed in the DF Talk 9 bonus section: (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html)

Quote

Then there's the whole thief mechanics, I haven't played a lot of those Thief games so I'm not up on the technology there ... a lot of it is about which way are they looking, like vision arcs, and that's something that I'm not comfortable with as a concept in general, I don't like it when you're walking around and you can only see half the screen, because that's not how it works, or at least if you were paranoid enough in a fantasy game you have to worry about getting attacked you'd be like 'step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder' so it should just show you everything. But when you're sneaking you shouldn't be able to ... when someone's sneaking at least if it's you or if the target of the sneaking is not the player, then there should be things like vision arcs so that you can have a guard walking down a hallway and then you can run down the hallway behind him ... There are going to be visions arcs then, but they just don't apply to you, I don't want to put them in for you ... Someone should be able to do that to you too theoretically, like you're walking down a hallway and then they can run up behind and either attack you or run down the hallway, but if we put in vision arcs strictly then you'll constantly have to stop and be paranoid about looking over your shoulder, and as realistic as that might be it would not be fun.

Thanks for this. I'll edit my comment accordingly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 24, 2012, 05:25:17 pm

And I'll un-green my quotation of your post accordingly :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on July 24, 2012, 08:35:01 pm

There seemed to be tents in that video. Are tents implemented for Fortress Mode, or are they just thingies that pop up in military camps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 24, 2012, 09:28:29 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 24, 2012, 08:35:01 pm

There seemed to be tents in that video. Are tents implemented for Fortress Mode, or are they just thingies that pop up in military camps?

I think its just implemented for Fort mode, but I do wonder how tents would work in fort mode... you'd probably need to build a tent as a building rather than as a construction, but it would (unlike normal buildings) have a roof over the top. Stuff falling on the roof of the tent would either break through or roll off though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 24, 2012, 09:31:37 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 24, 2012, 09:28:29 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on July 24, 2012, 08:35:01 pm

There seemed to be tents in that video. Are tents implemented for Fortress Mode, or are they just thingies that pop up in military camps?

I think its just implemented for Fort mode, but I do wonder how tents would work in fort mode... you'd probably need to build a tent as a building rather than as a construction, but it would (unlike normal buildings) have a roof over the top. Stuff falling on the roof of the tent would either break through or roll off though.

Um, no, we don't know if Tents are in Fort Mod yet. The video posted were in Adventure Mode. And we don't know if the next release will mean that adventures will also have tents.

Considering the size of the tent as presented, I dont think Adventurers will be able to use them they can get horses and saddle backs or smaller wagon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 25, 2012, 02:15:59 am

goodness I have a question but I have no idea how to phrase it.

Toady I noticed that "Undead" is an actual faction within your game. Is this a placeholder or are all undead buddy buddy with eachother inadvertingly?

I could imagine it being unintentional mind you. For example if several undead creatures attacked with "Life Sense"...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 25, 2012, 03:16:35 am

One side effect of that is that if you turn into a vampire, you can breeze through necro towers because only the necros themselves will attack you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 25, 2012, 09:38:26 am

Quote from: Japa on July 25, 2012, 03:16:35 am

One side effect of that is that if you turn into a vampire, you can breeze through necro towers because only the necros themselves will attack you.

Yeah which as I said if the Zombies only saw through Life Sense it would make sense. They simply cannot see Vampires.

Though given that zombies can make intricate towers of stone (No small feat) I guess they should be a tad more capable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 25, 2012, 10:47:52 am

Quote from: Neonivek on July 25, 2012, 02:15:59 am

goodness I have a question but I have no idea how to phrase it.

Toady I noticed that "Undead" is an actual faction within your game. Is this a placeholder or are all undead buddy buddy with eachother inadvertingly?

I could imagine it being unintentional mind you. For example if several undead creatures attacked with "Life Sense"...

It's intentional and most likely will change later:

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: Japa

Are adventurers-turned-vampire meant to be friendly towards raised dead?

Yeah, this is how it is supposed to work now.  Zombies are sort of generically against the living.  If they were actually animated under the active power of the necromancer, that would be different, and I imagine there will be other things going on over time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 25, 2012, 03:59:23 pm

Will there be an action available for adventurers to cut through tents?

Will this update see sneaking related quests? Such as sneaking into an army camp of a besieged city to kill their leader/general or poison rations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 25, 2012, 04:09:02 pm

Quote from: CLA on July 25, 2012, 03:59:23 pm

Will this update see sneaking related quests? Such as sneaking into an army camp of a besieged city to kill their leader/general or poison rations?

We already get missions to kill leaders of bandit camps. Sneaking in and killing just the leader should be valid for those. I don't imagine we'll be able to do it with poison, though, because I doubt that will go in until potions and alchemy in general, and those seem like a rather larger detour from the plan than even Toady tends to embark on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 25, 2012, 06:20:02 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on July 25, 2012, 04:09:02 pm

We already get missions to kill leaders of bandit camps. Sneaking in and killing just the leader should be valid for those. I don't imagine we'll be able to do it with poison, though, because I doubt that will go in until potions and alchemy in general, and those seem like a rather larger detour from the plan than even Toady tends to embark on.

I guess. It was more of an example of more varied siege-related quests. But that would probably require a lot more dev goals to be implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on July 25, 2012, 06:41:53 pm

I don't think I'll ask toady this because it is probably common knowledge, but with respect to the current militia system - is my understanding correct? Militias will be the armies that can be raised from the seperate sites of a Dwarven empire. Only the capital can raise an "army" complete with a general and captains and lieutenants. However, this must mean that in the event that we, as players, will be able to control an entire Dwarven empire (probably in the year 2020) then our military garrissons would not answer directly to the individual fortresses that they are protecting unless they are militia. There could be problems ahead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 25, 2012, 08:16:08 pm

If you're controlling your Civ entirely, I dont see any conflict. I find it unlikly in the event that you're in controll of your Civ, that it would be the same mode as Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 25, 2012, 08:28:37 pm

you might eventually have underlings in charge of a fort and a military garrison, or have the garrison BE forts. idk. im not the great Toad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on July 25, 2012, 08:45:55 pm

Will the new stealth mechanics carry over to dwarf mode?

It would be a brillant change to the kobold active cloaking system in place now. More focus could be put on setting up scouting patrols and lookouts to catch thives and ambushes; rather than the tie a dog to a tree and hope they stumble on it method in place in most forts.

With the new combat reactions, will we see multiple parts being hit with a single strike?

I have an image in my head of an elefant stomping on a dwarf, crushing every single bone in his body with one blow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 25, 2012, 09:08:02 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on July 25, 2012, 08:45:55 pm

Will the new stealth mechanics carry over to dwarf mode?

It would be a brillant change to the kobold active cloaking system in place now. More focus could be put on setting up scouting patrols and lookouts to catch thives and ambushes; rather than the tie a dog to a tree and hope they stumble on it method in place in most forts.

With the new combat reactions, will we see multiple parts being hit with a single strike?

I have an image in my head of an elefant stomping on a dwarf, crushing every single bone in his body with one blow.

No and No would be my guesses.

For the Elephant example, I think that would have to wait until combat respects size difference between opponents.

The stealth mechanics, are largely for the Adventure, it would seem. And even if the new mechanics are used for all NPC stealthiness, the dog at the choke point would still be a very effective means to discover them. So you can still set up patrol routes right now, if you'd like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on July 25, 2012, 11:05:13 pm

Something else just occurred to me: Will enemies hearing/smelling you despite their backs being turned be implemented any time soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 26, 2012, 09:31:56 am

From my understanding of the entity file, the militias are site-specific, while the nation has an army lead by a general, who is appointed by the monarch. I think Toady wanted the dwarves to send out soldiers from your site, though, so you'd either be raising your own army (for example, as a barony) and sending it out, or giving your militia a larger amount of work. It may be that you will be able to pick a Lieutenant (already in the entity file) to lead an army out of your fort. I suspect that in either case our entity files will change as a result, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on July 26, 2012, 11:46:21 am

Is the stealth/detection system going to take into account vantage points eventually? One of the reasons Watchtowers are so common in real life is that it is much easier to spot people from above than it is on the ground. But right now in DF they're useless for spotting sneaking people because it puts the guards too far away to detect anyone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on July 27, 2012, 08:35:26 am

will this sneaking update include fixes for the current ability to steal from anyone but shopkeepers? Or allow you to shoplift some berries without the entire world knowing.
Just because these bugs drive me insane.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on July 27, 2012, 09:03:43 am

Quote from: Mephansteras on July 26, 2012, 11:46:21 am

Is the stealth/detection system going to take into account vantage points eventually? One of the reasons Watchtowers are so common in real life is that it is much easier to spot people from above than it is on the ground. But right now in DF they're useless for spotting sneaking people because it puts the guards too far away to detect anyone.

this one always bothered me, though it may be in before too long (in DF release time scales) as it seems kinda necessary that watchtowers become non-decorative at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 28, 2012, 03:24:58 am

I'm still not excited for the next version as I am used to be for the previous ones. Maybe it's the lack of devlogs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on July 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Will the alert system apply to any other sites that are inhabited by armies? Like, say, a conquered player fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on July 29, 2012, 11:09:24 pm

Quote from: Spish on July 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Will the alert system apply to any other sites that are inhabited by armies? Like, say, a conquered player fortress?

I would imagine so. If one goblin can look around it only takes copy and paste to apply it to everything. Unless you mean the way that other guards are alerted. which brings to mind,When an alert is given, the offended entity doesn't yet know of the offence, right? In other words, is it possible to kill a guard before he alerts others and not become enemy of a civ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 30, 2012, 01:23:37 am

Cool. Two devlogs in a row.

Does the changes in sneaking apply to fortress mode?

Why did the commander fled instead of fighting?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 30, 2012, 01:46:09 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 30, 2012, 01:23:37 am

Cool. Two devlogs in a row.
Why did the commander fled instead of fighting?

As stipulated in the Dev Log, the Commander gave up the chase because of his responsibilities.


I have a question: How can the sneaking apply to fort mode exactly? You don't control anyone dorf, and it seems like we're no were near getting the Bloat of controlling one Dorf during Sieges, a la adventure move. A lot of the sneaking stuff, is conveying information to the Player so there no translation for that stuff in Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 30, 2012, 01:52:39 am

I think my favorite part is the addition of a tracking mechanism.  Now maybe we can track down animals in the wild when we are hungry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 30, 2012, 02:05:13 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 30, 2012, 01:46:09 am

As stipulated in the Dev Log, the Commander gave up the chase because of his responsibilities.

He tried to get back to his tent because of his responsabilities, but it was not the reason he fled. At least this is what is written in the devlog. I'm asking why he fled in the first place.

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 30, 2012, 01:46:09 am

I have a question: How can the sneaking apply to fort mode exactly? You don't control anyone dorf, and it seems like we're no were near getting the Bloat of controlling one Dorf during Sieges, a la adventure move. A lot of the sneaking stuff, is conveying information to the Player so there no translation for that stuff in Fort Mode.

The new mechanics can be applied to fortress mode even if the player doesn't have direct control (field of vision, raising alarms, and so on) and may impact gameplay regardless of player control. Or it may be the the same as it always was. This is what I hope Toady answers.

If you have a lot of this kind of doubts, you aren't being helpful trying to answer the questions for Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on July 30, 2012, 05:09:56 am

Quote

The noise reduction is a passive ability, while you can still set yourself to "sneak", which'll decrease your chance to be seen but will also make you look more suspicious if you are seen.

Good. It always bothered me in the Elder Scrolls games how it never seemed to bother any guard or shopkeeper if you were sneaking around everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 30, 2012, 09:19:31 am

Are your Fortress Mode soldiers going to engage in something of the same sort of expanded sneaking ability, even if it's not quite as expanded as the Adventure Mode version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 30, 2012, 10:11:21 am

Quote from: jellsprout on July 30, 2012, 05:09:56 am

Quote

The noise reduction is a passive ability, while you can still set yourself to "sneak", which'll decrease your chance to be seen but will also make you look more suspicious if you are seen.

Good. It always bothered me in the Elder Scrolls games how it never seemed to bother any guard or shopkeeper if you were sneaking around everywhere.

I just started playing Morrowind again, and was surprised to hear NPCs (including guards) making comments about my sneaking.  So at least one Elder Scrolls game took that in to account.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on July 30, 2012, 10:10:42 pm

Wait wait hold up a feck did Toady just add a new tile to the game

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 30, 2012, 10:30:18 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on July 30, 2012, 10:10:42 pm

Wait wait hold up a feck did Toady just add a new tile to the game

I think he did.  I am just overjoyed that tracking is finally in.  Now when one of the ambushers runs away I can track them down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 30, 2012, 10:56:10 pm

(those are larger images built from 219-223+254 that'll pop up with a description if we stick with that, not new tiles)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 30, 2012, 11:43:50 pm

Looks great!  Like the direction this tracking mechanic is going.
Will there be an element of in game learning required for the annotation of the track marks, or will the player be told what every track belongs to all the time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on July 30, 2012, 11:47:39 pm

I'm growing somewhat concerned about the extent of feature-creep in this release. Obviously, this is the Adams' baby, and the features they're interested in implementing are the ones that should go in. But for my own selfish interests, I'm somewhat concerned that features I'm really excited for -- such as a more dynamic world and nonlethal combat -- are going to get delayed behind features like search party AI and game trails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on July 30, 2012, 11:52:38 pm

Quote from: tfaal on July 30, 2012, 11:47:39 pm

I'm growing somewhat concerned about the extent of feature-creep in this release.

you must be new here!

No, seriously, DF is literally one big feature creep. It's been that way for about 6 years now, and it seems the more Toady indulges his feature-creeper side, the better the game gets

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 31, 2012, 12:00:11 am

Will the footprints be dynamic at all? For example, if the creature lost a toe, will that effect the footprint on screen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on July 31, 2012, 01:27:30 am

Will there be groups searching for other historical figures and such? For example, a small army trying to hunt down a dragon that attacked a village of their kingdom. When artifacts are in play and the exploration mechanics are in, will there be armies/hired mercenaries searching for wherever they believe an artifact to be, and wandering bands of explorers searching uncharted lands? What about lone wanderers and the like?

(Forgive the silly fluff questions, I'm just so excited.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDJ17 on July 31, 2012, 01:35:16 am

Will adventurers/roving bands/entire armies be able to hide their tracks or at the very least try to?
It would be fun if you could make special shoes that left the foot prints of different animals like a deer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 31, 2012, 03:38:10 am

Stopping fast travel to cross waterways could seem less tiresome if hunted quarry used them to try and shake you off the trail causing you to search up and down the banks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 31, 2012, 03:41:51 am

I feel that showing the tracks as exposed in the devlog is completely unnecessary, and would bring a series of problems. Each creature would need its own track, and there are many variations to each (a human could be using boots, or coud be using a crutch, and so on).

edit: to be honest, I didn't understand what Toady intends to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 06:32:51 am

Quote from: hermes on July 30, 2012, 11:43:50 pm

Will there be an element of in game learning required for the annotation of the track marks, or will the player be told what every track belongs to all the time?

As much as I'd love the game to give you no information whatsoever on that, it would be not a lot of fun unless that's your area of expertise and you like to keep notes outside of the game.

I guess having having the game track (no pun intended) which tracks your adventurer can possibly know would be nice.
If you see tracks, the tracks just say "unknown source". Your adventurer seeing an animal leaving tracks will add it to the list of known tracks. So next time you look at tracks, the game will tell you what the source is.
And you could also learn about tracks from experienced hunters. That reminds me, is something like people teaching your adventurer planned?


Will tracks have varying visibility/clarity (visually represented by added noise in the composite images for example)? Will it depend on your skill? On the underground the tracks are on?

Will we, then have a greater chance of not being tracked if we walk over ground that doesn't leave tracks, go through rivers to wash away scent, etc? Will the AI use that, too?

Will the track images be hardcoded?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 31, 2012, 07:28:16 am

titan tracks? boogeymen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiri Petru on July 31, 2012, 08:45:06 am

(http://bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/human.png)

I got pretty used to Toady's tendency to feature creep and add random cool things, but let me just say that this is the most useless thing I've ever seen added to Dwarf Fortress.

I don't see the point - it will require Toady (and modders) to add a footprint, which is basically graphics, to each single creature. Toady has stated on many occasions that adding graphics is exactly what he doesn't want to do, and the reason why he uses ASCII. Supposedly, whenever he adds something new to the game, ASCII allows him to just assign a tile instead of having to pixel paint a sprite. But these footprints basically = manually pixel painting a sprite for each creature. There's hundreds of creatures. Whenever a new one gets added, new footprint would have to be manually painted. What's the point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on July 31, 2012, 08:57:06 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on July 31, 2012, 08:45:06 am

(http://bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/human.png)

I got pretty used to Toady's tendency to feature creep and add random cool things, but let me just say that this is the most useless thing I've ever seen added to Dwarf Fortress.

I don't see the point - it will require Toady (and modders) to add a footprint, which is basically graphics, to each single creature. Toady has stated on many occasions that adding graphics is exactly what he doesn't want to do, and the reason why he uses ASCII. Supposedly, whenever he adds something new to the game, ASCII allows him to just assign a tile instead of having to pixel paint a sprite. But these footprints basically = manually pixel painting a sprite for each creature. There's hundred of creatures. Whenever a new one gets added, new footprint would have to be manually painted. What's the point?

Not really. He can just make a few  generic prints for different animal groups and reuse them. Seriously, it's not like the world will end if a few days get spent adding a small but cool feature ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 31, 2012, 08:59:00 am

i don't like it either
in classic rpgs, wich include roguelikes, there's a clear separation in what the player knows from what the character knows, what a player can do and what a character can do. with the latest additions, more hands on aproach to sneaking and tracking, this separation is getting blurred in a way i feel uncomfortable with. now a player has to be himself skilled in sneaking, meaning a supposedly legendary ambusher may behave like an amateur if he is controlled by a player who doesn't yet dominate the mechanics of sneaking, the opposite is true for a dabbling ambusher in the hands of a player that knows the system very well. this makes the character's stats less meaningful, which itself might not be a bad thing(i'm actually quite excited with the sneaking system, and looking forward to play arround with it), but is not coherent with the way rest of the game treats skills.
assigning a visual image to a creature's tracks brings up a similar problem, a character might be an incompetent tracker who can't recognise the tracks of a lot of animals, but a player who has memorized these or has access to a wiki can effectively nullify the need for such a skill at all
i feel these are features for an awesome, but different game, and do not fit df at all

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 09:01:13 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on July 31, 2012, 08:45:06 am

But these footprints basically = manually pixel painting a sprite for each creature. There's hundred of creatures. Whenever a new one gets added, new footprint would have to be manually painted.

I doubt it's particularly hard to write a program that creates these images automatically from b&w images of animal footprints found online.
You still have to add it to every single new creature, but it's a matter of searching for or making a normal track image. It doesn't need to be pixel-per-pixel, just a regular, rough b&w image.
As with density values of materials, this could be something that the community can help with.

Anyway, while this does make it easier, your point obviously still stands. It doesn't add anything that couldn't be covered by a text saying "you see human footprints" or "you see tracks of a small animal". In fact, you could convey skill-related vagueness better with text.

But as it seems to be right now, it wouldn't use the adventurers skill, but the player's skill (Same for sneaking).

So it's mostly a gameplay design question.
Personally I really like the idea, because it would be a great feeling actually learn the real track appearance of creatures, just from playing Dwarf Fortress.
On the other hand I'm not sure if it really fits in with the rest of the game.

EDIT:
As Askot said, RPGs are either character skill based or player skill based. And inconsistencies between them tend to sully the gameplay experience when the game has deep mechanics. It might not be a problem with light casual games like Skyrim, but I think more complex games benefit from coherent and consistent gameplay design in that regard.

However, I think there can be a solution to incorporate both things in games generally:
Everything is basically player skill based, but character skills define how the character executes the player intention. In other words, the player is the brain, the character skills determine the "muscle memory" or sensory perception (and the attributes determine the physical properties of the character body).
So, for example, the player decides where to strike, and depending on the character skill your adventurer hits or misses. And depending how strong he is, he will make more damage. That's actually already in the game like that.

For sneaking this would mean, the player decides where to sneak, when to stop, etc, but sneaking/perception skill influence how much noise the character makes, how well and acute he can stop and, say, remain motionless, how accurate he can see where an enemy looks, who is alerted, etc.

For tracking, whatever perception/tracking ability he has, decides finding tracks in the first place, and possibly helping player memory with additional information like how old the track is, in which direction it goes, etc.


If indeed implemented like that, I don't think the concerns of Askot, that the skills become less meaningful are justified.
After all, it works for combat very well already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 31, 2012, 09:41:17 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on July 31, 2012, 08:45:06 am

I don't see the point - it will require Toady (and modders) to add a footprint, which is basically graphics, to each single creature. Toady has stated on many occasions that adding graphics is exactly what he doesn't want to do, and the reason why he uses ASCII. Supposedly, whenever he adds something new to the game, ASCII allows him to just assign a tile instead of having to pixel paint a sprite. But these footprints basically = manually pixel painting a sprite for each creature. There's hundreds of creatures. Whenever a new one gets added, new footprint would have to be manually painted. What's the point?

I kind of know what you mean, as in this was my first reaction to the tracks.  But as Manveru says, generic prints would be a fine placeholder, and with the appropriate reference book I can't imagine it taking more than a few days to paint them in.  Why not have the graphical representation?  Tracking is largely a visual skill and it would be nice to engage the player a little with sign to help immersion.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on July 31, 2012, 08:59:00 am

i don't like it either
in classic rpgs, wich include roguelikes, there's a clear separation in what the player knows from what the character knows, what a player can do and what a character can do. with the latest additions, more hands on aproach to sneaking and tracking, this separation is getting blurred in a way i feel uncomfortable with. now a player has to be himself skilled in sneaking, meaning a supposedly legendary ambusher may behave like an amateur if he is controlled by a player who doesn't yet dominate the mechanics of sneaking...

Toady hasn't explained the details of tracking yet, but I would bet a megaproject it will only be dependent on character skills.

As for sneaking, I really don't understand what you mean.  All RPGs revolve around choice, gameplay choice, and the manner in which you choose to sneak is one of those choices.  It seems pretty obvious that the player should be aware of the mechanics of the game to play it well, and rather baffling to say that the system isn't coherent when clearly the range of movement options are not an on/off toggle like other features.  ???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on July 31, 2012, 09:56:20 am

Huh... I don't really like this either, myself. :-\
Couldn't there just be, I don't know, a generic ASCII symbol which is used to denote some kindof track, (nothing big or glaring, just a '*' or something admist the ground tiles of the same colour) and then 'l'ooking at said track displays what kind of track it is, and which way it is going?

The sneaking mechanics sound interesting, but I don't like the idea of these new tiles at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on July 31, 2012, 10:06:23 am

Quote from: Yoink on July 31, 2012, 09:56:20 am

Huh... I don't really like this either, myself. :-\
Couldn't there just be, I don't know, a generic ASCII symbol which is used to denote some kindof track, (nothing big or glaring, just a '*' or something admist the ground tiles of the same colour) and then 'l'ooking at said track displays what kind of track it is, and which way it is going?

The sneaking mechanics sound interesting, but I don't like the idea of these new tiles at all.

Quote from: Toady One on July 30, 2012, 10:56:10 pm

(those are larger images built from 219-223+254 that'll pop up with a description if we stick with that, not new tiles)

So it sounds like these are something that comes up when you actually examine these tracks, not something that shows up in local view.

Toady, what do tracks look like in local view? Are they title-invisible or something like a * as suggested earlier?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on July 31, 2012, 10:24:42 am

Ohhh, okay. :D Great!

*Is reassured, and feels a deep shame for ever having doubted the Great Toad's brilliance*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 10:40:43 am

Quote from: Yoink on July 31, 2012, 09:56:20 am

Huh... I don't really like this either, myself. :-\
Couldn't there just be, I don't know, a generic ASCII symbol which is used to denote some kindof track, (nothing big or glaring, just a '*' or something admist the ground tiles of the same colour) and then 'l'ooking at said track displays what kind of track it is, and which way it is going?

The sneaking mechanics sound interesting, but I don't like the idea of these new tiles at all.

Don't misunderstand, as toady said, this isn't a single tile you will find on the floor. This is a composite image of several tiles (219 to 223 and 254, basically the ballista 'bow' tiles) that will - presumably - appear as a popup window like, the forgotten beast popup for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 31, 2012, 10:49:53 am

Quote from: Jiri Petru on July 31, 2012, 08:45:06 am

But these footprints basically = manually pixel painting a sprite for each creature. There's hundred of creatures. Whenever a new one gets added, new footprint would have to be manually painted. What's the point?

Quote from: devlog

If we go with that, the six tiles used will be remappable, so affected tileset users should still get a decent effect (even if they map everything to one on/off tile).

So yeah, I read it as "six generic tiles" not "hundreds of unique tiles," with your tracking skill giving you the more detailed information.

I'm liking the tracking stuff so far, if only because I've had trouble with quests in heavily wooded areas where the bandit leader got hurt, panicked, and fled while I was busy with his goons, and then I couldn't find him later. Now I can track the bastard down!

What ways will you be able to disguise your trails? If I anger a town and get everyone after me, I'd like to know I can lay some false trails and sneak off to a nearby cave to wait out the heat..

How long does pursuit last? Will posses follow you into cities/towns/castles/other sites?  It's a fairly standard fantasy trope to follow the guy who murdered your village across the world to exact vengeance, dramatically arriving at the guy's award ceremony to accuse him of his misdeeds. And one of my favorite bits from the Wheel of Time books involved leading a group of enemy orc-equivalents into the Cursed City of Doomy Doom to try and evade them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 11:11:54 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 31, 2012, 10:49:53 am

So yeah, I read it as "six generic tiles" not "hundreds of unique tiles," with your tracking skill giving you the more detailed information.

It uses six generic tiles (219 to 223 and 254, basically the ballista 'bow' tiles) to make composite images which appear to be 16x16 tiles in dimensions.
These footprints will not be part of the tileset!
They use single tiles already present on the tileset to make 16x16 tile images.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 31, 2012, 11:43:47 am

I'm gonna disagree with the folks who don't like this. Accurate footprints are something that the userbase can do for Toady.

Also, will footprints respect foot equipment? At least to the extent of checking if there is any or none. Because a boot print would make more sense than a bare foot print for most humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 31, 2012, 11:48:14 am

These footprints are a classic example of feature creep. Well, if DF was a tv series, I would say it "jumped the shark" with these footprints.

The suggestion of the character knowing a number of animal tracks and identifying them based on their skill level would be much more appropriate with the previous design of Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 31, 2012, 11:52:00 am

If the footprints are broken down in to composite pieces people wouldn't have to create specific ones for each creature, or even use generic footprints.  It could be broken down in to data such as foot length, foot width, number of toes, sole type (foot, cloven hoof, bird foot, etc) in the raws and dynamically drawn.  This would also allow cool things like (I asked about this earlier) missing toes that match up to the wounds on the creature.  As a programmer I don't even want to think about all the complications this has (someone mods racoons to have 30 toes / foot), but if toady can manage to pull it off it will be awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 31, 2012, 12:08:04 pm

Toady's going to need to make a bigger default tileset sooner or later. The problem, of course, is that under the current system each tile only needs to call up one byte for shape and, what, four bits for color?

Does anybody have any idea how much, if at all, FPS would be affected if the default tileset were 32x32 (thus, four times larger than currently) instead of 16x16?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 31, 2012, 12:21:55 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 31, 2012, 12:08:04 pm

Toady's going to need to make a bigger default tileset sooner or later. The problem, of course, is that under the current system each tile only needs to call up one byte for shape and, what, four bits for color?

Does anybody have any idea how much, if at all, FPS would be affected if the default tileset were 32x32 (thus, four times larger than currently) instead of 16x16?

The big problem with expanding the tile let is that it's designed around ASCII, which only only has 256 values.  This is what allows it to run without graphics on text-only displays (think dfterm).  Adding more tiles breaks the ASCII and would change a LOT of things.  I immagine there is an aweful lot of code where things are defined as char type that would have to be changed to ints.  Code could rely on some of the special things you can do with chars.  I have to imagine that it would be a huge amount of work to change something so fundamental.  It also has a lot of potential to reintroduce bugs all over the codebase.  I agree that it would probably be the single best thing feature in recent memory, but the programmer in me cringes at the thought if doing it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 31, 2012, 12:43:50 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on July 31, 2012, 08:59:00 am

in classic rpgs, wich include roguelikes, there's a clear separation in what the player knows from what the character knows, what a player can do and what a character can do. with the latest additions, more hands on aproach to sneaking and tracking, this separation is getting blurred in a way i feel uncomfortable with. now a player has to be himself skilled in sneaking, meaning a supposedly legendary ambusher may behave like an amateur if he is controlled by a player who doesn't yet dominate the mechanics of sneaking, the opposite is true for a dabbling ambusher in the hands of a player that knows the system very well. this makes the character's stats less meaningful, which itself might not be a bad thing(i'm actually quite excited with the sneaking system, and looking forward to play arround with it), but is not coherent with the way rest of the game treats skills.

Yeah.  Graphical footprints are an interesting idea, but I'm not feeling it.  Maybe I'm unimaginitive, but I can only think of one purpose for this feature: establishing tension/suspense while tracking an unknown creature, a la countless horror movies etc.  Textual description could establish tension too, and without the player/character confusion that Askot mentioned.

Also, it just seems perverse that, of all things, footprints could be the first use of ASCII art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art) (as opposed to procedural portraits etc).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 31, 2012, 02:13:21 pm

I think I overreacted a bit, but I still don't think it is a good idea. There are too many varieties. A reptile for example would left tracks of their belly and tail besides their footprints.  Different kind of snakes have different moving patterns, affecting their tracks. Supernatural creatures could give false tracks, as this folcloric brazilian creature:

Quote

His name comes from the Tupi language kuru'pir, meaning "covered in blisters". According to the cultural legends, this creature has bright red/orange hair, and resembles a man or a dwarf, but its feet are turned backwards. Curupira lives in the forests of Brazil and uses its backward feet to create footprints that lead to its starting point, thus making hunters and travelers confused. Besides that, he can also create illusions and produce a sound that's like a high pitched whistle, in order to scare and drive its victim to madness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curupira

And there is the fact of boots, missing limbs, people deliberately avoiding pursuers... I hope Toady is right about this feature (and that it don't take too many days from the development)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 31, 2012, 02:24:32 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 31, 2012, 12:08:04 pm

Toady's going to need to make a bigger default tileset sooner or later. The problem, of course, is that under the current system each tile only needs to call up one byte for shape and, what, four bits for color?

Does anybody have any idea how much, if at all, FPS would be affected if the default tileset were 32x32 (thus, four times larger than currently) instead of 16x16?

Expanding the default tileset would be a stopgap, and not worth the effort. If Toady is going to rewrite things there, he should make a dynamic system like with creature graphics. I agree that this should be sooner rather than later, though. The current system is becoming increasingly inconvenient, especially for tileset creators and users.

FPS impact would probably be negligible or nonexistant on most systems, since Baughn made graphical rendering multithreaded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 31, 2012, 02:37:54 pm

1. Wait, graphics are multithreaded now?

2. As much as I sympathise with those who aren't very fond of the tracking changes as a feature creep problem, the fact remains that they're a highly realistic addition to Adventure Mode which are required- or something very much like them is required- if Toady wants to implement running away and wild goose-chases across the map which, after all, are half the fun of adventuring. Armies, bandits and caravans will, after all, spend a good bit, if not most, of their time chasing each other around, and you can't really have that as an expanded and interesting system without a tracking framework. We shouldn't worry that Toady's implementing tracking, only that he be careful how he's going about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 31, 2012, 02:44:50 pm

nobody is against the implementation of a tracking system, the main point of contention is *graphic* footprints, not the tracking system itself

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 31, 2012, 02:46:36 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 31, 2012, 02:37:54 pm

1. Wait, graphics are multithreaded now?

Yeah, for a while.

Also...

Quote from: Toady One on July 30, 2012, 10:56:10 pm

(those are larger images built from 219-223+254 that'll pop up with a description if we stick with that, not new tiles)

So how are these designed in-file, then? Will modders have to create footprints for their creatures manually?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on July 31, 2012, 05:19:53 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on July 31, 2012, 12:21:55 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on July 31, 2012, 12:08:04 pm

Toady's going to need to make a bigger default tileset sooner or later. The problem, of course, is that under the current system each tile only needs to call up one byte for shape and, what, four bits for color?

Does anybody have any idea how much, if at all, FPS would be affected if the default tileset were 32x32 (thus, four times larger than currently) instead of 16x16?

The big problem with expanding the tile let is that it's designed around ASCII, which only only has 256 values.  This is what allows it to run without graphics on text-only displays (think dfterm).  Adding more tiles breaks the ASCII and would change a LOT of things.  I immagine there is an aweful lot of code where things are defined as char type that would have to be changed to ints.  Code could rely on some of the special things you can do with chars.  I have to imagine that it would be a huge amount of work to change something so fundamental.  It also has a lot of potential to reintroduce bugs all over the codebase.  I agree that it would probably be the single best thing feature in recent memory, but the programmer in me cringes at the thought if doing it.

DF is also designed around terminal displays, which are only 80x25 characters in size. Yet, we still have the ability to resize the window (on the fly, even) to however big we please.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 31, 2012, 05:58:24 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on July 31, 2012, 12:43:50 pm

Yeah.  Graphical footprints are an interesting idea, but I'm not feeling it.  Maybe I'm unimaginitive, but I can only think of one purpose for this feature: establishing tension/suspense while tracking an unknown creature, a la countless horror movies etc.  Textual description could establish tension too, and without the player/character confusion that Askot mentioned.

Also, it just seems perverse that, of all things, footprints could be the first use of ASCII art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art) (as opposed to procedural portraits etc).

Agreed that text descriptions could be just as good (if not better since I prefer written works), but the more I think about Brad's post, the more it makes sense to start procedural artwork with footprints.  It's a 2D medium made in a single material (soil), with a limited number of general cases, where the only variations from a "normal" print are (off the top of my head) size and the absence of toes/limbs.... the perfect place to start experimenting with ASCII art viability.  Faces and bodies are, in comparison, complete nightmares.

That is, of course, if this is how the images are created.

If they were procedural, and if the player was told in notes what kind of beast left the tracks, then the art could convey, besides the atmosphere of the hunt, some ancillary information like the size of the animal, if it's injured (blood spatters?), its dominant side, etc.  Lots of 'ifs' there, have to wait and see...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on July 31, 2012, 06:12:46 pm

Quote from: Sizik on July 31, 2012, 05:19:53 pm

DF is also designed around terminal displays, which are only 80x25 characters in size. Yet, we still have the ability to resize the window (on the fly, even) to however big we please.

There is no fixed defined size for a terminal window.  I've seen 40x25, 40x24, and 80x24  as default sizes on some systems.  You are just thinking about the rendering system for the display, which is it's own compartmentalized system that is actually maintained by Baughn, not Toady.  Adding tiles would go far deeper than that, in to the core of the program and how things are fundamentally stored. ASCII by definition is 128 (or 256 if using extended) chars.  The "char" type in c++ is one byte, which holds up to 256 values which exactly matches ASCII.  It can't be extended. Adding more tiles would mean a fundamental shift away from using "char" and ASCII to store tile data.  I'm not saying it's impossible to move away from chars and ASCII. I'm just saying that it's a pretty HUGE task that could take a very long time and introduce a LOT of bugs.  I actually think it would be a great thing to do, but I wouldn't want to be the programmer doing it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 31, 2012, 06:41:56 pm

Quote from: hermes on July 31, 2012, 05:58:24 pm

It's a 2D medium made in a single material (soil), with a limited number of general cases, where the only variations from a "normal" print are (off the top of my head) size and the absence of toes/limbs.... the perfect place to start experimenting with ASCII art viability.  Faces and bodies are, in comparison, complete nightmares.

I was thinking more of portraits just for the humanoid races -- hardcoding the basic idea of a humanoid face, and using the existing facial feature attributes (how wide-set are your eyes, etc) to individualize the portraits.  Portraits for all species would be significantly harder, yes.

Quote from: hermes on July 31, 2012, 05:58:24 pm

That is, of course, if this is how the images are created.

I strongly doubt it -- Toady has been emphasizing that this is in the hypothetical stage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on July 31, 2012, 07:42:38 pm

ok, wait, what... what? im confused now..
does this mean we walk around the forest, and then this window pops up with some ascii-art-image and it says: "you found some footprints!"?
if this is the case, then im very unhappy:

-i hate windows/screens/images popping up just like that. they fuel my rage to the heat of a thousand stars! HEAR ME ROAR! the trade-discussions already annoy the hell out of me....

-we are supposed to look at the footprint and see: "oh, its missing its second toe, that must be the hamster-man i was fighting with just now!" my concern here is the same as what others already mentioned, if i as a player can see that, then where does my character come in play here? the same if i cant see the details im supposed to see while my character is some über-awesome tracker. we should get a procedurally generated text describing what our character sees, with the level of detail depending on the characters abilities/knowledge. just like we get to see more or less random/wrongly estimated prices when trading with a low-skill broker in place. im not totally against the images, i mean its awesome if we can learn some animal prints by playing df  just like were learning something about minerals, but its enough to put those images below the text, with the images generated with no more detail than the description.
in other words, if we have a skilled char tracking a deer, we should see an image of a deers footprint below the description of the footprint. when we track a deer with a low-skill char then we should only get a description talking of some kind of unidentifiable track and no image/an unidentifiable image.
all that in the normal description of the tile the prints are on with an asterisk on the ground animating the player to look at the tile if he wants to. only if we look at them. please, no more popups, give the player the choice to ignore the footprints without asking "do you want to look at the ground now?"

tl;dr: pretty much repeating complaints from 2 pages ago and ragin a bit

edit: i realized, no one here could possibly know how it actually will look like, apart from toady: therefore adding colour

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 07:54:08 pm

Quote from: eux0r on July 31, 2012, 07:42:38 pm

my concern here is the same as what others already mentioned, if i as a player can see that, then where does my character come in play here?

Again, I think it's not that big of a problem. Combat already works like that. You, the player, make the decisions where to strike, when to flee, etc, and the character's skills determine how successful that will be.
To quote myself:

Quote from: CLA

For sneaking this would mean, the player decides where to sneak, when to stop, etc, but sneaking/perception skill influence how much noise the character makes, how well and acute he can stop and, say, remain motionless, how accurate he can see where an enemy looks, who is alerted, etc.

For tracking, whatever perception/tracking ability he has, decides finding tracks in the first place, and possibly helping player memory with additional information like how old the track is, in which direction it goes, etc.

I really don't think this will be a problem. However, whether it should be displayed graphically or with text is worth to argue about I think.
Personally, I think it's a great addition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on July 31, 2012, 07:55:37 pm

I kind of like eux0r's idea, if the images are procedurally generated that is, otherwise it would be basically impossible.

however I don't think it will be an obtrusive popup or anything like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on July 31, 2012, 08:14:43 pm

Quote

Procedurally generated images based on information in the raws

Yeah, that would be really nice, especially if it can serve as framework for faces or even engravings at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 31, 2012, 08:34:52 pm

Quote from: eux0r on July 31, 2012, 07:42:38 pm

does this mean we walk around the forest, and then this window pops up with some ascii-art-image and it says: "you found some footprints!"?

It'll probably be something like "closely (L)ook at the tile you're standing on" for tracks, with shift+l. The way you describe is extremely gamey and just as stupid as you think it is :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 31, 2012, 11:53:02 pm

Some people had too many negative cornflakes for breakfast. I'm obviously more of a blind fanboy than most because the graphical footprints seem like a cool idea to me and I'm not worried that their inclusion will add X years to DF development.

Tracking will likely be a mode that you choose to enter. You will only see footprints when you want to, and you can probably filter the type that you're interested in so that you aren't spammed by chicken prints when chasing a colossus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 01, 2012, 12:31:36 am

I think the footprint images could be used to denote groups of footprints for similar species.

IE: You get a text paragraph saying "the footprint is medium sized and has five toes". You look some more and find "the footprint is medium sized and has five toes."

Problem is one is humanoid and the other is ape-ish.

If you show a generic humanoid foot or a generic prime ape foot... the player will be like "okay I'm following that Chimp that stole my food; so I'll ignore anything that doesn't have the prime ape foot print". Alternatively if they are following a dwarf, they will ignore anything but humanoid prints. They might have to study the description more to tell specifics (ie, dwarf prints are medium and broad; humans are medium), but the generic foot prints could act as a visual filter. The player sees the image and knows whether or not they could just skip the description. The description can go into more detail for missing toes and other info that might help the player.

That being the case, the images could be limited to groups that make sense. IE: bipedal humanoid (human, elf, dwarf), padded quadruped (dog, cat, wolf, tiger), rodent trail (rat, mouse), drag trail (snake, alligator, zombie whale), talons (chickens, owls, turkeys), hoofed quadruped (boar, goat, horse), bipedal humanoid with shoes (human, elf, dwarf).

A couple more than that as well. Some special creatures could have unique foot prints for flavor (ie: dragons), but every single animal species shouldn't require a unique footprint.

I could see the value of using the graphic as a quick and easy way to determine whether or not you want to read the description in depth thus saving you a couple seconds. That may not seem like a good reason, but imagine someone lead you through an area trafficed by tons of creatures. You'll love having a simple indicator to help you out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 01, 2012, 04:08:42 am

there's also the thing that tracks are rarelly footprints, and even when they are, they're rarely perfectly delineated footprints, more like an amorphous hole in the ground from which you can get a rough size, and maybe a width\length ratio. it is easier to identify if an animal is limping(and more relevant) than to count its toes

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on August 01, 2012, 08:15:02 am

With the new skills coming, and the increasing relevance of the existing skills, will the number of points available in 'demi-god' increase to make that moniker meaningful?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 02, 2012, 12:20:58 pm

Quote from: Quatch on August 01, 2012, 08:15:02 am

With the new skills coming, and the increasing relevance of the existing skills, will the number of points available in 'demi-god' increase to make that moniker meaningful?

More than that, I think it would be good to have a "limitless" mode where you could build your character however you pleased and not worry about points at all. But this is more suggestion than question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on August 02, 2012, 04:18:24 pm

Yeah, it's kind of silly to have any limitations in such a sandboxy game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on August 02, 2012, 04:39:58 pm

Quote from: tfaal on August 02, 2012, 04:18:24 pm

Yeah, it's kind of silly to have any limitations in such a sandboxy game.

Dunno if you're sarcastic being, but if you are, you'd think it'd be made an option rather than just as, yes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on August 02, 2012, 08:57:16 pm

I'm not sure I understand you. I definitely think there should be an option to have point-limits on your characters as we do now, in addition to a no-limit setting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 02, 2012, 10:19:53 pm

Well the selections of: Peasant, Hero, and Demigod will actually mean a lot more later on.

As for "limitations doesn't make sense in a sandbox game" I have to disagree. Even in Minecraft the game intentionally limits you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on August 03, 2012, 12:53:17 am

Probably the Peasant/Hero/Demigod distinction will be replaced by something more like in Mount and Blade, where you could answer a few questions about your past (like if you were an impoverished patrician, university student, etc.) and it would give you a starting scenario based on that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on August 03, 2012, 01:00:58 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on August 03, 2012, 12:53:17 am

Probably the Peasant/Hero/Demigod distinction will be replaced by something more like in Mount and Blade, where you could answer a few questions about your past (like if you were an impoverished patrician, university student, etc.) and it would give you a starting scenario based on that.

Please, no. I would rather be able to choose if I am a musician or a warrior when I start. A great shield user or a great swordsdwarf. If I am a elf or a dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 01:04:43 am

Unfortunately, Corai, it's planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on August 03, 2012, 01:49:25 am

If that's the case, then I hope it's set up so that the questions are fairly-easy to manipulate to get the results you'd like. It'd be the best of both worlds in that scenario; a logical starting point for roleplayers and a hopefully-straightforward-to-fill-out stat sheet for gamers.

E: Accidentally a whole two words :V

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spinning Welshman on August 03, 2012, 02:15:44 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 03, 2012, 01:49:25 am

If that's the case, then I hope it's set up so that the questions are fairly-easy to manipulate to get the results you'd like. It'd be the best of both worlds in that scenario; a logical starting point for roleplayers and a hopefully-straightforward-to-fill-out stat sheet for gamers.

E: Accidentally a whole two words :V

It's that age-old battle between immersion potential and comprehensible game-mechanics. However I'm sure Toady will find an interesting way of implementing it, really there's no reason why you can't have an element of both: Be given the text description of your choices, as in Mount and Blade, but alongside it have a panel showing you what stat changes those choices represent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 03, 2012, 04:07:52 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 01:04:43 am

Unfortunately, Corai, it's planned.

I think considered would be more accurate...

Spoiler: DF Talk 6 (click to show/hide)

Capntastic:   What are your plans to make adventure mode more accessible?
Toady:   [snip] .....  So there's the idea of how can you improve character generation, just in general, and also how than to make the game entirely take care of all of the accessibility problems that don't have anything to do with graphics and the general interface, that kind of thing, but just the game itself. So the idea is to have some additional options and the main one would be ... you've got a character who - currently you just create them and they're this outsider who doesn't really belong to the world at all, they might belong to the overall civilization that you've selected for them, but they don't meaningfully tie into that, they don't have a parent in that civilization, they don't have any friends in that civilization, they don't know anybody in that civilization - so one of the ideas for a mode of character generation would be a scenario-driven thing. There are downsides to that sort of stuff, like if you have a Q and A process like the Ultima games or even our own Liberal Crime Squad, the main downside to that I think is that it's a cumbersome way to create a character when you know the questions are just building stats and giving you items, so it just gets really annoying and you have to game the system just to get where you want to get, and it's the same every time. The key difference here is that it really can't be the same every time in Dwarf Fortress because the worlds are all different; it can picks two parent for you and say 'you were born to these two people and you're living in this kind of situation' and then it can have things arise based on just running world generation, just continue world gen from whatever point the game's at.

There's more to the discussion on the transcript page (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_6_transcript.html).

On topic with the points issue...

Quote from: tfaal on August 02, 2012, 04:18:24 pm

Yeah, it's kind of silly to have any limitations in such a sandboxy game.

I think it's silly not to have points.  There seems to be a general trend in mainstream western games of late to move towards "sandboxing", fewer restrictions on player-character potential and action, because apparently people want to be able to do everything.  Perhaps I'm getting too old for new games now, but I like limits and getting (metaphorically) kicked in the teeth every now and then, and not being able to overcome some limits adds to the r/p experience IMO.

(Incidentally I think the same arguments apply to the tileset discussiona few pages back, there are significant merits to working within graphical limits not dissimilar to the way poets work within traditionally defined structural boundaries.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 03, 2012, 05:03:33 am

Quote from: hermes on August 03, 2012, 04:07:52 am

I think it's silly not to have points.  There seems to be a general trend in mainstream western games of late to move towards "sandboxing", fewer restrictions on player-character potential and action, because apparently people want to be able to do everything.  Perhaps I'm getting too old for new games now, but I like limits and getting (metaphorically) kicked in the teeth every now and then, and not being able to overcome some limits adds to the r/p experience IMO.

I have never had real problems with the amount of points given to demigods.  The only real problem is that I often start with a silver or copper blade when a bronze or iron blade would be available.  Also, getting armor is a pain, but playing as human and raiding a castle for gear solves that problem.  The lethality of getting hit with an arrow is also annoying (seriously, it feels like Achilles was a DF adventurer who only had nerves in his heel.)  I don't start with legendary skills, but I have enough to take on all but the most powerful enemies from the get-go.

Quote

(Incidentally I think the same arguments apply to the tileset discussion a few pages back, there are significant merits to working within graphical limits not dissimilar to the way poets work within traditionally defined structural boundaries.)

Ultimately, until the game is much closer to being complete, I expect there to be lots (and lots) of things that use the tilesets because Toady doesn't want to bog down development with better graphics.  Full graphics support would be interesting (though I actually enjoy the roguelike feel of pseudo-ascii), but they will be a pain to create before most of the required content is hashed out.  That may sound like a cop-out to some people, but remember, normal coding projects sit down and decide what they are going to do before jumping in and doing anything.  Toady has notes, but his answers to long term questions are often "We will cross that bridge when we come to it".  While I think his method is incredibly sloppy, I am not going to argue with results.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 03, 2012, 07:07:47 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 01:04:43 am

Unfortunately, Corai, it's planned.

As hermes showed, that's not quite the case. It would probably be most accurate to say that starting scenarios are planned both for adventurers and fortresses, but their eventual implementation is up in the air a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 03, 2012, 11:44:37 am

Quote from: Rockphed

Quote

(Incidentally I think the same arguments apply to the tileset discussion a few pages back, there are significant merits to working within graphical limits not dissimilar to the way poets work within traditionally defined structural boundaries.)

Ultimately, until the game is much closer to being complete, I expect there to be lots (and lots) of things that use the tilesets because Toady doesn't want to bog down development with better graphics.  Full graphics support would be interesting (though I actually enjoy the roguelike feel of pseudo-ascii), but they will be a pain to create before most of the required content is hashed out.  That may sound like a cop-out to some people, but remember, normal coding projects sit down and decide what they are going to do before jumping in and doing anything.  Toady has notes, but his answers to long term questions are often "We will cross that bridge when we come to it".  While I think his method is incredibly sloppy, I am not going to argue with results.

There's really no reason a full graphics system shouldn't be dynamically expandable. Instead of defining the tile for a new feature, Toady would define its default tile and assign it a token for individual graphic definitions. It should be a pretty trivial amount of extra work, once the system is in place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on August 03, 2012, 12:58:51 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 02, 2012, 10:19:53 pm

Well the selections of: Peasant, Hero, and Demigod will actually mean a lot more later on.

As for "limitations doesn't make sense in a sandbox game" I have to disagree. Even in Minecraft the game intentionally limits you.

Optional limits, yes. Mandatory limits, no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 03, 2012, 04:52:54 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 01:04:43 am

Unfortunately, Corai, it's planned.

No the description given was not only inaccurate to the version they were talking about

But it was also an option within it, meaning it wasn't manditory.

also

NO they won't be getting rid of Peasant, Hero, and Demigod because in the future Demigod actually refers to a demigod.

Quote

Optional limits, yes. Mandatory limits, no.

Yes... It has manditory limits. I'd think you would have to mod (essentially cheating) the game if you wanted a super start.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 05:06:29 pm

There's creative mode and console commands are now implemented into single player.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 03, 2012, 10:44:17 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 03, 2012, 05:06:29 pm

There's creative mode and console commands are now implemented into single player.

Yes but those arn't the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 04, 2012, 06:23:53 am

-how does leaving tracks incorporate things like different types of underground/soil and surface area of feet?
(what will happen here in the future?)

-do you have any thoughts/plans for things like muddy soil/swampy ground to have effects apart from tracking?
(e.g. slowing movement or even completely sinking in)

edit: what are the effects of weather on tracking?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 04, 2012, 09:18:29 am

Is the tracking skill going to be the one already in the game, or is it going to be changed to be like literacy, so its a skill without a level? I'd prefer it if one could level up in the skill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BullDog on August 04, 2012, 10:34:18 am

There is a new shock image poster by the name of 'Shock'. Please add him to your ignore list by clicking Profile > Modify profile > buddy/ignore list > edit ignore list.
Thank you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on August 04, 2012, 11:33:13 am

Quote from: BullDog on August 04, 2012, 10:34:18 am

There is a new shock image poster by the name of 'Shock'. Please add him to your ignore list by clicking Profile > Modify profile > buddy/ignore list > edit ignore list.
Thank you.

It is not a new one, it is the same as always. I hope Toady reports it to the police or something - this guy is obviously unhealthy
 obsessed with DF and/or Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 04, 2012, 12:10:54 pm

In the last few Dwarf Fortress talks, we've heard about alternate dimensions, and the next set of night creatures. We've also heard a lot about things that used to be in Dwarf Fortress but were taken out before the original release, such as elves animating trees, and animals needing to eat. How much room do you think there will be in the hero arc for adding in the new night creatures? When we get dwarves with ambitions (it seems like there are already goals in place for entities in the game now), I assume we'll have dwarves who want to run their own tavern, or arrange their own furniture, or rob the bank. Does Dwarf Fortress have a means to make abstract structures or cause and effect relationships made by the players identifiable to NPCs? The problem is that you might have a bank vault behind two sets of steel doors controlled by levers and on timers (i.e. the lever does not open the door, but when pulled, it turns on a pump that will flood a tank, and when the tank reaches a certain level, a pressure plate will be triggered, opening the doors, after a certain number of ticks), and the dwarf would need a means to identify the cause-and-effect chain up to and beyond "this lever opens this door".

And this, my friends, is where we get dwarf gangs holding your leverpullers hostage to get out the combination to the bank vaults. We'd also have weapons and armour going missing from the armoury, and probably some kind of security patrol. "Mr Urist, let me introduce you to my atomsmasher. As you can see, we have secured all your prized +Gold Goblets+ and -pig tail fiber socks- underneath the bridge. It would be a shame if something were to happen to them..." Of course, if the same kind of "digging enemies" mechanic were added to dwarf gangs, they would just borrow a no-quality copper pick and dig a tunnel.

For the above to work, dwarves would need a reasonable method for patching up tunnels. They would also need a means for other dwarves to identify and report tunnels for investigation.

I personally think digging is a little too safe. There should really be more dangers (optional, of course) than just breaching the caverns or the HFS. For example, your dwarves might accidentally crack open an ancient tomb from the time before time, and release a lich and its RNG'd defenders. These things should not just be restricted to end-game content - it should be possible to find such an object in the first few layers too. It would also be great to have those HFS-pockets from 40d and 23a added back in, so embarking on the right locations would give you even more ways to ruin your fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 04, 2012, 01:35:38 pm

Will the eventual fae creatures get special tracking stuff? It's fairly common for them to be described as not disturbing vegetation with their passing, and some don't leave tracks at all. Meanwhile in America there are old stories of creatures who have backwards feet and thus leave backwards prints, and the Devil is said to leave goat prints even in the form of a man.

On another note, will stealth (or perhaps some other skill) reduce the tracks left? What about more active forms of tracker-thwarting like doubling back or walking in the river?

And finally, Is tracking information generated in worldgen as well as play? If so, how do they differ? And how abstracted is tracking info generation when the player isn't around to see? I imagine that always counts as army movement and uses that system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 04, 2012, 02:02:55 pm

Quote

old stories of creatures who have backwards feet and thus leave backwards prints

Interestingly enough. Trackers can easily tell when a creature is walking backwards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alu on August 05, 2012, 01:18:50 am

How long will tracking information stay active? Is it Adventure-Mode-Only?
Sounts like something that could slow down everything after some time

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 05, 2012, 07:43:01 am

Quote from: Alu on August 05, 2012, 01:18:50 am

How long will tracking information stay active? Is it Adventure-Mode-Only?
Sounts like something that could slow down everything after some time

Yeah, I'm guessing this is what Toady means by "cycling" data, if the number of tracks is limited then when that limit is full the old ones are automatically overwritten... ??  Is that what the devlog means today?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:04:28 am

Are we going to see any attempt to cut all the useless clutter data? While I enjoy Dwarf Fortress, I don't enjoy waiting about 45 minutes to generate a world because of 600 werebeast rampages or forest fires or whatever. There's a lot of information that seems pointless to record, which seems to bog down performance when pathfinding for a large fortress already eats memory like there's no tomorrow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 05, 2012, 09:06:45 am

Quote from: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:04:28 am

Are we going to see any attempt to cut all the useless clutter data? While I enjoy Dwarf Fortress, I don't enjoy waiting about 45 minutes to generate a world because of 600 werebeast rampages or forest fires or whatever. There's a lot of information that seems pointless to record, which seems to bog down performance when pathfinding for a large fortress already eats memory like there's no tomorrow.

Clutter data? Not sure what you mean. There's an option to cull unimportant hist. figures in the advanced worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:10:01 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 05, 2012, 09:06:45 am

Quote from: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:04:28 am

Are we going to see any attempt to cut all the useless clutter data? While I enjoy Dwarf Fortress, I don't enjoy waiting about 45 minutes to generate a world because of 600 werebeast rampages or forest fires or whatever. There's a lot of information that seems pointless to record, which seems to bog down performance when pathfinding for a large fortress already eats memory like there's no tomorrow.

Clutter data? Not sure what you mean. There's an option to cull unimportant hist. figures in the advanced worldgen.

Things like heartrates and how many times dwarves blink and all the other assorted invisible figures that seem to have no impact whatsoever on the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 05, 2012, 09:21:49 am

There are none of those if you play adventurer and dwarf mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 05, 2012, 10:04:18 am

Quote from: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:04:28 am

Are we going to see any attempt to cut all the useless clutter data? While I enjoy Dwarf Fortress, I don't enjoy waiting about 45 minutes to generate a world because of 600 werebeast rampages or forest fires or whatever. There's a lot of information that seems pointless to record, which seems to bog down performance when pathfinding for a large fortress already eats memory like there's no tomorrow.

Why is 45 minutes to generate a world unreasonable? You only need to do it once (per major update) and you don't have to sit there watching it or anything. Besides, even God took six days to do it.
Personally, I wouldn't mind at all if worldgen expanded to be the sort of thing you would leave overnight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on August 05, 2012, 10:13:51 am

All this talk of tracking everything that moves reminds me of when fluids were tracked around. It created a huge amount of data for this one facet of the simulation, enough to impact the games performance significantly. Do contemporary computers have the resources to record every movement that happens in a DF world so that it may be tracked? Are we going to need terabytes of HD space to accommodate this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on August 05, 2012, 11:19:48 am

Quote from: cephalo on August 05, 2012, 10:13:51 am

All this talk of tracking everything that moves reminds me of when fluids were tracked around. It created a huge amount of data for this one facet of the simulation, enough to impact the games performance significantly. Do contemporary computers have the resources to record every movement that happens in a DF world so that it may be tracked? Are we going to need terabytes of HD space to accommodate this?

I'm pretty sure toady stated that most of this information would be abstracted/put in higher detail dependent upon proximity.
So the locations of squads and armies should be abstracted if they're halfway across the world, I believe. It'll keep a more accurate (read; down to an overworld fast travel level) on squads that are more relevant to you, which naturally means closer to you.
Edit:This is just what I heard mind you, but it'd be the best way to go about it as far as I can see it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on August 05, 2012, 02:28:31 pm

Is it possible to follow tracks through cities?

A bit suggestiony but it seems relevant:
Have you put any future consideration into using dogs or other animals to aid in tracking?

Obviously companion animals aren't in Adventure Mode yet, but it seems like a logical step when they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 05, 2012, 04:19:19 pm

Quote from: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:10:01 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 05, 2012, 09:06:45 am

Quote from: Pabbicus on August 05, 2012, 09:04:28 am

Are we going to see any attempt to cut all the useless clutter data? While I enjoy Dwarf Fortress, I don't enjoy waiting about 45 minutes to generate a world because of 600 werebeast rampages or forest fires or whatever. There's a lot of information that seems pointless to record, which seems to bog down performance when pathfinding for a large fortress already eats memory like there's no tomorrow.

Clutter data? Not sure what you mean. There's an option to cull unimportant hist. figures in the advanced worldgen.

Things like heartrates and how many times dwarves blink and all the other assorted invisible figures that seem to have no impact whatsoever on the game.

I dont think you have clear understand of Dorf Fortress, or at least at this current time able to talk about it without hyperbole.

FPS Death for fort mode isn't largely due misc. simulations that you're hostile too, but due to the number of items its tracking. Which means that under any hardware system eventually it'll succumb to FPS Death.

And World Generation time length doesn't impact fort mode performance. World Gen is very abstracted simulation using simplified systems then whats found in Fort Mode or Adventure Mode.
                                 

Quote from: cephalo on August 05, 2012, 10:13:51 am

All this talk of tracking everything that moves reminds me of when fluids were tracked around. It created a huge amount of data for this one facet of the simulation, enough to impact the games performance significantly. Do contemporary computers have the resources to record every movement that happens in a DF world so that it may be tracked? Are we going to need terabytes of HD space to accommodate this?

I think you'll want to reread the Dev Log. The Tracking Information for Adventure Mode is cycled out on a regular basis.  And I really dont think the Dev Log implies that its recording Tracking Information for every Creature in a World for DF. And we dont know how Tracking Information is stored from World Gen, or if it'll be used there at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 05, 2012, 04:25:29 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on August 05, 2012, 02:28:31 pm

A bit suggestiony but it seems relevant:
Have you put any future consideration into using dogs or other animals to aid in tracking?

Obviously companion animals aren't in Adventure Mode yet, but it seems like a logical step when they are.

Toady specifically mentioned scents as a possibility in the July 30 devlog, so he has at least thought about it for future expansion. As he hasn't mentioned scents for the definite features, they likely won't be in the next version, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 05, 2012, 06:04:11 pm

I think the main issue as far the blood being tracked around, and everything else, was that it never went away and was an infinitely generated thing. So a cut on a hand would leave a trail of blood for over a hundred miles long, instead of stopping after two tiles max, and eventually fading, which would make sense.  You could have a five cm puddle of blood that, by being stepped in, would miraculously accommodate an ocean's worth.

If blood faded - if you want to fluff it out, scabs and flakes - then it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

So my assumption is that vegetation that is flattened or trampled, or otherwise disturbed, would spring back to a 'regular' state after a certain amount of time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: brainfreez on August 05, 2012, 06:29:48 pm

the blood smears are fixed .

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 05, 2012, 07:17:26 pm

Quote from: brainfreez on August 05, 2012, 06:29:48 pm

the blood smears are fixed .

No, they're just disabled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bohandas on August 05, 2012, 07:54:48 pm

One of the recent updates said that all non-flying corporeal creatures would break vegetation as they walk. Does that include elves and other creatures with "GRASSTRAMPLE:0"? And will that tag be modified in the new update?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 05, 2012, 08:32:52 pm

Thats an interesting question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 05, 2012, 11:29:55 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 05, 2012, 08:32:52 pm

Thats an interesting question.

That goes double for elves since in LotR Legolas even walks on top of the snow without leaving a trace.
Having creatures that don't leave a standard trail would definitely be interesting.
Though that may wait until scent becomes an available method of tracking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on August 06, 2012, 12:47:07 am

Elves should leave no trails nor scent in the forest because they're goddamned elves
They should leave trails in non-forest biome, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on August 06, 2012, 06:09:35 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

Indeed, but bearing in mind how DF elves are, they would no doubt go to excruciating lengths to train themselves to be able to walk without hurting the terrain, even if they didn't have the ability naturally. No way would they let their children run free down from their treehouses before they were sure they wouldn't accidentally step on and break twigs, disturb roots or kill any ants etc ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on August 06, 2012, 02:48:39 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on August 06, 2012, 06:09:35 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

Indeed, but bearing in mind how DF elves are, they would no doubt go to excruciating lengths to train themselves to be able to walk without hurting the terrain, even if they didn't have the ability naturally. No way would they let their children run free down from their treehouses before they were sure they wouldn't accidentally step on and break twigs, disturb roots or kill any ants etc ^^

My point exactly

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 03:58:47 pm

Quote from: Objective on August 06, 2012, 02:48:39 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on August 06, 2012, 06:09:35 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

Indeed, but bearing in mind how DF elves are, they would no doubt go to excruciating lengths to train themselves to be able to walk without hurting the terrain, even if they didn't have the ability naturally. No way would they let their children run free down from their treehouses before they were sure they wouldn't accidentally step on and break twigs, disturb roots or kill any ants etc ^^

My point exactly

"For killing that sapling I will eat your corpse." I suppose you have a poiint...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 06, 2012, 10:48:39 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

I mostly brought up LotR because the question put up by Bohandas does get twice as interesting when you consider that elves have precedent for not leaving trails.
I wasn't trying to imply that DF elves had to follow LotR elves' example. To a certain extent, I hope DF elves differ a lot from LotR elves. I think LotR elves can be a bit boring in their over-perfection at time.

Whether DF elves would leave a trail or not seems like a pretty interesting bit of info on the forest dwellers as DF sees them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 07, 2012, 08:11:32 am

Toady generally does a good job of steering elves between established tradition and original uniqueness while avoiding tired cliches and extreme stereotypes for their own sake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on August 07, 2012, 08:21:09 am

Quote from: Objective on August 06, 2012, 12:47:07 am

They should leave trails in non-forest biome, though.

My first image was an elf trekking across a supermarket parking lot.  And I thought, "Trails of what?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 07, 2012, 08:44:49 am

Quote from: Chthonic on August 07, 2012, 08:21:09 am

Quote from: Objective on August 06, 2012, 12:47:07 am

They should leave trails in non-forest biome, though.

My first image was an elf trekking across a supermarket parking lot.  And I thought, "Trails of what?"

Blood. That's what they leave behind on my forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 07, 2012, 08:45:51 am

Grass, obviously.

Imagine a guy in examining some fresh grass grown from between two floor tiles. "Crikey, looks like and elf passed by here not two hours ago"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 07, 2012, 12:48:13 pm

Quote from: Japa on August 07, 2012, 08:45:51 am

Grass, obviously.

Imagine a guy in examining some fresh grass grown from between two floor tiles. "Crikey, looks like and elf passed by here not two hours ago"

"Your search for "Steve Irwin wrestling an elf" returned no [relevant] results."

Awwwwww

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on August 07, 2012, 06:50:11 pm

The spinning manta-ray strikes the Steve Irwin in the upper body, tearing the heart through the x Dingo Leather Vest x!
A major artery in the heart has been torn!
The mata-ray venom is injected into the Steve Irwin!
Steve Irwin looks sick!
Steve Irwin retches!
Steve Irwin vomits!
Steve Irwin retches!
Steve Irwin retches!
Steve Irwin vomits!
Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter has bled to death!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on August 07, 2012, 10:42:36 pm

ugly



...moving on

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mechanoid on August 09, 2012, 12:58:59 am

Quote from: From The Front Page News

DF has been out for six years now. We now have proper bloody footprints to show for it, complete with direction, the kind of shoe if it was a shoe and not a foot, that kind of thing.

That sounded... Like a something to me. :-[ [or maybe its just the mood music i'm listening to...]

Quote

Critters on the ground are a little strange -- it picks the same parts that can pick up spatter from the ground, so there are strange things like cheek prints and turban marks, as if the crawling people really dig in with their whole bodies. Player tracking is at a good enough spot, at least if you want to track yourself. Now we need other people to run around tracking you, and we need additional critters running around in some form on the travel map so that you can find some incidental tracks. That'll include the ambushes that used to abstractly "find" you -- animals, bandits, nearby gob/kob site patrols and night creatures. Those'll all be moving around the world very soon in a more proper way.

So if a body hits the ground there'll be the impression of a body on the ground, even if we move it to hide it? Holy gods this is the best system that could develope into [the best] stealth minigame ever.

How smart do you expect NPCs to become under certain situations, like finding a pool of blood and enough scuff marks on the ground that indicates a fight happened? Will they raise the alarm appropriately if they're competent or putt around oblivious to the nearby danger if they're stupid enough?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 09, 2012, 03:33:46 am

Quote

Critters on the ground are a little strange -- it picks the same parts that can pick up spatter from the ground, so there are strange things like cheek prints and turban marks, as if the crawling people really dig in with their whole bodies.

That is so hilariously Dwarf Fortress. I can see the oddest things coming out of this...

"Hold up, the tracks have changed... It looks like he stopped and dragged his face, on the left side, and his upper right leg, across the ground here!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 09, 2012, 08:37:17 am

Clearly, we are tracking.... QWOP!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 09, 2012, 09:30:27 am

 there is still no release, so i guess its still good to ask about it but since i didnt think about it when it was hot news ill just make it a comunity-question:
 i remember some talk about different movement speeds, which should include running, has there been any official mentioning of stamina?
there is a huge difference between long-distance-walking-endurance and sprint-stamina, we got something like the endurance, since adventurers can get exhausted or tired after walking around all day, i think at least, but what about getting out of breath by other sources than your lungs being damaged? im not sure about long fights making you get out of breath

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 09, 2012, 09:33:31 am

Since stamina is already a thing (you can get tired/over-exerted through fighting too much), I'd say it isn't unreasonable to assume that that system of stamina is part of the new movement system as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 09, 2012, 03:25:35 pm

Quote from: eux0r on August 09, 2012, 09:30:27 am

there is still no release, so i guess its still good to ask about it but since i didnt think about it when it was hot news ill just make it a comunity-question:
 i remember some talk about different movement speeds, which should include running, has there been any official mentioning of stamina?
there is a huge difference between long-distance-walking-endurance and sprint-stamina, we got something like the endurance, since adventurers can get exhausted or tired after walking around all day, i think at least, but what about getting out of breath by other sources than your lungs being damaged? im not sure about long fights making you get out of breath

Apart from Putnam's post, the July 28 dev log also mentions that different movement speeds should have impact on "energy usage", among other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on August 09, 2012, 07:40:08 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 09, 2012, 03:33:46 am

Quote

Critters on the ground are a little strange -- it picks the same parts that can pick up spatter from the ground, so there are strange things like cheek prints and turban marks, as if the crawling people really dig in with their whole bodies.

That is so hilariously Dwarf Fortress. I can see the oddest things coming out of this...

"Hold up, the tracks have changed... It looks like he stopped and dragged his face, on the left side, and his upper right leg, across the ground here!"

Hehe, this just reminded me of the scene in The Princess Bride where the bad guy comes upon the tracks of two duelists sword fighting.  He reads the tracks in very great detail....  aaah, good times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 09, 2012, 08:14:43 pm

Why is it orange?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 09, 2012, 08:25:22 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 09, 2012, 08:14:43 pm

Why is it orange?

Some folks use orange to color things that are questions they would like answered but are likely to be more easily and quickly answered by users, and thus don't need to go to Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 09, 2012, 09:17:26 pm

yupp,
thx for the answers guys, somehow i missed that energy part on that one devlog

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on August 10, 2012, 12:52:27 am

Can tracks be cleaned up? or deliberately stamped over so much as to make interpretation impossible? or interacted with in any way other than observation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 10, 2012, 01:25:18 pm

My first reaction when reading about the new ambush system was "sweet, now the frequency of ambushes will be decreased, or at least believable !".
Then I thought "But some people are bound to say they think it's a useless feature, that it doesn't matter for the player to know where the bandits are from".
And then I thought : now when they ambush you, you can track back to their camps and hideaways... and sweet, sweet loot".

This is looking great.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on August 11, 2012, 12:04:46 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on August 06, 2012, 10:48:39 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 06, 2012, 05:00:31 am

At this point we should point out that LoTR, other standard fantasy elves and DF elves are VERY different creatures.

I mostly brought up LotR because the question put up by Bohandas does get twice as interesting when you consider that elves have precedent for not leaving trails.
I wasn't trying to imply that DF elves had to follow LotR elves' example. To a certain extent, I hope DF elves differ a lot from LotR elves. I think LotR elves can be a bit boring in their over-perfection at time.

Whether DF elves would leave a trail or not seems like a pretty interesting bit of info on the forest dwellers as DF sees them.

Considering LotR elves to be almost angelic and how carnal DF elves are, i think any similarities between the two to be superficial.

DF Elves are cannibals, for shit's sake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on August 11, 2012, 12:57:41 am

Eh. Calling them "cannibals" is a bit of a stretch. They eat people, but only people they've already killed for other reasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 11, 2012, 01:15:29 am

Um... have we ever actually seen elves eating elves?

If not, they're not cannibals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Person on August 11, 2012, 01:24:51 am

If/when boats arrive in game, do you plan to make it possible for traders/hostiles to arrive by boat, if you're by the ocean? Might add something interesting to the game, plus it would let people create a semi-accurate simulation of D-Day. Didn't see anything about this on the dev page, but it might be implied anyway along with ocean travel. On the note of ocean travel, are you going to make it possible for adventurers to pay for a ride, or commandeer the boat if that's their choice perhaps? That would greatly expand the world for adventurers.

Also, any plans to make it possible to remove clothing thoughts/ghosts by modding? Some mods have had slight problems due to those areas being hard coded.

Just dumping some random thoughts. I'm really looking forward to boats, even though they probably won't be in the game for a long time. I'm patient though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 11, 2012, 06:23:28 am

Quote from: Japa on August 11, 2012, 01:15:29 am

Um... have we ever actually seen elves eating elves?

If not, they're not cannibals.

I suppose they would eat elves raised by goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on August 11, 2012, 08:04:00 am

Quote from: G-Flex on August 11, 2012, 12:57:41 am

Eh. Calling them "cannibals" is a bit of a stretch. They eat people, but only people they've already killed for other reasons.

But that kind of rules a lot of cannibals in the real world. It's almost always ritualistic, and they usually eat enemies. Both of these seem to be the case for elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gordogomez on August 11, 2012, 09:47:39 am

from http://dictionary.cambridge.org

cannibal
noun /ˈkæn.ɪ.bəl/ [C]

Definition
a person who eats human flesh, or an animal which eats the flesh of animals of its own type

therefore, elves would only be cannibals if they ate other elves

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 11, 2012, 11:32:24 am

elves are people, but they're not humans. an elf eating another elf would not fit the definition of cannibal, but an elf eating a human would

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 11, 2012, 11:44:55 am

Nonono, It's animals they eat the flesh of other animals of the same type, so elves eating elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on August 11, 2012, 11:50:31 am

Elves eating elves = canibalism
Elves eating humans = anthropophagism

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on August 11, 2012, 02:15:33 pm

Wasn't Cacame's wife murdered and devoured by elves? Or was she not an elf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 11, 2012, 02:32:36 pm

Why does this make me pine for the day that the same races can fight eachother? As in Human Vs. Human

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tps12 on August 11, 2012, 05:42:31 pm

Quote from: Person on August 11, 2012, 01:24:51 am

plus it would let people create a semi-accurate simulation of D-Day

Seems like a weird design goal for a fantasy world simulator...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 11, 2012, 07:15:55 pm

Quote from: tps12 on August 11, 2012, 05:42:31 pm

Quote from: Person on August 11, 2012, 01:24:51 am

plus it would let people create a semi-accurate simulation of D-Day

Seems like a weird design goal for a fantasy world simulator...

Not really, Thats actually how I base how good a political simulater. How many events from the early-to-mid twentieth century can you simulate? Example: Civilization V can simulate the allies of the second world war, giving cities back, giving military help, United efforts to defeat a common foe, treaties, backstabs etc.

Comparitavely, DF seems rather odd. there is no contact between same-race, different countries. And there, similar to that, is no events that take up more then 2 entities. I expect this to change in the near future, relating to the multiple ownership claim thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dagoth Urist on August 11, 2012, 07:50:27 pm

Posting to follow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 11, 2012, 07:59:53 pm

Quote from: Dagoth Urist on August 11, 2012, 07:50:27 pm

Posting to follow.

This is kinda thumbnailed.

You REALLY don't have to do that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 11, 2012, 08:10:19 pm

Well, you do if you want it to show up in your "Show new replies to your posts" tab, which is how I follow most of my threads.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 11, 2012, 09:00:08 pm

Quote from: monk12 on August 11, 2012, 08:10:19 pm

Well, you do if you want it to show up in your "Show new replies to your posts" tab, which is how I follow most of my threads.

Makes sense. Thus it cannot be true! CHAOS REGIME!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on August 11, 2012, 10:13:52 pm

Quote

Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair.

This pretty much makes adventure mode an entirely different game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on August 11, 2012, 11:01:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on August 11, 2012, 10:13:52 pm

Quote

Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair.

This pretty much makes adventure mode an entirely different game.

Where did you get this quote? I'm interested

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 11, 2012, 11:05:28 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Lots of critters moving on the map now as proper groups rather than ambush chances, leaving a mess of signs that you can find. The night creatures and nocturnal natural predators come out when it gets dark and wander around their dens, and you can follow them back. Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair. The camps and evil sites also have patrols now. Next up, the bad groups'll be bothering you a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 11, 2012, 11:07:26 pm

Quote from: Auning on August 11, 2012, 11:01:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on August 11, 2012, 10:13:52 pm

Quote

Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair.

This pretty much makes adventure mode an entirely different game.

Where did you get this quote? I'm interested

When the Dev Log updates, occasionally you'll need to refresh it several times in succession to see the new entry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on August 11, 2012, 11:26:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 11, 2012, 11:07:26 pm

Quote from: Auning on August 11, 2012, 11:01:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on August 11, 2012, 10:13:52 pm

Quote

Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair.

This pretty much makes adventure mode an entirely different game.

Where did you get this quote? I'm interested

When the Dev Log updates, occasionally you'll need to refresh it several times in succession to see the new entry.

RSS of the DevLog FTW!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 11, 2012, 11:37:37 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on August 11, 2012, 11:26:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 11, 2012, 11:07:26 pm

Quote from: Auning on August 11, 2012, 11:01:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on August 11, 2012, 10:13:52 pm

Quote

Townspeople will no longer no the exact locations of every monster's lair.

This pretty much makes adventure mode an entirely different game.

Where did you get this quote? I'm interested

When the Dev Log updates, occasionally you'll need to refresh it several times in succession to see the new entry.

RSS of the DevLog FTW!

That's actually kinda slow. There was a post in here about the new devlog before it appeared on my feed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on August 11, 2012, 11:58:48 pm

Ahh, I'll need to be more cautious in the future to not miss it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 12, 2012, 05:30:57 am

So... uh, when do you think he's going to get around to simulating molecular physics?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: orius on August 12, 2012, 05:44:51 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 12, 2012, 05:30:57 am

So... uh, when do you think he's going to get around to simulating molecular physics?

Soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on August 12, 2012, 06:05:47 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on August 12, 2012, 05:30:57 am

So... uh, when do you think he's going to get around to simulating molecular physics?

It already does; it's just dummied out until modern hardware catches up  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 12, 2012, 01:34:53 pm

Do bogeymen still appear the old way, random and untrackable? Considering their nature, it would be kind of cool if they did. But I don't know if they're included in "night creatures"; they're not usually referred to as such but I guess they could be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 12, 2012, 01:42:03 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on August 12, 2012, 01:34:53 pm

Do bogeymen still appear the old way, random and untrackable? Considering their nature, it would be kind of cool if they did. But I don't know if they're included in "night creatures"; they're not usually referred to as such but I guess they could be.

I just ignore the "Night Creature" designation.

For the moment it is a meaningless designation on part with "Monster" and "Beast"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on August 12, 2012, 09:38:24 pm

Technically, bogeymen are night creatures, but like Neo said, there isn't really anything tying together the different kinds of night creatures at the moment that differentiates them as a whole from non-night creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on August 13, 2012, 05:43:23 am

They're mostly randomly generated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 13, 2012, 07:00:46 am

Toady, when you mentionned "lots of critters moving around", does it involve wolf packs ? Are they just packs roaming aimlessly, or do they have some sort of territory, or a central place where cubs are born ?
I could envision a trapper adventurer job, where you track wolves back to their main "camp" to get wolf cubs that you could raise as a pet...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 13, 2012, 03:36:31 pm

Quote from: Sizik on August 13, 2012, 05:43:23 am

They're mostly randomly generated.

Sorta. There is an intention to put them through more generation. Though remember one Staple night creature is always the same it just depends on its creation.

I think what will happen in the future to create the differences between night creatures and ordinary monsters is simply how the game treats them. Holy water for example don't harm a dragon but it may kill a zombie, give a vampire a rash, and scare off a werewolf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on August 13, 2012, 04:03:11 pm

We know that we will be able to run into and track bandits, patrols, creatures and night creatures, but what else will be included in this? What about demons and other notable beasts that "Began wandering X area"? Will only goblins be assaulting cities and towns, or will demons, megabeasts, and titans be laying siege to them/harassing them? Will they all be included in the initial release?

If you have a character with 4 arms, how would dual wielding bows work with the new combat? Would you be able to fire both at the same time? What would the hit penalty be like/how would it be calculated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 13, 2012, 04:26:14 pm

What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 13, 2012, 04:27:33 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 13, 2012, 04:26:14 pm

What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

My guess is the sheer amount of work that is required.

Heck the original Dark Towers weren't even used for anything other then for Goblins to stand around in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 13, 2012, 04:40:47 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 13, 2012, 04:26:14 pm

What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

A lot.

ToadyOne doesnt want to reintroduce those sites without them being as well developed as human sites have become. If I recall correctly, he wants Dorf Sites to be similar to the type of sites that players create which offers its own hurdles (as well designing hill dorf abodes from scratch). And while I'm sure that that procedural generation code for human sites can be applicable for Dorf Sites, but still need a slew of new infrastructure. I can also see Dorf Sites requiring the Traps Overhaul to happen too.

Elf Sites are probably bit more involved because it necessitate multi tile trees. But has a similar brunt of work needed for the Dorf Sites.

I dont recall anything said about Dark Towers though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 14, 2012, 04:21:51 am

Quote from: Dae on August 13, 2012, 07:00:46 am

Toady, when you mentionned "lots of critters moving around", does it involve wolf packs ? Are they just packs roaming aimlessly, or do they have some sort of territory, or a central place where cubs are born ?
I could envision a trapper adventurer job, where you track wolves back to their main "camp" to get wolf cubs that you could raise as a pet...

Well, I'm quite certain that wolf packs are among the critters moving around, as they exist. Presumably they'll just roam, since right now only the named predators have dens.

Quote from: Rockphed on August 13, 2012, 04:26:14 pm

What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

As other people have said, the work involved. However, Toady has already stated that he hopes to readd these sites into the game sometime during the current release cycle, rather than during the "army arc work" as was originally the plan when we had the explicit short-term caravan arc release list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on August 14, 2012, 05:52:08 am

I wonder why he did not simply temporarily use human templates for other race sites - it should not be much more work than dummying them out and much better than current void.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 14, 2012, 06:18:37 am

Quote from: zwei on August 14, 2012, 05:52:08 am

I wonder why he did not simply temporarily use human templates for other race sites - it should not be much more work than dummying them out and much better than current void.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say it was for two reasons: First is that Dorf and Elf Sites may act fundamentally different then human sites so simply using human sites would break the Elf and Dort Brain trying to use them. (As presumably, they're still thinking under the old rules for the old sites.) And rewriting these Critter Brains may not be worth the time sink. And they probably would still require some sorta minor changes anyway. For dorf sites in particular, they would need to include booze favoritism over using water, else wise having dorfs sober to death.
So even using Human Sites for Elves of Dorfs probably is a none trivial tasks. While simpler then writing and figuring out those two new sites from scratch, its still a negative expenses of man hours.

The other reason, I would guess is because the game right now has a hard time conveying information to the player. It generally provides to much information, or doesn't provide contextual information to explain why something isn't working. So, by having all races use the same template for cities, could make the game harder to navigate and may even make the game seem like it has less content then it does. By adding more of the same, it taking away actual content away from the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 14, 2012, 06:51:12 am

I rather suspect that he simply didn't want to replace a placeholder with another, worse-fitting placeholder.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: noname on August 14, 2012, 07:14:31 am

I've a question...Hope I'm on the right place here.

Is it possible for monsters and creatures to destroy walls and buildings?

Otherwise it seems a bit unrealistic if everything is undestroyable. But it's a lot easier to create a save fortress. What do you think about it?

Other question. When there is a siege, shouldn't they be able to climb up walls or swim through rivers, or break up doors or closed bridges with tools? Of course there should still be a chance for the fortress to be build save. Maybe building with strong materials.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 14, 2012, 07:20:58 am

Monsters destroying walls and buildings has always been a matter of when, not if.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 14, 2012, 07:22:32 am

Certain structures can be destroyed by creatures with [BUILDING_DESTROYER] tag.  And there are ways of preventing them access to them destroying said objects while still maintaining their functionality.

Amphibious/aquatic already will use water ways to get to you.  If you have a wall over a river, they may swim under it.

Seige mechanics will be addressed in future Army Arc type development, where questions such as scaling walls and undermining fortifications will be brought into play.

Also, this question could have been found in the Game Play or Fort Mode sections.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: noname on August 14, 2012, 08:28:52 am

Thank you very much. :) ..I read the future siege implementation intentions - great :).

It seems as if I have discovered maybe less then 10% of the hole games features...I mostly all the time keep searching for the perfect embark spot, rather than playing. Does anybody know a spot with a volcano and a river which naturally forms a nice first defence wall?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gimli on August 14, 2012, 07:20:00 pm

Quote from: Japa on August 14, 2012, 07:20:58 am

Monsters destroying walls and buildings has always been a matter of when, not if.

The sooner, the better! ;) [Same is true about diggers/tunnelers]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on August 14, 2012, 10:13:23 pm

So now vampires sense creatures with blood at a distance.  Which is awesome, but vampirism seems to be increasingly less of a curse and more of an awesome thing that has a minorish cost.  Maybe that will change when feeding on people has more negative consequences (like being hunted down).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 14, 2012, 10:15:37 pm

hasn't vampire always been something awesome with a minor cost in all games?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 14, 2012, 10:34:33 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on August 14, 2012, 10:13:23 pm

So now vampires sense creatures with blood at a distance.  Which is awesome, but vampirism seems to be increasingly less of a curse and more of an awesome thing that has a minorish cost.  Maybe that will change when feeding on people has more negative consequences (like being hunted down).

You mean like having small groups of people who are mad at you track you through the wilderness and attack you when you least expect it?  Odd how that is going to be possible in the upcoming version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on August 14, 2012, 10:46:01 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 14, 2012, 10:34:33 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on August 14, 2012, 10:13:23 pm

So now vampires sense creatures with blood at a distance.  Which is awesome, but vampirism seems to be increasingly less of a curse and more of an awesome thing that has a minorish cost.  Maybe that will change when feeding on people has more negative consequences (like being hunted down).

You mean like having small groups of people who are mad at you track you through the wilderness and attack you when you least expect it?  Odd how that is going to be possible in the upcoming version.

Haha. I hope it's possible to anger a civ or two enough to get armies hunting you down, or individual assassins. May make for some interesting experiences...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on August 14, 2012, 11:30:04 pm

Are technological advances based on history length an idea? For example, picks and axes after year 1, crossbows after year 20, metals able to be worked after different times, and mechanisms and minecarts and stuff post~70-ish? Just an idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 14, 2012, 11:40:06 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on August 14, 2012, 11:30:04 pm

Are technological advances based on history length an idea? For example, picks and axes after year 1, crossbows after year 20, metals able to be worked after different times, and mechanisms and minecarts and stuff post~70-ish? Just an idea.

Yes, having tech tree is defiantly an idea.

And this thread isn't for suggestions. There an entire sub forum for suggestions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on August 15, 2012, 12:07:20 am

Maybe this already has been posted, or at least there was a pretty similar question regarding night creatures, but,
Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 12:10:08 am

Quote from: Valtam on August 15, 2012, 12:07:20 am

Maybe this already has been posted, or at least there was a pretty similar question regarding night creatures, but,
Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

So your question is will these movements after world gen only apply to Adventure Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on August 15, 2012, 02:30:11 am

Cool! New interactions.

Do creatures with these new interactions use them for tracking?

Could a blind creature use this "sense blood"  smell sense to hunt, therefore making the "Extravision" tag redundant?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on August 15, 2012, 02:55:40 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 12:10:08 am

Quote from: Valtam on August 15, 2012, 12:07:20 am

Maybe this already has been posted, or at least there was a pretty similar question regarding night creatures, but,
Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

So your question is will these movements after world gen only apply to Adventure Mode?

Looks like it, but his question seems to center more on whether groups or creatures released through your fortress will transfer over to adventure mode. Like those draltha herds that bumrush right through your entire fortress to get themselves outside...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 03:10:48 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on August 15, 2012, 02:55:40 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 12:10:08 am

Quote from: Valtam on August 15, 2012, 12:07:20 am

Maybe this already has been posted, or at least there was a pretty similar question regarding night creatures, but,
Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

So your question is will these movements after world gen only apply to Adventure Mode?

Looks like it, but his question seems to center more on whether groups or creatures released through your fortress will transfer over to adventure mode. Like those draltha herds that bumrush right through your entire fortress to get themselves outside...

Well, alright. And the answer, is yes. Your Dwarf Fortress is meant to eventually be a potentially real force for change in the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 15, 2012, 05:04:06 am

That's purely cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 15, 2012, 06:01:00 am

So now groups can track you down and attack you, which is great. But do groups specifically attack the player or other groups as well ? Will merchant caravans be bothered by night creatures, wolf packs and bandit raids in the next release ?
Also, you spoke of real ambushes but are they now real ambushes, i.e. bandits not really into tracking people but setting camp around a portion of a much used road to demand a toll or just attack everyone going through, effectively claiming a portion of that road as an aggressive force ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 06:31:58 am

Quote from: Dae on August 15, 2012, 06:01:00 am

So now groups can track you down and attack you, which is great. But do groups specifically attack the player or other groups as well ? Will merchant caravans be bothered by night creatures, wolf packs and bandit raids in the next release ?

Yea, the world is meant to be moving around you, independently and respecting your actions. So if you do something that merits you being, tracked, then you'll be tracked. There several items on the dev expunging on players being tracked down and captured all that jazz. And everyone else is doing their own things interacting with each other. So caravan should be able to be attacked by night creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on August 15, 2012, 07:21:26 am

When will Ecologys become more fleshed out, particularly with certain life dominating an area? Let's take the example of Ungoliants children in the hobbit. They dominated that forest, and were a major threat, but you don't see such equivalents of dominant animals in dwarf fortress. Aside from that, the effects of foreign and magical species into an ecosystem, the resulting famine, plenty, or death and trapped abandonment upon nearby civilizations, even development of certain animals into intelligent species with the right magical stimuli. More individual animals would also be great, with runts of the litter and outcasts as well as pack hierarchy, something which should definitely be in when you can tame creatures in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on August 15, 2012, 07:31:07 am

Now that tracking is in, as well as a smell sense, I think we aren't far of  a simulated ecology, with herders (not owned by the player) grazing, predators hunting, scavengers looking for carrion, and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 15, 2012, 07:40:13 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 06:31:58 am

Quote from: Dae on August 15, 2012, 06:01:00 am

So now groups can track you down and attack you, which is great. But do groups specifically attack the player or other groups as well ? Will merchant caravans be bothered by night creatures, wolf packs and bandit raids in the next release ?

Yea, the world is meant to be moving around you, independently and respecting your actions. So if you do something that merits you being, tracked, then you'll be tracked. There several items on the dev expunging on players being tracked down and captured all that jazz. And everyone else is doing their own things interacting with each other. So caravan should be able to be attacked by night creatures.

Yes, I know you are being tracked. It was clearly stated in the dev log. My question is, has some attention been given SPECIFICALLY to ambushes happening to other moving groups than yours ? And specifically now, as opposed to "at some point in the future" ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 15, 2012, 12:11:10 pm

Sensing arbitrary creature classes? Fuck yeah toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: brainfreez on August 15, 2012, 01:00:03 pm

now that critters are moving around , could it be like if two civilizations are in war , you can track the civilization armies and fight them before they reach the other civilization ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 15, 2012, 01:14:35 pm

Quote from: brainfreez on August 15, 2012, 01:00:03 pm

now that critters are moving around , could it be like if two civilizations are in war , you can track the civilization armies and fight them before they reach the other civilization ?

That's the plan yeah, but Toady has said nothing so far about implementing warfare while you play. For the moment it's the simple, basic stuff (monsters, bandits, goblin attacks...) Wait, goblin attack probably fall in what you're referring to. I guess you COULD hear about a goblin raid from a survivor, get there after they've left and track them before they reach another village.

Are goblin camps in raided sites dismantled after a while ? If yes, how long ? If no, do all goblins stay there or do they leave an occupation force ?
Do goblins take child prisonners from raids (I have a feeling I already asked this one) ?
What is the criteria for goblins to attack a site ? Do they have to be at war with it (since they're conveniently at war with everone) ? Or is declaring war after world-gen already in ?

Quote from: Putnam on August 15, 2012, 12:11:10 pm

Sensing arbitrary creature classes? Fuck yeah toady!

I'm also surprised no modder has already jumped in with lots of questions. I'll ask mine :
What is the syntax for that creature-class sense in the raws ? Are the symbol and color used modifiable ? Is that symbol displayed even when you fully see the unit ? Is it toggleable ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tps12 on August 15, 2012, 07:21:36 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 06:31:58 am

There several items on the dev expunging on players being tracked down and captured all that jazz.

I think you mean "expurgating."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G-Flex on August 16, 2012, 04:28:28 am

Quote from: tps12 on August 15, 2012, 07:21:36 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 06:31:58 am

There several items on the dev expunging on players being tracked down and captured all that jazz.

I think you mean "expurgating."

He's allowed to type creatively, because he captured all the jazz.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 16, 2012, 07:54:15 am

The spinning =<*Free Form Jazz*>= strikes the Poster in all the senses, ya' dig, utterly blowing the mind!
The Status Quo has been struck down!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 16, 2012, 11:54:54 am

The wait is killing me. The entire forum holds its breath as Toady One is slowly building the Wall of Text.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on August 16, 2012, 12:53:50 pm

Quote from: tps12 on August 15, 2012, 07:21:36 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 15, 2012, 06:31:58 am

There several items on the dev expunging on players being tracked down and captured all that jazz.

I think you mean "expurgating."

He could have also meant "expounding", a word I prefer to 'expurgating' because it sounds a little less like something an axe wound does.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDJ17 on August 16, 2012, 01:16:01 pm

Quote from: Mr S on August 16, 2012, 07:54:15 am

The spinning =<*Free Form Jazz*>= strikes the Poster in all the senses, ya' dig, utterly blowing the mind!
The Status Quo has been struck down!

I'm gonna sig this little piece of magic :')

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on August 16, 2012, 01:50:05 pm

it is lovely, no?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on August 16, 2012, 04:07:19 pm

With the simulation aspects of the game, like economy, trade, warfare etc currently being fleshed out, are there any plans on simulating ecological systems?

Say you have a certain density of cave moss in an area, some dralthas and some GCS's. Ecologic simulation basically refers to Draltha population rising and cave moss density declining, slowly leading to a Malthusian catastrophy (or at least a slow decline in Draltha population), while GCS's and Dralthas have a similar relationship. Would probably need information on food chains, lifespans and reproduction rates.

Hmmmm... Let's see if NW_Kohaku has made a suggestion on this :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 16, 2012, 05:22:56 pm

With the tracking in will it be possible for in-game caravans to be tracked by bandits? If so, does that mean we might get a caravan in fortress mode followed by a wave of bandits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on August 16, 2012, 08:56:45 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on August 16, 2012, 05:22:56 pm

With the tracking in will it be possible for in-game caravans to be tracked by bandits? If so, does that mean we might get a caravan in fortress mode followed by a wave of bandits?

If the entity/critter world map abstraction that is going to rule their movement is also applied to caravans, then I'm unable to see why this chance of getting unsuspected bandits could not happen. However, if human bandit entities are considered neutral (or currently without an actual relationship) then they should have some sort of flag that allows them to pursuit caravans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 17, 2012, 08:07:18 am

I could also see the caravan guards skirmishing with the bandits enroute.  That's what the caravan guards are there for, by design.  It's assumed (however erroneously) that your trade depot is supposed to be safe and secure.

Depending on how well this works, the number of caravan guards may wind up being tweaked.  More guards needed based on savagery of a given region, leading to price inflation?

Also, depending upon the tenacity of the bandit gangs, the skirmishes may just be a hit and run, or the stragglers may follow all the way to your Fort.

This could also introduce a demand for medical care by the caravan personell upon arrival to your Fort (an interesting idea).  Say Human Caravan Guard Tivish has a broken ankle after bravely fending off a raiding party while en route.  He may have to spend the season that the traders are on site in your hospital seeking treatment before departing with the caravan (or afterwards, depending upon severity).  This opens up a can 'o worms as far as multiple factions interacting within your Fort in more than just benign or hostile ways.

Deep, man, deep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on August 17, 2012, 08:16:27 am

Quote from: Mr S on August 17, 2012, 08:07:18 am

This could also introduce a demand for medical care by the caravan personell upon arrival to your Fort (an interesting idea).

I, too, look forward to the day when I can implement death panels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 17, 2012, 08:22:28 am

Which would probably still be more kind than the sort of arbitrary amputations I'd be expecting Dwarf Doctors to administer to battlefield injuries.

BTW, is amputation possible currently?  (As a medical procedure, not the usual sort of workplace shenanigans.)  I mean if that Smashed Open finger is badly infected with gangrene, will they just take the blardy thing off?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on August 17, 2012, 09:57:33 am

I don't think they amputate, no. At least, I've never seen it happen, despite a lot of infected, smashed and broken limbs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 17, 2012, 02:52:20 pm

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 17, 2012, 03:10:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on August 17, 2012, 02:52:20 pm

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads

Simultaneausly, It would also open up the possibility of dwarves made entirely of prosthetics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GoombaGeek on August 17, 2012, 03:11:54 pm

3000th reply!

Okay, that was dumb.

I'd like to see ceramic replacement organs, though. "Make clay Replacement stomach"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on August 17, 2012, 03:14:16 pm

that sounds..... like pure win. 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on August 17, 2012, 03:45:04 pm

Quote from: misko27 on August 17, 2012, 03:10:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on August 17, 2012, 02:52:20 pm

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads

Simultaneausly, It would also open up the possibility of dwarves made entirely of prosthetics.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 17, 2012, 03:59:36 pm

Quote from: jellsprout on August 17, 2012, 03:45:04 pm

Quote from: misko27 on August 17, 2012, 03:10:28 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on August 17, 2012, 02:52:20 pm

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads

Simultaneausly, It would also open up the possibility of dwarves made entirely of prosthetics.

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster."

"Dwarfier"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on August 17, 2012, 05:29:33 pm

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GoombaGeek on August 17, 2012, 05:53:07 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on August 17, 2012, 05:29:33 pm

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.

I was pressed for time before someone else stole my glorious 3000th reply. And I think someone shattering if you hit them hard enough is pretty funny :P but yeah, unrealistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 17, 2012, 08:56:30 pm

it's clay for feet and tin for heads

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on August 17, 2012, 09:34:10 pm

Add some copper when forging and it's still as traditional but 20 times as strong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 17, 2012, 10:35:24 pm

Quote from: Chthonic on August 17, 2012, 05:29:33 pm

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.

Nick Chopper FTW, right?[/obscure reference]

I imagine dwarven surgeons with the ability to remove limbs would be quite terrifying.

Anyone else surprised at how different Adventure Mode is going to be in the next version.
I thought that the new travel map we got a couple versions ago and the new cities would make the game vastly different.
But this is a different beast altogether.

I wonder though. With the groups forming on the travel map,
I wonder if mummies and their raised armies will become groups on the map or if they will just go back to bed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDJ17 on August 17, 2012, 10:50:12 pm

Wouldn't they stay and protect their treasure? Or has the treasure not been added yet?

I don't play much adventure mode btw :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 18, 2012, 01:05:14 am

There's treasure alright.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:05 am

Thanks to Knight Otu, MrWiggles, Rockphed, Neonivek, Cruxador, Footkerchief and Putnam for answering some of the questions not included below, as well as anybody I missed.

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Quote from: tfaal

How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
     *Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?
     *How will you deal with the brain-punch problem? (Lower punch force? Higher skull strength?)
     *Will occasionally lethal punches still be possible?
     *How will this affect blunt weapons like maces and warhammers?

Quote from: iceball3

Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?

Hitpoints is not really the correct word, since computers are all numbers and there isn't going to be some number that kills you.  Bruises are already calculated using a few numbers for each wound on a body part's tissue, their severity and area and so on, and that can already cause some trouble for people and their functions.  It's just not good enough.  There'll just be a further reckoning with the systems that have been broken for a while, and everything's still on the table.  I don't think I can fix the skull properly without adding a new parameter to body parts to further account for their geometry, but that might be a fine thing to do.  Punches by very skilled, strong people should still sometimes cause death, since that happens in reality.  I'm not sure how it'll affect blunt weapons, but the goal is to leave them better than I found them.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Since goblin armies moving across the map to attack will be tracked as a replacement for a goblin army just popping up on your doorstep, is this going to scrap the grace period that you have with the goblins for the first year and a half or so? I would imagine that if you're halfway between a goblin fortress and the Mountainhome it is attacking, you'd be attacked even if you were a very young fortress.

I guess I'd tend toward let the dice roll on a player that wanted to plop their fort right down in goblin territory, but it would be easy to preserve the grace period at the same time.

Quote from: DarthBoogalo

Will units be able to block with weapons rather then attack by the next release? And will two units be able to get into a deadlock with their weapons, struggling to either get clear of the attacker or get a strike in himself?
On the note of cool duel-y things like that, would a hero be able to march into a bandit camp and challenge the leader to a one-on-one battle? If the bandits don't just shoot the hero down first anyway.

Do you mean in addition to the parrying they already do?  A defensive stance?  There aren't any deadlocks though we've floated that in the past.  We'll have to see where the reaction moments go.  I haven't done anything with duels.

Quote from: Heph

Will there be claims that dont interfere with each other? Say a Political claim on a city by a warlord and a religious claim by on or another religion? Will factions engage in Site-trades where it is viable say as reparation after ending a long-term war?

Yeah, not all claims interfere -- the claims have lots of parameters, and that's only going to get more interesting.  I haven't thought about any higher order diplomacy yet.  Agreeing on territory is certainly a reasonable thing.

Quote from: MoonLightBird

If I attack someone in town with a non-lethal attack, would the town try to subdue me, or would they just kill me like they do now?

It'll start as a nice non-lethal scuffle.  At least until the animals get involved.  That'll probably turn it into lethal combat until people are more reasonable and animals are more combat-averse.

Quote from: peskyninja

Do you have any plans to add more complex and advanced search options to the site finder? Like searching for an specific kind of ore or stone.

I don't have any specific plans for it.  That information doesn't appear on the readout, and I've always been ambivalent about the amount of information you should be given, as a default, but it wouldn't bother me if there was some sort of world gen setting for more specific readouts.

Quote from: monk12

Does this mean that, in Fort mode, your civilization (or others) could be wiped out during play? Presumably this would affect caravans and such as well.

Does this also apply to megabeast attacks? Which, in particularly crazy worlds, could lead to every civilization being wiped out in play.

Yeah, this'll be a danger, although your parent civ would have to be reasonably pathetic to lose its best fortresses over a few years.  But yeah, especially in megabeast heavy modded worlds, when we get the megabeasts moving around, things could get very bad.  I still haven't activated megabeasts yet, precisely because they need to have some controls.

Quote from: DavionFuxa

Would our character be able to mix different types of attacks together? I would assume we can bash a Goblin in the Head with the Shield while Hacking the Left Lower Leg off with the Battle Axe; but could we also throw the Battle Axe while attacking with the Shield, or try a Wrestling Move with our Leg while doing an Attack?

I still haven't settled on specifically what penalties there should be, but you will be able to do different sorts of actions all at once, with whatever objects, wrestling, etc.

Quote from: Guylock

- Will it be possible for a dead civilization to rebuild it's self aka if a race or kingdom went extinct and you make a adventurer and retire, is it possible to make them become an actual NPC peasant or sum ranked noble (like a king) that will rule over and give orders to the people so they can either rebuild or make a new civilization? (this kind of concept would work well if you gen a world with no civs, great for a Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for a player adventurer to be able to retire anywhere? (tied to the second question which relates to the Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for if say a Hord of demons from underworld or a Forgotten beast were to break free and slaughter your fort; be able to roam the world freely and attack or destroy or take over civs?

I don't understand the first one...  the adventurer rules over the extinct people and they rebuild?

You mean like retiring in the wilderness?  I'm not sure I like just letting you live if you are in a really bad spot.

Any historical monsters would still exist in the fort, and that will mean more and more now.  They won't be inspired to wander around the wilderness outside the fort until the regular megabeasts get their brain upgrade.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

During play, how often will the game update to account for events occuring in the world?

Dwarf Mode is somewhat removed from the world, so I guess that could be handled seasonally, but in Adventure Mode a significant change in the area you are in might be jarring.

It is a constant process, pretty much, rather than one giant periodic update, and people either do stuff away from the locally loaded area, or, in some cases, they actually perform them step by step in the local area.  When towns are destroyed, for instance, groups of invaders run around the travel level map hitting blocks at a time (and they don't know how to do it locally yet), and it doesn't happen suddenly but can take them some in-game hours to finish.

Quote from: darklord92

Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?

There might be incidental changes when the head is changed, but the use of a hammer is still lethal, and it is not their role to hold back.

Quote from: Greendogo

Toady:
1) Will we ever get to see families fleshed out more, such as humans creating noble Houses.

2) If megabeast AI is improved, will we ever get to see things like Giants herding/riding Mammoths and Elephants, or Cyclops herding sheep and cattle (ala the Odyssey)?

The succession stuff which'll go in this time is going to highlight families more, I imagine.

I'm not sure how exactly our megabeast antics will manifest themselves.

Quote from: Comatose

In the DF Talk, you were discussing legacys, both for Adventure and Fortress mode.
Regarding Adventure mode, you wanted to give more options to leave a creative/constructive legacy behind. Many of the ideas that the Podcast was throwing around were reliant on the current "activating worldgen in gameplay" that you are currently programming.

Where are constructive Adventurer tasks on your list of priorities?

I imagine positive adventurer actions as things like site creation (Houses, Camps, Shops), and leading adventure mode entities (bandit groups, roving bands of monster hunters, paladins of a god, etc.)

With adventurer entites becoming an increacing possibility;
Will there be more in-depth NPC interactions and conversations?

During the podcast, you also mentioned more interesting seiges and raids from gobbos.
In long, protracted seiges can we expect to see goblins building shelters, and receiving food and materials from their point of origin?

They are on the main list but I don't have a timeline.  I imagine the possibilities with NPCs are just going to slowly increase over time.  Goblins don't need food, but I'm still hoping to do supply lines in general, since they control so much about tactical decision making.

Quote from: Shinotsa

Will the system of large worldgen battles being concluded as a series of one on one duels be touched upon this update? If not, do you see it as being necessary in this set of world persistence updates, or will it wait until external military actions by the player are possible?

I haven't changed it, and I don't think it is necessary for this time.  As long as we leave world gen with the world intact we are good for this time.

Quote from: hermes

Re: The June 15th devlog, this entry seems to indicate that at least in the heat of battle, personal qualities, motivations and emotional reactions are going to have more of an effect.  Now that you're tackling group movements in more detail and at all scales, will these get the same treatment as you go along, or will you add them in at a later date?

I'm not sure what you mean -- the decisions of the group leaders?  Group movements during the heat of battle?  It's still kind of everybody for themselves once combat finally strikes.

Quote from: Chagen46

Toady, when you can send your armies out and watch them, can you also manage the fort at the same time or can you only do one thing (either watch the battle or manage the fort) at a time?

It is likely the battles will need to be resolved in some sort of frozen time before you return to your fort.  It might be possible to have both areas loaded simultaneously, but I imagine that would both be slow and a mess of bugs.

Quote from: Techhead

Given the Gods' more active state in recent releases (with curses and such), what are your plans for adventurers concerning conversations with their deity of choice? Even if it is something as simple as an occasional "Leave me alone, mortal, I have more urgent matters to attend to."

I have no idea what'll end up happening.  Most of the time they don't seem to talk to anybody, and if we follow the world gen example, it'll just be to say something mean before they turn you into a night creature.

Quote from: Greiger

Does two handedness of a crossbow(or any ranged weapon) have any effect on the rolls when being fired, like it does with melee weapons?  It only matters for mods since vanilla crossbows are apperantly always used as one handed weapons, but when I tried to ?science? it myself my results came up really inconclusive.

Yeah, although the two-handed stuff is unsatisfactory as we all know...  But the code I'm looking at says that if the ranged weapon is two-handed for the body size of the wielder, and they experience a "two handed failure" (by not having a free grasp on top of the main grasp holding the weapon), then the hit roll is halved.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

There are pre- and post-strike time periods.  I haven't altered snakes yet, but that's the sort of thing we'll be able to do.  A snake could be allowed to strike within 2 clicks for example, but take 10 or more to recover, or whatever makes sense.

Quote from: Japa

Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?

Whether or not invaders can dig is one of the big topics of conversation that comes up.  I lean toward having them be able to do it, since sieges are technically pointless without that ability, with the option to turn it off for people that want to do what they want.

Quote from: Vherid

Will we be able to adorn our forts with bodies impaled on spikes, etc?

I haven't changed anything there.

Quote from: Spish

Will we ever be able to arrest tantruming dwarves again? Personally, I don't like seeing civilians go unpunished for crippling craftsdwarves and destroying furniture.

Are those crimes not reported by witnesses?  I don't remember where that is at.  The intention is not to decriminalize those acts, in any case.

Quote from: Auning

How do the new attack phases effect the analysis of how square/easy the hit will be, etc., since circumstances may change in the time between the execution of the strike and the following through of it? I.E; You aim an attack at a goblin's lower body and it is shown to be very square. This may change to just square, or maybe even a direct hit opportunity by the time the strike lands.

When will the multiple layer thick trees be added? I recall you mentioning this as it may be required for elven sites (if I my memory is correct). Will this be applied to other things, such as all trees? Will trees be made to extend over one z level?

The squareness hasn't been changed at this point.  You get the shot you ask for if it isn't deflected entirely.  I think it might be too confusing if that information were rendered meaningless all the time.

No idea when the trees are going in.  Priority increases as we want the elf sites.

Quote from: Aerval

When Goblins or anybody else attack a town, will normal peasants start locking their doors and/or even built barricades to stop the goblins from plunder their part of the city? Especially locked doors would interest me, since you can currently go in every house as you want.

It's not something that happens right now.  It's reasonable for people to protect their lives and stuff, I just haven't gotten started on that kind of thing.

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Quote from: kaypy

Do tents have any differentiating features or are they just something like cloth-block hovels at this stage?

Quote from: Heph

How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Do tents provide protection from bogeymen at night?

They are pretty much cloth-block hovels, but they are displayed differently.  I haven't embarked on having some kind of giant "tent" item that can turn into many tiles, since I'd need to figure out a construction tile rewrite first.  It doesn't store them as a physical building, but they do get a zone.  The current ones can be quite large for the leader.  I haven't added cloth walls (curtains?) to dwarf mode.

Tents count as inside, unless I screwed up.

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Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will we have armies "just passing through" our fortress in the coming release?

Quote from: dhokarena56

Are refugees going to show up at our fortress demanding shelter if there are wars in the vicinity?

These things will start happening when we get to taverns, since I have to tackles some multi-racial fort issues before stuff'll work right.  At least that's the current idea.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Will we see the armies on the travel map?

If you can see them, yeah.  Right now you can see everything, but I'm going to hide some of the smaller groups, especially when they aren't nearby or in the open.  The "in the open" part might be a little too messy to take on now.  Forests and especially elevation add annoyances I'm not sure I want to tackle now.

Quote from: misko27

Will the refugees from failed forts make camp? I ask because I recently noticed that the dwarves who abandon do not, as I assumed, scatter in all directions, but actually form a group.

I think it dissolves that group after one save/load, maybe, and stuffs them in a town.  I haven't dealt with the overall game advancement problem -- like when you start a new fort, and it would normally shoot you to spring of the next year.  But now there are armies doing specific things everywhere.  Still an ongoing concern.

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Quote from: Phlum

Ok so a fort is made at the border of another factions land, they make a claim on your site. (a player made fort is a site, right) and destroy you with an army, will you be able to reclaim that fort, will it become a part of that entity, will individuals live at your now dwarfless fort.

Basically, how will forts be affected, if at all, by site claiming?

Quote from: MrWiggles

More broadly are player created Sites under the normal rules for Site Claiming? So lets say you lose a fort through Not Invasion, and you spend a year or two in adventure mode. Will the Site be up for grabs like normal?

I haven't gotten to the repopulation stuff (it is on the plate for this time).  Once I have that, and I have real armies attacking your fort (also o the plate), then yeah, your fort might not be available as a peaceful reclaim.  If repopulation works, then technically there should be people moving to your fort, but they wouldn't understand what to do there since it doesn't fit the usual parameters.  There aren't even usual parameters until we get the other racial sites in.

Player-created sites should be under the regular rules -- if things don't get finished there will be limitations.  If you leave a site fallow and run around in adv mode for a long time, your site will be fair for critters -- whether or not it gets snatched up by random people probably depends on how much we do with dwarf sites.  If humans aren't interested in moving into dwarf sites (player or not), then nothing'll happen if we don't have dwarf sites.

Quote from: Owlbread

Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?

Yeah, procedural creation myths are definitely in the cards, along with the overall metaphysics of how the various worlds and gods work and so on.  We're looking forward to it and have almost jumped in a few times over the years, but so far it hasn't happened.  I imagine at first it'll just flesh out the religions and so on, but we have those plans for the afterlife and all that, and it all relates.

Quote from: Knight Otu

Do multiple eyes, eyes in the back of your head, flexible eye stalks, and the like work with this system?

That doesn't currently do anything, but the way the arcs work, it is very easy to adjust the angles.  Not sure exactly when I'll connect it up but it'll happen.  I suppose a lot of the critters with animals just on the side of their head (like...  most of them?) should get their giant arcs.  But maybe most of it should be given the peripheral rating to make it playable.

Quote from: bombzero

Toady, does ambusher actually have any effect other then speed improvement with this new update? can it protect you from being spotted?

have you considered attempting to nerf some of the major grinding options in adventure mode?

It helps with avoiding being spotted in the peripheral vision area and helps you move silently.

I have some vague ideas about holding off the value of grinding, but it's a little dangerous -- there should be a skill cap on how much you can learn in a given skill in a day, before your brain rebels, realistically, for example, but you don't want that to interfere with the game.

Quote from: CLA

Is the display of enemy field of vision, sounds and alert status dependent on your sneak and/or perception skill?
I think it would be great if there'd be some sort of fairly inaccurate "base information" about the enemy FoV and alert status, but if you'd get more and more precise information if your perception skill was higher. For example only show the status (searching, alert, normal or whatever) and a short direction indicator as default, but with a high perception skill you see the range and how long the guards will stay alert.
EDIT: same for sound obviously.
Will there be a way to toggle sound perception? Say, it's only visible in sneaking mode or in listen-carefully-mode?

The display doesn't depend on your skill.  I guess it could, but I'm not sure if I like it or not.  It depends on how annoying it is when all the info is turned off.

Sound perception isn't toggleable right now.  It was the only thing happening outside of your field of view, so it didn't matter, but now that you can detect things as well, it might matter.

Quote from: Dae

To what extent are sounds going to expanded ? Will there be some things like a way to hear to stomping of a dragon in a cave ? I'm thinking of minotaurs' labyrinth too, where there is a basic placeholder for the beast's voice echoing through the corridors.

You can already hear animals stomping around wherever, as long as they are close enough.  The labyrinth is kind of the highlight of how bad the current system is, because the passages should probably distort the apparent direction of sounds, but it should tell you where talking is coming from in general, including stuff like out-of-sight market chatter.

Quote from: Auning

How will the new sneaking system work with companions? Hopefully we won't have our companions lumbering through the camp while we are trying to stealth. How will this be handled? Perhaps a placeholder "Wait here." kind of system, or will they somehow stealth as well?

How will sound be further applied in adventure mode, if at all, besides the army camps and other infiltration situations in the future? What specific attributes/skills will tie in with all of this?

I think you'll probably just tell them to wait for now, until they can taught to be helpful.

Sounds are applied everywhere.  You'll see them when you are being chased around by anybody, or just when you are walking through town.  I don't think I've linked it to any atts or skills yet.  It could just use situational awareness to give you the softest sounds perhaps.

Quote from: CLA

Will there be an action available for adventurers to cut through tents?

Will this update see sneaking related quests? Such as sneaking into an army camp of a besieged city to kill their leader/general or poison rations?

We've considered tent cutting, and it could still happen.  Not in yet.

It might be that there are fewer quests altogether, but more ways to sneak to get things done.  I'm not sure you're going to specifically be told to do things related to the army conflicts.  Although you'll have to be guided to which decisions are currently meaningful, I suppose.  We're still thinking about where we want to be by the release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

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Quote from: Maxmurder

Will the new stealth mechanics carry over to dwarf mode?

Quote from: thvaz

Does the changes in sneaking apply to fortress mode?

Quote from: dhokarena56

Are your Fortress Mode soldiers going to engage in something of the same sort of expanded sneaking ability, even if it's not quite as expanded as the Adventure Mode version?

I haven't done anything with the vision arcs or sound.  It's difficult to get the directional stuff in, since there would be a lot more calculations than there are in adventure mode.  It might be enough to just run a quick direction check with a dot product or something, but I'm not sure how much that change would matter since you can't see the sneakers to begin with, so you wouldn't see what's going on.

Quote from: Maxmurder

With the new combat reactions, will we see multiple parts being hit with a single strike?

I have an image in my head of an elefant stomping on a dwarf, crushing every single bone in his body with one blow.

I haven't done anything with multi-part hits.  The full combat arc is still off in the future.

Quote from: Mephansteras

Is the stealth/detection system going to take into account vantage points eventually? One of the reasons Watchtowers are so common in real life is that it is much easier to spot people from above than it is on the ground. But right now in DF they're useless for spotting sneaking people because it puts the guards too far away to detect anyone.

I'd like that kind of thing to matter.  I don't have a lot of room to move with extending my vision arcs though, so it's hard in adventure mode.  Right now a watch tower would help you see around trees, so technically I guess they could be helpful in adventure mode.  For dwarves, yeah, it's all proximity-based, but it's harder to do directions in adventure mode, and without directions there's nothing but proximity to work with (without vastly complicating things).  I guess it could wing it and just add a bonus, but it would be nice to find an actual fix.

Quote from: Phlum

will this sneaking update include fixes for the current ability to steal from anyone but shopkeepers? Or allow you to shoplift some berries without the entire world knowing.

It had nothing to do with that.  I still have to pick that stuff up later.

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Quote from: Spish

Will the alert system apply to any other sites that are inhabited by armies? Like, say, a conquered player fortress?

Quote from: Phlum

When an alert is given, the offended entity doesn't yet know of the offence, right? In other words, is it possible to kill a guard before he alerts others and not become enemy of a civ?

Player fortresses that have been conquered haven't been shifted over to the new system of occupation, because player fortresses are still not attacked by actual armies (though we're playing to snag that soon).

The cascading nature of alert information is still a work in progress, but yeah, there are going to be different levels of information passed along to the entity depending on when you kill the guard.  Even after the alert is raised, until the guard gives a report, I don't think your information will be passed along -- ideally, even after the report, they'd just have your appearance, but it's still tricky to store that as a properly abstracted chunk of information.

Quote from: thvaz

Why did the commander fled instead of fighting?

That particular commander, if I remember, was a poor civilian drafted out of the evil fortress to fill the post.  When that is dealt with, you'll have to beat them up a little more.

Quote from: hermes

Will there be an element of in game learning required for the annotation of the track marks, or will the player be told what every track belongs to all the time?

Your tracking skill is going to determine a lot of the information you receive.  Even a zero tracking person will be able to see a gigantic footprint.

Quote from: BradUffner

Will the footprints be dynamic at all? For example, if the creature lost a toe, will that effect the footprint on screen?

I haven't done anything like that.  The picture is part of the problem, but it's more of a memory issue.

Quote from: Auning

Will there be groups searching for other historical figures and such? For example, a small army trying to hunt down a dragon that attacked a village of their kingdom. When artifacts are in play and the exploration mechanics are in, will there be armies/hired mercenaries searching for wherever they believe an artifact to be, and wandering bands of explorers searching uncharted lands? What about lone wanderers and the like?

Less this time, but yeah, the hope is to have everybody moving around.  The only concern running counter to this is the coherence of your adventure -- if the rug is constantly pulled out from underneath you, it probably wouldn't be fun to play.  I think it'll be fine as long as that is kept in mind.

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Quote from: TheDJ17

Will adventurers/roving bands/entire armies be able to hide their tracks or at the very least try to?

Quote from: Quatch

Can tracks be cleaned up? or deliberately stamped over so much as to make interpretation impossible? or interacted with in any way other than observation?

Quote from: monk12

What ways will you be able to disguise your trails? If I anger a town and get everyone after me, I'd like to know I can lay some false trails and sneak off to a nearby cave to wait out the heat..

How long does pursuit last? Will posses follow you into cities/towns/castles/other sites?  It's a fairly standard fantasy trope to follow the guy who murdered your village across the world to exact vengeance, dramatically arriving at the guy's award ceremony to accuse him of his misdeeds. And one of my favorite bits from the Wheel of Time books involved leading a group of enemy orc-equivalents into the Cursed City of Doomy Doom to try and evade them.

I haven't done anything with cleaning -- I'd considered it briefly, but the way things work now, you'd just make more tracks immediately.  Perhaps if there is a single isolated track you left somewhere it would make sense, but if you're just stomping through sand or snow it doesn't seem like you can do much about it.  I don't know very much about this though.  Deliberate tramping around will still leave you with a short path from the start of your tramp to the end, since you are doing a loop-erased walk or something like that.  At least if the critter reading your tracks can tell down to the second which track came first (which they currently can).  I'm starting up on the evasion section now.  Part of that will probably just be making them more stupid.  I don't intend to leave the evasion section until you can evade a bit.  Using streams is my only big idea now though.  If you do manage to isolate a track that points away from what direction you are going on an otherwise trackless surface, the trackers will follow it and go the wrong way.

How long pursuit lasts depends on who is pursuing you.  A posse from a camp might chase you quite far from their camp, whereas a night creature always wants to make it back to their lair by dawn.  They follow you wherever right now, which is strange.

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Quote from: CLA

Will tracks have varying visibility/clarity (visually represented by added noise in the composite images for example)? Will it depend on your skill? On the underground the tracks are on?

Will we, then have a greater chance of not being tracked if we walk over ground that doesn't leave tracks, go through rivers to wash away scent, etc? Will the AI use that, too?

Will the track images be hardcoded?

Quote from: Putnam

So how are [the tracks] designed in-file, then? Will modders have to create footprints for their creatures manually?

I haven't done anything with track clarity yet, other than leaving some room and a flag for it.  Locally there are tracks underground, but there's not travel down there yet.

If you walk over ground that doesn't leave tracks, keep to rivers etc., you could only be tracked by the sensers and the smellers perhaps.  The trackers use specific tracks, and if you don't leave it they can't use it.  I haven't taught the AI to dodge tracks.

I have not fully taken the plunge on images, but they wouldn't be hardcoded.  It'd be a separate file, like colors, that you'd just link to creature bps.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler

titan tracks? boogeymen?

Everything corporeal that isn't flying leaves local tracks now, even if they shouldn't.  If they travel on the travel map, they leave tracks there too.

Quote from: O11O1

Toady, what do tracks look like in local view? Are they title-invisible or something like a * as suggested earlier?

When you turn them on, right now, they have a green background.  Your/companion tracks are black, others are yellow.  BPs like feet are !, vegetation signs are ", items like shoes are one of the square brackets.

Quote from: Cruxador

Also, will footprints respect foot equipment? At least to the extent of checking if there is any or none.

Yeah.

Quote from: Quatch

With the new skills coming, and the increasing relevance of the existing skills, will the number of points available in 'demi-god' increase to make that moniker meaningful?

There's a point at which having even more points to stuff into raw combat skills seems overboard.  We are starting to need more points, but they might need categories, or a new-fangled overall system as we've talked about in the past.

Quote from: eux0r

-how does leaving tracks incorporate things like different types of underground/soil and surface area of feet?
(what will happen here in the future?)

-do you have any thoughts/plans for things like muddy soil/swampy ground to have effects apart from tracking?
(e.g. slowing movement or even completely sinking in)

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Is the tracking skill going to be the one already in the game, or is it going to be changed to be like literacy, so its a skill without a level? I'd prefer it if one could level up in the skill.

It's a skill with a level, yeah.  It impacts the rate of spotting tracks, and the amount of information you can derive from them.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In the last few Dwarf Fortress talks, we've heard about alternate dimensions, and the next set of night creatures. We've also heard a lot about things that used to be in Dwarf Fortress but were taken out before the original release, such as elves animating trees, and animals needing to eat. How much room do you think there will be in the hero arc for adding in the new night creatures? When we get dwarves with ambitions (it seems like there are already goals in place for entities in the game now), I assume we'll have dwarves who want to run their own tavern, or arrange their own furniture, or rob the bank. Does Dwarf Fortress have a means to make abstract structures or cause and effect relationships made by the players identifiable to NPCs? The problem is that you might have a bank vault behind two sets of steel doors controlled by levers and on timers (i.e. the lever does not open the door, but when pulled, it turns on a pump that will flood a tank, and when the tank reaches a certain level, a pressure plate will be triggered, opening the doors, after a certain number of ticks), and the dwarf would need a means to identify the cause-and-effect chain up to and beyond "this lever opens this door".

We're trying to hold off from adding more night creatures for the time being, since it's time to get through some of the more core features.  There are clearly still going to be "content" sidetracks, but I'm happy that we're working overall toward our goals for this time.  I didn't quite get the second part.  Having critters understand complicated lever connection has always been a pathing problem we've avoided and continue to avoid, since it isn't easy.

Quote from: Cruxador

On another note, will stealth (or perhaps some other skill) reduce the tracks left? What about more active forms of tracker-thwarting like doubling back or walking in the river?

And finally, Is tracking information generated in worldgen as well as play? If so, how do they differ? And how abstracted is tracking info generation when the player isn't around to see? I imagine that always counts as army movement and uses that system?

Yeah, I'm not sure if the stealth skills will be broken up, but whatever we end up with might lead to fewer tracks in certain situations, like being more careful with vegetation.  Snow/sand/etc. are still trouble though, no matter what, I think.  Rivers should work naturally.  Doubling back would only work now if they can't just the age of the tracks.

There is no information generated in world gen -- it's all so short-lived right now it wouldn't matter.  Tracking info is held by direction and creator for 16 tile segments or so for moving armies, and it realizes the tracks based on that when you actually visit.

Quote from: Alu

How long will tracking information stay active? Is it Adventure-Mode-Only?

They seem to stick around for a day or two, with the current memory settings.  It's only used in adventure mode right now.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

Is it possible to follow tracks through cities?

A bit suggestiony but it seems relevant:
Have you put any future consideration into using dogs or other animals to aid in tracking?

Obviously companion animals aren't in Adventure Mode yet, but it seems like a logical step when they are.

Tracks can be left in the city mud, but I still need to handle travel through roadways on the travel map and how those tracks are realized.  Once there is street traffic, it'll likely be a much more proper mess, but it isn't that way now.

Smell is confusing, since there's knowing that something is, say, a mile upwind from you, or sniffing nose down along a scent trail.  I'm not sure what's going to happen with scent trails.  I haven't tracked smell like that yet.

Quote

Quote from: Bohandas

One of the recent updates said that all non-flying corporeal creatures would break vegetation as they walk. Does that include elves and other creatures with "GRASSTRAMPLE:0"? And will that tag be modified in the new update?

Quote from: Cruxador

Will the eventual fae creatures get special tracking stuff? It's fairly common for them to be described as not disturbing vegetation with their passing, and some don't leave tracks at all. Meanwhile in America there are old stories of creatures who have backwards feet and thus leave backwards prints, and the Devil is said to leave goat prints even in the form of a man.

GRASSTRAMPLE is one of those things I've noted down for dealing with -- some of the zero creatures should still leave tracks, and some of them are more magical and so up for consideration.  There's the matter of mud vs. broken vegetation, etc.  Something will happen, but I'm not sure what.  All the magical tracking stuff sounds cool and I'm sure we'll see some interesting stuff as it comes up.

Quote from: Mechanoid

How smart do you expect NPCs to become under certain situations, like finding a pool of blood and enough scuff marks on the ground that indicates a fight happened? Will they raise the alarm appropriately if they're competent or putt around oblivious to the nearby danger if they're stupid enough?

They certainly aren't very bright right now.  People love hiding bodies though, so I suspect you'll have to do that before long, and it'll have to matter.

Quote from: Cruxador

Do bogeymen still appear the old way, random and untrackable? Considering their nature, it would be kind of cool if they did. But I don't know if they're included in "night creatures"; they're not usually referred to as such but I guess they could be.

Yeah, they work the same way.  They are technically night creatures, but the main ones we've got running around now are werewolves and the spouse-converting trolls/hags/etc.

Quote from: Dae

Toady, when you mentionned "lots of critters moving around", does it involve wolf packs ? Are they just packs roaming aimlessly, or do they have some sort of territory, or a central place where cubs are born ?
I could envision a trapper adventurer job, where you track wolves back to their main "camp" to get wolf cubs that you could raise as a pet...

I still have to work through the regular animals, since I can't track them all (there are just too many).  It has to sort of fade them in and out of existence while respecting the overall population and the consistency of the tracks they leave (so that you can follow them).

Quote from: Auning

We know that we will be able to run into and track bandits, patrols, creatures and night creatures, but what else will be included in this? What about demons and other notable beasts that "Began wandering X area"? Will only goblins be assaulting cities and towns, or will demons, megabeasts, and titans be laying siege to them/harassing them? Will they all be included in the initial release?

If you have a character with 4 arms, how would dual wielding bows work with the new combat? Would you be able to fire both at the same time? What would the hit penalty be like/how would it be calculated?

I'm not sure exactly what we are going to get to -- the big ones are currently being held back because I'm not sure I can keep them alive properly easily.

I doubt it would assign a penalty.  Everything's still in flux, but yeah, you get to do your many attacks.

Quote from: Rockphed

What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

For forest retreats it's doing large trees, for mountain homes it's just the amount of work.  Dark towers or whatever goblins end up for their various settlements are the easiest to do.  We may or may not see those this time around, depending on how things go.

Quote from: Valtam

Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

They'll have to go somewhere!  Armies will move to your fortress, and then they have to move out or stay.  All of the historical figures that are involved won't disappear, though they might scatter if they end up joining different armies/towers/etc. as events progress.

Quote from: thvaz

Do creatures with these new interactions use them for tracking?

Could a blind creature use this "sense blood" smell sense to hunt, therefore making the "Extravision" tag redundant?

Yeah, that's the reason I put the new interactions in there, so that they can track using their detection, though it won't matter for now if a vampire isn't tracking you (which would only happen on a fluke).

Extravision also lets critters know where obstacles and whatever else in the universe is, though it probably never actually uses the tag for that.  I'm not sure how much additional information I need to split out to get rid of extravision.  Sensing is likely the equivalent of extravision now for all intents and purposes, if you can sense absolutely everything (rather than just stuff with blood).  I don't really know what the proper solution is for blob-like creatures, since it's not only about other creatures in the end.

Quote

Quote from: Dae

So now groups can track you down and attack you, which is great. But do groups specifically attack the player or other groups as well ? Will merchant caravans be bothered by night creatures, wolf packs and bandit raids in the next release ?
Also, you spoke of real ambushes but are they now real ambushes, i.e. bandits not really into tracking people but setting camp around a portion of a much used road to demand a toll or just attack everyone going through, effectively claiming a portion of that road as an aggressive force ?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the tracking in will it be possible for in-game caravans to be tracked by bandits? If so, does that mean we might get a caravan in fortress mode followed by a wave of bandits?

Caravans aren't on the road yet, but yeah, this'll make life troubling for them.  The bandits don't set up road tolls at this point.  It's certainly a fair thing for them to do, but it won't matter until there are people on the roads, or the adventurer is given an incentive to use roads.

Quote from: Dae

Are goblin camps in raided sites dismantled after a while ? If yes, how long ? If no, do all goblins stay there or do they leave an occupation force ?
Do goblins take child prisonners from raids (I have a feeling I already asked this one) ?
What is the criteria for goblins to attack a site ? Do they have to be at war with it (since they're conveniently at war with everone) ? Or is declaring war after world-gen already in ?

I haven't gotten to more-peaceful-than-total-destruction occupations yet, so it doesn't really handle the long term meaning of the camp yet.  I imagine they won't need to stay long if they are raiding or destroying...  perhaps just long enough for you to get word and follow their signs, in terms of the game.  But once we have occupation, the raiders won't need to stay unrealistically long.  Occupations are definately going in this time, along with various prisoner issues, since it'll be fun to adventure around those sorts of antics.  These can be post-world-gen wars.  There aren't separate snatcher squads yet.

Quote from: Dae

I'm also surprised no modder has already jumped in with lots of questions. I'll ask mine :
What is the syntax for that creature-class sense in the raws ? Are the symbol and color used modifiable ? Is that symbol displayed even when you fully see the unit ? Is it toggleable ?

For a regular creatures, it is currently [SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:<class>:<tile>:<3 color numbers>].
For a syndrome, it is currently [CE_SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:<standard syndrome effect tokens>:CLASS:<class>:<tile>:<3 color numbers>].
The symbol is not visible when you can see the unit.

Quote

Quote from: Helgoland

With the simulation aspects of the game, like economy, trade, warfare etc currently being flashed out, are there any plans on simulating ecological systems?

Say you have a certain density of cave moss in an area, some dralthas and some GCS's. Ecologic simulation basically refers to Draltha population rising and cave moss density declining, slowly leading to a Malthusian catastrophy (or at least a slow decline in Draltha population), while GCS's and Dralthas have a similar relationship. Would probably need information on food chains, lifespans and reproduction rates.

Quote from: Novel

When will Ecologys become more fleshed out, particularly with certain life dominating an area? Let's take the example of Ungoliants children in the hobbit. They dominated that forest, and were a major threat, but you don't see such equivalents of dominant animals in dwarf fortress. Aside from that, the effects of foreign and magical species into an ecosystem, the resulting famine, plenty, or death and trapped abandonment upon nearby civilizations, even development of certain animals into intelligent species with the right magical stimuli. More individual animals would also be great, with runts of the litter and outcasts as well as pack hierarchy, something which should definitely be in when you can tame creatures in adventure mode.

Yeah, I need more information in the raws.  It's the kind of thing I'd be into, probably more than people would want me to add it, but I've avoided it thus far.  There are more than a thousand regions in the average world, with a bunch of pops in each, and that could get pretty expensive if we try to simulate things rather than holding them in assumed equilibrium.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 18, 2012, 06:11:11 am

Thanks, Toady!  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 18, 2012, 06:28:08 am

Thanks for the answers! It'll be fun to see where a lot of this stuff ends up going.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on August 18, 2012, 07:37:52 am

Cool stuff. I just hope time passing by outside your fort for a whole world won't ruin FPS.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cheesoburgor on August 18, 2012, 11:36:38 am

will the sneak update fix the thing that people dodge your attacks even if they dont see you and dont notice you if you hit them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 18, 2012, 12:24:49 pm

Hmmm problem with too many skills?

Well I guess what could be done is you get two sets of points...

One you put into job focus with a list of jobs and it gives you all associated job skills according to your training with some varience depending on the importance of the skill (and these jobs can be modded in and out). Skills should even have Combat designation so if you are playing a race with a different anatomy then the job it should still recognise which skills are important offensive skills.

Then there are minor points that can be put into universal skills, General Civ skills, General Race Skills, General Demigod skills, and minor skills from the jobs you chosen from.

I should formalise this as a suggestion sometime but this is just what I thought of when I read it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aquillion on August 18, 2012, 12:47:27 pm

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

Is it possible to follow tracks through cities?

A bit suggestiony but it seems relevant:
Have you put any future consideration into using dogs or other animals to aid in tracking?

Obviously companion animals aren't in Adventure Mode yet, but it seems like a logical step when they are.

Tracks can be left in the city mud, but I still need to handle travel through roadways on the travel map and how those tracks are realized.  Once there is street traffic, it'll likely be a much more proper mess, but it isn't that way now.

Smell is confusing, since there's knowing that something is, say, a mile upwind from you, or sniffing nose down along a scent trail.  I'm not sure what's going to happen with scent trails.  I haven't tracked smell like that yet.

What about 'social' tracking, like asking shopkeepers if they've seen a one-eyed man pass through lately?  Is that planned to be part of this?  Will bounty-hunters be able to track you down in a city by talking to people who've seen you, and so on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tsuchigumo550 on August 18, 2012, 12:49:53 pm

I have two questions and a suggestion, this might not be the place for it but giving everyone food for thought seems like a good choice.

My question first, of course, will we be able to take diplomacy far beyond "I want this, I have this" with friendly civs? If our fortress is besieged by another army, would it be possible to send a courier or have a treaty in place where if we're attacked, they'll come help? Would it have drawbacks, such as requiring a certain number of militiadwarves to be ready to go to the other civ's rescue should they be attacked?

Secondly, will towns gain any new buildings and/or see a rise in other professions among peasants? Each arc could give rise to new buildings, I've always seen the Economy arc giving towns and keeps treasury buildings, heavily guarded "banks" that weigh heavily on what a town is worth. Is there anything like this planned, such as barracks?

For adventure skills, a branch into three trees could work, with point-caps over the entire fields and caps on skills themselves.

Spoiler: examples (click to show/hide)

For instance, a demigod would be able to max a stat and have some left over in each grouping, so that doing so creates an unbalanced adventurer but one that can walk out of a village as a skilled or even proficient swordsman and have enough points to cover armor, shields, swimming, and maybe one or two extra points to boost 4-5 skills to Novice.

Heroes require a bit more planning, enough to reach the cap in one stat but only able to cover what's needed by reducing the skill to Adequate or Competent.

Peasants have just enough to take Novice in everything or slightly less than everything that's needed.

Right now I see "needed stats" as Swimmer, Shield and Armor User, Dodger, and Wrestler. It's a basic skillset that allows versatility and lasting power, and I'm fairly certain a peasant can get that and a weapon.

Skills could be split by weapon use, such as all of the weaponry skills and possibly armor and shield user, and then survival skills, like Swimming and dodging and ambusher and observer, things that don't fall into battle or ones that do indirectly

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on August 18, 2012, 12:51:22 pm

Quote from: Toady

Are those crimes not reported by witnesses?  I don't remember where that is at. 

I've seen the crimes reported (or at least the Report Crime job assigned to dwarves standing near tantrumers) but nothing beyond that in the punishment system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xelanthol on August 18, 2012, 12:59:47 pm

Will there be anything in the near future to allow sieges to knockdown drawbridge-gates?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on August 18, 2012, 01:38:08 pm

why have you asked that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 18, 2012, 02:55:51 pm

Thanks for the answers! With the worldgen stuff going into play, are we going to get in-game updates as to territory changes and the world map? For example, when a caravan turns up they may inform you of worldwide events such as "the human town derpderp has grown to become a city"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cynm on August 18, 2012, 03:15:42 pm

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 18, 2012, 03:18:02 pm

Quote from: Cynm on August 18, 2012, 03:15:42 pm

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

You can do that now. You can attack things from behind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on August 18, 2012, 08:16:10 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady.

Will there ever be, in Fortress mode, siege engines that destroy draw bridges and walls?
And if you implement diggers to break in a fortress, will there ever be a way of stopping them short of encapsulating your fortress in a magma river? I mean, If I do a 20Z deep moat, will they dig until they can pass beneath it and break into the fortress? How common you think they (the diggers) will be? Will they dig through constructions or just native stone walls? Will they break wood walls?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 18, 2012, 08:47:59 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on August 18, 2012, 08:16:10 pm

Will there ever be, in Fortress mode, siege engines that destroy draw bridges and walls?
And if you implement diggers to break in a fortress, will there ever be a way of stopping them short of encapsulating your fortress in a magma river? I mean, If I do a 20Z deep moat, will they dig until they can pass beneath it and break into the fortress? How common you think they (the diggers) will be? Will they dig through constructions or just native stone walls? Will they break wood walls?

Siege engines destroying walls are planned, for both stone and wooden walls. I think if diggers are implemented you can turn them off, and they'll probably be limited to the soil layer. If they can dig down further, it will likely have another init option. Its also likely that the tunnels dug by invaders won't be the same as those dug by dwarves, and will have some restrictions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 18, 2012, 10:22:44 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on August 18, 2012, 08:16:10 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady.

Will there ever be, in Fortress mode, siege engines that destroy draw bridges and walls?
And if you implement diggers to break in a fortress, will there ever be a way of stopping them short of encapsulating your fortress in a magma river? I mean, If I do a 20Z deep moat, will they dig until they can pass beneath it and break into the fortress? How common you think they (the diggers) will be? Will they dig through constructions or just native stone walls? Will they break wood walls?

There will always be a way, Aussieguy's defense system, whose name I have forgotten, proves that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 18, 2012, 11:28:23 pm

The magma landmines or the HFS Checkerboard?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 18, 2012, 11:45:54 pm

Quote from: monk12 on August 18, 2012, 11:28:23 pm

The magma landmines or the HFS Checkerboard?

No, I found it:
An AussieGuy Project - The Waterlock(Or how to stop theoretical digging enemies)  (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108488.msg3240977#msg3240977)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on August 19, 2012, 12:29:13 am

Quote from: misko27 on August 18, 2012, 03:18:02 pm

Quote from: Cynm on August 18, 2012, 03:15:42 pm

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

You can do that now. You can attack things from behind.

Not exactly.  From what I can tell, the game keeps track of which direction a creature recently attacked in.  So if you stand on one side of a bandit and your buddy stands on the other, and the bandit attacks your buddy, your attack on the bandit might be "from behind" and get a bonus.  It has very little to do with sneaking and even if you sneak up on someone the game won't tell you which way they're facing.  The game also treats the attack as from the front in all other respects, aka you can stab someone's nose from behind with a knife.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Following on from this answer you gave...

Quote

Caravans aren't on the road yet, but yeah, this'll make life troubling for them.  The bandits don't set up road tolls at this point.  It's certainly a fair thing for them to do, but it won't matter until there are people on the roads, or the adventurer is given an incentive to use roads.

When are you planning to get caravans moving?
What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 19, 2012, 05:21:37 pm

Quote from: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I expect that the rate of animal and bandit attacks will be lower on the roads, but bandits will be more powerful when they do attack on a road.  Though I almost never get attacked by animals currently, so this might be a non-issue.

Anyway, it is good to know that goblin sites might be in for the next version.  Being able to take out the fiends who killed my followers is fun.  Being able to go kill their families afterward will be even more so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on August 19, 2012, 06:12:39 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 19, 2012, 05:21:37 pm

Quote from: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

I expect that the rate of animal and bandit attacks will be lower on the roads, but bandits will be more powerful when they do attack on a road.  Though I almost never get attacked by animals currently, so this might be a non-issue.

Anyway, it is good to know that goblin sites might be in for the next version.  Being able to take out the fiends who killed my followers is fun.  Being able to go kill their families afterward will be even more so.

I would expect that roads are easier to travel along than wilderness, so you can go farther faster, and probably eat and drink less.

Also, Is there a hard limit to the amount of attacks that you can preform at once? If so, what is that limit? Or is it based off of a stat?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on August 19, 2012, 06:27:26 pm

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jables on August 19, 2012, 06:58:46 pm

Quote from: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on August 19, 2012, 08:42:00 pm

Quote from: theqmann on August 19, 2012, 06:27:26 pm

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on August 19, 2012, 09:20:43 pm

Quote from: Jables on August 19, 2012, 06:58:46 pm

Quote from: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely don't move as quickly or as easily through a forest when picking through the trees compared to when I'm on a path. Now that we have the basic necessities of life (eating, drinking, and sleeping) in the game as well as a combat/movement speed split, it seems the main incentive to stay on the road would be that it's faster. This would save you daylight, food, water, and energy. This might be good if you want to travel for two days without stopping, whereas the same trip cutting through thick forest, tall grasses, swamps, etc. could potentially wear you out in half a day.

On the topic of road safety, will caravans always travel with a large enough number of guards to protect them, or will there be guards from the different civs patrolling the roads to keep them safer?

Also, now that goods are tracked from town to town, are caravan goods actually going to be tracked from their origin to their destination? For example, if a caravan carrying dwarven metalwork is ambushed on its way to a human town the mountainhome, will the bandit camp be filled with +steel short sword+ and ☼lead barrel☼? Would those same goods have showed up in human shops had the caravan arrived, or would they just be stored in the warehouses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on August 19, 2012, 10:22:40 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on August 19, 2012, 08:42:00 pm

Quote from: theqmann on August 19, 2012, 06:27:26 pm

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

I bet it will arrive around the same time that he lets us send out armies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 20, 2012, 04:08:34 am

Quote from: Shinotsa on August 19, 2012, 09:20:43 pm

Quote from: Jables on August 19, 2012, 06:58:46 pm

Quote from: hermes on August 19, 2012, 03:16:35 am

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Since some of the stuff about incentivizing adventurers to travel on roads appeared in the context of tracking, I sort of assumed that you won't leaving tracks if you travel along a road. This would have the advantage of preventing bandits from following your tracks straight to you, but on the other hand you could run into roadblocks if that is implemented.

I don't know about you guys, but I definitely don't move as quickly or as easily through a forest when picking through the trees compared to when I'm on a path. Now that we have the basic necessities of life (eating, drinking, and sleeping) in the game as well as a combat/movement speed split, it seems the main incentive to stay on the road would be that it's faster. This would save you daylight, food, water, and energy. This might be good if you want to travel for two days without stopping, whereas the same trip cutting through thick forest, tall grasses, swamps, etc. could potentially wear you out in half a day.

-snip-

yeah, that toady-quote is from the response to my question, so its not only about tracking but also about difficulty of terrain. i was also asking about sinking in in a swamp, which is something along the lines "you walk... you walk... you die" if you dont know what youre doing. so thats a pretty good incentive to travel on roads. then there are things like quicksand in other terrains and slipping on loose rocks in mountain areas, there are many dangers of serious injury or death if you pack all your adventurer skillpoints into strengh and sword-hacking and none into "i know what im doing, at least when i _walk_"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on August 20, 2012, 02:50:21 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on August 19, 2012, 10:22:40 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on August 19, 2012, 08:42:00 pm

Quote from: theqmann on August 19, 2012, 06:27:26 pm

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

That would have to use scouts, whic you can assign using said map. Scouts should be chosen based on their tracking and sneaking skills. You send them out, and they come back and report. They might get caught, or lost, or eaten.  They can report on enemy army size, race, what kind of weapons, general (If the scout isreally good), etc. Toady's probably not going to do that, at least not any time soon.

I bet it will arrive around the same time that he lets us send out armies.

We could just get a map that can see everything until scouts and armies are implemented

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on August 21, 2012, 03:16:18 pm

Quote from: Calathar on August 18, 2012, 12:51:22 pm

Quote from: Toady

Are those crimes not reported by witnesses?  I don't remember where that is at. 

I've seen the crimes reported (or at least the Report Crime job assigned to dwarves standing near tantrumers) but nothing beyond that in the punishment system.

Yeah. Well, it's good to see that it's not intentional, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 21, 2012, 05:40:11 pm

I can't wait until I see how dangerous the Hydra becomes once it has several free acting heads to chomp everyone with.

Mind you it will still have a bit to go... but given that it is going from the weakest to one of the strongest Megabeasts... it is quite the achievement.

Toady are you planning on redoing Titans at a certain point or adding something that can see if a Titan is worthwhile or not or what? Since a lot of the titans generated couldn't fight their way out of a paper bad (no really, the paper bag would probably kill the Titan)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on August 21, 2012, 11:50:05 pm

Quote from: The Almighty Toad

I still have a few things I'd like to do with tracking, but I'm going to jump back up to the larger scale issues for a while now, so that the game'll achieve some level of coherence. First up, the surrounding situation at the beginning needs to be revealed somewhat, to give you some leads to follow, for instance, and you'll need a few ways to learn about anything that changes (like a nearby town being invaded). The two trickiest parts with starting exposition will be (1) the first game you play after world generation, since the world is passing from vague to specific at that point and no actual events are underway (aside from general states of war, etc), and (2) how to deal with the player choosing a starting civilization which is just absolutely dull. We're still considering how to best handle it. Overall, we're hoping to flesh out some possible courses of action that resemble a successful adventure from start to finish, probably something culminating at a goblin site or human castle, and then to get the humans to patch themselves up if their civilization survives all the horrors (all the repopulation and succession stuff). The main goal is to try to keep everything a strict simulation that doesn't warp too deeply around the player, while at the same time allowing you to experience something more involved than simple one-off quests (or random fortress invasions for that matter). I'm going to try to avoid sinking into tracking/sneaking/etc. style mechanics again until we have the full skeleton in. We'll see how that turns out...

Discuss.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 22, 2012, 12:28:07 am

No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 22, 2012, 12:41:16 am

Quote

Oogie oogie oogie paloooo

Discuss

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 22, 2012, 12:43:53 am

Oogie appears to be a startingly common name for babies. Why do parents hate their young so?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on August 22, 2012, 01:12:05 am

Thanks to DF I'm beginning to see other games I thoroughly enjoyed in the past with a gaze of contempt.

I would love to see these new "claim" mechanics to apply also in fortresses, but as Toady said a few posts back, it would need a critical rework of the dwarven brain and the way other critters interact with a fortress.

Well, now with a couple of questions, because maybe I'm missing someting but in the next release we won't see the "Service" interaction in our adventures anymore, I'm afraid, now that we can ask the townsfolk about recent events and whatnot. How are we going to measure our deeds? Interests will still be global among entities, like being a worldwide hero due to a few local kills? How can we make sure that we're dealing with the right entity as soon as we're about to claim our 'reward'?

The last question is paired with the assumption that sites, now that they're going to be claimed by multiple (and even conflictive) entities, might contain groups of people that could give you an umprompted beating in response of your meddling in local affairs. Lets say that you arrive to a town near a former-hamlet-now-debris&gore, where you're told that X goblin entity made it; you manage to murder the entire goblin entity, and back in the town you enter to a house populated by bandits, who were also enemies of the (majority of the) hamlet. Will they despise you for helping an enemy? Can bandits and goblin be somehow 'allies' if they share some common goals, or are we not that into AI yet?

Sorry if my questions are horribly messy, but I'm getting truly excited while imagining where this is going.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 22, 2012, 03:23:50 am

Quote from: Valtam on August 22, 2012, 01:12:05 am

How are we going to measure our deeds? Interests will still be global among entities, like being a worldwide hero due to a few local kills?
Well, Reputation System is suppose to help your deeds be accountable. Seems like ToadyOne is going for a pretty scalable system.


Will they despise you for helping an enemy? Can bandits and goblin be somehow 'allies' if they share some common goals, or are we not that into AI yet?

They'll probably eventually hate you, once they understanding that you're working at cross purposes for them.

Bandits seem to be turing into more of an occupation then into a particular kind of mob. So goblins can be bandits. And eventually there suppose to be some neat Diplomacy stuff happening between Entities. Such as being allies. So different bandit groups will probably be able to be allies together, eventually.  From how I understand it, any action or relationship that be formed between two countries, should be allowable with small groups. I dont know if ToadyOne will carry it down to individual relationships. But he's spoken about Clan Feuds and what not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 22, 2012, 07:30:57 am

Every devlog that goes more into making DF a 'living' world excites me greatly!

I can't wait to play with (and interfere in) all the knew Entity site interactions that will be coming soon!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 22, 2012, 12:31:22 pm

I look forward to starting in the dullest civilization ever.  Then I will slaughter my starting down and try to escape over the border.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 22, 2012, 05:02:57 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 22, 2012, 12:31:22 pm

I look forward to starting in the dullest civilization ever.  Then I will slaughter my starting down and try to escape over the border.

"It was a golden age. The country I was born in could provide food and protection for all. It was perfect, it was safe, it was luxurious, IT WAS BORING.
It was time someone tried to inject some fun into this perfect society around me."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 22, 2012, 05:50:23 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on August 22, 2012, 05:02:57 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 22, 2012, 12:31:22 pm

I look forward to starting in the dullest civilization ever.  Then I will slaughter my starting down and try to escape over the border.

"It was a golden age. The country I was born in could provide food and protection for all. It was perfect, it was safe, it was luxurious, IT WAS BORING.
It was time someone tried to inject some fun into this perfect society around me."

Just because that happens doesn't mean it has to be boring. There could be grand tournaments, masters to learn by, secret societies... STUFF

I really REALLY hope they don't fix this by injecting danger in a society that should have no danger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 22, 2012, 09:28:02 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 22, 2012, 05:50:23 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on August 22, 2012, 05:02:57 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 22, 2012, 12:31:22 pm

I look forward to starting in the dullest civilization ever.  Then I will slaughter my starting down and try to escape over the border.

"It was a golden age. The country I was born in could provide food and protection for all. It was perfect, it was safe, it was luxurious, IT WAS BORING.
It was time someone tried to inject some fun into this perfect society around me."

Just because that happens doesn't mean it has to be boring. There could be grand tournaments, masters to learn by, secret societies... STUFF

I really REALLY hope they don't fix this by injecting danger in a society that should have no danger.

I was just getting into a mindset of a player character that suddenly goes serial killer in a completely stable civ.

I actually think the "boring" civs will make the civs in dire straights seem like they are actually in bad shape. A contrast that adds more depth to the world. If everything was in trouble then it would just seem like business as usual. Plus while you come from one civ, it doesn't mean you have to stay there.

Granted, you should be able to hear news of other civs and their happenings to make finding stuff to do easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 22, 2012, 09:34:57 pm

That is good too... There are plenty of stories about heros who grew up in Mary Sue ville who go to Hell Ville to make a difference.

Like Superman

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on August 22, 2012, 11:11:32 pm

I have a question, how are going to handle bogeymen? At the momment, bogeymen just appear if you don't have a companion and troll you. In the new update, will bogeymen act as groups and track you? Or just roam the wilds during the night, waiting for you to run into them? Or (hopefully) be removed? At the momment I hate bogeymen. I mean really, if your partner dies in a river during the night, boom, dead, but there is a ton of potential for them to be less trolly and more bogeyman....y.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 22, 2012, 11:30:47 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on August 22, 2012, 11:11:32 pm

I have a question, how are going to handle bogeymen? At the momment, bogeymen just appear if you don't have a companion and troll you. In the new update, will bogeymen act as groups and track you? Or just roam the wilds during the night, waiting for you to run into them? Or (hopefully) be removed? At the momment I hate bogeymen. I mean really, if your partner dies in a river during the night, boom, dead, but there is a ton of potential for them to be less trolly and more bogeyman....y.

Answered in the previous set:

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

Quote from: Cruxador

Do bogeymen still appear the old way, random and untrackable? Considering their nature, it would be kind of cool if they did. But I don't know if they're included in "night creatures"; they're not usually referred to as such but I guess they could be.

Yeah, they work the same way.  They are technically night creatures, but the main ones we've got running around now are werewolves and the spouse-converting trolls/hags/etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 12:29:41 am

Also I LONG since turned Boogeymen off. I don't even create worlds with them anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 02:48:51 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 12:29:41 am

Also I LONG since turned Boogeymen off. I don't even create worlds with them anymore.

They're not nearly ass annoying as they once were, and they only show up at all if you're out alone at night. If you haven't done so in more than a year or so, I'd recommend you try playing with them again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 11:15:37 am

Quote from: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 02:48:51 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 12:29:41 am

Also I LONG since turned Boogeymen off. I don't even create worlds with them anymore.

They're not nearly ass annoying as they once were, and they only show up at all if you're out alone at night. If you haven't done so in more than a year or so, I'd recommend you try playing with them again.

Right so if I don't want to see any boogeymen then I shouldn't explore..

OR I could remove boogeymen and keep the wonder of adventure.

Adventure or Boogeymen... Adventure... or boogeymen... such a hard choice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on August 23, 2012, 11:51:20 am

Yeah, they are my least favorite.  I usually turn them off too. Simply being mobbed because you're alone just doesn't sit well with me.  There needs to be some change in the mechanics for it to make the nights more dangerous, but less... whatever you'd call it as it stands now.  Of course, that's the beauty of making these things toggleable, allowing for individual tastes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on August 23, 2012, 12:43:49 pm

IMO if you cant handle half a dozen bogey men, how well shall you fare against a score of thieves amongst whom there will be two or three masters at arms clad and wielding masterwork loot-to-be? I see as a danger for the first days of my adventurers but after some weasel wrestling they are more like training dummies since they cant touch me. The main problem being exhaustion if I dont play a vampire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on August 23, 2012, 02:33:11 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on August 23, 2012, 12:43:49 pm

IMO if you cant handle half a dozen bogey men, how well shall you fare against a score of thieves amongst whom there will be two or three masters at arms clad and wielding masterwork loot-to-be? I see as a danger for the first days of my adventurers but after some weasel wrestling they are more like training dummies since they cant touch me. The main problem being exhaustion if I dont play a vampire.

so basically after grinding your skills up extremely high using what is basically an exploit they can no longer touch you?

wonderful, because every game needs to be centered around grinding and exploits...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 03:04:42 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 11:15:37 am

Quote from: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 02:48:51 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 12:29:41 am

Also I LONG since turned Boogeymen off. I don't even create worlds with them anymore.

They're not nearly ass annoying as they once were, and they only show up at all if you're out alone at night. If you haven't done so in more than a year or so, I'd recommend you try playing with them again.

Right so if I don't want to see any boogeymen then I shouldn't explore..

OR I could remove boogeymen and keep the wonder of adventure.

Adventure or Boogeymen... Adventure... or boogeymen... such a hard choice.

You could also explore with a buddy or two. And if you see bogeymen you could always just kill them. They're not really tough unless you get overwhelmed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geen on August 23, 2012, 09:43:39 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 03:04:42 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 11:15:37 am

Quote from: Cruxador on August 23, 2012, 02:48:51 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 12:29:41 am

Also I LONG since turned Boogeymen off. I don't even create worlds with them anymore.

They're not nearly ass annoying as they once were, and they only show up at all if you're out alone at night. If you haven't done so in more than a year or so, I'd recommend you try playing with them again.

Right so if I don't want to see any boogeymen then I shouldn't explore..

OR I could remove boogeymen and keep the wonder of adventure.

Adventure or Boogeymen... Adventure... or boogeymen... such a hard choice.

You could also explore with a buddy or two. And if you see bogeymen you could always just kill them. They're not really tough unless you get overwhelmed.

Which will pretty much always happen. Boogeymen have a tendency to zerg you if you don't run away, and while they aren't very dangerous there's enough of them that the Random Number God has a tendency to kill you with at least one of those 20 head-gorings. Goddamn horns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 23, 2012, 11:32:08 pm

Boogeyman have enough skill and speed that everytime you fight them you risk having one lucky shot chipping a bone and knocking you unconscious. Some people get lucky and kill groups effortless constantly, but I have had them hit me after a tackle.

They are actually a LOT easier to run away from if you have the speed (which I always do. Agility I rate higher then strength)... it just gets annoying and boring after a while.

Which is sort of the thing. They game is MORE fun without Boogeymen. I am not dealing with a time limit, I don't have to avoid rivers (and for SOME maps, not crossing rivers will make you quite the game on the spot... They don't always build bridged logically). I don't have to carry huge parties that kill enemies for me because I don't have to worry about the Boogeymen.

Every aspect, every single aspect, of the game is better when there are no Boogeymen except if I want to fight boogeymen... but If I want to do that I'll make a game with boogeymen. There is no part of the game that isn't worse because of boogeymen.

Heck I don't know how but I bet Fortress mode is better without Boogeymen too... and they don't even show up in that mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mechanoid on August 24, 2012, 12:40:06 am

RE: Boogeymen talk

The problem is, the boogeymen are everywhere.
They have no home in which you can attack or ambush them at. They are infinitely respawning jerkasses able to rip your body apart regardless of armor. They always attack you at night and only when you are alone; this is certainly appropriate for a creature in a high savagery area, or a personified spirit in a good/evil biome, or a good/evil biome effect like zombies/husks, or even a curse from a mummy or summoning spell from a wizard... But boogeymen don't just appear there. They can appear anywhere other night creatures can. You can be in the lowest savagery area in the world, and probably still find boogeymen ready to kill you if you step outside alone at night, and this really doesn't seem correct for what they are.

I'd rather be warned about the local night-patrolling werewolf or troll or titan, than a boogeyman.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 24, 2012, 12:47:43 am

Bogeymen tend not to appear in oceans, mountains, or areas far from civilization, actually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mechanoid on August 24, 2012, 03:38:16 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 24, 2012, 12:47:43 am

Bogeymen tend not to appear in oceans, mountains, or areas far from civilization, actually.

Oceans and mountains you can't fast-travel over (something else i hope changes for mountains at least) and areas far from civilization may not exist on long-running or smaller sized worlds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on August 24, 2012, 03:49:59 am

Hopefully, bogeymen are some sort of placeholder until the game is more fleshed out. I don't see how they'd get much use when you have things like the stalking night creatures and other wandering night-time predators. Things would get bad when these challenges stack by chance. For example, getting woken up by a pack of were-wolves, a stalking night-creature that visits you every night as a result of a curse, as well as a swarm of bogeymen. That is a bit much, though there is something to be said about getting rare catastrophic coincidences like that. It seems like the bogeymen just aren't necessary at a point, as if they'll be unnecessary extra fat next to the real beef of the content. Just my opinion, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 24, 2012, 06:54:36 am

Bogeymen used to have biomes attached to them (but apparently that changed at some point). I'm pretty sure they used to be the same as the night trolls still have - any forest, any shrubland, any savannah, any grassland, any wetland, and tundra. This is why they didn't appear in mountains, beaches, and "far from civilizations" (which is only because the biomes that they didn't appear in were also the ones that the vanilla playable races simply don't expand into). Given that they now lack biomes, I'm not sure if any of that still applies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrCat on August 24, 2012, 07:46:08 am

As someone above me noted, after some time spent adventuring bogeymen arn't that hard to deal with, and if you want to complain about lucky shots archers/crossbowmen are probably a better destination for your aggression (DAMNIT +iron breastplate+ WHY DON'T YOU PROTECT MY HEART FROM   ONE -tin bolt-?!). That said, I agree that bogeymen are more of an irritant than something that actually adds anything to the game, but that's why you can turn them off. On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me when, if ever, my siege operators will stop fleeing in terror at the first glimpse of a goblin through a fortification?
EDIT: To elaborate,  will something be added to where, if there is something obstructing a hostile creature from attacking a civilian, they won't get the "Urist McUseless cancels load ballista: interrupted by fluffy bunny huggler" reaction?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on August 24, 2012, 08:21:19 am

Will there also be some kind of exposition for the various characters you meet? Will the warrior I meet tell me how he helped defend his city? Will they tell me how they were besieged by a vile force of darkness?

Example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Me: You look like a mighty warrior indeed!
Spearman: I am a spearman.
Spearman: In 143 during <event name> I helped defend <friendly site name> from <enemy group/creature name>!
Spearman: During <event name> I killed 20 <enemy creature type>!/I fled from my battle with <dueler name> like a coward/after sustaining injuries...

Me: Tell me about your family.
Farmer: In 143 my son <name> was abducted by <enemy group name>!
Me: Tell me about your family.
Farmer: In 142 my son <name> was killed by <enemy group name>!
Me: Tell me about your family.
Farmer: In 141 my son <name> was cursed by <deity name> and became a <night creature type>!
Me: Tell me about your family.
Farmer: In 140 my wife was abducted by <night creature name> and became its spouse!

Me: Tell me about yourself.
Peasant: In 143 I was abducted by <enemy group name> and imprisoned in <enemy site name>.
Peasant: The <demon type> <name>, <position name> of <enemy group name> tortured me there!
Me: Tell me about yourself.
Peasant: In 146 I was freed from <enemy site name> by <friendly group name> during <event name>.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on August 24, 2012, 09:48:24 am

I'm ok with bogeymen, they stop being a problem once you get one companion or become skilled enough to scare them away by killing enough of them. If you're attacked by them and you're far from civilization, its best to fight them if you aren't fast enough to outrun them, otherwise they'll just follow you everywhere and slowly chip at you untill you keel over and get stomped to death.

What I don't like is that, unlike the night creatures, they don't seem to have a reason to exist or an origin of sorts, they sort of just poof into existence to kick your ass for seemingly no reason other then you being alone somewhere far away from civilization. But yea, I assume they're just a placeholder for future stuff, like the stalking night creatures, curses and etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 24, 2012, 09:53:34 am

Quote from: TempAcc on August 24, 2012, 09:48:24 am

What I don't like is that, unlike the night creatures, they don't seem to have a reason to exist or an origin of sorts, they sort of just poof into existence to kick your ass for seemingly no reason other then you being alone somewhere far away from civilization.

I have kind of made my peace with them by imagining them to be a rite of passage for each adventurer.  Only once you've defeated them have you conquered your fear of the night.  That said I've never actually managed to do that yet, hehe.  Stupid wild boars.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the latest devlog, didn't expect starting situation/scenarios to appear for a long time, so along with tracking the next release is gonna be awesome for adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on August 24, 2012, 10:18:31 am

I'm looking forward to the "living world" aspect.  I can't wait to be able to take an adventurer out and try to survive ala "unreal world" by hunting and fishing.  Make a cabin, raise livestock, make an Inn close to a nearby road, earn some coin, listen to rumors of goings on from afar, defend my property, employ guards, watch as an army passes along the road to some distant battlefield...   Uh, yes... these are what my dreams are made of.  And DF is getting closer and closer.   Yay!

Oh, and get married, have children and play as one of them when I die, old and satisfied... errrr sorry, forgot this was DF....   when I die chopped, mutilated, digested and crapped out onto my front lawn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 24, 2012, 11:12:50 am

Quote from: Chromasphere on August 24, 2012, 10:18:31 am

I'm looking forward to the "living world" aspect.  I can't wait to be able to take an adventurer out and try to survive ala "unreal world" by hunting and fishing.  Make a cabin, raise livestock, make an Inn close to a nearby road, earn some coin, listen to rumors of goings on from afar, defend my property, employ guards, watch as an army passes along the road to some distant battlefield...   Uh, yes... these are what my dreams are made of.  And DF is getting closer and closer.   Yay!

Oh, and get married, have children and play as one of them when I die, old and satisfied... errrr sorry, forgot this was DF....   when I die chopped, mutilated, digested and crapped out onto my front lawn.

Then you can avenge your own death! Not that I don't try to do that already, but it lacks a certain something when it's just a series of random adventurers instead of flesh and blood somebody-who-would-care.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 24, 2012, 12:03:02 pm

Quote

if you want to complain about lucky shots archers/crossbowmen are probably a better destination for your aggression

No... Anyone who plays this game knows that the very first thing you do is take down the ranged archers and crossbowmen BECAUSE you know they can easily luck out and kill you.

If there isn't enough time then you break their foot, then hand.

Boogeymen there is no method except cheaping them out, which ONLY works because combat is so simple.

Also Boogeymen are not a placeholder.

Honestly I didn't mind Boogeymen until I got a map with a lot of rivers (Movement obstructive rivers became more common for me) and when I fought Megabeasts and had my followers EASILY take it out.

Quote

What I don't like is that, unlike the night creatures, they don't seem to have a reason to exist or an origin of sorts, they sort of just poof into existence to kick your ass for seemingly no reason other then you being alone somewhere far away from civilization.

They are sort of a living manifestation of the fear we experience while alone in the dark. That which frieghtens children and drives men insane.

It is setting dressing. They make sense and heck you could even interpret them as you simply being insane. Afterall, NO ONE in world gen ever was killed by Boogeymen, no one has seen a boogeyman, so how do they know?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on August 24, 2012, 12:52:40 pm

I wish they'd do more than just bite and punch you to death though. It's not particularly scary if you get killed by being punched to death for the 9th time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 24, 2012, 01:02:33 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on August 24, 2012, 12:52:40 pm

I wish they'd do more than just bite and punch you to death though. It's not particularly scary if you get killed by being punched to death for the 9th time.

They can gore you.

Honestly I think one move they should do is if three grab you... you should be dragged into the shadows and die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 24, 2012, 01:11:08 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 24, 2012, 01:02:33 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on August 24, 2012, 12:52:40 pm

I wish they'd do more than just bite and punch you to death though. It's not particularly scary if you get killed by being punched to death for the 9th time.

They can gore you.

Honestly I think one move they should do is if three grab you... you should be dragged into the shadows and die.

They should drag you into the shadows and turn you into a boogeyman.  If you keep the same size you had before, suddenly everyone will fear the night!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jdf318 on August 24, 2012, 02:43:19 pm

Personally, I like to think of bogeyman as the souls of all my past adventurers and their followers pissed off at me for letting them die. There certainty is enough of them for that to make sense. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmperorNuthulu on August 24, 2012, 04:51:55 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 24, 2012, 01:11:08 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 24, 2012, 01:02:33 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on August 24, 2012, 12:52:40 pm

I wish they'd do more than just bite and punch you to death though. It's not particularly scary if you get killed by being punched to death for the 9th time.

They can gore you.

Honestly I think one move they should do is if three grab you... you should be dragged into the shadows and die.

They should drag you into the shadows and turn you into a boogeyman.  If you keep the same size you had before, suddenly everyone will fear the night!

 That would be pretty cool, especially with the new stealth/non lethal combat stuff. Become some sort of half night creature batman.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 25, 2012, 06:24:33 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 24, 2012, 12:03:02 pm

Also Boogeymen are not a placeholder.

Maybe not , but I doubt their implementation is close to finished. I think they're still in the experimental phase.

Also, for those who don't know, setting your fighting preference to charging makes them easier to fight because they're comparatively small. Of course, you're still likely to die from a lucky shot, especially if you get surrounded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 25, 2012, 12:02:06 pm

and heaven pray for you if you are not using a Boogeyman specific weapon. (another good reason to turn them off)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 25, 2012, 12:11:54 pm

Bogeyman specific weapon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on August 25, 2012, 01:04:43 pm

Are you planning on fixing the issue where werebeasts infect way too many people, causing massive slowdown in worldgen? I imagine it'd be just as much of a problem in post-worldgen historymaking, so I'd think it would be something to prioritize.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 25, 2012, 01:22:59 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 25, 2012, 12:11:54 pm

Bogeyman specific weapon?

Blades (and I think peircing works too but no where close to as well)

But if you are using blunt... well good luck (I've killed a LOT of boogeymen groups with blunt... but even I know it takes several shots that a sword can do in one)

Though that is partially because Blunt doesn't work like a blunt weapon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 25, 2012, 01:37:59 pm

Quote from: Spish on August 25, 2012, 01:04:43 pm

Are you planning on fixing the issue where werebeasts infect way too many people, causing massive slowdown in worldgen? I imagine it'd be just as much of a problem in post-worldgen historymaking, so I'd think it would be something to prioritize.

He's done at least some work in that regard already. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103007.0)

Quote

  (*) Stopped werebeasts from gumming up world gen

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on August 25, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

I'm for creatures roaming an area and attacking you, or if bogeymen made more sense, had goals, lives, reasons etc, but as it stands they're just irritating. You should be able to live as a loner, walking into famously bad inns, gathering information and having the odd mexican standoff, sleeping with one eye open and a loaded crossbow, without magically appearing jackasses mobbing you every bloody night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 25, 2012, 02:23:29 pm

Boogeymen make sense... perfectly.

They arn't creatures in the traditional sense anyhow. They are more akin to a force of nature being near mindless with their only motivation being destruction.

Also Novel my favorite name for Boogeymen is: Magic Kungfu Babies

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on August 25, 2012, 02:39:29 pm

:L. It's just that in a medieval fantasy setting, its not advised to go out alone, but it's not a guaranteed assault, as it is now. This is of course repealed if i get to be a ghostbuster in said setting :P.

When will there be more interaction with ghosts, including Ghostbusters :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on August 25, 2012, 03:31:48 pm

Quote from: Novel on August 25, 2012, 02:39:29 pm

:L. It's just that in a medieval fantasy setting, its not advised to go out alone, but it's not a guaranteed assault, as it is now. This is of course repealed if i get to be a ghostbuster in said setting :P.

When will there be more interaction with ghosts, including Ghostbusters :P

I think so, if this ThreeToe story is anything to go off of. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_terror.html)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 26, 2012, 09:53:42 pm

I would like it if the bogeymen were more distict, with their own names like the way other night creatures do, only you would have the same few bogeymen attack you over and over, regardless of how many times you killed them. Right now they're just nameless forms, maybe that's intentional so as too make them more creepy, but I like being able to recognize different enemies. Maybe different bogeymen for different regions, i think that would be cool.

Also, will bogeymen ever start attacking and killing people in worldgen? Right now everyone seems to be smart enough to stay inside every night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on August 27, 2012, 06:27:58 am

I found boggeymen really weird feature when considering gamey-game design.

Usually, person would be punished by something like this for having too big follower party to discourage zerging megabeasts with expendable targets.

Here, you are punished for being vulnerable - as you would likely be alone because you just started, so you are also untrained and underequipped.

Why?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on August 27, 2012, 07:38:12 am

Boogeymen were placed in adventure mode when there was very little to do in adventure mode. While I can only speculate, it seems that an infinitely respawning enemy that makes one have a daily goal is perfect for a mode lacking content. They are likely a temporary solution as they are now, and they will more than likely be removed or modified to a more reasonable form when adventure mode gets the content that the next series of updates promises.

So let's please focus on those updates for the time being, rather than a possible placeholder creature that is intentionally removable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cheesoburgor on August 27, 2012, 07:45:32 am

Quote from: Shinotsa on August 27, 2012, 07:38:12 am

Boogeymen were placed in adventure mode when there was very little to do in adventure mode. While I can only speculate, it seems that an infinitely respawning enemy that makes one have a daily goal is perfect for a mode lacking content. They are likely a temporary solution as they are now, and they will more than likely be removed or modified to a more reasonable form when adventure mode gets the content that the next series of updates promises.

So let's please focus on those updates for the time being, rather than a possible placeholder creature that is intentionally removable.

Night creatures are no placeholders >:C they just lack stuff that is coming soon

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on August 27, 2012, 07:46:32 am

Bogeymen are partly incentive to get followers, but I think the main motivation of adding them was to make the night scary. In 40d, you could just run around all over the map all the time, and the day-night cycle was basically useless.

When bogeymen were added, you had to make decisions about travel routes and timing. Also, they encourage you to get followers and to help them survive. Of course, this is mostly relevant for the early game, when you're too weak to fight the bogeymen and too unpopular to get a large group of companions.

To be honest, I like bogeymen. I try to avoid them, but they make for some really intense moments when all companions died at the last bandit camp, the next castle isn't in sight and you're getting surprised by nightfall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on August 27, 2012, 08:57:34 am

Quote from: Shinotsa on August 27, 2012, 07:38:12 am

(...) So let's please focus on those updates for the time being, rather than a possible placeholder creature that is intentionally removable.

Amen.

And now, it's Devlog Time.

Quote from: Toady One

In adventure mode, it now gives you a breakdown of your situation in the opening paragraph instead of the generic paragraph, and there's an indication of what you are getting into for each civiliations, to the extent that there are such things right now. It also gets some balls rolling right after world generation but before your first game so that the world doesn't start in a weird pre-active state.

Could this mean that there's an intention to change the Fortress' beginning paragraph as well? Or it wouldn't be that relevant in the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on August 27, 2012, 09:58:40 am

Quote from: Trif on August 27, 2012, 07:46:32 am

Bogeymen are partly incentive to get followers, but I think the main motivation of adding them was to make the night scary. In 40d, you could just run around all over the map all the time, and the day-night cycle was basically useless.

When bogeymen were added, you had to make decisions about travel routes and timing. Also, they encourage you to get followers and to help them survive. Of course, this is mostly relevant for the early game, when you're too weak to fight the bogeymen and too unpopular to get a large group of companions.

To be honest, I like bogeymen. I try to avoid them, but they make for some really intense moments when all companions died at the last bandit camp, the next castle isn't in sight and you're getting surprised by nightfall.

yea but bogymen do make it anoying if you want to brave the wilds by yourself without all the companions getting all the kills. Maybe you could make a campfire to keep them away or something like that.

Quote from: Valtam on August 27, 2012, 08:57:34 am

Quote from: Shinotsa on August 27, 2012, 07:38:12 am

(...) So let's please focus on those updates for the time being, rather than a possible placeholder creature that is intentionally removable.

Amen.

And now, it's Devlog Time.

umm yea srry bout that.
 
so does "getting some balls rolling"? mean that there are going to be a greater number of historic figures? or all sites will be an entity? im assuming that "the rolling balls" are each a story. how will a story worthy of "playable" be determined, or how will a story be defined?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 27, 2012, 10:46:30 am

Quote from: Phlum on August 27, 2012, 09:58:40 am

so does "getting some balls rolling"? mean that there are going to be a greater number of historic figures? or all sites will be an entity? im assuming that "the rolling balls" are each a story.

I thought it might be Katamari Damacy meets DF...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-LfGxh8PMoAo/UDuVxtcmx2I/AAAAAAAADwE/YGynUxILEt8/s800/GetTheBallRolling.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on August 27, 2012, 10:51:49 am

Quote from: Valtam on August 27, 2012, 08:57:34 am

Could this mean that there's an intention to change the Fortress' beginning paragraph as well? Or it wouldn't be that relevant in the next release?

Hey, the Fortress' beginning paragraph already has a great deal of depth. Ere the dingoes/cheetahs/wolves get hungry, remember? =p But it would be cool to see more background in all of the setting text. I know it only shows up once, but it felt really cool when I noticed that the setting paragraph for Fortress mode actually accounted for what predator was the most likely to eviscerate your dwarves.

Quote from: Phlum on August 27, 2012, 09:58:40 am

so does "getting some balls rolling"? mean that there are going to be a greater number of historic figures? or all sites will be an entity? im assuming that "the rolling balls" are each a story. how will a story worthy of "playable" be determined, or how will a story be defined?

When he was talking about balls rolling I'm fairly sure he was referring to the newly added moving groups. It would have been kinda weird to jump into a game and have everyone just starting out despite the world having supposedly been in motion for a bit. At least that's my understanding of it. As for the playable stories I'm not sure if he's actually making a story as much as he's giving you the setting you are in at this point. My guess is as good as yours when it comes to this, but I'm thinking it's going to be "Your civilization is X, it is at war with Y and Z. Nearby towns have been raided by Y. Z has been at war with somebody else and no battles have been had with them recently." Hopefully it's a little more in depth, but we have to remember it's all about baby steps. No point in designing an elegant system to give you a back story in adventure mode when you can't even hit someone over the head with a chair while drunk in an inn :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 12:53:36 pm

By getting some balls rolling, I'm hoping this also means that group movements were tracked and filled in their proper places, It would be kinda weird if when you firsty started, there were no tracks on the ground, and the ground was clean, as if everyone has to stay inside for a month as the world finalizes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on August 27, 2012, 01:06:53 pm

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 02:20:07 pm

Quote

yea but bogymen do make it anoying if you want to brave the wilds by yourself without all the companions getting all the kills.

It is worse if you happen to be in an area where you have to ford a lot of rivers. Since companions won't be able to keep up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on August 27, 2012, 03:51:52 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 12:53:36 pm

By getting some balls rolling, I'm hoping this also means that group movements were tracked and filled in their proper places, It would be kinda weird if when you firsty started, there were no tracks on the ground, and the ground was clean, as if everyone has to stay inside for a month as the world finalizes.

thank you. moving groups, got it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 27, 2012, 04:27:16 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 02:20:07 pm

Quote

yea but bogymen do make it anoying if you want to brave the wilds by yourself without all the companions getting all the kills.

It is worse if you happen to be in an area where you have to ford a lot of rivers. Since companions won't be able to keep up.

The limiter on group size is actually goblin and bandit ambushes.  Since goblins currently send a force sized relative to your group, if you have a large, inexperienced group they will get slaughtered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:15:09 pm

Well what you do Rockphed is when you fight you strike to disable then go to the next enemy. An enemy with a broken foot is as good as dead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 27, 2012, 05:31:09 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:15:09 pm

Well what you do Rockphed is when you fight you strike to disable then go to the next enemy. An enemy with a broken foot is as good as dead.

With a well leveled (demigod skills + one or two fights) adventurer I can normally take down a half dozen enemies (so long as no archers get lucky).  That is if I am just going toe to toe with all of them at once.  But when I have 15 companions and the goblins send 20 troops, my party is doomed.  Even when I have 5 companions and 8 goblins show up, my party is doomed.

A lot of it is that my companions normally have incomplete armor sets.  So I might have 8 of every armor piece among my minions, but I have 12 or 15 minions.  Alternatively, I have 15 helms, 30 gauntlets, 28 boots, and 5 breastplates.  If I could equip my minions with the armor I find around, they would be much less likely to die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 27, 2012, 07:52:32 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

No mod can help you deal with sheer stupidity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on August 28, 2012, 11:50:42 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 27, 2012, 01:06:53 pm

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

yes i want to know.... so i can know if i can continue to play spearbreakers on a laptop..... along with even worse things on my computer...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 28, 2012, 01:44:26 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on August 28, 2012, 11:50:42 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 27, 2012, 01:06:53 pm

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

yes i want to know.... so i can know if i can continue to play spearbreakers on a laptop..... along with even worse things on my computer...

You can always keep two versions of DF on your computer - in fact, if you want to keep old saves, you probably have to, since I suspect that save compatibility will be rather hard to include with the new features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on August 28, 2012, 01:53:21 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 28, 2012, 01:44:26 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on August 28, 2012, 11:50:42 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 27, 2012, 01:06:53 pm

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

yes i want to know.... so i can know if i can continue to play spearbreakers on a laptop..... along with even worse things on my computer...

You can always keep two versions of DF on your computer - in fact, if you want to keep old saves, you probably have to, since I suspect that save compatibility will be rather hard to include with the new features.

Will the new version be save-compatible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 29, 2012, 02:36:02 am

Quote from: Helgoland on August 28, 2012, 01:53:21 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 28, 2012, 01:44:26 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on August 28, 2012, 11:50:42 am

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 27, 2012, 01:06:53 pm

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

yes i want to know.... so i can know if i can continue to play spearbreakers on a laptop..... along with even worse things on my computer...

You can always keep two versions of DF on your computer - in fact, if you want to keep old saves, you probably have to, since I suspect that save compatibility will be rather hard to include with the new features.

Will the new version be save-compatible?

So far it doesn't sound like there's been anything that would break old saves, though a lot of the new data won't be generated until one or a few weeks have passed in-game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 29, 2012, 02:38:20 am

Quote from: misko27 on August 27, 2012, 07:52:32 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

No mod can help you deal with sheer stupidity.

To admit if you step backwards fast enough it would completely nullify the arrow's effectiveness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 29, 2012, 03:30:47 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 29, 2012, 02:38:20 am

Quote from: misko27 on August 27, 2012, 07:52:32 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

No mod can help you deal with sheer stupidity.

To admit if you step backwards fast enough it would completely nullify the arrow's effectiveness.

Hey, good point! Let's get our archery stuff and practice this!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on August 29, 2012, 12:43:17 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on August 29, 2012, 03:30:47 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 29, 2012, 02:38:20 am

Quote from: misko27 on August 27, 2012, 07:52:32 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

No mod can help you deal with sheer stupidity.

To admit if you step backwards fast enough it would completely nullify the arrow's effectiveness.

Hey, good point! Let's get our archery stuff and practice this!

"Bay 12's reimagining of the famous William Tell fable went... poorly."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on August 29, 2012, 01:01:41 pm

Quote from: Mr Frog on August 29, 2012, 12:43:17 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on August 29, 2012, 03:30:47 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 29, 2012, 02:38:20 am

Quote from: misko27 on August 27, 2012, 07:52:32 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 27, 2012, 07:45:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on August 27, 2012, 05:48:09 pm

It also has to do with the fact that they will often do very inefficient attacks or run right into the enemies' blade.

Or dodge an arrow by stepping backwards, and then getting hit by it.

No mod can help you deal with sheer stupidity.

To admit if you step backwards fast enough it would completely nullify the arrow's effectiveness.

Hey, good point! Let's get our archery stuff and practice this!

"Bay 12's reimagining of the famous William Tell fable went... poorly."

We should reenact more fairy tales. I know! We should put on plays and make money!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on August 29, 2012, 05:11:01 pm

It'd be nice to see companions actively pick up and wear armour and weaponry. Is it just me who doesn't mind them getting kills?
Perhaps in the brain update...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 29, 2012, 11:14:15 pm

 :o Goblin sites! Woohoo!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on August 30, 2012, 12:14:17 am

Amazing devlogs!

As I see, now that sucession and site rebuilding are encouraged behaviors, does this mean that the respawning NPC bug will be solved? Also, could this lead to a revamping for Legends mode, so you can find more easily related historical figures and active entities that are somehow involved in this or that region?

I would like to know if there might be some other changes (if any) to Legends mode. Now that we're not limited to one-off kill quests it would be awesome to see these new deeds and misdeeds reflected in different, telling ways. Does this sound more like someone suggesting stuff rather than speaking out a question?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on August 30, 2012, 02:15:43 am

Oddly enough I wasn't joking.

It is relative physics really... if you move backwards fast enough then the effective speed of the arrow moves closer or surpasses 0.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 30, 2012, 02:29:18 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 30, 2012, 02:15:43 am

Oddly enough I wasn't joking.

It is relative physics really... if you move backwards fast enough then the effective speed of the arrow moves closer or surpasses 0.

Its why Knight Rider can enter a moving Semi Truck at high speeds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on August 30, 2012, 02:45:47 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on August 30, 2012, 02:29:18 am

Quote from: Neonivek on August 30, 2012, 02:15:43 am

Oddly enough I wasn't joking.

It is relative physics really... if you move backwards fast enough then the effective speed of the arrow moves closer or surpasses 0.

Its why Knight Rider can enter a moving Semi Truck at high speeds.

Supposedly, that's not terribly difficult to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 30, 2012, 03:12:24 am

Thank you for goblin and demon sites Toady.  Now I can do things other than hunt down all the werewolves and vampires near my starting civilization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 30, 2012, 06:25:31 am

As much as I love work getting done on adventure mode (which I prefer to fortress mode at the moment), I am afraid of the derailing potential Toady is under right now.

Focus Toady ! Activate the world ! Focus on (re)building, (re)populating, site founding and war waging ! "Quests" will be less important as a concept in a living world. The player will be able to build his own narrative for the time being. We're doing it now.

Also, I'm much more excited about personnality rewrites (after activating the world). It's sort of ties into quests given by people and character description. Things like someone asking you to track down their children's killer, or find and kill their spouse after they've been turned into night creatures. You need the same information for giving that quest, asking that person what his motives are and modelling said motives into actions.

DF will seem so much more believable if the quest system is based on actual desires rather than "there is a demon. go kill it." I figure the DF approach would be more of a "the goblin civilisation is growing too powerful, after winning the wars against the elves to the east and our brethrens to the south. As we are their allies now, they have no troups on our border. They are a potential threat and they are vulnerable. As we attack, go to their capital and kill their leader".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 30, 2012, 07:13:58 am

Quote from: Rockphed on August 30, 2012, 03:12:24 am

Thank you for goblin and demon sites Toady.  Now I can do things other than hunt down all the werewolves and vampires near my starting civilization.

Now that you're going to deal with the missing goblin sites, are we going to see demon sites changed in the upcoming release with regards to Dwarf Fortress mode? Are we going for a standardised or randomised messing-up of the world at this point, and in how many ways can the world be messed up by these end-of-worldgen events?

From the devlog, it sounds like the world will be faced with some kind of disaster at the end of worldgen. This might involve goblin invasions, or devastating wars.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 30, 2012, 08:01:39 am

Quote from: Dae on August 30, 2012, 06:25:31 am

As much as I love work getting done on adventure mode (which I prefer to fortress mode at the moment), I am afraid of the derailing potential Toady is under right now.

Focus Toady ! Activate the world ! Focus on (re)building, (re)populating, site founding and war waging ! "Quests" will be less important as a concept in a living world. The player will be able to build his own narrative for the time being. We're doing it now.

Also, I'm much more excited about personnality rewrites (after activating the world). It's sort of ties into quests given by people and character description. Things like someone asking you to track down their children's killer, or find and kill their spouse after they've been turned into night creatures. You need the same information for giving that quest, asking that person what his motives are and modelling said motives into actions.

DF will seem so much more believable if the quest system is based on actual desires rather than "there is a demon. go kill it." I figure the DF approach would be more of a "the goblin civilisation is growing too powerful, after winning the wars against the elves to the east and our brethrens to the south. As we are their allies now, they have no troups on our border. They are a potential threat and they are vulnerable. As we attack, go to their capital and kill their leader".

Creating Goblins sites, is part of making the world more living, and getting the world activated requires some of the personality rewrites. I dont think there is actual focus right now, as 'activate the world' is a very vague and nebulous goal, since pretty much everything falls under such a descriptor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 30, 2012, 10:54:20 am

Well, new content and quest types are very player centered. One can easily make out a line between "making the world more alive" and "giving the player more things to do". Of course there is a link, but I fear the potential for feature creep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on August 30, 2012, 12:01:36 pm

Hmm, I don't see much feature creep right now. He says he wants a certain degree of "livingworldness" and having sites actually be there, and having people offer more dynamic quests definitely fits into that goal. I can see how it may be borderline, but being able to do whatever I felt like within certain self-made boundaries is what would keep making a game interesting for me at the very least.

Plus, as MrWiggles said, to activate the world fully some personality rewrites would be needed. Right now Toady's just tackling the admittedly still vast number of things he can do without other features or rewrites. I have to admit, I'm quite excited to see just how much can be done without additional rewrites.

Toady, what are the basic requirements that you have for making a living world? Theoretically they'd be something along the lines of grow, repopulate after disaster, gather and use resources, and adapt to various conditions placed upon it by the player which are similar to the basic characteristics of a living organism, but I am sure you have some specific goals for yourself even if they are to be expanded upon or refined at a later date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DeKaFu on August 30, 2012, 03:35:09 pm

Something I'm really hoping for alongside succession is an improvement in family names. Spouses sharing last names, last names passed on to children, etc. That would open the door for things like powerful families whose names are known across the land. e.g. The Inkedhelm family has ruled over Jaguarshattered with an iron fist for five generations.

Alternatively, situations where you realize in-game that the aged peasent you're helping in the village is the father of the bandit you just killed earlier, based on the names. If that happened now, you'd never notice unless you memorize the names of every random bandit you kill and ask everyone about their family (does anyone do this?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 30, 2012, 03:48:17 pm

Quote from: DeKaFu on August 30, 2012, 03:35:09 pm

Something I'm really hoping for alongside succession is an improvement in family names. Spouses sharing last names, last names passed on to children, etc. That would open the door for things like powerful families whose names are known across the land. e.g. The Inkedhelm family has ruled over Jaguarshattered with an iron fist for five generations.

Alternatively, situations where you realize in-game that the aged peasent you're helping in the village is the father of the bandit you just killed earlier, based on the names. If that happened now, you'd never notice unless you memorize the names of every random bandit you kill and ask everyone about their family (does anyone do this?).

I had the same idea with this, but then realized that without at least some people splitting off from the family name, you could very likely end up with (for worlds that span very long time stretches, such as those people who like 1050 year old worlds) only two or three last names in that civilization. Then you would end up with a large number of people with identical names, making the legend filter very much less useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: i2amroy on August 30, 2012, 11:38:07 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on August 30, 2012, 03:48:17 pm

I had the same idea with this, but then realized that without at least some people splitting off from the family name, you could very likely end up with (for worlds that span very long time stretches, such as those people who like 1050 year old worlds) only two or three last names in that civilization. Then you would end up with a large number of people with identical names, making the legend filter very much less useful.

You could counter this by making any people of "unknown parentage" have a random last name. Since the majority of the population out there doesn't actually have names, this would allow for diversity, while still making it so that you could have powerful ruling families.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 31, 2012, 01:08:41 am

or, like in real world, have common folk not have last names and be known for their city of origin, deeds, ocupation, or after their father

urist of soaptowers
dastot badgerslayer
udib eight fingers
asmel the carpenter
lorbam son of ingish

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on August 31, 2012, 01:20:09 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on August 31, 2012, 01:08:41 am

or, like in real world, have common folk not have last names and be known for their city of origin, deeds, ocupation, or after their father

urist of soaptowers
dastot badgerslayer
udib eight fingers
asmel the carpenter
lorbam son of ingish

Realism...... lol

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on August 31, 2012, 02:53:19 am

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on August 31, 2012, 01:20:09 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on August 31, 2012, 01:08:41 am

or, like in real world, have common folk not have last names and be known for their city of origin, deeds, ocupation, or after their father

urist of soaptowers
dastot badgerslayer
udib eight fingers
asmel the carpenter
lorbam son of ingish

Realism...... lol

Well, a lot of family names are actually nicknames that people happened to bear when someone had the idea of an official family name.
So if your name is Smith, chances are you have a blacksmith as an ancestor at some point.
Of course, even if your name isn't Smith, you still probably have a blacksmith as an ancestor but the name didn't get to you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 31, 2012, 03:15:27 am

Yeah, my mom's last name is of the "Comes from some place" variety.

My ancestor was Urist Von Mayrhofen (not actually urist. I just don't know the first name)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on August 31, 2012, 11:00:30 am

That's actually how, up until about the late 20th century/early 21st century, the Gaels in the Scottish Highlands/Islands would distinguish each-other. For instance, on Lewis, there is an almost infinite number of MacLeods, so naming your son Donald MacLeod is like naming him John Smith.

To get around this, Gaels would do exactly as Askot says (and sometimes still do): they'd name Donald MacLeod Domhnaill Dubh - dark haired Donald - if he had black hair, or Domhnaill Ban if he had blonde hair. They could also call him Dohmnaill Mor nan Orain if he was into music/song writing - Big Donald of the Songs, or maybe even Domhnaill Mhaira if he was a sailor - Donald of the Sea. You would never say "Oh, do you know Donald MacLeod?" because there would be about 20 in your 10-20 mile radius at least. The other way they'd do it is say "Oh, do you know Donald Archie Ian Gillespeag?" Donald, son of Archie, Ian and Gillespeag. A kind of patronymic. It used to be frowned upon if you couldn't go back 7 generations.

Perhaps Dwarves could have a clan/family name that goes back to the age of myth, but also a name that they would earn for a deed they have done e.g. "Mebzuth Shieldbroken" because he broke a famous warrior's shield in battle, but his clan name would be Mebzuth Oiledpulleys because of some bizarre notion in Armok's head when he was hammering the clan progenitor's head into shape on his holy anvil. An introduction might go as follows: "Hail traveller, I am Mebzuth Shieldbroken of the clan Oiledpulleys, son of Ingish Goblincleaver, son of Dastot Burningrages, son of Vabok Holybearded, son of Geshud Windowlicker."

An alternative name may be "House". So instead of "the clan Oiledpulleys" it becomes "Mebzuth Shieldbroken of the House of Oiledpulleys".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on August 31, 2012, 11:40:58 am

Sadly, we will still be vastly overpopulated with so many Urist Windowlickers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 31, 2012, 11:36:54 pm

Quote from: Mr S on August 31, 2012, 11:40:58 am

Sadly, we will still be vastly overpopulated with so many Urist Windowlickers.

"I am Urist McMiner, son of Morul McMiner, son of Fath McMiner, son of Mozum McMiner, son of Ingish McMiner, son of..."

Of course this would make trying to talk to anybody in adventure mode take about a season to get through formal greetings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 31, 2012, 11:46:08 pm

More like "I am Urist, Son of Urist, descendent of Urist Mc Spiderslayer"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 01, 2012, 12:07:43 am

the game should pick the most notable *surname*, like, peasants would give the name of their most notable parent, once they get a profession they give that profession, if they are from someplace else they give their town of origin, and if they have a handicap or something that warrants a nickname they give that one, or if they did something awesome that warrants a nickname they give that one instead. if there is someone inhabiting the same place with the same name and nickname they give their second most notable nickname as well or a second parent name
in legends mode there would be hundreds of urist smith, so their name there would always be accompanied by the place they live in and date of birth

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 01, 2012, 01:27:00 am

Would definitely need a mechanism to change heritable family name. Should be fairly simple since family relationships are already tracked.

Determining the appropriateness of events that give titles/change names would be harder; ideally a dwarf shouldn't get one for just killing a wild dog, but if he killed it after it ripped off both his hands that would probably be title-worthy. And even then the game would have to decide whether to make it 'Urist the Dogslayer' or 'Urist McNoHands'. And if he later saved a village during a siege, would he change titles? Some sort of loose event hierarchy would need to be established.


Also,

Quote from: Owlbread on August 31, 2012, 11:00:30 am

Dohmnaill Mor nan Orain - Big Donald of the Songs

Thank you, sir! You have just named my next gnomish DnD character.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on September 01, 2012, 04:48:53 am

Quote from: smirk on September 01, 2012, 01:27:00 am

Would definitely need a mechanism to change heritable family name. Should be fairly simple since family relationships are already tracked.

Determining the appropriateness of events that give titles/change names would be harder; ideally a dwarf shouldn't get one for just killing a wild dog, but if he killed it after it ripped off both his hands that would probably be title-worthy. And even then the game would have to decide whether to make it 'Urist the Dogslayer' or 'Urist McNoHands'. And if he later saved a village during a siege, would he change titles? Some sort of loose event hierarchy would need to be established.


Also,

Quote from: Owlbread on August 31, 2012, 11:00:30 am

Dohmnaill Mor nan Orain - Big Donald of the Songs

Thank you, sir! You have just named my next gnomish DnD character.

If it were up to me, I'd just name a dwarf after the first name-worthy thing he does that is historically unique. Anything greater he does after that enhances his previous fame only.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 01, 2012, 06:36:38 am

We're getting multi-tile trees! I wonder what the ascii will look like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 07:57:44 am

Finally! All the sites are getting fixed. Now I'll definitely need to regen when the new version comes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on September 01, 2012, 08:00:12 am

Quote from: smirk on September 01, 2012, 01:27:00 am

Would definitely need a mechanism to change heritable family name. Should be fairly simple since family relationships are already tracked.

Determining the appropriateness of events that give titles/change names would be harder; ideally a dwarf shouldn't get one for just killing a wild dog, but if he killed it after it ripped off both his hands that would probably be title-worthy. And even then the game would have to decide whether to make it 'Urist the Dogslayer' or 'Urist McNoHands'. And if he later saved a village during a siege, would he change titles? Some sort of loose event hierarchy would need to be established.


Also,

Quote from: Owlbread on August 31, 2012, 11:00:30 am

Dohmnaill Mor nan Orain - Big Donald of the Songs

Thank you, sir! You have just named my next gnomish DnD character.

I am more than happy to help. There are lots of Scottish Gaelic names like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:22:26 am

Quote from: DG on September 01, 2012, 06:36:38 am

We're getting multi-tile trees! I wonder what the ascii will look like.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 07:57:44 am

Finally! All the sites are getting fixed. Now I'll definitely need to regen when the new version comes out.

What? Toady said anything only about goblin sites.

Oh, and BTW see ya in half of year. Maybe next version will be almost done by then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on September 01, 2012, 08:31:47 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:22:26 am

Quote from: DG on September 01, 2012, 06:36:38 am

We're getting multi-tile trees! I wonder what the ascii will look like.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 07:57:44 am

Finally! All the sites are getting fixed. Now I'll definitely need to regen when the new version comes out.

What? Toady said anything only about goblin sites.

Oh, and BTW see ya in half of year. Maybe next version will be almost done by then.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115747.0 Here ya go

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:53:16 am

Quote from: AutomataKittay on September 01, 2012, 08:31:47 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:22:26 am

What? Toady said anything only about goblin sites.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115747.0 Here ya go

Oh. I seen only devlog on main page. Okay, then see ya in year. ;p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 01, 2012, 09:00:56 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:53:16 am

Quote from: AutomataKittay on September 01, 2012, 08:31:47 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on September 01, 2012, 08:22:26 am

What? Toady said anything only about goblin sites.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115747.0 Here ya go

Oh. I seen only devlog on main page. Okay, then see ya in year. ;p

In the last big release the towns got mostly done in about a month. It was the night creatures and interaction rewrite that took most of the time. So I would guess 8 months (1 month for each race plus an equal ammount of time for bugfixing)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Taxus on September 01, 2012, 10:04:46 am

Quote

Due to the all-encompassing nature of this release, we have decided it is time to tackle the goblin/elf/dwarf/kobold sites and do them all.

Sweet!! This is going to be epic! I am definitely willing to settle back for months of amazing dev logs, then the big reveal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 01, 2012, 10:15:08 am

looks like DF 2013: Activated Edition is on its way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 01, 2012, 10:32:03 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 01, 2012, 09:00:56 am

In the last big release the towns got mostly done in about a month. It was the night creatures and interaction rewrite that took most of the time. So I would guess 8 months (1 month for each race plus an equal ammount of time for bugfixing)

It was really closer to at least two or three months on the whole, though the latter estimate includes things like the travel map. We'll see how fast it goes, I suppose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 01, 2012, 11:05:12 am

So, am I reading this correctly? Multi-tile trees?
Will we see tree felling accidents?
Will there be animals that use the trees? I.e.: will we able to see bear claw marks or broken off twigs on the ground (in regards to the tracking stuff)? will birds have nests in trees? Bees making their hives in trees? Will large ones leave multi tile roots underground? Fallen leaves in autumn that can be collected as fertilizer?

Oh man, my mouth is already watering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wilsonns on September 01, 2012, 12:44:45 pm

I'm pretty sure that logging will be much like mining. The tress will be like the caverns and mountains. You'll only be able to see the exposed faces and the faces adjacent to felled tiles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on September 01, 2012, 01:18:54 pm

Huh, I was always expecting elf trees to simply be magical and thus grow larger and into some sort or dwelling while normal trees would remain the same.

Well let's not get pessimistic about this release. The human cities had a huge amount of work go into them because they needed to have a vast amount of research consolidated into one design. Elves should be alright as they are minimalistic by nature, the big problem there is the multi-tile trees. Maybe a gathering hall, a large tree-palace for royalty, etc. Dwarves I can see being a problem, but a very fun problem now that we have minecarts. Demon and goblin sites I have no idea about, but it seems like a non-negligible amount of progress has been made already. 

How will the dwarf sites be made? Will there be a few different preset shapes and sizes of room that are picked from based on the shape of the available space? Or will there be requirements like "Dining hall must be between X units by Y units and A units by B units for a site of population Z" allowing for more variety (and hilarious consequences)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 01, 2012, 02:42:43 pm

Quote from: Shinotsa on September 01, 2012, 01:18:54 pm

Huh, I was always expecting elf trees to simply be magical and thus grow larger and into some sort or dwelling while normal trees would remain the same.

Toady has talked about multi-tile trees a lot before, he wants trees of a more realistic size everywhere there's forests. The current single tile trees are more what he'd want saplings to be.

Quote

How will the dwarf sites be made? Will there be a few different preset shapes and sizes of room that are picked from based on the shape of the available space? Or will there be requirements like "Dining hall must be between X units by Y units and A units by B units for a site of population Z" allowing for more variety (and hilarious consequences)?

Toady has said he wants to emulate player fortresses. Obviously, a computer's imitation of human behavior will never be near complete, but it's probably reasonable to guess that a dining room's size will be based on the number of dwarves, and will just be placed on a layer where it fits. I imagine if he's emulating players, z-levels will tend to be more or less specialized to a general purpose.

On a note related to timespans, it occurs to me that while doing NPC dwarf fortresses, Toady will likely want to implement multi-z veins and other geological improvements.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 01, 2012, 02:47:02 pm

I imagine, now that he has the basics for large-scale constructed sites already in the game, modifying it to fit other races shouldn't be too horrendously difficult. Dwarven halls could use a modified version of the code that already generates things like dungeons and catacombs, goblin towers from human keeps and/or necromancer towers (or even just bring back the old awesome goblin towers). No idea about elves though; depends on how he wants to implement trees.

Quote from: Cruxador on September 01, 2012, 02:42:43 pm

On a note related to timespans, it occurs to me that while doing NPC dwarf fortresses, Toady will likely want to implement multi-z veins and other geological improvements.

Oh, I do hope so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on September 01, 2012, 02:50:12 pm

Since demons have sites, will all demons have their own sites that they inhabit, or will there still be law-makers, lords, and specifically, outcasts? In other words, will there still be a variety of possible ways for a demon to inhabit the world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 01, 2012, 03:11:10 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 01, 2012, 02:42:43 pm

Quote

How will the dwarf sites be made? Will there be a few different preset shapes and sizes of room that are picked from based on the shape of the available space? Or will there be requirements like "Dining hall must be between X units by Y units and A units by B units for a site of population Z" allowing for more variety (and hilarious consequences)?

Toady has said he wants to emulate player fortresses. Obviously, a computer's imitation of human behavior will never be near complete, but it's probably reasonable to guess that a dining room's size will be based on the number of dwarves, and will just be placed on a layer where it fits. I imagine if he's emulating players, z-levels will tend to be more or less specialized to a general purpose.

On a note related to timespans, it occurs to me that while doing NPC dwarf fortresses, Toady will likely want to implement multi-z veins and other geological improvements.

If he's going to emulate player fortresses, I hope that means children trapped in rooms with dogs, the nobility disappearing on an alarming basis (Urist McPlayer: Detective Inspector would make an awesome quest), and aqueducts that flood the countryside with magma at unpredictable intervals for no reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 03:46:08 pm

Quote from: Auning on September 01, 2012, 02:50:12 pm

Since demons have sites, will all demons have their own sites that they inhabit, or will there still be law-makers, lords, and specifically, outcasts? In other words, will there still be a variety of possible ways for a demon to inhabit the world?

Toady said he was going to keep quiet about the HFS sites. My prediction is there are going to be a lot more of them and different forms of them too, perhaps even on the surface.

I think worldgen walls should go into the game with the sites. At the moment, we have roads, but we need better tunnels, and we don't have worldgen walls.

With elf sites and the multi-tile trees, we could get trees growing and undermining constructions and perhaps causing damage underground. Yes, this happens in real life, and doesn't seem unreasonable to add to dwarf fortress.

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release. Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on September 01, 2012, 03:52:30 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 03:46:08 pm

With elf sites and the multi-tile trees, we could get trees growing and undermining constructions and perhaps causing damage underground. Yes, this happens in real life, and doesn't seem unreasonable to add to dwarf fortress.

AFAIK surface tree won't grow in tiles that's been mined out under. Not saying that'll stay the same but there're that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 01, 2012, 04:32:03 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 03:46:08 pm

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release. Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

Unlikely. Until there is a need in the stock game for underwater sites, I wouldn't expect them to happen, and currently, there is no such need.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 05:35:26 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 01, 2012, 04:32:03 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 03:46:08 pm

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release. Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

Unlikely. Until there is a need in the stock game for underwater sites, I wouldn't expect them to happen, and currently, there is no such need.

Technically when the rest of the night creatures go in, there will. Those may just be underwater lairs, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calite on September 01, 2012, 07:53:39 pm

There's been discussion lately about efficiency, with claims that newer versions of the game surprisingly managed to stay just as efficient (if not get more efficient!) as new features are added. Is optimization done as the game is developed, and do you personally think the game is getting more or less efficient as development progresses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 01, 2012, 07:58:02 pm

You know what would be a great easter egg? if ToadyOne had some of the more impressive and or in/famous player created fortress show up in the vanilla game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 01, 2012, 08:20:21 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 01, 2012, 07:58:02 pm

You know what would be a great easter egg? if ToadyOne had some of the more impressive and or in/famous player created fortress show up in the vanilla game.

and I am going to violently say no... no it wouldn't and I hope there never is a in game reference to it ever.

So much so I may actually stop playing Dwarf fortress and actually suggest others do the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on September 01, 2012, 08:27:35 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 01, 2012, 08:20:21 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 01, 2012, 07:58:02 pm

You know what would be a great easter egg? if ToadyOne had some of the more impressive and or in/famous player created fortress show up in the vanilla game.

and I am going to violently say no... no it wouldn't and I hope there never is a in game reference to it ever.

So much so I may actually stop playing Dwarf fortress and actually suggest others do the same.

Now that seems rather more strong than you need to be talking about something like this. Yes, i understand that it wouldn't really improve the game all that much to be making references like that, but to start badmouthing the game seems a bit over the top to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 01, 2012, 08:37:43 pm

Quote from: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

X amount of years of computer development? ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 01, 2012, 08:42:53 pm

Quote from: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

You're not going to be running individual creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:48:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 01, 2012, 08:42:53 pm

Quote from: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

You're not going to be running individual creatures.

So how exactly does this work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 01, 2012, 08:49:53 pm

Quote from: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

All those critters the game is simulating have much less in the way of a memory/CPU footprint than your own dorfs and creatures. They don't do much in the way of fancy pathfinding, they don't play with fluids, they make decisions much less frequently than your dwarves, so on and so forth. Further, it won't be "hundreds of thousands," it'll just be anyone of historical significance- decisionmakers like kings, generals, and mayors, rampaging beasts, bandit leaders, blah blah blah. All their minions can be abstracted until they interact with your fortress in some way- say, because the bandits decided to raid you, or a king decided to declare war on your king, or a megabeast heard rumor of your fantastic artifacts. Until they actually get on the map, they really just have to remember what they're doing and how long until they can do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 01, 2012, 09:15:48 pm

How tall can we expect multi-tile trees to be?

It wouldn't make over-much difference ingame, but with visualizers having vertically squished trees would look odd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 01, 2012, 09:27:02 pm

Quote from: snpaa on September 01, 2012, 08:35:08 pm

I have a question, how in the world will I be able to run dwarf fortress in the future if the whole world is gonna  come alive? 

Right now when I get a around to 160 dwarves that's usually when I dancing around fps death.

 But now am I to be expected to be able to run that while simultaneously running 100's of thousands of creatures  with no problem?

If there's something Im seriously overlooking here let me know.

if anything is going to be hit performance wise, it's going to be world generation. the world will iterate at most once per season, and probably only once per year

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 02, 2012, 12:14:56 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2012, 03:46:08 pm

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release.Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

I always wondered if the Ocean-biome titans you can see in Legends are actually out there wandering in the sea, and maybe in fact actually have Shrines placed somewhere out there - there's no way to go over ocean tiles in the Travel screen using modding, is there? I know Mountain tiles remain impassable even if your adventurer can fly; I assume Ocean is the same, but I wonder if that's hardcoded or can be changed. If it isn't ... I'd be tempted to take an adventurer out fast-traveling over an ocean biome and see if I don't stumble over a Titan Shrine sitting somewhere on the seafloor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sinistar on September 02, 2012, 02:09:04 am

Oh.

Oooohhhhhh.

OOOOHH MY!

^My reaction reading new monthly report. Forgot to do this yesterday and this is what I get.

Quite splendid, thank you. I'd ask questions, but right now I am to surprised to even think straight.

Quote

This'll involve some fort mode changes as well (most notably with trees when I get to the elves).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 02, 2012, 04:01:23 am

Heh, this is sweet news.  Looks like it could be a longhaul, but the waiting will be easy knowing what's coming.  I'd love for Toady to spend the time on settlements to really make them special.  Are the elven retreats going to be like Endorian treehouses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on September 02, 2012, 05:33:17 am

Am I alone in wondering what the kobold sites will look like?

What kind if features will they have, will there be nests, piles of treasure 'acquired' from other civilizations and finally will there be the kobold equivalent of cities.

I know this release will probably take a while but it should be an amazing release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 02, 2012, 07:35:18 am

Quote from: werechicken on September 02, 2012, 05:33:17 am

Am I alone in wondering what the kobold sites will look like?

A termite mound taken over by force and a dirty rag on a stick placed out front?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cheesoburgor on September 02, 2012, 03:29:13 pm

Quote from: DG on September 02, 2012, 07:35:18 am

Quote from: werechicken on September 02, 2012, 05:33:17 am

Am I alone in wondering what the kobold sites will look like?

A termite mound taken over by force and a dirty rag on a stick placed out front?

Sigged!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 02, 2012, 03:39:56 pm

Quote from: Torchy on September 02, 2012, 12:14:56 am

I always wondered if the Ocean-biome titans you can see in Legends are actually out there wandering in the sea, and maybe in fact actually have Shrines placed somewhere out there - there's no way to go over ocean tiles in the Travel screen using modding, is there? I know Mountain tiles remain impassable even if your adventurer can fly; I assume Ocean is the same, but I wonder if that's hardcoded or can be changed. If it isn't ... I'd be tempted to take an adventurer out fast-traveling over an ocean biome and see if I don't stumble over a Titan Shrine sitting somewhere on the seafloor.

I had never thought of this... I wonder whether the <biome> titans have to have their shrines located in a particular biome. Also I think there's a way to find out where the titans have settled in legends mode, but I'm not sure how precise it is.

My idea of a fun ocean site is a "sunken wreck" or "sunken ruin". The ruin would be offshore, but not far offshore so you'd find it in a normal ocean embark. The ruin will spawn a large number of minions at times, which would proceed to f**k up your fortress and add to their numbers...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on September 02, 2012, 03:49:32 pm

i want ships. and floating fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDJ17 on September 02, 2012, 04:06:01 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on September 02, 2012, 03:49:32 pm

i want ships. and floating fortresses.

I for one just want my fortress to lift from the ground and crawl across the countryside like a giant spider at the pull of a leaver.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on September 02, 2012, 04:22:38 pm

mobile citys.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on September 02, 2012, 05:27:12 pm

Urist's Moving Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: penguinofhonor on September 02, 2012, 05:31:01 pm

I still want a fort on top of a giant mountain-turtle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on September 02, 2012, 08:24:46 pm

Quote from: penguinofhonor on September 02, 2012, 05:31:01 pm

I still want a fort on top of a giant mountain-turtle.

I'd rather have a fortress on top of some elephants that are on top of a mountain-turtle, which is on top of something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on September 02, 2012, 11:38:21 pm

What do you mean with Demon Sites? Just HFS or something different?

Also, does Dwarf Sites include Hill Dwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 02, 2012, 11:39:44 pm

I'm a little unclear as to what demon sites are.
Are they a fully new feature or have there been demon sites previously?

I'm assuming they are like lairs but specifically for demons.

(Not greened since this is addressing anyone who can answer.)

EDIT: NINJA!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 02, 2012, 11:40:07 pm

Quote from: Aerval on September 02, 2012, 11:38:21 pm

What do you mean with Demon Sites? Just HFS or something different?

I'm guessing that it's going to be something like horrible fortresses or towers--think Angband or Barad-dûr.

Pretty sure we didn't have demon sites in the past because we really didn't have demons in the past, at least in the role they're in today. Originally, they showed up in player fortresses after the fortress fell to HFS; after they were just spirits of fire etc. In their current incarnation, they've never had anything special that isn't HFS, I'm pretty sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 02, 2012, 11:41:40 pm

There were demon sites long long long ago before the switch to full 3d. They were things like pyramids and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on September 03, 2012, 12:50:23 am

I've heard so much about so-called "hill dwarves" but I have no idea what people mean when they say it. Someone enlighten me? :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 03, 2012, 12:54:56 am

They're basically dwarves that live outside of the main fortress, not under your control, and come there for work or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on September 03, 2012, 12:56:38 am

Quote from: Japa on September 03, 2012, 12:54:56 am

They're basically dwarves that live outside of the main fortress, not under your control, and come there for work or whatever.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 03, 2012, 01:57:39 am

I was perusing through the Consolidated Development at the Wiki, just to tease myself with all the stuff planned for this already awesome alpha-of-a-game, and I found this:

Quote

Bloat330
   CLEANSING EVIL AREAS    (Future)    The cleansing of evil areas needs to be put back in after tracking is improved.

I know that the development usually strays from the (sort of) predefined way, and that's why there isn't a feature timeline to be found anywhere, but given that repopulation and various sites are going to be implemented, will there be a way to "claim" or, as said above, cleanse evil lands?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on September 03, 2012, 04:02:53 am

Quote from: Valtam on September 03, 2012, 01:57:39 am

I was perusing through the Consolidated Development at the Wiki, just to tease myself with all the stuff planned for this already awesome alpha-of-a-game, and I found this:

Quote

Bloat330
   CLEANSING EVIL AREAS    (Future)    The cleansing of evil areas needs to be put back in after tracking is improved.

I know that the development usually strays from the (sort of) predefined way, and that's why there isn't a feature timeline to be found anywhere, but given that repopulation and various sites are going to be implemented, will there be a way to "claim" or, as said above, cleanse evil lands?

Toady said that the game will move away from traditional "good" and "evil" areas because that's rather ill defined and also misses out on the spectrum between the two extremes. In the future, lands will be associated with various "spheres", much like gods are now.
And the best part is, you'll be able to influence these spheres with your fortress. So, if you produce a lot of musical instruments for example, maybe the surrounding woods be called the forest of singing after a while, and there will be more birds or some trees start to sing or something like that.
Of course you could reverse the influence, too, in some ways. That should be useful for lands of decay, violence or death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 07:26:14 am

Quote from: Japa on September 02, 2012, 11:41:40 pm

There were demon sites long long long ago before the switch to full 3d. They were things like pyramids and stuff.

Weren't the pyramids the old undead ruins? I believe the only "demon sites" were the goblin dark tower capitals, which would have a demon lord (assuming it didn't get killed during world gen).

And as Toady said that we doesn't want to reveal the details yet for "entertainment purposes", don't expect answers on what the demon sites are beyond what he already said. :P

As for ocean titans... I think they aren't generated at the moment? Probably happened at the time that titans got their lair shrines.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 03, 2012, 07:38:08 am

A bunch of questions about trees:

What sort of timescale is treegrowth on?
Will they have foilage and/or seeds?
If they have seeds, will dwarves be able to plant them?
Will underground trees become multi-tile? (probably unnecessary, and it's cramped down there anyway, but Morrowind)
If treefelling now works like mining, what happens if a tree is cut all the way through? (i.e. does it all collapse into logs, or act like a regular cave-in, or just drop one level?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 03, 2012, 07:38:08 am

A bunch of questions about trees:

What sort of timescale is treegrowth on?
Will they have foilage and/or seeds?
If they have seeds, will dwarves be able to plant them?
Will underground trees become multi-tile? (probably unnecessary, and it's cramped down there anyway, but Morrowind)
If treefelling now works like mining, what happens if a tree is cut all the way through? (i.e. does it all collapse into logs, or act like a regular cave-in, or just drop one level?)

*sigh*

Toady is now working on goblin sites, so we probably won't know about the trees until we hit elf sites in between 96 hours and 2 months from now. You have a legitimate concern there - unless changes are made, multi-tile trees may cause problems in the underground, as they use the same code for growth as aboveground trees. This can be solved by making the underground more spacious, and having a minimum amount of space around trees for them to grow. We will probably get some new woodcutting designations, so we can cut staircases inside trees. We may also get water inside trees...

Quote from: Japa on September 02, 2012, 11:41:40 pm

There were demon sites long long long ago before the switch to full 3d. They were things like pyramids and stuff.

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 07:26:14 am

Weren't the pyramids the old undead ruins? I believe the only "demon sites" were the goblin dark tower capitals, which would have a demon lord (assuming it didn't get killed during world gen).

Once again I want to play the 2D version. Checking out these old features is a quest in itself.

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 07:26:14 am

As for ocean titans... I think they aren't generated at the moment? Probably happened at the time that titans got their lair shrines.

Ocean Titans are generated, they've been cited in a number of threads and I think I've seen them in Legends mode...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 09:27:29 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

Ocean Titans are generated, they've been cited in a number of threads and I think I've seen them in Legends mode...

I've just generated a quick world with max titans (nominally 1000, but I suspect I might have gotten fewer), and no ocean (or synonymous) titan was among them. As I said, I suspect they were taken out of the game when lairs where added - I know they used to exist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 03, 2012, 11:26:23 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

*sigh*

Toady is now working on goblin sites, so we probably won't know about the trees until we hit elf sites in between 96 hours and 2 months from now.

I wasn't expecting answers straight away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 03, 2012, 02:05:09 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 09:27:29 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

Ocean Titans are generated, they've been cited in a number of threads and I think I've seen them in Legends mode...

I've just generated a quick world with max titans (nominally 1000, but I suspect I might have gotten fewer), and no ocean (or synonymous) titan was among them. As I said, I suspect they were taken out of the game when lairs where added - I know they used to exist.

Can we get a clarification on this, Toady? Were Ocean Titans taken out? If not, do they have Shrines placed currently or is there some system in place to prevent the strange situation of an inaccessible shrine sitting out there somewhere, presumably on the seafloor?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 03, 2012, 06:18:07 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 03, 2012, 11:26:23 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

*sigh*

Toady is now working on goblin sites, so we probably won't know about the trees until we hit elf sites in between 96 hours and 2 months from now.

I wasn't expecting answers straight away.

I think the question is bit premature though. Those questions may very well be answer through Dev Logs when he gets to Elf Sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Khalvin on September 03, 2012, 07:33:49 pm

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this. Surface Rivers in low lying layers cut through higher layer cliffs hills rather then detour around them.

Is this side effect of the world gen process, or is caused locally when the region is loaded in Dwarf mode/adventure mode?

It is nit picky. So I'm wondering what causes it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 03, 2012, 08:35:53 pm

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on September 03, 2012, 12:56:38 am

Quote from: Japa on September 03, 2012, 12:54:56 am

They're basically dwarves that live outside of the main fortress, not under your control, and come there for work or whatever.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

They get mentioned a lot more in DF Talk, and multiple talks touch on them and their role in future events. In particular, DF Talk 12 has Word of Toad for your question.

Quote from: DF Talk 12

Rainseeker:   I'm sorry, for those of us that don't know what you mean, what are hill dwarves?
Toady:   Hill dwarves ... The main idea is that if you want to have an army arc and you want to be able to compete at the numbers that other civilizations are putting out there, and if you want to actually go on the offensive especially - because you can lock up your fortress and trap people and do horrible siege things to them and magma and later when we have moving fortresses I don't even want to know what people are going to grind the poor attacking armies into - but if you want to go on the offensive and you hope to actually make your mark on the world then you're going to need more dwarves than fifty or sixty or seventy dwarves, and this is where hill dwarves come in. Now hill dwarves, it's not just to say that you have a bunch of dwarves living just in hills, like their copies of hobbits or something, but it's just meaning that they're outside your fortress, either in the wilderness or they've colonised the underground lairs that you've got, you could make deeper colonies of dwarves as well. And that might be related to getting extra mining, it might be related to just getting extra farming, or they could totally just be subsisting by themselves. But the idea would be that you could send out dwarves from your fortress, you can arm them, you can train them and you can send them out to cause trouble. At the same time they'd be able to come to your fortress and trade, probably mostly food and other things like that, so you can do some exports that way without having to wait a long time for a caravan; if you want to do it. Like I was saying, this is only really required for a fort that wants to be an expansionist military rather than a strictly defensive dwarf military setup. At the same time that we're adding hill dwarves we'll probably - if they're not already in - we'll be adding the fortress embark scenarios, so that you can say 'We have three hundred dwarves left to go found a fortress out in the wild' or, whatever 'to go found a fortress on the border with the goblin kingdom'; then you'd have dwarves inside your fortress and you'd have dwarves outside your fortress. It totally changes the relationship with migrants and how many dwarves you have, so it's a big deal. But that's not to say that the old gameplay system wouldn't also be preserved where you can start with a small number of dwarves and have a different sort, or a smaller kind of operation going on, rather than one where you're worried about playing more of this world strategic game. But if you want to play the world strategic game, which is part of what the army arc is about and part of what having a world map is about - it's so underused in dwarf mode - then you need more numbers, and you can't just have them all on the map, it's just not practical, as we've seen with the frames per second that we get. The alternatives are like having ever dwarf count for twenty dwarves or something, but we just didn't want to do it that way, especially with it how it has to match in with adventure mode, and how adventure mode actually has all the people all over the place. So your fortress would have more sprawl to it itself.

Hopefully I didn't strike you down with that wall o' text there :P This is also why the question about Hill Dwarves is timely, since it sounds like embark scenarios and soforth are very near term, and the two topics are rather intertwined. I'm really hoping the answer is yes, but it's a big enough thing I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it didn't make the cut.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 04, 2012, 03:19:35 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 03, 2012, 07:38:08 am

A bunch of questions about trees:

While we don't know this for sure, I feel that I can anticipate the answers to these pretty reliably:

Quote

What sort of timescale is treegrowth on?

It should be about the same as real life. Growth calculated each season.

Quote

Will they have foilage and/or seeds?

Yes, but seeds will continue to be abstracted in most cases.

Quote

Will underground trees become multi-tile?

Yes, of course.

Quote

If treefelling now works like mining, what happens if a tree is cut all the way through?

More like a regular cave-in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 04, 2012, 03:51:09 am

If the questions were premature, I apologise. Trees are part of the current development cycle, so it seemed fair game. Even if Toady hasn't started implementing them, I don't doubt he has put a lot of thought into what he's intending.

Quote from: Cruxador on September 04, 2012, 03:19:35 am

Quote

What sort of timescale is treegrowth on?

It should be about the same as real life. Growth calculated each season.

Preferably, yes. As always it's a balance between realism and gameplay, and current growth rates don't seem that true to life.

Quote

Quote

If treefelling now works like mining, what happens if a tree is cut all the way through?

More like a regular cave-in.

Most likely. I guess the safest method may be to carve a stairway to the top, then take it one layer at a time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 04, 2012, 07:46:35 am

Mind you trees grow much faster in game then in real life.

Well ok... at least in terms of wood cutting trees. Which from my understanding can take years upon years to produce sufficient wood (and in some cases, decades).

Though that probably wouldn't be enjoyable for some people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 04, 2012, 08:27:39 am

For "Standards", the tall, straight old trees, such as oaks used for main beams, or ship masts, those would be left to grow for decades.

For general purpose wood, smaller, common use carpentry, fire wood, charcoal, etc., a pollarding plan would generally be in practice in DF's real world equivalent time frame.  Every seven years, a section of trees would be copsed or pollarded, the next year was a different sectin, in rotation.  On year eight, back to the first area again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on September 04, 2012, 11:48:21 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 04, 2012, 03:51:09 am

Most likely. I guess the safest method may be to carve a stairway to the top, then take it one layer at a time.

Of course, since making a staircase produces the mining result, you wouldnt have to take down the staircase afterwards, you'd have the logs.

A forest of stair-trees will be for everyone :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 04, 2012, 12:04:28 pm

Maybe we'll have special "pruning" jobs? Or we could build walls around our trees to make them grow in the directions we wanted...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 04, 2012, 12:18:49 pm

Perhaps pruning as part of the herbalism skill to make hedgerows?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hectonkhyres on September 04, 2012, 06:13:42 pm

Quote from: Mr S on September 04, 2012, 12:18:49 pm

Perhaps pruning as part of the herbalism skill to make hedgerows?

Not even mentioning the Topiary Golems here...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 04, 2012, 07:41:39 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 04, 2012, 12:04:28 pm

Maybe we'll have special "pruning" jobs? Or we could build walls around our trees to make them grow in the directions we wanted...

Dirty Elf, wants to befriend trees.

Though that is a possible way to mangle and corrupt the forest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Waparius on September 04, 2012, 10:46:41 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 04, 2012, 03:51:09 am

Most likely. I guess the safest method may be to carve a stairway to the top, then take it one layer at a time.

Ick, I hope it has a different solution, at least when you use the "Fell tree" designation. Revamping cave-ins and having the trees drop north or south would be much more enjoyable, even if it did tack another couple of months on to the release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on September 05, 2012, 01:55:37 am

How far reaching will a personality rewrite be? Will it just be used for things like how sentient things react to various happenings, or will it also be noticeable in terms of each individual's personality? For example, as opposed to everyone having the *nearly* same greetings and ways interacting with you, it would change based on their personality. Your companion may be very narcissistic or there's a peasant in your town that speaks very cruelly, and the way they speak/act can reflect this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 05, 2012, 02:04:58 am

Quote from: Waparius on September 04, 2012, 10:46:41 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 04, 2012, 03:51:09 am

Most likely. I guess the safest method may be to carve a stairway to the top, then take it one layer at a time.

Ick, I hope it has a different solution, at least when you use the "Fell tree" designation. Revamping cave-ins and having the trees drop north or south would be much more enjoyable, even if it did tack another couple of months on to the release.

Whilst I can imagine having the occasional mega-flora that your dwarves could carve out from the inside, I agree that it'd be neat to have trees lying on their sides once felled.

With the larger trees, will the game get something approaching a canopy?  yes!
If so, will you tackle ground vegetation differences like fields of grass or forest floor moss?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 05, 2012, 02:30:36 am

Quote from: Auning on September 05, 2012, 01:55:37 am

How far reaching will a personality rewrite be? Will it just be used for things like how sentient things react to various happenings, or will it also be noticeable in terms of each individual's personality? For example, as opposed to everyone having the *nearly* same greetings and ways interacting with you, it would change based on their personality. Your companion may be very narcissistic or there's a peasant in your town that speaks very cruelly, and the way they speak/act can reflect this.

From how I've taken it to mean, is that the personality rewrite isn't just a one unified thing, and we've already seen bits and pieces of here and there. It does seem to be very invasive rewrite and junking processes.

Personality Facets that dorfs have now, are planned to be junked and replaced with system that more geared toward things that actually matter to the game, and more conducive for the organic story telling that DF has been so known for. It'll also include misc. things like reworking the job priorities and able to set ?? individual?? job tasks priorities. And ToadyOne said that this personality will also include the allowance for more internal Fort Drama such as crimes. I wouldnt be terribly shocked if it also held a footwork for how internal fort groups are support to interact at some point.

For Adventure Mode, it also seems to mean to get Mobs/NPC (Which I am pretty sure ToadyOne has called the Critter Brain, which I took to mean every mob uses the same brain), to act in ways more conducive to organic story telling, and to stop some very gamey elements. Such as an entire town knowing you instantly when you preform some trigger actions. The sneaking stuff, and knowing when a fight is none deadly to deadly, I think are all part of the personality rewrite in part.

And outside of that, there also the Personality Write up to allow groups to make decisions for their needs and wants and how to interact with other groups. This is probably one of the more important bit, as this is where Kingdoms will decide where to expand and whom to war with, but I'm pretty sure we've seen this already with Bandits decides on whom to raid and when to raid.

So in reflection, I think calling it a personality rewrite isnt a very keen descriptor for what it hopes to accomplish.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 05, 2012, 10:34:10 am

Quote from: devlog

09/05/2012 Toady One Goblin sites are well underway. The typical setup we're going for, with variations, is a central tower with a series of tunnels and pits underground that connect to the first underground layer, with some trenches, tunnel entrances and watch towers up above on the surface. The central tower's dungeons can reach well below the first layer. The larger pits will be where the industries are centered, so that debris can convenient be tossed down into the natural caverns. The human keep+dungeon infrastructure is coming in handy here, though the final result will look very different. The tunnel systems are sprawling but sparse, so you can't get lost as easily and you don't generally meet a zillion gobs at a time.

Can't wait for this.  It sounds like the tunnels will intersect with caverns in meaningful ways?  That'd be really cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on September 05, 2012, 10:57:58 am

Quote from: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

I would very much like this to depend on the status/recentness of the capture, and the kidnapped one's personality. After all, once they consider themselves goblins, do they really want to leave? Maybe we could be given a quest from a bereaved parent to rescue a child only to discover that the child doesn't want to leave after all. That could trigger a decision that either you talk to the parent to describe the new situation, or rekidnap the child and bring them home.

But this is just me spitballing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on September 05, 2012, 11:21:42 am

I know this gets thrown around a lot, but the next version will be awesome.  Why?  Because all those awesome things that went in over the last 2 years will finally get to showcase themselves.  I look forward to killing off all the bandits and night creatures near my home town and then going for an invasion of the nearby goblin fortress. 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on September 05, 2012, 02:36:30 pm

The description reminds me a lot of Isengard in the LOTR films.

Awesome. Should be fun to explore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on September 05, 2012, 02:37:28 pm

Quote from: Sunday on September 05, 2012, 02:36:30 pm

The description reminds me a lot of Isengard in the LOTR films.

Awesome. Should be fun to explore.

I had that same exact thought.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on September 05, 2012, 02:47:16 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on September 05, 2012, 02:37:28 pm

Quote from: Sunday on September 05, 2012, 02:36:30 pm

The description reminds me a lot of Isengard in the LOTR films.

Awesome. Should be fun to explore.

I had that same exact thought.

Ditto.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on September 05, 2012, 03:08:00 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on September 05, 2012, 11:21:42 am

I know this gets thrown around a lot, but the next version will be awesome.  Why?  Because all those awesome things that went in over the last 2 years will finally get to showcase themselves.  I look forward to killing off all the bandits and night creatures near my home town and then going for an invasion of the nearby goblin fortress. 8)

Maybe if your fame gets big enough, then you can recruit a bunch of soldiers and throw them at the goblin tower.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on September 05, 2012, 03:26:21 pm

Shame you can no linger embark on sites, it'd be pretty cool looking at the new site designs in dwarf mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on September 05, 2012, 03:33:27 pm

Quote from: werechicken on September 05, 2012, 03:26:21 pm

Shame you can no linger embark on sites, it'd be pretty cool looking at the new site designs in dwarf mode.

Just put the EmbarkAnywhere program in your DF folder. Run it in site selection, and you can embark anywhere. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on September 05, 2012, 03:36:18 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

That would be pretty perfect--it's practically built-in already with quest-givers, motivations, and quest-objectives.  It would be especially cool if with time lost children grew to see the goblins more as rescuers than captors, and might have to be convinced, coerced, or incapacitated and carried away to be rescued.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 05, 2012, 05:21:00 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

I was about to ask this very question. Oh well.

Will the new goblin sites be vulnerable to attacks from Forgotten Beasts, and other cavern-based monsters? What sort of defenses will they have against them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hummingbird on September 05, 2012, 05:32:56 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on September 05, 2012, 11:21:42 am

I know this gets thrown around a lot, but the next version will be awesome.  Why?  Because all those awesome things that went in over the last 2 years will finally get to showcase themselves.  I look forward to killing off all the bandits and night creatures near my home town and then going for an invasion of the nearby goblin fortress. 8)

And then go right to exploring the underground. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2012, 05:51:54 pm

New devblog update!

In dark fortresses, will there be watch towers at the entrances to fortress in the cavern layers as well as on the surface?

Will goblins be able to attack your fortress from the cavern layers now?

I'm looking forward to seeing some screenshots of goblin fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 05, 2012, 09:11:37 pm

Quote from: Willfor on September 05, 2012, 10:57:58 am

Quote from: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

I would very much like this to depend on the status/recentness of the capture, and the kidnapped one's personality. After all, once they consider themselves goblins, do they really want to leave? Maybe we could be given a quest from a bereaved parent to rescue a child only to discover that the child doesn't want to leave after all. That could trigger a decision that either you talk to the parent to describe the new situation, or rekidnap the child and bring them home.

But this is just me spitballing.

That'd be cool. It could use the domestication framework!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 05, 2012, 09:27:45 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on September 05, 2012, 10:50:16 am

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

I doubt that this would be to hard to implement as we already see and can free prisoners in game. I think it would make for very interesting quests.

I'm gonna say thats kinda of the point for having their sites be actually fleshed out. So that adventures can go there and do things. And when Forts can send military units off map, they'll be able to rescue those kids too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gnarker on September 05, 2012, 10:04:25 pm

Will there be sickness and epidemics?

They are, after all, a great influence on history, as well as another great source of !FUN!
Also, (for some, perhaps, most importantly,) another gruesome way to kill goblins/elves. Yay for biological genocide.
Would propably have to be toggleable though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 05, 2012, 11:29:32 pm

Quote from: Gnarker on September 05, 2012, 10:04:25 pm

Will there be sickness and epidemics?

They are, after all, a great influence on history, as well as another great source of !FUN!
Also, (for some, perhaps, most importantly,) another gruesome way to kill goblins/elves. Yay for biological genocide.
Would propably have to be toggleable though.

ToadyOne has talked about Sickness and Epidemics during some Dwarf Talk or in a Future of the Fortress answer dump. Its something he and ThreeToe are aware  that is a strong force in a world, but they dont seem to have a timeline yet for it. Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 06, 2012, 01:27:36 am

I REALLY hope population is handled at some point so we can have genuinly disasterous effects and dangerous creatures/groups.

I am tired of Surgical striking megabeasts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on September 06, 2012, 07:33:12 am

Quote from: monk12 on September 05, 2012, 09:11:37 pm

That'd be cool. It could use the domestication framework!

If you turn goblins "domesticating" dwarven children around within the domestication framework, you could also have dwarves "domesticating" goblin prisoners.  New use for the poor, neglected philosopher: he schleps down to the dungeon now and then, and chats with caged goblin prisoners, gradually imparting a dose of dwarven ethics.

Those prisoners failing basic ethics are, of course, introduced to !!ethics!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gnarker on September 06, 2012, 10:45:56 am

Quote

Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

So very true. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 06, 2012, 10:54:01 am

Quote from: Gnarker on September 06, 2012, 10:45:56 am

Quote

Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

So very true. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

They also need to house themselves

I am honestly starting to think Toady should increase the size of the world significantly...

Not in terms of increasing size as in more population. I mean just making the world bigger... as in land mass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 07:28:40 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 06, 2012, 10:54:01 am

Quote from: Gnarker on September 06, 2012, 10:45:56 am

Quote

Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

So very true. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

They also need to house themselves

I am honestly starting to think Toady should increase the size of the world significantly...

Not in terms of increasing size as in more population. I mean just making the world bigger... as in land mass.

Large worlds take forever to gen on a modern computer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cthulufaic on September 06, 2012, 08:26:24 pm

Thinking about the long term, Why not assign abandoned fortresses an arbitrary value as an area to be settled, and the civilization that fortress belonged to can reclaim it?  It would add some much needed player interaction with the world as a whole.  In fortress mode you know little to nothing about what's going on outside, therefore you cannot influence it.  But after a fortress is abandoned it is merely a site to explore, why not make it a site that can be settled as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 08:27:57 pm

Too much of a suggestion >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 06, 2012, 08:51:05 pm

Will modders be able to choose what kind of site a race develops, such as setting a race to build goblin style castles and towns instead of human type towns

disregard question. Had a lapse in my memory on entity tags.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 08:53:31 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on September 06, 2012, 08:51:05 pm

Will modders be able to choose what kind of site a race develops, such as setting a race to build goblin style castles and towns instead of human type towns


I'm wondering now if i can make my northern sergals have towers and massive "mines" with the pits from goblin sites, it would fit them.

We already can, you know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 06, 2012, 08:56:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 08:53:31 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on September 06, 2012, 08:51:05 pm

Will modders be able to choose what kind of site a race develops, such as setting a race to build goblin style castles and towns instead of human type towns


I'm wondering now if i can make my northern sergals have towers and massive "mines" with the pits from goblin sites, it would fit them.

We already can, you know.

Yea, but I think he's asking if they can use the similar build up, but have the enities using the site treat them differently.

Like currently you can tell dorfs to make cities and they make human cities but use them as if their humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 06, 2012, 09:04:13 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 06, 2012, 08:56:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 08:53:31 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on September 06, 2012, 08:51:05 pm

Will modders be able to choose what kind of site a race develops, such as setting a race to build goblin style castles and towns instead of human type towns


I'm wondering now if i can make my northern sergals have towers and massive "mines" with the pits from goblin sites, it would fit them.

We already can, you know.

Yea, but I think he's asking if they can use the similar build up, but have the enities using the site treat them differently.

Like currently you can tell dorfs to make cities and they make human cities but use them as if their humans.

no it was a lapse in my memory of entity tags and that you can set cities.  though it would be interesting if you cna mix and match city parts. like this:
[ENTITY:GOBBYS]
[...stuff...]
[CITY:WALLS]
[CITY:ROADS]
[CASTLE:LARGE_PIT]
[CASTLE:LARGE_TOWER]
[CASTLE:UNDERGROUND_STRUCTURES]
[CASTLE:UNDERGROUND_TUNNELS]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on September 07, 2012, 08:24:59 am

Will you be developing Kobolds soon? The same goes for elves, but i feel that the potential for kobolds in particular has been underexploited. If there a race of thieves, then let them be the race of thieves, with all the knowledge and skill that means, with the stolen knowledge and customs of a thousand civilisations and they're inexpertly trained animals to boot! In general, having races learn forom thier enemies would be good but it seems particularly apt in this case. As well as that, let kobolds come into thier own, with thier own domesticated creatures and thier strange society, and thier own gods and arts and myths. Draw from the mythos which inspired the idea, and i know i would love to see a connection the fae, though that may have to wait untill you get to planes, and knowing you, i have a feeling that whatever you end up doing it will be a pleasant surprise. Also, when will animal people get thier own sites, possibly based in the caverns and spreading to the service?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 08:39:47 am

Quote from: Novel on September 07, 2012, 08:24:59 am

Will you be developing Kobolds soon? The same goes for elves?

It depends on what you mean by soon. Indeed he is going to develop each one so they have their own site within this haul... but we don't know how long Goblins are going to take.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 01:28:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 07:28:40 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 06, 2012, 10:54:01 am

Quote from: Gnarker on September 06, 2012, 10:45:56 am

Quote

Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

So very true. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

They also need to house themselves

I am honestly starting to think Toady should increase the size of the world significantly...

Not in terms of increasing size as in more population. I mean just making the world bigger... as in land mass.

Large worlds take forever to gen on a modern computer.

Untrue. The absolute shortest part of World Gen is the land mass. My computer could generate over 10 of the largest worlds in five minutes if it was ONLY the World Generation itself.

It is history generation that takes WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long and comprises 99% of large world generation time.

My suggestion, well not really but I don't know the word for it, was for Toady to increase the Land size but not history load. As in "Compared to history generation you wouldn't notice the change".

I know that a lot of the problem with history generation is just programming efficiency and that Toady is working on it. (The "Travel size" suggests the world is the size of the UK or Europe, but square for square it is about the size of New York)... It suggests the days are shorter in Dwarf Fortress then in real life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 07, 2012, 01:57:28 pm

If i may state my curiosity from one of my previous posts.

Will we ever be able to edit the types of buildings that will appear in towns as well as the "dungeons" inside of it, possibly having it external such as a site_dwarf file. or having "plans" built into the game like now but with the buildings customisable in the entity files, such as the options to build towers or not, or to have sewers or not at a certain city value or population

ex:
[sitetag:building tag: minimum pop, minimum site currency]
[CITY:WALLS:300,50000]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tsuchigumo550 on September 07, 2012, 04:20:03 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on September 07, 2012, 01:57:28 pm

If i may state my curiosity from one of my previous posts.

Will we ever be able to edit the types of buildings that will appear in towns as well as the "dungeons" inside of it, possibly having it external such as a site_dwarf file. or having "plans" built into the game like now but with the buildings customisable in the entity files, such as the options to build towers or not, or to have sewers or not at a certain city value or population

ex:
[sitetag:building tag: minimum pop, minimum site currency]
[CITY:WALLS:300,50000]

I'd like this as well, but wouldn't it be easier to create a "bank" of parts that can be interconnected?
Such as putting tags in that would change what rooms are like, how they're connected, where they spawn, etc.
For instance, you could set hallways to [HALLS:WINDING:value:WIDTH:value:LENGTH:value], where "winding" can be changed to influence how hallways are generated, width a value from 1-3 determining how wide a hallway is, and length a value determining a median value for how long hallways are by unit. Rooms and such could be handled the same way with multiple tags, like [LOOT:YES] or [CORPSES] and the like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 07, 2012, 05:16:33 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 01:28:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 06, 2012, 07:28:40 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 06, 2012, 10:54:01 am

Quote from: Gnarker on September 06, 2012, 10:45:56 am

Quote

Right now the world wouldnt be able to handle an epidemic. They're still sorta confused about how to feed themselves.

So very true. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

They also need to house themselves

I am honestly starting to think Toady should increase the size of the world significantly...

Not in terms of increasing size as in more population. I mean just making the world bigger... as in land mass.

Large worlds take forever to gen on a modern computer.

Untrue. The absolute shortest part of World Gen is the land mass. My computer could generate over 10 of the largest worlds in five minutes if it was ONLY the World Generation itself.

It is history generation that takes WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long and comprises 99% of large world generation time.

My suggestion, well not really but I don't know the word for it, was for Toady to increase the Land size but not history load. As in "Compared to history generation you wouldn't notice the change".

I know that a lot of the problem with history generation is just programming efficiency and that Toady is working on it. (The "Travel size" suggests the world is the size of the UK or Europe, but square for square it is about the size of New York)... It suggests the days are shorter in Dwarf Fortress then in real life.

That makes literally zero sense. This part specifically:

Quote from: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 01:28:04 pm

My suggestion, well not really but I don't know the word for it, was for Toady to increase the Land size but not history load. As in "Compared to history generation you wouldn't notice the change".

The reason larger worlds would take longer is  because they have to gen more history.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 05:27:37 pm

I was seperating History Generation from the Physical aspects of the world generation.

As in "Increase the physical size of the world but don't increase the history load simply by moving things appart from eachother and allowing cities, towns, and hamlets to essentially be larger... Which won't mean they have more population because currently cities have over 10 times the population then they have the ability to hold"

It makes perfect sense...

If that is a problem you can even make the days longer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:03:15 pm

I seem to remember toady saying that the population density is about right for houses, it's only been recently that the amount of people to a house is in the single digits, it used to be several generations of one family in a house/hut.

As for the race sites I wonder if toady will throw in a generic animal race site as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 07, 2012, 08:19:59 pm

Quote from: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:03:15 pm

I seem to remember toady saying that the population density is about right for houses, it's only been recently that the amount of people to a house is in the single digits, it used to be several generations of one family in a house/hut.

As for the race sites I wonder if toady will throw in a generic animal race site as well.

For the animal people?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:57:41 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 07, 2012, 08:19:59 pm

Quote from: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:03:15 pm

I seem to remember toady saying that the population density is about right for houses, it's only been recently that the amount of people to a house is in the single digits, it used to be several generations of one family in a house/hut.

As for the race sites I wonder if toady will throw in a generic animal race site as well.

For the animal people?

Oops yeah, animal people. I mean it would probably take years to do a unique site for each race of animal peoples.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on September 07, 2012, 11:26:36 pm

Quote from: Torchy on September 03, 2012, 02:05:09 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 03, 2012, 09:27:29 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 03, 2012, 08:26:16 am

Ocean Titans are generated, they've been cited in a number of threads and I think I've seen them in Legends mode...

I've just generated a quick world with max titans (nominally 1000, but I suspect I might have gotten fewer), and no ocean (or synonymous) titan was among them. As I said, I suspect they were taken out of the game when lairs where added - I know they used to exist.

Can we get a clarification on this, Toady? Were Ocean Titans taken out? If not, do they have Shrines placed currently or is there some system in place to prevent the strange situation of an inaccessible shrine sitting out there somewhere, presumably on the seafloor?

cthulhu, lol.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 07, 2012, 11:31:10 pm

Quote from: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:57:41 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 07, 2012, 08:19:59 pm

Quote from: werechicken on September 07, 2012, 08:03:15 pm

I seem to remember toady saying that the population density is about right for houses, it's only been recently that the amount of people to a house is in the single digits, it used to be several generations of one family in a house/hut.

As for the race sites I wonder if toady will throw in a generic animal race site as well.

For the animal people?

Oops yeah, animal people. I mean it would probably take years to do a unique site for each race of animal peoples.

Toady will probably add in a few culture stuff that will be used generically similar to Bandit camps. With them adopting a major race's building style depending on their preferences.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 08, 2012, 12:05:07 am

Quote from: Novel on September 07, 2012, 08:24:59 am

Will you be developing Kobolds soon? The same goes for elves, but i feel that the potential for kobolds in particular has been underexploited. If there a race of thieves, then let them be the race of thieves, with all the knowledge and skill that means, with the stolen knowledge and customs of a thousand civilisations and they're inexpertly trained animals to boot! In general, having races learn forom thier enemies would be good but it seems particularly apt in this case. As well as that, let kobolds come into thier own, with thier own domesticated creatures and thier strange society, and thier own gods and arts and myths. Draw from the mythos which inspired the idea, and i know i would love to see a connection the fae, though that may have to wait untill you get to planes, and knowing you, i have a feeling that whatever you end up doing it will be a pleasant surprise. Also, when will animal people get thier own sites, possibly based in the caverns and spreading to the service?

Toady does read posts in the suggestions forums.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 08, 2012, 02:28:36 am

Quote from: DG on September 08, 2012, 12:05:07 am

Quote from: Novel on September 07, 2012, 08:24:59 am

Will you be developing Kobolds soon? The same goes for elves, but i feel that the potential for kobolds in particular has been underexploited. If there a race of thieves, then let them be the race of thieves, with all the knowledge and skill that means, with the stolen knowledge and customs of a thousand civilisations and they're inexpertly trained animals to boot! In general, having races learn forom thier enemies would be good but it seems particularly apt in this case. As well as that, let kobolds come into thier own, with thier own domesticated creatures and thier strange society, and thier own gods and arts and myths. Draw from the mythos which inspired the idea, and i know i would love to see a connection the fae, though that may have to wait untill you get to planes, and knowing you, i have a feeling that whatever you end up doing it will be a pleasant surprise. Also, when will animal people get thier own sites, possibly based in the caverns and spreading to the service?

Toady does read posts in the suggestions forums.

I dont think ToadyOne plans on the Kobolds being the 'thief race'. Their sorta just like ferrets or ravens or magpies (I think thats a thieving bird too), except that their bit smarter then them but not quite sentient.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 08, 2012, 04:51:30 am

Devlog time!

Quote from: Toady One the Great

Goblin sites continue. Right now I'm stopping certain tunnels to the main tower from forcing you to go through open areas filled with dozens of goblins and otherwise arranging things more carefully to balance function and playability.

Looks like they're coming along really quickly, so, of course, he'll get bogged down in something soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 08, 2012, 08:13:26 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 08, 2012, 02:28:36 am

Quote from: DG on September 08, 2012, 12:05:07 am

Quote from: Novel on September 07, 2012, 08:24:59 am

Will you be developing Kobolds soon? The same goes for elves, but i feel that the potential for kobolds in particular has been underexploited. If there a race of thieves, then let them be the race of thieves, with all the knowledge and skill that means, with the stolen knowledge and customs of a thousand civilisations and they're inexpertly trained animals to boot! In general, having races learn forom thier enemies would be good but it seems particularly apt in this case. As well as that, let kobolds come into thier own, with thier own domesticated creatures and thier strange society, and thier own gods and arts and myths. Draw from the mythos which inspired the idea, and i know i would love to see a connection the fae, though that may have to wait untill you get to planes, and knowing you, i have a feeling that whatever you end up doing it will be a pleasant surprise. Also, when will animal people get thier own sites, possibly based in the caverns and spreading to the service?

Toady does read posts in the suggestions forums.

I dont think ToadyOne plans on the Kobolds being the 'thief race'. Their sorta just like ferrets or ravens or magpies (I think thats a thieving bird too), except that their bit smarter then them but not quite sentient.

I would agree with novel, in many of the places i have seen kolbolds, they are all the same in the given fantasy worlds, little pests not much better than rats that have an affanity with the shiny stuff. i do belive that their thiving ways could be better explained and their race could be expanded. in other words...

1) we could try to make kolbolds more interesting and better developed.

2) we could continue the kolbold stereotype and make them smart rats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on September 08, 2012, 09:34:26 am

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2012-09-07

Goblin sites continue. Right now I'm stopping certain tunnels to the main tower from forcing you to go through open areas filled with dozens of goblins and otherwise arranging things more carefully to balance function and playability.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2012-09-05

Goblin sites are well underway. The typical setup we're going for, with variations, is a central tower with a series of tunnels and pits underground that connect to the first underground layer, with some trenches, tunnel entrances and watch towers up above on the surface. The central tower's dungeons can reach well below the first layer. The larger pits will be where the industries are centered, so that debris can convenient be tossed down into the natural caverns. The human keep+dungeon infrastructure is coming in handy here, though the final result will look very different. The tunnel systems are sprawling but sparse, so you can't get lost as easily and you don't generally meet a zillion gobs at a time.

It appears that one does simply walk into goblin towers, because some gates are deliberately underguarded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 08, 2012, 09:58:48 am

I think it's more an attempt to make it at least theoretically possible to sneak into a goblin tower if you are skilled enough, rather than entirely impossible because the goblins are packed like sardines in every available space.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 08, 2012, 10:59:16 am

Quote from: DG on September 08, 2012, 09:58:48 am

I think it's more an attempt to make it at least theoretically possible to sneak into a goblin tower if you are skilled enough, rather than entirely impossible because the goblins are packed like sardines in every available space.

Though you have to admit, that would make for some hilarious infiltration missions.

"Alright, Urist, what do you see around the corner?"
"Uh, about thirty goblins in a twenty foot space. I think it's the rec room."
".....Shit."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 02:19:16 pm

Quote from: monk12 on September 08, 2012, 10:59:16 am

Quote from: DG on September 08, 2012, 09:58:48 am

I think it's more an attempt to make it at least theoretically possible to sneak into a goblin tower if you are skilled enough, rather than entirely impossible because the goblins are packed like sardines in every available space.

Though you have to admit, that would make for some hilarious infiltration missions.

"Alright, Urist, what do you see around the corner?"
"Uh, about thirty goblins in a twenty foot space. I think it's the rec room."
".....Shit."

Well of course it would be nearly impossible to sneak in and out of a fortress that also hosts the population.

It is like sneaking into the center of a city going by the main roads while wearing a Barney suit without getting seen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 08, 2012, 02:38:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 02:19:16 pm

Quote from: monk12 on September 08, 2012, 10:59:16 am

Quote from: DG on September 08, 2012, 09:58:48 am

I think it's more an attempt to make it at least theoretically possible to sneak into a goblin tower if you are skilled enough, rather than entirely impossible because the goblins are packed like sardines in every available space.

Though you have to admit, that would make for some hilarious infiltration missions.

"Alright, Urist, what do you see around the corner?"
"Uh, about thirty goblins in a twenty foot space. I think it's the rec room."
".....Shit."

Well of course it would be nearly impossible to sneak in and out of a fortress that also hosts the population.

It is like sneaking into the center of a city going by the main roads while wearing a Barney suit without getting seen.

Except that your not taking main roads or at least not the commonly used ones and since goblin towers will have populations from other races there would be other people running around in Barney suits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 08, 2012, 02:57:39 pm

And now I can't wait for the day you can disguise yourself to look like the slaves/reformed citizenry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: werechicken on September 08, 2012, 04:20:53 pm

If you want to see how difficult it is to sneak into a fortress just look at how often kobold thieves are detected in a standard fortress, and that's a race with trap avoid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 05:30:06 pm

Quote

Except that your not taking main roads or at least not the commonly used ones and since goblin towers will have populations from other races there would be other people running around in Barney suits

You are since Goblins all live in Forts. A hallway is a main road.

Goblins don't have villages, houses, or hobbles... They all live in huge forts.

As well you are not going in there incognito, nor are you dressed for the part.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 08, 2012, 08:15:54 pm

Is there an ingame reason for goblins to have sneakable hallways besides "to allow the player to sneak into their fortress"? Also, could you clear up the confusion in the community about this?Since the human cities are created as a simulation, and the sewers with catacombs make sense, I would expect the same idea from the goblin towers. I am not sure I'm comfortable with the goblin towers created specifically so they could be sneaked into. It would make sense to need a strong army to enter a goblin stronghold.

I understand the need to make for an interesting adventure for the player character, but if you think about it, as the world progresses, there might be some NPC heroes who might try their luck. I would expect the world to be fair to them (the goblins probably don't want to leave hallways to have them sneaking around). I think it would make for an interesting distraction possibilities, and as has been suggested, dressing up as a slave type of thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tsuchigumo550 on September 08, 2012, 09:05:06 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on September 08, 2012, 08:15:54 pm

Is there an ingame reason for goblins to have sneakable hallways besides "to allow the player to sneak into their fortress"?Since the human cities are created as a simulation, and the sewers with catacombs make sense, I would expect the same idea from the goblin towers. I am not sure I'm comfortable with the goblin towers created specifically so they could be sneaked into. It would make sense to need a strong army to enter a goblin stronghold.

I understand the need to make for an interesting adventure for the player character, but if you think about it, as the world progresses, there might be some NPC heroes who might try their luck. I would expect the world to be fair to them (the goblins probably don't want to leave hallways to have them sneaking around). I think it would make for an interesting distraction possibilities, and as has been suggested, dressing up as a slave type of thing.

This is fine, but I think Toady was aiming for "you can sneak through the main part of the gobbo sites but if you're loothunting then they'll find you eventually. If it was impossible to sneak at all, that would be bad as well- it's fairly easy to sneak around with today's architecture, why any different for the goblins?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 09, 2012, 01:55:05 am

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

You don't like the idea of sneaking into a dark frotress but don't mind the idea of a frontal assault as long as the goblins are only two or three to a room?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 09, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

a legendary ambusher should be able to do anything, thats why ninjas are so popular.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 09, 2012, 03:16:03 pm

Quote from: Phlum on September 09, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

a legendary ambusher should be able to do anything, thats why ninjas are so popular.

Yeah but "Stealth Ninjas" are somewhat of a myth.

No one should stand in an open hallway and be "hidden"

A better thing would be high stealth skill allows a "hide reaction"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 09, 2012, 03:46:30 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 09, 2012, 03:16:03 pm

Quote from: Phlum on September 09, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

a legendary ambusher should be able to do anything, thats why ninjas are so popular.

Yeah but "Stealth Ninjas" are somewhat of a myth.

No one should stand in an open hallway and be "hidden"

A better thing would be high stealth skill allows a "hide reaction"

In canalization, ventilation, unfinished and abandoned passages, in piles of junk, on the ceiling support, anything. I'm not sure that's what's Toady is doing. I think we can at least agree that there is a collective dissonance about this in the community, which is why we need clarification.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 09, 2012, 05:23:41 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on September 09, 2012, 03:46:30 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 09, 2012, 03:16:03 pm

Quote from: Phlum on September 09, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

a legendary ambusher should be able to do anything, thats why ninjas are so popular.

Yeah but "Stealth Ninjas" are somewhat of a myth.

No one should stand in an open hallway and be "hidden"

A better thing would be high stealth skill allows a "hide reaction"

In canalization, ventilation, unfinished and abandoned passages, in piles of junk, on the ceiling support, anything. I'm not sure that's what's Toady is doing. I think we can at least agree that there is a collective dissonance about this in the community, which is why we need clarification.

I sure hope so. Because, while a legendary ambusher could possibly do this in a dark fortress or dungeon, I can still accomplish this in broad daylight in a empty field.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 09, 2012, 08:57:17 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on September 09, 2012, 03:46:30 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 09, 2012, 03:16:03 pm

Quote from: Phlum on September 09, 2012, 02:12:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 08, 2012, 09:18:58 pm

I don't think Toady is trying to make Fortresses Sneakable.

I think he is trying to make it without choke points of dozens of goblins.

Imagine fighting that many goblins going through a dark fortress.

a legendary ambusher should be able to do anything, thats why ninjas are so popular.

Yeah but "Stealth Ninjas" are somewhat of a myth.

No one should stand in an open hallway and be "hidden"

A better thing would be high stealth skill allows a "hide reaction"

In canalization, ventilation, unfinished and abandoned passages, in piles of junk, on the ceiling support, anything. I'm not sure that's what's Toady is doing. I think we can at least agree that there is a collective dissonance about this in the community, which is why we need clarification.

(man, Collective Dissonance would be such an awesome band name)

Might as well ask, then. Toady, would you mind clarifying how you're fixing the "open areas filled with dozens of goblins"? Are you spreading things out to make sense, or deliberately making it a little more game-y, or something entirely different?

Personally, seeing as how he's using some of the keep+dungeon code for this to make it go faster (called it ;D), then he's probably trying to stop chokes. Always thought it was a little odd how my adventurer can wander through empty passage after empty room after empty passage in dungeons, only to find the entirety of a bandit group crammed into the same 7x7 space. Making gobbos wander a bit more around their own castle would make sense to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on September 09, 2012, 11:07:40 pm

Does the picture in the devlog remind anyone else of their usual early bedroom setup?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 09, 2012, 11:27:11 pm

Not mine. Mine are 2x2 sorta apartment complexes, unless a larger wave gets me then there 2x2 bedrooms everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 10, 2012, 12:00:32 am

Quote from: irdsm on September 09, 2012, 11:07:40 pm

Does the picture in the devlog remind anyone else of their usual early bedroom setup?

Heh, looks like my later bedroom setup, even.   ;)
Once those gobbos get beds and furniture, I think my dwarves would mutiny at the first hint of a siege.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sinistar on September 10, 2012, 03:31:16 am

I am not even a big fan of DF adventurer mode, as I very rarely played it. But even so, every new devlog these days is just a joy to read.

Then again, I always enjoy reading devlogs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 10, 2012, 05:20:02 am

I'm not sure if that has been asked before, and the search function didn't find anything, so:
Does/Did/Will the fortress designs of the community you saw through screenshots/dfma/discussions influence Goblin/Human/Dwarven sites in one way or another?
Are you even exposed to these?

Of course some designs tend to be "gamey" and are sometimes adapted to game mechanics (defense, stuff that improves FPS); but other times they tend to be interesting and nice. Bedrooms and dining halls, for example. And some fortresses have great industrial complexes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 10, 2012, 06:08:22 am

Quote from: CLA on September 10, 2012, 05:20:02 am

I'm not sure if that has been asked before, and the search function didn't find anything, so:
Does/Did/Will the fortress designs of the community you saw through screenshots/dfma/discussions influence Goblin/Human/Dwarven sites in one way or another?
Are you even exposed to these?

Of course some designs tend to be "gamey" and are sometimes adapted to game mechanics (defense, stuff that improves FPS); but other times they tend to be interesting and nice. Bedrooms and dining halls, for example. And some fortresses have great industrial complexes.

The answer is yes. At least toward Dorf Forts. ToadyOne has stated that a goal with Dorf Sites is that they mimic something closer to what players actually make.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 10, 2012, 08:34:11 am

I noticed the "To Jobs" text in the picture he posted on the devlog, and wondered if this meant Toady is going to implement town jobs. I ran a few searches in the this thread for a similar question, but didn't come up with anything.

Are people in towns going to have jobs in the next release, as it appears goblins will? Or will they continue to stand idly in their houses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on September 10, 2012, 09:18:23 am

Quote from: Talvieno on September 10, 2012, 08:34:11 am

I noticed the "To Jobs" text in the picture he posted on the devlog, and wondered if this meant Toady is going to implement town jobs. I ran a few searches in the this thread for a similar question, but didn't come up with anything.

Are people in towns going to have jobs in the next release, as it appears goblins will? Or will they continue to stand idly in their houses?

Obviously the humans we see are not members of the proletariat.  They are the bourgeois overlords of the enslaved proletariat, living fat on the spoils of other's labor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 10, 2012, 12:50:26 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on September 10, 2012, 09:18:23 am

Obviously the humans we see are not members of the proletariat.  They are the bourgeois overlords of the enslaved proletariat, living fat on the spoils of other's labor.

Lol, of course, now explain their job titles: "Farmer" "Shearer" "Fisherdwarf" "Mason", etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on September 10, 2012, 01:59:09 pm

Cause they didnt stop at enslaving them, they drank their soul and took over their name, that's how this evil bourgeoisie get reborn every time you slaughter them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on September 10, 2012, 02:09:59 pm

I'm not sure about you guys, but this is how I prefer to build bedrooms.

Spoiler: Large image, ahoy! (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/YBzKs.gif)

Note: It's still under construction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 10, 2012, 02:34:33 pm

Why is that saved as a gif? That's like the worst filetype to save it as.

try png next time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on September 10, 2012, 02:37:47 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 10, 2012, 02:34:33 pm

Why is that saved as a gif? That's like the worst filetype to save it as.

try png next time.

Sorry. Used to saving things as gifs for work. Will brain next time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 10, 2012, 04:12:27 pm

It seems odd to me that we wouldn't know this, but I can't seem to recall any info on this topic. If it's merely slipped my mind and someone else could answer this that would be grand, but I suspect even if there's something I missed there's a lot more we could be told here.

How do attacks from a stealth situation work? In other words, if you sneak up behind a goblin and then aerate his kidneys, what happens? Do you get improved attack opportunities like with unconscious targets? Does the goblin (or your attack) make a sound that could be heard by other goblins, and if so is it effected by the Ambusher (or another) skill?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: [NO_THOUGHT] on September 10, 2012, 05:53:59 pm

Off the current vein of conversation, I was looking at all the dev log things before where there was the calculations of minecarts and positions of characters relative to them and tracks and ledges, following trajectories and the like. My question is:

How tightly bound is the DF world to a grid? Is it actually a floating point position based world displayed through a grid, or is it more so connected to the grid on a mathematical level. If it isn't bound by the grid are they any current considerations to alter game displays in that direction?

I would expect with all the calculations for the entities they would be floating point, but walls and floors and other items might have a 1 tile presence or less than.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 10, 2012, 06:01:27 pm

Quote from: [NO_THOUGHT] on September 10, 2012, 05:53:59 pm

Off the current vein of conversation, I was looking at all the dev log things before where there was the calculations of minecarts and positions of characters relative to them and tracks and ledges, following trajectories and the like. My question is:

How tightly bound is the DF world to a grid? Is it actually a floating point position based world displayed through a grid, or is it more so connected to the grid on a mathematical level. If it isn't bound by the grid are they any current considerations to alter game displays in that direction?

I would expect with all the calculations for the entities they would be floating point, but walls and floors and other items might have a 1 tile presence or less than.

It's all grids. Grids grids grids. Creatures occupy a full tile. Any arbitrary amount x of creatures can occupy a tile so long as x-1 creatures are lying down on it, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 10, 2012, 08:22:54 pm

Little question here,
will trolls be part of goblin forts? If so, how will they be found in the dark fortress?

In a more specific tone, How will trolls be treated by gobbos, animals? People? Bombs? If they are included in the dark fort, will they be chained? Live in rooms? Or be pastured like sheep?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on September 11, 2012, 06:11:59 am

Quote from: Putnam on September 10, 2012, 06:01:27 pm

Quote from: [NO_THOUGHT] on September 10, 2012, 05:53:59 pm

Off the current vein of conversation, I was looking at all the dev log things before where there was the calculations of minecarts and positions of characters relative to them and tracks and ledges, following trajectories and the like. My question is:

How tightly bound is the DF world to a grid? Is it actually a floating point position based world displayed through a grid, or is it more so connected to the grid on a mathematical level. If it isn't bound by the grid are they any current considerations to alter game displays in that direction?

I would expect with all the calculations for the entities they would be floating point, but walls and floors and other items might have a 1 tile presence or less than.

It's all grids. Grids grids grids. Creatures occupy a full tile. Any arbitrary amount x of creatures can occupy a tile so long as x-1 creatures are lying down on it, etc.

I believe that minecarts (and stuff that shares their systems) are the sole exception to this - they do use some actual floating point stuff to get the parabolic stuff to work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on September 11, 2012, 07:26:38 am

Quote from: Phlum on September 10, 2012, 08:22:54 pm

Little question here,
will trolls be part of goblin forts? If so, how will they be found in the dark fortress?

In a more specific tone, How will trolls be treated by gobbos, animals? People? Bombs? If they are included in the dark fort, will they be chained? Live in rooms? Or be pastured like sheep?

They already have civilian jobs when invading, and seeing as goblins are pretty much an equal-opportunities evil race, I'd expect them to simply work like anyone else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 13, 2012, 05:11:07 am

Trenches and mounds? Would be nice if we could do some more earth-works in fort mode too. Watchtowers are a fine addition too, cant wait to raid one of those gob-forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 13, 2012, 05:29:43 am

Quote from: Heph on September 13, 2012, 05:11:07 am

Trenches and mounds? Would be nice if we could do some more earth-works in fort mode too. Watchtowers are a fine addition too, cant wait to raid one of those gob-forts.

You can do trenches in Fort Mode.

Unless you're thinking that trenches are some sorta new, like half dug tile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 13, 2012, 09:11:51 am

I know i meant the mounds as in piling up dirt somewhere where i need it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 13, 2012, 10:51:43 am

Do watchtowers offer any advantage in spotting intruders? Or are they just cosmetic for now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 13, 2012, 03:45:52 pm

Quote from: thvaz on September 13, 2012, 10:51:43 am

Do watchtowers offer any advantage in spotting intruders? Or are they just cosmetic for now?

Also, do mounds and trenches etc... offer any advantages?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 13, 2012, 05:03:37 pm

They will block LOS for archers, and give a high point for defenders.  I'm not sure what advantages high ground gives in the current game mechanics, though.

Classically, the Mott and Bailey design was used to defend seiges, but since we don't have proper seige engines in game yet, that is a bit premature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 07:47:24 pm

How will you choose animals to be placed in "troll-shearing areas," codingly speaking? Any tamed critters that can be sheared, or some other factors?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 13, 2012, 08:24:34 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 07:47:24 pm

How will you choose animals to be placed in "troll-shearing areas," codingly speaking? Any tamed critters that can be sheared, or some other factors?

Do goblins shear anything other than trolls? :S

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 08:52:18 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 13, 2012, 08:24:34 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 07:47:24 pm

How will you choose animals to be placed in "troll-shearing areas," codingly speaking? Any tamed critters that can be sheared, or some other factors?

Do goblins shear anything other than trolls? :S

Sheep, goats, modded shell-cows...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 13, 2012, 09:41:03 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 08:52:18 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 13, 2012, 08:24:34 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on September 13, 2012, 07:47:24 pm

How will you choose animals to be placed in "troll-shearing areas," codingly speaking? Any tamed critters that can be sheared, or some other factors?

Do goblins shear anything other than trolls? :S

Sheep, goats, modded shell-cows...

I'd presume anything marked as a [evil] animal

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 13, 2012, 10:41:54 pm

Whether they have fur or not?  Those cunning bastards!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 14, 2012, 08:05:43 am

Quote from: Mr S on September 13, 2012, 10:41:54 pm

Whether they have fur or not?  Those cunning bastards!

Well if these troll sheering areas are just the pastures with workers than yes, it's likely we may see cave dragons in the same area too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on September 14, 2012, 05:02:47 pm

I saw it more as them getting their skin sheered off to be made into leather, followed by the trolls simply regenerating it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2012, 05:10:54 pm

No, they literally shear troll wool. You can even see goblins wear troll fur clothes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on September 14, 2012, 05:15:32 pm

Actualy skinning trolls alive then just letting them regenerate it is a pretty cool concept, altough DF trolls don't really have the legendary regeneration, AFAIK.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 14, 2012, 06:14:02 pm

Quote from: TempAcc on September 14, 2012, 05:15:32 pm

Actualy skinning trolls alive then just letting them regenerate it is a pretty cool concept, altough DF trolls don't really have the legendary regeneration, AFAIK.

Nothing in the game has regeneration unless you count transformations.

Some have fast healing though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Igfig on September 15, 2012, 01:36:22 am

It should be possible to set skin as a shearable tissue layer on a given creature, I'd imagine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on September 15, 2012, 11:18:28 am

Quote from: Igfig on September 15, 2012, 01:36:22 am

It should be possible to set skin as a shearable tissue layer on a given creature, I'd imagine.

DO WANT!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on September 15, 2012, 11:41:54 am

It is possible. There was something about how you could make dwarves ritually rip their skin off the same way they style their beards. Or have farmers shear other dwarves for Dwarf Beards for making cloth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: miauw62 on September 15, 2012, 12:08:26 pm

Cue somebody modding dwarf beards to be godlike armor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 15, 2012, 12:19:29 pm

Just a humble question, but...
Remember those good ol' (or not) games where you had to do quests for the kings/monarchs alike?

Well, will there ever be a chance of players being on the other end, giving "quests" to others while being some important guy oneself?
Those pesky karpz...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on September 15, 2012, 04:00:51 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 15, 2012, 12:19:29 pm

Just a humble question, but...
Remember those good ol' (or not) games where you had to do quests for the kings/monarchs alike?

Well, will there ever be a chance of players being on the other end, giving "quests" to others while being some important guy oneself?
Those pesky karpz...

Since at some point players in adventure mode will be able to create sites and groups, it is a reasonable supposition that you will be able to give people people quests.  I don't know what plans there currently are for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 16, 2012, 11:37:02 am

Quote from: Rockphed on September 15, 2012, 04:00:51 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 15, 2012, 12:19:29 pm

Just a humble question, but...
Remember those good ol' (or not) games where you had to do quests for the kings/monarchs alike?

Well, will there ever be a chance of players being on the other end, giving "quests" to others while being some important guy oneself?
Those pesky karpz...

Since at some point players in adventure mode will be able to create sites and groups, it is a reasonable supposition that you will be able to give people people quests.  I don't know what plans there currently are for it.

I dont think anything been directly said about giving adventures quests. However, there has been some stuff said about your Adventurer being able to give orders to folks, and groups of folks to full fill some task.
I dont see why this sorta system can't be expanded into your Adventure being able to give quest as well. But I can see some conflict with the NPC Adventure not being a member of your group/entity and preventing you from giving orders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on September 16, 2012, 04:14:20 pm

Are the plans for same-race militant and otherwise conflicts? What about variances in each civ's ethics vs their own race's ethics to entice that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 16, 2012, 09:23:50 pm

Good God, just look at those devlogs!
Will (rescued) prisoners behave any different than henchmen, at least in terms of recklesness and being unable to follow you under certain circumstances, like rivers? If there's a rewrite for the companions (which I'm sure it is, rendering doable all those sneaking quests) can you tell them to leave your group, or will they have motives to leave?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 16, 2012, 10:58:49 pm

Quote from: devlog

fortress maps (which are going in before the release)

Oh hell yeah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 16, 2012, 11:36:05 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on September 16, 2012, 10:58:49 pm

Quote from: devlog

fortress maps (which are going in before the release)

Oh hell yeah.

Just saw this. Yeeeeeeeeesssssssssss.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 17, 2012, 12:39:38 am

What exactly is meant by fortress maps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 17, 2012, 01:14:09 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 17, 2012, 12:39:38 am

What exactly is meant by fortress maps?

We're going to get Elf Sites, Goblin Sites and Dwarf Sites this release. By Fort Maps, I'm pretty sure that ToadyOne means dwarf fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on September 17, 2012, 07:14:17 am

With the addition of sites for other races--including those troll-shearing pits and other economic buildings--are we going to see some more fleshed-out out-of-the-box playability in vanilla DF for the non-dwarf races in fortress mode a la Kobold Camp?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 17, 2012, 12:18:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 17, 2012, 01:14:09 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 17, 2012, 12:39:38 am

What exactly is meant by fortress maps?

We're going to get Elf Sites, Goblin Sites and Dwarf Sites this release. By Fort Maps, I'm pretty sure that ToadyOne means dwarf fortresses.

Except Goblins also live in Fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 17, 2012, 12:37:40 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 17, 2012, 12:39:38 am

What exactly is meant by fortress maps?

Given the context (bringing a dwarf's abducted children home), dwarven mountain halls. Which we kind of knew, but I guess we didn't quite have confirmation that they would get in with this release. What's a bit more interesting is the mention of a dwarven duchess, considering that currently, the landed nobles of fortress mode aren't generated in world gen that I've seen. I guess activating that was part of some previous work (the claims, perhaps?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 17, 2012, 01:58:27 pm

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on September 17, 2012, 02:38:19 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 17, 2012, 01:58:27 pm

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

Ohoho, I should've thought of that too. Would be awesome, myes. I can even imagine NPC adventurer going on mass killings in the future or spontaneously becoming genocidal to a specific species or race!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 17, 2012, 02:42:30 pm

I may as well ask this :P

Will adventures be able to claim forts as concurred sites? ( replaces "give into starvation" with "claim fortress" or something if enough of the population has fallen compared to your group. ) and that site becoming part of your civilization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 17, 2012, 05:20:50 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 17, 2012, 01:58:27 pm

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

Haha, I was about to ask if that will be in once we have inns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on September 17, 2012, 06:16:27 pm

Ooooh, and maybe onc we get to tavern times, we can hire adventurers of our own, and sell them equipment.

Of course, sometimes they'll die and then the goblins come back to you with dwarven-made gear...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:29:57 am

Quote from: CLA on September 17, 2012, 05:20:50 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 17, 2012, 01:58:27 pm

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

Haha, I was about to ask if that will be in once we have inns.

I feel a feature creep coming up...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 06:34:21 am

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:29:57 am

Quote from: CLA on September 17, 2012, 05:20:50 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 17, 2012, 01:58:27 pm

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

Haha, I was about to ask if that will be in once we have inns.

I feel a feature creep coming up...

How is that a feature creep?

And the answer, is probably, a yea. NPC Adventures will be able to do Quest for your Dorf Fort, but I dont think anything been explicitly stated on this, but it doesnt seem to be an unreasonable ability for Forts to do so, especially once their interacting with the outside world, and NPC that are Not Trading and Not Invading can actually access your site. When? I dont know. ToadyOne and Times Lines aren't compatible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:50:38 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 06:34:21 am

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:29:57 am

I feel a feature creep coming up...

How is that a feature creep?

And the answer, is probably, a yea. NPC Adventures will be able to do Quest for your Dorf Fort, but I dont think anything been explicitly stated on this, but it doesnt seem to be an unreasonable ability for Forts to do so, especially once their interacting with the outside world, and NPC that are Not Trading and Not Invading can actually access your site. When? I dont know. ToadyOne and Times Lines aren't compatible.

If we want Fortress Mode, Adventure Mode and World Gen to be closer linked (which is kind of the point of this batch of releases), then abducted children should also be able to be brought back to your fortress. However, to bring back these abducted children we will need travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode. However, if we want travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode we will need taverns and inns. And to make these taverns more lively, we will need working instruments, etc.
This won't happen if Toady doesn't let abducted children be brought back in Fortress Mode yet, but I could still easily see this slipping into a feature creep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Igfig on September 18, 2012, 11:30:33 am

Hopefully rescuing prisoners will be added to the list of quests people can offer you. It would be great to finally have a quest that isn't "Go there, kill that guy."

Now, NPC adventurers already do quest-like things in worldgen, confronting monsters and bandits and such. I don't know if that makes use of the questing functionality or if it's something else... but if it does work that way, and recovering prisoners becomes a quest, then NPCs will almost certainly start doing exactly that.

Which makes me think. Prisoners can also be taken in war, not just by babysnatchers, right? It would be incredible to talk to a friendly goblin leader and have them ask you to rescue their demonic law-giver from the humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on September 18, 2012, 03:39:11 pm

Quote from: Igfig on September 18, 2012, 11:30:33 am

Hopefully rescuing prisoners will be added to the list of quests people can offer you. It would be great to finally have a quest that isn't "Go there, kill that guy."

You forgot " Go thataway, this guy there will tell you to go someplace else and kill someone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 18, 2012, 04:00:46 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on September 18, 2012, 03:39:11 pm

Quote from: Igfig on September 18, 2012, 11:30:33 am

Hopefully rescuing prisoners will be added to the list of quests people can offer you. It would be great to finally have a quest that isn't "Go there, kill that guy."

You forgot " Go thataway, this guy there will tell you to go someplace else and kill someone.

Meanwhile in 2050...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Grackle on September 18, 2012, 05:19:51 pm

Being able to rescue a kidnapee and then bring them back to their family means we will have a way to recruit and then discharge an NPC.  Hopefully there will be a way to do this for other companions too. "Dude, your spine is broken and you're missing an arm. I admire your dedication to the cause, but go home already. Go home."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 05:22:58 pm

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:50:38 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 06:34:21 am

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:29:57 am

I feel a feature creep coming up...

How is that a feature creep?

And the answer, is probably, a yea. NPC Adventures will be able to do Quest for your Dorf Fort, but I dont think anything been explicitly stated on this, but it doesnt seem to be an unreasonable ability for Forts to do so, especially once their interacting with the outside world, and NPC that are Not Trading and Not Invading can actually access your site. When? I dont know. ToadyOne and Times Lines aren't compatible.

If we want Fortress Mode, Adventure Mode and World Gen to be closer linked (which is kind of the point of this batch of releases), then abducted children should also be able to be brought back to your fortress. However, to bring back these abducted children we will need travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode. However, if we want travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode we will need taverns and inns. And to make these taverns more lively, we will need working instruments, etc.
This won't happen if Toady doesn't let abducted children be brought back in Fortress Mode yet, but I could still easily see this slipping into a feature creep.

I'm aware of what a possible avenue means for having Reunions in both Adventure Mode and Fort Mode. But thats not really feature creep. The overall stated goal of this release was to bring the world more alive. And that goal is /very/ open ended. So getting Fort Mode  working with the outside world defiantly falls under that. The current focus is to bring the Gob, Elf and Dorf Sites back into adventure mode. And ToadyOne could very easily decided that Dorf Sites (for adventure mode) need Inns, which could naturally bleed over Dorf Sites (fort mode) needing them as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 18, 2012, 05:24:10 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 17, 2012, 12:37:40 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 17, 2012, 12:39:38 am

What exactly is meant by fortress maps?

Given the context (bringing a dwarf's abducted children home), dwarven mountain halls. Which we kind of knew, but I guess we didn't quite have confirmation that they would get in with this release. What's a bit more interesting is the mention of a dwarven duchess, considering that currently, the landed nobles of fortress mode aren't generated in world gen that I've seen. I guess activating that was part of some previous work (the claims, perhaps?).

Wondering this myself.

Will dwarves now use the lesser nobilties in world-gen? Will dwarven mountain hall be listed as barony, duchy, etc? And Finally, Will we see Forced administarters ruling over conqured sites?

Meant to ask the last one earliar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on September 18, 2012, 06:02:30 pm

Are we going to see stealth missions?
Reading the devlog, all I can think about is Metal Beard Solid: Goblin Eater.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 18, 2012, 06:31:11 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on September 18, 2012, 06:02:30 pm

Metal Beard Solid: Goblin Eater.

I, for one already have a plan to go through legends and search for crazy over-the-top opponents and undergo a sneaking mission to defeat them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 18, 2012, 08:37:27 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on September 18, 2012, 06:02:30 pm

Are we going to see stealth missions?
Reading the devlog, all I can think about is Metal Beard Solid: Goblin Eater.

wasn't this already said with the "!" Sound indicators back in a earlier dev log:P ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on September 19, 2012, 05:30:13 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 05:22:58 pm

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:50:38 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 18, 2012, 06:34:21 am

Quote from: jellsprout on September 18, 2012, 06:29:57 am

I feel a feature creep coming up...

How is that a feature creep?

And the answer, is probably, a yea. NPC Adventures will be able to do Quest for your Dorf Fort, but I dont think anything been explicitly stated on this, but it doesnt seem to be an unreasonable ability for Forts to do so, especially once their interacting with the outside world, and NPC that are Not Trading and Not Invading can actually access your site. When? I dont know. ToadyOne and Times Lines aren't compatible.

If we want Fortress Mode, Adventure Mode and World Gen to be closer linked (which is kind of the point of this batch of releases), then abducted children should also be able to be brought back to your fortress. However, to bring back these abducted children we will need travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode. However, if we want travelling adventurers in Fortress Mode we will need taverns and inns. And to make these taverns more lively, we will need working instruments, etc.
This won't happen if Toady doesn't let abducted children be brought back in Fortress Mode yet, but I could still easily see this slipping into a feature creep.

I'm aware of what a possible avenue means for having Reunions in both Adventure Mode and Fort Mode. But thats not really feature creep. The overall stated goal of this release was to bring the world more alive. And that goal is /very/ open ended. So getting Fort Mode  working with the outside world defiantly falls under that. The current focus is to bring the Gob, Elf and Dorf Sites back into adventure mode. And ToadyOne could very easily decided that Dorf Sites (for adventure mode) need Inns, which could naturally bleed over Dorf Sites (fort mode) needing them as well.

Ah right, I understand your position now. Yes, I agree that such things could easily fit in this release. However, I also think that most players don't really have inns and such in mind for the current release. Such a side trail could easily be seen as a feature creep. Especially when you consider everything else that needs to be included to make inns and taverns more alive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on September 20, 2012, 06:17:12 am

Now, someone please lemme know if this has already been asked.

If army camps and such are being implemented, presumably with tents, will it be possible to build tents/other simple roofed structures in fort mode? It would really come in handy for surface dwelling, seeing as it's quite time-consuming to build above-ground structures at the moment.

Edit: Okay, so apparently that's been asked already. De-coloured it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 20, 2012, 07:05:07 am

Quote from: Yoink on September 20, 2012, 06:17:12 am

Now, someone please lemme know if this has already been asked.

If army camps and such are being implemented, presumably with tents, will it be possible to build tents/other simple roofed structures in fort mode?
It would really come in handy for surface dwelling, seeing as it's quite time-consuming to build above-ground structures at the moment.

Yep. Its been asked. Its also been asked more so for Adventure Mode. Dont remember the answer though currently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 20, 2012, 09:01:54 am

So we'll be able to return people home now? That's great, but will we be able to send out armies or recruit mercenaries to rescue prisoners as well in the next release?

Note "in the next release".

How will you handle expanding player fortress that have been retired? I know player fortresses can be a mess of hallways to nowhere and vast open areas, unlike the computer-generated fortresses.

I assume retiring fortresses will be going in quite soon in the last statement, possibly in the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 20, 2012, 09:34:05 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 20, 2012, 09:01:54 am

So we'll be able to return people home now? That's great, but will we be able to send out armies or recruit mercenaries to rescue prisoners as well in the next release?

99% the answer is no. Sending out armies or mercenaries isn't what the upcoming release is about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 20, 2012, 12:52:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 20, 2012, 09:01:54 am

I assume retiring fortresses will be going in quite soon in the last statement, possibly in the next release.

Why do you think that retiring fortressess (instead of abandoning them) would be going in soon? And why do you think that expanding player-built fortresses by computer will go in with that? I do not see ANYTHING in Toady devlogs that would indicate that he is even nearby stuff like that.

To be clear: I interpret Toady's words "living world" NOT as in running worldgen after starting adventure/fortress. Currently it means that just more happens during worldgen, maybe during start of another adventure/fortress, but thats it. At least it is how I understand it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 20, 2012, 01:40:10 pm

While fortress retirement certainly is still ways off, having entities be "reacting to your acts as you arise to interfere or aid them, with a generous helping of tension between historical figures frosted with beast antics" is a goal for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 20, 2012, 08:01:53 pm

So, ToadyOne is going to be tackling Jumping and climbing. So, I think this means that'll be getting ladders in Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 20, 2012, 08:22:49 pm

Yay fruit! and flowers, I wondered why DF had no flowers. I didn't even think about roots!. Hmm.

 Will we be able to damage roots by mining nearby and trampling?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 20, 2012, 08:27:19 pm

Walking over saplings is already kills trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 20, 2012, 08:29:30 pm

Heck yeah fruit! Although the mention of flowers intrigues me somewhat, since I didn't really think it would be something worthy of mention.

Do you have plans for flowers as a resource of some kind (decorative or otherwise,) or are they just an aesthetic choice to make the grass pretty? Does their coincidence with Elven sites indicate that Elves will have more flowers around than anyone else, or is it just "I'm doing trees and fruits and stuff, I'll throw in flowers quick?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 20, 2012, 08:31:14 pm

I think maybe the idea is trees, not saplings, growing to their determinant size much more slowly, or not at all, if the soil layer around them is compacted due to heavy traffic.

And, holy crap.  I sure hope fall damage is further refined else we'll get jumping related broken toes all over the place.  Does this mean soon we'll have Dwarven excercise programs that don't just involve air pumps?  That also train agility?  The mind boggles.

Edit: Also, flowers may tie into the existing BEES!! structure.  And if he gets really nasty, bees could be a pre-requisite for really fertile farming, as well as wild find (i.e. herbalism).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 20, 2012, 08:53:03 pm

So the question is asking if the trampling effect is going to be changed with the addition of new vegetation and tree changes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 20, 2012, 09:27:15 pm

With fruit going in will you make adventurers able to gather fruit and other plants for food straight from the source?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on September 20, 2012, 09:43:33 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 20, 2012, 08:01:53 pm

So, ToadyOne is going to be tackling Jumping and climbing. So, I think this means that'll be getting ladders in Fort Mode.

I initially read this as "ToadyOne is going to be tackling, jumping, and climbing." My first reaction was, "Gosh, I hope he stretches. Programming doesn't leave a lot of time for exercise."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 20, 2012, 09:48:44 pm

"Next here on American Ninja Warrior we have Tarn Adams, a reclusive programmer and game designer with a Ph.D in Mathematics. He's hoping the copious quantities of alcohol he consumed with his dedicated fans will fuel his run through the course and into the second stage!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 20, 2012, 10:09:24 pm

1) gobbo's have underground forts and pits to shear trolls,
2) there is sneaking and tracking, not to forget the combat/movement split,
3) multi level trees, Jumping and ladders.
4) active world outside of worldgen,

Hell yea, this update will be the best damn thing ever.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is my first DF update, we're the others this great?

But the jumping would give the player character's a huge edge over NPC's, won't this require a new AI? I'm scared to green this, seems like too much to hope for dosn't it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 20, 2012, 10:14:45 pm

Quote from: Phlum on September 20, 2012, 10:09:24 pm

1) gobbo's have underground forts and pits to shear trolls,
2) there is sneaking and tracking, not to forget the combat/movement split,
3) multi level trees, Jumping and ladders.
4) active world outside of worldgen,

Hell yea, this update will be the best damn thing ever.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is my first DF update, we're the others this great?

But the jumping would give the player character's a huge edge over NPC's, won't this require a new AI? I'm scared to green this, seems like too much to hope for dosn't it?

Well, the minecarts were great, and I was REALLY looking forward to the bug-fix where kill orders cancel upon death. I have ADHD, so a kill order would go out, and then they'd just stand there till I remembered them. Poor guys.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 20, 2012, 10:47:54 pm

Quote from: Captain's Log

With their industries and troll shearing pits most of the way there,

Do you think the gobbos get the kidnapped children to shear the trolls?  When the kids return to Dwarven civilization do they have all kinds of freaky skills?

Roots for trees!  Can't imagine how trees are going to work out, but it really sounds like they're going to give a lot more colour to the countryside.  Looking forward to more tree-info.   :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Squanto on September 20, 2012, 11:31:27 pm

Calling it right now:  A bug where you end up embarking on the canopy of a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DNK on September 21, 2012, 01:39:06 am

So, given that in real life many trees exceed 20 ft in height (and in jungle biomes, far more), does this mean that we're going to be seeing these multi-tile trees popping up regularly in fortress mode across many biomes as well? Are their canopies going to be just single tiles or multiple tiles on multiple Z levels?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 21, 2012, 02:02:32 am

Quote from: hermes on September 20, 2012, 10:47:54 pm

Do you think the gobbos get the kidnapped children to shear the trolls?  When the kids return to Dwarven civilization do they have all kinds of freaky skills?

This is a great question actually, so I'm greening it:

We know that, after a time, children kidnapped by Goblins become Goblin-naturalized, to the point of even leading armies against their original civ. Now that abducted children are locatable and rescuable, have you put any thought into how long they have to be saved before they become willing little Goblins themselves (at which point I'd imagine they would no longer want to be rescued)? Would you have this timeframe vary based on certain personality traits of the child abducted, or their age? More importantly - would kids rescued from Goblin civs after a significant length of time be changed in any way, be it in terms of picking up a skill like Shearing from slave labor, or another trait they might acquire from the ordeal?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 21, 2012, 02:27:10 am

Quote from: monk12 on September 20, 2012, 08:29:30 pm

Heck yeah fruit! Although the mention of flowers intrigues me somewhat, since I didn't really think it would be something worthy of mention.

Do you have plans for flowers as a resource of some kind (decorative or otherwise,) or are they just an aesthetic choice to make the grass pretty? Does their coincidence with Elven sites indicate that Elves will have more flowers around than anyone else, or is it just "I'm doing trees and fruits and stuff, I'll throw in flowers quick?"

Flowers are an important part of many plants' reproductive cycles, so putting them in now to be built upon later seems reasonable. I doubt he'll get too complex with it right now, as it'd be quite a sidetrack, but something basic and possibly beekeeping-related probably wouldn't be out of the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on September 21, 2012, 02:32:06 am

I am incredibly excited for vegetation improvements.

I wonder if we'll see buttressed roots above ground, as well as underground root systems. And whether roots will grow down through open spaces underground. And whether branches will be truly solid, or permeable like staircases are now. And whether trees can be felled in sections, or will fall intact, or what. And whether trees will go through the full bud, blossom, pollination, fruit cycle. And whether we'll have tags supporting mushrooms that only grow in tree roots. And...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sinistar on September 21, 2012, 02:39:47 am

Roots!

By Armok, ROOTS!

edit: the post above pretty much describes what's going on in my head right now. Only at higher speed, resulting in a complete mess.

Thanks, Dante.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on September 21, 2012, 02:48:25 am

Very excited for the vegetation changes. Might as well post the multi-tile tree mockups I made.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/treeanimation.gif) (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/firtreeanimation.gif)

Will the new vegetation changes include the undergrowth you've mentioned before?

When it comes to sites and modding will it be a matter of deciding if your custom civ uses one of the preset ones or are they more customisable?

What level of customisation are you planning for in future / What is your ideal level and what level do you expect to achieve?

What would happen in world gen if you gave humans goblin style sites? Would the lack of farms lead to starvation?

If a civ conquers a site that wouldn't support their needs how does settling work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 21, 2012, 04:28:56 am

Quote from: Torchy on September 21, 2012, 02:02:32 am

Quote from: hermes on September 20, 2012, 10:47:54 pm

Do you think the gobbos get the kidnapped children to shear the trolls?  When the kids return to Dwarven civilization do they have all kinds of freaky skills?

This is a great question actually, so I'm greening it:

We know that, after a time, children kidnapped by Goblins become Goblin-naturalized, to the point of even leading armies against their original civ. Now that abducted children are locatable and rescuable, have you put any thought into how long they have to be saved before they become willing little Goblins themselves (at which point I'd imagine they would no longer want to be rescued)? Would you have this timeframe vary based on certain personality traits of the child abducted, or their age? More importantly - would kids rescued from Goblin civs after a significant length of time be changed in any way, be it in terms of picking up a skill like Shearing from slave labor, or another trait they might acquire from the ordeal?

It would be cool if there was night creature-like transformations, with abducted children turning green and eventually turning into goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 21, 2012, 04:39:50 am

Quote from: Torchy on September 21, 2012, 02:02:32 am

We know that, after a time, children kidnapped by Goblins become Goblin-naturalized, to the point of even leading armies against their original civ. Now that abducted children are locatable and rescuable, have you put any thought into how long they have to be saved before they become willing little Goblins themselves (at which point I'd imagine they would no longer want to be rescued)?

Ooh , this reminded me of another question... goblins don't eat, right?  I know Toady mentioned this in DF talk one time... How do they provide for their intestinally blessed captives?  Will their forts feature pastures or fields to feed the prisoners?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 21, 2012, 04:41:26 am

Climbing and jumping? I certainly did not expect that to happen, even if it happens to be adventurer-only.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 21, 2012, 05:42:05 am

Quote from: Torchy on September 21, 2012, 02:02:32 am

would kids rescued from Goblin civs after a significant length of time be changed in any way, be it in terms of picking up a skill like Shearing from slave labor, or another trait they might acquire from the ordeal?

I can see it now:
"Goddamn, the mountainhome only sends me fish dissectors and soap makers. Time to go to war with the Goblins!"


Will we have trees massive enough that the trunk alone spans several tiles? Will we then be able to carve fortifications, stairs, etc in the trunk?
I assume the elves would do that by nicely asking the tree if he can grow in such a way that it works like stairs.
Anyway, can you imagine it? Hidden sentry posts in treetops? Accessible from below the earth?
Will trees regrow if we prune them? Can we use the fallen leaves as fertilizer?
Can the code for tree/root growing be reused for 3D veins? Will we see 3D veins in this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on September 21, 2012, 06:13:40 am

Fruit!

Will we have orchards in dwarf mode then? Grapes and proper wine?

Flowers! Mushrooms!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on September 21, 2012, 06:44:11 am

How moddable will the following be: tree shape, size, quantity of fruit bearing
Will all trees have different defined varieties of leaves/petals/etc? For example, pine trees will have pine needles, oak trees will have oak leaves, palm trees will have palm fronds.
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
With the implementation of the other new sites, will this in turn allow for more variety with human sites, since the code has been expanded upon?
Will trees legitimately spread through methods such as seeds in fruit, or will they still just spawn?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on September 21, 2012, 06:57:12 am

The next update is going to be amazing. My God, I'm going to fail my final year of university...

Also the theme song of this update: Sepultura - 'Roots bloody roots'

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Auning on September 21, 2012, 07:20:23 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on September 21, 2012, 06:57:12 am

The next update is going to be amazing. My God, I'm going to fail my final year of university...

I too am concerned about my studies as well as my health when it releases. I already decided to forgo any real social life several years ago in preparation for the very day it releases, because I might as well just not exist for several weeks after it is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 21, 2012, 07:38:17 am

Quote from: Phlum on September 20, 2012, 10:09:24 pm

But the jumping would give the player character's a huge edge over NPC's, won't this require a new AI? I'm scared to green this, seems like too much to hope for dosn't it?

When ToadyOne said he was adding in Jumping, and climbing it was most certainly for NPC and for adventurers. If I recall correctly, ToadyOne was hesitant to give it to Adventurers earlier due to advantages it would give adventures for accessing sqaures that NPC can't path to. The reason why he was hesitant against adding it for NPC, was because it would require a none trivial change to Path Finding. And it'll also probably touch upon numerous other aspect too. Like some NPC personalty facets may discourage their ability to take jumping paths.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on September 21, 2012, 08:46:21 am

Even though it would be awesome to see dwarves pathing individually, hesitating on whether or not to take a jump in fortress mode, it might be hard to do different requests for every unit.
However, it would be feasible in adventurer mode since there are less entities at a time, everyone can use the same pathfinding in normal situations (outside of fights) and it's not real-time.

I have been eagerly waiting for climbing and jumping for such a long time I'm having a hard time realizing it's really coming soon.
Plus, let's check what we know up till now :
- Non-lethal fight, small crimes and intimidation with activating the world and human cities;
- we had infiltration and rudimentary nc jobs with goblins;
- fruits, multitile trees, climbing and jumping with elves;

So, what will we have for dwarves and kobolds ? All bets are off ! Maybe inns, but I so strongly hope for the start of the personnality rewrite. It would allow for interesting leaders and warfare, stories of love and war and hate and treason at the head of states...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on September 21, 2012, 08:57:21 am

With climbing in, I'm wondering if my fort walls will be scaled or not.  Certainly I wont be able to have safe perimeters that use a single level ledge anymore (as I would often build walls into the sides of a hill and use the natural ledges as part of my safety perimeter due to it being unclimbable.  Enemies it seems now will just jump down the single level drop from above and into my fort proper... hehe.  I foresee radical changes in player fort design... that is for those of us who make extensive above ground forts.     Very exciting update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on September 21, 2012, 09:17:20 am

Will cutting down multi-tile trees right where the tree goes into the ground cause the cave-in code to take effect, or do you intend to handle this differently? I know logging is dangerous, but not that dangerous!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 21, 2012, 09:18:10 am

Once again, Toady just exceeded my expectations. We're getting fruits and flowers, so will we have seeding patterns too?

With the addition of fruits and flowers on trees, will animals such as elephants be able to browse trees?

Will roots be able to damage structures within your fortress?

Are all trees going to use the new multi-tile code?

Some real life trees, such as Baobabs, store large quantities of water inside their trunks. Will some large trees be filled with replenishing water?

How compatible will this version be with previous saves?

Now that climbing is going in, will we be getting ladders?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phibes on September 21, 2012, 10:38:53 am

Will invaders be linked to the new elven and goblin sites?

And if so, will this have any effect on sieges? Variety of unit types, historical figures, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pisskop on September 21, 2012, 10:43:22 am

Will Kobolds or cave civs see any revision?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on September 21, 2012, 10:52:24 am

Will climbing require special equipment, like grappling hooks, spiked shoes, picks and so on?

With this new climbing mechanics, will we see those high cliffs back again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 21, 2012, 10:59:09 am

Will Bamboo "grass" turn to Bamboo "Trees"? Also will we have multitile "Bushes" and "Hedges" like ribes, Hazelnuts or Hibiscus?

edit:

Will certain Trees/bushes/plants breed by other means then fruits and seeds? Like over the Rhizome by vegetative reproduction (natures own cloning) etc.? (quaking aspen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populus_tremuloides) does this)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 21, 2012, 11:09:23 am

Quote from: Vattic on September 21, 2012, 02:48:25 am

Very excited for the vegetation changes. Might as well post the multi-tile tree mockups I made.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/treeanimation.gif) (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/firtreeanimation.gif)

Damn, I've been worried about how multi-tile trees will look in the ASCII, because I've had trouble visualizing them in a way that would both make it clear what they are and not be ass-ugly to look at. But those, those are beautiful. If I wasn't so sure Toady's design will surprise me I'd recommend he use something like that. Those branches, those leaves - wow!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 21, 2012, 11:16:06 am

I wonder how toady is going to code the trees. I dont think he will use a standard palette like many games. Since trees are already in the raws i could imagine today will add some "growth-rules"  to them making them more or less fractal along the lines of the set rules. Given enough diversity and values any kind of tree/plant could be created. The interaction between trees now (as in a forrest) is another interresting problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 21, 2012, 11:23:47 am

Hey, I just realized! We passed Toady's original set release date for DF a week ago!

Quote from: Toady One on September 14, 2004, 11:42:00 pm

Eight years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 21, 2012, 11:30:32 am

Quote from: Heph on September 21, 2012, 11:16:06 am

I wonder how toady is going to code the trees. I dont think he will use a standard palette like many games. Since trees are already in the raws i could imagine today will add some "growth-rules"  to them making them more or less fractal along the lines of the set rules. Given enough diversity and values any kind of tree/plant could be created. The interaction between trees now (as in a forrest) is another interresting problem.

Custom workshops already have a "layout" framework, i don't see if that would be too difficult to change trees to use a workshop type of format where each stage of construction is instead a layer of tree growth.

i think this tool is the best example of what i mean : http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54004.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 21, 2012, 12:30:35 pm

Quote from: Heph on September 21, 2012, 11:16:06 am

I wonder how toady is going to code the trees. I dont think he will use a standard palette like many games. Since trees are already in the raws i could imagine today will add some "growth-rules"  to them making them more or less fractal along the lines of the set rules. Given enough diversity and values any kind of tree/plant could be created. The interaction between trees now (as in a forrest) is another interresting problem.

I think following real life organization would be the easiest and most modular (including user mods) solution. You could even apply it to grass.
Separating it into
ROOT
STEM
LEAF

and giving it tags like
LIGNIFIED
XYLEM
ANGIOSPERM
etc
And for the actual growth, a couple of parameters could be enough.
Given that a lot of these tags are also traits that determine their taxonomy, it'd be easy to assign tags and find mistakes.
Edit:
Multi tile plants would be part of one of the parameters. For non multi-tile plants, it would translate the parameters into more simple categories (i.e. "dense" grass, "very dense" grass, etc)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 21, 2012, 01:50:21 pm

Quote from: pisskop on September 21, 2012, 10:43:22 am

Will Kobolds or cave civs see any revision?

Apparently. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115747.0)

Quote

goblin/elf/dwarf/kobold sites

Unless by cave civs you mean cavern civs like the deep animal men. They'll probably have to wait.

Also, I'm pretty sure that most of the plant/tree questions that have been posted here would be answered in the upcoming devlogs anyway because of how important they are. I understand the enthusiasm, but shouldn't we wait a little bit to see what we won't know?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on September 21, 2012, 02:54:36 pm

Ah, do you guys think semi-rotten fruits will contain alchohol? They do in real life and I heard cows sometimes get drunk on fruit :D

Very excited for this release, as person who made shit for stonesense, I adored the grass and I'm excitedly awaiting flowers and trees :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sidhien on September 21, 2012, 03:18:35 pm

What is this? He's working on elves before dwarves.

Toady One, I respect you, but I'm concerned your priorities are not in order.






...

HOLY CRAP those trees are awesome!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 21, 2012, 03:35:45 pm

Will tree roots be multi-tile, and if so, will they remain and decay after the tree is chopped down?
edit:
Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?
edited again, but the question still stands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 21, 2012, 03:36:21 pm

Quote from: Sidhien on September 21, 2012, 03:18:35 pm

What is this? He's working on elves before dwarves.

Toady One, I respect you, but I'm concerned your priorities are not in order.

Who says he's not saving the best for last?

I'll be interesting to finally be able to visit all of the sites instead of just human towns ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 21, 2012, 06:12:31 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on September 21, 2012, 06:57:12 am

The next update is going to be amazing. My God, I'm going to fail my final year of university...

I think your time-frame might be a little optimistic, there. I'm seriously doubting a release date before January, so we'll at least get one good semester.

Quote from: ToadyOne

properly-sized mushrooms

Normal trees are cool and all, but multi-tile Tower Caps? Why yes, yes I would like to build my entire fortress in mushroom-tree-houses in the caverns. I would like that very much. (http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs43/f/2009/080/6/0/Mushroom_House_by_caglarcity.jpg)
Will you be making underground trees and mushrooms multi-tile as well, and if so how are you dealing with cavern space requirements for these?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 22, 2012, 03:15:48 am

As goblins breach the underground now,will they be attacked by forgotten beasts? There will be a chance now that forgotten beasts enter in play during world gen?

Before someone point out, demons aren't forgotten beasts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 22, 2012, 05:30:40 am

Quote from: Phibes on September 21, 2012, 10:38:53 am

Will invaders be linked to the new elven and goblin sites?

And if so, will this have any effect on sieges? Variety of unit types, historical figures, etc?

Yea. Thats part of the point from making the world alive after World Gen. Invaders are suppose to come from Site populations. We already get historical figures and incoming invaders come in with different invader types.

Quote from: Talvieno on September 21, 2012, 03:35:45 pm

Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?

Unless I'm misunderstanding the question, but I think the answer is yes, that Adventurers will be able to jump is an intended goal for this next release.

Quote from: thvaz on September 22, 2012, 03:15:48 am

As goblins breach the underground now,will they be attacked by forgotten beasts? There will be a chance now that forgotten beasts enter in play during world gen?

Very probably. I think it'd be very odd if ToadyOne and ThreeToe made a special exception for Gobo sites to be immune to Forgotten Beast. So, as long as they hit the artificial triggers for forgotten beasts, they should be invaded by them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 22, 2012, 07:09:49 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 22, 2012, 05:30:40 am

Quote from: Talvieno on September 21, 2012, 03:35:45 pm

Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?

Unless I'm misunderstanding the question, but I think the answer is yes, that Adventurers will be able to jump is an intended goal for this next release.

Thank you, question edited.

Will there be a difference between climbing rough and smooth walls? If some invaders become capable of climbing into an aboveground fortress, will smoothing the walls (or constructing smooth walls) prevent them from doing this? (unless they bring ladders/siege towers, of course)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 22, 2012, 07:26:27 am

Quote from: Talvieno on September 21, 2012, 03:35:45 pm

edit:
Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?
edited again, but the question still stands.

Yep. I'm pretty sure that Fort Mode uses the same path finding code, as NPC do in adventure mode, so barring restrictions or exceptions in their raw, they'll have the same path finding capability. Even if it uses a different path finding code, it'd be weird if we didnt see an analogous change to fort mode as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 22, 2012, 07:29:04 am

Yes, but in adventure mode, adventurers can jump down off ledges. Nothing else can in either game mode. If it's an adventurer-only change, then we wouldn't see it in fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 22, 2012, 07:35:10 am

If I recall correctly, ToadyOne has been hesitant to add in jumping to the game, to just Adventurer due to the unfair advantage it'd give the player over NPC. The reason why it wasn't added for NPC, is because its a none trivial change to path finding. Apparently Elf Sites require the ability to jump, /or/ the ability to climb requires changes to path finding already then while ToadyOne is in there, he's gonna the ability to jump. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 22, 2012, 07:55:25 am

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on September 22, 2012, 11:26:37 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 22, 2012, 03:15:48 am

Before someone point out, demons aren't forgotten beasts.

Perhaps they are remembered beasts!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2012, 11:32:59 am

Quote from: CLA on September 22, 2012, 07:55:25 am

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

This sounds like a really good idea tbh, not that I know how easy it'd be to implement :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 12:08:05 pm

Quote from: CLA on September 22, 2012, 07:55:25 am

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

Good luck making it fall across the river instead of on your head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 22, 2012, 12:14:56 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 12:08:05 pm

Quote from: CLA on September 22, 2012, 07:55:25 am

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

Good luck making it fall across the river instead of on your head.

It's a new application for the Wood Cutter skill- master Wood Cutters always have the tree fall where they want, while novices are at significant risk of tree-felling related mayhem. I really hope logging accidents make it in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 22, 2012, 12:19:39 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 12:08:05 pm

Good luck making it fall across the river instead of on your head.

I guess that would depend on your wood cutting skill and from which side you cut it. In either case, whether it lands on your head or falls across the river, the problem of not being able to cross the river is settled. A 100% problem solving method.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smaug13 on September 22, 2012, 02:23:14 pm

now there are armies and nightcreatures are traveling through the overworld, will this mean the megabeasts will leave their lair this or next update?

With the multitile trees and jumping implemented, does this mean that there will be creatures that live in trees. and will it be possible to sneak pasts guards through trees??

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 02:52:03 pm

Quote from: CLA on September 22, 2012, 12:19:39 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 12:08:05 pm

Good luck making it fall across the river instead of on your head.

I guess that would depend on your wood cutting skill and from which side you cut it. In either case, whether it lands on your head or falls across the river, the problem of not being able to cross the river is settled. A 100% problem solving method.

Unless it falls to one of the other two sides.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kulik on September 22, 2012, 03:29:51 pm

 Will entities be able to jump over more than one tile?

 Will you need some distance to run before jumping?

 Will you be able to jump into somebody as offensive maneuver?

 When climbing, will you be able to jump vertically to another adjacent (opposite) wall and try to snag to it?

 Will holding on ledges be part of climbing-jumping.

 Will climbing introduce ladders and ropes for climbing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 22, 2012, 03:39:08 pm

Climbing /has/ to introduce ropes and ladders. If I recall correctly, the reason why we were promised then denied rope ladders in Fort Mode was due to path finding addition not worth the effort. This was way back when the caverns were introduced.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 22, 2012, 05:24:27 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 22, 2012, 02:52:03 pm

Unless it falls to one of the other two sides.

Yeah I thought about that, but then you can just try the next tree until you die or reach the other side of the river, so I didn't bother mentioning that possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 22, 2012, 06:54:13 pm

It is possible to control the direction in which a tree falls, so this could be added into the game. This will give an adventurer a good way to bring down a tree, and possibly determine the direction in which a tree falls in dwarf fortress mode.

If walking trees go into Dwarf Fortress, the next update will ensure they become a lot more terrifying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 22, 2012, 07:15:24 pm

Deadfall traps anyone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on September 22, 2012, 07:24:25 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 22, 2012, 06:54:13 pm

It is possible to control the direction in which a tree falls, so this could be added into the game. This will give an adventurer a good way to bring down a tree, and possibly determine the direction in which a tree falls in dwarf fortress mode.
...

- Adventurers cutting down trees in combat to strike enemies?
- Adventurers cutting down trees near towns to strike NPCs, with plausible deniability?
- Fort mode wood cutters cutting down trees just as wood haulers arrive to collect the previous logs, leading to squished haulers?
- A tree is in a corner or something, so the only direction it can fall is towards the fort mode wood cutter?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on September 22, 2012, 08:25:35 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 22, 2012, 06:54:13 pm

It is possible to control the direction in which a tree falls, so this could be added into the game.

Cue your dabbling woodcutter getting it wrong, and dropping a tree on himself :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 22, 2012, 10:34:12 pm

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on September 22, 2012, 08:25:35 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 22, 2012, 06:54:13 pm

It is possible to control the direction in which a tree falls, so this could be added into the game.

Cue your dabbling woodcutter getting it wrong, and dropping a tree on himself :P

Boy I hope so.

Will jumping now be reflected as a skill? Will fortmode dwarves jump, and under what circumstances?

it would be reasonable to assume so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 23, 2012, 01:32:22 am

The excitement generated by an upcoming release is proportional to the number of green question-suggestions that roll in.

I'd hope that the possibility of lethal tree felling would wait until there was some way for non-skilled dwarves to learn the basics (how not to kill yourself immediately) from skilled dwarves by just tagging along and observing (apprenticeship). But it's not hard to spare a couple points for wood cutting at embark so it's not that important, I guess. Until your woodcutter is shot in the face from ambush.

Rope ladders are what I am most excited about. Finally the possibility of sheer sided pits without stairs or rubble left at the bootm. OCD players rejoice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 23, 2012, 05:54:27 am

ToadyOne, how much, if at all, do you enjoy us trying to soak as much information as possible from your Dev Logs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 23, 2012, 06:45:25 am

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on September 22, 2012, 07:24:25 pm

- A tree is in a corner or something, so the only direction it can fall is towards the fort mode wood cutter?

Knowing Dwarf Fortress, it will work like walls used to, they'll always fell it from the wrong side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 23, 2012, 07:00:39 am

Quote from: CLA on September 23, 2012, 06:45:25 am

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on September 22, 2012, 07:24:25 pm

- A tree is in a corner or something, so the only direction it can fall is towards the fort mode wood cutter?

Knowing Dwarf Fortress, it will work like walls used to, they'll always fell it from the wrong side.

I respectfully disagree. That would render the game unplayable, and Toady One has a tendency (one I strongly approve of) to forego realism for functionality, especially in places where it would break the game. One-chop lumberjacks would be incredibly annoying. If falling trees generate walls, then I think you would probably wind up with items getting destroyed as well, in the same manner as someone freezing in ice, which means you would have to produce a new axe every time you chop down a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 23, 2012, 07:19:38 am

I don't really see how it should be that hard to fix. Just need to make the ground area where the tree will land temporarily marked as dangerous, then program dwarf ai to respond to this and run to safety if needed (and possibly adding in an appropriate time delay for the tree to fall so they'd have a chance at running away in time if need be). And if one were to try and cut down a tree that can only fall in one direction with no space for your dwarves to get out of the way then that'd be a failure on the players part, same as causing a cave-in etc ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on September 23, 2012, 12:19:35 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 23, 2012, 07:19:38 am

And if one were to try and cut down a tree that can only fall in one direction with no space for your dwarves to get out of the way then that'd be a failure on the players part, same as causing a cave-in etc ^^

Or a masterfully planned trap!

I don't think felled trees are going to act like impassable walls, except maybe big, 3x[something] and bigger ones. In real life you could prob step over most trees, others would slow you down. Few could be considered to really be able to stop a person from continuing on.
Also, skilled-based directional control seems plausible, but also evasion. Agility could mean life or death.. if the dwarf's awareness is enough to notice he's going to be flattened... and let's face it, dwarves usually aren't that much aware of their surroundings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Charey Wolf on September 23, 2012, 01:35:49 pm

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 23, 2012, 01:45:59 pm

Quote from: Charey Wolf on September 23, 2012, 01:35:49 pm

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

Those don't quite fit the things Toady mentioned in the dev-log ("multi-tile trees (including roots and properly-sized mushrooms), fruit, flowers, climbing and jumping"), so it is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 23, 2012, 04:45:35 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 23, 2012, 01:45:59 pm

Quote from: Charey Wolf on September 23, 2012, 01:35:49 pm

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

Those don't quite fit the things Toady mentioned in the dev-log ("multi-tile trees (including roots and properly-sized mushrooms), fruit, flowers, climbing and jumping"), so it is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Mostly because that requires a plant rewrite and creature rewrite AND combat rewrite.

Afterall stationary creatures arn't... really dangerous in Dwarf Fortress as they are right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on September 23, 2012, 06:08:35 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 23, 2012, 04:45:35 pm

AND combat rewrite.

You mean the separation of attack speed and movement speed? The one that is inside this coming release? (Unless I am drastically misremembering)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 23, 2012, 09:47:56 pm

Toady i applaud! Those trees look awesome! And good luck with the Other trees :P Cant wait to see Mammoth trees and Mangroves!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 23, 2012, 09:56:59 pm

Quote from: Heph on September 23, 2012, 09:47:56 pm

Toady i applaud! Those trees look awesome! And good luck with the Other trees :P Cant wait to see Mammoth trees and Mangroves!

Kinda hoping for graphics support rather soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 23, 2012, 09:57:32 pm

YAY TREES. DF IS OFFICIALL A MULTI-TILE GAME.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on September 23, 2012, 10:37:36 pm

Holy Wow Batman, TREES!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 23, 2012, 10:48:58 pm

Quote from: misko27 on September 23, 2012, 09:57:32 pm

YAY TREES. DF IS OFFICIALL A MULTI-TILE GAME.

Wait, we're gonna get to play with more than 1 tile? Awesome ;D

On a more serious note, looking really good, can't wait to see what chopping them down is like ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 23, 2012, 10:50:15 pm

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

I uploaded the second one onto DFMA, so you can all see what the trees look like sideways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 23, 2012, 10:58:42 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 23, 2012, 10:50:15 pm

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

I uploaded the second one onto DFMA, so you can all see what the trees look like sideways.

You're awesome. I was wondering what they looked like up close.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on September 24, 2012, 12:02:28 am

Loving the trees so far.

When you say which branches are safe to climb on and which aren't does this take size into account?

Cheers Japa! Much easier to look at them in general through the DFMA interface.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bralbaard on September 24, 2012, 12:05:02 am

Quote from: Toady one

the 1/4 tiles are branches heavy enough to climb (but they still have some leaves),

I wonder if trees look different if you are a bronze collossus, or something else that should not be supported by these thin branches. An elf might be able to climb anywhere resulting in all tree leaves being 1/4 tiles..

Edit, aack ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on September 24, 2012, 12:11:06 am

Will the new, larger trees be dangerous to chop down in any way? What, if any, safety precautions will be needed to ensure safe harvesting, both of wood and (hopefully) fruit?

Will climbing be implemented in any other respect, or will it just be restricted to trees for now? What, if any, mechanical differences will there be between climbing and going up a flight of stairs/walking?

Also, I find it hilarious that the 1/4 tiles now actually have a use. Never saw that coming :p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: stolide on September 24, 2012, 12:11:35 am

How does combat while climbing work? (Can we throw things while climbing?)

Can we sneak while climbing?

Do all trees grow the same way?

Are trees the only things that we will be able to climb?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on September 24, 2012, 12:38:47 am

Quote from: stolide on September 24, 2012, 12:11:35 am

Do all trees grow the same way?

For now but by release there will be different sets of rules that determine their growth and many parameters will be exposed to the raws so we can customise them if we like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 24, 2012, 12:51:42 am

Quote from: stolide on September 24, 2012, 12:11:35 am

Do all trees grow the same way?

To answer that question let me quote the devlog:

Quote

I've been working with one set of rules for growing them so far, but I'll be expanding the parameters and pictures soon (for pines, saguaros, tower caps, etc).

So toady uses a rule based approach. By Rules basicly stuff like "Grow 2 tiles in hight before branching" or "Do symetrical branching" is meant thus it sets the growth behavior. This is mixed with a bit of randomness and variances to get greater variety while still getting similiar trees. Its a bit like our DNA or the current creature Makeup which determines how our basic form (Bipedal, 2legs, 2arms, a head and a beard) looks while variances/randomness determine individual aspects. For a tree that might be in which direction he/she/it branches (yes trees have genders). Also the outside influences might play a role, like where you can get light, space for root growth, previous damage etc. Since atm there is only one "set of Rules" you get only one basic "tree-form".

I have a followup question thought for toady: I love how you do this, it gives us nice dense forrests if done right but i wonder if you include the Physical aspects in your growth algorithm. Given that you have only one set of Rules (atm) i could imagine that respecting stuff like the Tensile and compressive Strength or the solid density of the different wood-materials makes still a difference in the outcome (for example if certain breaking points are reached).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lordinquisitor on September 24, 2012, 01:30:03 am

Pretty excited about the trees, altough i was sceptical at first- Cause, you know, this makes the issue of all creatures taking up exactly one tile much more noticeable. (Let`s hope that we see multi-tile creatures soon, then. :P )

Anyway- it seems like we will now also be able to build treehouses for our dwarves. Sounds elvish, but you know, i`m sure there can be a dwarfy approach to it, too.

Which brings up my question- Will Climbing be enabled in Fortress mode? And will there be critters that live in the trees, aside from elves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 01:56:30 am

Pretty cool. I hope the elf trees are bigger though - you can hardly fit even an elf house in the biggest of these. They're still good to hollow out for dwarven watchtowers, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 02:00:58 am

Quote from: Vattic on September 24, 2012, 12:02:28 am

Loving the trees so far.

When you say which branches are safe to climb on and which aren't does this take size into account?

Cheers Japa! Much easier to look at them in general through the DFMA interface.

Quote from: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 01:56:30 am

Pretty cool. I hope the elf trees are bigger though - you can hardly fit even an elf house in the biggest of these. They're still good to hollow out for dwarven watchtowers, though.

To buld off of this:
Will Building be able to be constructed on Trees at all, if so, what building under what circumstances.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 02:31:22 am

Quote from: AbuDhabi on September 24, 2012, 02:26:53 am

I wonder how much lumber trees will give when chopped down now.

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

MIND READER.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 03:06:59 am

.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on September 24, 2012, 03:09:41 am

Quote from: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 02:31:22 am

Quote from: AbuDhabi on September 24, 2012, 02:26:53 am

I wonder how much lumber trees will give when chopped down now.

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

MIND READER.

Presumably by increasing growth times for trees to more realistic time scales.

That in addition to the increased size needed for 'tree farming' will probably mostly resolve itself.

The striking realization I just had however is that if tree 'felling' as in cutting of the trunk heart  (and thus having the tree fall) is now the definition of 'tree cutting' then we now have a peaceful option for harvesting wood that should not upset elf diplomats.

Mull on that friend, there is a way to satisfy their demands to not cut down trees and still have a decent wood based industry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 03:26:07 am

Quote from: nighzmarquls on September 24, 2012, 03:09:41 am

Quote from: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 02:31:22 am

Quote from: AbuDhabi on September 24, 2012, 02:26:53 am

I wonder how much lumber trees will give when chopped down now.

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

MIND READER.

Presumably by increasing growth times for trees to more realistic time scales.

That in addition to the increased size needed for 'tree farming' will probably mostly resolve itself.

The striking realization I just had however is that if tree 'felling' as in cutting of the trunk heart  (and thus having the tree fall) is now the definition of 'tree cutting' then we now have a peaceful option for harvesting wood that should not upset elf diplomats.

Mull on that friend, there is a way to satisfy their demands to not cut down trees and still have a decent wood based industry.

Indeed there are many ways it could be done, but I think only Toady knows how it will be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Legorara on September 24, 2012, 03:29:48 am

Two words:

Forest
Fires

Do we know anything about this?  Maybe someone who is more eloquent could green text a question.  I'm not confident enough with my first post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 03:39:57 am

Quote from: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 03:06:59 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

Perhaps kitchen, distillation etc could require fuel?

That one's definitely a suggestion question.

Quote from: Legorara on September 24, 2012, 03:29:48 am

Two words:

Forest
Fires

Do we know anything about this?  Maybe someone who is more eloquent could green text a question.  I'm not confident enough with my first post.

I don't imagine they'll be all that different. Just the stuff that burns will be branches and leaves at an elevated level rather than just the grass and shrubs at ground level.
Although it would be interesting to hear what fire does to the trunks. The simplest thing would be to give the parts that fire touches a "burnt" modifier, and otherwise leave things unchanged. But then what? Does that tree yield charcoal instead of lumber? I suppose that would work fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 24, 2012, 03:50:01 am

Quote from: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 03:39:57 am

Quote from: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 03:06:59 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

Perhaps kitchen, distillation etc could require fuel?

That one's definitely a suggestion question.

Quote from: Legorara on September 24, 2012, 03:29:48 am

Two words:

Forest
Fires

Do we know anything about this?  Maybe someone who is more eloquent could green text a question.  I'm not confident enough with my first post.

I don't imagine they'll be all that different. Just the stuff that burns will be branches and leaves at an elevated level rather than just the grass and shrubs at ground level.
Although it would be interesting to hear what fire does to the trunks. The simplest thing would be to give the parts that fire touches a "burnt" modifier, and otherwise leave things unchanged. But then what? Does that tree yield charcoal instead of lumber? I suppose that would work fine.

As of now, unless something's changed, fire doesn't affect trees *at all*. I don't think magma does, either, but I'm not as sure about that.
The only time I've ever seen a tree burn is lighting one up manually in Adventure mode. They don't seem to catch, even if a Dragon sprays down the whole world around them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 03:53:04 am

Quote from: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 03:39:57 am

Quote from: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 03:06:59 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 02:27:05 am

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

Perhaps kitchen, distillation etc could require fuel?

That one's definitely a suggestion question.

Allrigth, pal, I fix it. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on September 24, 2012, 05:01:54 am

Vattic's trees were visually a bit better, IMHO.

I'm really curious how woodcutting will work with these new trees. Maybe we will finally get boards in addition to 'blocks'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 24, 2012, 05:33:06 am

Quote

It wasn't until the advent of multi-tile trees that the dwarven wood industry took a quantum leap forward in production efficiency as siegedwarves found new applications for their skills. Predictably, relations with elven nations crashed to a new low. The picture below documents one of the first trials of what became known as "long line" tree-felling.

- excerpt from A Brief History of Dwarf Fortress (abridged version)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa159/Drunken_gun/multitilewoodcutting_zps7dbb3853.png)
How cute is the ballista!?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 24, 2012, 06:01:43 am

cute as a hammerhead shark! _{the cutest of fish after the cuttlefish}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 07:32:53 am

So tell me palls, does this mean we get tree eating, aka browsing anytime around this release? Elephants, pandas etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 24, 2012, 07:41:47 am

Quote from: Neonivek on September 23, 2012, 04:45:35 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 23, 2012, 01:45:59 pm

Quote from: Charey Wolf on September 23, 2012, 01:35:49 pm

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

Those don't quite fit the things Toady mentioned in the dev-log ("multi-tile trees (including roots and properly-sized mushrooms), fruit, flowers, climbing and jumping"), so it is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Mostly because that requires a plant rewrite and creature rewrite AND combat rewrite.

Afterall stationary creatures arn't... really dangerous in Dwarf Fortress as they are right now.

I dont know if they would require actual rewrites to any of those systems. Depending on how its done, it may need the game to understand what having  Reach is, and that goes into the fogginess of what a tile dimension again.

Quote from: Kappas on September 24, 2012, 07:32:53 am

So tell me palls, does this mean we get tree eating, aka browsing anytime around this release? Elephants, pandas etc.

No real hint that that ToadyOne is going to be doing this. I dont see having multi tile trees adds pressure for them being added. We could have had browsing animals with the foliage as it was before. And there some animals which couldnt actually browse well at all, because their poorly represented by the game. (Like the giraffe.)

And I do think that this would be actual feature creep, as I dont think it it actually adds anything to the world being more alive.

---

---

---

Since you've talked about grass under the tree cover should be dry, doe s this mean we'll be seeing a change to say under growth and forest debris? Will this impact forest fires?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 24, 2012, 07:57:16 am

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 08:26:53 am

Will dwarves be capable of chopping down select portions of tree trunks, rather than chopping the entire tree down at once?

Assuming they don't decompose into logs like constructions when left without a support: will trees fall to the side, or use the current physics code and fall straight down? If the latter, will this create a cave-in effect? ("A section of the cavern has collapsed!")

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alu on September 24, 2012, 09:42:28 am

You mentioned working on tree-growing, does that imply they'll be able to grow bigger than just one z-level at some point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 24, 2012, 09:43:22 am

Quote from: Alu on September 24, 2012, 09:42:28 am

You mentioned working on tree-growing, does that imply they'll be able to grow bigger than just one z-level at some point?

Well, if you take a gander at the pictures that ToadyOne posted. You'll see that the tree grow to several z levels high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on September 24, 2012, 10:09:22 am

That's sixteen beard-decades tall!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 24, 2012, 10:15:00 am

beard-decades! genious!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 10:21:39 am

I wonder if the procedural tree growth calculations will impact FPS in world gen and ingame.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on September 24, 2012, 10:29:09 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 10:21:39 am

I wonder if the procedural tree growth calculations will impact FPS in world gen and ingame.

As far as I know most local land features aren't actually calculated until you arrive there, so it probably won't affect worldgen. Embarking might be a little slower, and there might be a little blip at whatever period the trees grow, but once you're on the local level there won't be that many trees to calculate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pisskop on September 24, 2012, 11:11:07 am

If trees are multitile, will other things start appearing multitiled?  Like say giant sperm whales?  Will space discrepancies start dissappearing (the bronze collossus who uses dwarven stairs w/no issues?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on September 24, 2012, 11:50:45 am

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

Apologies if this is a basic modding venture or something; I'm not talking about a tileset; I play vanilla ASCII. I just want to swap out one tree part tile for another so that I can look at the trees without going "one fourth, one fourth, one fourth..." in my head all the time.

Can someone else answer this question before Toady gets to it, maybe?
Felt like it was still appropriate to green, since it's asking about the extent of a statement he made in the devlog.

EDIT: Ouch, those 48x48s really do stick out, don't they? Here's hoping that gets sorted ... it drove me crazy when the Elven Retreats on the worldgen map would lay themselves out in a very inorganic-looking grid like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 24, 2012, 12:31:52 pm

Loving the trees so far, especially the ground level view where the "shade" of the trees is visible.  Also loved that the trees seemed to line the banks of the river in a natural looking fashion.  Some of those bad boys are going to create large blindspots for adventurers, forests could be pretty scary!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 12:36:59 pm

Quote from: Tenebrais on September 24, 2012, 10:29:09 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 10:21:39 am

I wonder if the procedural tree growth calculations will impact FPS in world gen and ingame.

As far as I know most local land features aren't actually calculated until you arrive there, so it probably won't affect worldgen. Embarking might be a little slower, and there might be a little blip at whatever period the trees grow, but once you're on the local level there won't be that many trees to calculate.

You are right about world gen, I had forgot about that. But what about a woodland embark? That growth would be continuous, because if you cut the trees they should grow again, using the same algorithms. Even if you didn't cut them, they should still continuously grow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 24, 2012, 12:40:43 pm

they wouldn't grow all at the same time, and the game would probably only check once a season or year, and even then, the growing algorithm is probably as processor intensive as a really low fluidity liquid

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 12:41:17 pm

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 12:36:59 pm

Quote from: Tenebrais on September 24, 2012, 10:29:09 am

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 10:21:39 am

I wonder if the procedural tree growth calculations will impact FPS in world gen and ingame.

As far as I know most local land features aren't actually calculated until you arrive there, so it probably won't affect worldgen. Embarking might be a little slower, and there might be a little blip at whatever period the trees grow, but once you're on the local level there won't be that many trees to calculate.

You are right about world gen, I had forgot about that. But what about a woodland embark? That growth would be continuous, because if you cut the trees they should grow again, using the same algorithms. Even if you didn't cut them, they should still continuously grow.

Tree growth rates will probably be changed to be more realistic as well though, so there won't really be that much growth going on with how slow it'll be :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 24, 2012, 12:57:10 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on September 24, 2012, 12:40:43 pm

they wouldn't grow all at the same time, and the game would probably only check once a season or year, and even then, the growing algorithm is probably as processor intensive as a really low fluidity liquid

Tree right now dont grow all the time. They probably do a monthly update or a quarterly update.

I dont see why that would change now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:18:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

If it's based anywhere near reality (which I think we can assume at this point), depending on the tree it would take around 20-30 years for the fastest ones to mature, whereas oak trees for example can take up to 50 years before they even start bearing acorns and would keep growing to ages between 500-1000 years :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 24, 2012, 01:21:53 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:18:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

If it's based anywhere near reality (which I think we can assume at this point), depending on the tree it would take around 20-30 years for the fastest ones to mature, whereas oak trees for example can take up to 50 years before they even start bearing acorns and would keep growing to ages between 500-1000 years :P

Trees grow REALLY fast in the Dwarf Fortress world.

There is enough wood to make a bed in a tree that has been growing for about 1 year.

Kind of interesting how powerful mother nature is in Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:23:56 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 24, 2012, 01:21:53 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:18:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

If it's based anywhere near reality (which I think we can assume at this point), depending on the tree it would take around 20-30 years for the fastest ones to mature, whereas oak trees for example can take up to 50 years before they even start bearing acorns and would keep growing to ages between 500-1000 years :P

Trees grow REALLY fast in the Dwarf Fortress world.

There is enough wood to make a bed in a tree that has been growing for about 1 year.

Kind of interesting how powerful mother nature is in Dwarf Fortress.

I'd bet my beard that'll get tuned now though with the new trees, as there really won't be any need for them to grow fast any more. Just need to balance the amount of wood we get from our new huge trees properly ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:24:43 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:18:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

If it's based anywhere near reality (which I think we can assume at this point), depending on the tree it would take around 20-30 years for the fastest ones to mature, whereas oak trees for example can take up to 50 years before they even start bearing acorns and would keep growing to ages between 500-1000 years :P

Right now it's set to trees reaching "adulthood" at a minimum of around a year. Possibly a little more. I'm not sure Toady One would give us a one-shot source of wood - realistically, you'd only see the trees at their full height at the start of the fortress, as there wouldn't be enough time in the fortress's life for most to regrow. However, at the same time, starting in a 1000 year old redwood forest sounds particularly attractive, just because of how you'd be able to tell the age of the trees by size, and the world would feel old with that knowledge. Then again... that would be roughly 30+ z's high, and six tiles or so across.

edit: double-ninja'd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 24, 2012, 01:30:40 pm

Depending on Tree i would say. Certain Bamboos can be Harvested after 5 Years, industrial firs after around 80-100. That is if you want wood for building.

There is the idea of Energy Forrests that get Harvested for Biomass and woodchips (+charcoal) which consist of Fast-growing willows (sallix), Poplar or aspen. Well that happens in RL anyway. IIrc The swedes have forrests where they get ~10 tons dry-mass per year and hectar. You harvest every 3-10 years depending on your trees and after ~20 Years you should give the land a break.

Toady normaly goes with realism here and the apparent wood contend of just one tree would warrant realistic growth cycles.

edit: got some numbers confussed for firs with another kind of Bamboo

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on September 24, 2012, 01:33:32 pm

It'll also result in fairly realistic industrial landscapes.

Dwarves will start cutting wood for beds, chairs and charcoal, but soon they're cutting more than the forest can supply. (Hell, it already happens with our 1yo trees), leading to genuine deforestation and punishment toward dwarves for being so greedy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:37:52 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:24:43 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 24, 2012, 01:18:26 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:01:53 pm

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

If it's based anywhere near reality (which I think we can assume at this point), depending on the tree it would take around 20-30 years for the fastest ones to mature, whereas oak trees for example can take up to 50 years before they even start bearing acorns and would keep growing to ages between 500-1000 years :P

Right now it's set to trees reaching "adulthood" at a minimum of around a year. Possibly a little more. I'm not sure Toady One would give us a one-shot source of wood - realistically, you'd only see the trees at their full height at the start of the fortress. However, at the same time, starting in a 1000 year old redwood forest sounds particularly attractive, just because of how you'd be able to tell the age of the trees by girth. Then again... that would be roughly 30+ z's high, and six tiles or so across.

Yeah, we won't really be going through trees at anywhere near the previous rate, since 1 tree now would probably give 10-100 times as much wood as one before. And I'd actually prefer to have wood not be an endlessly and instantly regenerating resource anymore but something you actually have to think a bit about.

Quote from: Heph on September 24, 2012, 01:30:40 pm

Depending on Tree i would say. Certain Bamboos can be Harvested after 5 Years, industrial firs after around 10-15. That is if you want wood for building.

 There is the idea of Energy Forrests that get Harvested for Biomass and woodchips (+charcoal) which consist of Fast-growing willows (sallix), Poplar or aspen. Well that happens in RL anyway. IIrc The swedes have forrests where they get ~10 tons dry-mass per year and hectar. You harvest every 3-10 years depending on your trees and after ~20 Years you should give the land a break.

Toady normaly goes with realism here and the apparent wood contend of just one tree would warrant realistic growth cycles.

Energy forests are kind of a special case though, and can't really be used for much else than for energy. Pine for example is left to grow between 60-90 years, and most other forest types for at least 50 up to a 100 years. (speaking of Sweden as well)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 24, 2012, 01:39:05 pm

Will, similar to grazers, certain animals require leaves and/or fruits now? Do certain animals climb trees now, too? Birds' nests, etc? Will we see a [CLIMBER] tag in this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on September 24, 2012, 01:43:00 pm

Will current saves be compatible with the new version? If so, will we get the new sites/trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 24, 2012, 01:43:16 pm

If we do, then monkeys!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 24, 2012, 01:43:25 pm

Quote from: Torchy on September 24, 2012, 11:50:45 am

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

Apologies if this is a basic modding venture or something; I'm not talking about a tileset; I play vanilla ASCII. I just want to swap out one tree part tile for another so that I can look at the trees without going "one fourth, one fourth, one fourth..." in my head all the time.

Can someone else answer this question before Toady gets to it, maybe?
Felt like it was still appropriate to green, since it's asking about the extent of a statement he made in the devlog.

EDIT: Ouch, those 48x48s really do stick out, don't they? Here's hoping that gets sorted ... it drove me crazy when the Elven Retreats on the worldgen map would lay themselves out in a very inorganic-looking grid like that.

Pretty confident that we'll be able to change tiles in the raws easily, as he's included that with many other things such as minecart tracks. People are debating whether it'll be just that or that AND affecting growth style, but appearance changeability is basically assumed.

The 48x48s are visible, but not too much more than cavern blocks are. Mind you, I hope he fixes those too.

Quote from: Heph on September 24, 2012, 01:30:40 pm

Depending on Tree i would say. Certain Bamboos can be Harvested after 5 Years, industrial firs after around 80-100. That is if you want wood for building.

There is the idea of Energy Forrests that get Harvested for Biomass and woodchips (+charcoal) which consist of Fast-growing willows (sallix), Poplar or aspen. Well that happens in RL anyway. IIrc The swedes have forrests where they get ~10 tons dry-mass per year and hectar. You harvest every 3-10 years depending on your trees and after ~20 Years you should give the land a break.

Toady normaly goes with realism here and the apparent wood contend of just one tree would warrant realistic growth cycles.

edit: got some numbers confussed for firs with another kind of Bamboo

Don't forget underground sources! He'll be able to fabricate those numbers pretty much from whole cloth, so if Tower-caps and Fungiwood get faster growth rates (being fungi) then we could see the wood industry get even more subterranean.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on September 24, 2012, 01:46:22 pm

I don't really think we should be thinking in terms of "balance" with things like forestation. In the future you will be able to send dwarves to places outside your own little fortress area for resources, and at the point there will be no concept of balance at all in how much wood you can get out of anything.

I like the idea that woods are not restrained by concepts such as balance, but are part of the "simulator" aspects of DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 24, 2012, 01:56:37 pm

I can't wait to see the autumn version. I bet that's super pretty.


On the potential slowdown, if there is any it'll be most apparent when moving about in Adventure Mode.

Quote from: Torchy on September 24, 2012, 11:50:45 am

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

I'm pretty sure that's what he meant in that sentence. Remember though, it's probably just a matter of getting used to it, like the ²s used for gibs and so on. As far as I'm aware, the ¼s haven't been used before.


When you talk about making grass dry underneath the canopy, will that be the case for all Inside Light tiles?

How does the tree "decide" which tiles to use when its trunk increases from 1x1 to 2x2?
Some of the 2x2 trunks on the first map seem to overlap the river, which is realistic in a way, but could become a problem if you get two 3x3s opposite each other?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 24, 2012, 02:03:08 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 24, 2012, 01:56:37 pm

I'm pretty sure that's what he meant in that sentence. Remember though, it's probably just a matter of getting used to it, like the ²s used for gibs and so on. As far as I'm aware, the ¼s haven't been used before.

They've been used for roc nests, actually.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 24, 2012, 01:56:37 pm

When you talk about making grass dry underneath the canopy, will that be the case for all Outside Dark tiles?

I think that's simply because the surrounding grass in the first screenshots is dry, but the grass below the trees isn't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 24, 2012, 02:08:05 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 24, 2012, 02:03:08 pm

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on September 24, 2012, 01:56:37 pm

When you talk about making grass dry underneath the canopy, will that be the case for all Outside Dark tiles?

I think that's simply because the surrounding grass in the first screenshots is dry, but the grass below the trees isn't.

Yeah, you're probably right. (Also, I keep getting my Inside Light, Outside Dark back to front.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: martinuzz on September 24, 2012, 02:17:46 pm

I really think today's tree pictures look truly awesome.
I wonder however, how it will affect gameplay.

...Urist cancels cut tree.. Too complex..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 03:22:27 pm

About the slowdown - even if the growth check was seasonal before and will remain seasonal, before we had trees in three states (no tree, sapling and fully grown tree) and now we will have a growth check for each branch of the new trees (do they grew up, down, north, south, east, west?) for each tree.

I can't discern the 48x48 boundaries, it all looks very organic to me. Could someone be nice and point it out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on September 24, 2012, 03:26:06 pm

Do branches move location when trees grow? Or just stay in place and widen? [edit:] Asking programatically, do you regenerate the whole tree/branch when it grows?

Do trees grow up, rather than just out? Meaning, if I build a platform on the second layer of branches, could that be lifted higher off the ground as the tree grows?

Will tree growth displace or destroy constructions? Same example, would a platform built beside a trunk of a tree (one tile trunk) be moved or destroyed when the tree enlarges to 3x3?

How will you decide when a tree dies, due to damage? Do we need to cut out a whole layer of trunk? Perhaps only ring it? What about 1 tile removal of a 3x3 trunk, either in the center or at the edge? what about root damage, how much is enough to kill a tree?

I'm also curious about mushrooms, the caverns are not as vertically unrestricted. I wonder which will budge: current cavern shapes, or tower-cap towerness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ragman le bon on September 24, 2012, 04:15:41 pm

 

Quote from: Quatch on September 24, 2012, 03:26:06 pm

Do trees grow up, rather than just out? Meaning, if I build a platform on the second layer of branches, could that be lifted higher off the ground as the tree grows?

That's not how trees grow IRL.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on September 24, 2012, 04:18:45 pm

Quote from: Quatch on September 24, 2012, 03:26:06 pm

Do branches move location when trees grow? Or just stay in place and widen?

Do trees grow up, rather than just out? Meaning, if I build a platform on the second layer of branches, could that be lifted higher off the ground as the tree grows?

[/color]

In real life, branches don't move upward with tree growth (unless I've forgotten something by living in the city too long).  The tree's growth is by adding length/height to it's top core trunk and by expanding it's girth.  So lower branches will always be lower branches...  Unless I'm mistaken somehow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chromasphere on September 24, 2012, 04:19:14 pm

oops

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 05:04:11 pm

Not greening in case someone asked, But will trees be flammable? I sure hope so. I wonder how that will be handled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 24, 2012, 05:05:32 pm

I'm really sure trees are flammable now. Just not destroyable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 24, 2012, 05:06:53 pm

Quote from: thvaz on September 24, 2012, 03:22:27 pm

I can't discern the 48x48 boundaries, it all looks very organic to me. Could someone be nice and point it out?

This picture (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_slope_08.png), zoomed out to fit on the screen at once. You can easily see the block lines of the standard 4x4 embarkation area. Doesn't really bother me, but if he wants to fix it that's awesome too.


In other questions,
Will foliage be burnable? If so, will you fix fire to spread across z-levels? 'Cause otherwise it would just look weird.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on September 24, 2012, 05:24:23 pm

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but what are the ideas for the new kobold sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 24, 2012, 05:28:02 pm

Quote from: ragman le bon on September 24, 2012, 04:15:41 pm

 

Quote from: Quatch on September 24, 2012, 03:26:06 pm

Do trees grow up, rather than just out? Meaning, if I build a platform on the second layer of branches, could that be lifted higher off the ground as the tree grows?

That's not how trees grow IRL.

In biology, the parts of the plant that grows upward are the "apical meristem" (Simple English: the top of the plant) and the "peripheral meristems" (Simple English: shoots or branches). I think this means if you have branches on the tree, they won't go up in height. However, if you build something on top of the tree, it will be pushed up. The thing for Toady to deal with now trees damaging constructions.

What happens if a tree is going to grow outwards or upwards, but something is in the way, be it a building or construction or creature?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 24, 2012, 05:29:59 pm

Hadn't really noticed the tiles until it got pointed out.  Not too bad, really.  Would love to see how Toady handles it.

I'm thinking the trees individualization he hints at will probably have to include determinant size (by mass?  Number of branches?) that vary by species, or group.  That would lead to interresting variation in forrests.

Related to that, will be things like the tower caps and fungi wood.  They may have smaller determinant sizes because of their subterranean environment.  Also, the cavern size itself will be an external determining factor of a given tree's growth potential.  The solution for cavern tree farms is obvious: multi-z-level channel clearing for tree growth areas.

I'm not sure if "Balancing" is the forefront question for these trees as much as what changes to the harvested product are we going to see.  Will we have Fir Branches that are harvested from the extremeties of the specimen that are good for small crafts, arrows, charcoal, etc. and Fir Logs that are for larger furniture, wall building, etc.?  That may even be greenable.  If this is the case, I could in some ways seeing this as self-balancing, where you'd get just as much of the good stuff as we'd gotten before for the things that need large wood (beds, doors), and a great deal of the smaller stuff, the "Energy Forrest" type of product for smaller craft and energy needs, i.e. charcoal.

Toady, is partial cutting (pollarding) of a tree going to be possible?  If tree-topping of this sort is possible, will the tree continue to grow?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 24, 2012, 05:31:49 pm

Quote from: Jacob/Lee on September 24, 2012, 05:24:23 pm

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but what are the ideas for the new kobold sites?

Toady will probably answer this in an upcoming devlog. My idea is either an outside fortification with trenches and wooden walls, or a fortified cave. The new trees could allow kobolds to establish a quick and dirty camp in a forest : D. I also think kobolds should have caches for storing items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 24, 2012, 05:50:15 pm

Quote from: Sizik on September 24, 2012, 01:43:00 pm

Will current saves be compatible with the new version? If so, will we get the new sites/trees?

I highly, highly doubt that the next version will be save compatible, mostly because of issues with the combat overhaul likely definitely changing the weapon and likely changing creature attack raws.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 24, 2012, 09:13:19 pm

Will trees be affected by the wind/weather/storms?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 24, 2012, 09:32:52 pm

How will cutting these trees work, will it work sort of like the de-construction of walls? Will they fall over? Not with a silly cave-in message I'm shure!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 24, 2012, 10:43:29 pm

I'll also be curious to see how undermining trees affects them as well.  And what difficulties will tree roots pose to mining out/farming the soil layer.  I think we'll be getting this kind of detail in forthcoming  devlogs though.

Pure Speculation:
Undermining trees and killing thier root structure will cause trees to die within one year.
Dead tree will fall down in 1 - 3 years, chances increased with "weather events".
Dead fall trees do not count against silly Elven Diplomacy.
Burn the dead fall out of spite and cut down living trees anyway JUST TO PISS THEM OFF!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 11:51:19 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:24:43 pm

However, at the same time, starting in a 1000 year old redwood forest sounds particularly attractive, just because of how you'd be able to tell the age of the trees by size, and the world would feel old with that knowledge. Then again... that would be roughly 30+ z's high, and six tiles or so across.

If we get trees like that, it would be worth making an elf-style fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 24, 2012, 11:54:54 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 24, 2012, 11:51:19 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on September 24, 2012, 01:24:43 pm

However, at the same time, starting in a 1000 year old redwood forest sounds particularly attractive, just because of how you'd be able to tell the age of the trees by size, and the world would feel old with that knowledge. Then again... that would be roughly 30+ z's high, and six tiles or so across.

If we get trees like that, it would be worth making an elf-style fortress.

That won't stop me from being the first person with a giant forest burning all at once.

But I agree. It will be interesting to note whether we can build on trees, and whether material will mater. I imagine He may have to rehash part of the cave-in code. More likely. he;ll just prevent us from doing anything, and leave the climbing to certain branches, I.e. dwarves won't go on branches that will collapse. More interesting though, s whether or not I can station a marksquad in a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 25, 2012, 02:53:51 am

Hunting elves in Adventure mode got just more well complicated. "Vertical ambush" sounds like something really nasty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on September 25, 2012, 03:25:19 am

There's also a question about how much foliage restricts LOS. Perhaps leaves should, but branches not? I don't know.

All the more reason to cut them down!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on September 25, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Another tree growth and wood industry question.

With trees presumably taking longer to grow will things like coppicing and other tree management be possible? Also what impact will this have on tree growth?

Related:

In what ways do you plan on players being able to influence tree growth? Bonsai trees being an extreme example of what I mean.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on September 25, 2012, 04:24:28 am

So, what about underground "trees"? They are in much more vertically restricted environments... will they be also updated to be multitile, or will they stay in  their current simpler form?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 25, 2012, 04:33:42 am

Quote from: zwei on September 25, 2012, 04:24:28 am

So, what about underground "trees"? They are in much more vertically restricted environments... will they be also updated to be multitile, or will they stay in  their current simpler form?

They'll get updated.

Quote

The main features here'll be multi-tile trees (including roots and properly-sized mushrooms)
...I'll be expanding the parameters and pictures soon (for pines, saguaros, tower caps, etc).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 25, 2012, 06:07:15 am

Guys, you need to read each others green questions. There's a lot of repetition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 25, 2012, 06:09:39 am

Quote from: DG on September 25, 2012, 06:07:15 am

Guys, you need to read each others green questions. There's a lot of repetition.

Its a indicater of the level of excitement. Only in Dwarf Fortress is anyone excited by the prospect of more realistic trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 25, 2012, 06:43:20 am

Yeah, true enough, and it's not my place to hose down anyone's effusiveness but we must keep in mind that the Toad is a limited resource.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 25, 2012, 06:57:52 am

Reading the Dev Post probbly not a bad idea either.

Lookin at you zwei! 8b

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on September 25, 2012, 08:24:07 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 25, 2012, 06:57:52 am

Reading the Dev Post probbly not a bad idea either.

Lookin at you zwei! 8b

I thought we would be getting normal aboveground mushrooms now that there would be proper forests...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on September 25, 2012, 11:04:08 am

With the new climbing mechanics are we going to see cave spiders climbing cave walls?

What happens when you cause the part of the ground the tree rests upon to cave in? Does the tree remain intact?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 25, 2012, 03:27:54 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on September 25, 2012, 11:04:08 am

What happens when you cause the part of the ground the tree rests upon to cave in? Does the tree remain intact?

Isn't obvious? This will happen: tree wil be intact. Tree will fall only if last support will be cut, like any other cave-in in current DF physics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 25, 2012, 03:40:44 pm

That's what one hopes would happen. But with tangled canopies it might be possible for a tree to be prevented from falling by its holding on to a nearby tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 25, 2012, 04:00:53 pm

And elven retreats creating fortified walls by having perimeter trees hugging each other!!

In all seriousness though, interractions with  branch collisions is a valid question for logging purposes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on September 27, 2012, 08:59:05 am

Ooooh, new leaf pictures coming soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on September 27, 2012, 05:05:34 pm

maybe the elves with have a giant sacred tree like in avatar or fern gully... and will get really upset if someone cut it down...mwahaha

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 09:01:58 am

am i the only one who is bothered by the huge amount of 3x3 wide trunks? wasnt word-of-toad something along the lines of a tile being 2x2x3[m]? where do you guys live to not notice a 9m or 12m high tree being 6m wide? at least ive never seen something like that in person(maybe except on pictures of baobabs), and ive been in a lot of forests all around the old world.
shouldnt nearly all trees never be more than one tile wide, with 2x2 already being huge and 3x3 being extraordinary exceptions?(excluding jungle biomes, but keep in mind the height needs to be like at least 30 times the width)

are the proportions of the trees weve seen so far already the desired picture or are tile dimensions yet to be applied for the trees to be what you want them to be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 28, 2012, 09:36:24 am

ToadyOne has never stated the dimensions of a tile. Tile volume is ambiguous, and only has certain volume in certain context.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on September 28, 2012, 10:00:23 am

Eux0r does have a point though, they may look strange going through a visualizer. Plus, there is a realism aspect to it. Living on the east coast of the United States I can say that I have seen many old forests with trees (pines I believe?) that are incredibly high, yet have a trunk no larger than two feet in diameter. Since we haven't heard much on variety it may be getting worked on now. It would be neat to have short and stocky trees in the savanna, tall and slender trees in pine forests, and massive trees for on dimensions in both tropical and temperate rainforest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on September 28, 2012, 10:12:29 am

I've estimated 2.5 x 2.5 feet for width and length, 6.25 feet tall, counting the "ceiling". That accounts for the amount of reach a creatue has and importantly the amount of water that can fit into a single tile.
Using those numbers, you can usually get realistic numbers for most situations. Except dragon stacking, but that's unfinished right now anway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 10:50:50 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 28, 2012, 09:36:24 am

ToadyOne has never stated the dimensions of a tile. Tile volume is ambiguous, and only has certain volume in certain context.

this is a quote from nwkohaku, who in the middle of a discussion about tile sizes pulled out a good toady quote:

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 02, 2012, 07:24:34 am

Spoiler: Regarding tile size (click to show/hide)

No, the game does operate on cubes already.  Noise is a cube, with noise traveling an equal distance vertically as it does horizontally.  Crossbow range is a cube - 20 tiles omnidirectional range, including vertical.  Travel distance is a cube - one tile up is equal to one tile horizontal.  Everything in the game treats distances in all directions as equivalent.

Does a dwarf take up a full 27 cubic meter volume? No, but neither does a cat take up a full 1 cubic meter volume, nor could a dwarf fit in one, much less a dragon.  That's just an unreality of the way the game treats all creatures as occupying the "upright" portion of a tile, while infinite numbers of creatures can crawl.  Arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is therefore meaningless, because elephants and dragons and giant sperm whales all have to crawl to share space with a rabbit.

Further, one of the major reasons 3 meters is used is because vertical distance is the easiest thing to assume.  3 meters/10 feet is the height of a story of a house.  Each z-level in the game is equal to a full story of a building, and each z-level can house a different floor. 

If you were to put it in terms like Minecraft or Terraria, which have clearly designated areas for their tiles, Minecraft has 1 meter per tile, but needs 2 tiles height for a humanoid, and a floor tile, which adds up to at least 3 meters per floor.  Terraria has 2 foot tiles, and requires 6 feet vertical and 4 feet horizontal clearnace, plus 2 feet of flooring, meaning 8 feet/2.5 meters vertical space per floor minimum, although an extra tile to fit some furniture is common in housing.  Furniture in that game is often quite large, as well, with beds also being 8 feet long/2.5 meters in length.  Fitting one of those beds into a single DF tile would require a horizontal tile length of at least 2.5 meters, if not 3. 

Yes, these are dwarves, not humans, but they're also digging in stone, and having some slightly thicker masonry in the ceiling/floor for support also makes sense for them.

So, you could argue something closer to 2.5 meters, but that winds up making calculations really messy.  15.625 cubic meters instead of a clean 27, for example. 

By the way, although Toady has never confirmed anything, when pressed to think about housing size, he gave 2 meters as his initial guess as to room size, and given the things that must fit inside a tile, 2 meters is definitely the floor, not the ceiling. 
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1511922;topicseen#msg1511922

Quote

I think they are fine given what I've read (that the floor space for a cottage for a family would be between, say, 25 and 125 square meters, depending on affluence and local customs and whatever else).  Throwing out 2m arbitrarily as a tile edge, we'd be at 100m^2 for the floor space and 1536 m between villages, which I'm more or less comfortable with (I read an aerial survey for medieval sites in England which put average nearest village distance at 0.89mi or something, and we talked about how this might be varied earlier).  Since we are on a grid, even with a single room the outer walls take up 24 tiles and the interior is 25, even though the outer walls shouldn't take up a lot of space.  If they are divided into a living and storage area, which might involve an internal partition, then the floor area would be cut down an additional 5 tiles, putting us down to 80m^2.  I don't know how different the cottage shapes are going to be, but within their plot there will end up being variations in terms of overall size, gardens, other structures, furniture, items, etc.

the point where i entered that discussion(easier and quicker to find for me than the actual beginning, which probably isnt very far away, but im lazy):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3246864#msg3246864

i think 2.5feet are close to 1m in non-stupid-units? then this is pretty much what my standpoint in that discussion was. those 2m, as far as i remember without rereading everything, were the compromise we could agree on accepting at the end of the discussion. at least when i see tiles i instantly think "2m x 2m x 3m", i pretty much forgot everything surrounding that thought.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 28, 2012, 11:52:33 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 28, 2012, 09:36:24 am

ToadyOne has never stated the dimensions of a tile. Tile volume is ambiguous, and only has certain volume in certain context.

I believe there was something regarding minecart physics in which context tiles have some sort of dimension. Maybe I can find that...
Ah, yes. It's a bit newer than Kohaku's Toady quote, but similar in the dimensions.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on May 03, 2012, 11:15:37 pm

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

Anyway, for the time being I assume that part of the problem is the mention of " crowns hitting other artificial boundaries". It's probably not everything, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 12:09:55 pm

oh yeah, there are exactly the 2x2x3 i remember, good work finding that one otu

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 28, 2012, 12:20:46 pm

Yea, but thats not the only volume of a tile though thats seems to be the volume of a tile when its dealing with mine carts. If I recall, it doesnt seem to match up with the volume of a block of steel.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 28, 2012, 01:32:35 pm

As well I have measured distance in Dwarf Fortress before using time.

Tiles are small and large at the same time... and before you go 999 dragons... I should state that I am not refering to that.

In terms of scale of infrastructure and objects each tile is small... In terms of how long it takes to clear a tile each tile is large.

I think I calculated the largest world to be a bit smaller then Europe by travel speed.

So basically you could convert that to gain the "Travel size" of each square.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 02:54:07 pm

i guess the problem is that not all aspects of the game were programmed with a unified tile size in mind, so things dont add up when one calculates from different points of origin. there are many aspects of the game, an i am sure one can calculate tiles to be 10cm wide as well as 10m depending on where one starts, so only aspects of the game where toady really thought about tile sizes when programming should be considered, while toady should be reminded not to forget to fix the other aspects of the game at some point, so things add up in the end.(e.g. trees not being only twice as high as they are wide or to fix in the future: travel-times)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 28, 2012, 03:04:46 pm

Well simply speaking I just split each square into different measurements.

It is just a world where Travel Time Size and City size are different.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on September 28, 2012, 04:05:46 pm

We see the world of DF through a screen where the display resolution isn't large enough to exactly map out the bounds of objects.  Let's pretend for a moment that each tile is 3 meters wide.  Just because a tree trunk is shown taking up 3 tiles doesn't mean that it's 9 meters wide.  If it's centered in the middle tile it may be just over 3 meters wide and only protruding through the tiles on the left and right by a small amount.  It's the same way that we know that a sock doesn't take up the full 3 meters of the tile it occupies on screen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on September 28, 2012, 04:10:55 pm

...But then there's still the fact that some of the trees in Toady's sample forest take up two tiles.

I mean, plenty of them are one tile.
...And I suposse we could say these are primal forest, so the trees had a damn long time to grow.

But still, very big trees. I wonder how big the elven trees will be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 04:16:49 pm

of course one has to assume tiles arent always maximally filled, but still the proportions are wrong, even when a tile is 2m wide, a 3tiles x 3tiles tree has a diameter of at about 4m, which, at an height of 15m is still too much for most types of trees

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on September 28, 2012, 04:51:04 pm

Quote from: eux0r on September 28, 2012, 04:16:49 pm

of course one has to assume tiles arent always maximally filled, but still the proportions are wrong, even when a tile is 2m wide, a 3tiles x 3tiles tree has a diameter of at about 4m, which, at an height of 15m is still too much for most types of trees

Dwarf trees, everything is shorter and fatter!  ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on September 28, 2012, 05:34:40 pm

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superlative_trees), the largest single-stem tree recorded has a diameter of 9.38 meters. Only 5 species have been recorded to have trunks over 6 meters across. Of course, multi stem trees can get even larger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Horse_Chestnut).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on September 28, 2012, 06:28:28 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on September 28, 2012, 04:51:04 pm

Dwarf trees, everything is shorter and fatter!  ;D

But not alcohol-dependent. At least, until the modders get to work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 28, 2012, 06:31:33 pm

Alcohol dependent is a creature token, so no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on September 28, 2012, 07:54:41 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 28, 2012, 06:31:33 pm

Alcohol dependent is a creature token, so no.

That gives me a great idea, make it so that plants can be given a tag for 'contaminant' or 'material' requirements to grow.

This would let us expand on farming practices and other such things quite nicely :)

also would let modders make alcohol dependent trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 28, 2012, 11:35:05 pm

I assumed the trees were that fat because he wanted to test out horizontal as well as vertical growth. He's putting in quite a few growth parameters, so we'll probably be getting more normal trees. Or if not, we can mod 'em.

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 29, 2012, 12:04:07 am

Quote

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

This sure sounds fun. It allows for a tree growing golden apples, for one thing. And trees bearing syndrome fruits. And if secrets can be tied to that then you can create, if not yet the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then at least the Tree of the Knowledge of Life and Death.

And that's without even considering what sorts of trees we might find underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 29, 2012, 12:36:35 am

Quote from: Cruxador on September 29, 2012, 12:04:07 am

Quote

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

This sure sounds fun. It allows for a tree growing golden apples, for one thing. And trees bearing syndrome fruits. And if secrets can be tied to that then you can create, if not yet the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then at least the Tree of the Knowledge of Life and Death.

And that's without even considering what sorts of trees we might find underground.

Once fruites are added, possibly for a later update, will we ever get quests to get frutes from good or evil regions? " I require a putrid apple from the swamps of longbottoms, will you acquire it for me? "

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on September 29, 2012, 01:33:00 am

That devlog... daaaayum.

I very much look forward to seeing modded trees that drop Unpleasantness onto nearby dwarves' heads. (On that note, can growths drop down on their own or must they always be harvested manually? If the former... having a carpet of dead leaves covering the ground of temperate forest embarks sounds cool, though I can't say the same about the resulting FPS hit.)

I think it's cool that there'll now be an actual benefit to keeping trees alive instead of just clear-cutting everything. Combine this with custom reactions and a lot of modding concepts just became viable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 29, 2012, 02:20:31 am

Quote from: darklord92 on September 29, 2012, 12:36:35 am

Quote from: Cruxador on September 29, 2012, 12:04:07 am

Quote

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

This sure sounds fun. It allows for a tree growing golden apples, for one thing. And trees bearing syndrome fruits. And if secrets can be tied to that then you can create, if not yet the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then at least the Tree of the Knowledge of Life and Death.

And that's without even considering what sorts of trees we might find underground.

Once fruites are added, possibly for a later update, will we ever get quests to get frutes from good or evil regions? " I require a putrid apple from the swamps of longbottoms, will you acquire it for me? "

Remember that not only good and evil biomes are going to be scrapped for good sooner than later (whatever that means here at Bay12) but also the questing system, as we know it, will undergo through several changes. Fruits might be aligned, as the forest themselves, to spheres, so we might see singing peaches or suicide raspberries and those all could have their own interactions based on what they are. Also, reading the devlog you may notice that not only fruits can grow from these giving trees...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ubiq on September 29, 2012, 02:22:31 am

So now we know the answer to the Eternal Question of Dwarf Fortress; The First Anvil came from an Anvil Tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on September 29, 2012, 02:37:55 am

And everyone knows Anvil Trees only release their fruit when unlucky fortunate cartoon characters dwarves walk underneath.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on September 29, 2012, 03:01:34 am

I wonder if toady is gonna add in that Cichi Cichi berry  that keeps on popping up in threetoe's stories as one of the new fruits.  I like the idea of the elves finally being able to defend themselves without having to be a bowman.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 29, 2012, 03:07:13 am

Well there are some very unpleasent trees in RL like the Dynamite tree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hura_crepitans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hura_crepitans)). Others like female Ginko produce Butyrik acid which you hopefully never encounter outside the classroom - the stench is just unbearable.

I guess falling leaves are handled like rain, snow or grass creating a covering instead of being items.


Toady, now that we have trees and Leaves, flowers and such will they be part of the of the "Art". I could see elves using many floral ornaments on theyr items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greendogo on September 29, 2012, 07:54:14 am

When are we going to see some more of Threetoe's stories?  I love them, and I want more!
Side note: A quest involving the fruit of a magic tree wouldn't be amiss ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on September 29, 2012, 08:04:21 am

Quote from: Greendogo on September 29, 2012, 07:54:14 am

When are we going to see some more of Threetoe's stories?  I love them, and I want more!

Aye, has been a while.  DF Talk also!  Hope to see more of both  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greendogo on September 29, 2012, 09:13:21 am

Quite right!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 29, 2012, 09:38:34 am

:( yep didnt see one in quite a while. Anew story up on the frontpage would be neat. Atm i cant afford to get my own reward-story an update. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on September 29, 2012, 02:03:35 pm

This devlog is promising as hell!
Do leaves count as items? Are they collectable or will they fall to the ground as a 'contaminant' during autumn?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 29, 2012, 03:04:03 pm

Quote from: Chronas on September 29, 2012, 02:03:35 pm

This devlog is promising as hell!
Do leaves count as items? Are they collectable or will they fall to the ground as a 'contaminant' during autumn?

+1

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Stromko on September 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Can plants fruit with living things? Like, a tree that creates Bad Things, or an 'egg pile' plant that creates bugmen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 29, 2012, 03:50:08 pm

Quote from: Stromko on September 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Can plants fruit with living things? Like, a tree that creates Bad Things, or an 'egg pile' plant that creates bugmen?

Quote

There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables...

Creatures are not items. At most, you might perhaps be able to get vermin growths, but I rather doubt it. No sheep growing from plants, I'll say.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 29, 2012, 03:53:29 pm

Do the fruits contain seeds of the trees? Will we see seeds for all plants now? Do new plants only grow where seeds are? Will animals disperse seeds?

Does tree growth depend on fertility of the ground? Can we influence that with fertilizer? Possibly order trees to be grown somewhere specific by planting a seed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on September 29, 2012, 04:05:21 pm

Quote from: Stromko on September 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Can plants fruit with living things? Like, a tree that creates Bad Things, or an 'egg pile' plant that creates bugmen?

If that is so maybe kobold bulbs (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Kobold_bulb) will be how kobolds reproduce?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 29, 2012, 04:06:40 pm

Hrm. Thats an interesting question. I hope that Toadyone doesnt change tree currently spawn, unless it means that we can then make orchards or tree farms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smaug13 on September 29, 2012, 04:23:58 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 29, 2012, 03:50:08 pm

Quote from: Stromko on September 29, 2012, 03:09:33 pm

Can plants fruit with living things? Like, a tree that creates Bad Things, or an 'egg pile' plant that creates bugmen?

Quote

There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables...

Creatures are not items. At most, you might perhaps be able to get vermin growths, but I rather doubt it. No sheep growing from plants, I'll say.

But eggs are, right? but then again, if they grow from plants with the current code, they'll probably not hatch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on September 29, 2012, 05:23:53 pm

Will elves again send their emmissaries to request logging limits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jothki on September 29, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

How will dwarves handle harvesting things from trees? Grabbing everything from every tree on the map would be absurd, but individually designating every item would be annoying as well. Is there going to be a way to flag trees for continuous harvesting?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 29, 2012, 08:40:57 pm

Are you implementing a more advanced tree reproduction simulation than saplings randomly popping up?

And if so, will different sorts of trees have different reproduction techniques? At the very least, I'd expect a divide between tree ferns (which tbh are rare), which reproduce by just spores and would act almost exactly like the current system of saplings popping into existence, to conifers, which conceive via wind but then have seeds that are a bit more complex, to angiosperms, many (though not all- I do not actually know how this works for most non-fruit trees, like birches and that sort) of which need outside help to reproduce, producing seeds that often again need outside help to germinate. If so, this would probably mean a more expanded role for bees and other sorts of vermin. Might also come into play with other sorts of plants...

Speaking of other types of plants, are plots afoot to change the way certain crops are grown, so that for example plump helmets might be close to the ground and would work the way they do now, but quarry bushes might produce a harvest of nuts and lose their leaves every fall, but would otherwise grow for years on end in their little place?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 29, 2012, 09:08:24 pm

That's a big question!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on September 29, 2012, 09:15:00 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 29, 2012, 08:40:57 pm

Are you implementing a more advanced tree reproduction simulation than saplings randomly popping up?

And if so, will different sorts of trees have different reproduction techniques? At the very least, I'd expect a divide between tree ferns (which tbh are rare), which reproduce by just spores and would act almost exactly like the current system of saplings popping into existence, to conifers, which conceive via wind but then have seeds that are a bit more complex, to angiosperms, many (though not all- I do not actually know how this works for most non-fruit trees, like birches and that sort) of which need outside help to reproduce, producing seeds that often again need outside help to germinate. If so, this would probably mean a more expanded role for bees and other sorts of vermin. Might also come into play with other sorts of plants...

Speaking of other types of plants, are plots afoot to change the way certain crops are grown, so that for example plump helmets might be close to the ground and would work the way they do now, but quarry bushes might produce a harvest of nuts and lose their leaves every fall, but would otherwise grow for years on end in their little place?

You're mixing up seed dispersal and fertilization.

All flowering plants use pollinators (birds/insects, sometimes monkeys or small apes IIRC), regardless of whether they develop fruits around their seeds or not. Ensuring (non-self-)fertilization is the purpose of the flower.

Fruits, on the other hand are for dispersing the seeds. Other plants use wind for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on September 30, 2012, 02:19:46 am

Note that in a few of ThreeToe's stories, elves could magically persuade trees to grow things like houses, handholds for climbing, and produce "elf kosher" wooden items including weapons and armor.

In this story the dwarves undermine the roots of an elven home tree, falling it:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_home_tree.html

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 30, 2012, 02:24:26 am

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on September 30, 2012, 02:19:46 am

Note that in a few of ThreeToe's stories, elves could magically persuade trees to grow things like houses, handholds for climbing, and produce "elf kosher" wooden items including weapons and armor.

In this story the dwarves undermine the roots of an elven home tree, falling it:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_home_tree.html

Could they make Fir Coats?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on September 30, 2012, 04:48:11 am

Quote from: Jothki on September 29, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

How will dwarves handle harvesting things from trees? Grabbing everything from every tree on the map would be absurd, but individually designating every item would be annoying as well. Is there going to be a way to flag trees for continuous harvesting?

It would make sense if it worked like collecting spider silk or sand.
Assign a job at the farmer's(?) workshop and a dwarf will grab wheelbarrow or something and go out to the nearest tree or designated 'orchard' zone and comes back with a barrel full.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 30, 2012, 06:16:42 am

These questions are unrelated to the tree changes, being more oriented towards the next version in general.
With the new combat and stealth changes that are going in, will we be able to pickpocket sentient creatures?

As non-lethal combat will allow surrendering, will it be taken further so that, say, a goblin fighting in Fortress mode can surrender, becoming a willing prisoner?

Quote from: Chronas on September 30, 2012, 04:48:11 am

Quote from: Jothki on September 29, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

How will dwarves handle harvesting things from trees? Grabbing everything from every tree on the map would be absurd, but individually designating every item would be annoying as well. Is there going to be a way to flag trees for continuous harvesting?

It would make sense if it worked like collecting spider silk or sand.
Assign a job at the farmer's(?) workshop and a dwarf will grab wheelbarrow or something and go out to the nearest tree or designated 'orchard' zone and comes back with a barrel full.

I find it more likely that you'll do it the way plants are currently gathered: d > f (gather fruit) > arrow keys and enter key to select an area. X dwarves would pick, and haulers would gather it up with barrels. It's the way Toady usually does things. Plus, it would allow multiple workers at once, while a job at a farmer's workshop would prevent any more than one dwarf per workshop from gathering fruit at a time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:26:43 am

Quote from: Talvieno on September 30, 2012, 06:16:42 am

These questions are unrelated to the tree changes, being more oriented towards the next version in general.
With the new combat and stealth changes that are going in, will we be able to pickpocket sentient creatures?

As non-lethal combat will allow surrendering, will it eventually be taken further so that, say, a goblin fighting in Fortress mode can surrender, becoming a willing prisoner?

There nothing in the Dev Logs to suggest that he added new player thieving. The Stealth was added in to sneak about Sites primarily.

And, ToadyOne has spoken that he would like Fort Mode ambushes and sieges to have other means of ending beside dying or retreating.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 30, 2012, 09:41:26 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:26:43 am

There nothing in the Dev Logs to suggest that he added new player thieving. The Stealth was added in to sneak about Sites primarily.

And, ToadyOne has spoken that he would like Fort Mode ambushes and sieges to have other means of ending beside dying or retreating.

All right, thanks. I figured the second one could have been answered at some point. Still, pickpocketing would make sneaking useful besides just for travel. It would probably actually get me to sneak on occasion. lol

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 30, 2012, 10:01:11 am

Pretty sure this has been asked before, but don't recall it having been asked when I browsed through the recent questions last night.

Toady, what are we looking at in regards to a tree's growth rate? Obviously some trees are going to grow much faster than others- a quick Google search informs me that in real life, some pine trees can grow (vertically) upwards of a meter a year, while saguaros, even in good years, grow less than a tenth of that. You asserted that it can all be changed in the raws, which means I suppose that we can have a world of saguaro-type trees if we're up for a challenge or a world where trees grow three Z-levels a season if we're not, but what are growth rates like in vanilla? The scale of the map embark and of the dwarven calendar suggests to me that they're going to have to be faster than is strictly realistic, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: stolide on September 30, 2012, 12:16:15 pm

Will a given species of tree grow exactly the same in all conditions?

Will the recent volume of rain have any impact on plant growth?

Are we going to see vines at some point? It would be cool to have a climbable plant that grows onto surfaces, like walls and cliff faces. Such a plant could be used like ladders by the elves...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 30, 2012, 01:49:39 pm

Boo no one groaned at my groan tastic pun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 02:01:26 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 30, 2012, 01:49:39 pm

Boo no one groaned at my groan tastic pun.

I groaned to myself. It was quite sappy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on September 30, 2012, 02:23:59 pm

Hay, leaf Fyewture of the Firtress alone. I strongly fell you're barking up the wrong tree.

Quote from: dhokarena56 on September 30, 2012, 10:01:11 am

Pretty sure this has been asked before, but don't recall it having been asked when I browsed through the recent questions last night.

-snip-

This was asked, yes, but not in quite that much detail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: caknuck on September 30, 2012, 03:05:38 pm

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on September 30, 2012, 06:42:27 pm

Will you be able to leave a fortress without abandoning it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 30, 2012, 06:44:10 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on September 30, 2012, 06:42:27 pm

Will you be able to leave a fortress without abandoning it?

Doesn't appear to be in the cards right now, but it could be a possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on September 30, 2012, 07:44:59 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 30, 2012, 06:44:10 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on September 30, 2012, 06:42:27 pm

Will you be able to leave a fortress without abandoning it?

Doesn't appear to be in the cards right now, but it could be a possibility.

I think that's already available if you manage to get the queen or king of your nation to visit your fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 30, 2012, 07:53:37 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on September 30, 2012, 07:44:59 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 30, 2012, 06:44:10 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on September 30, 2012, 06:42:27 pm

Will you be able to leave a fortress without abandoning it?

Doesn't appear to be in the cards right now, but it could be a possibility.

I think that's already available if you manage to get the queen or king of your nation to visit your fortress.

no

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:13:34 pm

The whole leaving forts thing, is apparently a pretty big can of worms that ToadyOne hasnt said he open yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 30, 2012, 08:23:13 pm

It's a big can of worm, but it's tied to non-player dwarf sites. So it's possible he might tackle it this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:24:29 pm

Quote from: King Mir on September 30, 2012, 08:23:13 pm

It's a big can of worm, but it's tied to non-player dwarf sites. So it's possible he might tackle it this release.

No, I dont think its tied to Dwarf Sites at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 08:30:02 pm

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on September 30, 2012, 08:35:53 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:13:34 pm

The whole leaving forts thing, is apparently a pretty big can of worms that ToadyOne hasnt said he open yet.

Perhaps using something similar to the caravans? But no, that would be based on seasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on September 30, 2012, 08:50:09 pm

Will civilisations that can fly still require a land path to perform a task?

Proposed solution:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have civilisations that can fly treat floor tiles as ramps and air tiles as up/down stairs, or something like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2012, 08:59:40 pm

You dont need to do anything like that. Its mostly a path finding problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 30, 2012, 10:34:00 pm

Quote from: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 08:30:02 pm

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

I wish Toady would at least do a place-holdery implementation that just ignores all that shit. I don't care if my fortress can kill the goblins with lava, I just want to be able to switch away from it to play adventure without having to lose all its residents or gen a separate world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on September 30, 2012, 10:39:31 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 30, 2012, 10:34:00 pm

Quote from: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 08:30:02 pm

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

I wish Toady would at least do a place-holdery implementation that just ignores all that shit. I don't care if my fortress can kill the goblins with lava, I just want to be able to switch away from it to play adventure without having to lose all its residents or gen a separate world.

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 12:55:05 am

Hey, just wanted to say hello to the local community here. I actually became interested in DF from playing the Gnomoria project, which i'm volunteering to do pixel art for, which brings me to my main question and point.

Will there ever be higher resolution pixel graphics and a more sophisticated renderer like what can be seen in "Dungeons of Dredmore" or "Secrets of Grindea?"

Even if you had just 1-3 trusted individuals working on just doing 32x32 tiles of every asset in the game, and spending the time to give the renderer good transparancy and item stacking, that would speed pretty much the whole project along to being a beta version instead of just an alpha version.

I don't really expect a response from Toady or Three-Toe on this issue, because they've probably gotten enough of hearing about it. It just kind of sucks that I can't get some friends into it because they're used to prettier things, but ah well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 01, 2012, 01:12:49 am

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 12:55:05 am

Hey, just wanted to say hello to the local community here. I actually became interested in DF from playing the Gnomoria project, which i'm volunteering to do pixel art for, which brings me to my main question and point.

Will there ever be higher resolution pixel graphics and a more sophisticated renderer like what can be seen in "Dungeons of Dredmore" or "Secrets of Grindea?"

Even if you had just 1-3 trusted individuals working on just doing 32x32 tiles of every asset in the game, and spending the time to give the renderer good transparancy and item stacking, that would speed pretty the whole project along to being a beta version instead of just an alpha version.

Wow, I sear I have seen 30 people literally exactly like you. Are you a hextuplet or something?

Uneeded jokes aside, the answer is really no. He's Toady. He will do this single-handedly, even if it takes 30 years to do so.  He actually quotes the number 20, but still. There are alot of people here who are angered by the thought of Toady working on Graphics, simply because thats not what we want him to do. Sure, is it pretty? Hells no, but thats not why I'm playing.

So yes, it doesn't matter. You couldliterally say anything at this point, but You aren't going to get far. He's focusd on things other then graphics.

EDIT: and What Japa said.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 01, 2012, 01:20:34 am

That said, there's projects like stonesense that aim to give DF graphics anyway, but that's not really part of the main project, just community modding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 01:26:34 am

I honestly am okay with the game with just the Phoebus graphics pack. I would be perfectly content along with oodles of other people it the game had the same style graphics as something like Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past. He can keep the menus the way they are. that's fine.

Though, it seems like the only way to get these advancements would be to either make the code open source, or if some lucky hacker got into Toady's workstation and obtained the source code and then mass-distributed it to start an underground movement to force feed the code upgrades until it was ripe with completeness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 01, 2012, 01:49:24 am

There's also Baughn, who's improved the graphical engine substantially for Toady and has talked in the past about revamping the way that the program perceives and uses tiles.

Quote from: misko27 on September 30, 2012, 10:39:31 pm

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

That's fine though. Just don't have the dwarves activate the bridge while the player's gone. It won't stop sieges, sure, but hopefully there's other precautions like an actual military that would stop that. And if the player leaves magma flowing that would kill all his dwarves when an adventurer enters the map and starts the fluids calculating again, that's the player's own fault.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 01:54:32 am

See that's, in my eyes, what this game deserves...

A dependable and loyal team to put together a good renderer and tileset library while Toady works specifically on the core, simulation, ai, etc. He doesn't have to get all unhappy and bent out of shape, because that team isn't going to so much as touch his workflow, since they're just taking the data of the game and making it look pretty to better represent the hard work he's put in. I just don't want to see the guy put in two decades on a project and have it not look the absolute best it can possibly be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 01, 2012, 02:01:01 am

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 01:26:34 am

Though, it seems like the only way to get these advancements would be to either make the code open source, or if some lucky hacker got into Toady's workstation and obtained the source code and then mass-distributed it to start an underground movement to force feed the code upgrades until it was ripe with completeness.

I'm pretty sure Toady would send his Trained squad of Toad-mounted Midget Assasins Armed with Silver BanWarHammers after you. All of whch have exactly Three toes on each foot.

Quote from: Cruxador on October 01, 2012, 01:49:24 am

Quote from: misko27 on September 30, 2012, 10:39:31 pm

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

That's fine though. Just don't have the dwarves activate the bridge while the player's gone. It won't stop sieges, sure, but hopefully there's other precautions like an actual military that would stop that. And if the player leaves magma flowing that would kill all his dwarves when an adventurer enters the map and starts the fluids calculating again, that's the player's own fault.

Well, I can imagine that it would work, I just don't think toady would want it so that magma is just waiting for you, and before your adventurer came, everyone was using their magic powers. But what about minecarts, or other player-dependant systems? What about advanced entrance traps?

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 01:54:32 am

See that's, in my eyes, what this game deserves...

A dependable and loyal team to put together a good renderer and tileset library while Toady works specifically on the core, simulation, ai, etc. He doesn't have to get all unhappy and bent out of shape, because that team isn't going to so much as touch his workflow, since they're just taking the data of the game and making it look pretty to better represent the hard work he's put in. I just don't want to see the guy put in two decades on a project and have it not look the absolute best it can possibly be.

Nope. Still won't do it. He does how he likes it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 02:03:36 am

that's unfortunate. I guess I'll continue assisting in the development of its pocket world carbon copy, Gnomoria.

I do enjoy what I've played of DF though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 01, 2012, 02:09:47 am

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 02:03:36 am

that's unfortunate. I guess I'll continue assisting in the development of its pocket world carbon copy, Gnomoria.

I do enjoy what I've played of DF though.

You do that. Also, Stop talking about Gnomoria. There are a number of people on these forums who call it a rip-off. I personally disagree, but It still might inspire spurn.

Also, I can't believed no one asked.What will be the limits ofn non-fruit tree growths? Are liquids possible? Containers with objects in them? Animate things, Like elves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

Quote from: misko27 on September 30, 2012, 10:39:31 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 30, 2012, 10:34:00 pm

Quote from: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 08:30:02 pm

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

I wish Toady would at least do a place-holdery implementation that just ignores all that shit. I don't care if my fortress can kill the goblins with lava, I just want to be able to switch away from it to play adventure without having to lose all its residents or gen a separate world.

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

I think you are reading too much into it. All other sites are ran statistically and there is no reason player forts would be unable to operate under this conditions too.

Computer does not need to operate elaborate player designs - that is impossible problem unsolvable without players writing script to operate fort tailored for their fort themselves. Toady would have to write class-a AI to do general solution otherwise.

But game can easily see number of dwarves in military, their equipment and other stuff (like number of traps or siege engines), put it to fairly abstract "meatgrinder" to resolve siege and it would work out just fine just as battles are resolved in worldgen right now. Same working for industries and food production.

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed. Also, non-player forts are not subjected to as frequent sieges as player handled ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 02:32:57 am

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 12:55:05 am

Even if you had just 1-3 trusted individuals working on just doing 32x32 tiles of every asset in the game, and spending the time to give the renderer good transparancy and item stacking, that would speed pretty much the whole project along to being a beta version instead of just an alpha version.

Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle)
having "pretty graphics" does not magically make the game feature complete.

also, in my personal opinion some half-hearted graphics are a terrible thing to add to any game. i rather have the ascii-graphics which forcefully activate my own imagination which has great graphics.

on the topic of the place-holder-computer-controlled-player-fort: blah blah *repeating what zwei just said* blah blah

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 01, 2012, 02:35:11 am

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

Quote from: misko27 on September 30, 2012, 10:39:31 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 30, 2012, 10:34:00 pm

Quote from: Willfor on September 30, 2012, 08:30:02 pm

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

I wish Toady would at least do a place-holdery implementation that just ignores all that shit. I don't care if my fortress can kill the goblins with lava, I just want to be able to switch away from it to play adventure without having to lose all its residents or gen a separate world.

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

I think you are reading too much into it. All other sites are ran statistically and there is no reason player forts would be unable to operate under this conditions too.

Computer does not need to operate elaborate player designs - that is impossible problem unsolvable without players writing script to operate fort tailored for their fort themselves. Toady would have to write class-a AI to do general solution otherwise.

But game can easily see number of dwarves in military, their equipment and other stuff (like number of traps or siege engines), put it to fairly abstract "meatgrinder" to resolve siege and it would work out just fine just as battles are resolved in worldgen right now. Same working for industries and food production.

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed. Also, non-player forts are not subjected to as frequent sieges as player handled ones.

I see your points, and While I agree, I simply mustpoint out that there are just manyy player-controlled things in the fort to account for. However, as I said, I do see your point, but It raises another Problem. How the fort isr un won't matter unless world-gen continues after a fort is automated. I mean, it would be cool to go to your fort and recruit people, but there aren't shops, or money, or taverns. It wouldn't be all htat different ffrom what we have now, except with dwarves till there, and Even this can be accomplished with DFhack. So, In conclusion, I think it will be off for a while.

Quote from: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 02:32:57 am

Quote from: ArwingXL on October 01, 2012, 12:55:05 am

Even if you had just 1-3 trusted individuals working on just doing 32x32 tiles of every asset in the game, and spending the time to give the renderer good transparancy and item stacking, that would speed pretty much the whole project along to being a beta version instead of just an alpha version.

Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle)
having "pretty graphics" does not magically make the game feature complete.

also, in my personal opinion some half-hearted graphics are a terrible thing to add to any game. i rather have the ascii-graphics which forcefully activate my own imagination which has great graphics.

on the topic of the place-holder-computer-controlled-player-fort: blah blah *repeating what zwei just said* blah blah

But did you consider blah blah blah? I thought not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 01, 2012, 05:06:29 am

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 01, 2012, 06:53:00 am

Quote from: thvaz on October 01, 2012, 05:06:29 am

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 01, 2012, 07:52:33 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 01, 2012, 06:53:00 am

Quote from: thvaz on October 01, 2012, 05:06:29 am

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

And for that matter, there were a few months last year (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98355.0) with a lower total, and this year's February was the second-highest in donations yet far as I can see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 01, 2012, 08:48:55 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 01, 2012, 07:52:33 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 01, 2012, 06:53:00 am

Quote from: thvaz on October 01, 2012, 05:06:29 am

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

And for that matter, there were a few months last year (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98355.0) with a lower total, and this year's February was the second-highest in donations yet far as I can see.

This year so far has been the best ever donations wise, but  September was the first month it dropped below 3k. I hope Toady make an earlier release than the previous cycles to counter this trend.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on October 01, 2012, 08:50:15 am

so there will be jumping and climbing ? we're gonna need to rethink our fort defense designs...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ghills on October 01, 2012, 09:07:29 am

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 01, 2012, 09:25:28 am

Quote from: Ghills on October 01, 2012, 09:07:29 am

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

Lighten up - this is Bay12. Within a month we'll have plenty of passive strategies to counter everything Toady does, and boatloads of ways to weaponize it all. ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 09:28:57 am

Quote from: Ghills on October 01, 2012, 09:07:29 am

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

maybe you forgot the talk was about leaving your fort alone and doing something else in the world without forcefully abandoning what you built up to that point. it does not mean you cant just play the same way you always did, you just wouldnt be able to return to a functioning fort after adventuring for a year or so, but you cant do that now anyways

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 01, 2012, 09:52:53 am

Quote from: Naryar on October 01, 2012, 08:50:15 am

so there will be jumping and climbing ? we're gonna need to rethink our fort defense designs...

Generally, yes.

I assume that climbing will only work across one zlevel, so walls will just have to be one level higher and jumping will mean that "vomitariums" will have to be roofed or surrounded with walls.

I guess that moat-n-wall will do just fine, but we shall see about availablility and effect of ladders or whether rough walls will be scalable easily.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on October 01, 2012, 10:11:19 am

ON GRAPHICS: I believe the reason Toady has been reluctant to work with anyone on an official tileset is because of rights issues. Though the fact that he would prefer to focus on building the mechanics of the game instead of trying to improve the graphics right now does show a priority preference. It doesn't need to be met with a "ASCII IS SUPERIOR" attitude, he's said there will always be an ascii option. Eventually there will be better tile support. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and don't have to be a divisive topic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Quote from: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 09:28:57 am

Quote from: Ghills on October 01, 2012, 09:07:29 am

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

maybe you forgot the talk was about leaving your fort alone and doing something else in the world without forcefully abandoning what you built up to that point. it does not mean you cant just play the same way you always did, you just wouldnt be able to return to a functioning fort after adventuring for a year or so, but you cant do that now anyways

That kinda reminds me, would the standing production orders not solve a lot of these problems?

I mean, you can already halfway automise the fortress during play if they'd exists. Too little booze? Make Booze. Too little food? Make food/trade food. Too little trading produce, produce trading products.

If you'd apply this to population demographics (always 10% military, 5% stoneworkers, 5% farmers etc.), burrow activation, and when and how levers should be used, you could automise the fort sufficiently for world gen.

Hell, if you could set this up for constructions and mining, a whole new fort building style could be created, where you design the fort, set up the automisation, and leave to adventure for a bit. When you return(and if you set it up correctly) your fort will have basically build itself. You would even be able to run several forts at the same time.

Regular dwarf mode will be more focussed on the fun micromanaging aspects(as the annoying ones will be macromanaged away with the standing production orders), like choosing the perfect wood cutter, looking for the HFS, dealing with foreign emmisaries and of course vampire cluedo.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 10:39:58 am

Quote from: Willfor on October 01, 2012, 10:11:19 am

ON GRAPHICS: I believe the reason Toady has been reluctant to work with anyone on an official tileset is because of rights issues. Though the fact that he would prefer to focus on building the mechanics of the game instead of trying to improve the graphics right now does show a priority preference. It doesn't need to be met with a "ASCII IS SUPERIOR" attitude, he's said there will always be an ascii option. Eventually there will be better tile support. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and don't have to be a divisive topic.

Actually, as far as I know it's a cluster of problems:

1) The game is HUGE. And he doesn't know how much bigger it'll become. So like the UI, he wants to first know how big the game will become before getting someone on it.
2) Rights issues would be gotten away with if he'd a) commision someone, or if b) there was a clear simple contract set up to Toady owning the copyright to the graphics. (With the artist owning portefolio rights)

The thing with the second one is that a. requires money and b. requires people to sign contracts. Also, Toady may feel b. is kinda skeevy, because it's not actually right to have someone work for free on something you are getting paid for.

In that light I'm making my stonesense graphics free to use as long as the use is directly related to Dwarf Fortress. That way anyone can use them to make their Dwarf Fortress related website look nice, or use them in their Let's Plays.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on October 01, 2012, 11:21:08 am

Quote from: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 10:25:20 am

Hell, if you could set this up for constructions and mining, a whole new fort building style could be created, where you design the fort, set up the automisation, and leave to adventure for a bit. When you return(and if you set it up correctly) your fort will have basically build itself. You would even be able to run several forts at the same time.

• set up automation parameters in fort mode
• Save them like templates
• attract a king in one fort
• enables "conquest mode"
• You now control not only an adventurer or a single fort, but a whole dwarven civilization that gives embark orders (send 7 or more AI controlled dwarves to build <auto template 1> fort here, <auto template 4> fort there), and requests good to be made and traded
• set up an army
• conquer the world
• Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  unlock fourth mode: interplanetary conquest with !!SCIENCE!! powered adamantine spaceships with magma cannons

Dwarf Fortress 2.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on October 01, 2012, 11:46:08 am

I figure having automated fortress processes/fortress retirement ties in to reintroducing a better economy. The rest of the world's entities are run economically, and money is a good motivator for having dwarves work needed jobs without prompting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 01:13:42 pm

im not sure standing order automatization is the key to making the fort retireable, since a retired fort would probably run on an highly abstracted level most of the time, cause no computer can handle 10 full forts running simultaniously

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 01:19:37 pm

Quote from: eux0r on October 01, 2012, 01:13:42 pm

im not sure standing order automatization is the key to making the fort retireable, since a retired fort would probably run on an highly abstracted level most of the time, cause no computer can handle 10 full forts running simultaniously

But it does help that fortress to seem active when you visit it as adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 01, 2012, 02:28:43 pm

Quote from: zwei on October 01, 2012, 02:23:40 am

I think you are reading too much into it. All other sites are ran statistically and there is no reason player forts would be unable to operate under this conditions too.

Computer does not need to operate elaborate player designs - that is impossible problem unsolvable without players writing script to operate fort tailored for their fort themselves. Toady would have to write class-a AI to do general solution otherwise.

But game can easily see number of dwarves in military, their equipment and other stuff (like number of traps or siege engines), put it to fairly abstract "meatgrinder" to resolve siege and it would work out just fine just as battles are resolved in worldgen right now. Same working for industries and food production.

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed. Also, non-player forts are not subjected to as frequent sieges as player handled ones.

What about if you end up besieging one of your own forts or visiting them in adventure mode? They need to function somewhat beyond statistics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on October 01, 2012, 02:55:43 pm

Biggest problem is the digging / building of new rooms, as far as I envision anything in that direction.
Perhaps we'll have news about that in the incoming fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 01, 2012, 03:56:52 pm

I think retired forts should only be automated in terms of farming and hunting and the designations made before retirements will be carried on.

This means if you're not good enough at automated management your fort will die.
If you're good enough then you have won Dwarf Fortress to some degree in that you could leave your fort untouched and it still won't collapse.

Of course then military would have to be more automated or else the retired forts will die at the first siege.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 04:06:36 pm

But the military is incredibly automated already... On paper.

The idea of the current military is that you set proper scedules for them, and then not bother with them at all. (You can make the patrol per month, make them train per month, give them free time per month. Per squed as well)
Problem is the fickle equipment system, the training system being peculiar and the long patrols-bad thought bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 01, 2012, 04:13:07 pm

Quote from: therahedwig on October 01, 2012, 04:06:36 pm

But the military is incredibly automated already... On paper.

The idea of the current military is that you set proper scedules for them, and then not bother with them at all. (You can make the patrol per month, make them train per month, give them free time per month. Per squed as well)
Problem is the fickle equipment system, the training system being peculiar and the long patrols-bad thought bug.

There is a binary bug patch for that last one.

But I see your point, It is currently awfully difficult to make sure that you're military is eqiupped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on October 01, 2012, 04:16:27 pm

how do you use that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

Quote from: Willfor on October 01, 2012, 10:11:19 am

ON GRAPHICS: I believe the reason Toady has been reluctant to work with anyone on an official tileset is because of rights issues. Though the fact that he would prefer to focus on building the mechanics of the game instead of trying to improve the graphics right now does show a priority preference. It doesn't need to be met with a "ASCII IS SUPERIOR" attitude, he's said there will always be an ascii option. Eventually there will be better tile support. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and don't have to be a divisive topic.

He's reluctant to work with anyone on it because they would have to do the whole thing in a consistent style and continue to do so for the entirety of DF's development (probably not less than 20 more years) but also because he, like most people, is perfectly happy with the current system of unofficial tilesets. This isn't the same issue as the desire for better tileset support; tileset support involves altering the display code so that the proper tile for any given situation can be externally defined with as close to total freedom as possible. An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point. Make it menu option so that it does not require conf file fiddling and people will adore it.

Ideally, game would get list of submitted tilesets from online repository, show previews and let player pick one without having to put files to directory. You can do the whole star-grading, user comments, featured tilesets, etc...  (and do something similar for mods).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on October 02, 2012, 04:03:30 am

Quote from: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point. Make it menu option so that it does not require conf file fiddling and people will adore it.

Ideally, game would get list of submitted tilesets from online repository, show previews and let player pick one without having to put files to directory. You can do the whole star-grading, user comments, featured tilesets, etc...  (and do something similar for mods).

I think toady's been highly against networking stuff in df. Let alone multiplayer being completely toss out( from what i know ).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on October 02, 2012, 06:17:11 am

Quote from: darklord92 on October 02, 2012, 04:03:30 am

Quote from: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point. Make it menu option so that it does not require conf file fiddling and people will adore it.

Ideally, game would get list of submitted tilesets from online repository, show previews and let player pick one without having to put files to directory. You can do the whole star-grading, user comments, featured tilesets, etc...  (and do something similar for mods).

I think toady's been highly against networking stuff in df. Let alone multiplayer being completely toss out( from what i know ).

All of this will have to wait till DF is more or less v1.0. To mess with that staff now would only slow down the development. Online staff will probably never make it's way in, but even this might change during next 20-30 years.
I would recommend to focus on somewhat closer future of this brilliant game ;)

Now on Fortress Retirement:
I think even if our fortresses would just stand still, slowly crumbling down due to sieges, wrong usage of levers, magma, tantrums etc. would be much better than what we have now. Imagine how cool it would be to visit such fort and witness all that craziness first hand! 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on October 02, 2012, 09:32:29 am

Quote from: Rip0k on October 02, 2012, 06:17:11 am

Now on Fortress Retirement:
I think even if our fortresses would just stand still, slowly crumbling down due to sieges, wrong usage of levers, magma, tantrums etc. would be much better than what we have now. Imagine how cool it would be to visit such fort and witness all that craziness first hand!

yes, theres no saying the fortress has to survive when you leave it. It would be cool to return to a fort in adv mode to discover that goblins have taken over it

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 02, 2012, 12:58:12 pm

I'd be happy just to see my dwarves standing around in my fort, rather like how townsfolk do in adventure mode. If they went and pretended to do their jobs at their workshops (without producing anything), and slept in their rooms at night, that'd be even better. I don't know about sieges, though... I think that might be best handled in some other manner. Goblins don't regularly siege cities with a population of 80 or over, so why should they do it to your fortress after you abandon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 02, 2012, 06:27:58 pm

good point...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 02, 2012, 07:43:14 pm

Goblins and, everyone sieging behaviors were recently changed.

---

So what are the things that need to happen to let Player Created Forts retire?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 02, 2012, 07:44:22 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 02, 2012, 07:43:14 pm

Goblins and, everyone sieging behaviors were recently changed.

---

So what are the things that need to happen to let Player Created Forts retire?

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrCat on October 02, 2012, 07:55:03 pm

The other day I was thinking about how the trading caravans always arrive at the same time (due mostly because my civilization was located across the world from me), and the obvious question came to my mind. Will the distance from your (or any) civilization to your fort ever effect how long it takes for a caravan to reach you? For example, instead of always arriving at the same time every year perhaps it would arrive at the same time every 2 years, or 1.3 years, and so forth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 02, 2012, 08:11:12 pm

Quote from: MrCat on October 02, 2012, 07:55:03 pm

The other day I was thinking about how the trading caravans always arrive at the same time (due mostly because my civilization was located across the world from me), and the obvious question came to my mind. Will the distance from your (or any) civilization to your fort ever effect how long it takes for a caravan to reach you? For example, instead of always arriving at the same time every year perhaps it would arrive at the same time every 2 years, or 1.3 years, and so forth.

Yes--this is what the Caravan arc is for, having armies and caravans actually cross the world to get to you instead of, you know, spawning literally at the edge of the screen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 02, 2012, 08:13:41 pm

Quote from: MrCat on October 02, 2012, 07:55:03 pm

The other day I was thinking about how the trading caravans always arrive at the same time (due mostly because my civilization was located across the world from me), and the obvious question came to my mind. Will the distance from your (or any) civilization to your fort ever effect how long it takes for a caravan to reach you? For example, instead of always arriving at the same time every year perhaps it would arrive at the same time every 2 years, or 1.3 years, and so forth.

Or not at all. ToadyOne has showed us how the Trade Networks work, if you're that far away from your home civilization, then when Forts in Fort start interacting with the actual world economy, you'd be so far removed from their trading sphere, that you should never get one from them.

I wouldnt be surprised if at some time down the road its possible to position your fort in such a far off location that it develops in mostly isolation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 08:14:47 pm

Quote from: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point.

The existence of LNP proves the opposite in my opinion. Since LNP exists, what point is there in making it redundant?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on October 02, 2012, 09:51:47 pm

will the caravan arc make it more difficult to sell stone crafts year after year? Like if you flood the market with them do they become less valuable?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 02, 2012, 09:58:13 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 02, 2012, 09:51:47 pm

will the caravan arc make it more difficult to sell stone crafts year after year? Like if you flood the market with them do they become less valuable?

Let's hope so :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 02, 2012, 10:37:43 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 02, 2012, 09:51:47 pm

will the caravan arc make it more difficult to sell stone crafts year after year? Like if you flood the market with them do they become less valuable?

I dont know about harder, but your fort is suppose to have an eventual impact on the economy around you. So presumably, if you make shit things then you make in turn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 02, 2012, 11:18:13 pm

Are we going to have more trees that are tied to savage/good/evil/calm regions, and if we are, are they going to "act" in strange ways? Will glumprong tree fruit be poisonous, or something like that? Walking trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 03, 2012, 12:12:52 am

Roses are Red,
Violets are blue,
Love you toady,
We do


XD ok seriously now. Flowers are a wonderful addition. Even thought they are mostly cosmetical i love them. After this Patch you have to domartial arts so we can recreate the best Japanese fighting scenes amidst flowering cherries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on October 03, 2012, 12:14:57 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 02, 2012, 11:18:13 pm

Are we going to have more trees that are tied to savage/good/evil/calm regions, and if we are, are they going to "act" in strange ways? Will glumprong tree fruit be poisonous, or something like that? Walking trees?

Seeing as good/evil lands are to be scrapped and replaced relatively soon I doubt we'll see any new trees added at this point. This should lay some groundwork for what is to come though hopefully:

"Core94, RANDOMIZED REGIONS AND THEIR FLORA/FAUNA, (Future): The current good/evil regions should be scrapped and replaced by a system that aligns a region to varying degrees with a set of spheres. In this way you could end up with a desert where the stones sing or a forest where the trees bleed, with all sorts of randomly generated creatures and plants that are appropriate to the sphere settings..."

Walking trees are also semi-planned for elven sites at some point, as they existed in a pre-alpha build (or some such).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on October 03, 2012, 12:23:58 am

With the inclusion of towns and cities being sieged by goblins. in the future will we see structures such as bell towers designed to alert the locals of attacks, and if so will we ever be able to warn a town of a attack and be marked as a hero for helping, or other alternatives such as mocked/disbelieved, or have a penalty applied to "crying wolf" 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 03, 2012, 02:29:21 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 08:14:47 pm

Quote from: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point.

The existence of LNP proves the opposite in my opinion. Since LNP exists, what point is there in making it redundant?

Because it suffers same issues as "mandatory" utilities? Of people waiting for LNP to be ready instead of getting vanilla (And in turn, LNP waiting for dfhack, therapist or mod updates ... and if compatibility breaks between versions, that can take some time).

Why does not Toady provide API? Because he does not want to be constrained in development by it. I think that those 3rd party things constrain him anyway, in a way.

Goal of making them redundant (and thus obsolete) is good one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 03, 2012, 04:27:45 am

Quote from: zwei on October 03, 2012, 02:29:21 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 08:14:47 pm

Quote from: zwei on October 02, 2012, 03:21:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 02, 2012, 01:51:46 am

An official tileset would just amount to Toady saying "okay, this one's official now" and bundling it with the game; something there's really not much point to.

Considering huge popularity of lazy newb pack and mayday, there *is* a point.

The existence of LNP proves the opposite in my opinion. Since LNP exists, what point is there in making it redundant?

Because it suffers same issues as "mandatory" utilities? Of people waiting for LNP to be ready instead of getting vanilla (And in turn, LNP waiting for dfhack, therapist or mod updates ... and if compatibility breaks between versions, that can take some time).

That's only part of the issue of mandatory utilities. The other issue is that mandatory utilities fill a need which is already fulfilled (in other words, they're needless) and the final issue is that it uses Toady's time which could better be spent on things we don't already have.

Quote

Why does not Toady provide API? Because he does not want to be constrained in development by it. I think that those 3rd party things constrain him anyway, in a way.

More than that I think he just doesn't care to bother maintaining something like that. It's not like an API would be inherently constraining, beyond that it would just require more work to keep in line with the majority of the game.

Quote

Goal of making them redundant (and thus obsolete) is good one.

A proper API might be handy to modders, but the DFhack system works fine now. As for other things, the one obsolete wouldn't be the currently existing things. Rather, the new redundant "official" version would be inferior - it can't help but be, being much newer - and thus it would be "obsolete" from the get-go.


Anyway, what I'm getting from this is that you want Toady to develop official utilities as a big middle finger to the fans who have been developing utilities all along. I guess if your dislike for people who enjoy DF in a way different from your own is that strong, I can't sway you from your opinion. But I will certainly continue to disagree with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on October 03, 2012, 05:37:21 am

With seasonal flowers, will we have the option of planting flowerbeds?

Do seasonal flowers mean that aboveground plants will no longer be year-round crops?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on October 03, 2012, 06:25:51 am

Quote from: Chthonic on October 03, 2012, 05:37:21 am

Do seasonal flowers mean that aboveground plants will no longer be year-round crops?

No. One have nothing to do with another, thankyouverymuch. If Toady changed something, he would mention it, as changes to plants have to be done spearately.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 03, 2012, 06:49:49 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 03, 2012, 04:27:45 am

Anyway, what I'm getting from this is that you want Toady to develop official utilities as a big middle finger to the fans who have been developing utilities all along. I guess if your dislike for people who enjoy DF in a way different from your own is that strong, I can't sway you from your opinion. But I will certainly continue to disagree with it.

Assume makes ass of you and me. And frankly, you really should do something about this paranoid-accusing attitude.

Official utilities exist because game is lacking something - good screen for management of dwarves, for example.

Fixing this is not middle finger to devs, it is acknowledging what what they did was worthwhile enough to be incorporated to official game. And if you do not mind, I would prefer option of getting feedback on this from people who actually have valid say on this "middlefingering business" - like LucasUP, chmod, DwarfEngineer, peterix, sizeak... and others who which i apologize for not incluing (in heretic list ;-p)

I would not mind if this happened to soundsense. I would be very flattered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 03, 2012, 07:11:37 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on October 03, 2012, 12:14:57 am

Seeing as good/evil lands are to be scrapped and replaced relatively soon I doubt we'll see any new trees added at this point. This should lay some groundwork for what is to come though hopefully:

While I generally agree that we likely won't see new aligned trees, the two things aren't really mutually exclusive. Today's EVIL tree could well be next year's DARKNESS/NIGHT/SHADOW tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 03, 2012, 07:13:44 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 03, 2012, 07:11:37 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on October 03, 2012, 12:14:57 am

Seeing as good/evil lands are to be scrapped and replaced relatively soon I doubt we'll see any new trees added at this point. This should lay some groundwork for what is to come though hopefully:

While I generally agree that we likely won't see new aligned trees, the two things aren't really mutually exclusive. Today's EVIL tree could well be next year's DARKNESS/NIGHT/SHADOW tree.

Toady has said he was going to remove good and evil lands FOREVER AGO and that time is getting further and further away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 03, 2012, 07:18:53 am

Quote from: Neonivek on October 03, 2012, 07:13:44 am

Toady has said he was going to remove good and evil lands FOREVER AGO and that time is getting further and further away.

I like to be optimistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on October 03, 2012, 10:03:22 am

Quote from: Neonivek on October 03, 2012, 07:13:44 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 03, 2012, 07:11:37 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on October 03, 2012, 12:14:57 am

Seeing as good/evil lands are to be scrapped and replaced relatively soon I doubt we'll see any new trees added at this point. This should lay some groundwork for what is to come though hopefully:

While I generally agree that we likely won't see new aligned trees, the two things aren't really mutually exclusive. Today's EVIL tree could well be next year's DARKNESS/NIGHT/SHADOW tree.

Toady has said he was going to remove good and evil lands FOREVER AGO and that time is getting further and further away.

he's been saying that before evil syndrome rains and husking clouds were implemented

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on October 03, 2012, 10:28:57 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on October 03, 2012, 06:25:51 am

Quote from: Chthonic on October 03, 2012, 05:37:21 am

Do seasonal flowers mean that aboveground plants will no longer be year-round crops?

No. One have nothing to do with another, thankyouverymuch. If Toady changed something, he would mention it, as changes to plants have to be done spearately.

Crops are located in the same raw file (plant_standard) as trees.  Plant_standard will obviously look very different in the new version--it will certainly be heavily edited--as will plant_grasses (assuming that's even where flowers will be located) since the current entries at the very least don't have seasonal tags.  Toady has a habit of paying attention to detail and unifying his frameworks.  I think my question is fair.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 03, 2012, 11:55:59 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on October 03, 2012, 10:03:22 am

Quote from: Neonivek on October 03, 2012, 07:13:44 am

Toady has said he was going to remove good and evil lands FOREVER AGO and that time is getting further and further away.

he's been saying that before evil syndrome rains and husking clouds were implemented

These, too, can be transplanted when the time comes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: JimiD on October 03, 2012, 02:08:27 pm

Will bees now make heather honey?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 03, 2012, 02:31:41 pm

will trees cave in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 03, 2012, 05:01:52 pm

Will people green their questions? :P

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on October 03, 2012, 12:14:57 am

"Core94, RANDOMIZED REGIONS AND THEIR FLORA/FAUNA, (Future): The current good/evil regions should be scrapped and replaced by a system that aligns a region to varying degrees with a set of spheres. In this way you could end up with a desert where the stones sing or a forest where the trees bleed, with all sorts of randomly generated creatures and plants that are appropriate to the sphere settings..."

I am very, very much looking forwards to this, whenever it happens. :) On that note,
Are you going to be laying any groundwork towards implementing the removal (as stated above) of good/evil flora regions before the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on October 03, 2012, 05:27:08 pm

I think that flooding the market with cheap stone crafts will not significantly lower the worthwileness of producing crafts. As you produce more crafts, the value of crafts will decrease, but your dwarves will become more skilled producing better crafts faster. Adding realistic markets will not decrease the importance of export, but forts will have to specialize if they want to mass produce stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 03, 2012, 05:31:47 pm

Quote from: zwei on October 03, 2012, 06:49:49 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 03, 2012, 04:27:45 am

Anyway, what I'm getting from this is that you want Toady to develop official utilities as a big middle finger to the fans who have been developing utilities all along. I guess if your dislike for people who enjoy DF in a way different from your own is that strong, I can't sway you from your opinion. But I will certainly continue to disagree with it.

Assume makes ass of you and me. And frankly, you really should do something about this paranoid-accusing attitude.

Official utilities exist because game is lacking something - good screen for management of dwarves, for example.

Fixing this is not middle finger to devs, it is acknowledging what what they did was worthwhile enough to be incorporated to official game. And if you do not mind, I would prefer option of getting feedback on this from people who actually have valid say on this "middlefingering business" - like LucasUP, chmod, DwarfEngineer, peterix, sizeak... and others who which i apologize for not incluing (in heretic list ;-p)

I would not mind if this happened to soundsense. I would be very flattered.

Toady has said he does not want to work closely with all the people who make utilities to make the compatible before every release. He wants the game to stand on its own without any critical dependance on a 3rd party tool. He's willing to help utility makers, but doesn't want the pressure of coordinating with them before a big release. I'm paraphrasing here, so please excuse me if this is imprecise. When he made the statement (on df talk I think) he was referring to abstracting the interface specifically, but his reservations apply to 3rd party tools generally.

A official graphical tileset would violate this, and prevent Toady from adding features like multitile trees and flowers without coordinating with the artist to make sure his tileset continues to work with the new graphics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 03, 2012, 05:57:46 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 03, 2012, 02:31:41 pm

will trees cave in?

They do now.  If you ramp under tree, it'll fuck that dorf up.

These new multi tile trees will probably be following the cave in system we have now. Maybe we'll get them falling to their side. That'll be neat. But I doubt that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 03, 2012, 06:07:28 pm

Tree cutting will need to be updated, and that might inspire a change in cave-ins in general.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 03, 2012, 06:56:01 pm

Quote from: King Mir on October 03, 2012, 06:07:28 pm

Tree cutting will need to be updated, and that might inspire a change in cave-ins in general.

I think that'll be very much a no.
ToadyOne doesnt seem to be in favor of replacing a place holder system with another place holder system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 03, 2012, 07:16:13 pm

That's true.  I could see multi-tile tree felling being treated as another special case instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 03, 2012, 08:47:59 pm

Will/How is tree-related debris handled? Fallen branches, falling leaves/flowers, falling fruit, etc.

Can trees die of natural causes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 04, 2012, 03:55:20 am

I can see many "I punch tress. I get woods." scenarios.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 04, 2012, 01:08:10 pm

Quote from: Objective on October 04, 2012, 03:55:20 am

I can see many "I punch tress. I get woods." scenarios.

Aaaah, Minecraft...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on October 04, 2012, 01:10:25 pm

Quote from: Objective on October 04, 2012, 03:55:20 am

I can see many "I punch tress. I get woods." scenarios.

I don't get wood when I punch trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 04, 2012, 01:32:41 pm

Quote from: Objective on October 04, 2012, 03:55:20 am

I can see many "I punch tress. I get woods." scenarios.

When I punch trees, I shatter the skull, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain.
Your reference has been struck down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 04, 2012, 01:51:56 pm

you dont like Minecraft, do you?

will trees fall when cut? if so, do the fall in a certain direction? and if so, can one tree damage another or a building?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on October 04, 2012, 05:57:45 pm

Will we be able to pick flowers for various purposes? For example, certain flowers could be used to produce dyes, while others, like nasturtiums, could be used for food.

Also, will flowers produce fruit, seed pods, or equivalent features?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: crapabear on October 04, 2012, 09:23:21 pm

After this release, how many release cycles away are we from seeing taverns and inns? In the last DF Talk I think you mentioned that it had been moving up the priority list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Corai on October 04, 2012, 09:46:40 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

Was only a matter of time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 04, 2012, 09:51:42 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

Surely, as the overseer is omniscient.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on October 04, 2012, 09:59:23 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

There are no sounds.
Just the sweet strumming of Toady's fingers upon a celestial guitar is the only sound the dwarven world will ever know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 10:01:12 pm

yes but you could get the message "you hear a tree falling in the distance", "you hear a shout", "you hear a pig fainting" etc etc

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 04, 2012, 10:52:02 pm

Quote from: Chronas on October 04, 2012, 09:59:23 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

There are no sounds.
Just the sweet strumming of Toady's fingers upon a celestial guitar is the only sound the dwarven world will ever know.

Its a mandolin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on October 05, 2012, 01:03:36 am

No, it's a classical guitar. He's said so in the past.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 05, 2012, 01:18:02 am

Quote from: Willfor on October 05, 2012, 01:03:36 am

No, it's a classical guitar. He's said so in the past.

Sorry, thinking of the music playing in MY background. Which also not a mandolin. Hmm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 06:20:47 am

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 04, 2012, 01:51:56 pm

you dont like Minecraft, do you?

I used to. Then I found Dwarf Fortress.

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

Hopefully it will make the glorious sound of screaming elves. I'd like to embark in an elven retreat just to chop their trees down for kicks and watch them scrambling about in terror like ants. Hopefully they won't get mad... but I'm hoping Toady will throw in a little surprise just in case - chopping down elven wood makes them attack you, if you're in their forest. Eventually in adventure mode it'd see some non-hack use, when he gets to implementing adventurers chopping trees and building.

Is there a possibility that some fruits will rot on the trees, without falling until after they've rotted, or possibly just rotting away? If fruits rot on the trees, how long will it take for them to rot?

Will unharvested fruits attract vermin such as flies?

Will bees make different types of honey now, now that we have flowers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on October 05, 2012, 07:01:47 am

Will all plants (regardless of whether they are multi-tile, single-tile grass, flowers, deciduous, conifers, or whatever) have unified raw parameters/tokens/structure? Like all creatures have? So you could - hypothetically - just change a few parameters in the raws and for example make a single tile grass into a multi-tile flowering plant? Or are there fundamental differences between the raws of different plants?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on October 05, 2012, 08:24:15 am

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on October 04, 2012, 09:45:15 pm

If a multi-tile tree falls when nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?

That is a valid question actually. If cutting wood counts as mining then the noise (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Noise) will propagate 8 tiles away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 09:15:10 am

Quote from: Toady One

He he he, I thought I'd have a Future of the Fortress post for you this time, but I'm only roughly halfway through it now -- there are well over a hundred questions! There's some crayon drawing today, but I should also be able to finish the forum post up and get it posted. Vegetation growths continue (doing things dropping off now), and I should be back into fully once I clear my plate here.

Sorry for asking so much, Toady. We're just excited.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 05, 2012, 09:22:22 am

Quote from: CLA on October 05, 2012, 07:01:47 am

Will all plants (regardless of whether they are multi-tile, single-tile grass, flowers, deciduous, conifers, or whatever) have unified raw parameters/tokens/structure? Like all creatures have? So you could - hypothetically - just change a few parameters in the raws and for example make a single tile grass into a multi-tile flowering plant? Or are there fundamental differences between the raws of different plants?

The only thing stated in the Dev Log is that trees have Raw's that are moslty (fully?) moddable, including the kind of fruit they'll bear. (which can apparently be swords.) Nothing stated on Flowers Raws, and no word if grasses were change. Though I can totally see Grasses being changed to allow flowers too. They might be independent though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 05, 2012, 03:43:50 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 09:15:10 am

Quote from: Toady One

He he he, I thought I'd have a Future of the Fortress post for you this time, but I'm only roughly halfway through it now -- there are well over a hundred questions! There's some crayon drawing today, but I should also be able to finish the forum post up and get it posted. Vegetation growths continue (doing things dropping off now), and I should be back into fully once I clear my plate here.

Sorry for asking so much, Toady. We're just excited.

QUCK EVERYONE GET YOUR QEUSTIONS IN NOW.

How will damage by falling trees be handled (especially considering the multi-tile aspect, as certain parts will weigh less presumably, but have the same velocity)? Will they fall as one tree, or will it shatter? Will it just poof and be on the ground as it is now, or will falling be a more gradual process? And what will occur to creatures on the tree? Will they be thrown, or cling to its branches?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 05, 2012, 03:52:44 pm

It's a good thing this thread is not a raw file. All these duplicates... :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on October 05, 2012, 04:04:40 pm

1: What's your stance on taking a creative break?
2: When would you take one? Would it be tied to donations?
3: If money permits, would you travel a bit around the world in order to improve your imagination?
4: When would the next DF meetup be?
5: Besides dwarven mountain homes and kobolds, is there anything left before release?
6: How many duplicates of questions would there have to be for you to intervene?
7: How is the fps rate going so far?

Most of these have been asked before, but it was a long time ago, so Toady's stance could have changed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 04:28:43 pm

will flowers be treated like grass or like water? in other words, can flowers slow movement?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 04:33:21 pm

Quote from: misko27 on October 05, 2012, 03:43:50 pm

What will occur to creatures in falling trees? Will they be thrown, or cling to its branches?

Much of your question has already been asked. I have rephrased for you.

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 04:28:43 pm

will flowers be treated like grass or like water? in other words, can flowers slow movement?

As shrubs don't slow movement, I think it's safe to say that flowers won't, either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phibes on October 05, 2012, 04:58:24 pm

Will tree roots play a role in Fortress mode as a usable material? Will they continue to grow in soil layers during game play?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:13:09 pm

Quote from: Phibes on October 05, 2012, 04:58:24 pm

Will tree roots play a role in Fortress mode as a usable material? Will they continue to grow in soil layers during game play?

ROOTS? WHAT ARE ROOTS? no really, roots?

Quote from: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 04:33:21 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 04:28:43 pm

will flowers be treated like grass or like water? in other words, can flowers slow movement?

As shrubs don't slow movement, I think it's safe to say that flowers won't, either.

not even brambles? think, THORNS.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 05, 2012, 05:39:21 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:13:09 pm

Quote from: Phibes on October 05, 2012, 04:58:24 pm

Will tree roots play a role in Fortress mode as a usable material? Will they continue to grow in soil layers during game play?

ROOTS? WHAT ARE ROOTS? no really, roots?

Roots are the parts of trees that grow about or below ground level.  Toady mentioned them in a devlog post a while ago.

Quote

Quote from: Talvieno on October 05, 2012, 04:33:21 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 04:28:43 pm

will flowers be treated like grass or like water? in other words, can flowers slow movement?

As shrubs don't slow movement, I think it's safe to say that flowers won't, either.

not even brambles? think, THORNS.

At present, shrubs do not impede movement.  Toady may yet add brambles and thorns, but they aren't in yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:42:46 pm

i dont read half of those..... im a horrible bay12er, arent i?

as for brambles, they are food, potential tracking and kindling.

PLEASE PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!

expeshaly as roses can be used in alcohol....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 05, 2012, 05:47:20 pm

I would say thorns and things like that would add to nuisance rather than realism.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:58:33 pm

why? added layer of things. you might have 2 choices: go on the road and get shot at, or go into bushes and get tracked and annoyed at slowness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on October 05, 2012, 06:07:48 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:58:33 pm

why? added layer of things. you might have 2 choices: go on the road and get shot at, or go into bushes and get tracked and annoyed at slowness.

That'd make sense. Toady expressed a wish to give a reason to use roads for anything other than the bridges: making the wild more annoying to walk through might work towards achieving that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 06:17:26 pm

plus if you can plant them in fortress mode then cheep walls that provide food.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on October 05, 2012, 08:08:52 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 06:17:26 pm

plus if you can plant them in fortress mode then cheep walls that provide food.

But they should be more easy to break through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 05, 2012, 09:13:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:42:46 pm

i dont read half of those..... im a horrible bay12er, arent i?

as for brambles, they are food, potential tracking and kindling.

PLEASE PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!

expeshaly as roses can be used in alcohol....

Please don't green suggestions or at least disguise them as questions like everyone else.

Example: WILL YUO PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 05, 2012, 10:54:58 pm

Quote from: DG on October 05, 2012, 09:13:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:42:46 pm

i dont read half of those..... im a horrible bay12er, arent i?

as for brambles, they are food, potential tracking and kindling.

PLEASE PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!

expeshaly as roses can be used in alcohol....

Please don't green suggestions or at least disguise them as questions like everyone else.

Example: WILL YUO PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!?

Don't do that either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 05, 2012, 11:07:46 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on October 05, 2012, 10:54:58 pm

Quote from: DG on October 05, 2012, 09:13:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 05, 2012, 05:42:46 pm

i dont read half of those..... im a horrible bay12er, arent i?

as for brambles, they are food, potential tracking and kindling.

PLEASE PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!

expeshaly as roses can be used in alcohol....

Please don't green suggestions or at least disguise them as questions like everyone else.

Example: WILL YUO PUT IN pRiCKILEY SHARP MOVEMENT-SLOWING BUSHES!?

Don't do that either.

Also, basic grammer is required.

Ohh, I'm so anticipant. Has anyone aseked how much he wants to do before releasing this version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:37:56 am

Toady, have you considered adding mercury to Cinnabar and adding a syndrome to intoxicate miners and/or smelters, as well as making mercury a prerequisite for amalgamation extraction of gold and silver from their ores like it was historically?^{1 (http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31497/1/0000419.pdf) 2 (http://mines.az.gov/Publications/circ027amalgam.html)} It could also be used as generic venom (coated in arrows or not), as a substance siegers use to try and poison your fort water, for drowning enemies on it, for making mirrors and for electrolysis reactions. You can extract them both without mercury, but using mercury triplicates the output. Being this way, you could make the normal extraction/smelting wield a lot less gold/silver and make the amalgamation process wield a lot more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 06, 2012, 01:58:23 am

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:37:56 am

Toady, have you considered adding mercury to Cinnabar...

Mercury was part of the reason to add cinnabar (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773), and similar things go for many of the other materials which have been added at the time. This makes your other questions very likely to be true as well.

Quote

Yeah, salt's in, and I want to do things with it, but I really need to resist until the next version is up.  Same goes for the alunite, all kinds of things to do with alum.  We'll also use the saltpeter...  as a fertilizer of course.  No mixing with sulfur and charcoal!  Sulfur is currently called brimstone.  You can change that in the raws if you want.  You won't be able to use pitchblende (uraninite) to make yellow cake either, although you should be able to color glass with it later.  I also added a few arsenic sulfides, he he he (guess I could have done the oxide, but the sulfides are more colorful).  Also added cinnabar, which can give a vermilion dye and mercury, though those products aren't in either.

I'm actually not decided on gunpowder, but I'm not in a rush.  It certainly shouldn't be allowed to ruin the setting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 06, 2012, 04:33:55 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 06, 2012, 01:58:23 am

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:37:56 am

Toady, have you considered adding mercury to Cinnabar...

Mercury was part of the reason to add cinnabar (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773), and similar things go for many of the other materials which have been added at the time. This makes your other questions very likely to be true as well.

Quote

Yeah, salt's in, and I want to do things with it, but I really need to resist until the next version is up.  Same goes for the alunite, all kinds of things to do with alum.  We'll also use the saltpeter...  as a fertilizer of course.  No mixing with sulfur and charcoal!  Sulfur is currently called brimstone.  You can change that in the raws if you want.  You won't be able to use pitchblende (uraninite) to make yellow cake either, although you should be able to color glass with it later.  I also added a few arsenic sulfides, he he he (guess I could have done the oxide, but the sulfides are more colorful).  Also added cinnabar, which can give a vermilion dye and mercury, though those products aren't in either.

I'm actually not decided on gunpowder, but I'm not in a rush.  It certainly shouldn't be allowed to ruin the setting.

Speaking of pitchblende, I just came across a castle made of the stuff.  Obviously the radiation made everyone crazy because it was full of a vampire cult.  Ahh, dwarf fortress, why do you do such a wonderful job telling accidental stories?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 06, 2012, 06:02:26 am

Assuming trees yield bark when processed will we see it required for tanning? I only ask because I remember you mentioning it (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3423.msg52643#msg52643) a long time ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 06, 2012, 06:48:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on October 06, 2012, 06:02:26 am

Assuming trees yield bark when processed will we see it required for tanning? I only ask because I remember you mentioning it (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3423.msg52643#msg52643) a long time ago.

Heh if so we can have useful Cork-oaks later on for the Human Wineries. At the same time Mamothtrees would need soft bark. Seriously the stuff is almost fluffy and ~15cm thick or so. Excreting resin would be cool too, some of them are even usefull like incense or highly flameable. (Jeffrey Pine says wikipedia. Something about "Exploding resin distilleries")

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:00:07 am

Thanks to misko27, CaptainArchmage, Rockphed, MrWiggles, Putnam, Knight Otu, Shinotsa, Cruxador, Neonivek and Talvieno for answering questions.  I also skipped some questions that were a little too off-track or suggestion-based.

Quote

Quote from: Cheesoburgor

will the sneak update fix the thing that people dodge your attacks even if they dont see you and dont notice you if you hit them?

Quote from: Cynm

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

Quote from: Cruxador

How do attacks from a stealth situation work? In other words, if you sneak up behind a goblin and then aerate his kidneys, what happens? Do you get improved attack opportunities like with unconscious targets? Does the goblin (or your attack) make a sound that could be heard by other goblins, and if so is it effected by the Ambusher (or another) skill?

Yeah, and it'll be fairly obscene for a truely undetected attack bonus-wise.  Bad news for a bad goblin.  If you aren't good at it, you might lose your initiative and give the goblin a reaction moment (since there is a pre-attack period now), but I think the chances of that are non-existent the way things are set up now, if you aren't detected when you start to attack.  I haven't done much with actual combat sounds yet, as opposed to movement sounds, but when I do that I'm going to be keeping stealth in mind (ie, it'll be a sure thing that combat noises won't make stealth pointless).

Quote from: Aquillion

What about 'social' tracking, like asking shopkeepers if they've seen a one-eyed man pass through lately?  Is that planned to be part of this?  Will bounty-hunters be able to track you down in a city by talking to people who've seen you, and so on?

Yeah, we want to get to that -- we were going to start by having you talk to refugees, rescued captives and people you capture.  I'm not sure we'll be able to get to capturing people or not, but we should have the other stuff.  We also wanted people hunting you to do collective punishment when they are hunting you, and I imagine that'd have some interrogation to direct them to you if they've talked to you recently.

Quote from: Tsuchigumo550

My question first, of course, will we be able to take diplomacy far beyond "I want this, I have this" with friendly civs? If our fortress is besieged by another army, would it be possible to send a courier or have a treaty in place where if we're attacked, they'll come help? Would it have drawbacks, such as requiring a certain number of militiadwarves to be ready to go to the other civ's rescue should they be attacked?

Secondly, will towns gain any new buildings and/or see a rise in other professions among peasants? Each arc could give rise to new buildings, I've always seen the Economy arc giving towns and keeps treasury buildings, heavily guarded "banks" that weigh heavily on what a town is worth. Is there anything like this planned, such as barracks?

There aren't going to be big diplomacy changes going in for this release, and I'm not working on human towns so much as the other races this time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the worldgen stuff going into play, are we going to get in-game updates as to territory changes and the world map? For example, when a caravan turns up they may inform you of worldwide events such as "the human town derpderp has grown to become a city"?

It'll take time to get each different world gen mechanic up in-play, but we've got some new horrifying stuff going on, and one of the ideas is to make sure you know about it, in all modes.  Liaisons and caravans are a good way to do that in fort mode.

Quote from: hermes

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

People mentioned safety and the eventual difficulty of traveling through rough terrain, which should actually effect your movement speed at some point (both locally and on the travel map).  There's also the benefit of orienting yourself -- you can pretty safely assume that the road will take you where you want to go, even if you can't see any landmarks or otherwise figure out where you are.  This is harder to simulate in a game with a grid.  Unless I switch the direction of the screen when you are lost (something I've considered, and which we did for other reasons in abandoned forts before), you'll know which way to go even without a road, more or less.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Is there a hard limit to the amount of attacks that you can preform at once? If so, what is that limit? Or is it based off of a stat?

Right now it's reasonably silly, and you can just keep stacking it up.  The idea was to penalize this in a few ways -- taking away power bonuses since the whole body can't be put behind multiple blows in general, and making it harder to hit with simultaneous attacks as a matter of stats/skills.  I don't think there'll ever be a hard cap, aside from not allowing you to double up with attacks that use the same parts, although we'll eventually have to make it realize that punching and elbowing with the same arm doesn't make much sense, for example.

Quote from: theqmann

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

When it matters more you'll get the map.  Probably when you have hill dwarves and are sending out scouts.

Quote from: Shinotsa

On the topic of road safety, will caravans always travel with a large enough number of guards to protect them, or will there be guards from the different civs patrolling the roads to keep them safer?

Also, now that goods are tracked from town to town, are caravan goods actually going to be tracked from their origin to their destination? For example, if a caravan carrying dwarven metalwork is ambushed on its way to a human town the mountainhome, will the bandit camp be filled with +steel short sword+ and ?lead barrel?? Would those same goods have showed up in human shops had the caravan arrived, or would they just be stored in the warehouses?

Not sure how caravan safety works out.  Seems like a "safe" kingdom would have unguarded caravans, if they really don't have to worry about bandits or theft or monsters or anything, since the caravan owner would save money that way.  There's the matter of actually organizing the caravans and making them think about stuff like that, and we aren't there yet.

Yeah, that level of tracking is in the cards now.  We already have the space allocated for it, so it just needs to be done when the caravans are moving, for the bandits.  Getting things to arrive at precise shops is more complicated.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady are you planning on redoing Titans at a certain point or adding something that can see if a Titan is worthwhile or not or what? Since a lot of the titans generated couldn't fight their way out of a paper bad (no really, the paper bag would probably kill the Titan)

It's certainly not good that it doesn't create monsters of reliable difficulty at this point.  Once titans matter more I imagine it could be looked at.

Quote from: Valtam

How are we going to measure our deeds? Interests will still be global among entities, like being a worldwide hero due to a few local kills? How can we make sure that we're dealing with the right entity as soon as we're about to claim our 'reward'?

The last question is paired with the assumption that sites, now that they're going to be claimed by multiple (and even conflictive) entities, might contain groups of people that could give you an umprompted beating in response of your meddling in local affairs. Lets say that you arrive to a town near a former-hamlet-now-debris&gore, where you're told that X goblin entity made it; you manage to murder the entire goblin entity, and back in the town you enter to a house populated by bandits, who were also enemies of the (majority of the) hamlet. Will they despise you for helping an enemy? Can bandits and goblin be somehow 'allies' if they share some common goals, or are we not that into AI yet?

In part, you measure your deeds by how many of your loved ones are still alive.  We've slowly arriving at a place where there are real consequences for action and inaction.  There's still an opinion of you based on entity standing, but the main difference this time is probably going to be how a given site's population can have different entity views from person to person -- that isn't all in yet, and we'll get significantly more interesting when I get to succession before the release.

We're not up to any more subtle AI yet.  Things'll get tangled with succession, and that's good.  Then we'll see how long the AI behaves bizarrely while I try to clean things up.

Quote from: Parisbre56

Will there also be some kind of exposition for the various characters you meet?

Not much of anything new this time around that relates to specific people.  Maybe stuff that relates to what they think about who occupies the town, but not enough to make them feel like individuals.  The stuff that they drop about their family members, for instance, is pretty stilted, and it'll have to get better.

Quote from: Valtam

Could this mean that there's an intention to change the Fortress' beginning paragraph as well? Or it wouldn't be that relevant in the next release?

I think the opening paragraph could very will change, but the important part is pre-embark -- the invasions that come at your fortress are going to depend on where you embark and it'll have to be clear about that somewhere in advance.

Quote from: Mr Frog

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

I don't think it'll be a problem.  Time in fortress mode is compressed, so that'll be the place to test it out, but there's no indication at this point that the new thoughts that map critters have at times matter that much.  Most of the things critters do now, like moving as armies, were already active, but not used much, and putting a slight extra load on that hasn't mattered.  A giant army moving doesn't really have any overhead at all at this point, once they have their goal.

Quote from: Helgoland

Will the new version be save-compatible?

It becomes more difficult as we move along.  There's an awful lot to account for, and I think it might be best not to burn a lot of time on it when not many of the features can be brought into play no matter how it works.

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Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that you're going to deal with the missing goblin sites, are we going to see demon sites changed in the upcoming release with regards to Dwarf Fortress mode? Are we going for a standardised or randomised messing-up of the world at this point, and in how many ways can the world be messed up by these end-of-worldgen events?

Quote from: Aerval

What do you mean with Demon Sites? Just HFS or something different?

Also, does Dwarf Sites include Hill Dwarves?

I don't think the overall metaphysics/creation structure is changing much yet.  That'll be tackled as its own major push later on when it is more justified.  The new demon sites are more adv modeish, and not related to the dwarf mode HFS sites.

The first hill dwarf appearance seems quite likely.

Quote from: Shinotsa

Toady, what are the basic requirements that you have for making a living world? Theoretically they'd be something along the lines of grow, repopulate after disaster, gather and use resources, and adapt to various conditions placed upon it by the player which are similar to the basic characteristics of a living organism, but I am sure you have some specific goals for yourself even if they are to be expanded upon or refined at a later date.

The baseline for this release is for the world to repair itself from player damage, pretty much.  I'm not going to worry about resource use this time...  basic food is still possible.  So I need repopulation, AI site reclaim, births, new marriages and succession.  That's not really living so much as just surviving, he he he.  The army stuff and elements of succession probably count more as living -- changes are important.  Having goblins take over sites is a good first step going in this time.  Having the player surprised by whose in control when they arrive somewhere is good, and having the player be able to exercise some control over this is good (for now that'll be limited to people you kill and rescue, pretty much).

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Quote from: CLA

Will we see tree felling accidents?

Quote from: Aseaheru

will trees fall when cut? if so, do the fall in a certain direction? and if so, can one tree damage another or a building?

Quote from: Talvieno

Will dwarves be capable of chopping down select portions of tree trunks, rather than chopping the entire tree down at once?
Assuming they don't decompose into logs like constructions when left without a support: will trees fall to the side, or use the current physics code and fall straight down? If the latter, will this create a cave-in effect? ("A section of the cavern has collapsed!")

Quote from: Phlum

How will cutting these trees work, will it work sort of like the de-construction of walls? Will they fall over? Not with a silly cave-in message I'm shure!

Quote from: Mr Frog

Will the new, larger trees be dangerous to chop down in any way? What, if any, safety precautions will be needed to ensure safe harvesting, both of wood and (hopefully) fruit?

Quote from: CLA

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

Will cutting down multi-tile trees right where the tree goes into the ground cause the cave-in code to take effect, or do you intend to handle this differently?

Quote from: misko27

How will damage by falling trees be handled (especially considering the multi-tile aspect, as certain parts will weigh less presumably, but have the same velocity)? Will they fall as one tree, or will it shatter? Will it just poof and be on the ground as it is now, or will falling be a more gradual process? And what will occur to creatures on the tree? Will they be thrown, or cling to its branches?

Quote from: Vattic

Assuming trees yield bark when processed will we see it required for tanning?

There won't be an animation for falling trees, but I'm assuming there will be a direction when I get there.  There'll probably have to be trouble, but it would be silly to have a too-dangerous-to-use lumber industry.  Perhaps dwarves that are unqualified won't check the space where the tree falls, even if the targets have a chance to dodge, but we'll see how it ends up.  I imagine after the tree falls it'll just be separate logs.  Later we might have more processing, but I don't want to go on an nth-level detour just yet.  I talk a bit in the coppicing answer about whether there will be one tile tree mining, but I don't really know.  Probably.  Felling of trees shouldn't working like that though, since it would look sort of unrealistic and silly.  Not sure about creatures on the tree...  perhaps they'll just be thrown in the direction of the fall.

Quote from: Auning

Since demons have sites, will all demons have their own sites that they inhabit, or will there still be law-makers, lords, and specifically, outcasts? In other words, will there still be a variety of possible ways for a demon to inhabit the world?

I'm not doing the actual underworldish planar stuff yet, so we're not going to super cool town.  Just some fun stuff.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release. Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

That might be a bit much for this time.

Quote from: Calite

Is optimization done as the game is developed, and do you personally think the game is getting more or less efficient as development progresses?

Yeah, quite a bit is done as the game is developed.  The efficiency goes up and down.  The last several releases were faster during play than in many years previous, but world gen has become slower.

Quote from: Japa

How tall can we expect multi-tile trees to be?

It's not completely resolved.  Right now they can get up to 10, but I'd prefer it if they can get taller.  You don't want to allocate too much sky though, since sky is a waste for the most part.

Quote from: Torchy

Can we get a clarification on this, Toady? Were Ocean Titans taken out? If not, do they have Shrines placed currently or is there some system in place to prevent the strange situation of an inaccessible shrine sitting out there somewhere, presumably on the seafloor?

I don't remember getting rid of them, but if they don't have shrines they won't be findable, and I don't think it does undersea shrines.  Like boats and everything else, it's just sea stuff out in the far distance somewhere.

Quote from: Khalvin

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this. Surface Rivers in low lying layers cut through higher layer cliffs hills rather then detour around them.

Is this side effect of the world gen process, or is caused locally when the region is loaded in Dwarf mode/adventure mode?

The main problems occur where rivers meet and the two branches are coming from places with different elevations (the waterfalls).  There are lots of things that need to be reconciled to avoid flat-out spillage or intersection with the underground layers without pushing them too low, and the rough solutions now lead to some strangeness.  I'm not sure when I'll be trying to handle it with more finesse -- maybe when I do actual hills and canyons.

Quote from: Auning

How far reaching will a personality rewrite be? Will it just be used for things like how sentient things react to various happenings, or will it also be noticeable in terms of each individual's personality? For example, as opposed to everyone having the *nearly* same greetings and ways interacting with you, it would change based on their personality. Your companion may be very narcissistic or there's a peasant in your town that speaks very cruelly, and the way they speak/act can reflect this.

Conversation text specifically is a nightmare, but it's also very important.  I'm not quite sure how much it'll be reflected this time, but I need to continue working on it since it is the best window we have and I want less of the work to reside solely under the hood this time.  The underlying rewrite is going to be pretty extensive, even for this release.

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Quote from: hermes

If so, will you tackle ground vegetation differences like fields of grass or forest floor moss?

Quote from: MrWiggles

Since you've talked about grass under the tree cover should be dry, doe s this mean we'll be seeing a change to say under growth and forest debris? Will this impact forest fires?

Quote from: Vattic

Will the new vegetation changes include the undergrowth you've mentioned before?

I want to deal with the lower light in forests, and the differences down below, but we'll see what we get this time.  I'm not sure at this point exactly what's going to happen.  The undergrowth is being dealt with now as I drop fruit/leaves from trees etc., and I have no idea if we'll be seeing things like movement rate decreases from shrubs and so on.

Quote from: Maxmurder

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

Yeah, they are there.  I'm not sure about the quest structure.  On the one hand, I'd like to move away from specific quests.  On the other hand, sometimes they are just appropriate and this feels like a case where someone would actually ask you to do something specific that has a strict starting and end point and all that.

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Quote from: misko27

Will the new goblin sites be vulnerable to attacks from Forgotten Beasts, and other cavern-based monsters? What sort of defenses will they have against them?

Quote from: thvaz

As goblins breach the underground now,will they be attacked by forgotten beasts? There will be a chance now that forgotten beasts enter in play during world gen?

I haven't changed the world gen stuff for gobs.  Next pass on that'll be when I do the non-player dwarf fortresses, when they interact with the layers.  Will I go back to world gen and add some stuff?  Dunno, probably not at this point.  Having site attacks happen in adventure mode with forgotten beasts will likely wait until the dragons are running around.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In dark fortresses, will there be watch towers at the entrances to fortress in the cavern layers as well as on the surface?

Will goblins be able to attack your fortress from the cavern layers now?

I haven't gotten around to make the cavern layer part very interesting, and I haven't made goblins siege from below.

Quote from: Novel

Will you be developing Kobolds soon?

It'll make this release.  Other than that I'm not sure on the timing.

Quote from: darklord92

Will we ever be able to edit the types of buildings that will appear in towns as well as the "dungeons" inside of it, possibly having it external such as a site_dwarf file. or having "plans" built into the game like now but with the buildings customisable in the entity files, such as the options to build towers or not, or to have sewers or not at a certain city value or population

Things tend to move out to the raws as I feel more comfortable with them.  Once I'm done with all of the sites and have more an idea of what I'm dealing with and what I'll be dealing with, we'll probably see more things in there.

Quote from: smirk

Toady, would you mind clarifying how you're fixing the "open areas filled with dozens of goblins"? Are you spreading things out to make sense, or deliberately making it a little more game-y, or something entirely different?

It all goes together.  The game's concept of goblin sites could easily be one giant communal living chamber or something, but we have to make decisions that don't make the game dull.

Quote from: Talvieno

Are people in towns going to have jobs in the next release, as it appears goblins will? Or will they continue to stand idly in their houses?

It's the same as the human towns.  Professions without work.

Quote from: NO_THOUGHT

How tightly bound is the DF world to a grid? Is it actually a floating point position based world displayed through a grid, or is it more so connected to the grid on a mathematical level. If it isn't bound by the grid are they any current considerations to alter game displays in that direction?

It's pretty much all grid-based.  Projectiles and mine carts are the exception right now.

Quote from: Phlum

will trolls be part of goblin forts? If so, how will they be found in the dark fortress?

Yeah, they are down there.  Right now they are in the troll shearing areas.

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Quote from: thvaz

Do watchtowers offer any advantage in spotting intruders? Or are they just cosmetic for now?

Quote from: Anatoli

Also, do mounds and trenches etc... offer any advantages?

I haven't done a height advantage -- it's trickier with the map as it stands, though perhaps I could extend their arcs lower down or something.  There is an advantage to the specific configuration of the watch towers though, in that they can see down the trenches where you might otherwise have an easy time sneaking.  Mounds don't matter so much defensively -- we don't have armies attacking yet.

Quote from: iceball3

Are the plans for same-race militant and otherwise conflicts?

Yeah.  They happen between different civilizations already in world gen, though they are more rare.  We're going to have more trouble and politics within a given civilization at some point, but the larger world questions are taking priority for the moment.  After the sweeping stuff is in, we can get more nuanced with it.  In-play succession, which is going in this release, sets the stage for some of the most important conflicts within a single civ.

Quote from: Valtam

Will (rescued) prisoners behave any different than henchmen, at least in terms of recklesness and being unable to follow you under certain circumstances, like rivers? If there's a rewrite for the companions (which I'm sure it is, rendering doable all those sneaking quests) can you tell them to leave your group, or will they have motives to leave?

Yeah, it should end up that way, hopefully this time.  Children you rescue shouldn't behave like rabid beasts.  I guess your regular companions shouldn't act like rabid beasts either.  It is a process.  You'll need to be able to tell your companions to wait at the very least for this release.

Quote from: Chthonic

With the addition of sites for other races--including those troll-shearing pits and other economic buildings--are we going to see some more fleshed-out out-of-the-box playability in vanilla DF for the non-dwarf races in fortress mode a la Kobold Camp?

Those are larger projects than just having the non-player sites around.  I don't think it'll be good to open up another can of worms that size any time soon.

Quote from: Japa

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

This made me think of taverns and inns.  I'm not sure when there will be lots of non-player adventures occurring.  The main issue is the ensure that adventure mode is not ruined by them, but that applies less when you are running a fort, especially where it concerns the fort's children.

Quote from: misko27

Will dwarves now use the lesser nobilties in world-gen? Will dwarven mountain hall be listed as barony, duchy, etc? And Finally, Will we see Forced administarters ruling over conqured sites?

I'm not sure about the administrators, but the others will show up.

Quote from: MaximumZero

Are we going to see stealth missions?  Reading the devlog, all I can think about is Metal Beard Solid: Goblin Eater.

I'm still hoping to move away from specific stated missions entirely, but there are now situations where directed stealth can save you a lot of trouble when applied for an extended period, which is roughly equivalent I think (current examples: saving a captive, assassinating a general, getting to a demon).

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Quote from: CaptainArchmage

How will you handle expanding player fortress that have been retired? I know player fortresses can be a mess of hallways to nowhere and vast open areas, unlike the computer-generated fortresses.

Quote from: MrWiggles

So what are the things that need to happen to let Player Created Forts retire?

Site expansion in general is an annoying open question, and for player fortresses it is basically a disaster.  I'm not sure when I'm going to tangle with site expansion (for the basic birth/repopulation, things just need to return to "normal"), but when I do, if there are former player forts, things'll probably get pretty ugly.

For retiring player forts, I think I just need to come to terms with the great explosion of death that will await the first adventurer that arrives at one, and then we'll be cool.  Really, the main thing I need is these non-player forts I'm working on, so I know what framework needs to be placed over the player ones for them to have sense made of them.

Quote from: misko27

Will we be able to damage roots by mining nearby and trampling?

I still have to set them up, but mining should certainly cause trouble for root tiles.  Dunno about trampling.  It might be too disruptive, or even inaccurate, depending on what sorts of floor-style root tiles we get.

Quote from: monk12

Do you have plans for flowers as a resource of some kind (decorative or otherwise,) or are they just an aesthetic choice to make the grass pretty? Does their coincidence with Elven sites indicate that Elves will have more flowers around than anyone else, or is it just "I'm doing trees and fruits and stuff, I'll throw in flowers quick?"

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

Quote from: EmeraldWind

With fruit going in will you make adventurers able to gather fruit and other plants for food straight from the source?

Yeah.

Quote from: DNK

So, given that in real life many trees exceed 20 ft in height (and in jungle biomes, far more), does this mean that we're going to be seeing these multi-tile trees popping up regularly in fortress mode across many biomes as well? Are their canopies going to be just single tiles or multiple tiles on multiple Z levels?

They are all over and can be quite large (the screenshot probably went up after this question, where you can see the canopies).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Torchy

We know that, after a time, children kidnapped by Goblins become Goblin-naturalized, to the point of even leading armies against their original civ. Now that abducted children are locatable and rescuable, have you put any thought into how long they have to be saved before they become willing little Goblins themselves (at which point I'd imagine they would no longer want to be rescued)? Would you have this timeframe vary based on certain personality traits of the child abducted, or their age? More importantly - would kids rescued from Goblin civs after a significant length of time be changed in any way, be it in terms of picking up a skill like Shearing from slave labor, or another trait they might acquire from the ordeal?

In world gen, the current rule is that they have to reach adulthood, I think (though I could be misremembering).  I'm happy enough with that, though I guess ideally it would be more fun if your captives reacted differently so you couldn't just treat the entire return trip the same way each time.  They don't currently do anything there, but if as historical figures it gave them jobs, they'd acquire skills.  We're still not really sure what they do with them, in terms of work or indoctrination, so for now they just hang out in cells.

Quote from: Vattic

When it comes to sites and modding will it be a matter of deciding if your custom civ uses one of the preset ones or are they more customisable?
What level of customisation are you planning for in future / What is your ideal level and what level do you expect to achieve?
What would happen in world gen if you gave humans goblin style sites? Would the lack of farms lead to starvation?
If a civ conquers a site that wouldn't support their needs how does settling work?

It still works the same way.  Once I'm happy with all the sites and things are working well, then it'll be time to move things out to the text files.  It'd probably be a happy time to do it when human towns start to look different.  Right now, I don't even know what I want of the basic races and having to update text files would slow me down too much.  It's similar to the random creatures, though those are farther along.  Ideally you'd be able to fiddle with all kinds of architecture and specifics and mix and match every element.  I think humans with goblin sites would probably still survive on butchering animals, or even by fake farms if the game just doesn't know what's going on.  Conveniently, goblins are the only ones with any fight in them right now.  When I do human conquests and have food use in play, that case'll be handled, but it's a bit of trick since it'll either have to involve site expansion or caravans.

Quote from: CLA

Will we have trees massive enough that the trunk alone spans several tiles? Will we then be able to carve fortifications, stairs, etc in the trunk?
Will trees regrow if we prune them? Can we use the fallen leaves as fertilizer?

The trunks can be large.  Not sure what the specific options'll be for carving or other uses yet.

Quote from: zwei

Will we have orchards in dwarf mode then? Grapes and proper wine?

He he he, "dwarves with *outdoor* *orchards*" is kind of a double-barreled fundamentally bizarre concept, so I'm not sure I'll be racing for that.  On the other hand, doing anything with underground vegetation along the same lines would pretty much let you do it above ground (if you are some kind of shaved-faced freak), so I wouldn't rule it out.  I doubt you'd ever compete in global trade with the people that live in forests under the sun and so on.

Quote from: Auning

How moddable will the following be: tree shape, size, quantity of fruit bearing
Will all trees have different defined varieties of leaves/petals/etc? For example, pine trees will have pine needles, oak trees will have oak leaves, palm trees will have palm fronds.
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
With the implementation of the other new sites, will this in turn allow for more variety with human sites, since the code has been expanded upon?
Will trees legitimately spread through methods such as seeds in fruit, or will they still just spawn?

As for the first few lines, yeah, all pretty good there.  Haven't done anything with sap.  I haven't expanded human sites, but yeah, the potential increases as I add non-human sites, but not really modding wise for this time.  I haven't gone down into actual seeding yet.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

We're getting fruits and flowers, so will we have seeding patterns too?
With the addition of fruits and flowers on trees, will animals such as elephants be able to browse trees?
Will roots be able to damage structures within your fortress?
Are all trees going to use the new multi-tile code?
Some real life trees, such as Baobabs, store large quantities of water inside their trunks. Will some large trees be filled with replenishing water?

No specific reproduction information at this point.  Not doing tree browsing yet.  The vast majority of trees don't do the massive taproot thing, so I'm not sure if any interesting things will happen with roots, but if you are playing like a hill dwarf and mucking about in the soil, you might run into trouble with roots, especially if you are shallow.  All trees but saplings will use multitile code.  I think trees at higher elevations should end up properly stunted, but might still get 2 tiles tall to distinguish them from saplings.  Don't have special plans for the odd cases, aside from things like basic saguaro shapes and things like that.

Quote from: Phibes

Will invaders be linked to the new elven and goblin sites?
And if so, will this have any effect on sieges? Variety of unit types, historical figures, etc?

Yeah, I don't expect we'll have any generated armies after this release (aside from underground animal people if it brings some of them out).  I don't think that'll have a broadly noticeable effect yet, though it will impact equipment and who comes in subtle ways at this point.

Quote from: Heph

Will Bamboo "grass" turn to Bamboo "Trees"? Also will we have multitile "Bushes" and "Hedges" like ribes, Hazelnuts or Hibiscus?
Will certain Trees/bushes/plants breed by other means then fruits and seeds? Like over the Rhizome by vegetative reproduction (natures own cloning) etc.?

There's more of a framework for that now, but I don't think I'm going to get further into it this time around.  There are memory/processor issues with allowing z-multi-tile independent vegetation on every x/y tile.  It can't use the full vegetation framework, so it can't be tracked as closely.  Reproduction is still all abstract.

Quote from: Talvieno

Will tree roots be multi-tile, and if so, will they remain and decay after the tree is chopped down?

They are, and they'll still be there.  I don't know if they'll decay in any particular way at this point.  That doesn't mean they can't be cleared.

Quote from: smirk

Will you be making underground trees and mushrooms multi-tile as well, and if so how are you dealing with cavern space requirements for these?

Yeah.  I'm not sure what you mean about cavern space requirements.

Quote from: smaug13

now there are armies and nightcreatures are traveling through the overworld, will this mean the megabeasts will leave their lair this or next update?

I'm not sure when the megabeasts will be activated.  I haven't done it yet.  Having the night creatures roaming around outside their lairs seems to bring it closer, but that behavior seems a little too flippant for the bigger ones.

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Quote from: Rip0k

Will climbing require special equipment, like grappling hooks, spiked shoes, picks and so on?

With this new climbing mechanics, will we see those high cliffs back again?

Quote from: Talvieno

Will there be a difference between climbing rough and smooth walls? If some invaders become capable of climbing into an aboveground fortress, will smoothing the walls (or constructing smooth walls) prevent them from doing this?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that climbing is going in, will we be getting ladders?

Quote from: Talvieno

Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?

Quote from: smaug13

With the multitile trees and jumping implemented, does this mean that there will be creatures that live in trees. and will it be possible to sneak pasts guards through trees??

Quote from: kulik

Will entities be able to jump over more than one tile?
Will you need some distance to run before jumping?
Will you be able to jump into somebody as offensive maneuver?
When climbing, will you be able to jump vertically to another adjacent (opposite) wall and try to snag to it?
Will holding on ledges be part of climbing-jumping.
Will climbing introduce ladders and ropes for climbing?

Quote from: misko27

Will jumping now be reflected as a skill? Will fortmode dwarves jump, and under what circumstances?

Quote from: Mr Frog

Will climbing be implemented in any other respect, or will it just be restricted to trees for now? What, if any, mechanical differences will there be between climbing and going up a flight of stairs/walking?

Quote from: stolide

How does combat while climbing work? (Can we throw things while climbing?)
Can we sneak while climbing?

Quote from: Lordinquisitor

Which brings up my question- Will Climbing be enabled in Fortress mode? And will there be critters that live in the trees, aside from elves?

Quote from: CLA

Do certain animals climb trees now, too? Birds' nests, etc? Will we see a [CLIMBER] tag in this release?

Quote from: Parisbre56

With the new climbing mechanics are we going to see cave spiders climbing cave walls?

We aren't there yet, so I can't be really specific about climbing and jumping.  Jumps should be able to pass over gaps on the ground, and running should matter (especially now that we have sprinting).  Being able to move through tiles with a jump will force us to deal with creature collisions, but I'm not sure what that's going to mean.  Dunno about fort mode jumping -- pathing is as usual the problem there with any movement changes, so we have to be careful.  I think jumping makes sense as a skill...  if the Olympics are any indication, there should be several skills, he he he.

I think you should be able to attempt to climb most things.  Climbing smooth walls equipment free as a human seems unlikely.  Adding equipment at this point is one of those tempting things.  Who knows what will end up happening...  perhaps nothing, perhaps another obscenity.  Climbing up something is different from going up a flight of stairs because when you are climbing you can fall and break something.  Not sure about sneaking while climbing -- you can sneak in the sense of avoiding detection from vision arcs and moving silently, but not sure about lowering your profile.  Even less sure about combat and the exact mechanics of climbing -- does it track exactly holds and prevent attacks with those?  Unsure.  Also unsure about climbing animals, though they are obviously cool.  Fort mode climbing has same problems as jumping -- pathing issues and how they are resolved.  Jumping vertically and ledge hanging seems fine -- I don't know much about rock climbing and how long you can support your weight on a ledge with a crappy hold though.  I'd like to have high cliffs back, and climbing was the main obstacle there, but I need to continue to be a bit careful there.  The old situation with cliffs everywhere was still bad -- might have to wait for the 3D veins and landforms and things.  I like ladders and ropes...  I don't even recollect at this point (burned out as I am since this is the last answer I'm typing up) what the block was for getting rope ladders in before, so I'll have to see what happens there.

Quote from: MrWiggles

ToadyOne, how much, if at all, do you enjoy us trying to soak as much information as possible from your Dev Logs?

I think it's cool when people are enjoying things.

Quote from: Charey Wolf

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

I doubt I'll get to anything like that this time around, but at least we've got a framework now that'll allow specific tiles dedicated to that kind of thing.  It only gets us part of the way there though.

Quote from: Vattic

When you say which branches are safe to climb on and which aren't does this take size into account?

That should make it in, but it'll still be a very coarse setup, since there are only levels of branch tile.

Quote from: stolide

Do all trees grow the same way?

Nope.  There are various parameters in the raws.

Quote from: Heph

I love how you do this, it gives us nice dense forrests if done right but i wonder if you include the Physical aspects in your growth algorithm. Given that you have only one set of Rules (atm) i could imagine that respecting stuff like the Tensile and compressive Strength or the solid density of the different wood-materials makes still a difference in the outcome (for example if certain breaking points are reached).

There are parameters in the raws, but I think it would be a rabbit hole to look at the specific numbers and try to form an algorithm around that.

Quote from: misko27

Will Building be able to be constructed on Trees at all, if so, what building under what circumstances.

The elves will likely have some things up there, and I assume that'll carry over.

Quote from: thvaz

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

It remains to be seen, since I haven't cut down any trees yet.  There will be more wood with each tree, but trees will grow more slowly now.  That might be enough, but we'll have to run out some forts for a period of time to see if it swings too far one way or the other.

Quote

Quote from: CLA

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

Quote from: smirk

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

The growth parameters are all in there.

Quote from: Torchy

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

Yeah, you can change each of the tiles.  The d_init file has the defaults, and the raws have any special tiles for specific trees.  For the 1/4th you'd probably just need to change the d_init one.

Quote from: Talvieno

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

The trees grow in increments, though the jumps in trunk width are by necessity pretty sudden.  I still have to look up data on tree growth rates, but I'm planning on keeping it as realistic as I can, then seeing how annoying logging is, and revamping one thing or another from there.

Quote from: CLA

Will, similar to grazers, certain animals require leaves and/or fruits now?

Not now, but having trees like this should help us get there.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

How does the tree "decide" which tiles to use when its trunk increases from 1x1 to 2x2?

It's random, based on what is available, but when it goes to 3x3 it tries to recenter back on where it was, so the tree doesn't migrate too much.

Quote

Quote from: Quatch

Do you regenerate the whole tree/branch when it grows?

How will you decide when a tree dies, due to damage? Do we need to cut out a whole layer of trunk? Perhaps only ring it? What about 1 tile removal of a 3x3 trunk, either in the center or at the edge? what about root damage, how much is enough to kill a tree?

Quote from: Mr S

Toady, is partial cutting (pollarding) of a tree going to be possible?  If tree-topping of this sort is possible, will the tree continue to grow?

Quote from: Vattic

With trees presumably taking longer to grow will things like coppicing and other tree management be possible? Also what impact will this have on tree growth?
In what ways do you plan on players being able to influence tree growth? Bonsai trees being an extreme example of what I mean.

It grows out tile by tile, in general, so it shouldn't do too-weird things with existing branches.  Trees don't need any particular tiles at this point to stay alive, and I'm not sure in the end what I'll get to there.

I haven't done the interface for cutting trees yet, so it remains to be seen exactly what'll happen -- if a tree doesn't die when its upper tiles are removed, and you can partially mine out wood in a tree, then coppicing would basically have happened (since the tree would grow back tile by tile from the trunk).

Aside from boxing in trees so they'd kind of grow around obstructions, I don't have specific plans for influencing tree growth at this point.

Quote from: smirk

Will foliage be burnable? If so, will you fix fire to spread across z-levels?

It'll burn, and I'm sure it'll be fun to make it look cool.

Quote from: Jacob/Lee

what are the ideas for the new kobold sites?

I don't want to commit to anything on those yet, other than something being done.  We have various ideas, but we still need to specify some of them, and some of them probably require mechanics I don't want to burn too much time on (as has been done with the trees for elves).

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

What happens if a tree is going to grow outwards or upwards, but something is in the way, be it a building or construction or creature?

The way it is set up now, trees will just go around.  I haven't done anything with slow pushing/deforming or anything like that -- we don't have fine gradations to work with.

Quote from: monk12

Will trees be affected by the wind/weather/storms?

Not at this point.  We need to do more with wind first.  Then I'll be able to simulate the annoying power-killing wind storms we get all the time out here.

Quote from: Parisbre56

What happens when you cause the part of the ground the tree rests upon to cave in? Does the tree remain intact?

You mean like floating in space?  The trees are tied to the map, so they won't float.

Quote from: eux0r

are the proportions of the trees weve seen so far already the desired picture or are tile dimensions yet to be applied for the trees to be what you want them to be?

It'll depend on the kind of tree more than what you saw there.

Quote from: darklord92

Once fruites are added, possibly for a later update, will we ever get quests to get frutes from good or evil regions? " I require a putrid apple from the swamps of longbottoms, will you acquire it for me? "

It's a reasonable enough thing.  There's also the whole alchemy/herbalism-type questions, where people including yourself mix all kinds of creepy stuff for nefarious purposes.  We'll have to see how it plays out.  Certainly having various flowers and leaves adds a draw there, programming-wise, but there's only so much time for detours.

Quote from: Mr Frog

can growths drop down on their own or must they always be harvested manually?

Growths will drop on their own, but due to the amount, it'll store them as a ground contaminant somewhat like blood.  If it's a growth like fruit, there'll need to be a step from there to collect them for eating, perhaps, and I haven't thought about how that might work yet.

Quote from: Heph

Toady, now that we have trees and Leaves, flowers and such will they be part of the of the "Art". I could see elves using many floral ornaments on theyr items.

It's a reasonable thing, but I haven't figured out exactly how far I'm going to go with the flower items that now exist.  Elf sites are coming very soon, so we'll see!

Quote

Quote from: Chronas

Do leaves count as items? Are they collectable or will they fall to the ground as a 'contaminant' during autumn?

Quote from: monk12

Will/How is tree-related debris handled? Fallen branches, falling leaves/flowers, falling fruit, etc.
Can trees die of natural causes?

I'm working through that now, and they'll be stored as a contaminant that can be picked up in part and at that point turned into a leaf item.  The leaf item already exists (from quarry leaves), so it shouldn't be a problem.  A leaf picked directly from a tree will also become an item (rather than a body contaminant), unless you've done something bizarre like making a tree with liquid leaves.

I'm not sure about natural causes.  It knows the ages of trees, but there aren't any diseases.

Quote from: CLA

Do the fruits contain seeds of the trees? Will we see seeds for all plants now? Do new plants only grow where seeds are? Will animals disperse seeds?
Does tree growth depend on fertility of the ground? Can we influence that with fertilizer? Possibly order trees to be grown somewhere specific by planting a seed?

I haven't done the seeds yet.  I'm not sure exactly what'll happen there.  It would be really cool to be able to plant trees.  We'll see.  I haven't messed with the soil.

Quote from: tahujdt

Will elves again send their emmissaries to request logging limits?

As far as I know, that's just a garden variety bug.  I'm not sure when it'll be fixed, or if I'll just wait for general diplomacy improvements.

Quote from: Jothki

How will dwarves handle harvesting things from trees? Grabbing everything from every tree on the map would be absurd, but individually designating every item would be annoying as well. Is there going to be a way to flag trees for continuous harvesting?

I haven't decided yet.  Since trees should last a while when you aren't cutting them down (the duration of the fort, pretty much), something permanent like an activity zone would probably work as well as anything, though I'm not 100% sure that's the best way to do it.  It does give you control over where things happen, and it lasts.

Quote from: stolide

Will a given species of tree grow exactly the same in all conditions?

Will the recent volume of rain have any impact on plant growth?

Are we going to see vines at some point? It would be cool to have a climbable plant that grows onto surfaces, like walls and cliff faces. Such a plant could be used like ladders by the elves...

Altitude might have an impact, but I haven't gotten around to a lot of variation within one species.  I like vines, but we aren't there yet.

Quote from: caknuck

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

Quote from: misko27

What will be the limits on non-fruit tree growths? Are liquids possible? Containers with objects in them? Animate things, Like elves?

Any simple item can be made.  So you can't make things within things or creatures.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Are we going to have more trees that are tied to savage/good/evil/calm regions, and if we are, are they going to "act" in strange ways? Will glumprong tree fruit be poisonous, or something like that? Walking trees?

I'm not doing anything special this time around.  The basic trees are complicated enough to set up for now.

Quote from: Chthonic

With seasonal flowers, will we have the option of planting flowerbeds?

Do seasonal flowers mean that aboveground plants will no longer be year-round crops?

You don't have any extra control over grass right now, and I haven't really fiddled with farming.  The effects on standard farming would potentially be wide-ranging, but I'm not quite sure how much I want to jump into that right now.

Quote from: Talvieno

Are you going to be laying any groundwork towards implementing the removal (as stated above) of good/evil flora regions before the next release?

Probably not.

Quote from: Tov01

Will we be able to pick flowers for various purposes? For example, certain flowers could be used to produce dyes, while others, like nasturtiums, could be used for food.

Also, will flowers produce fruit, seed pods, or equivalent features?

There isn't a reason to do it yet, anywhere, but an adventurer can.  We might see more action over time.  There will be pickable yummy fruit and so on in this release.

Quote from: crapabear

After this release, how many release cycles away are we from seeing taverns and inns? In the last DF Talk I think you mentioned that it had been moving up the priority list.

I think it would be unwise to make guesses about the release after this one, especially since I just took down a multi-release schedule.  It's not possible to say.

Quote from: Talvieno

Is there a possibility that some fruits will rot on the trees, without falling until after they've rotted, or possibly just rotting away? If fruits rot on the trees, how long will it take for them to rot?

Will unharvested fruits attract vermin such as flies?

Will bees make different types of honey now, now that we have flowers?

It can go either way, though things tend to be more uniform depending on where you set your parameters for a given species of tree.  I don't think there'll be flies for the stuff that falls on the ground, since there'll probably be too much of it.  It would need to be reasonably rare to keep things under control.

I haven't changed anything with bees.

Quote from: CLA

Will all plants (regardless of whether they are multi-tile, single-tile grass, flowers, deciduous, conifers, or whatever) have unified raw parameters/tokens/structure? Like all creatures have? So you could - hypothetically - just change a few parameters in the raws and for example make a single tile grass into a multi-tile flowering plant? Or are there fundamental differences between the raws of different plants?

It's the same material-wise and in various other parameters, though there is still a type variable between trees and grass and shrubs, and trees are the only ones where multi-tile information is used.  The main thing that needs to be reconciled for a full unification is how dwarf mode sees trees as objects for designations, and how extra information needs to be stored for trees that for technical reasons cannot be stored for every tile (so multi-tile grass presents a challenge, memory/processor-wise).

Quote from: Anatoli

1: What's your stance on taking a creative break?
2: When would you take one? Would it be tied to donations?
3: If money permits, would you travel a bit around the world in order to improve your imagination?
4: When would the next DF meetup be?
5: Besides dwarven mountain homes and kobolds, is there anything left before release?
6: How many duplicates of questions would there have to be for you to intervene?
7: How is the fps rate going so far?

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind.  I've gone off places for vacation for a few days or more in the past.  I think it's more important to keep working, for the most part, since there is a lot to do.  There aren't any meetup plans at this point.

There are plenty of things left for this release.  I haven't done any of the birth/marriage/succession/reclaim stuff yet.  That's pretty big.

Intervene like yelling at people?  It doesn't matter that much.  I just grouped them together.  Some of the groupings are quite large (record setting grouping size!), and if the groupings start to get larger and larger, something would need to be devised, but we're still okay.

FPS is unchanged so far in dwarf mode, and adv mode travel seems fine as well.  The creation of trees and all that doesn't seem to make embark take perceptibly longer, but I'll still have to try out a large forest and see if it gets tangled anywhere and optimize as necessary.  Same goes for wandering through an adv mode forest.

Quote from: Phibes

Will tree roots play a role in Fortress mode as a usable material? Will they continue to grow in soil layers during game play?

They will continue to grow.  Not sure they'll be usable for anything.  Maybe the really big ones can pass for wood, but I don't really know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 06, 2012, 07:56:00 am

You know you hit a wall of text when its higher then your desk. That being said thank you toady for answering our questions! When you are done with trees for this release can you provide a example raw-file?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 06, 2012, 08:06:00 am

This isn't a question, so much as a clarification.

The issue currently with underground trees is that more often than not, the spaces where the trees grow are only one Z level high.

Though with how common larger open areas are, I can see that effecting tree growth patterns more than cave generation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 06, 2012, 08:46:04 am

Excellent way to start the morning; thanks Toady!

Quote from: Japa on October 06, 2012, 08:06:00 am

This isn't a question, so much as a clarification.

The issue currently with underground trees is that more often than not, the spaces where the trees grow are only one Z level high.

Though with how common larger open areas are, I can see that effecting tree growth patterns more than cave generation.

Beat me to it, Japa! From my question here:

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: smirk

    Will you be making underground trees and mushrooms multi-tile as well, and if so how are you dealing with cavern space requirements for these?

Yeah.  I'm not sure what you mean about cavern space requirements.

I'm gonna make a giant leap and say that, most likely, 1) mushroom-trees won't be as big as their above-ground counterparts, and 2) They'll just grow really misshapen because of cavern space. Also, if he's doing a non-mining system for tree felling (which seems to be the case), all those cavern walls hemming in tower-caps could mean all kinds of lumberjacking headaches...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 06, 2012, 08:50:44 am

Personally, I'd love for underground trees to just plain not grow in places without a lot of headroom. that would go a lot towards making underground more interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on October 06, 2012, 09:13:39 am

Quote

Unless I switch the direction of the screen when you are lost (something I've considered, and which we did for other reasons in abandoned forts before), you'll know which way to go even without a road, more or less.

I'm trying not to make a suggestion here (and I hope the fact that I'm not sure exactly how it would work helps with that), but given that most pre-modern people could tell compass directions from the sun except on very overcast days, wouldn't it be more realistic to always allow the player a general sense of direction, but in some way lose the ability to use the broader/travel map and/or those sites with compass directions in the corner of the screen to get precisely to your destination, allowing you to head in the right general direction but miss the site to one side or the other if you're not a skilled tracker or something? I know that when travelling on the immediate level (which I do to level my sneaking abilities) I tend to have to keep adjusting my exact path as I get closer and "W" turns into "NW" because "W" was an approximate angle all along and the slight northliness of the destination becomes a bigger deal as I get closer; that's the sort of thing I'd realistically expect to lose without a road or map, and more so trying to find a path through the woods; I have no idea how that translates to the travel map where you can't lose the map, without forcing players to travel on-site if they're lost... Though maybe that's a reasonable enough consequence that could be considered, I have no idea -- turn the travel map into something you can only use via known paths or with sufficiently good navigation skills for the particular terrain you're in... But there might be better alternatives that don't make players feel like much of travelling is forced into the slow, on-ground movement for sake of alleged realism (whereas right now on-ground travelling is something some of us do if we want to level sneaking, and is otherwise unnecessary; I suppose that may change already with sneaking mechanics updates). Just thinking out loud, hope it's interesting/helpful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: davros on October 06, 2012, 09:34:18 am

Is there any chance of you posting screenshots of goblin towers, elf cities, and so on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 06, 2012, 10:40:03 am

Come to think of it, won't it make sense to have grasses designable at some point too? Even if it's only for the Humans. Because grass is needed to make hay and straw, which, amongst other things is used to feed animals during winter and travel.
I mean, right now, the Dwarves could technically just park their livestock in the caves where they'll eat cavemoss and floor fungi, but Humans might be looking for an alternative that requires less digging. Not to mention what Dwarves will do whenever they're stuck above a multi-level aquifer, the first winter is coming, and they still haven't gotten far enough to pierce the damn thing yet.
And while, right now, it doesn't really matter that there's snow on top of the grass, perhaps in the future it may be considered to make creatures actually receptive to temperature and give a reason to why winter could ruin an ill-prepared fort. (Aside from the 'haha, you didn't build a well, and you don't have enough booze' joke that strikes many a first-time player)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on October 06, 2012, 10:43:38 am

Sounds like adventure mode is going to get really fun.

I will say that I'd love to see massive trees (either redwoods or elf-trees, or both, though it would be awesome to be able to embark on them and I doubt you could do that with elf-trees), that have like 15 square-unit trunks, and go 40-50 z levels into the air, with forks in the trunk and such. It would be amazing to build a forts up in the canopy of a forest like that--maybe even having minecarts be the only way to get to one tree to another. But I also understand that that might just completely destroy FPS, what with all the sky above it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on October 06, 2012, 10:46:54 am

 Will we be seeing the new trees producing smaller branches and twigs for things like arrow making, instead of just logs for furniture? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 11:13:42 am

Quote from: CrzyMonkeyNinja on October 06, 2012, 10:46:54 am

Will we be seeing the new trees producing smaller branches and twigs for things like arrow making, instead of just logs for furniture? 

You tend to use logs to make arrow shafts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: adasdad on October 06, 2012, 11:31:54 am

will we get the ability in adventure mode to "mix" items without defining a specific reaction, for instance dipping weapons into vials of something, or poisoning food?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DNK on October 06, 2012, 12:49:45 pm

So, if you're going to include more microhabitats (like undercanopy grasses and fields, etc), will that include distinctions between things like:

- riparian zones (river banks) and the surrounding areas
- "old growth" forests and "new growth" areas within them where a tree "recently" fell or something that caused a disturbance [obviously could just be applied randomly rather than fully modeled, though adjusted for values like soil depth (less = more treefalls), wind (planned: higher = more falls), fire likelihood (would cause much larger "new growth" areas), etc, at least during initial embark level generation]. This would require plants to have a variable describing them on a spectrum between "rapid spreader" and "slow, long-term dominant species". Those with values closer to the former would be far more likely to appear after a recent fall (or clearing by dwarves in realtime) and grow fast at first, but as they grow larger, their rate of growth would slow, and the slow-growing long-term species would eventually overtake them (usually, but not always, of course).
- flora based on underlying soil/rock (for example, something occuring over a bauxite deposit would have high acidity and corresponding changes in plant makeup). This would require building values into each plant for acidity/base tolerance and adjusting likelihood of existence by that.
- other biological distinctions within general habitats/biomes I can't think of right now

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 06, 2012, 01:08:55 pm

how are dwarf cites going?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 01:18:05 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 06, 2012, 01:08:55 pm

how are dwarf cites going?

They havent gone at all.

After tress are done, he'll be moving onward with Elf Sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on October 06, 2012, 01:21:13 pm

Cool, thanks for the great answers, Toady.  The watchtower talk reminded me of a question/suggestion, so will try to make this as questiony as possible...

Since watchtowers and elven treehouses put dangerous entities up high, have you considered any adventure mode UI changes to make their visibility more... natural?  e.g. the z+1 view auto-adjusting to the top of the tower to simulate the adventurer glancing up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 01:55:01 pm

Yay! I love answers! This is why is one of the reasons why Toady is the best.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 06, 2012, 02:16:04 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

I would expect that doing this would greatly complicate things for modders, which is why Toady has them in *.txt files to begin with, as I understand it. A great portion of the player base has modded the game in one way or another, at least once. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS for the sake of being able to mod the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 02:25:36 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on October 06, 2012, 02:16:04 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

I would expect that doing this would greatly complicate things for modders, which is why Toady has them in *.txt files to begin with, as I understand it. A great portion of the player base has modded the game in one way or another, at least once. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS for the sake of being able to mod the game.

But dealing with a database is easy as modding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 02:30:03 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 02:25:36 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on October 06, 2012, 02:16:04 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

I would expect that doing this would greatly complicate things for modders, which is why Toady has them in *.txt files to begin with, as I understand it. A great portion of the player base has modded the game in one way or another, at least once. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS for the sake of being able to mod the game.

But dealing with a database is easy as modding.

Oh sure, if you know your way around sql.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 06, 2012, 02:34:23 pm

Quote from: therahedwig on October 06, 2012, 10:40:03 am

Come to think of it, won't it make sense to have grasses designable at some point too? Even if it's only for the Humans. Because grass is needed to make hay and straw, which, amongst other things is used to feed animals during winter and travel.

Hay and straw are planned, though there is no time-table for that yet. There was a chance that it would be added to the hauling release for hauling animals, but obviously that didn't happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 06, 2012, 02:38:37 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady!

There were plans to do animal-powered vehicles sometime. Is there any chance of that going in with this release?

This is linked to the inclusion of hay and straw, since the feeding stations Toady mentioned in April will be needed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 06, 2012, 03:48:47 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 06, 2012, 02:34:23 pm

Quote from: therahedwig on October 06, 2012, 10:40:03 am

Come to think of it, won't it make sense to have grasses designable at some point too? Even if it's only for the Humans. Because grass is needed to make hay and straw, which, amongst other things is used to feed animals during winter and travel.

Hay and straw are planned, though there is no time-table for that yet. There was a chance that it would be added to the hauling release for hauling animals, but obviously that didn't happen.

Which is why I found it puzzling that the main difference between grass and trees/shrubs seems to be designation. I mean, if hay will go it, you would presumably collect it through zones or designation, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Igfig on October 06, 2012, 03:51:37 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Tov01

Will we be able to pick flowers for various purposes? For example, certain flowers could be used to produce dyes, while others, like nasturtiums, could be used for food.

Also, will flowers produce fruit, seed pods, or equivalent features?

There isn't a reason to do it yet, anywhere, but an adventurer can.  We might see more action over time.  There will be pickable yummy fruit and so on in this release.

What if you used the tree framework for flowerbeds? You can pick fruit, so you can pick flowers too... just treat flowerbeds as trees without trunks or large branches, just lots of leaves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on October 06, 2012, 04:02:48 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Parisbre56

What happens when you cause the part of the ground the tree rests upon to cave in? Does the tree remain intact?

You mean like floating in space?  The trees are tied to the map, so they won't float.

He means will the tree stay tree-shaped, as opposed to collapsing into a mound of wood like the current cave in system does.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matt_S on October 06, 2012, 04:49:37 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 02:30:03 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 02:25:36 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on October 06, 2012, 02:16:04 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

I would expect that doing this would greatly complicate things for modders, which is why Toady has them in *.txt files to begin with, as I understand it. A great portion of the player base has modded the game in one way or another, at least once. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS for the sake of being able to mod the game.

But dealing with a database is easy as modding.

Oh sure, if you know your way around sql.

Theoretically Dwarf Fortress could convert between text files and databases for the users or have a utility to do so (or at least convert text files to databases, if not the other way around), since the code to parse text raws is already in Dwarf Fortress.  But I don't think raw processing is much of a bottleneck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on October 06, 2012, 05:43:49 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 02:30:03 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 02:25:36 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on October 06, 2012, 02:16:04 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

I would expect that doing this would greatly complicate things for modders, which is why Toady has them in *.txt files to begin with, as I understand it. A great portion of the player base has modded the game in one way or another, at least once. Most people would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS for the sake of being able to mod the game.

But dealing with a database is easy as modding.

Oh sure, if you know your way around sql.

The SQL is easy.

The setting up an interface between DF's lightly-packed/builtin database and your SQL commands is... *sounds of spattering brains and guts*

Oh, and whatever database software Toady hooked into it would have to be compatible on multiple OSes, or whoever does the Linux and Max Mac [wow, total typo] stuff would be driven berserk, and we all know how that ends.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 06, 2012, 05:50:03 pm

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 05:51:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2012, 05:50:03 pm

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

There no reason to think that underground tree will be different from surface trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 05:58:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 05:51:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2012, 05:50:03 pm

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

There no reason to think that underground tree will be different from surface trees.

But the underground is substantially both substantially smaller and more crowded by rocks. Plus the shape would be different due to, well, mushroomness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on October 06, 2012, 06:11:02 pm

Is it/will it be possible to mine under a tree without cutting through most of the roots, say, to create a little cave where the ground[above]/ceiling[below] appears to be held together by the tree roots (even though in actuality it stays simply because DF's cave-in physics for the ground itself currently don't kick in unless there is no physical connection)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 06, 2012, 06:13:03 pm

Will there be a (possibly welcome) dissonance between character reaction time and movement/other action cost? For instance, if I break into a full out sprint, I would say move two tiles instead of one in the same turnframe, thus, possibly overshooting a target I want to rush by while swinging at.
One good already existing example would be minecart riding, though, then we might have issues with players having to mash the movement key a bunch of times to move a single tile at slowest movement rate, though at least they won't be vulnerable to several attempts of attack by an enemy who's several tiles away just be pressing a movement key.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 06:17:31 pm

Quote from: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 05:58:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 05:51:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2012, 05:50:03 pm

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

There no reason to think that underground tree will be different from surface trees.

But the underground is substantially both substantially smaller and more crowded by rocks. Plus the shape would be different due to, well, mushroomness.

I dont see how that means that Underground trees (or shrooms) will act different from surface trees.

Less height means, they cant grow as high as some surface trees. More crowding means that there wont be as possibly thick forest underground. But neither of those require the tree framework to act differently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 06:19:02 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 06:17:31 pm

Quote from: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 05:58:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 05:51:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2012, 05:50:03 pm

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

There no reason to think that underground tree will be different from surface trees.

But the underground is substantially both substantially smaller and more crowded by rocks. Plus the shape would be different due to, well, mushroomness.

I dont see how that means that Underground trees (or shrooms) will act different from surface trees.

Less height means, they cant grow as high as some surface trees. More crowding means that there wont be as possibly thick forest underground. But neither of those require the tree framework to act differently.

Look, the problem is It can't grow in a branch by leaf manner, it has to grow consistently in the shape. Because of that, if it grows in a small spot it won't be able to grow large.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 06:20:58 pm

Yea. They'll grow differently, but how it grows is determine from the raws and the tree framework. The tree will still be govern by the same system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 06, 2012, 07:06:43 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

There would be no advantage to using a database given how raws are read in so infrequently. They are read when starting a new world, and when loading a game.

Also, this is a suggestion, and does not belong here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 07:14:32 pm

Quote from: King Mir on October 06, 2012, 07:06:43 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

There would be no advantage to using a database given how raws are read in so infrequently. They are read when starting a new world, and when loading a game.

Also, this is a suggestion, and does not belong here.

No it's not, it's a question. I questioned if he considered doing this, and if the .txts being converted to a database would improve performance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tsuchigumo550 on October 06, 2012, 07:32:28 pm

To quote:

He he he, "dwarves with *outdoor* *orchards*" is kind of a double-barreled fundamentally bizarre concept, so I'm not sure I'll be racing for that.  On the other hand, doing anything with underground vegetation along the same lines would pretty much let you do it above ground (if you are some kind of shaved-faced freak), so I wouldn't rule it out.  I doubt you'd ever compete in global trade with the people that live in forests under the sun and so on.

Does this hint at any future changes to food/drink quality such as wines gaining cost/demand over time or something along the lines of modding to include such complicated farmering and foodering?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on October 06, 2012, 08:13:00 pm

The problem I have with underground trees, is what would they feed on? There's no sunlight underground, so they would have to be different. I would assume that they are a lot more carnivorous, or maybe they can feed on magma/chemical heat/vapors. The ingame effect would be that they would only grow in certain places. Or do people mean mushrooms when they talk about underground trees?

I also think that some questions about tree growth could be cleared with a video showing a tree grow. Toady, could you create such a video showing tree growth. Alternatively, I would like to see someone make such a video after this release. Either way would be great.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 06, 2012, 08:15:02 pm

Underground trees generally speaking are just not plants that use the process of Photosynthesis or that find their own way to produce light (Photosynthetic cells or something like that... Glow in the dark).

An underground tree is like the Tower Cap which is a giant mushroom which is a fungus.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on October 06, 2012, 08:26:35 pm

Edity: I know the answer to all of them is yes (except the last one, personal enemies created by you through your actions I don't recall ever being addressed), but these are features I am really looking forward to. So I'm kind of disappointed in myself for asking them to get status of them being in the next release. I wasted toady's time with them! So I yellowed them out. Though I'd love to know the answer with "in the next release" tacked on.

Will you be able to "resume" world generation independant of player action for a set amount of years?

Are birth/marriages going in for players yet, or just NPCs?

If reproduction for players is allowed so, will it allow you to "resume" on your offspring for adventuring?


Urist Daggerdagger, third Generation Fluffy Wambler thrower! With her trusty baby-shield! Oops, she died.
*12 years of world generation later*
Dagger Uristdagger, Fourth Generation Fluffy Wambler thrower! Now to get revenge on that dreaded bandit! Oh darn. He died of old age. Hey, his kid lives! Generational war time...

And that asks...


Will you gain personal enemies that will hunt you to the ends of the earth for killing their parent years ago?

Hey, they already ask you to do it for them. It's only fair to extend the eye for the eye out.
"I'm Dingo the Mountain-Toy, you killed my Aunt, prepare to die!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 06, 2012, 08:30:47 pm

So in short underground trees are basically giant mushrooms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emerald Salamander on October 06, 2012, 08:32:20 pm

Hi
Toady probably already answered this some-where but I couldn't find it. I was wondering when in fortress mode you'll be able to actually send out troops and armies to attack different citys and other things? When would you also be able to switch screens to see your army fighting other armies if their away from your fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hiho216 on October 06, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

I know that this project is your baby, but would you consider taking volunteers for stuff unrelated to making the game?  Maybe a team to help you sift through the FOTF questions, perhaps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on October 06, 2012, 08:42:03 pm

*this double post menaces with spikes of time delay.*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 08:56:24 pm

Quote from: Tsuchigumo550 on October 06, 2012, 07:32:28 pm

Does this hint at any future changes to food/drink quality such as wines gaining cost/demand over time or something along the lines of modding to include such complicated farmering and foodering?

Drinks are gonna eventually get quality modifers. And everything the fort can make is suppose to be subjected to supply and demand, eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 06, 2012, 09:15:16 pm

Quote from: Objective on October 06, 2012, 08:30:47 pm

So in short underground trees are basically giant mushrooms.

Most of them are. Spore trees and blood thorn might be a little different. Also, fungiwood has a grain, and tunnel tubes have curving trunks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 5candles on October 06, 2012, 09:27:16 pm

When one does see more extensive undergrowth in the dwarfiverse, Will the Dwarfs and other races have bush-clearing abilities, asides from harvesting and trampling, e.g a machete, i.e hacking the vegetative things hindering their progress into little bits?

It'd be quite nice. Assuming of course that the vegetative explosion sure to ensue in the future does indeed hamper the movement speeds of affected entities?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 10:14:31 pm

Quote from: Emerald Salamander on October 06, 2012, 08:32:20 pm

Hi
Toady probably already answered this some-where but I couldn't find it. I was wondering when in fortress mode you'll be able to actually send out troops and armies to attack different citys and other things? When would you also be able to switch screens to see your army fighting other armies if their away from your fortress?

Eventually, yes you will, not exactly sure how it will function, though, we will only know the details when Toady works on it. And it will not be available in this release, only in the army arc/caravan arc.

Quote from: hiho216 on October 06, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

I know that this project is your baby, but would you consider taking volunteers for stuff unrelated to making the game?  Maybe a team to help you sift through the FOTF questions, perhaps?

You need to put your question in green or lime green for him to read. It helps when answering. It would be cool if we could help him, but Toady prefers to work alone, I think. Sometimes some mods corrections make it to the raws, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 06, 2012, 10:15:09 pm

Quote from: hiho216 on October 06, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

I know that this project is your baby, but would you consider taking volunteers for stuff unrelated to making the game?  Maybe a team to help you sift through the FOTF questions, perhaps?

He has mods for the mantis bugtracker. For FotF, the current system of vigilante question-answering seems to work fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on October 06, 2012, 10:29:24 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on October 06, 2012, 10:15:09 pm

Quote from: hiho216 on October 06, 2012, 08:34:41 pm

I know that this project is your baby, but would you consider taking volunteers for stuff unrelated to making the game?  Maybe a team to help you sift through the FOTF questions, perhaps?

He has mods for the mantis bugtracker. For FotF, the current system of vigilante question-answering seems to work fine.

That, and Baughn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

I like answering questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 11:09:59 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

I like answering questions.

I like getting credit for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 07, 2012, 12:41:49 am

Quote from: misko27 on October 06, 2012, 11:09:59 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

I like answering questions.

I like getting credit for it.

My motivation for answering questions. (http://xkcd.com/386/)  Also, Hurray for answered questions.  Next version I will be even more able to take down hoards of enemies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on October 07, 2012, 06:33:31 am

Quote from: Objective on October 06, 2012, 08:30:47 pm

So in short underground trees are basically giant mushrooms.

Most of them are, but I don't think they have to be, even given a normal metabolism.

Photosynthesis, after all, is a plant's way of eating. However, it can be replaced with other mechanisms (the way mushrooms and animals eat organic matter, for example). And remember that in DF the surface is very close to magma, compared to the real world. Thus, there's no reason that some of the plants (particularly in cavern level 3) couldn't get their energy from the magma sea (either via root to the sea, or ambient absorption). Then the giant mushrooms could feed off of the decaying dead magma-trees.

Of course, given the proximity of hell, as well, it's possible that certain plants have managed to convert ambient magic to energy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 07, 2012, 08:45:35 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

I like answering questions.

You are helpful, but sometimes you guess a lot while trying to answer questions. Compare with Footkerchief, that answered using Toady's quotes from ages past.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 07, 2012, 10:08:55 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 06, 2012, 08:26:35 pm

Will you be able to "resume" world generation independant of player action for a set amount of years?

I dont quite get what you're asking. But ToadyOne has spoken about being able to time skip during Adventure Mode, for months or possibly years at a time.

Quote

If reproduction for players is allowed so, will it allow you to "resume" on your offspring for adventuring?

Yep. Thats planned.

Quote

Will you gain personal enemies that will hunt you to the ends of the earth for killing their parent years ago?

There nothing in the Dev Goals or Dev Logs to suggest this in particular is planned. But there are stuff in the works that may let this happen on its own. Such as the Site and Entity reputations, being a criminal adventurer role and being tracked down.

Quote from: thvaz on October 07, 2012, 08:45:35 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

I like answering questions.

You are helpful, but sometimes you guess a lot while trying to answer questions. Compare with Footkerchief, that answered using Toady's quotes from ages past.

I dont know how Footkerchief can mine the forum search function like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on October 07, 2012, 01:14:02 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 07, 2012, 10:08:55 am

Quote

Will you gain personal enemies that will hunt you to the ends of the earth for killing their parent years ago?

There nothing in the Dev Goals or Dev Logs to suggest this in particular is planned. But there are stuff in the works that may let this happen on its own. Such as the Site and Entity reputations, being a criminal adventurer role and being tracked down.

If I understand what's being done with parties hunting down adventurers correctly then that kind of feature is all but guaranteed. It seems like it would simply be a one-man posse, a variation of a feature that is already planned for the next round of releases. I doubt it will actually make it in to this release due rivalries and vengeance needing to be programmed in for full sentience for interactions on that level.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 07, 2012, 01:52:48 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on October 06, 2012, 06:13:03 pm

Will there be a (possibly welcome) dissonance between character reaction time and movement/other action cost? For instance, if I break into a full out sprint, I would say move two tiles instead of one in the same turnframe, thus, possibly overshooting a target I want to rush by while swinging at.
One good already existing example would be minecart riding, though, then we might have issues with players having to mash the movement key a bunch of times to move a single tile at slowest movement rate, though at least they won't be vulnerable to several attempts of attack by an enemy who's several tiles away just be pressing a movement key.

Even when you're at the maximum speed possible in-game as of now, you'll still have control over every movement. Sprinting will probably just increase your movement speed, which to the player means that everyone else will appear slower as opposed to the player seeming to move faster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on October 07, 2012, 05:10:10 pm

Will there be a special place in future Dwarven culture/society for the original 7 Dwarves? I have noticed some players put great value on their original 7, and become emotionally attached to them. Will the AI dwarves also revere them in some way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 07, 2012, 05:23:13 pm

Will single tile trees still be possible?
Some plants may be suitable to be treated as impassible single tiles, as trees are now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on October 07, 2012, 06:52:28 pm

Had to edit my question due to embarassment, but for the dingo mountain-toy thing, what I meant was like gaining a personal peasant child enemy who gains a goal to become the best swordsman in the world with the sole goal of finding you and killing you.

It was implied because of the pop culture reference, it should have been stated clearly.

Action: You kill a NPC elf
Reaction 1: Low skilled NPC elf child of the elf you killed spends years gaining skill
Reaction 2: Now High Skilled elf once a child NPC starts looking for you.
Reaction 3: You fight an epic battle to the death with the victim of your careless actions.

An eye for an ear!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 07, 2012, 07:37:32 pm

It would certainly be realistic... But given that a single adventurer might kill dozens of innocent bystanders, would the game really be playable with hundreds of people out to get you? Eventually, you'd just have to go into hiding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 07, 2012, 08:47:13 pm

Will we get other things growing in the trees like lichen? Trees act as a habitat for all sorts of other animals (like elves of course).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on October 07, 2012, 09:19:36 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 07, 2012, 07:37:32 pm

It would certainly be realistic... But given that a single adventurer might kill dozens of innocent bystanders, would the game really be playable with hundreds of people out to get you? Eventually, you'd just have to go into hiding.

I think that sounds awesome.

How many innocent bystanders do you really kill, anyway? That would encourage you to think more about your actions. Either don't kill innocent bystanders or ... make sure you're thorough enough to kill all of them!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on October 07, 2012, 09:21:53 pm

Do you have any plans at the moment to expand on Legend Mode's XML export feature, or Legend Mode in general?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 07, 2012, 09:48:37 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on October 07, 2012, 09:21:53 pm

Do you have any plans at the moment to expand on Legend Mode's XML export feature?

Legend Mode XML export feature, is labeled as a WIP. So, presumably, yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 07, 2012, 09:50:21 pm

I've honestly forgetten. This is the same update with all the stealth, less than lethal combat, and combat mind systems being put in place as well, yeah?
Going back to the combat mind portion of this update, will we have civilian dwarves in fortresses occasionally not only fighting back, but making sure an enemy is sufficiently incapacitated if they can, out of retaliatory anger?
Will dwarves always have the heart, militia or not, to finish off an unconscious/sufficiently helpless/fleeing enemy after getting the upper hand in what has developed into the 'lethal combat' range?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 07, 2012, 10:09:11 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 07, 2012, 07:37:32 pm

It would certainly be realistic... But given that a single adventurer might kill dozens of innocent bystanders, would the game really be playable with hundreds of people out to get you? Eventually, you'd just have to go into hiding.

That's realistic. If you kill bandits instead you can have the power of the law at your disposal when they try to get you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 07, 2012, 10:09:53 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on October 07, 2012, 09:50:21 pm

I've honestly forgetten. This is the same update with all the stealth, less than lethal combat, and combat mind systems being put in place as well, yeah?
Going back to the combat mind portion of this update, will we have civilian dwarves in fortresses occasionally not only fighting back, but making sure an enemy is sufficiently incapacitated if they can, out of retaliatory anger?

A change to Fort Mode Dorf AI would probably be mention in the Dev Log, and when the combat changes were made, the Dev Log only spoke about Adventure Mode Critter Brain AI changes.

The overarching personality changes are suppose to include Fort Mode Dorfs reacting different to critters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 07, 2012, 10:44:44 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 07, 2012, 07:37:32 pm

It would certainly be realistic... But given that a single adventurer might kill dozens of innocent bystanders, would the game really be playable with hundreds of people out to get you? Eventually, you'd just have to go into hiding.

Admittedly, that would be kind of awesome. Hide out on the other side of the world, swim to a deserted island, all that jazz. Or get a few allies, convince them through friendship and relationship simulation that you might be worth defending, and then perhaps take on those threats head on, and perhaps more quietly too?
The directions we could go with this could be really diverse once it gets fleshed out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 10:52:50 pm

If a tree grows into a new tile in such a way as a trunk would move over a creature, what would happen? In real life, if some object is left in a tree, the bark will eventually envelop it and trap it, but will creatures get a chance to move out of the way so they won't be "encased in maple tree?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 07, 2012, 10:59:35 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 10:52:50 pm

If a tree grows into a new tile in such a way as a trunk would move over a creature, what would happen? In real life, if some object is left in a tree, the bark will eventually envelop it and trap it, but will creatures get a chance to move out of the way so they won't be "encased in maple tree?"

I'm not sure if that would even make sense so I'm assuming the creature would be moved as though the tree had actually grown overtime.
that is, unless dwarves are really stupid enough to stand still while a tree literally grows around them now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 11:01:19 pm

Quote from: bombzero on October 07, 2012, 10:59:35 pm

I'm not sure if that would even make sense so I'm assuming the creature would be moved as though the tree had actually grown overtime.
that is, unless dwarves are really stupid enough to stand still while a tree literally grows around them now.

They've stood still for dumber things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 07, 2012, 11:40:42 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 11:01:19 pm

Quote from: bombzero on October 07, 2012, 10:59:35 pm

I'm not sure if that would even make sense so I'm assuming the creature would be moved as though the tree had actually grown overtime.
that is, unless dwarves are really stupid enough to stand still while a tree literally grows around them now.

They've stood still for dumber things.

This is.... true.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

That sounds like an elfy thing to do, become one with a tree.

As for the hordes of vengeful decendants, I don't think every single one would do it, but enough that if you were the 'megabeast' of the elf empire "The Flowery Fronds of Mists", then elvish heroes would arise to slay you. Most forum-goers here don't really realize where they properly fit in the story of this game. Burning elf villages to the ground, ethnic clensing, one memoriable act that was even worse... Yea, your the villians guys. Sorry.

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on October 08, 2012, 12:29:01 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

That sounds like an elfy thing to do, become one with a tree.

As for the hordes of vengeful decendants, I don't think every single one would do it, but enough that if you were the 'megabeast' of the elf empire "The Flowery Fronds of Mists", then elvish heroes would arise to slay you. Most forum-goers here don't really realize where they properly fit in the story of this game. Burning elf villages to the ground, ethnic clensing, one memoriable act that was even worse... Yea, your the villians guys. Sorry.

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

New bug:
Adventurers are eventually overwhelmed by the descendants of those they killed, the descendants of those descendants, and their descendants as well, in an exponentially growing human horde of vengeance seekers.

The only solution is the mass murder of babies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 08, 2012, 12:35:21 am

You know, I had remarked earlier that in the early version the revenge system would probably end up in clan feud, but then again stuffs like that actually happened in RL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 08, 2012, 01:36:50 am

Toady, seeing as magma is very popular, are you planning, at some point, to do an overhaul of the "volcanic" biome (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Bromo/Bromo2011_1958.JPG)? Adding eruptions (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/JAP09_0795.jpg), smoke (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Soufriere%20Hills/MS10_0717.jpg), more volcano shaped volcanoes (http://photovolcanica.com/Pictures_V2/v2_hp18.jpg), surroundings surrounded by ash, basalt, no trees or wildlife and sulphuric rain sometimes, and frozen/dead lava lakes/volcanoes? Also, did you considered adding other varations like lava  (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Erta%20Ale/Eth2002.1.48.jpg)lakes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_lake) and geysers? Also, promising, my last question: do you plan to add other Tin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tin_minerals) ores, seeing as it is used to glaze and bronze but it's fairly rare?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 08, 2012, 02:35:44 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

Sympathy and mercy don't sound like the sort of things that Toady would add.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 08, 2012, 03:58:43 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 08, 2012, 02:35:44 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

Sympathy and mercy don't sound like the sort of things that Toady would add.

I still think that should affect all things except dwarves and goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 08, 2012, 05:15:12 am

Quote from: arkhometha on October 08, 2012, 01:36:50 am

Toady, seeing as magma is very popular, are you planning, at some point, to do an overhaul of the "volcanic" biome (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Bromo/Bromo2011_1958.JPG)? Adding eruptions (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Sakurajima/JAP09_0795.jpg), smoke (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Soufriere%20Hills/MS10_0717.jpg), more volcano shaped volcanoes (http://photovolcanica.com/Pictures_V2/v2_hp18.jpg), surroundings surrounded by ash, basalt, no trees or wildlife and sulphuric rain sometimes, and frozen/dead lava lakes/volcanoes? Also, did you considered adding other varations like lava  (http://photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Erta%20Ale/Eth2002.1.48.jpg)lakes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_lake) and geysers? Also, promising, my last question: do you plan to add other Tin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tin_minerals) ores, seeing as it is used to glaze and bronze but it's fairly rare?

I do remember Toady saying that he wanted to make volcanco embarks more dangerous by adding things likes quakes and eruptions so there would be a downside to the easy surface magma. The comment I recall was a long time before the magma sea, though.

Title: A bit on the rivers and lakes.
Post by: Varyag1 on October 08, 2012, 05:50:46 am

A bit on the rivers and lakes.
1. I would like to know whether the river flow from the caves and vice versa?
2. Will the river, narrow, then expand?
3. And also wanted to know whether the rivers and lakes have a different depth (not just one tile)?
4. Winter will have the opportunity to break through the crust of ice river that would reach the water?

Thank you!

Title: Re: A bit on the rivers and lakes.
Post by: MrWiggles on October 08, 2012, 06:06:28 am

Quote from: Varyag1 on October 08, 2012, 05:50:46 am

A bit on the rivers and lakes.
1. I would like to know whether the river flow from the caves and vice versa?
2. Will the river, narrow, then expand?
3. And also wanted to know whether the rivers and lakes have a different depth (not just one tile)?
4. Winter will have the opportunity to break through the crust of ice river that would reach the water?

Thank you!

If these questions are meant for ToadyOne, then in the future you'll want to use (color=limegreen) (/color)  to highlight them for ToadyOne. Though replace the () with []

1. Yep. Rivers flow from and to caves.
2. River width are pretty well aligned with how they behave in real life.
3. They do.

4. I'm pretty sure if the Biome Temp range for the Season say that the Water Freezes then all of the Water Freeze unless its in-door water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on October 08, 2012, 07:06:17 am

My hilarious bug prediction: embarking in a forest and having your fortress crumble in the autumn when every dwarf gets their head caved in by a falling acorn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on October 08, 2012, 07:52:57 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on October 08, 2012, 07:06:17 am

My hilarious bug prediction: embarking in a forest and having your fortress crumble in the autumn when every dwarf gets their head caved in by a falling acorn.

Maybe acorns SHOULD be able to at least bruise them. I know my head things that's realistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on October 08, 2012, 08:05:51 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 08, 2012, 02:35:44 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

Sympathy and mercy don't sound like the sort of things that Toady would add.

Really?
Wouldn't there be a more epic story than having climbed up from adventurer to bandit leader, killing everything that stands in your way, only to be stopped short by a passing army, with one soldier deciding to have mercy on you. Now, you're all alone again, in the wilderness that has been razed by war, and if you return where you came from, you will be waited on by people wanting vengeance for your cruel deeds.
How will you survive?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on October 08, 2012, 08:07:12 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on October 08, 2012, 07:06:17 am

My hilarious bug prediction: embarking in a forest and having your fortress crumble in the autumn when every dwarf gets their head caved in by a falling acorn.

. . . leading to ironic new methods of execution for our pointy-eared treehugging friends.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on October 08, 2012, 08:56:15 am

Quote from: Objective on October 08, 2012, 03:58:43 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 08, 2012, 02:35:44 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 08, 2012, 12:24:56 am

Did Toady ever mention about people being not willing to slaughter incapacitated foes? I recall running from battle and not escalating conflict, but nothing about sympathy or mercy, or squemishness.

Sympathy and mercy don't sound like the sort of things that Toady would add.

I still think that should affect all things except dwarves and goblins.

Just because the playerbase has people in it who are truly merciless and terrible does not mean that Dwarves themselves are planned to be merciless and terrible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 10:09:11 am

i like mercy..... and clean water......... IDEA!

Will there be a way to use salt in food, and if so, will there be a way to process saltwater into salt and/or water?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 08, 2012, 12:11:25 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 10:09:11 am

i like mercy..... and clean water......... IDEA!

Will there be a way to use salt in food, and if so, will there be a way to process saltwater into salt and/or water?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773

Quote from: Toady One link=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773

Yeah, salt's in, and I want to do things with it, but I really need to resist until the next version is up.  Same goes for the alunite, all kinds of things to do with alum.  We'll also use the saltpeter...  as a fertilizer of course.  No mixing with sulfur and charcoal!  Sulfur is currently called brimstone.  You can change that in the raws if you want.  You won't be able to use pitchblende (uraninite) to make yellow cake either, although you should be able to color glass with it later.  I also added a few arsenic sulfides, he he he (guess I could have done the oxide, but the sulfides are more colorful).  Also added cinnabar, which can give a vermilion dye and mercury, though those products aren't in either.

I'm actually not decided on gunpowder, but I'm not in a rush.  It certainly shouldn't be allowed to ruin the setting.

Yes, there are plans to salt use, but I imagine it will be mines of salt instead of using saltwater.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 08, 2012, 12:13:22 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 08, 2012, 12:11:25 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 10:09:11 am

i like mercy..... and clean water......... IDEA!

Will there be a way to use salt in food, and if so, will there be a way to process saltwater into salt and/or water?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773

Quote from: Toady One link=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg26773#msg26773

Yeah, salt's in, and I want to do things with it, but I really need to resist until the next version is up.  Same goes for the alunite, all kinds of things to do with alum.  We'll also use the saltpeter...  as a fertilizer of course.  No mixing with sulfur and charcoal!  Sulfur is currently called brimstone.  You can change that in the raws if you want.  You won't be able to use pitchblende (uraninite) to make yellow cake either, although you should be able to color glass with it later.  I also added a few arsenic sulfides, he he he (guess I could have done the oxide, but the sulfides are more colorful).  Also added cinnabar, which can give a vermilion dye and mercury, though those products aren't in either.

I'm actually not decided on gunpowder, but I'm not in a rush.  It certainly shouldn't be allowed to ruin the setting.

Yes, there are plans to salt use, but I imagine it will be mines of salt instead of using saltwater.

Yes, then we can finally force our migrants to toil in the salt mines.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 01:49:23 pm

but.. but... desalination and distilled water!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 08, 2012, 03:33:02 pm

That makes me think, if salt water is spread over an area and then is given time to evaporare, would salt boulders be left behind?
hmm..
When salt is implemented, will evaporation of salt water leave salt behind as a by-product?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 08, 2012, 04:36:14 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 08, 2012, 03:33:02 pm

That makes me think, if salt water is spread over an area and then is given time to evaporare, would salt boulders be left behind?
hmm..
]When salt is implemented, will evaporation of salt water leave salt behind as a by-product?

Hmm, well the amount of salt it would leave behind would be rather minimal, and on top of that it would be rather dirty.

but given a particularly large quantity of saltwater and a fine mesh to run it through you would eventually end up with enough filthy salt to last you.... I don't know, bout an in game week or so?
(basically it's not terribly practical)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 08, 2012, 04:42:23 pm

Quote from: bombzero on October 08, 2012, 04:36:14 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 08, 2012, 03:33:02 pm

That makes me think, if salt water is spread over an area and then is given time to evaporare, would salt boulders be left behind?
hmm..
]When salt is implemented, will evaporation of salt water leave salt behind as a by-product?

Hmm, well the amount of salt it would leave behind would be rather minimal, and on top of that it would be rather dirty.

but given a particularly large quantity of saltwater and a fine mesh to run it through you would eventually end up with enough filthy salt to last you.... I don't know, bout an in game week or so?
(basically it's not terribly practical)

I agree with you about the filthy. People just don't realise "salt" is a generic term for aqueus materials, i.e. dissolved stuff. But I have to disagree regarding efficiency. Nothing to stop players from making a massive salt farm. Besides, a in-game week is terribly short.

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 01:49:23 pm

but.. but... desalination and distilled water!

BUT NOTHING. I DEMAND SALTMINES.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 08, 2012, 04:52:14 pm

Quote from: misko27 on October 08, 2012, 04:42:23 pm

a in-game week is terribly short.

Kind of what I was getting at, the usable amount of "sea salt" per gallon of seawater is miniscule, so it would take a massive amount of water to produce a few DF units of salt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 08, 2012, 04:58:29 pm

Quote from: bombzero on October 08, 2012, 04:52:14 pm

Quote from: misko27 on October 08, 2012, 04:42:23 pm

a in-game week is terribly short.

Kind of what I was getting at, the usable amount of "sea salt" per gallon of seawater is miniscule, so it would take a massive amount of water to produce a few DF units of salt.

Thus, we could have superlicious megaprojects to do this? Seems fitting enough, a gigantic reservoir thingy where water is set to evaporate en masse, since dwarven enginners don't have much to do once they got their lava defense and everything else set up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 08, 2012, 04:59:51 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: tahujdt

Will elves again send their emmissaries to request logging limits?

As far as I know, that's just a garden variety bug.  I'm not sure when it'll be fixed, or if I'll just wait for general diplomacy improvements.

Toady, Quietust's findings in this report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3295) suggest that it's a simple raws issue.

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 10:52:50 pm

If a tree grows into a new tile in such a way as a trunk would move over a creature, what would happen? In real life, if some object is left in a tree, the bark will eventually envelop it and trap it, but will creatures get a chance to move out of the way so they won't be "encased in maple tree?"

This was just answered:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

What happens if a tree is going to grow outwards or upwards, but something is in the way, be it a building or construction or creature?

The way it is set up now, trees will just go around.  I haven't done anything with slow pushing/deforming or anything like that -- we don't have fine gradations to work with.

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 07:14:32 pm

Quote from: King Mir on October 06, 2012, 07:06:43 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 06, 2012, 01:46:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady and everybody.
Okay, this probably have been asked before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here it goes:
Does having raws in text files impact performance, and putting them in a database like SQL would improve performance? If yes, have you considered doing this?

There would be no advantage to using a database given how raws are read in so infrequently. They are read when starting a new world, and when loading a game.

Also, this is a suggestion, and does not belong here.

No it's not, it's a question. I questioned if he considered doing this, and if the .txts being converted to a database would improve performance.

No, it wouldn't improve performance in any meaningful way.  See Amdahl's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law) -- to optimize a program, you have to target the sections that have the largest impact on run time.  If you're under the impression that the raws are read from disk every time the game checks some creature properties or whatever, that's not how it works.  The raws get imported into permanent memory objects, which is the same thing that'd happen if they were imported from a database instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 07:20:14 pm

if getting salt form seawater is useless, then why did capecod do it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: merreton on October 08, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

Not sure if this has been asked yet;
Will you be able to use plants and things to create poisons to put onto weapons.
That is, will at some point there be the possibility to make weapons cause poison and other affliction damage over time.
Which also has implications of more alchemy things like anitdotes to poisons and such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 08, 2012, 08:52:33 pm

tobad the cant be gunpowder...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 08, 2012, 09:17:50 pm

Quote from: merreton on October 08, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

Not sure if this has been asked yet;
Will you be able to use plants and things to create poisons to put onto weapons.
That is, will at some point there be the possibility to make weapons cause poison and other affliction damage over time.
Which also has implications of more alchemy things like anitdotes to poisons and such.

Yes, coating weapons with poisons/liquids and alchemy is planned.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928#msg1578928

Quote from: Toady One link=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928#msg1578928

On the other hand, writing from the perspective that every command the player gives will be credited to fortress position holders, if an appropriate official were to order that a liquid, with usage hints/whatever in the raws, will now be used for something entirely outside those bounds (like coating a weapon with syrup), that action might be anything from brilliant to quirky to wasteful to tyrannical to suicidal, depending on the situation.  The dwarves aren't currently capable of judging their officials and it's a very difficult problem most of the time.  If a randomly-generated creature has a weakness to syrup, maybe coating the weapons with syrup is simply a practical strategy, and in that case syrup wouldn't have the "weapon coating" usage hint in the raws.  That coating action is entirely up to player ingenuity, much like ordering the creation of a complicated machine, and it's a reasonable thing to allow.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928#msg1578928

Quote from: Toady One link=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928#msg1578928

At the extreme end of the potion/material discussion, out beyond what maybe anybody was asking for, I'm absolutely against having to master some sort of scripting language just to get dwarves to poison their weapons.  At the same time, it'll be difficult to get dwarves to use certain exotic syndrome-causing materials in a reasonable way that satisfies a player, especially one using potion mods.  Maybe it'll end up being usage hints in the raws and classifications in-play for use in the military etc. with some sensible defaults.  Ideally they'd be able to handle it like food, water and alcohol (to the extent those aren't broken), and perhaps those would be brought into the same system.  For more exotic actions and random weirdness, maybe there are cases in the mods where you'd really want to write some kind of script down, especially for a non-dwarven mod race that does something or other, but that level of support is pretty hard to prioritize when I don't really need or want it for dwarves.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21498.msg419302#msg419302

Quote from: Toady One link=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21498.msg419302#msg419302

Quote from: Warlord255
This warrants a question. How will poisons/weapon coatings operate in dwarf mode?

I'm not going to allow that until the ethical framework and repercussions are in place.  Dwarves with poison weapons seem strange to me, so I'd like to do that stuff first before I worry about the interface, jobs and storage.  That is, you'd be allowed to make that decision, but it would cause quite a fuss in general.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 09, 2012, 03:24:24 am

Late reply but salt farming via saltwater evaporation WORKS.
There is a reason why farmers in my country still do so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 09, 2012, 03:50:35 am

Quote from: merreton on October 08, 2012, 07:24:47 pm

Not sure if this has been asked yet;
Will you be able to use plants and things to create poisons to put onto weapons.
That is, will at some point there be the possibility to make weapons cause poison and other affliction damage over time.
Which also has implications of more alchemy things like anitdotes to poisons and such.

If Toady does end up making fruit/leaves fall as some sort of contaminant layer like he mentions, it should be a simple enough process to put a bin-less weapon stockpile under your modded poison tree in time for the fall harvestening. Not an ideal scenario, but far easier than current workarounds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 09, 2012, 11:06:38 am

Oddly enough the worthwhile poisons arn't even the ones that do physical damage to your attackers.

The ones you want to have either instantly cause a lot of pain, thus weakening their attacks, or that paralyze them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 09, 2012, 01:29:14 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 08, 2012, 04:59:51 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 07, 2012, 10:52:50 pm

If a tree grows into a new tile in such a way as a trunk would move over a creature, what would happen? In real life, if some object is left in a tree, the bark will eventually envelop it and trap it, but will creatures get a chance to move out of the way so they won't be "encased in maple tree?"

This was just answered:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

What happens if a tree is going to grow outwards or upwards, but something is in the way, be it a building or construction or creature?

The way it is set up now, trees will just go around.  I haven't done anything with slow pushing/deforming or anything like that -- we don't have fine gradations to work with.

I thought I'd specified this for just buildings and constructions, but it looks like I also included creatures in there. This means we can use pastures to modify the growth patterns of trees, right? For example, we could pasture certain creatures and make the trees grow around them to create a wall or something? Nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 09, 2012, 01:49:08 pm

Might be hard to create a pasture in the sky. You could create a platform, but the tree might just as well avoid overgrowing that because it's there, without the animal.

However if an unlucky bird happened to perch on a tree precisely when it was growing, it might find itself surrounded by a few more branches. It would take a special kind of bad luck on the bird's part to actually become trapped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 09, 2012, 02:21:56 pm

Quote from: King Mir on October 09, 2012, 01:49:08 pm

Might be hard to create a pasture in the sky. You could create a platform, but the tree might just as well avoid overgrowing that because it's there, without the animal.

However if an unlucky bird happened to perch on a tree precisely when it was growing, it might find itself surrounded by a few more branches. It would take a special kind of bad luck on the bird's part to actually become trapped.

Birds dont actually move through tiles. They act pretty much like regular vermin, and sorta teleport places. The main difference is that we get to see it teleport.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 09, 2012, 02:22:31 pm

Special kind of bad luck, yes, but it will happen.  Then you'll chop a tree to get chustnut logs and find partail Kea skeleton inside.  Bonus!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 09, 2012, 02:31:48 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on October 09, 2012, 11:06:38 am

Oddly enough the worthwhile poisons arn't even the ones that do physical damage to your attackers.

The ones you want to have either instantly cause a lot of pain, thus weakening their attacks, or that paralyze them.

Of course, rotting which can be considered physical damage could be an effective tool as well, last time I checked, while a thoughroughly rot person can be walking around, they tend to quite randomly drop dead when you hit them with something. And in cheaper lieu, we could make something like smoke bombs that release nauseating and winding toxins. That'll do some heavy penalties for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on October 09, 2012, 03:18:57 pm

With the change in climbing pathing, will we see improvement in the pathing of flying/swimming creatures?

I hope that a side effect of this is that modded races will move like one would want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Berserkr on October 09, 2012, 06:30:44 pm

I was wondering if any of you know anything further on the topic of non lethal fighting in adventure mode where you can punch a person in the head and not ram your masculine dwarf arm through them? Also about the concept of tieing up people in adventure mode. I read something on this topic a bit back but im not sure if it will be in the new update or in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 09, 2012, 06:50:28 pm

Quote from: Berserkr on October 09, 2012, 06:30:44 pm

I was wondering if any of you know anything further on the topic of non lethal fighting in adventure mode where you can punch a person in the head and not ram your masculine dwarf arm through them? Also about the concept of tieing up people in adventure mode. I read something on this topic a bit back but im not sure if it will be in the new update or in the future.

In the current, at least for the non-lethal stuff. Other stuff MAY be going in as part of that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: stolide on October 09, 2012, 09:14:41 pm

Will acorns become oak trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 09, 2012, 09:22:25 pm

With the new trees going in, and elves being considerered,
When creatures are capable of throwing items and weapons, will we ever see the elves using wasp/hornet's nests as throwable weapons?
I think that would be a VERY good way to administer some poisons to your dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 09, 2012, 10:36:25 pm

Quote from: Toady One, the Great

We have falling leaves again, you can see them fall in little downward moving flows and land on the ground. This involves "item clouds" and "item spatter", which should continue to come up in various places over time. You can pick flowers and leaves and there are falling fruits and nuts. It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled. All of the fallen material can be picked up. You can also pick fruit directly from trees if they are hanging low enough (you'll be able to climb before long). I think we've got enough vegetation information to start in on elf sites themselves now.

All hail the Toad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 09, 2012, 10:47:59 pm

No hailing Toady until there are Chestnuts roasting on an open fire!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 09, 2012, 10:55:33 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on October 09, 2012, 10:47:59 pm

No hailing Toady until there are Chestnuts roasting on an open fire!

How about tossing Chestnuts at elves? Thats my christmas dream right there. Hell, now he HAS to have this up by the 25th of december.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 10, 2012, 12:01:20 am

Is there anything useful we can do with dead leaves? They probably don't burn hot enough to be used as a fuel, but maybe fertilizer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 10, 2012, 01:04:26 am

On itemclouds: Is it possible to use that type as material breath? I would like to see shrapnel-"clouds" from say a giant porcupine instead of a single spine. 

For breakable items it couldalso make sense. Glass and ceramics breaking into shard-clouds for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Techhead on October 10, 2012, 01:26:46 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 10, 2012, 12:01:20 am

Is there anything useful we can do with dead leaves? They probably don't burn hot enough to be used as a fuel, but maybe fertilizer?

I can tell you from personal experience that the only practical use in burning leaves is to dispose of them. They burn quick and bright, but thrown up embers in large amounts and don't produce much heat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 10, 2012, 01:41:01 am

Quote

It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled.

Are you planning to do that? I can't tell if this is just a joke or if it's also suggesting that the adventure mode campfires might see more use.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 10, 2012, 03:25:15 am

Cue all kinds of adventure mode cartoons, fortress stories, etc, featuring mass murder by apples.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 10, 2012, 04:13:38 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 10, 2012, 01:41:01 am

Quote

It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled.

Are you planning to do that? I can't tell if this is just a joke or if it's also suggesting that the adventure mode campfires might see more use.

Considering this is the guy who decided to describe liver as 'chopped' rather than the standard 'prepared', I don't think that 'just a joke' is enough for it NOT to be in the game =D  In all seriousness though, adv mode cooking is probably in the works with all the other adv mode things. Should be as simple (or as difficult) as making adv mode reactions require a heat source.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 10, 2012, 08:08:46 am

Quote from: smirk on October 10, 2012, 04:13:38 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 10, 2012, 01:41:01 am

Quote

It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled.

Are you planning to do that? I can't tell if this is just a joke or if it's also suggesting that the adventure mode campfires might see more use.

Considering this is the guy who decided to describe liver as 'chopped' rather than the standard 'prepared', I don't think that 'just a joke' is enough for it NOT to be in the game =D  In all seriousness though, adv mode cooking is probably in the works with all the other adv mode things. Should be as simple (or as difficult) as making adv mode reactions require a heat source.

He'll implement it. One line of code will conflict with another line of code in a completely different file. You are now standing on a field of ducks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on October 10, 2012, 09:28:05 am

How long does leaf-clutter last on the ground?  I'm a little OCD about fortress cleanliness and contaminants (the cleaning bug drives me crazy right now)--will dwarves get rakes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sidhien on October 10, 2012, 09:39:42 am

Quote

It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled.

ROASTING MUST BE ADDED

When, not if, this is added will we be able to roast nuts in fortress mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 10, 2012, 09:48:56 am

Quote from: Chthonic on October 10, 2012, 09:28:05 am

[...]I'm a little OCD about fortress cleanliness and contaminants (the cleaning bug drives me crazy right now)--will dwarves get rakes?

I really doubt that. It doesn't fit the time period, and considering how contaminants work right now, you wouldn't be able to clear a tile - just like trying to remove snow.

Will we be able to use rotting leaves as a fertilizer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on October 10, 2012, 10:50:36 am

Quote from: Sidhien on October 10, 2012, 09:39:42 am

ROASTING MUST BE ADDED

For a moment I thought that Toady meant some other roasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roasting_(metallurgy) uff what a relieve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 10, 2012, 10:58:44 am

Will we also be able to pick fruit in Dwarf Fortress mode too, as well as adventure mode?

This is just brilliant. I'm looking forward to seeing the new elf sites!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Weirdsound on October 10, 2012, 11:25:29 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 10, 2012, 10:58:44 am

Will we also be able to pick fruit in Dwarf Fortress mode too, as well as adventure mode?

This is just brilliant. I'm looking forward to seeing the new elf sites!

If so how much fruit will there be? Will there be enough to have a major impact on how we play the food supply game?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzlyAdamz on October 10, 2012, 01:07:32 pm

Can you be killed by a falling coconut?
or is it handled by the contaminant spray mechanic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 10, 2012, 01:11:51 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 10, 2012, 10:58:44 am

Will we also be able to pick fruit in Dwarf Fortress mode too, as well as adventure mode?

Yes. He's even stated how we're likely to go about gathering it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 10, 2012, 03:27:14 pm

As well as hinting at new Booze types.

And nothing gets us more excited than new Booze!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 10, 2012, 04:53:39 pm

will leaves have any use? such as animal fodder or for turning into ash or fertaliser?

please keep in mind that sometimes i cant spell so much that spellcheckers die...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 10, 2012, 05:05:30 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 10, 2012, 04:53:39 pm

will leaves have any use? such as animal fodder or for turning into ash or fertaliser?

please keep in mind that sometimes i cant spell so much that spellcheckers die...

From the Dev Log, it seems pretty certain that ToadyOne and ThreeToe are satified with Trees, Leaves and Fruit to move on with Elven Sites.

So, it seems like for this release, there wont be any vanilla use for them for Adventure or Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 10, 2012, 07:13:00 pm

awwwwwwwwww

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 10, 2012, 09:06:49 pm

Heh. Low-hanging fruit is now low-hanging fruit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on October 11, 2012, 02:17:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on October 10, 2012, 09:06:49 pm

Heh. Low-hanging fruit is now low-hanging fruit.

I just died a little inside. Excellent work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on October 11, 2012, 02:06:38 pm

Quote from: monk12 on October 10, 2012, 09:06:49 pm

Heh. Low-hanging fruit is now low-hanging fruit.

Most literal use of this phrase ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 02:55:33 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on October 11, 2012, 02:06:38 pm

Quote from: monk12 on October 10, 2012, 09:06:49 pm

Heh. Low-hanging fruit is now low-hanging fruit.

Most literal use of this phrase ever.

yes.

you know, i pity the great toad. he has to read these comments, but then there are all these inane ones. can we just make it so that every post has a question?

How tall will the normal tree be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on October 11, 2012, 03:04:42 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 02:55:33 pm

How tall will the normal tree be?

He stated that the maximum height for trees is currently about 10 z-levels. I'd guess average would be 5-7.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 11, 2012, 03:08:27 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 02:55:33 pm

you know, i pity the great toad. he has to read these comments, but then there are all these inane ones. can we just make it so that every post has a question?

The whole point of greening questions is so that he can just skim through the thread and ignore the chatter?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 04:49:10 pm

you still have pages of non-question-talk.


will there be more food types in future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 11, 2012, 06:08:01 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 04:49:10 pm

you still have pages of non-question-talk.


will there be more food types in future?

Food stuff?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:20:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 11, 2012, 06:08:01 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 04:49:10 pm

you still have pages of non-question-talk.


will there be more food types in future?

Food stuff?

different prepared meals.

will caravans be modeled soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on October 11, 2012, 06:21:00 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 04:49:10 pm

you still have pages of non-question-talk.

I'm sure if he is ever not happy with the format or content of this thread he will let us know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:21:47 pm

fine. i ranout of questions anyways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 11, 2012, 06:23:22 pm

All of my questions are related to modding, hehe.

Are there any plans for anything new in the way of the data/speech files?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:24:51 pm

will there be any variations in a language? i.e. a civ sits alone for a thousand years, and its version of, say, dwarven is almost incomprehensible to a dwarf elsewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 11, 2012, 06:26:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:24:51 pm

will there be any variations in a language? i.e. a civ sits alone for a thousand years, and its version of, say, dwarven is almost incomprehensible to a dwarf elsewhere.

I seriously doubt it. He hasn't even mentioned it. Hasn't even gone on to the whole mish-mash culture thing. THough that woudl be interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:29:57 pm

he mentioned it... a while ago...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on October 11, 2012, 06:42:51 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:24:51 pm

will there be any variations in a language? i.e. a civ sits alone for a thousand years, and its version of, say, dwarven is almost incomprehensible to a dwarf elsewhere.

Definitely not in this release. He's stated pretty clearly what his goals are for this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 11, 2012, 06:52:38 pm

I think language is a waste of time really.
Maybe in the later versions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 11, 2012, 07:13:28 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 06:20:19 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 11, 2012, 06:08:01 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 04:49:10 pm

you still have pages of non-question-talk.


will there be more food types in future?

Food stuff?

different prepared meals.

There is a Cooking and Farming overhaul on the books, at some point in the future. And what ToadyOne has spoke about Cooking is that Recipes will be completely redone, so, not much different prepared meals are planned but the ability for greater novelty in meals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 11, 2012, 07:22:41 pm

SMILE

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on October 11, 2012, 11:17:02 pm

This just in: Lethal jumping bugs.

Let's see how long it takes Bay12 to weaponize jumping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 11, 2012, 11:17:53 pm

Quote from: Willfor on October 11, 2012, 11:17:02 pm

This just in: Lethal jumping bugs.

Let's see how long it takes Bay12 to weaponize jumping.

I'd put socks on, oh, 4-6 days.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 12, 2012, 12:02:43 am

Quote from: Willfor on October 11, 2012, 11:17:02 pm

This just in: Lethal jumping bugs.

Let's see how long it takes Bay12 to weaponize jumping.

Depends, is the player treated as a projectile while in the air? ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: burn_heal on October 12, 2012, 12:56:37 am

Quote from: Willfor on October 11, 2012, 11:17:02 pm

Let's see how long it takes Bay12 to weaponize jumping.

I can see AI exploits which cause goblins to jump straight into the side of walls, blowing themselves apart...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: burn_heal on October 12, 2012, 01:21:56 am

Toady,

It has always seemed to me that Fortress mode is the more popular format in the game. With a lot of the focus of current development being on adventure mode, are you worried that more fort-oriented players will miss out on a lot of the new features?

When scouts/armies are eventually introduced to Fort-mode, will we see the same villain-behaviour / groups-moving-around-the-world that is being worked on in this release? Will the world behave in (more or less) the same way it does in adventure mode?

Thanks for taking the time you do to answer questions here. Always looking forward to reading about current development :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 12, 2012, 02:27:47 am

Quote from: burn_heal link= =100851.msg3688755#msg3688755 date=1350022916

When scouts/armies are eventually introduced to Fort-mode, will we see the same villain-behaviour / groups-moving-around-the-world that is being worked on in this release? Will the world behave in (more or less) the same way it does in adventure mode?[/color]

Thanks for taking the time you do to answer questions here. Always looking forward to reading about current development :)

Thats is the goal. Adventure Mode and Fort Mode are not seperate games. They're suppose to be different means to interact with the same game, and more importantly with the same game world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on October 12, 2012, 02:29:12 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 12, 2012, 02:27:47 am

Quote from: burn_heal link= =100851.msg3688755#msg3688755 date=1350022916

When scouts/armies are eventually introduced to Fort-mode, will we see the same villain-behaviour / groups-moving-around-the-world that is being worked on in this release? Will the world behave in (more or less) the same way it does in adventure mode?[/color]

Thanks for taking the time you do to answer questions here. Always looking forward to reading about current development :)

Thats is the goal. Adventure Mode and Fort Mode are not seperate games. They're suppose to be different means to interact with the same game, and more importantly with the same game world.

This is also why Toady is making such an effort to synchronize fortress mode and adventure mode systems over past years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 12, 2012, 02:32:22 am

Quote from: burn_heal on October 12, 2012, 01:21:56 am

Toady,

It has always seemed to me that Fortress mode is the more popular format in the game. With a lot of the focus of current development being on adventure mode, are you worried that more fort-oriented players will miss out on a lot of the new features?

It stands to reason that Fortmode would be more popular when it has historically had more features and time put into. It's no reason not to work on improving Adventure mode. With a better Adventure mode more Fortmode-only people may be encouraged to give it a shot and enjoy it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: burn_heal on October 12, 2012, 04:24:28 am

Quote from: DG on October 12, 2012, 02:32:22 am

With a better Adventure mode more Fortmode-only people may be encouraged to give it a shot and enjoy it.

This is certainly what I hope. I personally am excited about giving adventure mode a proper go after next release, it sounds like it will be really fleshed-out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 12, 2012, 04:32:44 am

Will we be able to adjust how many tiles it takes to get up to speed when sprinting? I think it would be interesting.

When at full speed can you change direction and keep the speed? Turning anything more than 90° without slowing seems strange. I know you've thought about this for the mounted controls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on October 12, 2012, 04:34:45 am

Hey guys, this is going to be the release with the non-lethal combat, right? Or am I mistaken?

If yes, has the great Toady made any mention of sheaths for weapons, at all? If drawing a deadly weapon ramps a fight up to lethal, I mean.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 12, 2012, 04:44:54 am

Quote from: Vattic on October 12, 2012, 04:32:44 am

Will we be able to adjust how many tiles it takes to get up to speed when sprinting? I think it would be interesting.

When at full speed can you change direction and keep the speed? Turning anything more than 90° without slowing seems strange. I know you've thought about this for the mounted controls.

Quote from: Toady One

When you are running full speed, you can still stop without carrying forward additional squares, but you need to move in roughly the same direction to maintain your full speed. So if you are going east, then northeast and southeast are also okay, but if you go north, you'll go back down to jogging speed until you build up again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 12, 2012, 04:58:55 am

Thank you Japa.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 12, 2012, 05:05:20 am

The real meat of DF is in the integration with the world. Fortress mode and adventurer mode are tools to this integration. If you like only fortress mode, there are plenty of clones games inspired by Fortress mode already in development.  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 12, 2012, 05:41:09 am

With the combat/movement speed split, will we be seeing mounts in the next release? If yes, both for fort and adventure modde or just for one of the two?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on October 12, 2012, 09:18:33 am

Quote from: Vattic on October 12, 2012, 04:32:44 am

Will we be able to adjust how many tiles it takes to get up to speed when sprinting? I think it would be interesting.

When at full speed can you change direction and keep the speed? Turning anything more than 90° without slowing seems strange. I know you've thought about this for the mounted controls.

Acceleration will probably be configurable per creature in the raws. Animals like cheetahs and turtles have vastly different acceleration rates, and rhinos have surprisingly high acceleration for their size from what I've heard.

Will acceleration and jump height be affected by equipment and other inventory?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on October 12, 2012, 09:26:53 am

Quote from: Helgoland on October 12, 2012, 05:41:09 am

With the combat/movement speed split, will we be seeing mounts in the next release? If yes, both for fort and adventure modde or just for one of the two?

mounts for dwarves are not planned. invader mounts in fort mode were in, not sure if they've been taken out

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on October 12, 2012, 09:42:30 am

Oh man this next update is looking better and better -here was me doubting that was even possible.
In regards to speed loss when changing direction, will it be more time efficient pulling a turning circle to make a full 180 or even to turn 90 degrees vs. losing sprint to change direction instantaneously?

Is the sprinting speed of a creature dependent on its innate speed or a separate variable?

Do different creatures have different turning circles? For example some losing speed at a mere 45 degree angle or others capable of maintaining speed in any direction.
If yes, is that also a separate variable or do faster creatures turn slower?

IIRC you mentioned that moving at a faster speed increases the force of your blows (like a non-placeholder charge). Is the reverse also true? Will running/jumping into a moving minecart head-on (or even obtusely) combine the force?

Uh... sorry for the pile of questions. This update excites me greatly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Old Bones on October 12, 2012, 10:02:08 am

In adventure mode if you jump from somewhere onto a climbable surface, will you catch yourself?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 12, 2012, 01:19:47 pm

Quote from: Chronas on October 12, 2012, 09:42:30 am

Oh man this next update is looking better and better -here was me doubting that was even possible.
In regards to speed loss when changing direction, will it be more time efficient pulling a turning circle to make a full 180 or even to turn 90 degrees vs. losing sprint to change direction instantaneously?

Is the sprinting speed of a creature dependent on its innate speed or a separate variable?

Do different creatures have different turning circles? For example some losing speed at a mere 45 degree angle or others capable of maintaining speed in any direction.
If yes, is that also a separate variable or do faster creatures turn slower?

IIRC you mentioned that moving at a faster speed increases the force of your blows (like a non-placeholder charge). Is the reverse also true? Will running/jumping into a moving minecart head-on (or even obtusely) combine the force?

Uh... sorry for the pile of questions. This update excites me greatly.

As far as I know, creatures just stop (or slow down to normal speed), and turn. They don't have a turning circle like a vehicle or something, and their momentum won't carry them further (i.e. off cliffs or into walls) if they choose to stop.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on October 12, 2012, 09:26:53 am

Quote from: Helgoland on October 12, 2012, 05:41:09 am

With the combat/movement speed split, will we be seeing mounts in the next release? If yes, both for fort and adventure modde or just for one of the two?

mounts for dwarves are not planned. invader mounts in fort mode were in, not sure if they've been taken out

I think mounts are planned for adventure and dwarf mode. It was mentioned a while back with caravans travelling around the world.

Will Dwarf Fortress try to deliberately make navigable climbing paths up trees and through the tree-tops outside of forest retreats?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 12, 2012, 02:09:44 pm

will there be devices to ease climbing? i.e. grappling hooks or crossbows firing rope?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on October 12, 2012, 02:54:20 pm

Quote from: The Toady One

I also got started on jumping. My first jump was off by a factor of 100, so I flew against a cliff and blew apart. I'm still working on it.

Only in Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: burn_heal on October 12, 2012, 07:47:53 pm

Quote from: Vattic on October 12, 2012, 04:32:44 am

When at full speed can you change direction and keep the speed? Turning anything more than 90° without slowing seems strange. I know you've thought about this for the mounted controls.

Quote from: Toady One

When you are running full speed, you can still stop without carrying forward additional squares, but you need to move in roughly the same direction to maintain your full speed. So if you are going east, then northeast and southeast are also okay, but if you go north, you'll go back down to jogging speed until you build up again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 12, 2012, 07:48:42 pm

Quote from: Old Bones on October 12, 2012, 10:02:08 am

In adventure mode if you jump from somewhere onto a climbable surface, will you catch yourself?

Press X to Not Die.

You're welcome.

In a more serious note:

Quote

Do different creatures have different turning circles? For example some losing speed at a mere 45 degree angle or others capable of maintaining speed in any direction.
If yes, is that also a separate variable or do faster creatures turn slower?

I think this isn't meaning so much as turning radius like a tractor-trailer vs. a bicycle.  I'm taking this to mean how tightly can an animal turn AT SPEED without losing it's footing.

Case in point, a wildebeast has to turn a much larger arc at a full gallop to avoid toppling over losing it's footing, since it's so top heavy and, y'know, hooves, as opposed to the lioness pursuing it.  All of that and more is summed up by saying that the lioness is more agile or maneuverable than the wildebeast. 

I don't think Agility for animals is modeled yet, and I don't know that it will be in this release.  It may, however, as suggested on the acceleration constants be pushed out into the raws for the time being.

Now, when you talk about changing directions, at speed, and consider flying creatures, this gets REALLY interesting.  Will we have birds of prey able to do a 'wingover' maneuver eventually?  Let's certainly hope so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on October 12, 2012, 09:35:41 pm

Heh at the super-jump-splat.

Toady,

Does sprinting/jumping/climbing make you hungrier?

Otherwise, I can see most people pretty well sprinting constantly everywhere they're not Travelling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yoink on October 12, 2012, 09:43:30 pm

Toady, if this is to be the release with non-lethal combat, do you have any plans for 'sheath' items for weapons? Since drawing a weapon will escalate a fight to lethal stakes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on October 12, 2012, 10:54:08 pm

Since adventure mode is turn based and things only move/act every time you give input, what does jumping look like? Does the simulation run until you regain footing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Charey Wolf on October 12, 2012, 11:37:45 pm

If you are fighting a smaller creature then you can you jump on top of it to try and squish it? Can you jump onto large creatures to catch a ride? What happens if you jump off a tree and then land in the water?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 12, 2012, 11:46:01 pm

Quote from: Charey Wolf on October 12, 2012, 11:37:45 pm

Can you jump onto large creatures to catch a ride?

Can you paint em all kinds of pretty colors to boot?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on October 13, 2012, 12:09:01 am

Quote from: Quatch on October 12, 2012, 10:54:08 pm

Since adventure mode is turn based and things only move/act every time you give input, what does jumping look like? Does the simulation run until you regain footing?

I don't know but did he state anything about it when doing the combat-movement speed split? I mean we don't even know whether movement is still the main "source" for turns. _{(And if I remember correctly, he was unsure about it himself?)}
Also, what's the case with mine cart riding, I think it'll be similar

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 13, 2012, 12:27:09 am

According to what happens when you get whacked by a really strong enemy, you will fly off.
At that state every button you press will be treated as wait until you hit the ground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 13, 2012, 12:29:13 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on October 12, 2012, 09:35:41 pm

Heh at the super-jump-splat.

Toady,

Does sprinting/jumping/climbing make you hungrier?

Otherwise, I can see most people pretty well sprinting constantly everywhere they're not Travelling.

I doubt it; however, it is pretty likely that it will make you tired, I.E, exerted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 13, 2012, 12:46:36 am

Quote from: Charey Wolf on October 12, 2012, 11:37:45 pm

If you are fighting a smaller creature then you can you jump on top of it to try and squish it? Can you jump onto large creatures to catch a ride?

I'm going to go with No on this one. There an entire expansion for the combat system dealing with this. Though the old Dev Plan, was about Adventurers climbing very large creatures, and the Creatures volume being better respected overall. So, most assurely, it would mean that when the Adventurer happen to be the larger creature, it can be do similar things that larger creatures can do to it.  Of course there is no ti
me table.

Quote

What happens if you jump off a tree and then land in the water?

Why would anything special happen? There already code in place to handle objects falling into water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 13, 2012, 05:41:18 am

Quote from: Charey Wolf on October 12, 2012, 11:37:45 pm

If you are fighting a smaller creature then you can you jump on top of it to try and squish it? Can you jump onto large creatures to catch a ride? What happens if you jump off a tree and then land in the water?

Quote from: Toady One on June 01, 2012, 09:32:45 pm

Quote from: Vattic

Will these [combat arc dev items]
Also include things like much larger creatures being able to stomp on much smaller ones and similar? Larger creatures could just barge others using their bulk as a weapon. It need not stop at attacks of course, darting trough a giants legs would be cool.

When people are attacking large beasts in the new ways, it would be fair to give the beasts more options as well, but it's hard to say how it'll play out.  I think it would fit the feel of the game if a large creature could utterly obliterate a small critter into a paste item as long as they got a shot to dodge out of the way.  With the reaction moments, it would also be a chance for you to jump on the leg (or attempt something borderline foolish like holding a pointed weapon up at the bottom of the foot).  Charge attacks from large creatures already give a very large chance for the smaller creature to be knocked over.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CountAlex on October 13, 2012, 05:42:01 am

I hope this question wasn't asked yet and it's unlikely to be related to actual development but When and whether leather armor and clothes will have different durability depending on basic hide they made of? I. e. chicken leather armor must be not much better then paper when dragon leather armor should be hard as kevlar flak jacket.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on October 13, 2012, 07:42:12 pm

The updates relating to the sneaking around goblins camps - including the movies showcasing the system supporting this - have been removed from the dev log.

Has this already been addressed? If not, I guess I'll green this to see if these features are being cut from the release. I hope not, I was looking forward to Metal Gear Dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 14, 2012, 12:21:36 am

Quote from: SirPenguin on October 13, 2012, 07:42:12 pm

The updates relating to the sneaking around goblins camps - including the movies showcasing the system supporting this - have been removed from the dev log.

Has this already been addressed? If not, I guess I'll green this to see if these features are being cut from the release. I hope not, I was looking forward to Metal Gear Dwarf.

ToadyOne has always made a good effort to tell us changes to the current Release. So they probably havent been removed from the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on October 14, 2012, 01:10:33 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 14, 2012, 12:21:36 am

Quote from: SirPenguin on October 13, 2012, 07:42:12 pm

The updates relating to the sneaking around goblins camps - including the movies showcasing the system supporting this - have been removed from the dev log.

Has this already been addressed? If not, I guess I'll green this to see if these features are being cut from the release. I hope not, I was looking forward to Metal Gear Dwarf.

ToadyOne has always made a good effort to tell us changes to the current Release. So they probably havent been removed from the next release.

The devlog posts being scrubbed is very strange, though, I don't think there's a precedent for that ... Can somebody comment? Sooner rather than later, I hope.

edit: Degreened since Toady answered. Thanks for the promptness T1!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on October 14, 2012, 02:50:34 am

There are still references in the devlog to making noise and other factors involved in sneaking, and the movies themselves are still on the DF Map Archive, where they were originally posted.

Is it just the one update (July 23?) that's been removed, or were there others?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 14, 2012, 04:01:54 am

I had to remove all of my links to the DFMA, due to inappropriate content.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on October 14, 2012, 05:55:50 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 12, 2012, 01:19:47 pm

As far as I know, creatures just stop (or slow down to normal speed), and turn. They don't have a turning circle like a vehicle or something, and their momentum won't carry them further (i.e. off cliffs or into walls) if they choose to stop.

I am completely aware of all of this, you misunderstand me.
I was talking about whether going W while at an E heading is more efficient than going NE-N-NW-W to stay sprinting -literally turning in a circle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 14, 2012, 07:06:42 am

Wait... Inappropriate content on the DFMA? did somebody upload NSFW ascii art or something?

Weird. But understandable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 14, 2012, 07:54:55 am

Spambots, apparently. They seem to have flocked to one of the sneaking videos to lecture us on the medical benefits of marijuana and how to improve our credit ratings. Dunno why that would make Toady scrub the links, but I can't see anything worse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on October 14, 2012, 11:25:19 am

Are you saying pot will improve my credit rating? Tell me more!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on October 14, 2012, 11:47:27 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 14, 2012, 12:29:22 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on October 14, 2012, 11:25:19 am

Are you saying pot will improve my credit rating? Tell me more!

You have to buy marijuana with cash, not credit, so if you have issues moderating your spending, pot as a prime form of recreation will help you out there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: raiker123 on October 14, 2012, 01:26:20 pm

Will dwarf sites in adventure mode make this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 14, 2012, 01:39:32 pm

Quote from: raiker123 on October 14, 2012, 01:26:20 pm

Will dwarf sites in adventure mode make this release?

Yes, it has been said multiple times that ALL other creature sites will be in this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 14, 2012, 02:05:18 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 14, 2012, 01:39:32 pm

Quote from: raiker123 on October 14, 2012, 01:26:20 pm

Will dwarf sites in adventure mode make this release?

Yes, it has been said multiple times that ALL other creature sites will be in this one.

Including Kobold Sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 14, 2012, 03:55:29 pm

Every race in entity default yes. Not so likely for animal men though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on October 14, 2012, 04:28:49 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on October 14, 2012, 12:29:22 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on October 14, 2012, 11:25:19 am

Are you saying pot will improve my credit rating? Tell me more!

You have to buy marijuana with cash, not credit, so if you have issues moderating your spending, pot as a prime form of recreation will help you out there.

this fourm is awsome. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on October 15, 2012, 01:39:10 am

Tree bark or seeds in barrels of alcohol for spice extracts?

You all talk about "vanilla" DF, but the truth is there is currently no vanilla in DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 01:50:20 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 15, 2012, 01:39:10 am

Tree bark or seeds in barrels of alcohol for spice extracts?

You all talk about "vanilla" DF, but the truth is there is currently no vanilla in DF.

Theres hasnt been any changes to Beverages, and it seems like ToadyOne and ThreeToe are satisfied with Trees, for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LoSboccacc on October 15, 2012, 01:54:23 am

so are we getting climbing invaders?

does this imply a invade AI update? I guess adding them seeking levers to open doors could be fun and not that hard to do (since there are creatures that does this already)

edit:
now green

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 01:57:56 am

Quote from: LoSboccacc on October 15, 2012, 01:54:23 am

so are we getting climbing invaders?

I think this is worth Greening, but I highly doubt we're going to get a redux on Sieges for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 15, 2012, 02:25:24 am

Quote from: Toady One's Devlog

Right now you can climb constructed walls but you can't climb smoothed walls or ice walls.

Please clarify this, Toady. By smooth walls do you only mean natural walls that have been smoothed by an engraver (the impression I'm getting) or also walls constructed of blocks instead of rough stone/logs/bars?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzlyAdamz on October 15, 2012, 02:58:15 am

Hmm, you said jumping might get itself a skill, and that you think we should be able to attempt to climb most things, and also mentioned you were still working on penalties, but here's my question:
How is climbing ability determined? Will there be a skill check, an attribute (agility) check, or both/neither? Will a dwarf child be able to scale a thousand-foot cliff or will it be a perilous climb, rolling ability checks every tick?

-edit
hehe, while I'm at it, a question for extraneous skills, (thinking of morul)
With jumping implemented, especially when factoring in water, will there be a diving skill?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on October 15, 2012, 08:02:22 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 01:50:20 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 15, 2012, 01:39:10 am

Tree bark or seeds in barrels of alcohol for spice extracts?

You all talk about "vanilla" DF, but the truth is there is currently no vanilla in DF.

Theres hasnt been any changes to Beverages, and it seems like ToadyOne and ThreeToe are satisfied with Trees, for now.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: caknuck

    So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

    And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)


Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

It seems that there have been some changes to beverages. We don't have all the details, but at least there should be some new alcohols to brew from the fruit that have been added.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 15, 2012, 08:22:06 am

We will have creatures like spiders climbing on the ceilings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 15, 2012, 09:07:35 am

Quote from: thvaz on October 15, 2012, 08:22:06 am

We will have creatures like spiders climbing on the ceilings?

We'd need ceilings first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Siquo on October 15, 2012, 10:10:07 am

That is kind of funny, actually. We have floors, but no ceilings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 15, 2012, 10:26:50 am

Quote from: DG on October 15, 2012, 09:07:35 am

Quote from: thvaz on October 15, 2012, 08:22:06 am

We will have creatures like spiders climbing on the ceilings?

We'd need ceilings first.

You're so funny, I almost fell off my chair.

Quote

I'm well into climbing now. A critter can grab hold of various surfaces, including branches above them

Why wouldn't them be able to hold on the "floor" above them? A floor on a level could be as well the ceiling of the level below.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 15, 2012, 10:27:53 am

will there be ceilings and animals that hide in them to dropdown on people?

a branch is not a ceiling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jurph on October 15, 2012, 10:39:56 am

From the climbing update, it sounds like any creature might be able to climb a wall.  Moats as currently designed would be ineffective if invaders believed that a climbing path could be found, but you could turn the AI against itself.  Envision a steep but rough wall leading up to a single-tile-wide entrance, and a watch tower full of marksdwarves with arrow slits overlooking the wall.  Assuming climbing is slower than walking, this could absolutely decimate the enemy. 

Other implementations of this include moats with a shallow slope on the outer face, but a steep inner face several Z-levels tall.  Inside the ramped outer face, pillboxes!  PEW PEW PEW. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 15, 2012, 10:46:18 am

i meant a creature that LIKES hiding in ceilings to dropdown on people.
nice photo by the way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 15, 2012, 12:18:33 pm

With the inclusion of climbing, will invaders now be able to scale walls?

Will creatures be able to grapple a ceiling?

Will creatures be able to climb constructed or engraved fortifications?

Will creatures be able to climb up and over raised drawbridges?

Be prepared to roof over your outdoor fort in the next version!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kulik on October 15, 2012, 01:04:39 pm

How will the coming running mechanic work with charging during combat? I mean, will there be a difference when charging somebody while in full run? Could a lighter combatant take down heavier stationary opponent if he charges him at full running speed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on October 15, 2012, 02:11:33 pm

I am really exited for the climbing and sneaking mechanics. I cant wait to parkour around cites like Altier!

Will we get reaction moments when jumping/landing on a creature?
ie. the player jumps out of a tree undetected onto a nearby goblin. As he lands he gets a reaction moment to attack the goblin with a weapon doing extra damage.


Will elves get a buff to movement/fighting while climbing in trees?
I could see a very deadly strategy of climbing up a tree then picking off people with a bow/crossbow as they try to climb after you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: squishynoob on October 15, 2012, 02:46:20 pm

Will there be (or is) a skill involved in climbing?
Is climbing determined by a on/off creature tag?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on October 15, 2012, 03:30:25 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 15, 2012, 10:46:18 am

i meant a creature that LIKES hiding in ceilings to dropdown on people.

Well, we already have bats, which are known for hanging from ceilings, geckos, which are known for climbing walls (even smooth ones), and squirrels, which are known for climbing trees.  Also, the creeping eye (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Creeping_eye) description says, "A small underground monster that crawls across the cavern wall with its four clawed hands."  Better yet, the manera (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Manera) is described like this, "A creature that crawls along the cavern ceiling with four long arms.  Its body is shaped as the head of a man with a mouth full of shark teeth.  It waits for its prey to pass below."  So, technically the game already has a creature like what you want, it's just not implemented properly yet.

It would be nice to see climbing/clinging properly implemented for these creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on October 15, 2012, 04:38:27 pm

One place I don't want to spend the night is inside the Tarn Brother's Imagination.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 15, 2012, 04:47:29 pm

Hmmm.. so, soon the Scamps entry in the wiki will have the [CEILING_CAT] tag.

I approve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 08:16:23 pm

Quote from: Keldane on October 15, 2012, 08:02:22 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 01:50:20 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on October 15, 2012, 01:39:10 am

Tree bark or seeds in barrels of alcohol for spice extracts?

You all talk about "vanilla" DF, but the truth is there is currently no vanilla in DF.

Theres hasnt been any changes to Beverages, and it seems like ToadyOne and ThreeToe are satisfied with Trees, for now.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: caknuck

    So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

    And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)


Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

It seems that there have been some changes to beverages. We don't have all the details, but at least there should be some new alcohols to brew from the fruit that have been added.

Except that we cant gather fruits in Fort Mode. And I think the inability to gather fruits also implies the inability to brew fruits into new beverages.

Quote from: ToadyOne About Fruit

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 15, 2012, 09:41:47 pm

Toady will you be adding any supernatural trees with Fruit in this release or only real life equivilants?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on October 15, 2012, 09:58:40 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 08:16:23 pm

Except that we cant gather fruits in Fort Mode. And I think the inability to gather fruits also implies the inability to brew fruits into new beverages.

Quote from: ToadyOne About Fruit

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

That quote was about flowers, not fruit.

Edit for clarity:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:00:07 am

Quote from: monk12

Do you have plans for flowers as a resource of some kind (decorative or otherwise,) or are they just an aesthetic choice to make the grass pretty? Does their coincidence with Elven sites indicate that Elves will have more flowers around than anyone else, or is it just "I'm doing trees and fruits and stuff, I'll throw in flowers quick?"

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

Emphasis mine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 16, 2012, 12:04:31 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 15, 2012, 08:16:23 pm

Except that we cant gather fruits in Fort Mode. And I think the inability to gather fruits also implies the inability to brew fruits into new beverages.

Quote from: ToadyOne About Fruit

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: caknuck

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on October 16, 2012, 06:46:29 am

will we be seeing monkeys climbing trees for bananas?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on October 16, 2012, 07:51:50 am

Quote from: magmaholic on October 16, 2012, 06:46:29 am

will we be seeing monkeys climbing trees for bananas?

No. Banana trees are not climbable. They are relatively short, and just have a very smooth, very weak, trunk. It is a tree you can acually punch down. You don't get wood from it though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tenebrais on October 16, 2012, 09:29:48 am

Will fruit trees be real fruits, like the other trees, or made up, like the other crops? And does either answer affect your future plans for handling plants?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 16, 2012, 10:12:40 am

Iirc toady said in the last Podcast that he wants more Reallife crops, also straw-berrys are real ;). Given that we already have some fruitbearing trees in the raws (cacao, chestnut, Mango, oak, "coconut-"palm and candlenut) we would have atleast some fruit and nut bearing trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 16, 2012, 10:19:44 am

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe remarkably similar to our own...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa159/Drunken_gun/suggestaquestion.png)
I don't know why.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 16, 2012, 10:28:37 am

Quote from: Tenebrais on October 16, 2012, 09:29:48 am

Will fruit trees be real fruits, like the other trees, or made up, like the other crops? And does either answer affect your future plans for handling plants?

Actually quite a few "other crops" are real crops just given a different name.

Whipvine for example is likely Hemp I believe (Or was it Rope Reed?)

Longland Grass is likely Wheat (which is odd... given "Cave Wheat" is a thing)

It is what makes "Wild Strawberry" such an oddity given that it actually got away with its original name.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on October 16, 2012, 12:49:23 pm

Does that mean we can expect vision arcs/field of view (of sorts) "soon"?
Because if we got them, Dwarf Fortress would instantly become better than Assassin's Creed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 16, 2012, 01:55:03 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on October 16, 2012, 12:49:23 pm

Does that mean we can expect vision arcs/field of view (of sorts) "soon"?
Because if we got them, Dwarf Fortress would instantly become better than Assassin's Creed.

It's already in. Toady even made a movie (http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2456-preliminarysneaking--visionsound).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on October 16, 2012, 02:01:12 pm

Quote from: Trif on October 16, 2012, 01:55:03 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on October 16, 2012, 12:49:23 pm

Does that mean we can expect vision arcs/field of view (of sorts) "soon"?
Because if we got them, Dwarf Fortress would instantly become better than Assassin's Creed.

It's already in. Toady even made a movie (http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-2456-preliminarysneaking--visionsound).

Well, this means it's officially awesome once 0.35.00 (totally not the proper version name) is out...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on October 16, 2012, 02:36:30 pm

Back in the old 2D versions, the "cliff face" was covered with a layer of "damaged" stone which couldn't be smoothed but could be dug away more quickly.
Will damaged stone be easier to climb? And if so, might the landscape generation be adjusted to create these again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 16, 2012, 03:57:11 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on October 16, 2012, 12:49:23 pm

Does that mean we can expect vision arcs/field of view (of sorts) "soon"?
Because if we got them, Dwarf Fortress would instantly become better than Assassin's Creed.

Except it already is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 16, 2012, 09:13:53 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 16, 2012, 03:57:11 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on October 16, 2012, 12:49:23 pm

Does that mean we can expect vision arcs/field of view (of sorts) "soon"?
Because if we got them, Dwarf Fortress would instantly become better than Assassin's Creed.

Except it already is.

Add on the modifier "in the stealth department" and I think we get what was meant :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 17, 2012, 12:13:06 am

Have you planned on making magma transport easier?
Like magma pipes, or something like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 17, 2012, 01:09:00 am

Quote from: Objective on October 17, 2012, 12:13:06 am

Have you planned on making magma transport easier?
Like magma pipes, or something like that.

I could have sworn that magma was a valid cargo for minecarts.  Not sure on the current state of weaponizing magmacarts though.

Also, that seems a bit suggestiony and not very close to current development.  I suppose when we get dwarf sites it might come up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 17, 2012, 01:42:01 am

I was about to post it as suggestion but I asked just in case it was already planned.

Oh and you're right I just found out minecart is a valid way of more FPS-efficient magma transport.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 17, 2012, 01:46:12 am

It sounds like Toady's adding an acrobatics skill to the game. Now your dwarves can join the circus too.  ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 17, 2012, 04:41:46 am

Quote from: King Mir on October 17, 2012, 01:46:12 am

It sounds like Toady's adding an acrobatics skill to the game. Now your dwarves can join the circus too.  ;D

Those arn't exactly acrobatics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alu on October 17, 2012, 05:51:17 am

What are your plans on climbing gear? Maybe with the equipment, one could even climb ice walls.

But what I'm most curious about is this:
"Do you plan to integrate dwarven civs until the next release? So a dwarf adventurer could go shopping dwarf equip in dwarven cities/caves n stuff?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 17, 2012, 06:18:51 am

Quote from: Alu on October 17, 2012, 05:51:17 am

But what I'm most curious about is this:
"Do you plan to integrate dwarven civs until the next release? So a dwarf adventurer could go shopping dwarf equip in dwarven cities/caves n stuff?"

Getting non-human civs back in is definitely one of the main drives for this release:

Quote from: Toady 9/20

...I've reached a stopping point for goblins. There's more to be finished up, but it overlaps with dwarves and I'm going to work through the non-player dwarf fortresses first so I have a better chance of unifying what goes on there code-wise.

Quote from: Toady 9/16

...We still need to handle reunions, but that'll definitely be going in when we get to fortress maps (which are going in before the release). It'll be cool to finally get some dwarves back home after all these years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 17, 2012, 08:46:46 am

Will unrooted things on tiles be subject to velocity and physics from a flying creature that latches onto them mid-flight?
Ie: if a dwarf hurtles out of a minecart over a chasm, and grabs a goblin on a ledge, by the arm, mid-flight as it goes past, will the dwarf pull the goblin along with him until he stops? Or will the goblin act as if it were an entrenched pillar of lead, anchoring and wrenching the Dwarf to a sudden halt?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on October 17, 2012, 10:30:17 am

I'm not sure how this never occurred to me before, but

Will Goblin settlements have shops?

Even though you can't play as a Goblin by default, and most of the time they'll be hostile to you automatically, it seems like it would make sense for them to have some kind of markets present at least for their own use. (Yes, I know the NPCs don't really *use* them) Especially if they're going to have civilian professions of the type that would produce goods for shops.

Also, for the rare character that is from a civ that is at peace with Goblins or somehow gets in good with them (not sure what might be possible with the Reputation system eventually, but I think of the way Human Outsiders can speak to and chill out with bandit camps), it'd be awesome to be able to mill around a Goblin Tower window-shopping whatever weird hideous shit they'd have for sale in there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 17, 2012, 10:36:08 am

Goblins definitely strike me as a command economy. Any necessary goods and services will be distributed by whomever is in charge of the site, and non-necessary luxuries are likely to be looted. They certainly don't strike me as the sort of group to make expensive fineries for export.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Escapism on October 17, 2012, 10:39:26 am

Will combat advantages (both projectile and hand-to-hand) relating to z-levels be done in this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on October 17, 2012, 11:46:39 am

You can grab things while falling to presumably save you. Orbital Drop Shock Dorfs!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 17, 2012, 02:24:16 pm

Quote from: Objective on October 17, 2012, 12:13:06 am

Have you planned on making magma transport easier?
Like magma pipes, or something like that.

He has something like that planned, but I doubt it will be in the current version...

Quote

Improved Mechanics

    Better traps
        Stone traps should require the stone be placed above the tile that is targeted
        Stones should be able to roll (perhaps if they are started from or land on a ramp tile)
        Weapon traps should be multi-tile and require a spring or other potential energy source -- automatic resetting should require some explicit establishment of a feasible mechanism
    Large pipe sections -- walk on them or crawl inside them, allow passage for fluids
    Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)
    Waterproof axles through some mechanism
    Rock grinders? Fans? We'll do some other machines around this time -- whichever feasible ones are the most entertaining for dwarves and treasure hunters

I actually look forward to those. They remind me of a place called "Leaps and Bounds", which was basically a giant hamster-tube maze for kids. The fact they they can be walked on and crawled in make them pretty useful in various situations in my mind plus the liquid things will make transporting liquids less frustrating too... (Trees always seem to block my water tunnels.) (What would be even cooler is if the pipes could be attached to pumps so that you can pump from the bottom of a cistern instead of from the top, but that is getting into unnecessary discussion territory.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 17, 2012, 06:25:36 pm

Quote from: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

I imagine it would be based on strength/agility, and probably creature size. It would make sense for a human to jump higher than a dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on October 17, 2012, 07:35:11 pm

Quote from: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

Well, dwarves can already unintentionally dodge up on top of walls.  So, in theory, it's already possible.

It would be nice if they could climb down now though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on October 17, 2012, 08:34:46 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 17, 2012, 08:46:46 am

Will unrooted things on tiles be subject to velocity and physics from a flying creature that latches onto them mid-flight?
Ie: if a dwarf hurtles out of a minecart over a chasm, and grabs a goblin on a ledge, by the arm, mid-flight as it goes past, will the dwarf pull the goblin along with him until he stops? Or will the goblin act as if it were an entrenched pillar of lead, anchoring and wrenching the Dwarf to a sudden halt?

Currently, what happens is that the dwarf will fly off (losing the grasp or removing a stuck weapon, as if the dwarf walked away on his turn) and the goblin stays still.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on October 18, 2012, 04:06:15 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 17, 2012, 06:25:36 pm

Quote from: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

I imagine it would be based on strength/agility, and probably creature size. It would make sense for a human to jump higher than a dwarf.

Actually, it doesn't. Mass is cubically proportional to creature length, muscle force quadratically and leg length linearly. So if you consider the energy needed to jump to a certain height and the work your legs can perform during a jump, you see that the jumping height is roughly constant for creatures across all sizes. Ever noticed how cats and even grasshoppers can jump higher than you, despite being much smaller?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AfterShave on October 18, 2012, 06:16:21 am

Quote from: HiEv on October 17, 2012, 07:35:11 pm

Well, dwarves can already unintentionally dodge up on top of walls.  So, in theory, it's already possible.

It would be nice if they could climb down now though.

They can't dodge up two stories now can they? What I meant was

         Z3
   |''''  Z2
@|     Z1

Where @ is a human and next to him is a two story wall. If he'd be able to grab hold of the roof with a jump.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on October 18, 2012, 08:20:07 am

Quote from: HiEv on October 17, 2012, 07:35:11 pm

Well, dwarves can already unintentionally dodge up on top of walls.

I thought what was going on was that flying pets were standing on the tops of the walls and moving diagonally downward into tiles occupied by dwarves and displacing said dwarves onto the top of the wall (i.e. swapping position with them, something which happens quite frequently during movement).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on October 18, 2012, 09:33:23 am

Quote from: Quietust on October 18, 2012, 08:20:07 am

Quote from: HiEv on October 17, 2012, 07:35:11 pm

Well, dwarves can already unintentionally dodge up on top of walls.

I thought what was going on was that flying pets were standing on the tops of the walls and moving diagonally downward into tiles occupied by dwarves and displacing said dwarves onto the top of the wall (i.e. swapping position with them, something which happens quite frequently during movement).

Well, people usually only notice it happened long afterwards (often only after the dwarf has died), so it's hard to say.  Both reasons could be true in different cases.

At this point I don't really know enough to rule out either possibility, but one symptom can often have multiple causes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 18, 2012, 09:43:09 am

Quote from: jellsprout on October 18, 2012, 04:06:15 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 17, 2012, 06:25:36 pm

Quote from: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

I imagine it would be based on strength/agility, and probably creature size. It would make sense for a human to jump higher than a dwarf.

Actually, it doesn't. Mass is cubically proportional to creature length, muscle force quadratically and leg length linearly. So if you consider the energy needed to jump to a certain height and the work your legs can perform during a jump, you see that the jumping height is roughly constant for creatures across all sizes. Ever noticed how cats and even grasshoppers can jump higher than you, despite being much smaller?

You have a point there, that would be funny to watch this little dwarf leap up and punch a human in the face. Must be why we can hit dragons and hydras in the head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 09:44:07 am

Will we ever get dwarf cavalry? Will we be able to make armor for animals? Because an insane marksdwarf riding on an armored legendary Roc sounds just plain awesome. Better yet, make the bird a gunship.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 18, 2012, 09:50:06 am

Quote from: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 09:44:07 am

Will we ever get dwarf cavalry? Will we be able to make armor for animals? Because an insane marksdwarf riding on an armored legendary Roc sounds just plain awesome. Better yet, make the bird a gunship.

Well, it wouldn't be a gunship due to the lack of technology from the time period, but I'm sure you could mod that in.
Although people made armor for thier war horses, and an armored Jabberer sounds perfectly reasonable. But for now, you could always use minecarts and have drive-by shootings. But I'm pretty sure animal armors and mounts are in the eventual plan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 09:52:10 am

A Roc cavalry would be a sort of low-tech gunship. Have several marksdwarves per Roc instead of just one.

Seriously, DWARVEN GUNSHIPS. We could conquer the elves and goblins within a month!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 18, 2012, 10:32:59 am

Quote from: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 09:52:10 am

A Roc cavalry would be a sort of low-tech gunship. Have several marksdwarves per Roc instead of just one.

That would require not only proper mounts, but multiple riders to be implemented, which is perfectly reasonable, and would even give the two-humped camel a very useful ability to carry two people instead of just one. Perhaps the way mounting would work would be that certain body parts have a [MOUNTABLE] tag or such, which camels would have on their humps, and possibly, for large creatures such as rocs, this tag would combine with the creature's size to possibly permit multiple riders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 18, 2012, 10:35:22 am

Now as I said in another place

Most things that fly, barely fly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 18, 2012, 10:54:47 am

true.

also, 2 humans can mount 1 horse, thats not only possible with two-humped camels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 18, 2012, 10:57:53 am

Quote from: eux0r on October 18, 2012, 10:54:47 am

true.

also, 2 humans can mount 1 horse, thats not only possible with two-humped camels.

What? Next thing you wil tell me is that you not only do not ride the humps, but that they don't carry water in them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 11:20:48 am

Yes, all of the above is good.

Spider Riders, Inheritance, and the Power of Roc! All is possible with Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on October 18, 2012, 11:25:58 am

Quote from: jellsprout on October 18, 2012, 04:06:15 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 17, 2012, 06:25:36 pm

Quote from: AfterShave on October 17, 2012, 06:07:01 pm

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

I imagine it would be based on strength/agility, and probably creature size. It would make sense for a human to jump higher than a dwarf.

Actually, it doesn't. Mass is cubically proportional to creature length, muscle force quadratically and leg length linearly. So if you consider the energy needed to jump to a certain height and the work your legs can perform during a jump, you see that the jumping height is roughly constant for creatures across all sizes. Ever noticed how cats and even grasshoppers can jump higher than you, despite being much smaller?

You know, that means it'd be possible for Toady to work out a formula for it, using a combination of the creature's size, weight, proportional leg size, strength stats.

Which would make proportional sizes start mattering for things beside just targeting and hit percentages.  I like when things matter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on October 18, 2012, 02:41:46 pm

Quote from: Voyd211 on October 18, 2012, 09:44:07 am

Will we ever get dwarf cavalry? Will we be able to make armor for animals? Because an insane marksdwarf riding on an armored legendary Roc sounds just plain awesome. Better yet, make the bird a gunship.

'ever' is such a strong word... but no. toady has stated he doesn't like the idea of mounted dwarves and he isn't planning on implementing mounts in fort mode

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 18, 2012, 03:36:46 pm

Here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1457383;topicseen#msg1457383) is a relevant quote:

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Mephansteras

When are Adventurers and Fortress Mode dwarves going to get Mounts? What are the current hurdles involved in allowing those, since invaders seem to use mounts just fine?

I don't know if fortress mode dwarves are ever going to get mounts, though modders will probably want them in any case.  Adv mode mounts are in the hero section on the new dev page, and the hurdles there are just the livestock purchase/tracking that'll go in with adv mode sites as they progress, and the minor pathing changes to get them to move with velocity, which will probably want the attack/move speed split from the combat rewrite first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Charey Wolf on October 18, 2012, 11:59:14 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 18, 2012, 03:36:46 pm

Here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1457383;topicseen#msg1457383) is a relevant quote:

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Mephansteras

When are Adventurers and Fortress Mode dwarves going to get Mounts? What are the current hurdles involved in allowing those, since invaders seem to use mounts just fine?

I don't know if fortress mode dwarves are ever going to get mounts, though modders will probably want them in any case.  Adv mode mounts are in the hero section on the new dev page, and the hurdles there are just the livestock purchase/tracking that'll go in with adv mode sites as they progress, and the minor pathing changes to get them to move with velocity, which will probably want the attack/move speed split from the combat rewrite first.

Half way there!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on October 19, 2012, 04:03:28 am

Quote from: Fieari on October 18, 2012, 11:25:58 am

You know, that means it'd be possible for Toady to work out a formula for it, using a combination of the creature's size, weight, proportional leg size, strength stats.

Which would make proportional sizes start mattering for things beside just targeting and hit percentages.  I like when things matter.

Which is fine by me as long as we can override it. DF world is still a fantasy world, and it'll be a nightmare modding in a creature with unlikely jump ability if you have to work out the numbers so it's coherent.
We need to keep the "A Wizard Did It".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 19, 2012, 11:09:54 am

Quote from: Dae on October 19, 2012, 04:03:28 am

Quote from: Fieari on October 18, 2012, 11:25:58 am

You know, that means it'd be possible for Toady to work out a formula for it, using a combination of the creature's size, weight, proportional leg size, strength stats.

Which would make proportional sizes start mattering for things beside just targeting and hit percentages.  I like when things matter.

Which is fine by me as long as we can override it. DF world is still a fantasy world, and it'll be a nightmare modding in a creature with unlikely jump ability if you have to work out the numbers so it's coherent.
We need to keep the "A Wizard Did It".

In that case, there could be a jump force number (which would have its own tag) that directly alters how high the creature can jump. That way the equation can keep all the above stats for figuring out how high or how far a creature can jump and then the jump force will be added at the end for adjustments not requiring the modder to do the math and make the creature ultra-realistic. (Also this way the jump force number could be used with magic/syndromes for when magical effects increase or decrease jumping ability.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on October 19, 2012, 11:26:50 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 19, 2012, 11:09:54 am

Quote from: Dae on October 19, 2012, 04:03:28 am

Quote from: Fieari on October 18, 2012, 11:25:58 am

You know, that means it'd be possible for Toady to work out a formula for it, using a combination of the creature's size, weight, proportional leg size, strength stats.

Which would make proportional sizes start mattering for things beside just targeting and hit percentages.  I like when things matter.

Which is fine by me as long as we can override it. DF world is still a fantasy world, and it'll be a nightmare modding in a creature with unlikely jump ability if you have to work out the numbers so it's coherent.
We need to keep the "A Wizard Did It".

In that case, there could be a jump force number (which would have its own tag) that directly alters how high the creature can jump. That way the equation can keep all the above stats for figuring out how high or how far a creature can jump and then the jump force will be added at the end for adjustments not requiring the modder to do the math and make the creature ultra-realistic. (Also this way the jump force number could be used with magic/syndromes for when magical effects increase or decrease jumping ability.)

Or just adding the [JUMP_FORCE] tag and forgetting about setting a default value... I don't know what'll take more time for Toady : coding a way to calculate a reasonnable default jump ability or setting an additional tag to all creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 19, 2012, 12:23:25 pm

its not about what takes longer, its about whats better(beware, subject to subjectivity). i assume what toady thinks is better would be the more complicated, realistic and procedural approach.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on October 19, 2012, 05:30:43 pm

I know I probably should have asked this a few weeks ago when Toady was working on Goblin sites, but I just now thought of this.

How extensive will Goblin slavery be in the next release? I know that kidnapped children are in, but is anything else planned?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 19, 2012, 06:06:02 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

That's a suggestion and an all-too-common one. Also, you can disable them with advanced worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 19, 2012, 07:32:37 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Putnam answered already and also, this is a suggestion, not a question. Wrong thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 07:41:33 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 19, 2012, 07:32:37 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Putnam answered already and also, this is a suggestion, not a question. Wrong thread.

I guess your right there. I know you can remove it in AWG, but it always seems like a pain in the ass too me. I just wish they wernt there all together.

I feel like an idiot now :p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 20, 2012, 02:43:11 am

i dont see why people always want to disable something for everyone only because they dont like it themselves. i for my part like the boogeymen and i certainly dont want to be robbed of them only because someone else doesnt want them.

(somehow im feeling antagonistic this week)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 04:21:36 am

Quote from: adasdad on October 06, 2012, 11:31:54 am

will we get the ability in adventure mode to "mix" items without defining a specific reaction, for instance dipping weapons into vials of something, or poisoning food?

For me this has always been interesting in other "Rogue Likes", the idea that you can say kill a Vampire, and collect its blood, then, coat a blade with it, and stab some random person. And have that reaction take place. The liquids/powders and their reactions are all in place I think, but just a way to add them to other items would be amazing.

And if this were to be implemented, imagine the Fortress mode reactions, capturing a GCS and "milking" it's venom...
"The Goblin was struck by the Venom coated **Wooden Spork** hehe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 04:38:01 am

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Bogeymen should get less common as more reasons for stalking through the night go in (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1719248#msg1719248). Presumably when Toady decides to take on parts of the thief role would be a good time.
   

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Cthulhu

Are boogeymen and the like always going to be this prominent?  It's cool that they're spotlighted now but I can see it getting kind of annoying once the game is more complete.

Quote from: thvaz

The release of 31.17 was a sucess amongst the playerbase, with few bugs and complains about the new mechanics. One of the complains is about the onipresence of bogeymen when alone at night. There will be some fine tuning about them in the future?

Nah, traveling alone in the night is too interesting a situation to always have every non-savage forest/plain/swamp bogeyman infested, but we wanted to try out this kind of atmosphere.  Once there's more of a reason to reclaim a piece of the night, we'll do that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 04:44:57 am

And as for the whole "To Boogymen or Not to Boogymen" I think giving us an option to disable or alter the parameters of create a world to have not only map size, mineral scarcity etc. but to have a night creature set of options, such as "Types of creatures present" or even turning each "Race" of night creature off. Maybe even as far as to say make this world a "zombie apocalypse" sort of situation.

This might sound like an AWG function, but just a few key "On/Off" options on the regular create a world would make sense, feel free to disagree :)

The only way to keep everyone happy is to make the game flexible like that, as we've just seen, boogeymen make the game better for some people, while it makes it worse for others, we need to keep everyone happy :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 05:10:49 am

Adding more and more options to Create a New World kind of runs counter to it being the simple way to generate a world, but there could be a middle ground between Create a New World and Advanced World Gen (where you can already fine tune the number of night creature types), I'm pretty sure. An idea would be a way to enter a slightly more complex screen from Create a New World for each of the existing options, but that goes into suggestion territory.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 20, 2012, 06:24:36 am

I don't think an option bwetween the two is required. It's easy enough to change the specific thing you want in Advanced World Gen by simply leaving the other options alone. I just wish we could rename civilizations and choose civ symbols, and choose the gods and...Ok, I'll stop.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 06:41:01 am

Both really good points, and I think a middle ground would be great, but yeah, this isn't the place for suggestions, just questions so :/


Question, ...will we have more Create a world options any time soon? in regards to individual factors, factions or "scenarios" such as a template to the state of a world after world gen?

;) lol made a question out of it, haha

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 07:08:35 am

Toady previously mentioned that a Region/Island switch would be viable for the screen, and I would expect that once there are mood/atmosphere/genre factors for worldgen, you could choose something like Grim Fairytale or Epic Fantasy there as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 08:15:46 am

One question I have about reaction moments (such as blocking in fights and intercepting attacks) will it be possible to grab arrows mid flight "Ninja Style?" also, are there certain attacks that cannot be intercepted at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 20, 2012, 08:35:00 am

We're into elf sites and have orchards now.

Will we be able to get orchards in Dwarf Fortress Mode too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on October 20, 2012, 09:22:07 am

Quote from: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 08:15:46 am

will it be possible to grab arrows mid flight "Ninja Style?"

I'm pretty sure he's addressed this specifically before, and said no - arrows travel instantaneously right now and I think he intends to keep it that way, in fact when the combat/movement speed split was happening I seem to remember him mentioning making sure the movement speed system would preserve the way arrows work now, and not allow very fast characters to get a turn while an arrow is in mid-flight and step out of its way. Grabbing arrows out of the air with reaction moments would be very similar to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on October 20, 2012, 10:17:46 am

Ah ok, thanks :) I must have missed that post :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 20, 2012, 12:15:17 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 04:38:01 am

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Bogeymen should get less common as more reasons for stalking through the night go in (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1719248#msg1719248). Presumably when Toady decides to take on parts of the thief role would be a good time.
   

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Cthulhu

Are boogeymen and the like always going to be this prominent?  It's cool that they're spotlighted now but I can see it getting kind of annoying once the game is more complete.

Quote from: thvaz

The release of 31.17 was a sucess amongst the playerbase, with few bugs and complains about the new mechanics. One of the complains is about the onipresence of bogeymen when alone at night. There will be some fine tuning about them in the future?

Nah, traveling alone in the night is too interesting a situation to always have every non-savage forest/plain/swamp bogeyman infested, but we wanted to try out this kind of atmosphere.  Once there's more of a reason to reclaim a piece of the night, we'll do that.

Well, eventually it should get easier to avoid boogeymen as time goes on. Right now, your anti-boogey options are to have party members, be in town staying the night, or stay the night in a lair.

But with caravans and other entities moving around we might eventually see the potential to spend a night at a temporary camp set up by merchants and such. Or even flat-out traveling with the caravan for safety in numbers sake when going through potentially dangerous territory.

My point is as new features are added the boogeyman problem might naturally become less due to having more options to avoid them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on October 20, 2012, 02:15:17 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 20, 2012, 12:15:17 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 04:38:01 am

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on October 19, 2012, 06:02:57 pm

Oh, oh, oh, pick me!

Will you please, please get rid of those god damn annoying bastards called Bogeymen? I mean, with adding all this new, immersive stuff to adventure mode, I just think it would be appropriate to get rid of those buggers aswell.

Bogeymen should get less common as more reasons for stalking through the night go in (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1719248#msg1719248). Presumably when Toady decides to take on parts of the thief role would be a good time.
   

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Cthulhu

Are boogeymen and the like always going to be this prominent?  It's cool that they're spotlighted now but I can see it getting kind of annoying once the game is more complete.

Quote from: thvaz

The release of 31.17 was a sucess amongst the playerbase, with few bugs and complains about the new mechanics. One of the complains is about the onipresence of bogeymen when alone at night. There will be some fine tuning about them in the future?

Nah, traveling alone in the night is too interesting a situation to always have every non-savage forest/plain/swamp bogeyman infested, but we wanted to try out this kind of atmosphere.  Once there's more of a reason to reclaim a piece of the night, we'll do that.

Well, eventually it should get easier to avoid boogeymen as time goes on. Right now, your anti-boogey options are to have party members, be in town staying the night, or stay the night in a lair.

But with caravans and other entities moving around we might eventually see the potential to spend a night at a temporary camp set up by merchants and such. Or even flat-out traveling with the caravan for safety in numbers sake when going through potentially dangerous territory.

My point is as new features are added the boogeyman problem might naturally become less due to having more options to avoid them.

Actually, from my little experience, I find mountains to be the safe place from boogeymen as well.
But hey...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: brilliantazure on October 20, 2012, 04:43:22 pm

Ok, this is completely off the topic of trees and whatever, but something I've been wondering for awhile is whether or not there are currently plans to make instruments usable, perhaps via some sort of musician job or simply as some sort of idle action when dwarves are sitting around in meeting halls. I think it would be neat to have dedicated bards, perhaps even whole bands, playing in designated meeting halls and providing happy thoughts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2012, 05:29:50 pm

Quote from: brilliantazure on October 20, 2012, 04:43:22 pm

Ok, this is completely off the topic of trees and whatever, but something I've been wondering for awhile is whether or not there are currently plans to make instruments usable, perhaps via some sort of musician job or simply as some sort of idle action when dwarves are sitting around in meeting halls. I think it would be neat to have dedicated bards, perhaps even whole bands, playing in designated meeting halls and providing happy thoughts.

Yes, there are such plans. You can find a quick mention on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) under "Inns, taverns and dens" in the Thief role :

Quote

Musical instrument use, dancing, storytelling, etc.

More discussion can be found in DF Talk #12 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html), I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pikdome on October 21, 2012, 03:47:15 am

Will some trees have saps that can be harvested? What about pine sap being made into pine pitch glue? Do you think dwarves would enjoy tapping sugar maples roots in the winter and gathering the sap and turning it into maple booze?

I mean, technically it wouldn't be elfy, they ain't goin' above the ground ta' do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 21, 2012, 07:00:43 am

Last we heard, Toady hadn't done anything with sap yet, which was a few days before he  went into climbing and jumping. Chances are that this hasn't changed yet, though perhaps during the elf site work he'll find a reason to do so.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Auning

...
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
...

...  Haven't done anything with sap. ...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on October 21, 2012, 09:17:52 am

At present, Dwarven society is quite a model of gender equality. Will factors such as Dwarven women's place in society be addressed at a later point in DF's development? Is it your intention to keep their society equal, or should there be differences that are more in keeping with traditional western european medieval society? The reason that I ask this is that some of us were having a debate over whether a Dwarven language should be gendered (on the basis of personal pronouns) because that would conflict with the gender equality that is apparently present in Dwarven culture.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 21, 2012, 10:37:38 am

well, they certainly arent equal in _my_ forts...
every immigrant that arrives immediately gets either "worker" or "soldier" as a nickname, with males all being drafted and females left to do the rest of the work, since i find their habit of carrying babies into battle or having children follow them all the time very... unproductive... with them making their families tantrum when they die and all...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 21, 2012, 11:14:10 am

Quote from: Owlbread on October 21, 2012, 09:17:52 am

At present, Dwarven society is quite a model of gender equality. Will factors such as Dwarven women's place in society be addressed at a later point in DF's development? Is it your intention to keep their society equal, or should there be differences that are more in keeping with traditional western european medieval society? The reason that I ask this is that some of us were having a debate over whether a Dwarven language should be gendered (on the basis of personal pronouns) because that would conflict with the gender equality that is apparently present in Dwarven culture.

In a similar direction:

Can you say a bit more about what sort of flavour each of the races will have? E.g. humans being similar to ancient Greece or Rome or to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever; I hope you know what I mean ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tps12 on October 21, 2012, 12:23:09 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on October 21, 2012, 11:14:10 am

Can you say a bit more about what sort of flavour each of the races will have? E.g. humans being similar to ancient Greece or Rome or to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever; I hope you know what I mean ;)

I think aside from the general medieval time period, Toady's goal is that the societies of non-human races should not resemble any historical human societies.

I remember this specifically in the discussion of whether goblins need to eat: some people suggested goblins could be nomadic herders patterned after historical Mongols, and his response was that goblins shouldn't act like Mongols because the game should be able to make human civilizations that look Mongolian. The impression I got was that the simulation should account for the full diversity of historical human societies, with non-human civilizations looking like something else entirely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on October 21, 2012, 02:22:07 pm

Quote from: tps12 on October 21, 2012, 12:23:09 pm

I think aside from the general medieval time period, Toady's goal is that the societies of non-human races should not resemble any historical human societies.

I remember this specifically in the discussion of whether goblins need to eat: some people suggested goblins could be nomadic herders patterned after historical Mongols, and his response was that goblins shouldn't act like Mongols because the game should be able to make human civilizations that look Mongolian. The impression I got was that the simulation should account for the full diversity of historical human societies, with non-human civilizations looking like something else entirely.

would be cool if they were possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 21, 2012, 04:15:10 pm

Quote from: tps12 on October 21, 2012, 12:23:09 pm

The impression I got was that the simulation should account for the full diversity of historical human societies, with non-human civilizations looking like something else entirely.

That was why I asked about flavour and not about similar societies in real life - I just wanted some impression of what the various races will end up looking like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on October 21, 2012, 04:37:42 pm

I think the intention is that, eventually, each nation will have a culture procedurally generated within a set of basic racial guidelines(like the current entity ethics), to allow for maximum variation.
I other words, humans will be like a lot of things, goblins will be like a lot of things, but each country of each race will be unique to the world it was generated in, and not particularly 'like' any given real culture.

At least that's the impression I've gotten over the years when these kind of questions pop up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also goblins should eat again now that they're getting sites. I imagine vast ranches of elk bird and stolen cattle, awaiting the eventual slaughter. Also beak dog ranches where they get trained for war. But that doesn't belong here. Sorry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on October 21, 2012, 05:25:23 pm

Toady seemed to misunderstand one of my questions, so I'll reword it.

Will the fruits develop from flowers, or will they just appear on the tree? And if flowers do mature into fruit, will the flowers of non-fruiting trees produce seed pods or whatever. (Note that I am NOT asking if we'll have non-abstract plant reproduction. I know we won't. But this would be a step in that direction.)

Also, another goblin question I probably should have asked earlier.

Does it fit in your view of goblins for them to have farms to feed their livestock (once feed is implemented, of course), and perhaps their slaves (as in, feeding slaves the same gruel they feed their animals)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on October 21, 2012, 07:54:47 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on October 21, 2012, 04:37:42 pm

Also goblins should eat again now that they're getting sites. I imagine vast ranches of elk bird and stolen cattle, awaiting the eventual slaughter. Also beak dog ranches where they get trained for war. But that doesn't belong here. Sorry.

I think one of the original rationales for them not was that the whole idea of goblin farmers didn't fit the aesthetic, but if the goblins were hunters and raiders, and kept slaves to do the farming, I think it would make a lot of sense for them to eat again.  I picture goblin fields being different from human fields in that they could be underground with watchtowers in the caverns to keep an eye on slave farmers, while aboveground plots would be walled and towered, giving a real prison-y vibe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 21, 2012, 07:56:26 pm

i like that idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 21, 2012, 08:59:17 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on October 21, 2012, 04:37:42 pm

I think the intention is that, eventually, each nation will have a culture procedurally generated within a set of basic racial guidelines(like the current entity ethics), to allow for maximum variation.
I other words, humans will be like a lot of things, goblins will be like a lot of things, but each country of each race will be unique to the world it was generated in, and not particularly 'like' any given real culture.

At least that's the impression I've gotten over the years when these kind of questions pop up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also goblins should eat again now that they're getting sites. I imagine vast ranches of elk bird and stolen cattle, awaiting the eventual slaughter. Also beak dog ranches where they get trained for war. But that doesn't belong here. Sorry.

Goblins not eating is an intentional point of flavor. They can eat meat but can also survive without it, and Toady doesn't intend to change that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 21, 2012, 09:38:25 pm

Will we be able to specify that some creatures can climb smooth and ice walls?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on October 21, 2012, 10:31:30 pm

Quote from: Pikdome on October 21, 2012, 03:47:15 am

Will some trees have saps that can be harvested? What about pine sap being made into pine pitch glue? Do you think dwarves would enjoy tapping sugar maples roots in the winter and gathering the sap and turning it into maple booze?

I mean, technically it wouldn't be elfy, they ain't goin' above the ground ta' do it.

From Toady's last FotF reply:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Auning

Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.

Haven't done anything with sap.

Sounds like he isn't planning on doing it in the next release, but who knows what the future may hold for sap and other non-fruit non-wood tree products.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 22, 2012, 09:13:48 am

also, maple-tree-sap is not the only edible one

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 22, 2012, 03:20:22 pm

theres birch sap leading to birch soda, RUBBER sap leading to RUBBER, sugar cane sap leading to SWEET THINGS, uh... several dozen more?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaciusDF on October 22, 2012, 03:28:27 pm

When will we know the Beta game? I think so that's Alfa version, doesn't it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 22, 2012, 03:31:48 pm

Quote from: MaciusDF on October 22, 2012, 03:28:27 pm

When will we know the Beta game? I think so that's Alfa version, doesn't it?

2030, old boy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaciusDF on October 22, 2012, 04:12:33 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 22, 2012, 03:31:48 pm

Quote from: MaciusDF on October 22, 2012, 03:28:27 pm

When will we know the Beta game? I think so that's Alfa version, doesn't it?

2030, old boy.

Im spanish and my English skills isnt very well xd. 2030? o my god, so later jaja

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 22, 2012, 04:22:40 pm

Yep.  We're still technically pre-Alpha.  And everything in game is still an "emergent feature".  That's what makes it so fun! (And !!FUN!!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on October 22, 2012, 07:30:44 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 22, 2012, 03:31:48 pm

Quote from: MaciusDF on October 22, 2012, 03:28:27 pm

When will we know the Beta game? I think so that's Alfa version, doesn't it?

2030, old boy.

You got him all wrong, guys. He's just excited about the plant and tree updates - he was trying to ask if this was the Alfalfa version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on October 22, 2012, 09:20:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 22, 2012, 03:20:22 pm

theres birch sap leading to birch soda, RUBBER sap leading to RUBBER, sugar cane sap leading to SWEET THINGS, uh... several dozen more?

The day I can drive a group of dugged out, sugar addicts to their death's, by promising them their weight in drug as a frikking @ symbol, will be the day that I win dwarf fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 23, 2012, 10:00:43 am

How big is this update by now? I can't remember half the features going into it...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 23, 2012, 11:08:27 am

There may be some things missing, but this should be most of the confirmed coded/started features.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Enemy Groups
*Entities put claims on sites
*Bandits harass townspeople
*Invaders cause mayhem in conquered sites
**Destroyed buildings, killed historical figures, things impaled on upright weapons...
*Invaders have camps with tents for soldiers and large tents for commanders
*Soldiers patrol the camp, raise the alarm
*Commanders chased out of their camp try to return due to their responsibilities

Combat and Movement
*No immediate enemy recognition in cities to avoid fights to the death on the street
*Conflicts and conflict levels are tracked
*Critters can enter a state of terror from lethal battle
*Enemies can surrender
*Move/Attack split
*Reaction moments (catching a swung fist)
*Sound indicators/vision cones
*Running, creeping, walking, sneaking, as opposed to just walk and sneak
**Need to accelerate
**Sharp turns slow you down
*Sneaking is suspicious
*Creatures leave tracks as they move unless they fly or are ghosts
**Track descriptions depend on what  left the track - feet, boots, turbans...
*Tracks can be found in their own vision mode
*Climbing
**Climb up to branches, walls or down to ledges
**Can't climb smoothed walls or ice walls
*Jumping
**Can grab onto tiles when jumping or falling

Creatures
*Townspeople no longer know exact positions of lairs
*Vampires can sense creatures with blood.
**More generally, tags to sense arbitrary creature classes
**can be attached via interactions/syndromes

Adventure mode
*New opening paragraph depending on your starting situation.
*New demon-related locations
*Goblin sites realized
**Central tower with pits and tunnels underneath
***Connects to first underground layer
**Trenches, tunnel entrances, watchtowers
**Prisons with prisoners and snatched children
*Elf sites
**Orchards

Environment
*Multitile trees
**Falling leaves and fruit
**Item clouds/spatter
*Flowers

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 23, 2012, 01:57:21 pm

it it as big as the 2010 update?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 23, 2012, 02:09:27 pm

I don't know, but it's pretty fucking big!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Errant Gamer on October 23, 2012, 03:12:12 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 23, 2012, 02:09:27 pm

I don't know, but it's pretty fucking big!

This can only be a good thing. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 23, 2012, 03:15:25 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 23, 2012, 01:57:21 pm

it it as big as the 2010 update?

It doesn't have as many listed features, but more of the listed features are actually things we care about.  Most of the 2010 update was breaking things and bringing them back to the former levels of functionality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 23, 2012, 03:33:29 pm

Yeah. DF2013 will truly be an update for the ages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 23, 2012, 05:00:38 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 23, 2012, 11:08:27 am

There may be some things missing, but this should be most of the confirmed coded/started features.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Enemy Groups
*Entities put claims on sites
*Bandits harass townspeople
*Invaders cause mayhem in conquered sites
**Destroyed buildings, killed historical figures, things impaled on upright weapons...
*Invaders have camps with tents for soldiers and large tents for commanders
*Soldiers patrol the camp, raise the alarm
*Commanders chased out of their camp try to return due to their responsibilities

Combat and Movement
*No immediate enemy recognition in cities to avoid fights to the death on the street
*Conflicts and conflict levels are tracked
*Critters can enter a state of terror from lethal battle
*Enemies can surrender
*Move/Attack split
*Reaction moments (catching a swung fist)
*Sound indicators/vision cones
*Running, creeping, walking, sneaking, as opposed to just walk and sneak
**Need to accelerate
**Sharp turns slow you down
*Sneaking is suspicious
*Creatures leave tracks as they move unless they fly or are ghosts
**Track descriptions depend on what  left the track - feet, boots, turbans...
*Tracks can be found in their own vision mode
*Climbing
**Climb up to branches, walls or down to ledges
**Can't climb smoothed walls or ice walls
*Jumping
**Can grab onto tiles when jumping or falling

Creatures
*Townspeople no longer know exact positions of lairs
*Vampires can sense creatures with blood.
**More generally, tags to sense arbitrary creature classes
**can be attached via interactions/syndromes

Adventure mode
*New opening paragraph depending on your starting situation.
*New demon-related locations
*Goblin sites realized
**Central tower with pits and tunnels underneath
***Connects to first underground layer
**Trenches, tunnel entrances, watchtowers
**Prisons with prisoners and snatched children
*Elf sites
**Orchards

Environment
*Multitile trees
**Falling leaves and fruit
**Item clouds/spatter
*Flowers

We been needing a proper list of changes for a while now. I went ahead and made an easily linkable google doc, and also rearranged things a bit just based on what I figured would make more sense to people who haven't been following along so closely.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on October 23, 2012, 05:03:33 pm

Assuming we get multi-tile mushrooms are we likely to see any nice shelf ones (https://www.google.com/search?q=shelf+mushrooms&tbm=isch)? Having some big enough to walk on or even build on would be cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on October 23, 2012, 07:48:42 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on October 23, 2012, 05:00:38 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 23, 2012, 11:08:27 am

There may be some things missing, but this should be most of the confirmed coded/started features.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Enemy Groups
*Entities put claims on sites
*Bandits harass townspeople
*Invaders cause mayhem in conquered sites
**Destroyed buildings, killed historical figures, things impaled on upright weapons...
*Invaders have camps with tents for soldiers and large tents for commanders
*Soldiers patrol the camp, raise the alarm
*Commanders chased out of their camp try to return due to their responsibilities

Combat and Movement
*No immediate enemy recognition in cities to avoid fights to the death on the street
*Conflicts and conflict levels are tracked
*Critters can enter a state of terror from lethal battle
*Enemies can surrender
*Move/Attack split
*Reaction moments (catching a swung fist)
*Sound indicators/vision cones
*Running, creeping, walking, sneaking, as opposed to just walk and sneak
**Need to accelerate
**Sharp turns slow you down
*Sneaking is suspicious
*Creatures leave tracks as they move unless they fly or are ghosts
**Track descriptions depend on what  left the track - feet, boots, turbans...
*Tracks can be found in their own vision mode
*Climbing
**Climb up to branches, walls or down to ledges
**Can't climb smoothed walls or ice walls
*Jumping
**Can grab onto tiles when jumping or falling

Creatures
*Townspeople no longer know exact positions of lairs
*Vampires can sense creatures with blood.
**More generally, tags to sense arbitrary creature classes
**can be attached via interactions/syndromes

Adventure mode
*New opening paragraph depending on your starting situation.
*New demon-related locations
*Goblin sites realized
**Central tower with pits and tunnels underneath
***Connects to first underground layer
**Trenches, tunnel entrances, watchtowers
**Prisons with prisoners and snatched children
*Elf sites
**Orchards

Environment
*Multitile trees
**Falling leaves and fruit
**Item clouds/spatter
*Flowers

We been needing a proper list of changes for a while now. I went ahead and made an easily linkable google doc, and also rearranged things a bit just based on what I figured would make more sense to people who haven't been following along so closely.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit)

I think "less lethal" combat should be added to the list.
Disregard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 23, 2012, 08:34:27 pm

Quote from: Vattic on October 23, 2012, 05:03:33 pm

Assuming we get multi-tile mushrooms are we likely to see any nice shelf ones (https://www.google.com/search?q=shelf+mushrooms&tbm=isch)? Having some big enough to walk on or even build on would be cool.

That would be awesome, and actually pretty realistic, I just wonder how the game would handle cavern walls turning to deal with it, or passages, for that matter

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaciusDF on October 24, 2012, 08:12:45 am

I've played my world DF and I lasted two hours. I'm sad because I have not lasted long. Have you lasted long in your games?
I hope that in your games last much longer xd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on October 24, 2012, 11:34:08 am

With the next version, will all the civ creatures (e.g. golbins, elfs and dwarfs) from legends be present in the map? Like I can talk to everybody (alive) from legends in adventure mode? What about FB/Titans, do you plan to have them all on the map? How will they move/decide where they will strike?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 24, 2012, 12:43:30 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on October 24, 2012, 11:34:08 am

With the next version, will all the civ creatures (e.g. golbins, elfs and dwarfs) from legends be present in the map? Like I can talk to everybody (alive) from legends in adventure mode? What about FB/Titans, do you plan to have them all on the map? How will they move/decide where they will strike?

Yes; yes (if they're friendly); titans still have shrines and FBs are underground; megabeasts won't attack (yet) but civilizations will go to war with each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 24, 2012, 02:22:19 pm

i still wonder how dwarf forts will be genned...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 24, 2012, 04:56:07 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 24, 2012, 02:22:19 pm

i still wonder how dwarf forts will be genned...

Fractal pattern generating algorithms...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on October 24, 2012, 05:06:45 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 24, 2012, 04:56:07 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 24, 2012, 02:22:19 pm

i still wonder how dwarf forts will be genned...

Fractal pattern generating algorithms...

The meeting hall just goes on. and on. and on. and on. and on.


How closely will dwarf mountain halls follow player forts? will you be using famous player forts for designs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 24, 2012, 05:10:05 pm

will there be more than one design for mountain halls?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on October 24, 2012, 07:19:33 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on October 24, 2012, 05:06:45 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 24, 2012, 04:56:07 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 24, 2012, 02:22:19 pm

i still wonder how dwarf forts will be genned...

Fractal pattern generating algorithms...

The meeting hall just goes on. and on. and on. and on. and on.


How closely will dwarf mountain halls follow player forts? will you be using famous player forts for designs?

Not likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 24, 2012, 09:59:39 pm

Will there be a form of true rebirth or possibly reincarnation? Rather than mummies that rot in tombs, will we ever see a fallen entombed general ever leave the tomb and rejoin society for some cause? And if an entity member worships a god of rebirth or something, will we see any form of reincarnation, either as a new birth of the same species, or perhaps different species? And would they be aware of it?

If either or both of these are implemented, would they show up beyond just being viewable in Legends mode? Would we see a dwarf be reborn/reincarnated in fortress mode, or perhaps have an adventurer do the same and be replayable from their new life?

On a completley unrelated note:
My wife was wondering, Will various foods in the game have viewable flavors? Such as if certain food is sweet or spicy, and if dwarves would prefer different flavors, as opposed to/in addition to specific foods. Also, would they have allergies to particular foods? Or at least disliking a particular food, which would cause a minor bad thought?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nauticus on October 25, 2012, 03:48:45 am

Will there be an apprenticeship system for non-military skills?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 25, 2012, 07:09:15 am

Quote from: nauticus on October 25, 2012, 03:48:45 am

Will there be an apprenticeship system for non-military skills?

It's an eventual goal, and the military system is supposed be flexible enough to eventually cover all sorts of teaching. Apprenticeship specifically has been mentioned in relation to guilds (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1413312#msg1413312).

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: zwei

One of popular mods are custom workshops designed to train skills. How far in pipeline are things that would make it obsolete: like books, master/apprentice relationships, training straw dummies for soldiers, toys providing experience for children and geting experience by observing others to do something or by talking to then about subject.

Right now the idea is to put in books in the treasure hunter section, and master/apprentice stuff is the province of guilds (though I don't imagine that's as relevant here, since the trades already have workshops, although children can't learn at them).  That enables the things you are talking about in part, but it's difficult to talk about with getting down into specific skills.  I imagine the mods are wide-ranging.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 09:18:04 am

@mastahcheese: resurrection (as opposed to animation) is already a valid interaction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on October 25, 2012, 11:23:55 am

Remind me, guys. Are births, successions, and other related activities after world gen planned for this release? I thought I read that it was, but I can't remember.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on October 25, 2012, 11:47:58 am

Quote from: Tov01 on October 25, 2012, 11:23:55 am

Remind me, guys. Are births, successions, and other related activities after world gen planned for this release? I thought I read that it was, but I can't remember.

It'll either go in in this release or the one after most likely, depends on how far Toady will keep adding stuff before actually putting a version out I guess ^^
(My guess would be this release though)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 25, 2012, 03:55:21 pm

Quote from: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

I'm expecting a "I could release the game tomorrow, but will instead add totally unrelated feature Z" dev log on december 30th.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on October 25, 2012, 07:29:02 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on October 25, 2012, 03:55:21 pm

Quote from: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

I'm expecting a "I could release the game tomorrow, but will instead add totally unrelated feature Z" dev log on december 30th.

Am I the only one that thinks this is a good thing? I love releases as much as the next guy, but I feel like if the Toad feels a feature is worth delaying a release for then it's certainly worth waiting for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 25, 2012, 07:32:33 pm

true

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 25, 2012, 07:34:16 pm

Quote from: Shinotsa on October 25, 2012, 07:29:02 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on October 25, 2012, 03:55:21 pm

Quote from: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

I'm expecting a "I could release the game tomorrow, but will instead add totally unrelated feature Z" dev log on december 30th.

Am I the only one that thinks this is a good thing? I love releases as much as the next guy, but I feel like if the Toad feels a feature is worth delaying a release for then it's certainly worth waiting for.

Me too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 25, 2012, 07:59:36 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 09:18:04 am

@mastahcheese: resurrection (as opposed to animation) is already a valid interaction.

I know it's a valid interaction, but currently (In vanilla DF at least) it extends to people being revived in a tomb, and waiting for an adventurer to come tick them off.
What I'm refering to is for those people to then leave that said tomb, and go and re-enter society, possibly attemping to re-start a war that's been dead for 200 years, or other such actions.

If there is a way to do this through modding already, that would be totally awesome, but I'm fairly sure that's hardcoded, and wouldn't work in fortress mode or adventurer mode in the ways that I mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 08:30:49 pm

Resurrection works perfectly well through modding, but only in adventurer and fort mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on October 25, 2012, 08:46:59 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 25, 2012, 07:59:36 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 09:18:04 am

@mastahcheese: resurrection (as opposed to animation) is already a valid interaction.

I know it's a valid interaction, but currently (In vanilla DF at least) it extends to people being revived in a tomb, and waiting for an adventurer to come tick them off.
What I'm refering to is for those people to then leave that said tomb, and go and re-enter society, possibly attemping to re-start a war that's been dead for 200 years, or other such actions.

If there is a way to do this through modding already, that would be totally awesome, but I'm fairly sure that's hardcoded, and wouldn't work in fortress mode or adventurer mode in the ways that I mentioned.

DF talk 16 brings up some interesting concepts behind death revival and multiple plains of existence. it involved resurrection as well as other adventurers trying to bring you back from the dead among other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on October 26, 2012, 09:42:41 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 25, 2012, 07:59:36 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 09:18:04 am

@mastahcheese: resurrection (as opposed to animation) is already a valid interaction.

I know it's a valid interaction, but currently (In vanilla DF at least) it extends to people being revived in a tomb, and waiting for an adventurer to come tick them off.
What I'm refering to is for those people to then leave that said tomb, and go and re-enter society, possibly attemping to re-start a war that's been dead for 200 years, or other such actions.

If there is a way to do this through modding already, that would be totally awesome, but I'm fairly sure that's hardcoded, and wouldn't work in fortress mode or adventurer mode in the ways that I mentioned.

Try the masterwork mod. There are several resurrection spells. Fox example, try a lifemancer adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 26, 2012, 10:33:47 am

Quote from: Rockphed on October 25, 2012, 03:55:21 pm

Quote from: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

I'm expecting a "I could release the game tomorrow, but will instead add totally unrelated feature Z" dev log on december 30th.

this is a little bit unfair. They are never 'totally unrelated'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 26, 2012, 12:33:09 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 26, 2012, 10:33:47 am

Quote from: Rockphed on October 25, 2012, 03:55:21 pm

Quote from: Aerval on October 25, 2012, 01:49:33 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on October 25, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

ok I might be the troll but eh... (btw I dont get it why is the most popular troll face adorned with french ornaments? french people arent trolls! not all of them I mean)
when do you think this release will be out?

Pretty sure it won't come in 2012. My guess would be about June.

I'm expecting a "I could release the game tomorrow, but will instead add totally unrelated feature Z" dev log on december 30th.

this is a little bit unfair. They are never 'totally unrelated'.

Okay, "Chain of barely related features".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 26, 2012, 04:26:59 pm

What features of this pending release are barely related? The causal link for all the features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 26, 2012, 06:11:03 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 26, 2012, 04:26:59 pm

What features of this pending release are barely related? The causal link for all the features.

Oh, I am not saying that any features for this release are barely related.  I am saying that on December 30th Toady will go off on a tangent of some sort.  I expect it to be an awesome tangent, but a tangent nonetheless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 26, 2012, 08:29:54 pm

Damn, long time with no devlog update! I suppose Toady either wants to get everything working before he tells us, or there are a lot of bugs to fix.

Quote from: Putnam on October 25, 2012, 08:30:49 pm

Resurrection works perfectly well through modding, but only in adventurer and fort mode.

A few mods have this. I haven't seen it used in worldgen though, mostly because I haven't used those mods, but...
If we have a modded world where some good regions resurrect the dead, are the dead returned to life and the population during worldgen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 26, 2012, 11:53:46 pm

Does anyone know what Toady'll tackle after elves and dwarves? I expect elves will take about a month, so most of November, and most of the stuff for dwarves is already in one way or another so I'd give that 'till the end of 2012.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 27, 2012, 12:52:09 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 26, 2012, 11:53:46 pm

Does anyone know what Toady'll tackle after elves and dwarves? I expect elves will take about a month, so most of November, and most of the stuff for dwarves is already in one way or another so I'd give that 'till the end of 2012.

So, from the Dev Logs, after he gets done with the Dorf Sites, he'll have to go back to Gobo sites because there were in site job things that they shared. There also suppose to be Kobold sites too.

What was left ambiguous, was the Invaded Town stuff, and if that'll be applied to these new sites and when it'll be applied.

Like when ToadyOne said he was done with Gobo site, does that mean that they can be invaded to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 27, 2012, 01:03:17 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on October 26, 2012, 11:53:46 pm

Does anyone know what Toady'll tackle after elves and dwarves? I expect elves will take about a month, so most of November, and most of the stuff for dwarves is already in one way or another so I'd give that 'till the end of 2012.

After dwarves he plans to finish up goblins. He hasn't said after that, but the only other major race is kobolds so it's reasonable to surmise that it'll be them.
Other than races, I think the only big thing he wants to work on is heritance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 27, 2012, 01:35:00 am

Great! I'll put my bets on March or April '13.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 27, 2012, 01:48:11 am

Anything from the hero role is fair game for this release. So mounts, special moves, combat stance, fire response, fire use, disguises, interrogations, or improved orders may make it in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 27, 2012, 01:54:18 am

We were promised better fire response last group of release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on October 27, 2012, 02:09:04 am

Will you provide pictures of the new sites, or will that be a surprise for release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 27, 2012, 02:10:17 am

He gave us pictures of the Gobo sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on October 27, 2012, 02:34:22 am

Only one, of their underground, aimlessly-dug living quarters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on October 27, 2012, 08:10:17 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 27, 2012, 01:54:18 am

We were promised better fire response last group of release.

Actually, we were just told that "creatures not safe from fire will run out of lethally hot squares", and we got that in the v0.34.11 release.  This fix unfortunately made obsidian farming nearly impossible if you have temperature turned off, since the area doesn't cool down after the magma/lava is turned into obsidian.  Works fine otherwise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on October 28, 2012, 02:09:53 am

Actually it has introduced one issue I must nitpick at: Creatures on fire will not move, at all, because they can't path away from the extreme heat. It prevents your idiot dwarves from deciding they need to go get a drink and destroyign your fortress, but it also prevents them from, say, finishing the job of killing the creature they were sent to kill when the only part of them that is actually on fire is their cloak or whatever. Now, if creatures on fire pathed towards a nearby water source, or pond or something (lern2drop+rollnewbz), and threw off that ‼pig tail fiber cloak‼ before it became a ‼XXpig tail fiber cloakXX‼, that would be great, because having burning clothing that could have been removed wouldn't be a death sentence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 28, 2012, 02:16:42 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on October 28, 2012, 02:09:53 am

Actually it has introduced one issue I must nitpick at: Creatures on fire will not move, at all, because they can't path away from the extreme heat. It prevents your idiot dwarves from deciding they need to go get a drink and destroyign your fortress, but it also prevents them from, say, finishing the job of killing the creature they were sent to kill when the only part of them that is actually on fire is their cloak or whatever. Now, if creatures on fire pathed towards a nearby water source, or pond or something (lern2drop+rollnewbz), and threw off that ‼pig tail fiber cloak‼ before it became a ‼XXpig tail fiber cloakXX‼, that would be great, because having burning clothing that could have been removed wouldn't be a death sentence.

Yes. A modder created a hell-fire titan, that was always really hot, but It never did anything!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 28, 2012, 02:17:46 am

Not to mention that you can now give creatures materials that they don't actually utilize that will make them immobile because of the odd pathing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on October 28, 2012, 02:34:23 am

Quote from: darklord92 on October 24, 2012, 05:06:45 pm

How closely will dwarf mountain halls follow player forts? will you be using famous player forts for designs?

-Remembers Boatmurdered-


Ye gods...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meistermoxx on October 28, 2012, 03:26:03 am

Why does the development page not list the new elf, gobbo, demonsites, jumping and those things?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 28, 2012, 03:42:29 am

Quote from: Toady One, the Great

There are lots of orchards now, and the elves grow other important trees for various purposes. The orchards are currently stuck with the products from the old tree raws (chestnuts, mangos and coconuts), but that should be diversified significantly. The residential etc. trees aren't strictly natural, so you'll get some places that are flatter and smoother grown into them, but even those trees still use the standard tree growing algorithm and there's plenty of regular vegetation to go around. We should finally be on to non-player dwarf fortresses at the beginning of next month. I thought I'd be to them by now but having climbing and jumping works well enough as a consolation prize. I doubt I'll be any better at predicting how long dwarf sites will take, since there's a lot of pre-existing material to work with.

Awesome! Quicker than I expected...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on October 28, 2012, 04:39:22 am

Personally, I am more excited about running and jumping than sites for other races. Sites are a nice bonus though. And finally, food grows on trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Alu on October 28, 2012, 04:42:32 am

So now that you are working on elven trees, does elven woodwork get special tagging now? An Elf snaps if he sees non-elven woodwork, because trees are being killed for it, so they do it differently by growing their furniture out of the tree or something right? Does elven woodwork get special tagging now, so they don't go crazy if you buy their stuff and sell it back to them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same? If the raw structures for trees have changed, would you be able to present an example for us? Has the elven method for producing items been elaborated on in this release, i.e. will we see trees growing furniture? Will forest vegetation such as leaves burn?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 29, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

If it's not in this release, it probably won't happen for many years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 10:42:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 29, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

If it's not in this release, it probably won't happen for many years.

still counts as later, but yeah....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 29, 2012, 12:23:15 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 10:42:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 29, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

If it's not in this release, it probably won't happen for many years.

still counts as later, but yeah....

But like the above said, it is already in the raws... So even if Toady doesn't do them right away modders can make trees grow new stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 12:25:57 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 29, 2012, 12:23:15 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 10:42:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 29, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

If it's not in this release, it probably won't happen for many years.

still counts as later, but yeah....

But like the above said, it is already in the raws... So even if Toady doesn't do them right away modders can make trees grow new stuff.

Yeah, Toady even said you can have them grow swords if you want

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on October 29, 2012, 03:46:25 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 12:25:57 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 29, 2012, 12:23:15 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 10:42:34 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 29, 2012, 03:42:39 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on October 29, 2012, 02:29:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2012, 02:25:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 28, 2012, 12:31:46 pm

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same?

From the context, Toady simply hasn't added new trees yet that produce "fruit" beyond palms, mango trees, and chestnuts. I'm pretty sure he already mentioned that the tree raws have changed, and they pretty much have to be to accommodate growth parameters, fruit, leaves, etc.

Yeah, he already said all the growth/vegatation modifiers for trees will be moddable from the time it's released, so I think it's fair to say that he just hasn't added any new ones, but I'm sure he'll get around to it, either this release or a later one.

If it's not in this release, it probably won't happen for many years.

still counts as later, but yeah....

But like the above said, it is already in the raws... So even if Toady doesn't do them right away modders can make trees grow new stuff.

Yeah, Toady even said you can have them grow swords if you want

So that's where the elves get those wooden swords! It would be fantastic if the elves actually grew all the wooden crap they try to sell you in special orchards. "Yes, this is my prized bracelet tree, and over there is a grove of sword trees that are just ripe enough to pick." It would answer the age old question of elf-kosher.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on October 29, 2012, 03:50:12 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on October 29, 2012, 03:46:25 pm

It would be fantastic if the elves actually grew all the wooden crap they try to sell you in special orchards.

I really like that idea. It would also make stealth/theft "missions" in Elven orchards very interesting and unique.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greendogo on October 30, 2012, 05:12:03 am

Regarding Elves and their affection for trees; have you read Orson Scott Card's sequel to Ender's Game called "The Speaker For the Dead"?  It has a very interesting take on a kind of "tree husbandry".  The "Piggies", as they're called, use dance and song to ask the trees to produce the objects they need (the trees are grown from the bodies of their slain ancestors, and they're sentient).  I'm basically wondering how you're planning on Elves having wooden homes and wooden tools and other wooden stuff, but not carving it or hacking it out of the trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on October 30, 2012, 06:18:55 am

Quote from: Greendogo on October 30, 2012, 05:12:03 am

Regarding Elves and their affection for trees; have you read Orson Scott Card's sequel to Ender's Game called "The Speaker For the Dead"?  It has a very interesting take on a kind of "tree husbandry".  The "Piggies", as they're called, use dance and song to ask the trees to produce the objects they need (the trees are grown from the bodies of their slain ancestors, and they're sentient).  I'm basically wondering how you're planning on Elves having wooden homes and wooden tools and other wooden stuff, but not carving it or hacking it out of the trees.

I was very disappointed with that book.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on October 30, 2012, 09:18:38 am

Orson Scott Card in general has been a very disappointing and batshit insane writer for the past decade.

On topic, did told say anything about seriously considering elves growing their equipment and stuff from special trees or is that just player speculation? Cause that sounds rather awesome and would give elves some interesting racial flavor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 09:22:00 am

its just speculation. it WAS a example of toady's. i think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hoveringdog on October 30, 2012, 09:34:02 am

Are there any near-future plans to integrate tree products into existing fortress industries (e.g. pressing juices from mangoes, oil from coconuts or kapok, tapping maples for syrup, and then having those products for relevant brewing, cooking, or soap-making tasks)? Also, will any of the fictional trees (e.g. goblin cap, etc.) be given harvestable products?

I'm excited about the inevitable feature creep. I doubt a chocolate industry will ever happen, but I can still dream of legendary chocolate rabbits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on October 30, 2012, 09:55:39 am

I think growing stuff from trees was in one of Threetoe's stories, or at least implied there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 10:24:25 am

i wonder if horseshoe crab blood will be fixed. afterall, its BLUE, not WHITE. but that IS a minor thing...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 30, 2012, 04:36:52 pm

Wait... shouldn't that just be a RAWS fix?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 30, 2012, 06:24:53 pm

a) This doesn't really belong in this thread.
b) If Wikipedia can be trusted, horseshoe crab blood really is blue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 30, 2012, 09:12:15 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 09:22:00 am

it WAS a example of toady's. i think.

To quote Toady One on 09/28/2012

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on October 31, 2012, 12:02:47 am

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 10:24:25 am

i wonder if horseshoe crab blood will be fixed. afterall, its BLUE, not WHITE. but that IS a minor thing...

That sounds like a good one to put on the bugtracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/) with the "Probable Quick Fix" tag.
... If Toady's still looking at the bugtracker anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 31, 2012, 01:42:51 am

Quote from: finka on October 31, 2012, 12:02:47 am

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 10:24:25 am

i wonder if horseshoe crab blood will be fixed. afterall, its BLUE, not WHITE. but that IS a minor thing...

That sounds like a good one to put on the bugtracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/) with the "Probable Quick Fix" tag.
... If Toady's still looking at the bugtracker anymore.

He may look at it ocasionally to look into bugs he may fix while developing the new features of the next version, but apart from that, the next release is not a bugfix release and Toady don't need to check it on a daily basis. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be reporting new bugs, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 31, 2012, 11:07:25 am

Quote from: finka on October 31, 2012, 12:02:47 am

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2012, 10:24:25 am

i wonder if horseshoe crab blood will be fixed. afterall, its BLUE, not WHITE. but that IS a minor thing...

That sounds like a good one to put on the bugtracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/) with the "Probable Quick Fix" tag.
... If Toady's still looking at the bugtracker anymore.

Toady does of course still look at the bug tracker. He simply is on a feature release right now rather than a series of bugfixing releases as he usually is after a feature release.

Also, the horseshoe crab blood bug has been reported (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5863) already, so there's no need to report it again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 01, 2012, 11:09:59 am

 :D Just read the monthly report! YES!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on November 01, 2012, 11:12:39 am

Really excited for reclaiming NPC forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deimos56 on November 01, 2012, 12:44:30 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 01, 2012, 11:12:39 am

Really excited for reclaiming NPC forts.

I rather enjoyed the idea of forts being able to persist after you leave, myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 01, 2012, 01:08:24 pm

I wanted this since I got my first successful fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 01, 2012, 01:13:31 pm

Quote from: Deimos56 on November 01, 2012, 12:44:30 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 01, 2012, 11:12:39 am

Really excited for reclaiming NPC forts.

I rather enjoyed the idea of forts being able to persist after you leave, myself.

You know, there's going to be a whole breed of people building fortresses with the express purpose of making the computer eff them up in a bad way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 01, 2012, 01:41:34 pm

Wow, I really didn't think we were going to be able to retire forts and have them continue this release. Reclaiming NPC forts should be pretty cool too!

Will NPC forts fall prey to HFS? Trying to reclaim a fort you didn't design (and thus don't know where the important things are) from HFS, Moria-style, would be pretty amazing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on November 01, 2012, 01:43:46 pm

How will the game handle preventing fort retirement exploits?  Essentially, if a fort is full of goblins or a syndrome sweeping the populace, what will stop a player from retiring the fort and preserving it as an NPC fort?  Will there be some means of ensuring that forts with !!Fun!! stay !!Fun!!?

I can see retiring forts as an easy out to preventing fort death and possibly even saving doomed dwarves for immigration to later forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 01, 2012, 02:21:59 pm

That would be easy enough to figure out afterwards by having a history-mode fight if there's still combattive units when it's unloaded... though that won't be aware of problems like having all your military surrounded by lava at the moment. It'd be no worse than the rest of history, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on November 01, 2012, 02:25:17 pm

Quote from: Calathar on November 01, 2012, 01:43:46 pm

How will the game handle preventing fort retirement exploits?  Essentially, if a fort is full of goblins or a syndrome sweeping the populace, what will stop a player from retiring the fort and preserving it as an NPC fort?  Will there be some means of ensuring that forts with !!Fun!! stay !!Fun!!?

I can see retiring forts as an easy out to preventing fort death and possibly even saving doomed dwarves for immigration to later forts.

My guess would be you can't retire a fort in the middle of a megabeast, force of darkness and/or the dead walk event for starters. As for how much beyond that it'll go is hard to say.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 01, 2012, 02:38:04 pm

There are no words to describe my state of euphoria right now...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 01, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on November 01, 2012, 02:38:04 pm

There are no words to describe my state of euphoria right now...

euphoric?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 01, 2012, 03:00:21 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 01, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

euphoric?

Hmmm, I think that might work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meistermoxx on November 01, 2012, 03:04:39 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on November 01, 2012, 02:25:17 pm

Quote from: Calathar on November 01, 2012, 01:43:46 pm

How will the game handle preventing fort retirement exploits?  Essentially, if a fort is full of goblins or a syndrome sweeping the populace, what will stop a player from retiring the fort and preserving it as an NPC fort?  Will there be some means of ensuring that forts with !!Fun!! stay !!Fun!!?

I can see retiring forts as an easy out to preventing fort death and possibly even saving doomed dwarves for immigration to later forts.

My guess would be you can't retire a fort in the middle of a megabeast, force of darkness and/or the dead walk event for starters. As for how much beyond that it'll go is hard to say.

Exactly
Just like you cant retire your adventurer unless you are safe in a friendly town.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 01, 2012, 03:32:00 pm

Sweet God almighty, this is exciting news. Couple questions:

Say you manage to make your fortress the capital of a dwarven civilization and then retire said fortress, starting a new fortress with the same civilization somewhere else. Will it be just as easy to make this new fortress into the capital? Because with the standards we have right now it would be easy to make a new fortress every three or four game years or so and make it into the civilization capital. And if you could retire every one of them you'd see the king just hoping from place to place every couple of years. So, will each successful fortress raise the standards for making the upgrade?

and

What if you refused to be "baroned" and still retired a very sucessful fortress? How would that fortress work? Would it then be treated as something of an independent city-state or realm, maybe even becoming it's own entity sparking a new civilization of it's own?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RedWick on November 01, 2012, 03:35:57 pm

Quote from: Calathar on November 01, 2012, 01:43:46 pm

How will the game handle preventing fort retirement exploits?  Essentially, if a fort is full of goblins or a syndrome sweeping the populace, what will stop a player from retiring the fort and preserving it as an NPC fort?  Will there be some means of ensuring that forts with !!Fun!! stay !!Fun!!?

I can see retiring forts as an easy out to preventing fort death and possibly even saving doomed dwarves for immigration to later forts.

People had the same sort of questions when buildable walls were still being bandied about.  "What will stop players from just walling up their fortress and stopping sieges from attacking?"  I suspect that abandoing a dying fort to save it is something that won't be prevented from happening and that people will argue about whether it's a game exploit/cheating/going against the spirit of the game or if it's a legitimate tactic for gameplay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: adasdad on November 01, 2012, 03:45:37 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 01, 2012, 02:45:35 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on November 01, 2012, 02:38:04 pm

There are no words to describe my state of euphoria right now...

euphoric?

sig'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 01, 2012, 05:59:07 pm

So we're getting retire-able settlements? Hill dwarves? We will be able to reclaim abandoned worldgen settlements? We will be getting dwarf fortresses that reasonably follow player fortresses?

FUCK YES

Does this mean if we play as humans, we will be able to reclaim cities that have fallen into ruin? If so, how will we get around the 16x16 limit on the map size, given some cities are 17x17?

Even if our computers can't run that kind of map, it pays to be prepared.

Will dwarves have pastures aboveground in the mountain areas? If so will grass now regrow in mountain biomes?

That grass bug is really annoying on mountain maps. Before 0.31.19, we could settle on a mountain biome and engrave the surface, but now we have soil with grass that doesn't regrow.

The great thing about retiring forts is there's now a way to say "Mission Accomplished!" and "win" the game under those conditions. Of course, you'll start a new game, but that world will be changed by the stuff you've done in it.

Is the new stuff in this version going to make the saves from 0.34.11 incomptable? If not, what will happen with the "non-existant" settlements in that world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on November 01, 2012, 06:08:43 pm

Not necessarily related to technical development, but related to the Nov. report and development in general:


Do you think the (visible) focus in the recent development of Dwarf Fortress on world interaction - that is, including features that make people realize more easily that DF is generating a persistent world to interact with, with fortress, adventure, and legends mode being tools to interact with that world - rather than DF just being another city building/management sim and roguelike by itself is important for how you understand/envision Dwarf Fortress? Not only to differentiate DF from "clones" like Gnomoria, A game of Dwarves, Castle something something, and whatever they're all called, but more importantly in terms of a coherent "vision" you have for DF?
In other words: Do you see DF as city building/management sim and roguelike game with the whole world generation thing around it as "gimmick", or do you think, possibly contrary to what DF might have started out as, persistent and continuous interaction with the World that is generated is now the core game mechanic of DF, with the three modes being various facets of that mechanic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 01, 2012, 06:28:45 pm

Quote from: CLA on November 01, 2012, 06:08:43 pm

Not necessarily related to technical development, but related to the Nov. report and development in general:


Do you think the (visible) focus in the recent development of Dwarf Fortress on world interaction - that is, including features that make people realize more easily that DF is generating a persistent world to interact with, with fortress, adventure, and legends mode being tools to interact with that world - rather than DF just being another city building/management sim and roguelike by itself is important for how you understand/envision Dwarf Fortress? Not only to differentiate DF from "clones" like Gnomoria, A game of Dwarves, Castle something something, and whatever they're all called, but more importantly in terms of a coherent "vision" you have for DF?
In other words: Do you see DF as city building/management sim and roguelike game with the whole world generation thing around it as "gimmick", or do you think, possibly contrary to what DF might have started out as, persistent and continuous interaction with the World that is generated is now the core game mechanic of DF, with the three modes being various facets of that mechanic?

Well, that was always the goal with DF. DF isn't meant to be a game about building a fort or a game about an adventurer exploring the world. It's meant to be a simulation that can create settings for players to explore, experience, and effect.

What we're seeing now are the first visages of Toady's original vision coming to life. This was why he was so eager to get to bringing the world to life. It was the point of all the work up to this point and this upcoming version is going to be our first look at the concept behind the whole project.

Granted even then we're still looking at a sapling that has only begun to grow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 01, 2012, 06:51:18 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 01, 2012, 06:28:45 pm

Quote from: CLA on November 01, 2012, 06:08:43 pm

Not necessarily related to technical development, but related to the Nov. report and development in general:


Do you think the (visible) focus in the recent development of Dwarf Fortress on world interaction - that is, including features that make people realize more easily that DF is generating a persistent world to interact with, with fortress, adventure, and legends mode being tools to interact with that world - rather than DF just being another city building/management sim and roguelike by itself is important for how you understand/envision Dwarf Fortress? Not only to differentiate DF from "clones" like Gnomoria, A game of Dwarves, Castle something something, and whatever they're all called, but more importantly in terms of a coherent "vision" you have for DF?
In other words: Do you see DF as city building/management sim and roguelike game with the whole world generation thing around it as "gimmick", or do you think, possibly contrary to what DF might have started out as, persistent and continuous interaction with the World that is generated is now the core game mechanic of DF, with the three modes being various facets of that mechanic?

Well, that was always the goal with DF. DF isn't meant to be a game about building a fort or a game about an adventurer exploring the world. It's meant to be a simulation that can create settings for players to explore, experience, and effect.

What we're seeing now are the first visages of Toady's original vision coming to life. This was why he was so eager to get to bringing the world to life. It was the point of all the work up to this point and this upcoming version is going to be our first look at the concept behind the whole project.

Granted even then we're still looking at a sapling that has only begun to grow.

DF actually was meant to be a game about building a fort. It was meant to be a game about building a fort, then going into that fort as an adventurer and finding all the loot, reading all the stocks, etc. as a kind of "scoring system". It switched to what you see today before its first release in 2006, when he just started adding more and more things to it and decided to start working on it instead of Armok 1.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 12:27:01 am

W-we're getting retired forts?  And activating the world?  And getting NPC non-human sites?  And activating the world?

This release is a bundle of things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW.  This is awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 12:29:19 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 12:27:01 am

W-we're getting retired forts?  And activating the world?  And getting NPC non-human sites?  And activating the world?

This release is a bundle of things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW.  This is awesome.

We've known about world activation was coming since June, IIRC...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on November 02, 2012, 12:47:49 am

With the fort retirement thing, will we be able to simulate the world a la worldgen, but after we leave a fort? And will adventurers gain in status over time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 01:13:32 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 12:29:19 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 12:27:01 am

W-we're getting retired forts?  And activating the world?  And getting NPC non-human sites?  And activating the world?

This release is a bundle of things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW.  This is awesome.

We've known about world activation was coming since June, IIRC...

Yeah, but at the time I wasn't expecting that one till we'd worked through inns and other economy stuff.  Ditto for non-human sites, although I've been modding my game so other races have human sites, so I'm not AS excited for that one.  The heroic, goblin fighting, child liberating adventures dark fortresses open up are going to be awesome though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 02, 2012, 01:31:11 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 01, 2012, 06:51:18 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 01, 2012, 06:28:45 pm

Quote from: CLA on November 01, 2012, 06:08:43 pm

Not necessarily related to technical development, but related to the Nov. report and development in general:


Do you think the (visible) focus in the recent development of Dwarf Fortress on world interaction - that is, including features that make people realize more easily that DF is generating a persistent world to interact with, with fortress, adventure, and legends mode being tools to interact with that world - rather than DF just being another city building/management sim and roguelike by itself is important for how you understand/envision Dwarf Fortress? Not only to differentiate DF from "clones" like Gnomoria, A game of Dwarves, Castle something something, and whatever they're all called, but more importantly in terms of a coherent "vision" you have for DF?
In other words: Do you see DF as city building/management sim and roguelike game with the whole world generation thing around it as "gimmick", or do you think, possibly contrary to what DF might have started out as, persistent and continuous interaction with the World that is generated is now the core game mechanic of DF, with the three modes being various facets of that mechanic?

Well, that was always the goal with DF. DF isn't meant to be a game about building a fort or a game about an adventurer exploring the world. It's meant to be a simulation that can create settings for players to explore, experience, and effect.

What we're seeing now are the first visages of Toady's original vision coming to life. This was why he was so eager to get to bringing the world to life. It was the point of all the work up to this point and this upcoming version is going to be our first look at the concept behind the whole project.

Granted even then we're still looking at a sapling that has only begun to grow.

DF actually was meant to be a game about building a fort. It was meant to be a game about building a fort, then going into that fort as an adventurer and finding all the loot, reading all the stocks, etc. as a kind of "scoring system". It switched to what you see today before its first release in 2006, when he just started adding more and more things to it and decided to start working on it instead of Armok 1.

Indeed, DF originally was a city building with very "gamey" mechanics, but then it was fused with the ideas Toady had originally since his older fantasy game I forgot the name now.

And DF is still different and original because of this ambition. Soon there won't be a genre of "DF-likes" anymore because DF would have become so much more than what it is today.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 09:11:17 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 01:13:32 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 12:29:19 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 12:27:01 am

W-we're getting retired forts?  And activating the world?  And getting NPC non-human sites?  And activating the world?

This release is a bundle of things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW.  This is awesome.

We've known about world activation was coming since June, IIRC...

Yeah, but at the time I wasn't expecting that one till we'd worked through inns and other economy stuff.  Ditto for non-human sites, although I've been modding my game so other races have human sites, so I'm not AS excited for that one.  The heroic, goblin fighting, child liberating adventures dark fortresses open up are going to be awesome though.

...It was the first thing he worked on this release >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 02, 2012, 10:53:28 am

Dwarf Fortresses required a little more than just that required for Goblin settlements and so on. My personal opinion is well get proper mines and 3D veins, which will result in the addition for mines for all mining civilisations. Dwarf Fortresses are different though in that their mining and city-building processes are very closely related. I'd really expect the release to come out after the new sites are done, though it will probably take longer with armies moving around the map and finishing up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 02, 2012, 11:16:07 am

Fortress retirement is pretty darn exciting.  I always feel guilty about abandoning fortresses, like once I've gone all the dwarves wake up as if from a dream and look at each other and say, "what.. what were we all just doing?  Why did we dig these embarrassing rabbit warrens in this soil?  Let's get back to civilization for a real drink."  Hopefully they'll make my retirement less shameful now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 11:34:10 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 09:11:17 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 01:13:32 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 02, 2012, 12:29:19 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on November 02, 2012, 12:27:01 am

W-we're getting retired forts?  And activating the world?  And getting NPC non-human sites?  And activating the world?

This release is a bundle of things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW.  This is awesome.

We've known about world activation was coming since June, IIRC...

Yeah, but at the time I wasn't expecting that one till we'd worked through inns and other economy stuff.  Ditto for non-human sites, although I've been modding my game so other races have human sites, so I'm not AS excited for that one.  The heroic, goblin fighting, child liberating adventures dark fortresses open up are going to be awesome though.

...It was the first thing he worked on this release >_>

I know.  The statement "things I thought we weren't even going to start for a few years, much less NOW" applied to each of the things I listed, at the time I found out about them.  So Toady's like "hey, we're activating the world now" and I'm like, "woah, thought we were a few big releases away from that".  Then, some days later, I have the same thoughts about non-human sites, and now fortress retirement.  Throwing all those things in a list was supposed to be more concise than explaining in story form that I was suprised by each of them in chronological order, although I'm writing it out now and having a quote pyramid so so much for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 12:29:36 am

Apologies if this sounds suggestion-y but I'm just addressing a long-standing problem that now seems pretty... urgent.

Toady, now that adventure mode is becoming more "major", and you're doing all the various work on making combat better and more functional, are you going to be taking a look at some of the more extenuating issues like crossbows being particle splitting railguns or certain types of weapons being ungodly overkill for what they should be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 03, 2012, 12:42:12 am

Quote from: hermes on November 02, 2012, 11:16:07 am

Fortress retirement is pretty darn exciting.  I always feel guilty about abandoning fortresses, like once I've gone all the dwarves wake up as if from a dream and look at each other and say, "what.. what were we all just doing?  Why did we dig these embarrassing rabbit warrens in this soil?  Let's get back to civilization for a real drink."  Hopefully they'll make my retirement less shameful now.

This this this. Since many forts are less interesting once the challanges of set up are done, Until you get more challanges late game, like economic stuff, you very often end up with nice perfectly fine forts trashed, or worse, plain abandoned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on November 03, 2012, 01:43:56 am

Quote from: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 12:29:36 am

 certain types of weapons being ungodly overkill for what they should be?

We're talking about whips, right? And scourges?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 03, 2012, 02:13:54 am

Quote from: Torchy on November 03, 2012, 01:43:56 am

Quote from: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 12:29:36 am

 certain types of weapons being ungodly overkill for what they should be?

We're talking about whips, right? And scourges?

...and Fluffy Wumblers (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56935.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 03, 2012, 02:42:49 am

Quote from: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 12:29:36 am

Apologies if this sounds suggestion-y but I'm just addressing a long-standing problem that now seems pretty... urgent.

Toady, now that adventure mode is becoming more "major", and you're doing all the various work on making combat better and more functional, are you going to be taking a look at some of the more extenuating issues like crossbows being particle splitting railguns or certain types of weapons being ungodly overkill for what they should be?

He's planning to work on that stuff, but it doesn't really seem related to this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on November 03, 2012, 04:41:45 am

whats the problem with crossbows? they dont seem overly powerful to me. the only problem might be the rate of fire being too high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on November 03, 2012, 05:16:50 am

I've been wondering how easy it is to use a crossbow and shield, with actually reloading the crossbow after more than one shot. But yeah, it probably won't get looked at in the next release. But we have had reaction times and other combat stuff, so who knows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on November 03, 2012, 09:16:38 am

If you want a modder's fix on overpowered ranged weapons, Joben did some nice work editting the raws of crossbows and bolts and found out how to make them more realistic.
There's a link in my sig.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 03, 2012, 09:36:27 am

Quote from: DG on November 03, 2012, 05:16:50 am

I've been wondering how easy it is to use a crossbow and shield, with actually reloading the crossbow after more than one shot. But yeah, it probably won't get looked at in the next release. But we have had reaction times and other combat stuff, so who knows.

Well, Toady did do more than just Movement/Attack Speed as part of the combat rewrite. For instance, he added delays before and after attacks (to use Toady's example was like a snake bite, it hits fast but then takes some time to do again).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 01:03:59 pm

I just figured that if Adventure Mode was going to be approaching something closer to "playable in more ways than grinding stats and killing loosely organized groups of bandits over and over again", that it might be the right time to look at making less adventure mode characters end in ways that don't logically make sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 03, 2012, 01:47:32 pm

Odd I thought Crossbows were REALLY toned down (In fact possibly TOO toned down)

When did they become overpowered all over again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 03, 2012, 10:18:54 pm

Quote

The basic three-way split is between hill dwarf sites near the mountain on the surface, deeper sites under the mountains that have no direct external exit, and fortresses, which connect the surface to the underground and are the same sort of sites that you create. The nobility are also going to be adapted to this new layout. We might not get to the involvement of hill dwarves and deeper sites with your fortress during play for this release, since that's another involved addition, but we will be laying the groundwork for that here.

Can you clarify what you mean here? What are these undergrounds sites supposed to represent? Are they dwarven made or something that just exists?

You make them sound distinctly separate from the fort layouts and make them sound like they will be added to fort mode and therefore not a current part of it.

I'm curious because if these areas are hidden and you can occasionally dig into one that could be kind of cool, but it also sounds like it could be something else too.

   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bombzero on November 03, 2012, 10:35:50 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 03, 2012, 01:47:32 pm

Odd I thought Crossbows were REALLY toned down (In fact possibly TOO toned down)

When did they become overpowered all over again?

Well, the issue is they're never quite toned down "right", projectile weapons have always been quirky in DF on account of that they have to work in both adventure mode and fortress mode, I'm hoping with Toady's new changes to combat he can properly fix them now that he has multiple attack phases and possibly new weapon properties to play with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 03, 2012, 10:39:17 pm

With the inclusion of underground sites, will tunnels (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Tunnel#Tunnels) be reintroduced to worldgen? and will they on longer be blocked up in fort mode so that dwarven caravans can enter your fort through the underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 03, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 03, 2012, 10:18:54 pm

Quote

The basic three-way split is between hill dwarf sites near the mountain on the surface, deeper sites under the mountains that have no direct external exit, and fortresses, which connect the surface to the underground and are the same sort of sites that you create. The nobility are also going to be adapted to this new layout. We might not get to the involvement of hill dwarves and deeper sites with your fortress during play for this release, since that's another involved addition, but we will be laying the groundwork for that here.

Can you clarify what you mean here? What are these undergrounds sites supposed to represent? Are they dwarven made or something that just exists?

You make them sound distinctly separate from the fort layouts and make them sound like they will be added to fort mode and therefore not a current part of it.

I'm curious because if these areas are hidden and you can occasionally dig into one that could be kind of cool, but it also sounds like it could be something else too.

   

Sounds like totally underground dwarven cities, and forts are the (heavily guarded) surface entrance/outposts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on November 03, 2012, 11:27:55 pm

Will there ever be an option for Fort Mode to play as a deep mountain site? I.e. is the description of (paraphrasing) "fortresses are what you play as in fort mode, but in addition we're adding hill settlements and deep sites inside mountains" merely indicative of how these sites compare to what is currently in fort mode, or is this restrictive in that we should not expect to be able to play these other new types of sites anywhere down the road?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 04, 2012, 01:03:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

That sounds like hell on FPS, and worldgen...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 04, 2012, 01:08:30 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on November 03, 2012, 11:27:55 pm

Will there ever be an option for Fort Mode to play as a deep mountain site? I.e. is the description of (paraphrasing) "fortresses are what you play as in fort mode, but in addition we're adding hill settlements and deep sites inside mountains" merely indicative of how these sites compare to what is currently in fort mode, or is this restrictive in that we should not expect to be able to play these other new types of sites anywhere down the road?

Sounds like something for later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on November 04, 2012, 07:47:40 am

Playing as a deep fortress could be interesting... especially if it generated as an entirely underground region (i.e. the highest point of the map is still subterranean) and you spawned in a cavern or on a deep road.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 04, 2012, 10:28:09 am

I think that playing as a "deep mountain site" is not planned. It looks like they'll be the dwarven equivalent of human cities. As will the aboveground "hill dwarven sites" be the dwarven equivalent to human farming villages. And if that's the case, the biggest limitation will be the sheer size and population density.

I'm curious to know if we'll be able to link ourselves through underground roads leading to the formation of these "deep sites" on the outskirts of our fortresses.

Do you plan on having underground cities forming themselves semi-independently around your fortress, just like you plan to have aboveground villages being formed on surrounding territory as the game progresses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 04, 2012, 02:21:04 pm

Wall of questions:

Will we have underground roads built over the cavern floors in this release, or tunnelled out roads?

Does the king live exclusively in a fortress, or elsewhere (i.e. in a deep settlement or hill settlement).

If we're getting underground roads and tunnels, will dwarven merchants arrive through the caverns? If so will they be more proactive in choosing the caverns as their exit?

As we're getting deep settlements, will migrants arrive through the cavern layers or underground tunnels?

If caravans and/or migrants arrive through the cavern layers and tunnels, would they still be able to arrive during sieges on the surface? If we get underground sieges, will there be a differentiation between the levels that are being sieged and the levels not being sieged to allow migrants to arrive some way or other (i.e. by means of a sealed underground road that leads to the next fortress)?

Which cavern layer will dwarf settlements reach down to? If they can reach down to the second or third cavern layer, does that mean they will be able to harvest the resources of that layer (i.e. so we can order Blood Thorns from the caravan)?

If we tunnel down to the HFS and establish a fortress in there, does that mean dwarves will set up deep settlements there as well?

Will other races set up trading outposts around our fortresses as they grow?

You've mentioned that the hill dwarf settlements are close to the mountains, fortresses are in the mountains, and deep settlements are underground connected to the surface through fortresses. What happens when the fortresses - such as player fortresses - are located outside of the mountains? Many players do things like embarking in jungles or in deserts or on remote islands, so in those cases would deep settlements appear around the player fortress? If the settlement is remote, would we be able to get migrants or caravans through the underground in the absence of ships and boats?

With all the new things in worldgen, how is its speed looking? Is it running slower than in 0.34.11?

Commentry:

Personally, I'm expecting the naval release to be coming up along with the tavern release, unless we get taverns in this release which is not too unreasonable (@Toady: With all the nonlethal combat and so on thus far, are we likely to get taverns in the upcoming release?). There is a direct connection between taverns and the navy and colossal bar fights and bandits and pirates, after all. This would require the addition of ports and naval towns, though that might be relatively simple given all that has gone in. Given the movement, however, we may have to wait until armies are properly sorted out.

We'll need and get another UI addition for controlling things that happen in the world. For example, we could have a system to assign a squad of dwarves to work off-site, say, in building a road to the nearest friendly settlement (this was emulated in the 2D version, where on finishing a road out to the map edge, a road would appear beyond the build-able space indicating that the connection had been made). This would mean calling up a world map to design the route. The fortress would need to supply the building materials and logistics (wagon with animals). This would also give more reason to have architects in your fortress, as good architects could be able to estimate the amount of resources and time it would take to build a road, and their presence would speed up construction somewhat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on November 04, 2012, 02:23:55 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 03, 2012, 10:18:54 pm

Can you clarify what you mean here? What are these undergrounds sites supposed to represent? Are they dwarven made or something that just exists?   

Sounds to me like they're just more hill dwarf towns, but built entirely in the cavern layers. You know, where they're farming underground crops for the booze, syrup, sugar, cloth, and plump helmets the caravans keep trying to sell you. Similarly logging camps harvesting the mushroom trees, and deep mines for all those logs, stones, and metals they love to sell you.

It's not some new fun thing we'll be digging into by accident, it's a new fun thing that will develop and attach to our forts during play, just like the surface hill dwarf sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 04, 2012, 02:47:22 pm

Going into the HFS is a player driven decision, so I doubt other forts will do likewise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 04, 2012, 10:02:36 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 03, 2012, 10:18:54 pm

Quote

The basic three-way split is between hill dwarf sites near the mountain on the surface, deeper sites under the mountains that have no direct external exit, and fortresses, which connect the surface to the underground and are the same sort of sites that you create. The nobility are also going to be adapted to this new layout. We might not get to the involvement of hill dwarves and deeper sites with your fortress during play for this release, since that's another involved addition, but we will be laying the groundwork for that here.

Can you clarify what you mean here? What are these undergrounds sites supposed to represent? Are they dwarven made or something that just exists?

You make them sound distinctly separate from the fort layouts and make them sound like they will be added to fort mode and therefore not a current part of it.

I'm curious because if these areas are hidden and you can occasionally dig into one that could be kind of cool, but it also sounds like it could be something else too.

They're generally discussed as dwarven made, although you can expect them to intersect with the underground horrors and get colonized by goblins and so on.  This goal has been around for a while:

Quote from: dev_single

Bloat172, DEEP SITES, (Future): There should be more interesting sites deep in the mountains, and it should be possible for you to create multi-tile tunnels under mountain ranges with various sites of your making and not of your making on the way.

Quote from: DF Talk

Rainseeker:   Okay, XSI asks: [8]'Dwarven strongholds seem to have tunnels between them, would it be possible to eventually make one of those in fortress mode; probably useful to get migrants and dwarf caravans while being sieged?'
Toady:   I think there's a dev item on that, I don't know if it was called 'deep outposts' or something like that, and I think it originally sprang forth from a suggestion someone posted so there's probably a few posts on it as well. We're definitely for that; the issues that arise are the same issues that always arise when you have off-site sites. How do you connect it up? How does digging commence off map? And the same thing would go to like building an aboveground wall, or aboveground roads and that kind of thing; how do you build that site when your view is restricted to a single fortress? But I think those questions are just a matter of making a good decision about it; I don't think that they're super hard and we're definitely planning to do that, especially because those tunnels are there. The fact that the tunnels are there is one of those things that kind of demands satisfaction in terms of actually being able to do it yourself or getting rid of them. So it's just a matter of ... Right now you can't designate digging on the edge of your map, and if you can designate 'I want to dig there, I want to dig a tunnel' then that's got to be some kind of special requirement or you have to have say five or six miners leave the map and do that digging for you and it's going to tie into a number of things. It's going to tie into having little - like when you become a capital - having outposts outside of your map and sending armies off the map, having those larger populations that we talked about last time; all of it ties in again to that kind of thing so I imagine those questions will start to be answered around that time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 04, 2012, 11:10:44 pm

Ah I see. I was a bit confused due to the bit about no direct exits to the surface. I took that a bit differently than it was meant to. Haha.

But still thanks for the clarification and thanks Footkerchief for the quotes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 05, 2012, 03:57:18 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 04, 2012, 01:03:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

That sounds like hell on FPS, and worldgen...

Why would roads and paths carved into mountains be any worse than those on the surface?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 05, 2012, 01:25:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on November 05, 2012, 03:57:18 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 04, 2012, 01:03:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

That sounds like hell on FPS, and worldgen...

Why would roads and paths carved into mountains be any worse than those on the surface?

Maybe not worldgen, but...
...How does the size and complexity of a site affect Adventure Mode FPS?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 05, 2012, 02:41:20 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 05, 2012, 01:25:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on November 05, 2012, 03:57:18 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 04, 2012, 01:03:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

That sounds like hell on FPS, and worldgen...

Why would roads and paths carved into mountains be any worse than those on the surface?

Maybe not worldgen, but...
...How does the size and complexity of a site affect Adventure Mode FPS?

Doesn't adventure mode run on a turn based basis? You know you move and then everything else does. And each turn is technically a frame in that sense, so adventure mode naturally doesn't have a very high FPS due to the nature of it.

At most it might effect the delay between the player's turns, but FPS doesn't seem to apply here...

Unless your talking graphics-wise... which honestly doesn't seem to matter much in adventure mode either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 05, 2012, 03:04:04 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 05, 2012, 02:41:20 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 05, 2012, 01:25:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on November 05, 2012, 03:57:18 am

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 04, 2012, 01:03:24 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 03, 2012, 10:57:53 pm

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

That sounds like hell on FPS, and worldgen...

Why would roads and paths carved into mountains be any worse than those on the surface?

Maybe not worldgen, but...
...How does the size and complexity of a site affect Adventure Mode FPS?

Doesn't adventure mode run on a turn based basis? You know you move and then everything else does. And each turn is technically a frame in that sense, so adventure mode naturally doesn't have a very high FPS due to the nature of it.

At most it might effect the delay between the player's turns, but FPS doesn't seem to apply here...

Unless your talking graphics-wise... which honestly doesn't seem to matter much in adventure mode either.

You'd think it wouldn't happen, but there actually is lag in adventure mode.  I'm not sure if I'd measure it in FPS, but the slowdown is there.

It's been pretty rare for me, except when my characters go unconscious or are stunned (this causes the game to run a bunch of steps all at once).  However, I've heard reports that the new human cities will sometimes cause slowdown even for normal speed characters.  I think some people with slow computers actively avoid cities.  Its because the city spreads out across the entire loaded area and is filled with items and creatures, to say nothing of the undercity.  It'll only become worse when the townsfolk actually start pathing around on their own and making decisions.  A subterranean dwarf city would be like that, but with multiple z levels of buildings and such (right now, the houses are multiple stories tall but only have one floor).

It might be worth the risk (it sounds like goblin sites already dip into the underground anyway) but lag is a legitimate concern in adventure mode.  In worldgen the sites of all races are functionally identical in terms of lag AFAIK, since the sites aren't loaded it doesn't matter how much of a complicated mess they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 05, 2012, 05:33:26 pm

So far, it appears that the game mechanics we expect to see in the next release would, technically, allow for Player control of the Deep Settlements under certain circumstances.  I should imagine that, when site reclaim of NPC generated sites is implemented, this could include Hill Dwarven and Deep Settlements.  Can, not necessarily Will.  It is up to Toady to decide if he will allow that.

Which begs another question:
Toady, will the Three Tiered Dwarven Sites implement another site flag, similarly to the Lair Flag, to indicate which type of site they are?  Are there any practical, overhead, coplexity or gamey distinctions between them?  Will we be able to reclaim any of these three types?  What will be complications/restrictions for borders of these underground sites be if/when they do indeed span multiple areas (2x2 - 4x4) and/or have tunnels connecting them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on November 06, 2012, 09:40:07 am

will two sites be able to occupy the same x-y-coordinates, even when theyre not from the same civ? in general, will two civs be able to occupy the same territory, as long as one is above and the other is below ground level?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 06, 2012, 11:18:57 am

When a dwarven civ expands, either in worldgen or in the general lore of the game, is there a regular order in which the three types of settlements emerge from the mother civ - e.g. hill dwarfs migrate then decide to dig down and make a fortress which eventually begets a deep site, or deep site up, or something else - or are they independent of each other in terms of origin?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 06, 2012, 12:58:38 pm

Will dwarven sites ever become separate ruins, as a dwarf site becomes a deep site and than a fort will the above ground fort ever be abandoned and become ruins and the lower site remain a underground city?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 06, 2012, 01:00:37 pm

Quote from: eux0r on November 06, 2012, 09:40:07 am

will two sites be able to occupy the same x-y-coordinates, even when theyre not from the same civ? in general, will two civs be able to occupy the same territory, as long as one is above and the other is below ground level?

Rephrase: Will multiple sites be abel to occupy the same map time, as in fortresses and deep sites on multiple levels on the map?

The idea here is that you might have a human city on the surface, and a deep dwarven settlement just below, and below that a goblin encampment, and then another dwarven settlement from another dwarven civilisation beneath that. It goes beyond the above and below ground thing, which makes it somewhat more complicated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kumis on November 06, 2012, 03:46:15 pm

"and fortresses, which connect the surface to the underground and are the same sort of sites that you create."

If fortresses now connect the surface to the underground societies will we now find restrictions upon where we can embark, or if not a restriction then a new possibility to make a fortress as an entrance to our mountain home?

Will our fortresses still become the capital after a time? It seems a bit weird to turn the front door into the throne room, so to speak.

It seems that my main deciding factor for where to place what should be some far-flung colony in the style of Ancient Greece or some vital fort watching over a trade route is actually whether or not there's an aquifer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 06, 2012, 06:19:05 pm

I understand you... Those aquifers, I simply cant start a fort if I dont have one. How else could I do all the waterfalls and decontamination chambers ^^
And they are so convenient for farming. You are right, they rule!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on November 06, 2012, 09:47:23 pm

Sometimes aquifers deter players instead of attracting them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 02:29:29 am

It may take a season or two to breach them but with a custom embark (three miners, three woodcutters and a stonecrafter/carpenter) you can be settled by the end of the first summer, settled as in everything dug, three outdoor fields, a trade depot and a big wall to protect you from the many invaders.
I wont green my question since I think it has already been answered but,

Toady, what programming language do you use for DF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on November 07, 2012, 04:37:48 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 02:29:29 am

Toady, what programming language do you use for DF?

Originally C, but he has switched to C++ after the very first months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Wow I thought it would be object oriented. Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on November 07, 2012, 05:40:54 am

I have some reasonable things to try that would improve performance in my mind, but that's not one of them.

Some things I'd suggest to look into:

• Rewrite flagarrayst::has_flag without using get_slot_and_addbit_uchar, so that the compiler could fully inline it when the flag is a constant.
• Units should cache the effective state of frequently checked caste flags like OPPOSED_TO_LIFE in a bitfield, so that the check could be done with one instruction, instead of multiple checks, branches, memory accesses and function calls. This seems to be one of the top sources of slowness in friend-or-foe checks in the current version.
• I'm wondering if sticking to integer math for temperature is that good of an idea, since modern CPUs probably have quite good floating-point units, while branch mispredictions and integer division are slow. With floating-point you can even cache the reciprocal of SPEC_HEAT in a field, and use only multiplication and addition. Integer math also causes some boundary jitter bugs with item containers that prevents temperature updates from ever stabilizing.
• Speaking of temperature, why can't it be done every 5 or 10 frames, instead of every frame, with an increased exchange coefficient to compensate. Something like tallow takes over 10000 frames to reach equilibrium with the environment from a 10 degree difference, and while that happens, all items in a 16x16 tile block have to be updated. Likewise, all units seem to be always being updated...
• I don't remember if items created in workshops are set to the environment temperature, instead of some fixed preset one, but if they aren't, that should probably be fixed too for the above reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 07, 2012, 07:21:20 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/), and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 09:00:34 am

if I may, I didnt suggest anything nor did the above poster, I asked a question regarding df programming without greening it since I hoped someone could answer it and didnt want to bother toady. the kind sir ag answered and gave me clues about what could be done regarding my question. it's not just an answer I agree, it's also an incentive to look more into the raws and how df works.

I do not deserve my own suggestion forum, mind you. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 07, 2012, 10:04:37 am

Quote from: Kumis on November 06, 2012, 03:46:15 pm

"and fortresses, which connect the surface to the underground and are the same sort of sites that you create."

If fortresses now connect the surface to the underground societies will we now find restrictions upon where we can embark, or if not a restriction then a new possibility to make a fortress as an entrance to our mountain home?

Will our fortresses still become the capital after a time? It seems a bit weird to turn the front door into the throne room, so to speak.

It seems that my main deciding factor for where to place what should be some far-flung colony in the style of Ancient Greece or some vital fort watching over a trade route is actually whether or not there's an aquifer.

The idea is that fortresses connect the surface to the underground, and since we embark on the surface, that should eliminate most of the restrictions for building a Dwarf Fortress far away. In the future, however, we may have to deal with getting there, so there will be places that are difficult to get to, or will require ships. For example, after the naval release, embarking on an island may result you in having a boat instead of a wagon. The details of that have yet to be worked out and there's only a slight chance of them going in this release.

Worldgen fortresses seem to be exclusively in mountain areas, which do not have aquifers as frequently as non-mountain biomes. There will probably be some way around this.

Trade routes are in but the actual movement of caravans is abstracted out, so you won't find them on the road in adventure mode. Toady had put out a map of trade routes in 0.31.13.

Toady, do you have any ideas or goals for when ships, boats, and vehicles are added? Specifically, do you see ships, boats, and vehicles as being optionally designed by the player within the game, or just being hardcoded or defined within the raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on November 07, 2012, 11:32:28 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on November 07, 2012, 12:02:51 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Wow I thought it would be object oriented.

What's not oo in c++?

I remember Toady once guessed about several thousand objects, he wrote for df. Might be a bit exaggerated but it definitely is oo.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 07, 2012, 12:28:15 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Wow I thought it would be object oriented. Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

There're reasons that assembly isn't very used compared to higher level codes! Optimizing compilers can pull out more tricks, much faster, than most people can do. Plus it's pretty nitty gritty and ASM's harder to write over larger code segements because it involves micromanaging stuffs :D

Sure, a person can use tricks that compiler can't take advantage of, it's still not going to run twice as fast compared to decent compilers.

OO isn't a magic bullet for anything, either, it's a useful tool when applied well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 12:41:23 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on November 07, 2012, 11:32:28 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

No.

care to clarify for a nub?

I do not know the first thing about c++, when I say oo I was thinking python or ruby for an example... Since I'm pretty new here I cant recall the "auld days" of C. why did he switch? how hard had it been?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 07, 2012, 02:44:09 pm

There been a lot of threads already discussing how ToadyOne should be programming the game, why does it need to be in this one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 07, 2012, 03:09:38 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 12:41:23 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on November 07, 2012, 11:32:28 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

No.

care to clarify for a nub?

I do not know the first thing about c++, when I say oo I was thinking python or ruby for an example... Since I'm pretty new here I cant recall the "auld days" of C. why did he switch? how hard had it been?

No, because C++ is faster than assembly, unless you're know assembly as well as a compiler writer. Even then, it would be prudent to use C++ for speed of development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on November 07, 2012, 03:46:55 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 07, 2012, 03:09:38 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 12:41:23 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on November 07, 2012, 11:32:28 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 05:05:22 am

Just musing, would it improve speed to rewrite it in assembly?

No.

care to clarify for a nub?

I do not know the first thing about c++, when I say oo I was thinking python or ruby for an example... Since I'm pretty new here I cant recall the "auld days" of C. why did he switch? how hard had it been?

No, because C++ is faster than assembly, unless you're know assembly as well as a compiler writer. Even then, it would be prudent to use C++ for speed of development.

And C++ is also far more platform-independent than assembly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 04:49:46 pm

so anything but assembly to be platform independent, I got it.but what c++ have that C doesnt?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 07, 2012, 05:10:50 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 04:49:46 pm

so anything but assembly to be platform independent, I got it.but what c++ have that C doesnt?

The standard template library and object oriented programming, which among other benefits, allow you to express to the compiler what you want to do instead of how to do it, which allows the compiler to be smarter about optimizing your code. It is also makes it easier to organize a large project into parts, as that's an integral part of OOP. Lastly, it makes managing memory easier than C, especially C++11. There are other benifits too, so there is little reason to use C for a project like DF.

At it's worst C++ is as good as C. At it's best it's as abstract as Java, yet faster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 07:02:00 pm

Are some unix os written in c++?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 07, 2012, 07:13:11 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 07:02:00 pm

Are some unix os written in c++?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=list+of+unix+os+written+in+C%2B%2B (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=list+of+unix+os+written+in+C%2B%2B)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 07:16:15 pm

Thanks pal, shame it doesnt work on my phone ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 07, 2012, 07:40:49 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 07, 2012, 07:16:15 pm

Thanks pal, shame it doesnt work on my phone ^^

Heh, well I feel bad now!  My point was this is an off topic discussion that you should really do with google.  So I followed some links and the answer seems to be... almost none.  C seems to be the language of choice for kernels because it is lower level than C++ which is important for efficiency etc. That said there do seem to be some benefits to writing an OS in C++, see the discussion on this page (http://www.osnews.com/comments/14871), but perhaps not enough to make it popular.  End of off topic...?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 07, 2012, 08:26:26 pm

New question on the devlog update of 11/03/2012:

You've mentioned that the nobility will be adapted to the structure of different dwarf sites. Does this mean the noble system is going to be changed significantly? If so how will it be changed? Will we be getting guild nobles back with this update?

As to the structure of the different dwarf sites, will the breakdown of three different types of sites be covered by the Mountain Halls settlement type, or will dwarves have their sites defined in the raws individually as with outdoor fortifications? By this I mean will we have [DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE:CAVE_DETAILED] for an entity to have dwarf fortresses, deep settlements, and hill settlements, or will we have something like:

[PRIMARY_SITE_TYPE:MOUNTAIN_FORTRESS]
[SECONDARY_SITE_TYPE:DEEP_SETTLEMENT]
[SECONDARY_SITE_TYPE:HILL_SETTLEMENT]

If not, are you going to make it possible for an entity to found multiple types of site? For example, you could have a modded civilisation that would build both cities, fortresses, and deep settlements.

Depending on how the entity files are set up, would making an entity which only founded deep settlements make that civilisation live exclusively underground?

Finally, are there any plans to make dwarves less picky about the mountains they embark on? At the moment I'm finding dwarves tend to be unable to found settlements because the mountains absolutely have to be neutral, and so when I bump up the civilisation number really high, I get a large quantity of human, goblin, and elf civilisation but not dwarf civilisations. If this isn't as much of a problem in your tests, how far out (and up, and down) are dwarf civilisations spreading with their new sites?


It may be too much to ask for the upcoming release, but if we had volcanoes to erupt, there might be some impressive opportunities to reclaim buried settlements.

A quick solution to the dwarves and mountains problem would be to provide an option for them to start out on mountains of any alignment, such as [START_BIOME:ANY_MOUNTAIN].

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on November 07, 2012, 09:02:17 pm

Will we ever be able to play out the trip towards a new site? Such as, when a site is being chosen, would we see a travel line from the entity's capitol toward the desired embark and actually have the wagon move along it, sort of like adventure mode travel, but in control of the dwarves?
If this were possible, would we also be able to change the path taken, such as making it longer in order to avoid going through an evil forest?

I'm guessing a lot of work would have to be done before this, such as work on moving caravans and whatnot first, as well as ships for island settlements, but I think it would be awesome to play as a group of 7 dwarves saillling the ocean to reach new land.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 07, 2012, 10:54:26 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on November 07, 2012, 09:02:17 pm

Will we ever be able to play out the trip towards a new site? Such as, when a site is being chosen, would we see a travel line from the entity's capitol toward the desired embark and actually have the wagon move along it, sort of like adventure mode travel, but in control of the dwarves?
If this were possible, would we also be able to change the path taken, such as making it longer in order to avoid going through an evil forest?

I'm guessing a lot of work would have to be done before this, such as work on moving caravans and whatnot first, as well as ships for island settlements, but I think it would be awesome to play as a group of 7 dwarves saillling the ocean to reach new land.

Indirectly. ToadyOne has spoken about you in Adventure Mode, going off with some dopes, starting some new Site, and I think being able to run it in fort mode possibly. But that part of the podcast seem to be highly speculative.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on November 07, 2012, 11:03:24 pm

Are the dwarven settlements outside of mountains still called Mountainhomes or are they Hill-, Plains-, or Whateverhomes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on November 07, 2012, 11:59:06 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on November 07, 2012, 11:03:24 pm

Are the dwarven settlements outside of mountains still called Mountainhomes or are they Hill-, Plains-, or Whateverhomes?

Swamp-homes sound kinda cool, actually, as do Glacier-homes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on November 08, 2012, 01:05:47 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

My attention was diverted the last few days, so I haven't quite got the various dwarven baronies finished yet, but here are some pictures of the general way dwarven sites are set up now. The eventual idea is that you'd be able to get communities like these settled around your own fort in many instances.

When you say that "you'd be able to get communities like these settled around your own fort", do you mean that we'd be able to send migrants out of our fort to settle/join other areas?

If so, that sounds kind of cool.

Also, how will nearby communities affect trade?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 08, 2012, 01:26:09 am

I believe we are missing something in one of the latest dev screens

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/dwarf_sites_1.png)

what is that along the bottom around the dark fortress? a village, the fortress grounds? camps?

It looks to me like all sites in general are getting larger areas and sprawls

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 08, 2012, 01:33:30 am

Oh wow, when did those go up? Jesus, they're spreading like humans now. And the part about owning a entire mountain IS TRUE.

So then, are we going to see more territorial conflicts in world-gen? As sprawl is now so much more important, are various civs going to fight to establish themselves in a given are? Sorta of overlaps with the can sites overlap with underground ones, since that'd make it easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 08, 2012, 03:27:54 am

just saw the pics, this release is really gonna be awesome...
will the "outside" nobles (baron, all the way to the king) will now have different requirements? link to the capital like a secure tunnel through one of the cavern layers from inside the fortress to the edge?
will we be able to found underground "link" fortress to link two parts of the civ each on one side of a mountain chain (dawn of time challenge any one?)? if yes will there be rules such has "dont breach the above ground" or something like that?

we are going to need some ways to breach the aquifers from below...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on November 08, 2012, 03:58:42 am

Very excited about the new release, based on the newest update's images of dwarven settlements on the world map. I wonder (this isn't really a question, merely a consideration) - the vast size of underground dwarven settlements seems to be incongruous with, or more accurately greatly larger than individual human villages and towns - what could Toady be planning for deep dwarf settlements? I look forward to future updates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on November 08, 2012, 05:32:38 am

I think the Ωs just indicate individual sites rather than part of a much larger one. Some of them are probably quite small in reality. I still felt a twinge of pride though, seeing the second image.

Will there be an underground dwarvern equivalent of human farmland?
I'm sure this has been discussed in general before, but this seems like a good point to bring it up. The hill dwarves will have regular farms I guess, but dwarves need more than strawberries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on November 08, 2012, 08:59:38 am

Now that the maps are being filled in with more realistic sized (scale-abiding) settlements, will the overall size of the world* change so as to preserve undiscovered wilderness areas?

*or perhaps some sort of population density gradient to make uninhabited places?

I am very much loving this new look, gives a real sense of Empire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on November 08, 2012, 09:09:28 am

Quote from: Quatch on November 08, 2012, 08:59:38 am

Now that the maps are being filled in with more realistic sized (scale-abiding) settlements, will the overall size of the world* change so as to preserve undiscovered wilderness areas?

*or perhaps some sort of population density gradient to make uninhabited places?

I am very much loving this new look, gives a real sense of Empire.

I'd say just slowing down how fast civilizations spread and create nw sites should be enough. Not sure if it's just me but I feel they spread way too fast as it is, and with sub-sites now added on top of that it could use some tweaking. I always gen large worlds and stick to a low amount of civs and it still feels like the cramp up all the space (and the good embarks) in less than a hundred years of world gen :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 08, 2012, 11:31:36 am

Hopefully we will get plenty of ruins to reclaim. Abandoned Deep sites may lead to a totally new kind of discovery in the underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 08, 2012, 11:50:57 am

Quote from: Quatch on November 08, 2012, 08:59:38 am

Now that the maps are being filled in with more realistic sized (scale-abiding) settlements, will the overall size of the world* change so as to preserve undiscovered wilderness areas?

*or perhaps some sort of population density gradient to make uninhabited places?

I am very much loving this new look, gives a real sense of Empire.

What makes you think that their undiscovered wilderness now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Zack on November 08, 2012, 11:56:56 am

Will we only be able to reclaim sites of our own race or civ?

I'd like to be able to take over an abandoned human fortress and then transform it into a proper dwarf one, personally.

Will reclaimed world gen fortresses already have workshops and areas that were formerly stockpiles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 08, 2012, 12:47:02 pm

Will invading Humans/Elves/Goblins be able to conquer the deeper dwarf sites, or will they be restricted to the hill sites and the fortresses?

A player founded fortress will be able to spread to deeper dwarf sites as well as the hills, yes? Will the player be able to direct/incentivize this spread in a particular direction?

If a player fortress generates significant deeper sites, and then releases HFS, will the HFS spread to the deeper sites and claim the whole mountain for themselves, or will they just hang out in the site where they were released?

I see what Toady meant by the deeper sites, and I'm so pumped. Now that LotR situation of "Do we go around the mountain, or go through the goblin-infested former dwarf city" is entirely likely to come up. I can see players deliberately founding paired fortresses just to build a road for adventurers through a particularly wide mountain range.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 08, 2012, 01:05:10 pm

Toady, with dwarven settlements now being common, will it be possible to fast-travel through them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 08, 2012, 01:25:15 pm

Toady, will other races have these sorts of new site divisions at all? I can easily imagine a true distinction between cities and surrounding hamlets for humans, or maybe a goblin dark tower having a clutch of small, scattered camps around it to better protect against invasion and act as outposts. Connected to that, will sites ever "mature" into another class of site, or decay into a less populous class? For example, a regular fortress might seal off the underground due to a forgotten beast invasion during worldgen and become hill dwarves, and then when you went there it'd just be fifteen or twenty dwarves fishing and farming and living in wooden houses, and you'd talk to the elder of the village and he'd say "a long time ago, in my grandfather's grandfather's years, we were a mighty fortress of hundreds, but then a mythical monster appeared out of nowhere, killed almost everyone, and we had to seal it off. The fortress is still down there if you want to dig through and try to slay the beast." Or you'd get legends of minor sites that hide great wealth or ancient artifacts of immense power.

Of course, the lovable not-quite-right-the-first-time nature of Dwarf Fortress probably means that we'll get, say, peaceful farming communities where a small child owns the most powerful sword in the world, or something...

Finally, are we ever going to be able to play as these different sorts of sites? And, will the depth of sites be more variable to account for the different site depths, especially on embark?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on November 08, 2012, 01:40:52 pm

As long as the sword can be taken from the child, there is no problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 08, 2012, 02:20:04 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on November 07, 2012, 09:02:17 pm

Will we ever be able to play out the trip towards a new site? Such as, when a site is being chosen, would we see a travel line from the entity's capitol toward the desired embark and actually have the wagon move along it, sort of like adventure mode travel, but in control of the dwarves?
If this were possible, would we also be able to change the path taken, such as making it longer in order to avoid going through an evil forest?

Ooh, and your wagon could capsize crossing a river and the expedition leader could get dysentery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 08, 2012, 04:44:34 pm

Well, looks like I'll be having to brush up on Oregon Trail...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 08, 2012, 04:52:45 pm

Quote from: rex mortis on November 08, 2012, 01:40:52 pm

As long as the sword can be taken from the child, there is no problem.

To quote Mr. Burns: "As easy as taking candy from a child. Speaking of which..." He then goes out and struggles with a toddler for possession of the toddler's lollipop - without great success.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on November 08, 2012, 04:59:53 pm

oh my... oh my...
*rocks back and forth*

Speaking of forts changing type, will it be possible for, say, several forts being built on the same ground? inotherwords, a deepfort below a hill fort, both in use, but separated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 08, 2012, 05:03:31 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 08, 2012, 01:25:15 pm

Toady, will other races have these sorts of new site divisions at all?

Humans Already Do. Dorfs Do. There seem to be different symbols for Gobo Sites. So we can probably assume that Elf sites do, and demon sites as well.

Quote

will sites ever "mature" into another class of site, or decay into a less populous class?

That would be kinda of the point for this release.

Quote

are we ever going to be able to play as these different sorts of sites? And, will the depth of sites be more variable to account for the different site depths, especially on embark?

You already do. You start off as small tiny community, then it grows larger and larger still, becoming a city or a county and eventually a barony. What this release may do, is let small community pop up around you, that you support and they help support you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Grackle on November 08, 2012, 05:44:16 pm

I wonder if forgotten beasts are going to get moved to a lower level. If not, those dwarf sites will have to fend off lots of glass scorpions and fire breathing pigs monsters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 08, 2012, 05:54:31 pm

Quote from: The Grackle on November 08, 2012, 05:44:16 pm

I wonder if forgotten beasts are going to get moved to a lower level. If not, those dwarf sites will have to fend off lots of glass scorpions and fire breathing pigs monsters.

I'm surprised they're not already fending them off, since dwarves get products of the first cavern. At least I've not seen any fights with underground forgotten beasts in legends in 34.09, I doubt the worldgen's been changed much for the .11 for it to show up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EuchreJack on November 08, 2012, 06:31:35 pm

After reading the November 2012 status update, I just had to post and say how excited I am about the upcoming ability to retire successful fortresses instead of just abandoning them.

I also love the fact that I'll be able to reclaim fortresses from my dwarven civilization!

Wow.  Just wow.  Now, it really feels like I'll be creating something more than a World of Ruin.  I can actually make my civilization grow.  Magnificent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 09, 2012, 12:49:56 pm

Devlogs two days in a row!

I usually think that the frequency of devlogs indicates the excitement of Toady with what he is currently working.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 09, 2012, 01:22:22 pm

I have only one problem with the world generator, and that is all these inland "seas". They consume lots of space and don't reflect realistic terrain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 09, 2012, 04:19:49 pm

I don't really understand what the links mean, or how to read those maps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 09, 2012, 04:27:51 pm

Well, it's still a Work In Progress for now (WIP) but those links denote Trade Routes on the one map and Feudal Allegiances in the other.  Both show theoretical straight line distances, not necessarily the route taken by Trade Caravans or Liaison. (What is the plural of Liaison?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 09, 2012, 04:30:20 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 09, 2012, 04:19:49 pm

I don't really understand what the links mean, or how to read those maps.

Alrighty those Squares represent Dorf Forts, and their colors represent what kind of Nobility is running it.

dukes in red, counts in orange and barons in yellow, with the monarch in purple

The lines between these blocks is how their related to each other. More or less showing that their in the same Kingdom, and also showing, Barony, Counties, or a Duchy with their surrounding communities. 

---------
I dun like this map, I think its so similar to the trade network maps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 09, 2012, 05:23:48 pm

Quote from: Mr S on November 09, 2012, 04:27:51 pm

What is the plural of Liaison?

Ask a mormon ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ragman le bon on November 09, 2012, 06:57:33 pm

Will we be able to use minecarts to connect fortresses to hill/deep sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on November 09, 2012, 07:01:38 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 09, 2012, 04:30:20 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 09, 2012, 04:19:49 pm

I don't really understand what the links mean, or how to read those maps.

Alrighty those Squares represent Dorf Forts, and their colors represent what kind of Nobility is running it.

dukes in red, counts in orange and barons in yellow, with the monarch in purple

The lines between these blocks is how their related to each other. More or less showing that their in the same Kingdom, and also showing, Barony, Counties, or a Duchy with their surrounding communities. 

---------
I dun like this map, I think its so similar to the trade network maps.

I only see yellow squares. Where are the other nobles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 09, 2012, 07:17:11 pm

Quote from: tfaal on November 09, 2012, 07:01:38 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 09, 2012, 04:30:20 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 09, 2012, 04:19:49 pm

I don't really understand what the links mean, or how to read those maps.

Alrighty those Squares represent Dorf Forts, and their colors represent what kind of Nobility is running it.

dukes in red, counts in orange and barons in yellow, with the monarch in purple

The lines between these blocks is how their related to each other. More or less showing that their in the same Kingdom, and also showing, Barony, Counties, or a Duchy with their surrounding communities. 

---------
I dun like this map, I think its so similar to the trade network maps.

I only see yellow squares. Where are the other nobles?

They don't seem to be associated with any one specific site. There's an itty bitty little square at the center of web of colored lines which represents a noble, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 09, 2012, 09:17:03 pm

Quote from: ragman le bon on November 09, 2012, 06:57:33 pm

Will we be able to use minecarts to connect fortresses to hill/deep sites?

No. They'll be offsite in fort mode. Maybe in Adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Phlum on November 09, 2012, 09:47:33 pm

Is that TRADE!!? that was already there right?

I mean that he didnt just do a trade rewrite did he?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 09, 2012, 10:06:35 pm

Quote from: Phlum on November 09, 2012, 09:47:33 pm

Is that TRADE!!? that was already there right?

I mean that he didnt just do a trade rewrite did he?

Improved world gen trading was already part of the 0.34 release. It's unlikely to need another rewrite so soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 09, 2012, 11:10:06 pm

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 10, 2012, 12:27:37 am

Quote from: Phlum on November 09, 2012, 09:47:33 pm

Is that TRADE!!? that was already there right?

I mean that he didnt just do a trade rewrite did he?

That trade stuff was from a while ago, when he built the human cities if I recall correctly. It just hasn't shown a lot of effect in gameplay yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on November 10, 2012, 12:29:09 am

Quote from: Heph on November 09, 2012, 11:10:06 pm

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

There's a much more noticeable one in the glacier in the second map. Also, on the trade screens, they are connected to a neighboring civ by a dark green line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 07:12:08 am

Quote from: Sizik on November 10, 2012, 12:29:09 am

Quote from: Heph on November 09, 2012, 11:10:06 pm

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

There's a much more noticeable one in the glacier in the second map. Also, on the trade screens, they are connected to a neighboring civ by a dark green line.

On the holdings map for that world, it seems to be a tiny 4-pixel speck. I'm going to guess that it's one of those demon sites. There's another one further down between a cluster of seven goblin sites and three dwarf sites on the same world, and in the south-south-east of the third world, by the goblin sites with a tomb (I'm guessing those are conquered sites, then).

Quote from: Cruxador on November 09, 2012, 07:17:11 pm

Quote from: tfaal on November 09, 2012, 07:01:38 pm

I only see yellow squares. Where are the other nobles?

They don't seem to be associated with any one specific site. There's an itty bitty little square at the center of web of colored lines which represents a noble, though.

To be more clear, each itty bitty square is a fortress, where a noble (plus potentially the monarch) resides. In the third world, for example, the purple monarch lines come from a monarch/baron fortress, and connect to three duke fortresses, several baron fortresses, and hill dwarf settlements (the big yellow sites). Each of the duke fortresses in that world also connects to two count fortresses and a number of hill dwarf sites. The count fortresses are only connected to hill dwarf sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: slink on November 10, 2012, 08:36:50 am

Ohhh, I get it now.  I was coming here with the same questions, because the squares I saw were not of the colors described.  What he meant was that there are individual pixels marking the locations of the nobles, overlayed on squares marking the locations of cities.  I wonder what the color coding is for the civilizations.  It looks like spruce green for Dwarves.  Pink/magenta for goblins?  Yellow/olive for someone else, and white/grey for some other someones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on November 10, 2012, 11:53:50 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 07:12:08 am

Quote from: Sizik on November 10, 2012, 12:29:09 am

Quote from: Heph on November 09, 2012, 11:10:06 pm

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

There's a much more noticeable one in the glacier in the second map. Also, on the trade screens, they are connected to a neighboring civ by a dark green line.

On the holdings map for that world, it seems to be a tiny 4-pixel speck. I'm going to guess that it's one of those demon sites.

I was thinking that was what it had to be, too, but the trade screen makes this very peculiar - what use would the Demons have for trade? When Toady added "Demon Sites" I imagined they would be something more like the old Adamantine hollows from 40d - torture chambers, gore, filth, chained slaves, and so forth, populated by perhaps one major ("humanoid-twisted") demon and some minor cohorts, similar to the single greater Demon and the 30-40 typed Demons that would come out of the pits before. If the trade screen is connecting them, though, does that mean they're civilized enough to actually conduct trade? Maybe the system that makes the map just isn't refined enough, yet, and it's just using "any marked site populated by intelligent/[CANSPEAK] beings" to construct the trade webs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 10, 2012, 11:59:58 am

finally, the moutain home will find buyers for their barrels of fly ichor and one humped camel bloodI picture some kind of aristocratic freak with horns and lizard like scales bathing every day in a pool of imported badger blood sold to her with a "fair dwarf maid blood" label on it

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 12:27:01 pm

Quote from: Torchy on November 10, 2012, 11:53:50 am

I was thinking that was what it had to be, too, but the trade screen makes this very peculiar - what use would the Demons have for trade? ... Maybe the system that makes the map just isn't refined enough, yet, and it's just using "any marked site populated by intelligent/[CANSPEAK] beings" to construct the trade webs?

That's what it could be. It could also be a "just in case" function as it is with goblin sites - connected to the trade network in case the goblin site gets conquered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 10, 2012, 03:31:08 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 12:27:01 pm

Quote from: Torchy on November 10, 2012, 11:53:50 am

I was thinking that was what it had to be, too, but the trade screen makes this very peculiar - what use would the Demons have for trade? ... Maybe the system that makes the map just isn't refined enough, yet, and it's just using "any marked site populated by intelligent/[CANSPEAK] beings" to construct the trade webs?

That's what it could be. It could also be a "just in case" function as it is with goblin sites - connected to the trade network in case the goblin site gets conquered.

i don't see why goblins should be exempt from trade, there can always be the rare situation where goblins are neutral with a civ meaning dwarf goods could potentially end up at a goblin site

item from dwarf site> traded to humans> traded to elfs> traded to goblin loving humans > traded to gobs

or even through theft

item from dwarf site> stolen by kobold > stolen by gobs > traded to humans > traded to same dwarf site

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 10, 2012, 03:36:28 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on November 10, 2012, 03:31:08 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 12:27:01 pm

Quote from: Torchy on November 10, 2012, 11:53:50 am

I was thinking that was what it had to be, too, but the trade screen makes this very peculiar - what use would the Demons have for trade? ... Maybe the system that makes the map just isn't refined enough, yet, and it's just using "any marked site populated by intelligent/[CANSPEAK] beings" to construct the trade webs?

That's what it could be. It could also be a "just in case" function as it is with goblin sites - connected to the trade network in case the goblin site gets conquered.

i don't see why goblins should be exempt from trade, there can always be the rare situation where goblins are neutral with a civ meaning dwarf goods could potentially end up at a goblin site

item from dwarf site> traded to humans> traded to elfs> traded to goblin loving humans > traded to gobs

or even through theft

item from dwarf site> stolen by kobold > stolen by gobs > traded to humans > traded to same dwarf site

Back in 31. I used to get occasional peaceful goblins trading. I'd enjoy seeing that happen again!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 10, 2012, 04:21:33 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on November 10, 2012, 03:31:08 pm

i don't see why goblins should be exempt from trade, there can always be the rare situation where goblins are neutral with a civ meaning dwarf goods could potentially end up at a goblin site

item from dwarf site> traded to humans> traded to elfs> traded to goblin loving humans > traded to gobs

or even through theft

item from dwarf site> stolen by kobold > stolen by gobs > traded to humans > traded to same dwarf site

I was only paraphrasing something Toady said back when the trade maps were first implemented (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1776138;topicseen#msg1776138), where he also shared the idea that goblins might get to trade:

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Glanzor

Are the purple cities dark fortresses? Does that mean the goblins actually trade this time?

These are potential routes -- I marked them at this point just in case places end up getting conquered.  On the other hand, I think trade might end up being possible, especially with those human civs that are led by demon-gods, but maybe more generally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 11, 2012, 12:19:48 pm

Actually, I don't think the many of the black squares are demon sites. There are ruins over those areas in the maps, and some grey'd out goblin sites (what are the goblin sites surrounding dark fortresses called again?).

In older versions, dwarf fortresses had a color relevant to the population, so darker grey fortresses had smaller populations and the largest fortresses showed up as white. Now, white settlements indicate fortresses, light grey settlements indicate hill dwarves, and dark grey settlements indicate deep dwarves. The symbols for the sites of other entities still change depending on the population on the world map, so will we still have such an on-map indicator for fortress size or not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on November 11, 2012, 03:15:54 pm

Speaking of Nobles:

Will you changed anything about how succession works in this release or the ones immediately after it? For example, if a monarch dies with no heir, will the game try to find a more distant relation to take their place (siblings, spouse, ext), instead of picking someone at random, as the game seems to do now? Or, if the heir is still a child, will the child take the throne (perhaps, in a later release, with a steward ruling in the meantime), instead of ignoring the child heir completely?

There are more complex things that could happen, such as wars of succession, and contested succession in general, but I don't expect those type of things to be in for a long while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 11, 2012, 03:32:57 pm

Are we going to get to interact with successions or hierarchies this go-around? I don't know what that would entail, exactly- perhaps trying to promote your baron to monarch or starting a coup?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 11, 2012, 03:49:46 pm

Ever since now fortresses and other sites will appear and (hopefully) dynamically expand, does it mean we can expend addition of Dwarf Fortress skills (Miner, Stone Crafter, Broker etc.) in Adventurer mode?
Because NPCs also need skills to expand their homes, and I doubt that once generated sites would stay in their original state forever.


I know, I'm stubborn, but it only makes sense to at least consider it being coded in.
I don't demand, like, designations and burrows, just the possibility of building a house, digging a mine or just breaching a keep's wall for good reasons. (also, tactical sieges)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on November 11, 2012, 04:17:14 pm

I would prefer expanded adventurer skills got their very own release cycle, or several.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 11, 2012, 04:55:42 pm

Quote from: rex mortis on November 11, 2012, 04:17:14 pm

I would prefer expanded adventurer skills got their very own release cycle, or several.

We could just get basics now (but first things first, so let the Toady finish the dorfs sites and whatnot) and the rest later.
Btw, are the social skills also considered fortress mode and not yet in the Adv. mode?

Because they seem like those we could leave out for a while...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 11, 2012, 07:29:54 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 11, 2012, 03:49:46 pm

Ever since now fortresses and other sites will appear and (hopefully) dynamically expand, does it mean we can expend addition of Dwarf Fortress skills (Miner, Stone Crafter, Broker etc.) in Adventurer mode?
Because NPCs also need skills to expand their homes, and I doubt that once generated sites would stay in their original state forever.


I know, I'm stubborn, but it only makes sense to at least consider it being coded in.
I don't demand, like, designations and burrows, just the possibility of building a house, digging a mine or just breaching a keep's wall for good reasons. (also, tactical sieges)

Adventurers being able to exercise those skills arent really necessary to have the world be 'Alive' after world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 11, 2012, 07:33:44 pm

Quote from: rex mortis on November 11, 2012, 04:17:14 pm

I would prefer expanded adventurer skills got their very own release cycle, or several.

I can't wait for the day when I can chop down trees and build my own cabin with farm plot out in the woods in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 11, 2012, 09:47:38 pm

Slaves to Armok III: Harvest Moon

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on November 12, 2012, 12:40:09 pm

Jeremiah Johnson.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 12, 2012, 02:37:10 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 11, 2012, 09:47:38 pm

Slaves to Armok III: Harvest Moon

For some reason that sounds very sinister...

Though, I like the Harvest Moon series... so I would probably enjoy it if DF ever got around to the point where we could just play a small town farmer... the only thing is though I doubt scarecrows will keep the Bronze Colossus out of my garden.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 12, 2012, 02:38:40 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 12, 2012, 02:37:10 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 11, 2012, 09:47:38 pm

Slaves to Armok III: Harvest Moon

For some reason that sounds very sinister...

What do you mean, I can't fertilize my fields with the blood and marrow of my enemies? :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 12, 2012, 05:46:34 pm

So as it is, the king is going to just move around from fortress to fortress, without there being a main capitol? This seems to make sense but is there going to be a tag on the king to indicate that he will move around? When other entities have kings, will they move around by default or be settled in one place unless there's a very good reason to move?

The idea here is that dwarves may have a king who will move to a different town if there's adamantine or if there are more +<<+platinum goblets+>>+, while human kings will generally stay in one place.

I've notice someone has put up something on the suggestions forum about island settlements. If we settle on an otherwise uninhabited island, will settlements still spring up around the fortress?

The stage of advancement we're at given the devlogs suggests we'll need ships sooner than later, at least in an abstract form.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on November 12, 2012, 06:07:47 pm

What are those little purple mound thingies in the new world maps? Some sort of new goblin site?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 12, 2012, 08:09:47 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on November 12, 2012, 06:07:47 pm

What are those little purple mound thingies in the new world maps? Some sort of new goblin site?

I sorta thought they were  simi;ar to the dwarven spreading. So, smaller villiages. As opposed to regular sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Brotato on November 12, 2012, 09:34:23 pm

Will hill-dwarf settlements spring up naturally around our fortresses, or will we send migrants out in the hope they establish colonies for us?

Also, I'm really, really excited for this release! I have a feeling Toady is either going to add improved sieges after this release; or allow adventurers to create their own sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CatParty on November 13, 2012, 01:10:17 am

Are there any plans to include water as a factor in fortress survival in a bigger way? Water availability was one of the biggest limiting factors in real human settlement and, despite their preference for booze, I would imagine it would be the same for less established (i.e. not yet able to tap into bore water) dwarven sites. Currently, barring hospitals, there's no real survival problem with settling in the middle of a desert, when it should be a massive challenge.

Perhaps dwarves could get dehydrated at a slow rate, forcing them to take a drink every now and then?
This would also make building a sewer system somewhat useful rather than just a fun little puzzle as it is now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ag on November 13, 2012, 01:55:49 am

Will it be possible to bring a player fortress out of retirement in case you have a new idea or something, like you can with an adventurer, or is the retirement process strictly one-way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 13, 2012, 03:21:20 am

Quote from: CatParty on November 13, 2012, 01:10:17 am

Are there any plans to include water as a factor in fortress survival in a bigger way? Water availability was one of the biggest limiting factors in real human settlement and, despite their preference for booze, I would imagine it would be the same for less established (i.e. not yet able to tap into bore water) dwarven sites. Currently, barring hospitals, there's no real survival problem with settling in the middle of a desert, when it should be a massive challenge.

Perhaps dwarves could get dehydrated at a slow rate, forcing them to take a drink every now and then?
This would also make building a sewer system somewhat useful rather than just a fun little puzzle as it is now.

I remember Toady mentioning in the past that he thought that the ability to create booze without using water was a bit unrealistic.  Hopefully that means it's on his radar at some point to have booze production require access to water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on November 13, 2012, 03:31:16 am

Quote from: ag on November 13, 2012, 01:55:49 am

Will it be possible to bring a player fortress out of retirement in case you have a new idea or something, like you can with an adventurer, or is the retirement process strictly one-way?

From this month's report (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118526.0):

Quote from: Toady One

Non-player dwarven sites will likely be our largest challenge so far in the world tour we've been taking of the various critters over the last few months.  They have to be reclaimable by the fortress mode player when they are conquered or fall into ruin, they have to be visitable by adventurers, and they also have to be reasonable in a general sense, fitting into the world as a whole.  In addition, these sites have to align closely enough with player fortresses that a player fortress can turn into one of them when it is retired, which is why we're going ahead with that now.

I.e. player sites will become non-player sites, and will only be reclaimable after a disaster of some sort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 13, 2012, 04:19:38 am

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on November 13, 2012, 03:31:16 am

Quote from: ag on November 13, 2012, 01:55:49 am

Will it be possible to bring a player fortress out of retirement in case you have a new idea or something, like you can with an adventurer, or is the retirement process strictly one-way?

From this month's report (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118526.0):

Quote from: Toady One

Non-player dwarven sites will likely be our largest challenge so far in the world tour we've been taking of the various critters over the last few months.  They have to be reclaimable by the fortress mode player when they are conquered or fall into ruin, they have to be visitable by adventurers, and they also have to be reasonable in a general sense, fitting into the world as a whole.  In addition, these sites have to align closely enough with player fortresses that a player fortress can turn into one of them when it is retired, which is why we're going ahead with that now.

I.e. player sites will become non-player sites, and will only be reclaimable after a disaster of some sort.

A lot of people (not necessarily here) seem to think that the upcoming release would allow a person to reclaim a non-destroyed fortress as well, thereby enabling adventure mode without forfeiting a fortress, and allowing the claiming of NPC fortresses to bypass initial fortress setup. I imagine a lot of folks will be quite disappointed if that possibility isn't going in yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 13, 2012, 05:37:02 am

Quote from: BradUffner on November 13, 2012, 03:21:20 am

Quote from: CatParty on November 13, 2012, 01:10:17 am

Are there any plans to include water as a factor in fortress survival in a bigger way? Water availability was one of the biggest limiting factors in real human settlement and, despite their preference for booze, I would imagine it would be the same for less established (i.e. not yet able to tap into bore water) dwarven sites. Currently, barring hospitals, there's no real survival problem with settling in the middle of a desert, when it should be a massive challenge.

Perhaps dwarves could get dehydrated at a slow rate, forcing them to take a drink every now and then?
This would also make building a sewer system somewhat useful rather than just a fun little puzzle as it is now.

I remember Toady mentioning in the past that he thought that the ability to create booze without using water was a bit unrealistic.  Hopefully that means it's on his radar at some point to have booze production require access to water.

In directly, more use of water, has been stated. Like with the booze, as mention, but the  farming and cooking overhaul may need different uses of water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vsor on November 13, 2012, 07:26:30 am

With the world in its more living state, the problem comes up where the life of most adventurers can be measured in days. When can we expect a mechanic that makes time pass faster? ie. staying in an inn or recovering in a place of healing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 13, 2012, 08:27:39 am

Or for that matter, being held in bars for one's crimes...
"Poor fool, you accused me of being a night creature!
First thing : you are wrong 'cause I'm actually a demon, second I sentence you to three hundred years in jail!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on November 13, 2012, 09:48:10 am

an adventurer being held in a bar? Could be worse, as far as demonic punishments go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 13, 2012, 11:22:14 am

Quote from: Quatch on November 13, 2012, 09:48:10 am

an adventurer being held in a bar? Could be worse, as far as demonic punishments go.

He forgot to mention that it's a Milk Bar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vsor on November 13, 2012, 11:25:28 am

Quote from: BradUffner on November 13, 2012, 11:22:14 am

Quote from: Quatch on November 13, 2012, 09:48:10 am

an adventurer being held in a bar? Could be worse, as far as demonic punishments go.

He forgot to mention that it's a Milk Bar.

Korova Milk Bar?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 13, 2012, 12:17:32 pm

According to the latest devlog on 11/12/2012, hill dwarves now have outdoor gardens. Are dwarves going to have aboveground plants by default now, and will traders bring outdoor plants?

Also, with the addition of hillocks, are dwarves actually going to be moving earth around in the next release and if will this facility be included in fortress mode for players?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dancing kobold on November 13, 2012, 01:16:10 pm

 for the next release. how smart do you want the AI that control retired player fortresses be? will it actually simulate the fortress similar to the way players do it or will it "cheat" a bit? if it cheats. will it then take into consideration what stuff you have at the site for how much chance it have to survive?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 13, 2012, 01:32:59 pm

Quote from: dancing kobold on November 13, 2012, 01:16:10 pm

for the next release. how smart do you want the AI that control retired player fortresses be? will it actually simulate the fortress similar to the way players do it or will it "cheat" a bit? if it cheats. will it then take into consideration what stuff you have at the site for how much chance it have to survive?

Personally, I'd really appreciate it if the AI that controls the retired fortresses doesn't screw them up too much. I'm OK with the AI planning out a new set of rooms when the fortress population starts reaching the thousand or thousands of dwarves that we end up having in these sites (its true, worldgen sites have way higher populations than player fortresses; site limit is typically 1200 citizens or so defined in worldgen). However, the AI shouldn't do things like build corridors through magma pumpstacks or water cisterns, and should leave tombs and zoos alone unless it deliberately wants to expand them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: XXSockXX on November 13, 2012, 01:59:35 pm

Will hill dwarf sites and deep sites be subject to invasions or MB/FB rampages during gameplay? Will you need to and be able to defend them?

Will you eventually be able to control these sites in the same way you control your fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 13, 2012, 02:04:53 pm

Quote from: Vsor on November 13, 2012, 07:26:30 am

With the world in its more living state, the problem comes up where the life of most adventurers can be measured in days. When can we expect a mechanic that makes time pass faster? ie. staying in an inn or recovering in a place of healing.

Yep. THere been a fair amount of talk in DF Talks about a mechanic to allow time to pass faster. As always, no time line.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 13, 2012, 12:17:32 pm

will traders bring outdoor plants?

Human and Elf Traders already bring outdoor plants. If you were speaking about Dorf Traders in particular, then they'll trade whatever their Dorf Civilation makes. If that includes outdoor plantys, then they'll bring outdoor plants. From my understanding, what traders can bring doesnt have any artificial limitation like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 13, 2012, 04:43:31 pm

Quote from: Vsor on November 13, 2012, 11:25:28 am

Quote from: BradUffner on November 13, 2012, 11:22:14 am

Quote from: Quatch on November 13, 2012, 09:48:10 am

an adventurer being held in a bar? Could be worse, as far as demonic punishments go.

He forgot to mention that it's a Milk Bar.

Korova Milk Bar?

Moloko Plus?!  I could see Dorfs getting into that.

Also, over 100 questions on this FotF?  You're welcome, Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on November 13, 2012, 05:13:24 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 12, 2012, 02:37:10 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 11, 2012, 09:47:38 pm

Slaves to Armok III: Harvest Moon

For some reason that sounds very sinister...

Though, I like the Harvest Moon series... so I would probably enjoy it if DF ever got around to the point where we could just play a small town farmer... the only thing is though I doubt scarecrows will keep the Bronze Colossus out of my garden.

Yeah, that sounds nice. Living the simple life of a prickle berry farmer. Going to town to sell your crops at the market. Buying seeds. Planting and harvesting. Saving enough money to buy some armor and a dagger. Sneaking around the farm in your spare time to increase your ambush skill. Heading to a rival's homestead and eliminating him along with any witnesses. Buying his farm. Hiring workers for the farm. Selling your crops at the market for more money. Bribing public officials to arrest another farmer for a crime he didn't commit. Obtaining his farm. Selling your crops to merchants who sell them in other towns. Using money to pay assassins to kill any remaining rival farmers in the nearby area. Obtaining their farms. Buying land to create more farms. Continuing this cycle of planting, harvesting, assassinations, bribery and buying land until you have wealth that kings can only dream about obtaining. Using assassins to create succession struggle. Bribing generals to fight for me. Becoming king...

Will assassins become part of the game? Bribery? Slavery?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 13, 2012, 05:21:08 pm

Quote from: Just Some Guy on November 13, 2012, 05:13:24 pm

Will assassins become part of the game? Bribery? Slavery?

Short answer:  Yes, eventually.

Also, some aspects of Succession will be touched on in this release, although final details will be forthcming.  So, actions that could be seen as assassinations to lead to succession issues may happen, sort of, with or without player input.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 13, 2012, 06:16:02 pm

You mentioned in your last DFTalk that hill dwarf settlements would lead to a revamp of how migrant waves work. Now that they're finally going in seven months later, do you have any more elaborated ideas for what that will look like?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 13, 2012, 06:17:50 pm

Who else is absolutey stoked (For extreme lack of a better term) at these changes? I mean damn! This is awesome!

Since theres now a whole window for nobility and holdings, is it going to remain limited to showing dwarven sites, or will it eventually include the loose allances of the human lords, or what now appear to be goblin and elven sprawl?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 13, 2012, 06:30:29 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on November 13, 2012, 06:16:02 pm

You mentioned in your last DFTalk that hill dwarf settlements would lead to a revamp of how migrant waves work. Now that they're finally going in seven months later, do you have any more elaborated ideas for what that will look like?

Toady mentioned this on his Nov 3rd Update:

Quote

We might not get to the involvement of hill dwarves and deeper sites with your fortress during play for this release, since that's another involved addition, but we will be laying the groundwork for that here.

I would assume from this he has some idea how he wants it to work, but don't expect for a reform on migrants just yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on November 13, 2012, 06:41:50 pm

Quote from: misko27 on November 13, 2012, 06:17:50 pm

Who else is absolutey stoked (For extreme lack of a better term) at these changes? I mean damn! This is awesome!

The next release isn't out yet and I already feel that the current version is pretty outdated.

Now that we're going to find fortress dwarves in their natural habitat, without telling us about how far from their home they are, are there plans to fit or expand their interaction choices with adventurers? Maybe trading with brokers or request healing from medicine laborers?

I don't think the broker trading could be exploited (as some may have suggested) by bringing insane goods with the adventurer, all for free, and then reclaiming inmediately. I hope the question doesn't sound suggestion-y, but would bring some extra value to fortress visiting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 13, 2012, 06:47:36 pm

Speaking of interactions, as a modder, are there going to be any expansions of old modding with this release? More tokens for CE_ADD_TAG, more syndrome types, more usage hints, more counter triggers, anything like that? Or is it just a straight shot to expansion and activation of the world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Thanks to MrWiggles, Talvieno, Knight Otu, King Mir, arkhometha, Footkerchief, Eric Blank, Japa, Putnam, Vattic, EmeraldWind, Askot Bokbondeler, HiEv, Cruxador, BradUffner, rhesusmacabre, Mr S and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions people had.  As usual, some questions were not included for various reasons (answered by people, too off-topic and suggestiony, etc.).

Quote

Quote from: Heph

When you are done with trees for this release can you provide a example raw-file?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

When you mention orchards using the products from the old tree raws, do you mean no further trees have been added in or are the raw structures the same? If the raw structures for trees have changed, would you be able to present an example for us? Has the elven method for producing items been elaborated on in this release, i.e. will we see trees growing furniture? Will forest vegetation such as leaves burn?

Yeah.  I think I'm going to hold off a bit longer though, while I let some more things shake out (in particular the underground trees).  Many new trees, and the elves do interesting things.  I haven't updated forest fires but it should be pretty impressive before the release, in terms of visual tree annihilation.

Quote

Quote from: davros

Is there any chance of you posting screenshots of goblin towers, elf cities, and so on?

Quote from: Sizik

Will you provide pictures of the new sites, or will that be a surprise for release?

I've posted what I feel comfortable posting.  A lot of it is too smeared out vertically for an interesting image, and there is some stuff I want to hold back.

Quote from: adasdad

will we get the ability in adventure mode to "mix" items without defining a specific reaction, for instance dipping weapons into vials of something, or poisoning food?

I don't have a timeline for it.  The contaminant system makes it reasonable enough to do, and it would happen when it's important to do something like that and we have more dipping candidates around in adv mode.

Quote from: DNK

So, if you're going to include more microhabitats (like undercanopy grasses and fields, etc), will that include distinctions between things like:

- riparian zones (river banks) and the surrounding areas
- "old growth" forests and "new growth" areas within them where a tree "recently" fell or something that caused a disturbance [obviously could just be applied randomly rather than fully modeled, though adjusted for values like soil depth (less = more treefalls), wind (planned: higher = more falls), fire likelihood (would cause much larger "new growth" areas), etc, at least during initial embark level generation]. This would require plants to have a variable describing them on a spectrum between "rapid spreader" and "slow, long-term dominant species". Those with values closer to the former would be far more likely to appear after a recent fall (or clearing by dwarves in realtime) and grow fast at first, but as they grow larger, their rate of growth would slow, and the slow-growing long-term species would eventually overtake them (usually, but not always, of course).
- flora based on underlying soil/rock (for example, something occuring over a bauxite deposit would have high acidity and corresponding changes in plant makeup). This would require building values into each plant for acidity/base tolerance and adjusting likelihood of existence by that.
- other biological distinctions within general habitats/biomes I can't think of right now

I'm interested in doing more with habitats, but don't really have a lot of the basic necessities yet, except maybe for the river banks (where we do have the simple wet/dry distinction and nothing else).

Quote from: hermes

Since watchtowers and elven treehouses put dangerous entities up high, have you considered any adventure mode UI changes to make their visibility more... natural?  e.g. the z+1 view auto-adjusting to the top of the tower to simulate the adventurer glancing up.

It has been a long time since I've tested it, but there's an init option to make the Z windows trigger when a creature is there, rather than all the time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

There were plans to do animal-powered vehicles sometime. Is there any chance of that going in with this release?

Nope, I don't think there's a chance of that now.  We've already got enough on the plate.

Quote from: Sizik

He means will the tree stay tree-shaped, as opposed to collapsing into a mound of wood like the current cave in system does.

The tree tiles wouldn't look good if they survived the collapse, except perhaps for the generic branches.  I haven't done dwarf mode tree stuff yet, but I'll deal with the wood production angle of it at that time.

Quote from: Inarius

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

I wouldn't expect super-roots, but they will grow through the space they fit in.  For some of the tunnelly areas we might not have anything.  I've saved finalizing things like tower-caps for deep sites, and we are almost there.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Is it/will it be possible to mine under a tree without cutting through most of the roots, say, to create a little cave where the ground[above]/ceiling[below] appears to be held together by the tree roots (even though in actuality it stays simply because DF's cave-in physics for the ground itself currently don't kick in unless there is no physical connection)?

The tree roots aren't like that in general, with giant taproot pillars, though you could have a ceiling made of tangled roots.

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Quote from: iceball3

Will there be a (possibly welcome) dissonance between character reaction time and movement/other action cost? For instance, if I break into a full out sprint, I would say move two tiles instead of one in the same turnframe, thus, possibly overshooting a target I want to rush by while swinging at.

Quote from: kulik

How will the coming running mechanic work with charging during combat? I mean, will there be a difference when charging somebody while in full run? Could a lighter combatant take down heavier stationary opponent if he charges him at full running speed?

It doesn't spoil your turn now.  The old charges made things like that happen depending on skill rolls, so when I finish up attacks in the new system it could happen, but I'm not sure how it'll end up.  Charging/lunging attacks still need to be finalized.

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam

Will you gain personal enemies that will hunt you to the ends of the earth for killing their parent years ago?

This time it's more oriented toward civ-level trouble you are causing for armies and so on, but it should work for things like that -- the hunting itself is at the personal level, but it's still on entity orders.

Quote from: Scandles

Will the Dwarfs and other races have bush-clearing abilities, asides from harvesting and trampling, e.g a machete, i.e hacking the vegetative things hindering their progress into little bits?

I haven't gotten to any movement speed issues.  The more those matter, the more likely it is you'd have the ability to deal with it.

Quote from: Owlbread

Will there be a special place in future Dwarven culture/society for the original 7 Dwarves? I have noticed some players put great value on their original 7, and become emotionally attached to them. Will the AI dwarves also revere them in some way?

Starting scenarios are starting to get quite a bit piled on them (as the caravan arc did in the past), but it's the sort of thing I wouldn't want to think about too hard until we know why the dwarves left on their journey in the first place.

Quote from: King Mir

Will single tile trees still be possible?
Some plants may be suitable to be treated as impassible single tiles, as trees are now.

Right now they stay saplings if they have no room to grow.

Quote from: Vattic

Will we get other things growing in the trees like lichen? Trees act as a habitat for all sorts of other animals (like elves of course).

Vines and so on as well...  you can't have a game that has no vines in the jungle, but DF is such a game right now.  Not sure when we'll get to it though.

Quote from: iceball3

Going back to the combat mind portion of this update, will we have civilian dwarves in fortresses occasionally not only fighting back, but making sure an enemy is sufficiently incapacitated if they can, out of retaliatory anger?
Will dwarves always have the heart, militia or not, to finish off an unconscious/sufficiently helpless/fleeing enemy after getting the upper hand in what has developed into the 'lethal combat' range?

Yeah, the responses aren't going to be uniform, but I'm not sure that they'll change vs. unconscious opponents -- the main thing there was to go on to conscious targets.  They need a new check for conscious targets to do that part right.

Quote from: mastahcheese

When salt is implemented, will evaporation of salt water leave salt behind as a by-product?

It seems like it should, and that it doesn't take overly modern processes, but we'd have to be careful with setting that up properly, since there is a lot of sea water and we have to make sure it doesn't overload the system at random when you are walking along the ocean.

Quote from: tahujdt

With the change in climbing pathing, will we see improvement in the pathing of flying/swimming creatures?

Nope.  Those problems are different, and they aren't easy to fix.

Quote from: stolide

Will acorns become oak trees?

It doesn't currently work that way.  It would be fun to get there eventually.

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Quote from: dhokarena56

Is there anything useful we can do with dead leaves? They probably don't burn hot enough to be used as a fuel, but maybe fertilizer?

Quote from: Trif

Will we be able to use rotting leaves as a fertilizer?

Quote from: Aseaheru

will leaves have any use? such as animal fodder or for turning into ash or fertaliser?

They aren't currently useful.

Quote from: Heph

On itemclouds: Is it possible to use that type as material breath? I would like to see shrapnel-"clouds" from say a giant porcupine instead of a single spine.

It isn't currently in as a possible interaction material emission token, but I think it's a good time to keep that flow involved with the material emission system, so it'll work before the release.

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Quote from: Cruxador

Are you planning to do (chestnut roasting)?

Quote from: Chthonic

When, not if, this is added will we be able to roast nuts in fortress mode?

There's the whole "edible_cooked" tag, and cooked foods in general, but I don't have particular plans.

Quote from: Chthonic

How long does leaf-clutter last on the ground?  I'm a little OCD about fortress cleanliness and contaminants (the cleaning bug drives me crazy right now)--will dwarves get rakes?

I'm not sure I'll ever have rakes for dwarves...  tending to the cleanliness of the outdoors seems very out of character.  The leaf litter clears up in spring after it falls through autumn and sits in winter right now.

Quote from: Weirdsound

how much fruit will there be? Will there be enough to have a major impact on how we play the food supply game?

You can't currently plant fruit trees, but if you embark with lots of them around, it'll matter quite a bit.  I haven't gotten to that designation yet, so I'm not sure how it'll play out.

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz

Can you be killed by a falling coconut?
or is it handled by the contaminant spray mechanic?

Right now it lies between item clouds and items as a non-cloud item spatter.  It's sort of an irritating problem, since you don't want to allocate too many items, but coconuts aren't overly numerous either.

Quote from: Putnam

Are there any plans for anything new in the way of the data/speech files?

As far as I remember, that's still all the same.

Quote from: Aseaheru

will there be any variations in a language? i.e. a civ sits alone for a thousand years, and its version of, say, dwarven is almost incomprehensible to a dwarf elsewhere.

We've mentioned it a bit here and there -- I have an interest in that kind of thing, but I haven't really started work on languages at all yet.

Quote from: burn_heal

It has always seemed to me that Fortress mode is the more popular format in the game. With a lot of the focus of current development being on adventure mode, are you worried that more fort-oriented players will miss out on a lot of the new features?

It all ties together, so I'm happy with what everybody will end up getting.  Everything's not for everybody, but things like the site maps are eventually going to matter for most people.

Quote from: Helgoland

With the combat/movement speed split, will we be seeing mounts in the next release? If yes, both for fort and adventure modde or just for one of the two?

I think somebody mentioned that dwarf mode mounts for dwarves aren't really a high priority.  I'd like to do adventure mode mounts, and the combat/move speed split was the main barrier, but it might be an overreach to do adv mode mounts now.

Quote from: BradUffner

Will acceleration and jump height be affected by equipment and other inventory?

Acceleration for running?  Equipment affects your max speed, and I think it's done by percentages after some point so your running acceleratio would be affected as well.  Jump height isn't really an issue, since a vertical jump higher than touching the next tile up isn't part of the game right now, since that would be quite a jump.  When I get to other critters needing special jumps, we might think more about equipment.

Quote from: Chronas

In regards to speed loss when changing direction, will it be more time efficient pulling a turning circle to make a full 180 or even to turn 90 degrees vs. losing sprint to change direction instantaneously?

Is the sprinting speed of a creature dependent on its innate speed or a separate variable?

Do different creatures have different turning circles? For example some losing speed at a mere 45 degree angle or others capable of maintaining speed in any direction.
If yes, is that also a separate variable or do faster creatures turn slower?

IIRC you mentioned that moving at a faster speed increases the force of your blows (like a non-placeholder charge). Is the reverse also true? Will running/jumping into a moving minecart head-on (or even obtusely) combine the force?

It's hard to say without trying it out or running the numbers, since you lose 4 turns when you pull the circle, but you are at full speed when you hit the start line, where the person that turns around gets to start at the start line but has to get up to full speed.

Sprint speed is currently a fixed percentage of the speed, but it should probably be separate.  The turning circle is also set at this point.

I don't understand the part about the minecart.  Combine which forces?

Quote from: Old Bones

In adventure mode if you jump from somewhere onto a climbable surface, will you catch yourself?

You can, yeah.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will Dwarf Fortress try to deliberately make navigable climbing paths up trees and through the tree-tops outside of forest retreats?

I don't understand this one -- you mean to make the elf sites accessible by climbing without blocking things off?  The elves exercise quite a bit of power over the shapes of their trees.

Quote from: Yoink

Toady, if this is to be the release with non-lethal combat, do you have any plans for 'sheath' items for weapons? Since drawing a weapon will escalate a fight to lethal stakes.

I haven't done the items yet.  For now I've just added a fast "strap" option that lets you put your items away and take them out with one keypress.  Later it'll be tied to objects.

Quote from: Quatch

Since adventure mode is turn based and things only move/act every time you give input, what does jumping look like? Does the simulation run until you regain footing?

Unless you get a reaction moment or something like that, it works like when you get knocked back -- you become a projectile for a time and have to wait until you regain your footing.

Quote from: Charey Wolf

What happens if you jump off a tree and then land in the water?

It's the same as falling in the water, so there's some slowing effect before you impact on the hard part.

Quote from: CountAlex

When and whether leather armor and clothes will have different durability depending on basic hide they made of? I. e. chicken leather armor must be not much better then paper when dragon leather armor should be hard as kevlar flak jacket.

It hasn't been a high priority, but I suppose it can already be done outside of vanilla.  I'm theoretically for differentiating things, but I'm not really sure where I'd get data for non-fantasy creatures.  Dragon skin should likely be special, since it usually is.

Quote from: LoSboccacc

so are we getting climbing invaders?

It's not likely to happen for this release, although I'm enthusiastic about having that kind of churning overrun feeling happen to you eventually.  There's a chance some part of it'll happen automatically when I look back at climbing AI before the release, but it's a coin toss.

Quote from: DG

Please clarify this, Toady. By smooth walls do you only mean natural walls that have been smoothed by an engraver (the impression I'm getting) or also walls constructed of blocks instead of rough stone/logs/bars?

I haven't distinguished the constructions yet, but I'm for making block walls much harder to climb, both from a game and realism perspective.

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz

How is climbing ability determined? Will there be a skill check, an attribute (agility) check, or both/neither? Will a dwarf child be able to scale a thousand-foot cliff or will it be a perilous climb, rolling ability checks every tick?

-edit
hehe, while I'm at it, a question for extraneous skills, (thinking of morul)
With jumping implemented, especially when factoring in water, will there be a diving skill?

Still no news here.  I moved on before I resolved it to my satisfaction, but it'll still be handled before I'm done.  There will be a skill of some kind, and all of the skill checks involve multiple attributes.

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Quote from: thvaz

We will have creatures like spiders climbing on the ceilings?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the inclusion of climbing, will invaders now be able to scale walls?

Will creatures be able to grapple a ceiling?

Will creatures be able to climb up and over raised drawbridges?

Quote from: Vattic

Will we be able to specify that some creatures can climb smooth and ice walls?

I haven't done super-climbers yet that can use smoother surfaces, but it'll have to go in sometime.  Climbing specifies the surface that is held, and this currently includes being able to hang in an air tile while you hold on to a tile above (like tree branches), so ceiling walking can use the floor/wall type above in the same way.  I haven't addressed buildings like raised drawbridges or doors.

Quote from: Maxmurder

Will we get reaction moments when jumping/landing on a creature?
ie. the player jumps out of a tree undetected onto a nearby goblin. As he lands he gets a reaction moment to attack the goblin with a weapon doing extra damage.

Will elves get a buff to movement/fighting while climbing in trees?
I could see a very deadly strategy of climbing up a tree then picking off people with a bow/crossbow as they try to climb after you.

I don't have such moments now, but the system is really bare right now.

Some creatures have natural skills, and I'm not sure how that's going to work with civilized creatures.  We've tended to rely on attributes for that, and still have learned skills from nothing, but I imagine it'll change at some point.  I expect elf atts will help them now, and they might have some kind of talent for climbing later, so that they end up learning it better and faster, which is kind of like having a specialized attribute.  Not quite sure how it'll turn out.

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Quote from: Neonivek

Toady will you be adding any supernatural trees with Fruit in this release or only real life equivilants?

Quote from: Tenebrais

Will fruit trees be real fruits, like the other trees, or made up, like the other crops? And does either answer affect your future plans for handling plants?

Probably all real fruit this time.

Quote from: Quietust

Back in the old 2D versions, the "cliff face" was covered with a layer of "damaged" stone which couldn't be smoothed but could be dug away more quickly.
Will damaged stone be easier to climb? And if so, might the landscape generation be adjusted to create these again?

The whole idea of cliff faces and canyons is still waiting.  Climbing was the major obstacle to putting those back in the game, but we're still rampy right now.  I agree that most future cliff faces should use the damaged picture and be easier to climb.

Quote from: Alu

What are your plans on climbing gear? Maybe with the equipment, one could even climb ice walls.

Don't have anything specific at this point.

Quote from: MasterMorality

Will unrooted things on tiles be subject to velocity and physics from a flying creature that latches onto them mid-flight?
Ie: if a dwarf hurtles out of a minecart over a chasm, and grabs a goblin on a ledge, by the arm, mid-flight as it goes past, will the dwarf pull the goblin along with him until he stops? Or will the goblin act as if it were an entrenched pillar of lead, anchoring and wrenching the Dwarf to a sudden halt?

We don't have that kind of interaction yet, if I remember how it works.  It would be weird if a gnome could arrest a giant's flight by initiating a wrestle on it.

Quote from: Torchy

Will Goblin settlements have shops?

Even though you can't play as a Goblin by default, and most of the time they'll be hostile to you automatically, it seems like it would make sense for them to have some kind of markets present at least for their own use. (Yes, I know the NPCs don't really *use* them) Especially if they're going to have civilian professions of the type that would produce goods for shops.

They don't have markets as it stands.  I'm not sure they ever will, and we haven't really thought carefully about how they conceive of trade (when they want something that they can't just take).  It might make them less likely to aggregate in a single location, but I'm not sure.  Part of it depends on how they start to relate to human civs that have gone sour (like the ones that have demon leaders masquerading as gods).

Quote from: Escapism

Will combat advantages (both projectile and hand-to-hand) relating to z-levels be done in this release?

There's more reason to put it in than there was before, but I haven't done anything with it yet.

Quote from: AfterShave

When jumping, how high up can you get? If you manage one z level, does this mean you can grab hold of the roof of a 2 story building and climb up?

You can't jump up into another tile.  As your example points out, that would be quite a high jump.

Quote from: Tov01

How extensive will Goblin slavery be in the next release? I know that kidnapped children are in, but is anything else planned?

There are slaves on the sites at times, though humans seem just as good at it, if not better, since they tend to leave more people alive.  I haven't particularly addressed this yet, though we are still quite likely to do more with site occupation before the release.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will we be able to get orchards in Dwarf Fortress Mode too?

I haven't done tree planting yet, and I'm not sure how that'll end up.  It should be possible to grab things from existing trees.

Quote from: Owlbread

At present, Dwarven society is quite a model of gender equality. Will factors such as Dwarven women's place in society be addressed at a later point in DF's development? Is it your intention to keep their society equal, or should there be differences that are more in keeping with traditional western european medieval society? The reason that I ask this is that some of us were having a debate over whether a Dwarven language should be gendered (on the basis of personal pronouns) because that would conflict with the gender equality that is apparently present in Dwarven culture.

I expect the society will remain equal.

Quote from: Helgoland

Can you say a bit more about what sort of flavour each of the races will have? E.g. humans being similar to ancient Greece or Rome or to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever; I hope you know what I mean

I'm trying not to do it like that -- ideally humans will end up with enough parameters to end up like various different civilizations, and the other civilizations will probably become more alien to humans as humans take up more of the slack.  Dwarves are an exception to that since they should keep some familiarity to be easily playable, and they should continue to exemplify the highs and lows of human craft and inebriation.

Quote from: Tov01

Will the fruits develop from flowers, or will they just appear on the tree? And if flowers do mature into fruit, will the flowers of non-fruiting trees produce seed pods or whatever. (Note that I am NOT asking if we'll have non-abstract plant reproduction. I know we won't. But this would be a step in that direction.)

Also, another goblin question I probably should have asked earlier.

Does it fit in your view of goblins for them to have farms to feed their livestock (once feed is implemented, of course), and perhaps their slaves (as in, feeding slaves the same gruel they feed their animals)?

Things currently go through a cycle over a year.  It doesn't track individual flowers turning into individual fruit, but since they occur in turn, the effect is the same.  I've put in a rough cycle for each of the trees, so you can end up with some spathe type critters and so on.

Nope, don't like farms.  I don't expect goblin animals to need feed in the end.  They can eat rats out in the swamp.  The kidnapees need to be fed.  I'm not sure they track that right now, since they are historical figures and we softened their need to feed after some problems elsewhere.  It might rely on butchered beakdogs or trade later.

Quote from: Vattic

Assuming we get multi-tile mushrooms are we likely to see any nice shelf ones? Having some big enough to walk on or even build on would be cool.

I have a soft spot for shelf fungus, after one of my Seattle apartments, but I'm not sure I'll get to it.  I'd need to work a bit to get plants attached to walls instead of floors reliably.

Quote from: arkhometha

With the next version, will all the civ creatures (e.g. golbins, elfs and dwarfs) from legends be present in the map? Like I can talk to everybody (alive) from legends in adventure mode? What about FB/Titans, do you plan to have them all on the map? How will they move/decide where they will strike?

Yeah.  There could be exceptions, but you should be able to find all the civilized beings.  I haven't done findable FBs or underground civs like antmen.

Quote from: darklord92

How closely will dwarf mountain halls follow player forts? will you be using famous player forts for designs?

I'll probably look at some maps to remind myself of things I've forgotten, he he he.  There will be things that I probably won't attempt, with machines and so on, especially things that require active jobs to maintain.

Quote from: Aseaheru

will there be more than one design for mountain halls?

I'll be starting on that soon, and I think it'll likely end up like human towns in the sense that we are starting with one basic way of doing things that we plan to extend over time.  There's only so much that can be done right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will there be a form of true rebirth or possibly reincarnation? Rather than mummies that rot in tombs, will we ever see a fallen entombed general ever leave the tomb and rejoin society for some cause? And if an entity member worships a god of rebirth or something, will we see any form of reincarnation, either as a new birth of the same species, or perhaps different species? And would they be aware of it?

If either or both of these are implemented, would they show up beyond just being viewable in Legends mode? Would we see a dwarf be reborn/reincarnated in fortress mode, or perhaps have an adventurer do the same and be replayable from their new life?

On a completley unrelated note:
My wife was wondering, Will various foods in the game have viewable flavors? Such as if certain food is sweet or spicy, and if dwarves would prefer different flavors, as opposed to/in addition to specific foods. Also, would they have allergies to particular foods? Or at least disliking a particular food, which would cause a minor bad thought?

We have a resurrection effect already, but we don't do anything interesting with it.  I'm not sure what will happen in the future.

Trying to come up with general taste categories for things like bananas seems like a nightmare, or at least something that I couldn't do at all myself.  I'm technically for having that sort of information, but have no idea how to do it.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

If we have a modded world where some good regions resurrect the dead, are the dead returned to life and the population during worldgen?

Nah, world gen doesn't use the effects well, especially modded ones.

Quote from: Alu

So now that you are working on elven trees, does elven woodwork get special tagging now? An Elf snaps if he sees non-elven woodwork, because trees are being killed for it, so they do it differently by growing their furniture out of the tree or something right? Does elven woodwork get special tagging now, so they don't go crazy if you buy their stuff and sell it back to them?

It doesn't have a tag yet, but it should.  One would hope they could recognize their own work, especially as it becomes more unusual.

Quote from: Greendogo

Regarding Elves and their affection for trees; have you read Orson Scott Card's sequel to Ender's Game called "The Speaker For the Dead"?  It has a very interesting take on a kind of "tree husbandry".  The "Piggies", as they're called, use dance and song to ask the trees to produce the objects they need (the trees are grown from the bodies of their slain ancestors, and they're sentient).  I'm basically wondering how you're planning on Elves having wooden homes and wooden tools and other wooden stuff, but not carving it or hacking it out of the trees.

I haven't read it.  We weren't planning on dancing so much, but yeah, trees are growy.  We wanted something forest-dwelling humans couldn't do.

Quote from: hoveringdog

Are there any near-future plans to integrate tree products into existing fortress industries (e.g. pressing juices from mangoes, oil from coconuts or kapok, tapping maples for syrup, and then having those products for relevant brewing, cooking, or soap-making tasks)? Also, will any of the fictional trees (e.g. goblin cap, etc.) be given harvestable products?

I don't have a timeline for any of that.

Quote from: monk12

Will NPC forts fall prey to HFS? Trying to reclaim a fort you didn't design (and thus don't know where the important things are) from HFS, Moria-style, would be pretty amazing.

Ideally we'll get to that sort of thing.  I think it should all be on the table to make world generation non-static.  I'm not sure what I'll get to though.  I'd like to have some reclaimable forts from the start, at least a lot of the time.

Quote from: Calathar

How will the game handle preventing fort retirement exploits?  Essentially, if a fort is full of goblins or a syndrome sweeping the populace, what will stop a player from retiring the fort and preserving it as an NPC fort?  Will there be some means of ensuring that forts with !!Fun!! stay !!Fun!!?

It'll probably work out the way adventure mode retirement works, in that only a properly situated adventure can retire.  A fort in danger will likely need to be abandoned if you want to quit right then.  Danger is hard to track in certain circumstances though, so there will be exploits, just as you can exploit the current adv mode system.  I'm happy with allowing extra retirements rather than trying to restrict the option based on possibly dubious heuristics.  I think the siege light would ideally be a good block on retirement for instance (although it still stays on forever, sometimes...).

Quote from: Ribs

Say you manage to make your fortress the capital of a dwarven civilization and then retire said fortress, starting a new fortress with the same civilization somewhere else. Will it be just as easy to make this new fortress into the capital? Because with the standards we have right now it would be easy to make a new fortress every three or four game years or so and make it into the civilization capital. And if you could retire every one of them you'd see the king just hoping from place to place every couple of years. So, will each successful fortress raise the standards for making the upgrade?

and

What if you refused to be "baroned" and still retired a very sucessful fortress? How would that fortress work? Would it then be treated as something of an independent city-state or realm, maybe even becoming it's own entity sparking a new civilization of it's own?

That's how it would work right now, yeah.  Once it understands the situation in the original capital, that'll probably change.

We don't really have the consequences all coded for refusing the barony -- once that relationship is established more formally, it should be respected when your fortress retires.  It could very well end up as its own civilization at that point (and you'd also have dwarf invasion trouble at times).

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Does this mean if we play as humans, we will be able to reclaim cities that have fallen into ruin? If so, how will we get around the 16x16 limit on the map size, given some cities are 17x17?

Is the new stuff in this version going to make the saves from 0.34.11 incomptable? If not, what will happen with the "non-existant" settlements in that world?

When it's modded, I'm not really sure what your site is supposed to represent -- I doubt you'll be allowed to reclaim villages (just as you won't be able to reclaim hill sites or deep sites for dwarves).

I certainly wouldn't count on using your old saves for this time.  There have been a lot of changes.

Quote from: CLA

Do you see DF as city building/management sim and roguelike game with the whole world generation thing around it as "gimmick", or do you think, possibly contrary to what DF might have started out as, persistent and continuous interaction with the World that is generated is now the core game mechanic of DF, with the three modes being various facets of that mechanic?

Relating the game to the whole world has always been the point of our main fantasy game (DF used to be a side project).  If you look back at the Armok 1 days, we were basically going for the same thing, but from the bottom up (too much).  The old Dragslay game had a little more world activity than DF (and was vastly more simple in most other ways), with towns being sacked and so on, and it was fun.  DF is just now starting to take that stuff up, and it should be really cool to finally get it going.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

With the fort retirement thing, will we be able to simulate the world a la worldgen, but after we leave a fort? And will adventurers gain in status over time?

There aren't many plans to simulate world gen after play has begun, since there are lots of difficulties with re-abstracting information.  There'll be times when time needs to be advanced though, and I haven't gotten into that yet.  I'm not sure what you mean by status.  There's the current "you're a hero!" thing, and we'd like to improve on that.

Quote from: darklord92

With the inclusion of underground sites, will tunnels be reintroduced to worldgen? and will they on longer be blocked up in fort mode so that dwarven caravans can enter your fort through the underground.

I've been ambivalent about this...  it could be that the deep sites are the tunnels now.  In a lot of those forts you could walk from a fortress, down into a deep site and then move between deep sites until you arrive at another fortress without stepping into an unclaimed cavern tile.  Eventually you'll get dwarven caravans from the underground, but perhaps not until we give you some associated sites of your own.

Quote from: Vattic

With the dwarven sites is there the possibility of whole mountain ranges carved inside into giant dwarven cities, riddled with corridors and rooms and similar not unlike Moria, or are you thinking smaller?

I've posted some of those pictures now, and you can see the amount of sites there.  I'm not sure exactly how carved deep sites will be though, since I'm still on the hill sites.  They won't carve every tile on every z-level, but there should be a healthy amount of carving going on -- enough to get you across the mountain range if they've settled it.  It is a huge area since they've got many z's to play with, and I don't want dwarven populations much higher than the populations of other civilized creatures, so the could be certain sparseness or clustering (or just a ton of mine tunnels).  We'll have to see how it plays out.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Will there ever be an option for Fort Mode to play as a deep mountain site? I.e. is the description of (paraphrasing) "fortresses are what you play as in fort mode, but in addition we're adding hill settlements and deep sites inside mountains" merely indicative of how these sites compare to what is currently in fort mode, or is this restrictive in that we should not expect to be able to play these other new types of sites anywhere down the road?

The reason the fortresses are small on the map is that playing 17x17 sites isn't really on the table.  I wouldn't rule out a starting scenario in the future that takes place in the underground though.  Those kind of sites would then occur in world gen as well, as small forts (or whatevers) within the mountain that don't have surface entry.  Perhaps they'd occur on the boundary with underground animal people or underground goblins when those are fleshed out.

Quote from: Ribs

I'm curious to know if we'll be able to link ourselves through underground roads leading to the formation of these "deep sites" on the outskirts of our fortresses.

Do you plan on having underground cities forming themselves semi-independently around your fortress, just like you plan to have aboveground villages being formed on surrounding territory as the game progresses?

Yeah, the deep site plans align with the hill dwarf plans there.  When we do them for fortress mode play, it is now almost guaranteed that we'll do hill and deep site linkages/mechanics at the same time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

If caravans and/or migrants arrive through the cavern layers and tunnels, would they still be able to arrive during sieges on the surface? If we get underground sieges, will there be a differentiation between the levels that are being sieged and the levels not being sieged to allow migrants to arrive some way or other (i.e. by means of a sealed underground road that leads to the next fortress)?

Will other races set up trading outposts around our fortresses as they grow?

I think eventually there will be a differentiation between the levels.  There isn't really a need for it yet, since I haven't added lower caravans.

You'll likely have a more explicitly stated relationship with nearby sites as you get your own associated outside sites, but I don't have specific plans.

Quote from: Mr S

Toady, will the Three Tiered Dwarven Sites implement another site flag, similarly to the Lair Flag, to indicate which type of site they are?  Are there any practical, overhead, coplexity or gamey distinctions between them?  Will we be able to reclaim any of these three types?  What will be complications/restrictions for borders of these underground sites be if/when they do indeed span multiple areas (2x2 - 4x4) and/or have tunnels connecting them?

The hill/deep sites are too large to reclaim, and that's the main difference, though the maps are also completely different.  I'm not sure about the borders -- the layers of the cavern tend to be connected, though there are water areas.  I'm sure I'll encounter various problems when I get to the deep site maps.  Ideally, the fortresses will go down to at least the first layer (and sometimes all the way down to have magma forges), and through the cavern layers they will connect to the deep site maps.  I'm not sure every deep site map will be on a cavern layer(s), but it'll probably be very common for them to have a significant presence there, especially for food and lumber.

Quote

Quote from: eux0r

will two sites be able to occupy the same x-y-coordinates, even when theyre not from the same civ? in general, will two civs be able to occupy the same territory, as long as one is above and the other is below ground level?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will multiple sites be abel to occupy the same map time, as in fortresses and deep sites on multiple levels on the map?

Eventually we'll need to deal with x/y overlap of sites, but we've just managed to avoid this time.  It's a not-difficult but lengthy rewrite I'd like to continue to avoid since it'll overload me for this release.  Once we get to underground animal person sites, I think it'll be unavoidable, but that'll be good and it'll lead to some cool things.

Quote from: hermes

When a dwarven civ expands, either in worldgen or in the general lore of the game, is there a regular order in which the three types of settlements emerge from the mother civ - e.g. hill dwarfs migrate then decide to dig down and make a fortress which eventually begets a deep site, or deep site up, or something else - or are they independent of each other in terms of origin?

I think we'll explore the concepts more deeply when we get to start scenarios, but right now we work with a starting fortress at year 1.  They prefer to go deep, but if they have no room, they degenerate and go hill.  They try to ring the mountain ranges with forts, and these also determine political/economic centers of power, since everything passes through them.  Dwarves tend to cling more tightly than other civs overall, since they don't seek the best river squares within their overall area of influence, but are happy with planting a new deep site in their range.

Quote from: darklord92

Will dwarven sites ever become separate ruins, as a dwarf site becomes a deep site and than a fort will the above ground fort ever be abandoned and become ruins and the lower site remain a underground city?

Yeah, the sites are treated independently, so dwarves can go full-mountain if things don't go their way.  All the market flags are on fortresses, so this would isolate them economically in the simulation as well.

Quote from: Kumis

If fortresses now connect the surface to the underground societies will we now find restrictions upon where we can embark, or if not a restriction then a new possibility to make a fortress as an entrance to our mountain home?

Will our fortresses still become the capital after a time? It seems a bit weird to turn the front door into the throne room, so to speak.

Until we get to start scenarios, I'm not placing any additional restrictions.  The dwarves in world gen never place forts away from border mountains, but it still lets you put them wherever you want.  Even when I get to start scenarios, there will still always be a way to put a fortress most anywhere you can already, I think.  The start scenarios will also govern your relation to hill/deep sites and other forts, and you'll still be able to have the monarch be your live-in buddy.  It might make sense to make the monarch a deep site dweller at the center of the mountain range, but the way it works now, the forts are the important part and the only places where nobles higher than barons live.  We'll see how this plays out over time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Toady, do you have any ideas or goals for when ships, boats, and vehicles are added? Specifically, do you see ships, boats, and vehicles as being optionally designed by the player within the game, or just being hardcoded or defined within the raws?

I have no idea.  Ideally you'd have a good deal of control over how a ship works, though as with human site buildings for example it might take a while to get any of that out into the raws.  If you produce a ship for yourself in game (for instance, as an adventurer), it would be cool if you had the option to custom make it exactly how you want.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will we ever be able to play out the trip towards a new site? Such as, when a site is being chosen, would we see a travel line from the entity's capitol toward the desired embark and actually have the wagon move along it, sort of like adventure mode travel, but in control of the dwarves?
If this were possible, would we also be able to change the path taken, such as making it longer in order to avoid going through an evil forest?

It has been an idea that's floating around, and I'm not against it as an option, but it's quite a bit of work, so I suspect we'll arrive at it more indirectly through the adventure trader stuff.  If you start as a dwarf adventurer, and take on a wagon and some buddies, then it's almost all handled, once the caravan stuff is in.  We have some ideas for running a site while you are an adventurer, but switching over to a dwarf mode style game might also be an option once you meet certain criteria.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

Are the dwarven settlements outside of mountains still called Mountainhomes or are they Hill-, Plains-, or Whateverhomes?

He he he -- right now it says "Dwarven Fortress", "Dwarven Mountain Halls" (for deep sites), and "Dwarven Hillocks" (for the hill dwarves, who can get a little moundy in their jealousy).  I'm not sure at this point if a Mountainhome constitutes the entirety of the deep sites and fortresses in a given mountain range, or the spot where the monarch is.

Quote from: HiEv

When you say that "you'd be able to get communities like these settled around your own fort", do you mean that we'd be able to send migrants out of our fort to settle/join other areas?

If so, that sounds kind of cool.

Also, how will nearby communities affect trade?

Yeah, that'll be part of it.  The trade ramifications are something we're still trying to comprehend.  It could be an almost permanent fair-like presence since time runs too fast to have a weekly market setup.

Quote from: misko27

So then, are we going to see more territorial conflicts in world-gen? As sprawl is now so much more important, are various civs going to fight to establish themselves in a given are? Sorta of overlaps with the can sites overlap with underground ones, since that'd make it easier.

It's certainly getting there.  As more and more uncomfortable situations arise, with the upcoming succession and so on, I imagine things will fall into place here, to avoid it being bonkers.

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010

will the "outside" nobles (baron, all the way to the king) will now have different requirements? link to the capital like a secure tunnel through one of the cavern layers from inside the fortress to the edge?
will we be able to found underground "link" fortress to link two parts of the civ each on one side of a mountain chain (dawn of time challenge any one?)? if yes will there be rules such has "dont breach the above ground" or something like that?

Not right now.  Once we know more about your relationship with the world, it should be more natural to update exactly what it means for one of your dwarves to be elevated, or for somebody to come from outside.  I addressed inner fortresses elsewhere in these questions.  I feel a little weird about restrictions about digging through the ceiling, since the surface would be sitting right there.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

Will there be an underground dwarvern equivalent of human farmland?

Yeah, they'll need to get their food someplace.  Deep sites will do it one way, and hill sites will go another.  Mostly the same, mushroomy, but hill dwarves might also degrade to a bit of outdoor work in keeping with their fallen nature.

Quote from: Quatch

Now that the maps are being filled in with more realistic sized (scale-abiding) settlements, will the overall size of the world* change so as to preserve undiscovered wilderness areas?

They are plenty big right now I think, and you have control over the amount of sprawl with the world gen site cap.  It should be okay.  We'll see how it plays out when player forts starting eating up more than one tile with their own hill/deep sites.

Quote from: Lord Zack

Will we only be able to reclaim sites of our own race or civ?

I'd like to be able to take over an abandoned human fortress and then transform it into a proper dwarf one, personally.

Will reclaimed world gen fortresses already have workshops and areas that were formerly stockpiles?

Right now we're sticking with dwarf sites.  A human fortress or a necromancer's tower would be the next likely candidates, since they are small enough to manage, but we don't have specific plans there.

The workshop questions is one of the trickier parts of the non-player forts, since it needs to also align with whatever our solution ends up being for human towns, and one of the highlights of the ultima style games was being able to mess around with stuff at a greater level of detail than "workshop".  Not sure what the end result is going to be.

Quote from: monk12

Will invading Humans/Elves/Goblins be able to conquer the deeper dwarf sites, or will they be restricted to the hill sites and the fortresses?

A player founded fortress will be able to spread to deeper dwarf sites as well as the hills, yes? Will the player be able to direct/incentivize this spread in a particular direction?

If a player fortress generates significant deeper sites, and then releases HFS, will the HFS spread to the deeper sites and claim the whole mountain for themselves, or will they just hang out in the site where they were released?

It happens that way now, pretty indiscriminately -- ideally they'd have to nab the fortresses before they can get underground, and hopefully I can get to that.  I don't think it would be unreasonable to direct your deep sites, particularly if you have some kind of start scenario about forming a tunnel connection to a previous fort or something like that.

I'm not sure how HFS will play out, or how much I'll share of that if I do change it, he he he.

Quote from: Japa

Toady, with dwarven settlements now being common, will it be possible to fast-travel through them?

I think that'll be necessary, yeah.  When I'm done with site maps I'll try to wrap my head around it.  The annoying part'll be when you have two forts with their own deep sites but an intervening square or two of unsettled cavern.  I guess that's kind of like zooming in to cross rivers, but it'll take a bit longer. The caverns need their own travel maps, and I need to strike a balance between travel speed, knowing where you are, exploration and maintaining some mystery and adventure.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Toady, will other races have these sorts of new site divisions at all? I can easily imagine a true distinction between cities and surrounding hamlets for humans, or maybe a goblin dark tower having a clutch of small, scattered camps around it to better protect against invasion and act as outposts. Connected to that, will sites ever "mature" into another class of site, or decay into a less populous class?

Finally, are we ever going to be able to play as these different sorts of sites? And, will the depth of sites be more variable to account for the different site depths, especially on embark?

I'm not sure what you mean by a true distinction.  There is a flag that differentiates cities and hamlets based on the presence of a market, and it works fine that way.  There are various sites surrounding goblin towers now -- they were there before, but now they are displayed and they have maps.  Cities grow from hamlets during world gen already, and they can outright die, but there isn't much change in the world -- wars, disease, migration and economic variation should have more impact.

There were very vague long-term plans for other modes of play, but I'm not sure what's going to happen there.

Quote from: Heph

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

I guess people who are curious will have to go on a little journey, he he he.  It'll be there waiting.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In older versions, dwarf fortresses had a color relevant to the population, so darker grey fortresses had smaller populations and the largest fortresses showed up as white. Now, white settlements indicate fortresses, light grey settlements indicate hill dwarves, and dark grey settlements indicate deep dwarves. The symbols for the sites of other entities still change depending on the population on the world map, so will we still have such an on-map indicator for fortress size or not?

Fortress size isn't that important now, really.  Forts have player-levels of dwarves, so they are always pretty small, pop-wise.  The dwarven sites overall have the least population variation now.

Quote from: Tov01

Will you changed anything about how succession works in this release or the ones immediately after it? For example, if a monarch dies with no heir, will the game try to find a more distant relation to take their place (siblings, spouse, ext), instead of picking someone at random, as the game seems to do now? Or, if the heir is still a child, will the child take the throne (perhaps, in a later release, with a steward ruling in the meantime), instead of ignoring the child heir completely?

I haven't gotten to that yet.  I think it might be the last really big thing I said I was going to do for this release -- the whole birth/death/succession/marriage thingy to get the world kicked off properly.  It's especially necessary now that so many extra people die during play.  I'm not sure if that's going to address specific issues such as going to other relations.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Are we going to get to interact with successions or hierarchies this go-around? I don't know what that would entail, exactly- perhaps trying to promote your baron to monarch or starting a coup?

Aside from the basics of getting things to work in play at all, it probably won't be that interesting this time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

So as it is, the king is going to just move around from fortress to fortress, without there being a main capitol? This seems to make sense but is there going to be a tag on the king to indicate that he will move around? When other entities have kings, will they move around by default or be settled in one place unless there's a very good reason to move?

The idea here is that dwarves may have a king who will move to a different town if there's adamantine or if there are more +<<+platinum goblets+>>+, while human kings will generally stay in one place.

I've notice someone has put up something on the suggestions forum about island settlements. If we settle on an otherwise uninhabited island, will settlements still spring up around the fortress?

The dwarven monarch is a special case as it relates to your fortress in play, so I haven't set up a tag for it.  It would be reasonable to do so, so we can see more movement in world gen (right now the movement is just theoretical to explain what's going on with you, in the absence of start scenarios or anything else).

For islands, I'm not really sure.  It's one of the things that start scenarios are meant to address -- why are you on an island?  Ideally, it would detect that (it knows where all the land masses are as it stands), and restrict your scenario options based on that -- assuming you choose location first and scenario second.  I'm not sure if you'll pick the location first or the scenario first.  I think that'll probably be a matter of taste.  I'd personally pick the scenario first, but with things like the site-finder and people looking for the ideal fort spot, I imagine being able to pick any location first would be a high importance item to a lot of people.

Quote from: Brotato

Will hill-dwarf settlements spring up naturally around our fortresses, or will we send migrants out in the hope they establish colonies for us?

I can imagine scenarios where you bring a whole train of hill dwarves that give you a small starting hill dwarf site from the beginning, or one where you try to get something set up from your initial fortress after migrants arrive (or even just from the native-born population, though that would be slow).

Quote from: ag

Will it be possible to bring a player fortress out of retirement in case you have a new idea or something, like you can with an adventurer, or is the retirement process strictly one-way?

I think it's a little different, and it's a more difficult problem.  I don't have an issue, theoretically, with unretiring fortresses, or being able to assume control of a non-player fortress that isn't dead -- we've talked about it in terms of adventurers, where you might in the future be able to assume control of an existing historical figure.  I don't think I'm going to do it this time around, and it's something that should be considered more in terms of world gen options than as a basic mechanic, since it does spoil the otherness of computer people and sites.  For unretiring player forts, which isn't that way, it still has the technical problem -- if an adventurer has visited the site, the unretired site would be a very different critter than you started with, and I'm not confident that there would even be a point in attempting it, but we'll see what happens once I get a site retired.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Also, with the addition of hillocks, are dwarves actually going to be moving earth around in the next release and if will this facility be included in fortress mode for players?

There isn't going to be a new feature there.  We're definitely at the point where we need to draw a line around what we are doing.  There are already a ton of outstanding issues.

Quote from: dancing kobold

for the next release. how smart do you want the AI that control retired player fortresses be? will it actually simulate the fortress similar to the way players do it or will it "cheat" a bit? if it cheats. will it then take into consideration what stuff you have at the site for how much chance it have to survive?

For the next release?  There won't be much.  Human towns don't do much yet either.  That'll have to come later.  We are doing some basic army stuff, patrol stuff, and birth/death/succession/marriage stuff, but the nuances of town management and development are beyond this release.

Quote from: XXSockXX

Will hill dwarf sites and deep sites be subject to invasions or MB/FB rampages during gameplay? Will you need to and be able to defend them?

Will you eventually be able to control these sites in the same way you control your fort?

Yeah, this was one of the main ideas of the army arc, and one of the main reasons for adding hill dwarf settlements to begin with.  Everything will eventually be subject to the issues of the world.

The sites are too large to control as you control your fort, but you should have significant influence over them in many cases.

Quote from: misko27

Since theres now a whole window for nobility and holdings, is it going to remain limited to showing dwarven sites, or will it eventually include the loose allances of the human lords, or what now appear to be goblin and elven sprawl?

I think it'll probably get more interesting, since it is quite dwarf-centric with a lot of wasted space right now.

Quote from: Valtam

Now that we're going to find fortress dwarves in their natural habitat, without telling us about how far from their home they are, are there plans to fit or expand their interaction choices with adventurers? Maybe trading with brokers or request healing from medicine laborers?

Yeah, hopefully they'll at least be as interesting as human cities are.  They doesn't mean there's going to be healing options yet.

Quote from: Putnam

Speaking of interactions, as a modder, are there going to be any expansions of old modding with this release? More tokens for CE_ADD_TAG, more syndrome types, more usage hints, more counter triggers, anything like that? Or is it just a straight shot to expansion and activation of the world?

I think it has been a reasonably straight shot, but there has been a lot added to the raws of course.  For new interaction stuff, there's the vampire senses, and maybe various other things.  In general between expanding the skeleton of the game and bug-fixing, there's the idea of fleshing things out, which for us usually means lots of feature expansion and interconnections of old features of the sort you are talking about, and I don't think we've done much of that over the last many months.  And there probably won't be a lot of it up through this release since we've already bitten off a large chunk.  I'm not sure when I'll get around to more of that.  We'll be at an interesting spot after this release, with any number of directions to go, and we still need to decide which one or ones we'll choose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on November 14, 2012, 06:21:08 am

Quote

It has been an idea that's floating around, and I'm not against it as an option, but it's quite a bit of work, so I suspect we'll arrive at it more indirectly through the adventure trader stuff.  If you start as a dwarf adventurer, and take on a wagon and some buddies, then it's almost all handled, once the caravan stuff is in.  We have some ideas for running a site while you are an adventurer, but switching over to a dwarf mode style game might also be an option once you meet certain criteria.

Good news. Will it be possible to do the contrary ? That is to say, choose a dwarf in Fortress mode, and make him leave the fortress, switching then to the adventurer mode while "retiring" from Fortress mode and letting the fortress as it is ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on November 14, 2012, 06:34:36 am

Good news. Will it be possible to do the contrary ? That is to say, choose a dwarf in Fortress mode, and make him leave the fortress, switching then to the adventurer mode while "retiring" from Fortress mode and letting the fortress as it is ?
[/quote]

There are plans to allow you to take historical figures people as adventurers. Once that is done, it will be posible(retiring the fort, and then starting an adventure with the figure of your choice, who can be a member of the fort)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 14, 2012, 07:28:07 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on November 14, 2012, 11:17:00 am

The falling coconut strikes the Skipper in the head, bruising the skin and fracturing the bone!
The Skipper has been knocked unconscious!
"Gilligannnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on November 14, 2012, 12:41:29 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

For islands, I'm not really sure.  It's one of the things that start scenarios are meant to address -- why are you on an island?  Ideally, it would detect that (it knows where all the land masses are as it stands), and restrict your scenario options based on that -- assuming you choose location first and scenario second.  I'm not sure if you'll pick the location first or the scenario first.  I think that'll probably be a matter of taste.  I'd personally pick the scenario first, but with things like the site-finder and people looking for the ideal fort spot, I imagine being able to pick any location first would be a high importance item to a lot of people.

Will this be a world-gen toggle? Or maybe you're given the map of the world and then given an option to pick site or scenario? Could scenarios actually pick sites for you?

It'd be neat to have some stuff, like founding a trade outpost, be site driven while others, like a shipwreck, be scenario based where it picks a site for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 14, 2012, 01:43:43 pm

With regards to starting on islands, my question was regarding the upcoming release. Are we going to have starting scenarios in already? As it is you just pick anywhere that isn't mountain or ocean to start, hit embark, and go, even if its a totally stupid Fun jungle on an uninhabited volcanic island with no access to any race. I was wondering whether in those situations in the upcoming release, you'd get deep or hill sites appearing around your fortress (without the implementation of "scenarios").

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on November 14, 2012, 01:54:47 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on November 14, 2012, 12:41:29 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

For islands, I'm not really sure.  It's one of the things that start scenarios are meant to address -- why are you on an island?  Ideally, it would detect that (it knows where all the land masses are as it stands), and restrict your scenario options based on that -- assuming you choose location first and scenario second.  I'm not sure if you'll pick the location first or the scenario first.  I think that'll probably be a matter of taste.  I'd personally pick the scenario first, but with things like the site-finder and people looking for the ideal fort spot, I imagine being able to pick any location first would be a high importance item to a lot of people.

Will this be a world-gen toggle? Or maybe you're given the map of the world and then given an option to pick site or scenario? Could scenarios actually pick sites for you?

It'd be neat to have some stuff, like founding a trade outpost, be site driven while others, like a shipwreck, be scenario based where it picks a site for you.

The thing I am looking forward to about scenarios is that they will give you a set of dwarves and supplies, and you will have to create a fortress out of it, whether or not those supplies are actually what you need and want.  One of my favorite games ever was the "no supplies, no immigrants" start in the last days of 40d.  I ended up hunting the local unicorn population to extinction and selling bolts to the caravan in exchange for a pick, an axe, and a couple blocks.  The first step was deconstructing the wagon for the logs to build workshops.  I don't remember if it ever worked in the versions since 40d.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RAKninja on November 14, 2012, 02:19:57 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Tov01

Also, another goblin question I probably should have asked earlier.

Does it fit in your view of goblins for them to have farms to feed their livestock (once feed is implemented, of course), and perhaps their slaves (as in, feeding slaves the same gruel they feed their animals)?

Things currently go through a cycle over a year.  It doesn't track individual flowers turning into individual fruit, but since they occur in turn, the effect is the same.  I've put in a rough cycle for each of the trees, so you can end up with some spathe type critters and so on.

Nope, don't like farms.  I don't expect goblin animals to need feed in the end.  They can eat rats out in the swamp.  The kidnapees need to be fed.  I'm not sure they track that right now, since they are historical figures and we softened their need to feed after some problems elsewhere.  It might rely on butchered beakdogs or trade later.

if memory serves from my testing in goblin fortress, my kidnapped children from worldgen would starve to death on most sites unless i made humans [NO_EAT] or made goblins live in human style towns.

it seems sensable that goblins who have been very active snatchers/slave breeders who have large non-goblin populations do develop rather sizable slave farms to feed their masses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 14, 2012, 02:41:53 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

Quote from: ag

Will it be possible to bring a player fortress out of retirement in case you have a new idea or something, like you can with an adventurer, or is the retirement process strictly one-way?

I think it's a little different, and it's a more difficult problem.  I don't have an issue, theoretically, with unretiring fortresses, or being able to assume control of a non-player fortress that isn't dead -- we've talked about it in terms of adventurers, where you might in the future be able to assume control of an existing historical figure.  I don't think I'm going to do it this time around, and it's something that should be considered more in terms of world gen options than as a basic mechanic, since it does spoil the otherness of computer people and sites.  For unretiring player forts, which isn't that way, it still has the technical problem -- if an adventurer has visited the site, the unretired site would be a very different critter than you started with, and I'm not confident that there would even be a point in attempting it, but we'll see what happens once I get a site retired.

Well... a lot of people will be disappointed about that one for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 02:43:36 pm

Will Dwarf Fortress run on big-endian systems?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on November 14, 2012, 03:17:07 pm

Quote from: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 02:43:36 pm

Will Dwarf Fortress run on big-endian systems?

Big-endian vs little-endian is a hardware and compiling issue that barely interacts with coding.  In essence, it is whether a system with byte addressing puts the most significant byte on the bus first or the least significant byte on the bus first.

In short, your question is nonsensical.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on November 14, 2012, 03:29:35 pm

Quote from: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 02:43:36 pm

Will Dwarf Fortress run on big-endian systems?

If you mean 'Will DF run on 64 bit systems' the answer is yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on November 14, 2012, 04:05:19 pm

wait, what? big-endian systems? if t can run on a small system why WONT it be able to run on a big one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 14, 2012, 04:06:04 pm

I've worked with advanced tech companies which specify that all hardware must be programmed in "least-significant-byte Big Endian" order.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 14, 2012, 04:13:42 pm

pretty much the only time endianess is ever an issue is when networking between two machines, from what I understand from it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

I have a question here (or several questions). Will you be able to, for example, join the milatary of a town/civilisation and be part of their army as they invade places? Because that seems badass. Also, will civs fight for "land" (army vs. army in open battle) or will battles only take place in city's (attack/defend)?

Another question, how will this "scared" thing work with archers? If its based of skill level and armour, then archers will just be overwelmed with sieges and run for the hills when they see them rather then shooting from the battlements. How do you plan on fixing this? Also, what attribute will be tied with bravery in battle?

Edit; Oh, and another thing. How will we be able to tell who is on our side and who isnt if 2 of the same races are at war? Will there be some kind of marking that members of a civ wear, or a different color, or it could just be in their name. Also, on the subject of armour, could you kill a member of a civ then wear their armour as a discuise and infiltrate into the other civ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HiEv on November 14, 2012, 06:27:44 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on November 14, 2012, 04:05:19 pm

wait, what? big-endian systems? if t can run on a small system why WONT it be able to run on a big one?

"Little-endian" and "big-endian" have nothing to do with the size of the computer/system.  It has to do with the order that bytes are handled in multi-byte data structures.

For example, a 32-bit word is made up of four 8-bit bytes.  In little-endian you would have those four bytes in this order "4321", but in big-endian you would have them in this order "1234".

Most computers today are little-endian (mostly x86 CPUs, all Windows), while some others are big-endian (mostly Mac on non-x86 hardware).

I simplified things a bit, so for more info see the Wikipedia entry on Endianness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 06:48:23 pm

Yeah, big endian is effectively dead on anywhere but supercomputers (zSeries). MIPS is making a push into the mobile market though and I frankly think that we will see DF on mobile devices too in a few years, if Toady is up to the task.

Does endianness actually affect if a program will compile under a given architecture, then? This stuff is far too low-level for poor scripter me to properly comprehend and I was looking for an real computer scientist's opinion.

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

snip

Y'know, displaying the text in green is obviously eye-catching but it's to the detriment of the conversation as people only notice you (not to mention that it can be hard to read, depending on your theme)... and don't worry, Toady always gets around to replying to his fans (he lives off donations and he is an excellent businessman).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 14, 2012, 06:53:47 pm

Quote from: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 06:48:23 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

snip

Y'know, displaying the text in green is obviously eye-catching but it's to the detriment of the conversation as people only notice you (not to mention that it can be hard to read, depending on your theme)... and don't worry, Toady always gets around to replying to his fans (he lives off donations and he is an excellent businessman).

It's standard behaviour here to highlight it. He does have over 100 to go through, and there is alot of off-topic comments.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on November 14, 2012, 06:55:06 pm

Quote from: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 06:48:23 pm

...

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

snip

Y'know, displaying the text in green is obviously eye-catching but it's to the detriment of the conversation as people only notice you (not to mention that it can be hard to read, depending on your theme)... and don't worry, Toady always gets around to replying to his fans (he lives off donations and he is an excellent businessman).

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

...
If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them all, although it is difficult to respond to everything when it is busy.  I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here.  In the past, we've all found the practice of making questions green works pretty well.  You do that like this:

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions green[/color]


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on November 14, 2012, 07:02:41 pm

Thanks for the brain dump, Toady!

Question about the latest DF Talk, actually: While discussing Goblin Fortresses and waste disposal, you used the phrase "underground river". I'm not expecting them this release, of course, but... sooner rather than later? Or the usual "no timetable"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on November 14, 2012, 07:14:31 pm

Quote from: RAKninja on November 14, 2012, 02:19:57 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Tov01

Also, another goblin question I probably should have asked earlier.

Does it fit in your view of goblins for them to have farms to feed their livestock (once feed is implemented, of course), and perhaps their slaves (as in, feeding slaves the same gruel they feed their animals)?

***
Things currently go through a cycle over a year.  It doesn't track individual flowers turning into individual fruit, but since they occur in turn, the effect is the same.  I've put in a rough cycle for each of the trees, so you can end up with some spathe type critters and so on.

Nope, don't like farms.  I don't expect goblin animals to need feed in the end.  They can eat rats out in the swamp.  The kidnapees need to be fed.  I'm not sure they track that right now, since they are historical figures and we softened their need to feed after some problems elsewhere.  It might rely on butchered beakdogs or trade later.

If memory serves from my testing in goblin fortress, my kidnapped children from worldgen would starve to death on most sites unless I made humans [NO_EAT] or made goblins live in human style towns.

It seems sensible that goblins who have been very active snatchers/slave breeders who have large non-goblin populations do develop rather sizable slave farms to feed their masses.

Yeah, that was my thought on the matter, as well. It's not like the goblins have to start plowing the mud themselves. Slaves and all.

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

Also, will civs fight for "land" (army vs. army in open battle) or will battles only take place in city's (attack/defend)?

Battles on open ground are already in world gen, last I checked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on November 14, 2012, 07:25:09 pm

Will the products of trees have any quality levels, either visible or invisible?

Not a significant question for fruit and such, but it could matter for bracelet tress and such if those were added/modded in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 14, 2012, 07:35:13 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on November 14, 2012, 07:25:09 pm

Will the products of trees have any quality levels, either visible or invisible?

Not a significant question for fruit and such, but it could matter for bracelet tress and such if those were added/modded in.

I think this is unlikely, given the state of the game now. Quality levels are for dwarf products. The closest thing is Gems having different cuts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on November 14, 2012, 08:52:57 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 14, 2012, 07:35:13 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on November 14, 2012, 07:25:09 pm

Will the products of trees have any quality levels, either visible or invisible?

Not a significant question for fruit and such, but it could matter for bracelet tress and such if those were added/modded in.

I think this is unlikely, given the state of the game now. Quality levels are for dwarf products. The closest thing is Gems having different cuts.

Not necessarily. You can specify the quality level of creatures' itemcorpses, which is at least similar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 14, 2012, 08:54:24 pm

Quote from: Dante on November 14, 2012, 08:52:57 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 14, 2012, 07:35:13 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on November 14, 2012, 07:25:09 pm

Will the products of trees have any quality levels, either visible or invisible?

Not a significant question for fruit and such, but it could matter for bracelet tress and such if those were added/modded in.

I think this is unlikely, given the state of the game now. Quality levels are for dwarf products. The closest thing is Gems having different cuts.

Not necessarily. You can specify the quality level of creatures' itemcorpses, which is at least similar.

Yeah, but that's primarily for bronze colossi, which are very, very magical.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 14, 2012, 09:19:42 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

It has been a long time since I've tested it, but there's an init option to make the Z windows trigger when a creature is there, rather than all the time.

Thanks for the answers, Toady.  Didn't know about this feature, man this game is huge.  Very excited for the new release now.  I'm predicting forum wide mass burnings of elven settlements just "to check" the new fire AI and tree flammability.   :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 14, 2012, 09:27:59 pm

The truest form of !!Science!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on November 14, 2012, 10:50:49 pm

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on November 14, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

I have a question here (or several questions). Will you be able to, for example, join the milatary of a town/civilisation and be part of their army as they invade places? Because that seems badass. Also, will civs fight for "land" (army vs. army in open battle) or will battles only take place in city's (attack/defend)?

Another question, how will this "scared" thing work with archers? If its based of skill level and armour, then archers will just be overwelmed with sieges and run for the hills when they see them rather then shooting from the battlements. How do you plan on fixing this? Also, what attribute will be tied with bravery in battle?

Edit; Oh, and another thing. How will we be able to tell who is on our side and who isnt if 2 of the same races are at war? Will there be some kind of marking that members of a civ wear, or a different color, or it could just be in their name. Also, on the subject of armour, could you kill a member of a civ then wear their armour as a discuise and infiltrate into the other civ?

I'll take a license to answer some of these questions, at least what I think about them; maybe I could be corrected by someone more knowledgeable than me.

The army joining stuff is certainly planned, but I don't think it will happen on this release (as Toady has stated a few times from now, that would be overreaching). A few devlogs ago, Toady told us that with site claiming there would be small groups pursuing basic goals, and that you could be more free than before to be on either site of the equation, now that allegiances are getting pretty diverse. "Land" fighting, as far as I know, was pretty scarce even in medieval times; sure, media shows us the impressive charges of cavarly on the open battlefield and it fills our lungs with awe, but things were rarely like that. When huge armies stop being too abstract and their paths collide, that could ensue a match of forces, or even in a arbitrary place if it entails some relevance for any of the involved entities. Again, something for a future release.

I don't think being scared or not relates to an attribute, more than it does to personality (which already has a decent framework) and maybe to survival chances, represented on being well armored. Fleeing from combat, as I've read, will be related more often with escalating levels of violence and the threat of death, but someone asked Toady if the Fortress Mode would present something related. Surprising stuff it was to know that even armed soldiers could flee from combat, as that tends to happen every now and then in real life. So your battlements won't be empty at the arrival of peril, after all we're dealing with dwarves.

Right know, you already know who's your enemy and who's your friend given the decent knowledge you have about the latter, before entering combat. When you look around and peek over your companions, their names and status are already granted, while the hostile forces are only known by what they're supposed to be or which kind of deadly tool are they carrying around. On a larger and more colourful battlefield, surely you're not supposed to know the name of each and every allied soldier that fights for a vaguely similar cause than yours, an hectic mess is to be expected with all the blood, limbs and ‼dwarves‼ running around; but without a doubt, Toady has something planned for the UI to help us, without conceding something too gamey that wash out the inherent fun of such a situation. As with the former questions, we'll know when he gets there.

The new stealth mechanics look pretty great, and it has been already stated that disguises and other means of subterfuge are to be expected to flesh out the art of being incognito.

Here's what I found out at the Development page (that still needs to be updated, you'll notice that some of these have been accomplished)

Quote

Breaking into fortified locations
Having locations alerted, being able to yell for help
Disguises and impersonation through use of entity uniforms
Closed doors and passwords
Sneaking mechanics
     Making hiding impossible in wide open areas (at least in adv mode)
     Vision arcs for patrolling guards
Gagging people and tying them up
Allowing constructions to burn, use of kindling/hay/etc. where reasonable
Responding properly to personal fire issues (all modes)
Fleeing burning buildings
Fighting fire (all modes)
Designation to set item or tile on fire in dwarf mode

Sorry for the long answer. If it wasn't me, maybe someone else would have gladly helped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 14, 2012, 11:07:27 pm

Quote from: Yannanth on November 14, 2012, 06:48:23 pm

Yeah, big endian is effectively dead on anywhere but supercomputers (zSeries). MIPS is making a push into the mobile market though and I frankly think that we will see DF on mobile devices too in a few years, if Toady is up to the task.

Does endianness actually affect if a program will compile under a given architecture, then? This stuff is far too low-level for poor scripter me to properly comprehend and I was looking for an real computer scientist's opinion.

You're joking about mobile devices, right? Those things don't have enough memory to run DF, unless I'm so behind the time that they have over a gigabyte of RAM within it free. And that's not to mention processing capacity without killing the battery or cooking itself. There are a program to play DF remotely, but that's entirely different thing.

OS' capacity is more the limit than endianness, not to mention that things won't run or break down badly if you tries to run a program built for entirely different machine instruction set. It's not noticible on interpreted scripts because the interpreters tend to be built to the system/processor set, while compiled codes are machine instruction for a specific subset of processor.

It'd break down before it could run :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on November 14, 2012, 11:35:06 pm

Quote from: AutomataKittay on November 14, 2012, 11:07:27 pm

You're joking about mobile devices, right? Those things don't have enough memory to run DF, unless I'm so behind the time that they have over a gigabyte of RAM within it free. And that's not to mention processing capacity without killing the battery or cooking itself. There are a program to play DF remotely, but that's entirely different thing.

OS' capacity is more the limit than endianness, not to mention that things won't run or break down badly if you tries to run a program built for entirely different machine instruction set. It's not noticible on interpreted scripts because the interpreters tend to be built to the system/processor set, while compiled codes are machine instruction for a specific subset of processor.

It'd break down before it could run :D

Someone did manage to sort of create a mobile version of DF. They wrote a client script that relayed commands to a seperate server computer actually running the DF exe, and returned with the graphical information. Not really relevant, but interesting IMO.


Otherwise, Toady that sounds awesome, thanks for the info! It's great to finally see dwarves get the the same treatment the humans got!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 14, 2012, 11:43:05 pm

I think I actually giggled a little when I got a nod for answering a question AND had one of my own questions answered in the same FotF.

Thanks Toady!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on November 14, 2012, 11:52:33 pm

Quote from: Valtam on November 14, 2012, 10:50:49 pm

The new stealth mechanics look pretty great, and it has been already stated that disguises and other means of subterfuge are to be expected to flesh out the art of being incognito.

I still want to make a DF game into Metal Beard Solid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RedReign on November 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

Particularly in Adventure Mode, will there be some way of dragging creatures you are in combat with?
I've always wanted to drag a bogeyman around by his feet and see how long I survive. Or drag animals and toss them off cliffs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on November 15, 2012, 12:47:15 am

Quote from: RedReign on November 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

Particularly in Adventure Mode, will there be some way of dragging creatures you are in combat with?
I've always wanted to drag a bogeyman around by his feet and see how long I survive. Or drag animals and toss them off cliffs.

Is that a question for Toady? If so, you should probably color that text green. Otherwise, he's unlikely to notice your question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geen on November 15, 2012, 01:04:59 am

Keep up the great work, Toady!
EDIT:Oh, and are we going to see climbing-oriented creatures (i.e. monkeys) be using the new climbing system? Or nests in trees, allowing creatures and characters to steal eggs for sustenance?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RedReign on November 15, 2012, 01:25:56 am

Quote from: Tov01 on November 15, 2012, 12:47:15 am

Quote from: RedReign on November 15, 2012, 12:11:48 am

Particularly in Adventure Mode, will there be some way of dragging creatures you are in combat with?
I've always wanted to drag a bogeyman around by his feet and see how long I survive. Or drag animals and toss them off cliffs.

Is that a question for Toady? If so, you should probably color that text green. Otherwise, he's unlikely to notice your question.

Heheh, thanks! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Edmus on November 15, 2012, 01:30:54 am

 With hillocks springing up about our forts will we see civilians fleeing to our fortress when they are under attack, kind of like the villagers fleeing to the keep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 15, 2012, 01:50:57 am

Quote from: Edmus on November 15, 2012, 01:30:54 am

With hillocks springing up about our forts will we see civilians fleeing to our fortress when they are under attack, kind of like the villagers fleeing to the keep.

And on that note, how and to what extent do we communicate with the Hillocks? As of right now it sounds like they are passive, how will they interact with the fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 15, 2012, 01:53:52 am

Toady will we ever see Embedded sites?

Like a castle that has a city growing around it

Mostly I ask because I kinda imaginined that to be what fortress mode would be kinda like. Where you have your fortress and a town would slowly grow outside the play area.

Also Toady I should state because many people fell into the same hole you did for a tad.

Quests are simply, if put into simple words, things to do. They are a catch all term. You cannot "remove" them from the game because all you are doing is removing the term "Quest".

Anyhow if you want to remove the term Quest may I suggest a "Commit to memory" function for information (Ohh I found out where the Necromancer tower is? I better commit that to memory for easy access later) as well as something that lists favors, contracts, bounties, and stuff.

It just is sort of just easier to call them "Quests" in the end. If they are handled like steriotypical quests is another.

Though I like my "Commit to memory" idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 15, 2012, 03:35:40 am

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 15, 2012, 04:29:22 am

Yes, Thank you Toady  :-[

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 15, 2012, 05:01:56 am

I'm thanful too and I DID giggle...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zalminen on November 15, 2012, 05:29:23 am

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will Dwarf Fortress try to deliberately make navigable climbing paths up trees and through the tree-tops outside of forest retreats?

I don't understand this one -- you mean to make the elf sites accessible by climbing without blocking things off?  The elves exercise quite a bit of power over the shapes of their trees.

I think what he meant was whether it will be generally possible to move from treetop to treetop in any random forest or whether the trees will be too far apart to actually do that except in elf retreats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tps12 on November 15, 2012, 06:50:51 am

Quote from: Tov01 on November 14, 2012, 07:14:31 pm

Quote from: RAKninja on November 14, 2012, 02:19:57 pm

It seems sensible that goblins who have been very active snatchers/slave breeders who have large non-goblin populations do develop rather sizable slave farms to feed their masses.

Yeah, that was my thought on the matter, as well. It's not like the goblins have to start plowing the mud themselves. Slaves and all.

I think this is relevant:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Helgoland

Can you say a bit more about what sort of flavour each of the races will have? E.g. humans being similar to ancient Greece or Rome or to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever; I hope you know what I mean

I'm trying not to do it like that -- ideally humans will end up with enough parameters to end up like various different civilizations, and the other civilizations will probably become more alien to humans as humans take up more of the slack.

Since having farms worked by slaves was a common characteristic of historical human civilizations, I imagine it would still not seem "alien" enough to fit with Toady's ultimate vision for goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on November 15, 2012, 08:45:40 am

I dunno, the fact that goblins apparently like living in tiny cells in combination with the slavery seems pretty alien to me.

Sure, humans and dwarves can be put into tiny rooms as well, but it's not something they choose to do naturally. (Usually it's compensated by other things like 'safety', 'cheapness' or 'a really damn comfortable bed', or simply 'it beats sleeping in the rain')

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 15, 2012, 09:45:58 am

Quote from: Toady

Quote from: Heph

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

I guess people who are curious will have to go on a little journey, he he he.  It'll be there waiting.

Oh Toady, you tease :P  That pretty much seals the fate of my first adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on November 15, 2012, 10:10:19 am

Quote from: monk12 on November 15, 2012, 09:45:58 am

Quote from: Toady

Quote from: Heph

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

I guess people who are curious will have to go on a little journey, he he he.  It'll be there waiting.

Oh Toady, you tease :P  That pretty much seals the fate of my first adventurer.

I tried to find that block but struggled. Could anyone mark it on a map for future reference?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 15, 2012, 10:31:08 am

Quote from: Owlbread on November 15, 2012, 10:10:19 am

Quote from: monk12 on November 15, 2012, 09:45:58 am

Quote from: Toady

Quote from: Heph

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

I guess people who are curious will have to go on a little journey, he he he.  It'll be there waiting.

Oh Toady, you tease :P  That pretty much seals the fate of my first adventurer.

I tried to find that block but struggled. Could anyone mark it on a map for future reference?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://tnypic.net/kotuy.png)

There's two of'm, both suspiciously near the dwarves...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 15, 2012, 12:52:27 pm

Toady said sites will probably not have that much interaction but there might be something like a permanent market fair thing. It would be nice to have hill dwarves bring stuff to you to trade every month or so depending on the number of zombie kittens in the forest. For deep sites to interact with a fortress, they'd have to send stuff through a tunnel to you, and as Toady said deep caravans will probably not go in.

Will deep sites be built anywhere or just in mountains?

If deep sites can be connected to a fort by a tunnel, that's a permanent trading presence even under siege and ambush with multiple forgotten beasts roaming all the caverns and the circus spilling out uncontrolled into the bottom cavern layer.

Will forgotten beasts invade us through tunnels either in the next release or afterwards? The idea is that if we embark on top of a tunnel, forgotten beasts can arrive through the ends, and if a tunnel is dug to our fortress, we may get forgotten beasts arriving through them.

If a site connected to other settlements by a tunnel falls to siege of the HFS, will the other sites deliberately collapse the tunnel or block it off?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Its actualy in. You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 15, 2012, 01:00:47 pm

Quote from: Heph on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Its actualy in. You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

You still have a mandatory temperature gradient from north to south.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on November 15, 2012, 01:10:12 pm

Quote from: Japa on November 15, 2012, 01:00:47 pm

Quote from: Heph on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Its actualy in. You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

You still have a mandatory temperature gradient from north to south.

Or south to north.  It's random which.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 15, 2012, 01:15:44 pm

Quote from: Fieari on November 15, 2012, 01:10:12 pm

Quote from: Japa on November 15, 2012, 01:00:47 pm

Quote from: Heph on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Its actualy in. You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

You still have a mandatory temperature gradient from north to south.

Or south to north.  It's random which.

That makes me think of DF world as tidally locked to it's sun at a pole with orbital heliostat to light up the side away from it without warming it much and a very eccentic orbit to give seasonal gradients.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on November 15, 2012, 02:09:46 pm

I don't like Toady's idea that we shouldn't be able to play on retired fortresses and NPC forts because it would remove the seperateness of the computer world to us. I thought the whole point of DF was that it was a fantasy world simulator where we could play or control anything. If you start putting restrictions in like "I want the computer generated stuff to be outwith the control of the player" then you really limit the possibilities for interesting gameplay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on November 15, 2012, 02:18:58 pm

That's not quite true, he said that he was fine with the idea of the player taking control back from retired forts. There just might be a few issues with the transition to NPC fort and back again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 15, 2012, 02:20:55 pm

The impression I got was that Toady wasn't sure how to set things up so it would work properly without system being gamed too much or introducing other issues into it. I imagine it would be difficult enough trying to manage a fortress that you've never designed or leaving a fortress you made into computer control and then trying to get back into it after some time being left to it's own device. Not that he wanted to restrict what you could do, just that he didn't know how well it'd work out.

And I'm very definite that computer wouldn't know how to manage a fortress designed by most people very well :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on November 15, 2012, 02:22:03 pm

I see, forgive me then, I'd gotten the wrong impression.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RAKninja on November 15, 2012, 03:03:37 pm

Quote from: tps12 on November 15, 2012, 06:50:51 am

Quote from: Tov01 on November 14, 2012, 07:14:31 pm

Quote from: RAKninja on November 14, 2012, 02:19:57 pm

It seems sensible that goblins who have been very active snatchers/slave breeders who have large non-goblin populations do develop rather sizable slave farms to feed their masses.

Yeah, that was my thought on the matter, as well. It's not like the goblins have to start plowing the mud themselves. Slaves and all.

I think this is relevant:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Helgoland

Can you say a bit more about what sort of flavour each of the races will have? E.g. humans being similar to ancient Greece or Rome or to medieval times or the Renaissance or whatever; I hope you know what I mean

I'm trying not to do it like that -- ideally humans will end up with enough parameters to end up like various different civilizations, and the other civilizations will probably become more alien to humans as humans take up more of the slack.

Since having farms worked by slaves was a common characteristic of historical human civilizations, I imagine it would still not seem "alien" enough to fit with Toady's ultimate vision for goblins.

then something game mechanic-wise needs to be done to address starving snatchees.  kobolds have shown that things that must steal food tend to starve.  that'll prolly change when the economy gets further developed and actually activated.

but on that note, after many, many worldgens, i find that goblins often get relegated to undesirable areas, far from other civs, which may or may not make stealing food that much more difficult.

this is, of course, assuming we are abstracting in the terrible things that happen when you have severe nutrient deficiencies for a long period of time.  after all, slaves with severe cases of, say, scurvy do not work very well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on November 15, 2012, 03:13:47 pm

Quote from: Heph on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

Thanks for mentioning that, it somehow escaped me that we had that option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on November 15, 2012, 10:10:56 pm

Woo! Thanks to Toady for answers to our questions

Quote from: Toady

Quote from: Heph

In the first map in the upper 1/3rd of the right side there is a darkgrey "Block". What does it mean?

I guess people who are curious will have to go on a little journey, he he he.  It'll be there waiting.

...Or at least most of the time.

But anyway, will we get an option in fort mode to view a world map? Such as when in adventurer mode how you can see a world map, could we get this in fort mode in order to see what direction a certain race is, or to see how many secondary sites has sprouted up along our fort's border? It would also help to get our orientation if it's been a while, but now that the world changes, I think the ability to check on the surrounding area would be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 15, 2012, 10:54:35 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on November 15, 2012, 10:10:56 pm

But anyway, will we get an option in fort mode to view a world map? Such as when in adventurer mode how you can see a world map, could we get this in fort mode in order to see what direction a certain race is, or to see how many secondary sites has sprouted up along our fort's border? It would also help to get our orientation if it's been a while, but now that the world changes, I think the ability to check on the surrounding area would be nice.

This is talked about in the latest DF Talk. Sadly there is no transcript yet but he basically talks about how a map might work in fort mode and how new news might appear on it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on November 15, 2012, 11:26:45 pm

Quote from: Vattic on November 15, 2012, 10:54:35 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on November 15, 2012, 10:10:56 pm

But anyway, will we get an option in fort mode to view a world map? Such as when in adventurer mode how you can see a world map, could we get this in fort mode in order to see what direction a certain race is, or to see how many secondary sites has sprouted up along our fort's border? It would also help to get our orientation if it's been a while, but now that the world changes, I think the ability to check on the surrounding area would be nice.

This is talked about in the latest DF Talk. Sadly there is no transcript yet but he basically talks about how a map might work in fort mode and how new news might appear on it.

Awesome, can't wait for that transcript.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on November 15, 2012, 11:58:21 pm

Why do we play as humans in adv. mode, but dwarves in fort mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 15, 2012, 11:58:59 pm

Quote from: Quatch on November 15, 2012, 11:58:21 pm

Why do we play as humans in adv. mode, but dwarves in fort mode?

Because dwarven sites aren't in until the next version, that's why :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 16, 2012, 12:12:40 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 15, 2012, 11:58:59 pm

Quote from: Quatch on November 15, 2012, 11:58:21 pm

Why do we play as humans in adv. mode, but dwarves in fort mode?

Because dwarven sites aren't in until the next version, that's why :P

Yes, then we will be able to play as humans, elves, dwarves, gobbos with minor modding. Added with the whole earlier stuff with Camp senses, climbing, attack/move, sneaking, armies and simlar things, adventure mode is going to be very, very, interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 12:15:03 am

We can already play as elves and dwarves, actually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 16, 2012, 12:16:04 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 12:15:03 am

We can already play as elves and dwarves, actually.

But no armor fits! And you have to live in human towns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 16, 2012, 02:06:14 am

Quote from: Heph on November 15, 2012, 12:59:55 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 15, 2012, 11:57:15 am

I wonder if this is the version where we get worldgen options to change the temperature gradients. I've always wanted to be able to have uniformly-freezing glacier worlds or pseudo-whole-globe-maps with both tropics and poles.

Or even strange worlds with freezing centers and hot edges. Not that I'm passive-agressively migrating suggestions into FotF or anything.

Its actualy in. You go to advanced worlgen. the you hit "e" to customize and then you hit "p". In that window you can paint your map.

oooo.... my.... god....  This is like when I first learned about mass designations for dumping after I had been playing for months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 03:49:08 am

Will toady ever accept bitcoins donations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 04:16:20 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 03:49:08 am

Will toady ever accept bitcoins donations?

Why would he want to deal with that headache?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 04:33:10 am

Donations from overseas? This way willing patrons wont get ripped off exchanging one currency for another and that's more money for him

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 16, 2012, 04:34:09 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 04:33:10 am

Donations from overseas? This way willing patrons wont get ripped off exchanging one currency for another and that's more money for him

Bitcoins' value are pretty unstable, though, like it makes pretty much every other major currency looks rock stable in exchange rate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 04:35:16 am

Doesnt paypal automatically do exchanges?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 16, 2012, 05:33:03 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 04:35:16 am

Doesnt paypal automatically do exchanges?

Yes. And it does so at a perfectly competitive rate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 16, 2012, 05:48:20 am

Quote from: Cruxador on November 16, 2012, 05:33:03 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 04:35:16 am

Doesnt paypal automatically do exchanges?

Yes. And it does so at a perfectly competitive rate.

rate is still better than the difference of bitcoin value from one day to the next.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 07:02:47 am

I'm not sure of that, do you have any proof of that over a significant time frame or is it just "common sense"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 16, 2012, 07:35:39 am

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

Over the past month, bitcoin value went between 10 and 13 dollars per bitcoin. That's a 30% change. Some of that was a dollar difference over a day. That means you can give Toady a 10 dollar donation, and by the time he cashes it in, it's only worth 9

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 07:44:24 am

Thanks for the link, that made your point.an optimistic would say it could also go the other way.

Ok, I suggest toady implements a bitcoin donation system, this way all the black hat hackers around the world playing dwarf fortress will be able to share profit with him.
What? You're giving my IP to the feds? X)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 16, 2012, 07:47:00 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 16, 2012, 07:44:24 am

Thanks for the link, that made your point.an optimistic would say it could also go the other way.

I'm not a gambler.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 09:44:17 am

It's possible to set up an account with MtGox that will convert bitcoins to dollars right away with every transaction, AFAIK. Also, people interested in donating bit coins have bitcoins to give. If the value of bitcoins drops, that doesn't mean the same people would have donated more bitcoins if they knew that it would.

I think the real issue would be if the marginal increase in donations due to people being able to use their preferred currency is worth the hassle other potential drawbacks of setting it up. If somebody interested in donating bit coins were to ask Toady to set something up, that might be enough. Or he might not go for it. Questions about making donations may be more suitable for email or PM than this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on November 16, 2012, 06:28:46 pm

Is it possible to make donation in GOLD ? :p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 08:05:34 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 09:44:17 am

It's possible to set up an account with MtGox that will convert bitcoins to dollars right away with every transaction, AFAIK. Also, people interested in donating bit coins have bitcoins to give. If the value of bitcoins drops, that doesn't mean the same people would have donated more bitcoins if they knew that it would.

I think the real issue would be if the marginal increase in donations due to people being able to use their preferred currency is worth the hassle other potential drawbacks of setting it up. If somebody interested in donating bit coins were to ask Toady to set something up, that might be enough. Or he might not go for it. Questions about making donations may be more suitable for email or PM than this thread.

ToadyOne seems to be in favor of the path of least resistance with the administration of the businessy side of ToadyOne The Great Productions. Why bother with unstable, obscure, quasi legitimate tender, when in so far ToadyOne makes enough with just accepting donations.

And on another note, thats what we need more administrative man hours away from working on the game, for a questionable increase in donations and furthermore, a questionable sustained increase in donation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robosaur on November 16, 2012, 10:37:02 pm

When can we get modding support for the procedurally generated things, like modding Necromancers or making our own secrets?
What about syndromes that add new limbs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 10:43:50 pm

Quote from: Robosaur on November 16, 2012, 10:37:02 pm

When can we get modding support for the procedurally generated things, like modding Necromancers or making our own secrets?
What about syndromes that add new limbs?

We can make our own secrets.

The second part: maybe later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 11:12:35 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 08:05:34 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 09:44:17 am

It's possible to set up an account with MtGox that will convert bitcoins to dollars right away with every transaction, AFAIK. Also, people interested in donating bit coins have bitcoins to give. If the value of bitcoins drops, that doesn't mean the same people would have donated more bitcoins if they knew that it would.

I think the real issue would be if the marginal increase in donations due to people being able to use their preferred currency is worth the hassle other potential drawbacks of setting it up. If somebody interested in donating bit coins were to ask Toady to set something up, that might be enough. Or he might not go for it. Questions about making donations may be more suitable for email or PM than this thread.

ToadyOne seems to be in favor of the path of least resistance with the administration of the businessy side of ToadyOne The Great Productions. Why bother with unstable, obscure, quasi legitimate tender, when in so far ToadyOne makes enough with just accepting donations.

And on another note, thats what we need more administrative man hours away from working on the game, for a questionable increase in donations and furthermore, a questionable sustained increase in donation.

Firstly, there's nothing "illigitimate" about bitcoins.

Second, I disagree with the notion that Toady makes "enough." He could make due with less, but he would certainly prefer to make more.

Third, Toady does devote time, generally on weekends, I believe, to responding to donations, in providing all the perks a donation can give. This would be as much time spent on a single donation. It could be worthwhile to provide the convenience to the single donor alone, regardless of potential sustained increases. It is a also a false choice to say that any time Toady spends time on donations or anything else means less time developing the game. It's not that clear cut.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 17, 2012, 01:59:16 am

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 11:12:35 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 08:05:34 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 09:44:17 am

It's possible to set up an account with MtGox that will convert bitcoins to dollars right away with every transaction, AFAIK. Also, people interested in donating bit coins have bitcoins to give. If the value of bitcoins drops, that doesn't mean the same people would have donated more bitcoins if they knew that it would.

I think the real issue would be if the marginal increase in donations due to people being able to use their preferred currency is worth the hassle other potential drawbacks of setting it up. If somebody interested in donating bit coins were to ask Toady to set something up, that might be enough. Or he might not go for it. Questions about making donations may be more suitable for email or PM than this thread.

ToadyOne seems to be in favor of the path of least resistance with the administration of the businessy side of ToadyOne The Great Productions. Why bother with unstable, obscure, quasi legitimate tender, when in so far ToadyOne makes enough with just accepting donations.

And on another note, thats what we need more administrative man hours away from working on the game, for a questionable increase in donations and furthermore, a questionable sustained increase in donation.

Firstly, there's nothing "illigitimate" about bitcoins.

Second, I disagree with the notion that Toady makes "enough." He could make due with less, but he would certainly prefer to make more.

Third, Toady does devote time, generally on weekends, I believe, to responding to donations, in providing all the perks a donation can give. This would be as much time spent on a single donation. It could be worthwhile to provide the convenience to the single donor alone, regardless of potential sustained increases. It is a also a false choice to say that any time Toady spends time on donations or anything else means less time developing the game. It's not that clear cut.

I hears a lot about bitcoins in relationship to illegal activity, like drug market, botnet rentals, etc :D

Either way, I don't think that having bitcoin donation will be worth the overhead, particularly with how iffy their legal basis is, some of the exchanges don't seems to be sure if they're operating legally as a currency. Even without the association, it's very minor currency and very unstable to boot.

So in short; grey area for it, unstable exchange rate, having to manage another account just for it, lack of accountablity in the system ( not criminal activity, just general lack of tracking that banks are required to have ).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 17, 2012, 04:47:13 am

Quote from: AutomataKittay on November 17, 2012, 01:59:16 am

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 11:12:35 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 16, 2012, 08:05:34 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 16, 2012, 09:44:17 am

It's possible to set up an account with MtGox that will convert bitcoins to dollars right away with every transaction, AFAIK. Also, people interested in donating bit coins have bitcoins to give. If the value of bitcoins drops, that doesn't mean the same people would have donated more bitcoins if they knew that it would.

I think the real issue would be if the marginal increase in donations due to people being able to use their preferred currency is worth the hassle other potential drawbacks of setting it up. If somebody interested in donating bit coins were to ask Toady to set something up, that might be enough. Or he might not go for it. Questions about making donations may be more suitable for email or PM than this thread.

ToadyOne seems to be in favor of the path of least resistance with the administration of the businessy side of ToadyOne The Great Productions. Why bother with unstable, obscure, quasi legitimate tender, when in so far ToadyOne makes enough with just accepting donations.

And on another note, thats what we need more administrative man hours away from working on the game, for a questionable increase in donations and furthermore, a questionable sustained increase in donation.

Firstly, there's nothing "illigitimate" about bitcoins.

Second, I disagree with the notion that Toady makes "enough." He could make due with less, but he would certainly prefer to make more.

Third, Toady does devote time, generally on weekends, I believe, to responding to donations, in providing all the perks a donation can give. This would be as much time spent on a single donation. It could be worthwhile to provide the convenience to the single donor alone, regardless of potential sustained increases. It is a also a false choice to say that any time Toady spends time on donations or anything else means less time developing the game. It's not that clear cut.

I hears a lot about bitcoins in relationship to illegal activity, like drug market, botnet rentals, etc :D

Either way, I don't think that having bitcoin donation will be worth the overhead, particularly with how iffy their legal basis is, some of the exchanges don't seems to be sure if they're operating legally as a currency. Even without the association, it's very minor currency and very unstable to boot.

So in short; grey area for it, unstable exchange rate, having to manage another account just for it, lack of accountablity in the system ( not criminal activity, just general lack of tracking that banks are required to have ).

ToadyOne has spoken about maximizing revenue in a few DF Talk, and hes also aware that if he were to redo the entire UI to make it more accessible would also probably increase revenue as well. And, he/we (Its hard to see how much weight ThreeToes has 8/) seems to not be terrible interested in doing things for the sake of maximizing revenue. So, that's moot.

And that would go against community common perception of ToadyOne, in being not wanting to 'sell out'. Heck, ToadyOne doesnt seem to even want to make crappy print on demand t-shirts to help support themselves.

So, I think its safe to conclude that ToadyOne, is at least satisfied with the amount that DF makes him/them.

And BitCoins is qusi legitimate tender because its a tender only used in a grey market, a tiny, obscure, market that almost no one cares about. The fact that its heavily used (in what little it is used) in conjunction with black market activity doesnt really impact its legitimacy. All actual currency is used for black market transactions.

But beyond that, you neatly avoided the issue of its questionable measure of donations or it being sustaining source of donations. I dont blame you, BitCoin grey market, is de facto dying. Even on the onion network, its not exactly flourishing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 17, 2012, 05:26:04 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 17, 2012, 04:47:13 am

And BitCoins is qusi legitimate tender because its a tender only used in a grey market, a tiny, obscure, market that almost no one cares about. The fact that its heavily used (in what little it is used) in conjunction with black market activity doesnt really impact its legitimacy. All actual currency is used for black market transactions.

But beyond that, you neatly avoided the issue of its questionable measure of donations or it being sustaining source of donations. I dont blame you, BitCoin grey market, is de facto dying. Even on the onion network, its not exactly flourishing.

I'd like to clarify for future, just the currency being involved in illegimate market don't makes it bad money, I was more joking about it's reputation, hopefully that line wasn't taken seriously!

It's instability, small market and lack of accountablity's why I'm pointing out the issues with it. And the comment about grey area's about the legality of currency itself, not what it's involved with, since some bitcoin exchanges and federal government's had some published debate and unsureness of it's statue.

I'd hope the excessively unstable exchange rate and lack of legal accounting is enough of points in disfavor of it as a good donation point. Bitcoin is interesting idea and could be viable if it was larger and more stable system with legal oversight, rather than current small and grey system.

(Also sorry all for the derail! )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 01:01:21 pm

Pray, why are bitcoins "dying"

They do not need any legal oversight, from my point of view the more bitcoins are mined the more stable it gets...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robosaur on November 17, 2012, 01:48:10 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 10:43:50 pm

Quote from: Robosaur on November 16, 2012, 10:37:02 pm

When can we get modding support for the procedurally generated things, like modding Necromancers or making our own secrets?
What about syndromes that add new limbs?

We can make our own secrets.

The second part: maybe later.

not really.
necromancers are currently hardcoded in the game. You can't change a thing about them, and if you make any secrets of your own, the worldgen spits out at most one of them.

so I restate my question. When can we get proper modding support for secret interactions? (and maybe werebeasts?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 17, 2012, 01:50:20 pm

Quote from: Robosaur on November 17, 2012, 01:48:10 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 10:43:50 pm

Quote from: Robosaur on November 16, 2012, 10:37:02 pm

When can we get modding support for the procedurally generated things, like modding Necromancers or making our own secrets?
What about syndromes that add new limbs?

We can make our own secrets.

The second part: maybe later.

not really.
necromancers are currently hardcoded in the game. You can't change a thing about them, and if you make any secrets of your own, the worldgen spits out at most one of them.

so I restate my question. When can we get proper modding support for secret interactions? (and maybe werebeasts?)

All it takes is changing one line in advanced worldgen to fix that. Lower the amount of secrets in advanced worldgen and now you have more than just 1. I usually have 5 or 6 if I do that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Iforgotmypassword on November 17, 2012, 01:50:40 pm

In a future release, will a player or NPC controlled fortress be able to declare independence from their civ? If so, Will the civ make an effort to reclaim a disobedient fortress by force?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 17, 2012, 01:53:48 pm

Quote from: Iforgotmypassword on November 17, 2012, 01:50:40 pm

In a future release, will a player or NPC controlled fortress be able to declare independence from their civ? If so, Will the civ make an effort to reclaim a disobedient fortress by force?

Quote from: ToadyOne

We don't really have the consequences all coded for refusing the barony -- once that relationship is established more formally, it should be respected when your fortress retires.  It could very well end up as its own civilization at that point (and you'd also have dwarf invasion trouble at times).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 17, 2012, 05:20:45 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 01:01:21 pm

Pray, why are bitcoins "dying"

They do not need any legal oversight, from my point of view the more bitcoins are mined the more stable it gets...

Its community is stagnating or declining, on the whole, and the number of bitcoin miners are overall smaller then during bitcoin very brief boom.
It certainly isnt stabilizing nor is it even near close to being a mainstream Net Currency, or whatever fable you want Bitcoins to fill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on November 17, 2012, 05:30:02 pm

The bitcoin discussion doesn't really seem related to "current DF development" and would probably do better in its own thread.  Moving on.

Quote from: Robosaur on November 17, 2012, 01:48:10 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 16, 2012, 10:43:50 pm

Quote from: Robosaur on November 16, 2012, 10:37:02 pm

When can we get modding support for the procedurally generated things, like modding Necromancers or making our own secrets?
What about syndromes that add new limbs?

We can make our own secrets.

The second part: maybe later.

not really.
necromancers are currently hardcoded in the game. You can't change a thing about them, and if you make any secrets of your own, the worldgen spits out at most one of them.

so I restate my question. When can we get proper modding support for secret interactions? (and maybe werebeasts?)

As was mentioned its currently partially doable if you fiddle with things correctly.   As to why there are hard-coded chunks, there are a couple of reasons I'm aware of currently.  Generally, if something in DF is hardcoded, it is because Toady thinks he'll be coming back to make some significant changes to the system, and it is a bit rude to cultivate a modding community, then turn their work into garbage on a regular basis.  In the case of the Werebeasts and Necromancers, this "unfinished" part is probably the randomization procedure used to create the current incarnations of the Undead and Werebeasts (not to mention underground unmoddable things). 

The other aspect that's waiting is for historical figures to have motivations ("heroes and villains" I think it was called on the old devgoals).  There is some minor work being done with the "immortality" type motivations and things, but there's meant to be a much more satisfying and larger system in place to govern what historical figures do and why they do it.  Most of the vanilla Werebeasts just suck because they don't really act in a believable way right now, and just mope about naked in a cave waiting to be killed.  Once they develop goals and go on adventures themselves, there will be a system of behaviors and motivations in place that will make a modded version able to behave appropriately. 

So yeah, right now, as was mentioned, it can be done, but is a bit fiddly and unfinished to work with.  It would be nice for the system to be more accommodating to modding, but it is probably going to wait until one of the those two things to get handled (or for Toady to go on another night creature kick). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 06:36:39 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 17, 2012, 05:20:45 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 01:01:21 pm

Pray, why are bitcoins "dying"

They do not need any legal oversight, from my point of view the more bitcoins are mined the more stable it gets...

Its community is stagnating or declining, on the whole, and the number of bitcoin miners are overall smaller then during bitcoin very brief boom.
It certainly isnt stabilizing nor is it even near close to being a mainstream Net Currency, or whatever fable you want Bitcoins to fill.

TBH I lack enough data to reply to your statement, but I would be very glad to have a look at your sources. It's normal that bitcoin miners get less and less numerous since it is getting harder to mine new bitcoins. What you call the "brief boom" would be the period when it was easy to mine tons of new bitcoins in a small length of time without much ressources.

how can I move several posts to a new thread? do I have to be a moderator to do so?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 17, 2012, 06:59:55 pm

Toady, in the most recent DFtalk you mentioned other dimensions and how Dwarf Fortress is not quite there to implement them. I've also heard in a previous DFtalk that the game is already able to deal with "alternate dimensions", say, from where some night creatures may come from. Do you think players will be able to colonize those alternate dimensions in the future? Its been a theme in some games (i.e. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on November 17, 2012, 09:33:41 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 06:36:39 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 17, 2012, 05:20:45 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 17, 2012, 01:01:21 pm

Pray, why are bitcoins "dying"

They do not need any legal oversight, from my point of view the more bitcoins are mined the more stable it gets...

Its community is stagnating or declining, on the whole, and the number of bitcoin miners are overall smaller then during bitcoin very brief boom.
It certainly isnt stabilizing nor is it even near close to being a mainstream Net Currency, or whatever fable you want Bitcoins to fill.

TBH I lack enough data to reply to your statement, but I would be very glad to have a look at your sources. It's normal that bitcoin miners get less and less numerous since it is getting harder to mine new bitcoins. What you call the "brief boom" would be the period when it was easy to mine tons of new bitcoins in a small length of time without much ressources.

how can I move several posts to a new thread? do I have to be a moderator to do so?

How are bitcoins mined anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 17, 2012, 09:37:44 pm

Processing power. IIRC, a problem--problems which get exponentially harder as time goes on--is given to everyone who is mining. The first person whose computer solves the problem gets bitcoins conjured out of thin air. But they're not really conjured out of thin air: the processing power is the "mineral resource" that bitcoins are based on. The algorithms make sure that there are only so many bitcoins that can be mined total, making sure that they never really get devalued.

It's an interesting concept.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 18, 2012, 09:26:07 am

It makes the system more violent since saving up bitcoins means that you increase the Buying value of your coinage. Hmmm toget the drift back to DF ... thats the same for Goldcoins and minted money if you have a single currency with one Minting organisation. Any ammount of Money in the Vaults of a Noble means that the value of the others goes up. Releasing huge Amounts, say in financing a army can swamp an economywith extra money devaluing the money and lowering the buying-power.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on November 18, 2012, 09:30:27 am

Quote from: Heph on November 18, 2012, 09:26:07 am

It makes the system more violent since saving up bitcoins means that you increase the Buying value of your coinage. Hmmm toget the drift back to DF ... thats the same for Goldcoins and minted money if you have a single currency with one Minting organisation. Any ammount of Money in the Vaults of a Noble means that the value of the others goes up. Releasing huge Amounts, say in financing a army can swamp an economywith extra money devaluing the money and lowering the buying-power.

I wonder how much economical interaction is planned within foreseeable future within DF, speaking of swamping an economy. It does happens a lot historically, even with unbacked and free-floating currency. And if it'll involve supply and demand for specific material and items, relating to civ usage or trading to another civ.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 18, 2012, 09:36:49 am

You can also look at this from the production side: If large amounts of money are poured into the system, a great share of labor will go somewhere else, leaving less for those who were in the system from the beginning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 18, 2012, 10:56:56 am

Whether Toady should accept bitcoins is at least relevant to Toady. This discussion of how bitcoins work, and all the arguing about what Toady should do about them really should go to another thread.

Like here. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119322.0)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 18, 2012, 12:49:09 pm

Quote from: King Mir on November 18, 2012, 10:56:56 am

Whether Toady should accept bitcoins is at least relevant to Toady. This discussion of how bitcoins work, and all the arguing about what Toady should do about them really should go to another thread.

Like here. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119322.0)

You can always ask Toady about his position on bitcoins and other means of donation. There's a lack of green text in the entire bitcoin discussion, so:

Toady, do you plan to accept bitcoin donations or donations through other means than check or Paypal, such as Google Checkout?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on November 18, 2012, 08:42:11 pm

Why send him a load of horse bollocks when you can send him actual money instead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 18, 2012, 08:44:21 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on November 18, 2012, 08:42:11 pm

Why send him a load of horse bollocks when you can send him actual money instead?

Because, Perhaps there is a horse-to-cash conversion place near his house?
 
Toady, Is there a Horse bollocks to cash conversion place near your house?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 18, 2012, 09:10:00 pm

seeing as the thread looks horribly derailed for now:

you mentioned wars being fought on the border sites of your civilization, will these sites fall during fortress and adventure play exposing your sites to war, and will your site potentially end up the last standing fortress in the world( of your civilization)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 18, 2012, 10:41:25 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on November 18, 2012, 09:10:00 pm

seeing as the thread looks horribly derailed for now:

you mentioned wars being fought on the border sites of your civilization, will these sites fall during fortress and adventure play exposing your sites to war, and will your site potentially end up the last standing fortress in the world( of your civilization)?

Thats an eventual goal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on November 19, 2012, 12:24:50 am

I agree that this thread has been horribly derailed, so let's move on, please.

Toady, when armies are in and moving about, will your civilization's armies ever come and help defend to your fortress in Dwarf Mode? (perhaps conditional on how important your site is, how close you are to the enemy, ext.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 20, 2012, 02:19:26 am

By the sounds of things hill dwarves will be making their own hillocks, if this is so does it bring us any closer to other earthworks and even earthworks in fortress mode? Shaping the earth being one of the most lasting impacts of activity should make ruins more interesting even after a long time of decay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 20, 2012, 03:10:52 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 20, 2012, 02:19:26 am

By the sounds of things hill dwarves will be making their own hillocks, if this is so does it bring us any closer to other earthworks and even earthworks in fortress mode? Shaping the earth being one of the most lasting impacts of activity should make ruins more interesting even after a long time of decay.

In the last batch of ToadyOne answers, he said that this wasnt happening for fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 21, 2012, 06:41:54 am

Toady, you've mentioned that hill dwarves will have mounds. Are these artificial mounds of earth (and possibly rock) that have been piled up by the dwarves, or are they mounds that have have been dug out by the dwarves?

You mentioned that dwarves will have drinking halls, but they won't have taverns until the next release. Will there be new taverns for each site type or will it depend so the drinking halls in hill settlements can become taverns?

Toady said that the earth-moving code was likely to be very buggy and it was something the release could do without for now.

Similarly, Toady said dwarves won't clean up leaves outside. However, I think its a good idea to be able to designate an area to be cleaned anyways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 21, 2012, 07:39:19 am

I really think it safe to say, that all sites with large enough population to warrant a Tavern will have them. Defiantly for Humans and Dorfs... dont know for elves or gobo though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on November 21, 2012, 09:50:12 am

Will a broker or other diplomat affect the relationships with other nations if you have him/her at the tavern?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 11:00:55 am

I foresee this situation : you are preparing the meeting with the goblin diplomat when he gets his nose broken in a barfight...
"A diplomat has left unhappy"
then a year later he gets back with five thugs, wreak havoc in the tavern, beat bloody the guy who broke his nose then set the tavern on fire...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 21, 2012, 11:41:45 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 11:00:55 am

I foresee this situation : you are preparing the meeting with the goblin diplomat when he gets his nose broken in a barfight...
"A diplomat has left unhappy"
then a year later he gets back with five thugs, wreak havoc in the tavern, beat bloody the guy who broke his nose then set the tavern on fire...

Speaking of which, its now possible for forest fires to spread through the trees, where the solid parts are pretty much like walls. As forest fires can now cause spectacular devastation with burning trees, can fires now level wooden buildings in towns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on November 21, 2012, 11:54:31 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 21, 2012, 11:41:45 am

As forest fires can now cause spectacular devastation with burning trees, can fires now level wooden buildings in towns?

I'd hazard a guess that the code that made trees invincible is separate from whatever code makes construction invincible, and even if they used the same code he probably wrote entirely new code for the trees. I doubt that would change unless Toady went out of his way for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on November 21, 2012, 12:55:39 pm

If I'd had to guess, I'd say that the code that makes wooden buildings indestructible is the same code that makes walls in general indestructible, so burning buildings would probably require a rewrite of the wall code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 21, 2012, 01:14:23 pm

A while back, I played a modded fire spirit adventurer. I went down to the arctic and vaporized native ice walls, but only when I stood next to them, not on top of them. Ice-boulder-walls, as constructions, would behave differently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:39:02 pm

I ment ice blocks walls

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 21, 2012, 04:16:44 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

The Icewall around Asgard was the first thing that came to my mind. As far as global warming etc goes ... that would need a rewrite of the Weather sim. A rewrite for Dorf Thermodynamics would be needed too i think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 21, 2012, 09:57:26 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

If we were to have climate change, cooling would be more appropriate than warming, considering the game is target roughly at late medieval time period, during which the Medieval Climate Optimum was ending and the Little Ice Age was beginning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 21, 2012, 10:25:19 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on November 21, 2012, 09:57:26 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

If we were to have climate change, cooling would be more appropriate than warming, considering the game is target roughly at late medieval time period, during which the Medieval Climate Optimum was ending and the Little Ice Age was beginning.

As well as the fact that the most industrialized civ hasn't even managed to figure out how to dump liquids other then magma into the surrounding enviroment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on November 21, 2012, 11:06:58 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on November 21, 2012, 09:57:26 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

If we were to have climate change, cooling would be more appropriate than warming, considering the game is target roughly at late medieval time period, during which the Medieval Climate Optimum was ending and the Little Ice Age was beginning.

We cannot forget though, that the geography of the worlds in DF are ussually SIGNIFICANTLY different from ours. It'd make no sense to have the world undergo cooling simply because that's what happened in our world, especially in worlds where the biomes and events are arranged in such a way that it would make sense for it to cause a general heating or general stability. I vouch for it to be done dynamically, though it still makes little sense to have climate change within a few hundred years and no cars.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 21, 2012, 11:13:54 pm

Yeah, barring absurd magic I'd think global climate change is beyond the capacity for any civ of the era. Then again, this IS a fantasy game that already has absurd magic in it, so I look forward to Spirit of Fire Emissions causing catastrophic ecological damage in the future!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 21, 2012, 11:14:57 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 21, 2012, 01:02:03 pm

I guess that he will tackle this at the same time as he get rid of never melting ice walls...
it could be interesting, if we ever get climate changes, to see civs build big ice walls to keep the foe at bay (like THE Wall in game of thrones) only to see them melt over the millenia as everyone beyond them keeps warming the climate
What pal, you got a problem with this warm ice wall?

Needing constructed Ice Walls to melt doesnt seem to be attached to any major gameplay. Having ice walls melting, also to me, isnt strongly connected to also needing constructed walls universally be destroyable, absent of player agency.

What I think will require that constructed walls needing to be destroyed will be the siege.] overhaul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on November 22, 2012, 02:07:58 am

Whenever fire and walls is done, it should never be easy to burn down an entire elf grove simply by starting a campfire next to a named tree. That would be lame. Unless maybe the forest's been in drought and everything is tinder dry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 22, 2012, 02:35:51 am

Quote from: DG on November 22, 2012, 02:07:58 am

Whenever fire and walls is done, it should never be easy to burn down an entire elf grove simply by starting a campfire next to a named tree. That would be lame. Unless maybe the forest's been in drought and everything is tinder dry.

I'd expect some sort of Elfy / Nature magic thing to protect the Elf cities from standard (non-magic) fire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 22, 2012, 03:06:37 am

Quote from: BradUffner on November 22, 2012, 02:35:51 am

Quote from: DG on November 22, 2012, 02:07:58 am

Whenever fire and walls is done, it should never be easy to burn down an entire elf grove simply by starting a campfire next to a named tree. That would be lame. Unless maybe the forest's been in drought and everything is tinder dry.

I'd expect some sort of Elfy / Nature magic thing to protect the Elf cities from standard (non-magic) fire.

Sure, if by "Elfy / Nature magic" you mean "elves with buckets". That and the fact that wet (live) wood doesn't burn that well anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on November 22, 2012, 03:53:57 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 20, 2012, 03:10:52 am

Quote from: Vattic on November 20, 2012, 02:19:26 am

By the sounds of things hill dwarves will be making their own hillocks, if this is so does it bring us any closer to other earthworks and even earthworks in fortress mode? Shaping the earth being one of the most lasting impacts of activity should make ruins more interesting even after a long time of decay.

In the last batch of ToadyOne answers, he said that this wasnt happening for fortress mode.

Fair enough. Must have missed that specific answer. Cheers :).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 22, 2012, 05:35:52 am

So how large are the hill dwarf sites? Are they still 17x17 and too large to be reclaimed?

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 22, 2012, 09:07:48 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 22, 2012, 05:35:52 am

So how large are the hill dwarf sites? Are they still 17x17 and too large to be reclaimed?

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

The answerisin the newest Dev-log:

Quote from: ToadyOne

  I'm working on deep dwarven sites, and it should include a bit of early work on fortresses as well, since the basics of their individual living arrangments and industry should be about the same.  Deep sites claim areas much larger than forts (the size of human towns in the current version -- up to 17x17 embark tiles), and a lot of this will probably be devoted to farms in the cavern layers, but I'm hoping for something reasonably different from a human village underground.  These kind of sites aren't reclaimable (because they are too large), so the amount of farms won't clash with the time-compressed nature of farming in fort mode.  Aside from the living, farming and workshop areas, there'll be zones for mining and storage as well.  Certain of them have barons, and those'll have an additional area.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 22, 2012, 11:59:43 am

If an entire mountainhome is lost, and then a player claims one of the border forts, would the population spread from that fort prefer to spill into the old deep sites, prefer to build new sites, or simply not care? Does the presence of those sites increase the rate at which the population spreads?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 22, 2012, 02:05:32 pm

Quote from: Heph on November 22, 2012, 09:07:48 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 22, 2012, 05:35:52 am

So how large are the hill dwarf sites? Are they still 17x17 and too large to be reclaimed?

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

The answerisin the newest Dev-log:

Quote from: ToadyOne

  I'm working on deep dwarven sites, and it should include a bit of early work on fortresses as well, since the basics of their individual living arrangments and industry should be about the same.  Deep sites claim areas much larger than forts (the size of human towns in the current version -- up to 17x17 embark tiles), and a lot of this will probably be devoted to farms in the cavern layers, but I'm hoping for something reasonably different from a human village underground.  These kind of sites aren't reclaimable (because they are too large), so the amount of farms won't clash with the time-compressed nature of farming in fort mode.  Aside from the living, farming and workshop areas, there'll be zones for mining and storage as well.  Certain of them have barons, and those'll have an additional area.

Toady was referring to the deep sites; my question was whether the hill sites are also 17x17.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on November 22, 2012, 02:08:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

The hill/deep sites are too large to reclaim, and that's the main difference, though the maps are also completely different.  I'm not sure about the borders -- the layers of the cavern tend to be connected, though there are water areas.  I'm sure I'll encounter various problems when I get to the deep site maps.  Ideally, the fortresses will go down to at least the first layer (and sometimes all the way down to have magma forges), and through the cavern layers they will connect to the deep site maps.  I'm not sure every deep site map will be on a cavern layer(s), but it'll probably be very common for them to have a significant presence there, especially for food and lumber.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on November 23, 2012, 11:13:08 am

Toady, when you said before that non-fortress sites would be too big to reclaim, I'd assumed that they could theoretically span who knows how many of those 16x16 map sectors; but now that I notice the latest devlog saying they only go up to 17x17, I'm wondering... If non-fortress sites can't go far beyond the player limit of 16x16, why not limit them just one embark tile more (er, fewer?) and let sites use a common framework, suitable not only for eventually making other sites reclaimable but for eventually letting modders play as human towns, elf hamlets and such? At the moment I'm starting to suspect that the fact other sites can exceed 16x16, all the way up to the whopping one embark tile wider (yes, that's sarcasm) of 17x17, is not the real cause of their being nonplayable, but rather a technical means to enforce their nonplayability, while the real reason has been left unwritten (as far as I've seen), though it might be as simple as that the task of making all types of sites meet certain standards of playability is not worth your trouble in the near future (which I'd still rather hear than suspect while I hear other things). Or, is the intention to limit site sprawl at the present time, but leave room long-term to make sites that do stretch across a multiplicity of 16x16 sectors -- a sort of Dwarven/Elven/Goblin equivalent of Los Angeles, if you will?

A note to the mathematically inclined: I'm aware that going from 16x16 to 17x17 itself adds a grand total of 33 embark tiles, one more than the size of a fortress of maximum length and minimum width. I still think that whether you're looking at 16 vs 17 or at 16^2 (256) vs 17^2 (289) it's odd to let the size only just exceed what would allow a common site framework, if that isn't itself the point.

Also, if this has already been discussed elsewhere, say, in DF Talk, feel free to just point me to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 23, 2012, 06:47:56 pm

There's one other thing with embarking that is you can't have an embark crossing between region tiles. You can't have a 4x4 embark that has 8 tiles in one region tile and 8 tiles in another. I noticed that a lot of the settlements now do that.

The problem with 17x17 sites beyond the game engine is also with performance, but there are people who can run 16x16 embarks. They just don't run very well for most of those people, however.

Toady, how large are the worldgen fortress sites at the moment? Are they strictly of something like 4x4 dimensions or can they vary?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jables on November 24, 2012, 04:06:14 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 23, 2012, 06:47:56 pm

There's one other thing with embarking that is you can't have an embark crossing between region tiles. You can't have a 4x4 embark that has 8 tiles in one region tile and 8 tiles in another. I noticed that a lot of the settlements now do that.

This. I'm pretty sure the reason 17x17 is the maximum size for certain sites is that it's the biggest size you can have while still guaranteeing that the entire site will fit inside a 2x2 block of region tiles. Preventing sites from crossing region boundaries is an artificial limitation that applies to player fortresses for technical reasons. This will almost certainly change in the future (though likely not the near future), but until then we'll have to live with many sites being impossible to reclaim.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 24, 2012, 10:53:36 am

Quote from: Jables on November 24, 2012, 04:06:14 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 23, 2012, 06:47:56 pm

There's one other thing with embarking that is you can't have an embark crossing between region tiles. You can't have a 4x4 embark that has 8 tiles in one region tile and 8 tiles in another. I noticed that a lot of the settlements now do that.

This. I'm pretty sure the reason 17x17 is the maximum size for certain sites is that it's the biggest size you can have while still guaranteeing that the entire site will fit inside a 2x2 block of region tiles. Preventing sites from crossing region boundaries is an artificial limitation that applies to player fortresses for technical reasons. This will almost certainly change in the future (though likely not the near future), but until then we'll have to live with many sites being impossible to reclaim.

Toady, will all ruined dwarf fortresses be reclaimable or will there be fortresses that cannot be reclaimed because of crossing region tiles and so on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on November 24, 2012, 02:51:00 pm

@Jables: Good points both re. 17x17 being as large as possible while limiting to 2x2 sectors/region tiles and re. the region boundary limitation for player embarks. Would be interesting to hear more from Toady (e.g., is it a long-term goal to remove the region tile boundary limitation for embarks, and what limitations on embark size will then be in effect, the same 17x17 to limit actual region tile coverage to 2x2?), but now my curiousity as to the reasoning involved won't bug me so much in any case. ;^) Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 24, 2012, 03:14:29 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on November 24, 2012, 02:51:00 pm

@Jables: Good points both re. 17x17 being as large as possible while limiting to 2x2 sectors/region tiles and re. the region boundary limitation for player embarks. Would be interesting to hear more from Toady (e.g., is it a long-term goal to remove the region tile boundary limitation for embarks, and what limitations on embark size will then be in effect, the same 17x17 to limit actual region tile coverage to 2x2?), but now my curiousity as to the reasoning involved won't bug me so much in any case. ;^) Thanks!

If you want to hear more from Toady, you can always put the question in lime green and he will try to answer it. Copied for you:

Toady, do you plan to remove the region tile boundary limitation for player embarks and if so what limitations on embark size will be in effect?

Was there any reason behind making the large worldgen sites 17x17 rather than 16x16?

One reason Toady may have done this was to prevent players reclaiming worldgen sites; if one had a 16x16 ruined city in the next version it might have been possible to reclaim it (assuming a suitable computer system). The reason for not making worldgen sites bigger than 17x17 would be covered by sprawl and making sure they wouldn't overlap more than a 2x2 area of region tiles.

How do dwarf settlements react to aquifers in worldgen? If we have a mountain range with an aquifer, will dwarves just not settle there, or will they construct shafts down to below the aquifer level? How do hill dwarves react to aquifers?

Will there be worldgen walls in the next version, especially around mountains with dwarf settlements?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 24, 2012, 07:07:34 pm

Would be undying glory for quantum menace if his two slits method was to be immortalized through use by hill dwarves...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on November 25, 2012, 03:36:40 am

I don't think people are really thinking here about the fact that you can't currently do a 16x16 embark anyway without crashing the game, unless you've intentionally skewed your worldgen parameters with that in mind (no caverns/no bottom layer/no magma layer would probably do it).  I don't know of anyone seriously playing on anything higher than 6x6 right now.  I would certainly be happy for the game to get tuned up to be fast enough on those kinds of embarks (and there is certainly plenty of optimization that could be done to prevent FPS death and memory issues of large and old forts) but until that happens, it doesn't really matter that you can't reclaim hill/mountain dwarf sites. 

I think when Toady mentioned 17x17 being "too large" he was probably referring more to the memory/FPS constraints than to an arbitrary limiting number. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on November 25, 2012, 03:09:34 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on November 25, 2012, 03:36:40 am

I don't think people are really thinking here about the fact that you can't currently do a 16x16 embark anyway without crashing the game, unless you've intentionally skewed your worldgen parameters with that in mind (no caverns/no bottom layer/no magma layer would probably do it).  I don't know of anyone seriously playing on anything higher than 6x6 right now.  I would certainly be happy for the game to get tuned up to be fast enough on those kinds of embarks (and there is certainly plenty of optimization that could be done to prevent FPS death and memory issues of large and old forts) but until that happens, it doesn't really matter that you can't reclaim hill/mountain dwarf sites. 

I think when Toady mentioned 17x17 being "too large" he was probably referring more to the memory/FPS constraints than to an arbitrary limiting number.

I have a 10x10 fort that is still achieving ~50 FPS with almost 100 dwarves. 16x16 crashes, but that is because of memory problems. Computers are very fast nowadays.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on November 25, 2012, 03:34:32 pm

I don't post too often but I've been wondering this since the city redesign.

As Cities Grow do they preserve structures from their older 'smaller' versions? How do you manage the interaction of the old proceduraly generated layout and additions?
Is this the same method your thinking to use when overlaping entity sites (one conquering another and then growing)?


I'm very curious about this as I've run into massive difficulties trying to implement much less complicated procedural based progressions/interactions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on November 25, 2012, 03:37:12 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 24, 2012, 03:14:29 pm

If you want to hear more from Toady, you can always put the question in lime green and he will try to answer it.
...
One reason Toady may have done this was to prevent players reclaiming worldgen sites...

Quote from: Caldfir on November 25, 2012, 03:36:40 am

I don't think people are really thinking here about the fact that you can't currently do a 16x16 embark anyway without crashing the game...

Actually, I'd already pretty much asked in limegreen a few posts back (not going to repeat it here, but I think it's on the previous page of posts) whether there was a reason for the 17x17 size given that my understanding is that that 17x17 size was itself given at some point* as the reason why we won't be able to play non-fortress sites.

*I think it was the last FotF reply session, to my question as to whether we'd get to play the new Dwarven Deep Sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PanH on November 26, 2012, 12:21:18 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 24, 2012, 07:07:34 pm

Would be undying glory for quantum menace if his two slits method was to be immortalized through use by hill dwarves...

I think the easiest thing would simply to not care about aquifer. They don't really "dig" like we do in Fortress Mode. The thing will spawn, and most probably with smoothed walls, preventing the flow. But I agree that would be fun to see the double slits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 12:45:26 pm

Actually, since aquifers generate water in the tile below them, smoothed walls on the sides won't help much unless the aquifer is sealed off from above too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 26, 2012, 02:14:23 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 24, 2012, 07:07:34 pm

Would be undying glory for quantum menace if his two slits method was to be immortalized through use by hill dwarves...

I just noticed how funny it is that a guy named "Quantum Menace" invented the "two-slit" (double slit) method :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 08:11:41 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

This. However, I don't know if Toady is going to change the code just because of that. I feel that dwarves would want to keep their tunnels dry without good reason or without accident.

Also I think there's a game engine limitation to playing the 17x17 maps, rather than a performance one. Sure the thing might play at 1FPS or so, but that's still "working".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 26, 2012, 08:18:38 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 08:11:41 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

This. However, I don't know if Toady is going to change the code just because of that. I feel that dwarves would want to keep their tunnels dry without good reason or without accident.

Also I think there's a game engine limitation to playing the 17x17 maps, rather than a performance one. Sure the thing might play at 1FPS or so, but that's still "working".

The game can't use the amount of memory required to play a 17x17 map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on November 26, 2012, 10:37:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 26, 2012, 08:18:38 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 08:11:41 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

This. However, I don't know if Toady is going to change the code just because of that. I feel that dwarves would want to keep their tunnels dry without good reason or without accident.

Also I think there's a game engine limitation to playing the 17x17 maps, rather than a performance one. Sure the thing might play at 1FPS or so, but that's still "working".

The game can't use the amount of memory required to play a 17x17 map.

Is the game 64 bit yet or still stuck at 32 bit?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 26, 2012, 11:21:31 pm

2x2? 3x3 Being decadent? Man my dorfs must live like kings in theyr 5X5 rooms. heck my nobles get 7x7.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 26, 2012, 11:54:09 pm

"moral decadence of the 3x3" made me lol pretty good. I tend for 2x3 myself, it's interesting to have an official in-game standard to judge by.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 27, 2012, 12:37:08 am

Quote from: iceball3 on November 26, 2012, 10:37:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 26, 2012, 08:18:38 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 08:11:41 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

This. However, I don't know if Toady is going to change the code just because of that. I feel that dwarves would want to keep their tunnels dry without good reason or without accident.

Also I think there's a game engine limitation to playing the 17x17 maps, rather than a performance one. Sure the thing might play at 1FPS or so, but that's still "working".

The game can't use the amount of memory required to play a 17x17 map.

Is the game 64 bit yet or still stuck at 32 bit?

32bit for now, but ToadyOne has stated in a Dwarf Talk that'll have to convert the game into 64bit. As always, no time line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on November 27, 2012, 12:48:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on November 26, 2012, 11:54:09 pm

"moral decadence of the 3x3" made me lol pretty good. I tend for 2x3 myself, it's interesting to have an official in-game standard to judge by.

No wonder immigrants are gagging to come to our forts.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 26, 2012, 08:11:41 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 26, 2012, 01:37:40 pm

Aquifers just shouldn't be fire hoses. It should be easy, and safe, to dig down into an aquifer, send workers down to wall up the sides, and maybe even leave the tunnels as they are and use pumps to keep them dry enough to work in, like we do in real life.

This. However, I don't know if Toady is going to change the code just because of that. I feel that dwarves would want to keep their tunnels dry without good reason or without accident.

Also I think there's a game engine limitation to playing the 17x17 maps, rather than a performance one. Sure the thing might play at 1FPS or so, but that's still "working".

It's one of those ocasions where the warp time speed of Fortmode doesn't gel with the speed that dwarves do things in Fort mode. Like work. And drown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on November 27, 2012, 03:27:56 am

Quote from: Heph on November 26, 2012, 11:21:31 pm

2x2? 3x3 Being decadent? Man my dorfs must live like kings in theyr 5X5 rooms. heck my nobles get 7x7.

Well you only really need three floor tiles, so yeah. And consider that a tile is around a few meters on a side, think about how big that is compared to your own bedroom in real life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 27, 2012, 03:45:05 am

Actualy my bedroom would be about the size of that given that i have a 1.5 room flat. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 27, 2012, 04:36:34 am

My dwarves live in 3x1 bedroom with masterwork engravings, bed, cabinet and chests... The noble though all live in the same 11x11 room. That's not cruelty I think, they are always ecstatic and provided with enough work they dont tantrum spiral over anyone's death(except that time with the friggin vampire)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on November 27, 2012, 05:39:44 am

Toady, with the mounds for drinking, and the dwarves standing around looking drunk, will dorves thtart talking funning like therpennmen do alredy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on November 27, 2012, 08:20:37 am

Quote from: tahujdt on November 27, 2012, 05:39:44 am

Toady, with the mounds for drinking, and the dwarves standing around looking drunk, will dorves thtart talking funning like therpennmen do alredy?

First, green your questions... Second, dwarves are more coherent and productive while they're drunk, and Toady One hasn't mentioned anything special relating to conversation, so I'd say no.

Toady, will the walls of fortresses be engraved, smoothed, rough, or will it depend on certain factors and wind up being a mix of the three at times?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 27, 2012, 02:04:35 pm

Seriously? 3x3 is "decadent"? In my forts 3x3 is the smallest type of room, usually dedicated to some workshops, temporary accommodation, and some barracks. Most dwarves get a 5x5 bedroom, sometimes with multiple rooms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 02:09:26 pm

I give 2x3 rooms to the basest level of accommadation. Once I start being able to house people decadently, I set up a pretty consistent level of 4 12-square rooms for bedrooms, dining, and office for the higher-ups, plus a room connected to the quarters designated as a "meeting area". Commoners get a 3x3 bedroom, a 2x3 dining room, and a 3x3-3x4 common room.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 27, 2012, 02:47:05 pm

In my forts everyone gets 5x5 rooms in the main dorm section, and the nobles get 7x7 or 9x9 rooms off to the side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on November 27, 2012, 03:00:28 pm

My dwarves get 20x20 bedrooms. They do have to share that bedroom with almost 200 other dwarves, but they don't seem to mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 03:04:22 pm

Well hey, if there's 200 masterwork beds in the room, it MUST be a great place to stay!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 27, 2012, 04:21:25 pm

I go with the 2x2 or 3x3 set-up... though my first seven get 5x5 and my nobles get really big rooms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on November 27, 2012, 04:29:06 pm

I usually go for 2x3. My nobles are very much set apart from the rest of the population, usually getting 5x7 to 7x9.

edit:

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 02:09:26 pm

I set up a pretty consistent level of 4 12-square rooms for bedrooms, dining, and office for the higher-ups, plus a room connected to the quarters designated as a "meeting area".

This, largely, but I do 11x11, simply because it's fastest... >.> shift + arrow key.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 27, 2012, 05:09:37 pm

Oh wow, you guys are luxurious.
 
Later migrants are pleased to see 3x3, or 3x2, but if I'm pressed, say hello to 3x1

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 27, 2012, 05:38:38 pm

I use 2x2 for "special" dwarves (those that got my attention for a feat for example), 3x3 for nobles (with 3x3 dining rooms and offices if required) and 1x3 for the unwashed masses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 05:55:07 pm

"You killed that hydra with a masterwork =Pig Tallow Roast=? Say hello to AN ENTIRE 25% MORE FLOORSPACE, BUDDY!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on November 27, 2012, 06:04:50 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 03:04:22 pm

Well hey, if there's 200 masterwork beds in the room, it MUST be a great place to stay!

"And over there to the left is the Dwarven Orgy Hall."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 27, 2012, 07:06:09 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on November 27, 2012, 06:04:50 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on November 27, 2012, 03:04:22 pm

Well hey, if there's 200 masterwork beds in the room, it MUST be a great place to stay!

"And over there to the left is the Dwarven Orgy Hall."

"Otherwise known as the Sporium."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 27, 2012, 08:03:36 pm

I guess it depends on how you build you dorm z-level wise. I go with my own version of the Appartment complex having 8 or so rooms on each z-level over 5 Z-levels. I can easely fit atleast 5 Of those in one Maptile X and Y wise. A flat sprawl like i see it often in the LPs needs smaller rooms to cram ~200 dorfs in. 

I can see thought that toady goes with smaller rooms just to get similar populations to Human cities for the Mountainhomes. I wonder if we get elaborate aboveground fortifications for dorfs ... and drowning chambers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on November 28, 2012, 12:03:38 am

Am I the only one who doesn't use square bedrooms? Whenever I make my apartment complexes, I use 1x4 rooms, they're much easier to nestle together in nice little fractal arrangements.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on November 28, 2012, 12:36:16 am

Quote from: O11O1 on November 28, 2012, 12:03:38 am

Am I the only one who doesn't use square bedrooms? Whenever I make my apartment complexes, I use 1x4 rooms, they're much easier to nestle together in nice little fractal arrangements.

Quote from: misko27 on November 27, 2012, 05:09:37 pm

Later migrants are pleased to see 3x3, or 3x2, but if I'm pressed, say hello to 3x1

Waapaah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 28, 2012, 01:31:43 am

If you want more bedroom on the same z level, more walls for engraving and better pathing, go for the modified windmill villas

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nyotor Lizardhammers on November 28, 2012, 08:52:20 am

If Ruined NPC forts are reclaimable, what items should I expect to find scattered around? Will metal items correspond to local ore deposits and/or will armor and weapons usually be iron and steel What creatures would I find lurking in the ruins?

Not sure if this has been asked before but I thought it was worth a try. Pardon if that's too many questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 28, 2012, 09:05:48 am

With Dwarven fortresses being put in place, are there any plans for linking the the materials that humans build their castles with to the materials their friendly dwarven trading partners dug out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 28, 2012, 09:37:08 am

Quote from: Japa on November 28, 2012, 09:05:48 am

With Dwarven fortresses being put in place, are there any plans for linking the the materials that humans build their castles with to the materials their friendly dwarven trading partners dug out?

So will there be mines in the next version? I'm thinking at the very least deep settlements with areas dedicated to mining.

Because its reasonable, and Toady has already mentioned magma forges in the depths.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on November 28, 2012, 11:28:48 am

My 4x3 rooms are apparently the height of decadance!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on November 28, 2012, 11:51:32 am

I remember building elaborate riverside housing districts next to the cave river, with bridges, elegant paths, statues, and hobbity homes carved into the side. They eventually got paved with cave crocs, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 28, 2012, 12:06:59 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 28, 2012, 09:37:08 am

Quote from: Japa on November 28, 2012, 09:05:48 am

With Dwarven fortresses being put in place, are there any plans for linking the the materials that humans build their castles with to the materials their friendly dwarven trading partners dug out?

So will there be mines in the next version? I'm thinking at the very least deep settlements with areas dedicated to mining.

Because its reasonable, and Toady has already mentioned magma forges in the depths.

There will be areas dedicated to mining in the deep sites. We have head nothing about mines and mining otherwise in the next release, but it is unlikely to come in - the mines on the dev page are linked with the 3d-vein work, and we have nothing indicating that Toady wants to go there for the next release yet.

Quote from: Toady One

I'm working on deep dwarven sites, .... Aside from the living, farming and workshop areas, there'll be zones for mining and storage as well. Certain of them have barons, and those'll have an additional area.

Quote from: Japa on November 28, 2012, 09:05:48 am

With Dwarven fortresses being put in place, are there any plans for linking the the materials that humans build their castles with to the materials their friendly dwarven trading partners dug out?

Humans will eventually have mines of their own, so they don't particularly need dwarven trade for those materials, though it would probably help. Either way, the framework should be mostly in place already thanks to the caravan arc work that Toady has already done. All that's really left is to make the fortress-building use reasonable materials, rather than go for bituminous coal, pitchblende, and native aluminum.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 23, 2012, 06:47:56 pm

Toady, how large are the worldgen fortress sites at the moment? Are they strictly of something like 4x4 dimensions or can they vary?

The trade and holdings maps seem to be accurate in that respect, the largest sizes being 17x17 pixels, so the dwarf fortresses seem to be 3x3 in size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on November 28, 2012, 07:51:40 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 28, 2012, 12:06:59 pm

All that's really left is to make the fortress-building use reasonable materials, rather than go for bituminous coal, pitchblende, and native aluminum.

Microcline?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on November 28, 2012, 08:06:23 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on November 28, 2012, 07:51:40 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 28, 2012, 12:06:59 pm

All that's really left is to make the fortress-building use reasonable materials, rather than go for bituminous coal, pitchblende, and native aluminum.

Microcline?

Hey, someone has to use it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on November 28, 2012, 08:07:07 pm

Really, just restricting fortresses to layer stones would get rid of most of the silly ones, and it would make sense, because layer stones are obviously the most plentiful and thus easiest to build things with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on November 29, 2012, 01:36:55 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on November 28, 2012, 07:51:40 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 28, 2012, 12:06:59 pm

All that's really left is to make the fortress-building use reasonable materials, rather than go for bituminous coal, pitchblende, and native aluminum.

Microcline?

fixed

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on November 29, 2012, 05:22:41 pm

I doubt that the civ site materials will be updated this time around to correspond to trade/locally available stones, though this does give me visions of reclaiming a ruined human fort made of native gold.  Welcome to El Dorado!

Though on that subject, I hope that when that does happen, we also get some fixes to the various world constructions which just get listed as "stone" at the moment.  I want to be able to follow the Orthoclase Brick Road to the Garnierite City!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 29, 2012, 07:29:32 pm

That could cause some trouble if the economy ever gets implemented. The Dwarven City of Gold, or even the Suburb of Silver, will be continuously under siege.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 29, 2012, 07:41:43 pm

Have a look at the bitcoin thread, pal! If the entire city is made of gold they must have traded a lot of it while building it so gold wont have as much value as it would have if there wasnt enough to build a city with...
That's just my opinion though, feel free to flame me :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on November 29, 2012, 08:27:12 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 29, 2012, 07:41:43 pm

Have a look at the bitcoin thread, pal! If the entire city is made of gold they must have traded a lot of it while building it so gold wont have as much value as it would have if there wasnt enough to build a city with...
That's just my opinion though, feel free to flame me :)

I think you've already read Voltaire's Candide or Thomas Moor's Utopia, because you nailed the point of the golden cities depicted in those works.

The original goblin strongholds from 40d and 0.31, what material were they made from? Could the new fortresses be influenced by local kinds of stone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Black_Legion on November 29, 2012, 08:37:18 pm

Quote from: Valtam on November 29, 2012, 08:27:12 pm

The original goblin strongholds from 40d and 0.31, what material were they made from? Could the new fortresses be influenced by local kinds of stone?

I believe, at least from my experience with the 0.31.xx era all Goblin Towers were masses of dark, obsidian towers... That could be smoothed and engrave btw. Fun was had flooding them and dealing with the inhabitants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snake_Eyes on November 29, 2012, 10:20:06 pm

Was thinking that the introduction of mounts means that a change in pole arms should go along with it.

We have chopping with axes, lancing with spears, and bashing with hammers. The hook attached to pole-arms to trip and pull riders from horses hopefully will be either implemented or modded in.

It would be nice to see trip or knock-down as a move with a specialist weapon.

JMO
:D Snake_Eyes

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on November 29, 2012, 11:56:13 pm

I heard about mounds, not mounts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 30, 2012, 02:21:31 am

Bay12 games is already well established into video game history;Dwarf Fortress being part of a small and selective group of representative games is another great achievement.

Congratulations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on November 30, 2012, 04:56:07 am

Quote from: thvaz on November 30, 2012, 02:21:31 am

Bay12 games is already well established into video game history;Dwarf Fortress being part of a small and selective group of representative games is another great achievement.

Congratulations.

Hear hear!  :)

It sounds like a great collection, of which DF is a worthy member.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on November 30, 2012, 08:24:16 am

I am so proud of knowing and playing this fabulous game. And it's only the  beginning ! As it was said just  before, it is a great collection, of which DF is a worthy member. Imagine that, Tetris, Sim city, Dwarf fortress !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 30, 2012, 11:44:10 am

Does the MoMA have a fixed version of the game or do they download the latest every so often?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 30, 2012, 01:15:43 pm

Quote from: Valtam on November 29, 2012, 08:27:12 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 29, 2012, 07:41:43 pm

Have a look at the bitcoin thread, pal! If the entire city is made of gold they must have traded a lot of it while building it so gold wont have as much value as it would have if there wasnt enough to build a city with...
That's just my opinion though, feel free to flame me :)

I think you've already read Voltaire's Candide or Thomas Moor's Utopia, because you nailed the point of the golden cities depicted in those works.

The original goblin strongholds from 40d and 0.31, what material were they made from? Could the new fortresses be influenced by local kinds of stone?

That's assuming that the golden city doesn't create a sort of diamond hoarding effect. They trade so much gold and take it off the market until the point that there is barely any gold left on the market and it becomes valuable again.

Which honestly when DF gets to that point both directions could be very viable paths for history to take. And in one world gold might be worthless and in another it could be valuable. One world might have a gold city where the effect is "I've seen four of those in this world." and another would be "Whoa! I haven't seen gold anywhere and now there's a city made out of it. How did that happen?".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on December 01, 2012, 11:43:22 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on November 30, 2012, 01:15:43 pm

Quote from: Valtam on November 29, 2012, 08:27:12 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 29, 2012, 07:41:43 pm

Have a look at the bitcoin thread, pal! If the entire city is made of gold they must have traded a lot of it while building it so gold wont have as much value as it would have if there wasnt enough to build a city with...
That's just my opinion though, feel free to flame me :)

I think you've already read Voltaire's Candide or Thomas Moor's Utopia, because you nailed the point of the golden cities depicted in those works.

The original goblin strongholds from 40d and 0.31, what material were they made from? Could the new fortresses be influenced by local kinds of stone?

That's assuming that the golden city doesn't create a sort of diamond hoarding effect. They trade so much gold and take it off the market until the point that there is barely any gold left on the market and it becomes valuable again.

Which honestly when DF gets to that point both directions could be very viable paths for history to take. And in one world gold might be worthless and in another it could be valuable. One world might have a gold city where the effect is "I've seen four of those in this world." and another would be "Whoa! I haven't seen gold anywhere and now there's a city made out of it. How did that happen?".

Bonus points if mineral abundance parameter in world gen influences the chances of gold cities happening.

But now I feel like building a fortress of gold. Yes I must make it happen. rex mortis has been taken by a fey mood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on December 01, 2012, 12:52:59 pm

Suddenly...suddenly, the end is in sight...

...give it about four to six months. At least we finally know with this month's report what still needs to happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on December 01, 2012, 03:58:17 pm

**Quote from December report**
The art world has recognized your championship at last.  Without your support and contributions Dwarf Fortress wouldn’t be representing in the MoMA.  That’s just the beginning.  We haven’t even got started.  Retiring fortresses, and soon to the beyond.

***************

Are you considering adding some sort of afterlife or more advanced two-way interactions with ghosts, or some such?  I'm not quite sure what you mean by the red-text above.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on December 01, 2012, 05:54:24 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on December 01, 2012, 03:58:17 pm

**Quote from December report**
The art world has recognized your championship at last.  Without your support and contributions Dwarf Fortress wouldn’t be representing in the MoMA.  That’s just the beginning.  We haven’t even got started.  Retiring fortresses, and soon to the beyond.

***************

Are you considering adding some sort of afterlife or more advanced two-way interactions with ghosts, or some such?  I'm not quite sure what you mean by the red-text above.

Probable answer:

Quote from: right there in the devlog

fortress retirement, and hopefully we'll get to reclaims of non-player forts as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 01, 2012, 07:17:03 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on December 01, 2012, 12:52:59 pm

Suddenly...suddenly, the end is in sight...

...give it about four to six months. At least we finally know with this month's report what still needs to happen.

I bet we'll have a release in February. Kobold Sites dont get as large as Elves/Dwarfs/Gobo/Demon sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 01, 2012, 08:47:31 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on December 01, 2012, 12:52:59 pm

Suddenly...suddenly, the end is in sight...

...give it about four to six months. At least we finally know with this month's report what still needs to happen.

People have been predicting a Q1 2013 release pretty much since Toady first discussed what he intended to include. But based on this month's report, if Toady's plans don't change, we could easily see a release even in February, or early March.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 01, 2012, 10:20:08 pm

Highly possible this was asked before, if so please ignore...

Will dwarves get happy thoughts from the presence of particularly aged and large trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on December 01, 2012, 11:07:35 pm

Quote from: hermes on December 01, 2012, 10:20:08 pm

Highly possible this was asked before, if so please ignore...

Will dwarves get happy thoughts from the presence of particularly aged and large trees?

Are these dwarves you're talking about, or elves? Sounds kinda like an elven good thought, if you ask me.
Seriously, though, Toady's said elsewhere that dwarves won't get any particular benefit from that type of thing. Can't remember where or how, though, just that it didn't seem very dwarfy to him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on December 01, 2012, 11:16:38 pm

Maybe they could get happy thoughts from cutting it down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 01, 2012, 11:38:17 pm

Urist McTimber has been ecstatic recently. He enjoyed chopping down a centennial tree without bringing death to anybody.

With the inclusion of Kobold sites, retired Fortresses and kidnap/rescue mechanics in place, are you planning to allow us to reunite a stolen artifact or specially valuable item with it's owner or maker?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 02, 2012, 01:32:21 am

I'm glad to see Toady got the feature creep to a minimum this release cycle, so far.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on December 02, 2012, 07:53:12 am

This release was supposed to be more active entities and some preliminary stuff to make that possible, such as site claims and non-lethal combat. Everything that has been added since August is a feature creep, including the non-human sites, tracking, vampire blood sense, jumping and climbing and the tree rewrite. And I don't think the main goal of this release has even been done yet.
I'm not complaining, I love feature creep. These features are often more interesting than the actual release goals. But that doesn't change the fact that the feature creep has been pretty heavy this release. Perhaps not as heavy as the .34 release, but it's still there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 02, 2012, 09:34:53 am

Quote from: jellsprout on December 02, 2012, 07:53:12 am

This release was supposed to be more active entities and some preliminary stuff to make that possible, such as site claims and non-lethal combat. Everything that has been added since August is a feature creep, including the non-human sites, tracking, vampire blood sense, jumping and climbing and the tree rewrite. And I don't think the main goal of this release has even been done yet.
I'm not complaining, I love feature creep. These features are often more interesting than the actual release goals. But that doesn't change the fact that the feature creep has been pretty heavy this release. Perhaps not as heavy as the .34 release, but it's still there.

Quote from: thvaz on December 02, 2012, 01:32:21 am

I'm glad to see Toady got the feature creep to a minimum this release cycle, so far.

 ::)

1. I agree with jellsprout. There's been technically a lot a feature creep when you compare it to the initial goals of the release, but I also like it when Toady is adding more interesting features. 

2. If you don't consider the above to be feature creep, then you will see some before the end. Toady always has that phase where he stands back and thinks, "It works, but is it fun?" I imagine we'll see a couple of tweaks here and there towards the end for that basic purpose. You're just setting yourself up to complain more later.

3. Instead of saying feature creep why not say what you think, "Toady hasn't added too many features I'm not interested in."  If that's not what you meant then to be honest that is how it reads.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 02, 2012, 11:43:32 am

I don't understand the concept of feature creep in a game where the short-term development plan is made up on the fly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Minnakht on December 02, 2012, 02:00:36 pm

Will NPC dwarves have some less conventional things in their settlements, like sizable art? Anything that just looks nice and isn't practical? Or maybe some player 'inventions' like artificial waterfalls/magma use?
It'd be nice if some dwarf civilization made a giant sculpture, or an obelisk, or something. After all, that's what dwarves are known for - building big things. Artistic things.
Big halls with lots of engraved pillars in them. More than just a lot of huts/doored-off niches.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 02, 2012, 06:06:06 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on December 01, 2012, 11:07:35 pm

Quote from: hermes on December 01, 2012, 10:20:08 pm

Highly possible this was asked before, if so please ignore...

Will dwarves get happy thoughts from the presence of particularly aged and large trees?

Are these dwarves you're talking about, or elves? Sounds kinda like an elven good thought, if you ask me.
Seriously, though, Toady's said elsewhere that dwarves won't get any particular benefit from that type of thing. Can't remember where or how, though, just that it didn't seem very dwarfy to him.

Yes, I agree mostly.  Perhaps from a human perspective we can appreciate trees but dwarves would be indifferent/disgusted?

Quote from: Kadzar on December 01, 2012, 11:16:38 pm

Maybe they could get happy thoughts from cutting it down?

Liberating all that stone the roots have enmeshed :)

November was a great month for donations.  It's fantastic that they're steady even in the middle of a release cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 02, 2012, 09:14:11 pm

Non-human sites are technically feature creep, since they are listed under the Treasure Hunter role, not the Hero role, which was the original restructuring of development at the beginning of the release development. So is climbing and jumping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 02, 2012, 09:26:53 pm

I honestly don't really feel like it's that much feature creep. Activating the sites means having armies and stuff move around, and it's pretty terrible for goblin armies to be wandering around when goblin cities don't exist. Jumping, climbing, and trees are all in because elven sites don't make much sense without it. The extent to which HFS sites are creepy depends a lot on what HFS sites turn out to actually be. Tracking and blood-sense are a little creepy, but as EmeraldWind said they're in to make the core things actually fun to the average player. Compared to .34, which had all the night creature shenanigans, and this is basically nothing.

Then again, I don't consider "feature creep" to be a slander when it comes to DF, since basically everything that goes in was planned to make it anyway. I'm crossing my fingers for a Valentine's release, myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 02, 2012, 11:10:10 pm

The thing about non-dwarf sites is they are supposed to make up a part of the world that runs alongside your dwarf fortress, which is why its really important to have them back in. Especially when players want to send out their dwarven armies to sack the Castle of Balls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 02, 2012, 11:17:06 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 02, 2012, 11:10:10 pm

The thing about non-dwarf sites is they are supposed to make up a part of the world that runs alongside your dwarf fortress, which is why its really important to have them back in. Especially when players want to send out their dwarven armies to sack the Castle of Balls.

That's for even later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 02, 2012, 11:57:30 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 02, 2012, 11:10:10 pm

The thing about non-dwarf sites is they are supposed to make up a part of the world that runs alongside your dwarf fortress, which is why its really important to have them back in. Especially when players want to send out their dwarven armies to sack the Castle of Nuts.

Spoiler:  FTFY (click to show/hide)

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8x6zgcwRd1re08rjo1_500.gif)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 03, 2012, 01:51:22 am

I wasn't offending Toady, but just pointing out a characteristic of his works. The current developments aren't feature creep. The last big release was an enormous feature creep, as it was supposed to bring the human towns, but instead what we saw was toady working on the towns for 2 months and on night creatures (to make the release fun) for the other six months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 03, 2012, 06:35:14 am

The only goal stated for this next release, was to 'Activate' the world more. It was extremely nebulous. And ToadyOne hasn't (could he?) go beyond that stated goal. Ergo, nothing has been feature creep this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 03, 2012, 11:34:34 am

We have retirement!

We have reclamation!

We even have potential reclamation of old retired forts.

Oh, and the possibility of multi-racial forts as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Saraias on December 03, 2012, 01:50:41 pm

I feel enthusiastic about this coming release. Continuing history, succession, and so on will surely enhance one of my favorite things about DF: the ability to play out the epic story of a civilization, as well as the stories of individual dwarfs and forts. I can see myself playing a given world for a long time. My questions relate to details of this lengthened history and continued evolution of these simulated societies.

Do you have any plans to allow civilizations to progress exotic animal training to fully "Domesticated" now that their history will extend?

Once a fort is successfully retired, will its local resources (minerals, wood, animal products, etc.) become available for trade to future forts of its civilization?

In Fort Mode, will succession be governed entirely by AI, or will the player have some sort of influence over the process?

Currently, when a noble or administrator dies, they lose association with their former status. This can lead to things like the duke getting unhappy thoughts about a dead monarch's royal tomb ("a lesser's pretentious burial arrangements"). Art featuring these deceased nobles/administrators references "Mafol So-n-so, mason," rather than "dead baron" unless the subject matter is their ascension. Etc. Will succession include any features that "remember" nobles' status post-mortem?

And one more off that theme:
Now that you're implementing the scripts for generating different types of sites, will these interact when it comes to conquered sites? Say elves conquer a hill dwarf settlement, or dwarfs conquer a dark fortress. Will its ongoing development follow the original site type or is there a chance of hybridized settlements?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 03, 2012, 01:56:13 pm

Now that we're on the way to having multi-racial forts, are there plans to also make traders behave differently depending on the species of the dealer? For example, if your broker is a human, you might get better deals from human caravans than with a dwarven broker.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 03, 2012, 03:44:43 pm

I'm actually a bit surprised that Toady already seems to be well into fortress retirement, if not past that already. Apparently the deep site work paid of very well for the fortresses?

As for whether the sites should be considered feature creep, I'll gladly take living sites as part of living worlds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 03, 2012, 05:34:50 pm

Quote from: Saraias on December 03, 2012, 01:50:41 pm

Do you have any plans to allow civilizations to progress exotic animal training to fully "Domesticated" now that their history will extend?

This should already be happening in World Gen. And I think we can safely assume that anything that happens in World Gen is meant to happen during regular play, eventually.

Quote

Once a fort is successfully retired, will its local resources (minerals, wood, animal products, etc.) become available for trade to future forts of its civilization?

From the Dev Posts and FotF a retired fort becomes an NPC in the interim, so it should function more or less like an NPC Fort, including being part of on going trade.

Quote

In Fort Mode, will succession be governed entirely by AI, or will the player have some sort of influence over the process?

What do you mean by succession?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 03, 2012, 05:45:10 pm

Wiggles, succession refers to your empress's daughter becoming empress when your empress dies etc. So the answer to the question should be "no, unless appointed or heirless".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 03, 2012, 05:47:52 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 03, 2012, 05:34:50 pm

Quote from: Saraias on December 03, 2012, 01:50:41 pm

Do you have any plans to allow civilizations to progress exotic animal training to fully "Domesticated" now that their history will extend?

This should already be happening in World Gen. And I think we can safely assume that anything that happens in World Gen is meant to happen during regular play, eventually.

Quote

Once a fort is successfully retired, will its local resources (minerals, wood, animal products, etc.) become available for trade to future forts of its civilization?

From the Dev Posts and FotF a retired fort becomes an NPC in the interim, so it should function more or less like an NPC Fort, including being part of on going trade.

Quote

In Fort Mode, will succession be governed entirely by AI, or will the player have some sort of influence over the process?

What do you mean by succession?

If he's refering to the king, we really don't even have any control now. I mean we can kill people off as we like, but it's not the same as appointing a sucessor.
 
If you're referring to the Overseer, you aren't technically a thing, so there is no sucession. You are the hive-mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 03, 2012, 07:52:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 03, 2012, 05:45:10 pm

Wiggles, succession refers to your empress's daughter becoming empress when your empress dies etc. So the answer to the question should be "no, unless appointed or heirless".

There is position succession, and site succession. I think one more. ToadyOne likes using similar works for lots of stuff. Like Entity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 03, 2012, 08:03:23 pm

Pretty sure there's just position succession. And entity means only one thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 04, 2012, 12:41:07 am

Entity, means from one person, to one town, to one group, to one country. It seems to be used whenever something makes design as one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 04, 2012, 12:42:39 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 04, 2012, 12:41:07 am

Entity, means from one person, to one town, to one group, to one country. It seems to be used whenever something makes design as one.

Entity always refers to something that has the ability to make claims on a site. A person is a critter, but can be an entity. A town is a site, but contains a group, which happens to be an entity. Countries are entities in the raws and, I would assume, in code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 04, 2012, 01:07:26 am

Entities are just social groups that are recognized by the game. Entities can have positions, so a succession process is needed for when a person in a position dies, and possibly other conditions.

Changing entity claims to sites is a separate issue, and largely already implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 04, 2012, 01:12:26 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 04, 2012, 12:41:07 am

Entity, means from one person, to one town, to one group, to one country. It seems to be used whenever something makes design as one.

In DF terms, an "entity" is a thing in the code which contains creatures and has properties about the places it contains. One group or country. Groups and countries are entities, but towns are entity sites - simply a place on the main map, designed to be claimed by entities - and although I guess an entity could be reduced to a population of one, the entity itself is something else.

Quote from: King Mir on December 04, 2012, 01:07:26 am

Entities can have positions

To be more explicit, an entity can contain positions, which would then be held by creatures within that entity's population. The entity itself cannot hold a position.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 04, 2012, 01:17:23 am

Like governments IRL, basically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 06, 2012, 12:26:00 am

New devlog! Now to populate my future fortresses with nothing but demigod adventurers whose sole quest was to live in my remote dirthole.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on December 06, 2012, 12:29:02 am

I find it disconcerting that Toady managed to be surprised by code that he presumably wrote over the past week or so. It really speaks to the unearthly complexity of his creation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on December 06, 2012, 12:45:27 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on December 06, 2012, 12:29:02 am

I find it disconcerting that Toady managed to be surprised by code that he presumably wrote over the past week or so. It really speaks to the unearthly complexity of his creation.

Emergent behaviour from the simulation... Armok is awakening!

Seriously though, I'm so happy. Once we have this, we'll literally be able to build an enormous wall across several world map tiles, and have it remained staffed! Game of thrones, here we come :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 06, 2012, 01:35:27 am

Toady, how close does this bring us to being able to play existing historical figures as an adventurer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 06, 2012, 04:17:59 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on December 06, 2012, 12:45:27 am

Seriously though, I'm so happy. Once we have this, we'll literally be able to build an enormous wall across several world map tiles, and have it remained staffed! Game of thrones, here we come :P

Oh wow, what a great idea!  I don't know how readily worlds are shared for adventuring at the moment, but I can totally see worlds with a particularly nice setup being popular.  Also, we can now have longer succession games where people build a whole fortress each.  This is gonna be so cool  8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on December 06, 2012, 10:52:46 am

I'm thinking of making a couple adventurers and sending them off to collect books from various places, then bring them all together in a big library fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on December 06, 2012, 11:00:34 am

"Right now the bedrooms are 2x2, between the 1x1s and 1x2s of crueler players and the moral decadence of the 3x3"

Toady's comments on the community are all too true. Sums us up really well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 06, 2012, 11:14:36 am

My dwarves have 1x3 bedroom, that makes half cruel?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nonsequitorian on December 06, 2012, 11:24:04 am

yay moral decadence

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PanH on December 06, 2012, 02:27:29 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 06, 2012, 11:14:36 am

My dwarves have 1x3 bedroom, that makes half cruel?

I would say that's 2/3 cruel and 1/3 decadent.

Do you count the door in it ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 06, 2012, 04:41:01 pm

of course not!
1x3 masterwork engraving, bed, chest and cabinet. And masterwork rock door

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: evictedSaint on December 06, 2012, 05:36:39 pm

How will the the location of your dwarves be affected by retirement/unretirement of fortresses? Presumably dwarves will be meandering around the fort; if I haven't tunneled into the first cavern, can I expect to find them underground anyways?  What if I were to order my entire population into a room and then build a wall around the exit, blocking them in right before I retire?  Will an adventurer come by later to find the fort mysteriously vanished, save a muffled pounding from behind the wall?  Would retirement/unretirement result in dwarves in impossible locations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 06, 2012, 07:35:44 pm

In legend mode it may appear as:
"[...]While defeated the latter escaped unscathed, ran to the nearest fort and walled himself inside a tunnel out of shame"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deathworks on December 06, 2012, 11:29:34 pm

Hi!

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

Yours,
Deathworks

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 07, 2012, 01:40:09 am

Quote from: Deathworks on December 06, 2012, 11:29:34 pm

Hi!

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

Yours,
Deathworks

My understanding is that something like that has been considered but there's no timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on December 07, 2012, 01:51:47 am

Quote from: Deathworks on December 06, 2012, 11:29:34 pm

Hi!

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

Yours,
Deathworks

For some reason, I haven't seen you post much lately, and I realized I missed your elegant posting style. You keep on keepin' on, Deathy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 07, 2012, 08:14:51 am

You've mentioned in the latest devblog post (on 5th December 2012 for those who read this post after the apocalypse that won't happen) that the adventurers are literally "pulled out of thin air" and this is noticeable when it comes to forts. Are all individuals "historical figures" now or is there still a site population that is for all intents and purposes nameless, identity-less, and skill-ambiguous besides being of a particular creature type and caste?

If there are still nameless members of a site population, would you consider having ancestry generated at character creation, or would that mess up the game?

When you add multi-racial forts (it looked like a valid thing for forts in the upcoming version as of devblog on 12/3/2012), as some players play goblin fortresses, these will get immigrants from other races. Goblins don't need to eat, but the other races do, so if you had a multi-racial goblin fort would we be able to set up farms anyway?


If (in the future of DF) there existed rock trolls who grew and ate crystals and drank magma, it seems reasonable that troll immigrants to an elf retreat would be able to set up their own magma well and crystal farm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rex mortis on December 07, 2012, 08:17:49 am

Quote from: Cruxador on December 07, 2012, 01:40:09 am

Quote from: Deathworks on December 06, 2012, 11:29:34 pm

Hi!

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

Yours,
Deathworks

My understanding is that something like that has been considered but there's no timeline.

Yet, if the dwarf was spawned out of nothing, like it is currently, it would be as simple as letting us choose our starting location or site. I doubt taking control of an existing historical figure will be in this time.

Now this might be a balance issue if we can pick up masterwork adamantine arms and armour off the floor freely in a retired fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 07, 2012, 08:34:50 am

Quote from: rex mortis on December 07, 2012, 08:17:49 am

Quote from: Cruxador on December 07, 2012, 01:40:09 am

Quote from: Deathworks on December 06, 2012, 11:29:34 pm

Hi!

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

Yours,
Deathworks

My understanding is that something like that has been considered but there's no timeline.

Yet, if the dwarf was spawned out of nothing, like it is currently, it would be as simple as letting us choose our starting location or site.

I think we interpreted "a dwarf from the player's fortress" differently. I read it as a dwarf who had actually been there while you were playing (from, as in that's his origin and where he lives), but I now realize it might have been intended to mean just that's your starting point as an adventurer, in which case I don't think it's something Toady is planning to do, but I do imagine he'd be down for it if it seemed like something a lot of people wanted. Personally I don't think omitting the overworld travel is worth the dev time making that UI.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 07, 2012, 08:40:09 am

Quote from: rex mortis

Now this might be a balance issue if we can pick up masterwork adamantine arms and armour off the floor freely in a retired fortress.

An abandoned fortress that has an avaliable candy dispenser and a few cotton sticks is still a pretty dangerous fortress to get out from, so I think there wouldn't be a lot of unbalancing... If there was such a case to begin with in the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on December 07, 2012, 10:00:50 am

Balance? This is DF, where one fort has nothing but copper and silver, and the next has steel available from the get-go.

Armok cares not for your concerns of balance.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 07, 2012, 10:32:53 am

I have to agree.
 
Also, if a fort manages to have candy items, the odds are that that perrson is experianced enough at the game. Besides, it's the only way to get candy items right now in adventure mode without modding

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 07, 2012, 11:48:25 am

How do you handle items in retired fortresses? Can an adventurer just grab them, or are they fortress property?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PanH on December 07, 2012, 07:26:10 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 07, 2012, 08:14:51 am

When you add multi-racial forts (it looked like a valid thing for forts in the upcoming version as of devblog on 12/3/2012), as some players play goblin fortresses, these will get immigrants from other races. Goblins don't need to eat, but the other races do, so if you had a multi-racial goblin fort would we be able to set up farms anyway?

I may be wrong, but the reason that Goblins don't eat is for them to survive the world generation, as they are bonecarn. Maybe at one point, we'll get goblins eating (able to get meat reliably). Anyway, goblins themself don't need farms, and I guess they could feed the snatched children with only meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on December 07, 2012, 09:55:48 pm

Quote from: PanH on December 07, 2012, 07:26:10 pm

I may be wrong, but the reason that Goblins don't eat is for them to survive the world generation

you're wrong. toady doesn't picture goblins as doing anything else besides fighting. they may feed on violence and hatred later on, even feeding on meat just for fun, but they wont eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Brotato on December 08, 2012, 03:42:43 pm

there's no guarantee of survival for retired forts

This caught my eye right away. What kind of factors affect whether or not a fort survives?  Can we reasonably expect that retired forts will still be attacked by sieges and mega beasts? 

I guess you'd be controlling an official, but you wouldn't have any actual powers

What happens if an official is killed or leaves the fort while you control him?  Will the position be open again or does that prevent you from putting someone else in charge?

If you come back to a fort after a reasonable amount of time, like 5 or 10 years, can you expect to see the fort changed?  For example, will some old dwarfs be dead from enemies, died if they had an infection that the doctor couldn't fix, old age, bad luck, etc?  Will there be new dwarfs from births and migration, and will they continue to get married while you are gone?  Will new rooms, workshops, farms, and other constructions be built?  i.e. Can we pretty much expect the fort to go on acting as if you're still in charge?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on December 08, 2012, 04:15:54 pm

Quote from: Brotato on December 08, 2012, 03:42:43 pm

i.e. Can we pretty much expect the fort to go on acting as if you're still in charge? [/color]

Dwarf Fortress isnt becoming sentiant quite yet :p

One would assume that, there would be new rooms and such, but they wouldn't be tied in with your initial design, that would be more then the AI could handle (yet). The rooms/zones would probably just be dug all over the place when needed, with no real orginization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 08, 2012, 05:10:40 pm

New rooms would be good, but this release might not do that, especially for player forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on December 09, 2012, 03:43:05 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on December 06, 2012, 10:52:46 am

I'm thinking of making a couple adventurers and sending them off to collect books from various places, then bring them all together in a big library fortress.

I've done this in the current version by reclaiming a fort that orignally created a bunch of lead bins, coming in on my adventurer, depositing the books in the bins, and then leaving the bin in an obvious spot.  On reclaim the bin was there, but there are a couple artifact/book bugs that prevented me from doing anything cool with them, and during a bit of a scuffle the bin fell down a well :S

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on December 09, 2012, 04:26:36 am

Quote

and fix problems with dwarven brains that had developed, like how they started crawling around on the ground and so on.

what

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kadzar on December 09, 2012, 04:50:49 am

Quote from: Untelligent on December 09, 2012, 04:26:36 am

Quote

and fix problems with dwarven brains that had developed, like how they started crawling around on the ground and so on.

what

When dwarven minds wander, they tend to do so literally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ebergar on December 09, 2012, 05:09:16 am

Toady, will these progress bars be added to Stocks screen? It is really weird that I cant see progress of stone, furniture or other items counting, especially when I have VERY (erm. 100k+ ?) large amounts of these.

I have over 100.000 stones in my fort. On some computers counting these hang the process, on some not. I'd like to know when it hangs, and maybe the % of counting.

Thanks for response, if there would be any! :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 09, 2012, 05:15:11 am

Quote from: Ebergar on December 09, 2012, 05:09:16 am

Toady, will these progress bars be added to Stocks screen? It is really weird that I cant see progress of stone, furniture or other items counting, especially when I have VERY large amounts of these.

I think he means progress bars for the game loading/saving, so it won't just go "This program is not responding" until it's done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 09, 2012, 05:21:20 am

Quote from: Caldfir on December 09, 2012, 03:43:05 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on December 06, 2012, 10:52:46 am

I'm thinking of making a couple adventurers and sending them off to collect books from various places, then bring them all together in a big library fortress.

I've done this in the current version by reclaiming a fort that orignally created a bunch of lead bins, coming in on my adventurer, depositing the books in the bins, and then leaving the bin in an obvious spot.  On reclaim the bin was there, but there are a couple artifact/book bugs that prevented me from doing anything cool with them, and during a bit of a scuffle the bin fell down a well :S

So, in other words...A successful dwarven library.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa159/Drunken_gun/library.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on December 09, 2012, 06:27:35 am

Quote

[...] and fix problems with dwarven brains that had developed, like how they started crawling around on the ground and so on.

Typical Dwarves: doesn't have to be efficient, but if they can do it, they'll do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 09, 2012, 08:10:38 am

Quote

[...] problems with dwarven brains that had developed [..]

Dorfs developing brains? My, I never thought I'd live to see the day...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on December 09, 2012, 09:02:24 am

You just know that crawling brains are about to become a feature in some capacity after this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 09, 2012, 10:10:09 am

Have you considered utilizing some of the bugs to emulate psychological problems? The latest devblog post showed some very interesting effects such as dwarves crawling on the ground.

I really think Toady should have used this to simulate multiple personality disorder or some other psychological problem. Dwarf Fortress has taught me not to be surprised when crazy bugs happen.

Progress bars look good on loading screens, but will we see them elsewhere? For example, will workshops get a progress bar on reactions, or will buildings and constructions get a progress bar whilst being built?

Do dwarf fortresses and settlements incorporate minecart tracks yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 09, 2012, 12:12:14 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 09, 2012, 10:10:09 am

Progress bars look good on loading screens, but will we see them elsewhere? For example, will workshops get a progress bar on reactions, or will buildings and constructions get a progress bar whilst being built?

I hope not - remember Empire Earth? We'd end up having dorfs hammer at the ground unti it rises up and forms the workshop they want, and archers shooting at stone walls until they crumble. I'd rather see more realism when it comes to producing stuff, such as forging a blade, cooling it, firring it to a handle and only then having a sword.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 09, 2012, 12:29:59 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on December 09, 2012, 12:12:14 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 09, 2012, 10:10:09 am

Progress bars look good on loading screens, but will we see them elsewhere? For example, will workshops get a progress bar on reactions, or will buildings and constructions get a progress bar whilst being built?

I hope not - remember Empire Earth? We'd end up having dorfs hammer at the ground unti it rises up and forms the workshop they want, and archers shooting at stone walls until they crumble. I'd rather see more realism when it comes to producing stuff, such as forging a blade, cooling it, firring it to a handle and only then having a sword.

The only thing is in DF the building and reaction progression is pretty much the same - you get "construction not yet begun", "construction started", "construction nearly done", and the finished building. The animation is just different for buildings. A skilled dwarf will take a shorter period of time to do something and has a higher chance or guarantee of producing a high-quality item, but there's still an invisible progress state.

We may sometime get to the realistic method for forging a blade, when we get to a general production overhaul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on December 10, 2012, 07:20:20 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 09, 2012, 12:29:59 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on December 09, 2012, 12:12:14 pm

I hope not - remember Empire Earth? We'd end up having dorfs hammer at the ground unti it rises up and forms the workshop they want, and archers shooting at stone walls until they crumble. I'd rather see more realism when it comes to producing stuff, such as forging a blade, cooling it, firring it to a handle and only then having a sword.

The only thing is in DF the building and reaction progression is pretty much the same - you get "construction not yet begun", "construction started", "construction nearly done", and the finished building. The animation is just different for buildings. A skilled dwarf will take a shorter period of time to do something and has a higher chance or guarantee of producing a high-quality item, but there's still an invisible progress state.

We may sometime get to the realistic method for forging a blade, when we get to a general production overhaul.

Since the workshops are a placeholder if I remember correctly and will be replaced by workrooms, then we can expect the alchemical creation of objects (object A + object B + dwarf D + ? ? ? ? = object C) to stop and be replaced by a more realistic one, or at least one with more intermediate stages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on December 10, 2012, 12:30:11 pm

I dream of full Dwarven factories.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 10, 2012, 03:14:31 pm

When will blocking be something we can initiate? After all, there's no sword fighting without fencing, and preempting your opponents attacks is crucial. I have a suspicion you'll do this with fighting styles however, but even so i hope it's never entirely clearcut. Sure, it could make use of an observer skill, but you should never know for certain, and a good bit of intuition depending on your opponents emotional state, traing and capabilities should be left up to us. Also, how about retired fortresses, depending on how quickly they cant get up and running, having their own competing factions which you have limited control over during play? Rather a nice way to balance plentiful ai-mined adamantine on reclaim if someones decided to snatch them up all ready, or an idiots sold them on. I also trust that if the fortress ends up in the hands of lazy fools, gaping architectural flaws and half-assed dwarven solutions may abound.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on December 10, 2012, 09:24:12 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 10, 2012, 03:14:31 pm

When will blocking be something we can initiate? After all, there's no sword fighting without fencing, and preempting your opponents attacks is crucial. I have a suspicion you'll do this with fighting styles however, but even so i hope it's never entirely clearcut. Sure, it could make use of an observer skill, but you should never know for certain, and a good bit of intuition depending on your opponents emotional state, traing and capabilities should be left up to us. Also, how about retired fortresses, depending on how quickly they cant get up and running, having their own competing factions which you have limited control over during play? Rather a nice way to balance plentiful ai-mined adamantine on reclaim if someones decided to snatch them up all ready, or an idiots sold them on. I also trust that if the fortress ends up in the hands of lazy fools, gaping architectural flaws and half-assed dwarven solutions may abound.

If you have a high weapon skill, you can already parry attacks in the current (0.34.11) version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on December 11, 2012, 01:43:34 pm

Is Toady open in any way to having people do bugfixing for him while he makes new features? I know this is a one man band but the stuff like bugfixing is a bit much now, we've had bugs with purring maggots for 2 years and nothing has been done about it because Toady is too busy with other stuff. This is going to be a long and buggy development if we don't sort this kind of stuff out. Bugfixing slows Toady down too so that means we get less features while he works on bugfixes for several versions. He's said before that he's doing this for himself and it's his life's work and all that, but I'm not saying we should work on the development of it. I'm saying we do his "Housekeeping" while he powers through it. Yes, that old chestnut again.

This said, there are less bugs now than there used to be back in late 2010. I remember many many articles on the wiki having that big glaring bug symbol above it. It's a shame because I feel like I want to be excited about big new versions because of the all the exciting changes, but all I really think is "oh god, more bugs". I still keep the glass half full, but it puts a downer on big releases for me. I don't know about how you guys feel.

My biggest concern is that eventually because the development has taken too long with all those months (years cumulatively) lost on bugfixing, the game might get abandoned or after he's discovered he's limited by the current format in some unforseeable way and Toady will start Slaves to Armok 3.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on December 11, 2012, 02:30:04 pm

It seems like he's said he's not open to that, however, he has incorporated bug fixes made by others before, for example, I'm pretty sure Quietus has pointed out some small bugs with simple fixes, which he's at least said he would incorporate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 11, 2012, 02:52:30 pm

He generally incorporates those bug fixes in the next released version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on December 11, 2012, 03:39:03 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on December 11, 2012, 01:43:34 pm

Is Toady open in any way to having people do bugfixing for him while he makes new features? I know this is a one man band but the stuff like bugfixing is a bit much now, we've had bugs with purring maggots for 2 years and nothing has been done about it because Toady is too busy with other stuff. This is going to be a long and buggy development if we don't sort this kind of stuff out. Bugfixing slows Toady down too so that means we get less features while he works on bugfixes for several versions. He's said before that he's doing this for himself and it's his life's work and all that, but I'm not saying we should work on the development of it. I'm saying we do his "Housekeeping" while he powers through it. Yes, that old chestnut again.

This said, there are less bugs now than there used to be back in late 2010. I remember many many articles on the wiki having that big glaring bug symbol above it. It's a shame because I feel like I want to be excited about big new versions because of the all the exciting changes, but all I really think is "oh god, more bugs". I still keep the glass half full, but it puts a downer on big releases for me. I don't know about how you guys feel.

My biggest concern is that eventually because the development has taken too long with all those months (years cumulatively) lost on bugfixing, the game might get abandoned or after he's discovered he's limited by the current format in some unforseeable way and Toady will start Slaves to Armok 3.

Many of the bugs on the bugtracker aren't really bugs, just people complaining about new features that they don't like. "Population cap not working" is one of them, among others. Generally, one encounters very few bugs while playing the game, and the ones one does are often minor anyways. There are far more bugs in iOS, but people still use it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 11, 2012, 05:06:46 pm

Quote from: Owlbread on December 11, 2012, 01:43:34 pm

Is Toady open in any way to having people do bugfixing for him while he makes new features?

He's not open to releasing the source, but Quietust has patched a number of bugs from the disassembly. And Toady has incorporated those fixes. Of course it's much easier for Toady to find and fix a bug in the source than Quietust to find and fix a bug in the disassembly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 11, 2012, 06:14:30 pm

I find it funny that no less than two people have misspelled Quietust in a row :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 11, 2012, 09:15:50 pm

What, people are misspelling Quietrust? Perish the thought!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 11, 2012, 10:13:36 pm

Quietdust? Was that added in .34?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 12, 2012, 12:18:27 am

It was indeed. Silently accumulating on your furniture!

Quietest is a fun guy, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 12, 2012, 01:44:56 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 11, 2012, 06:14:30 pm

I find it funny that no less than two people have misspelled Quietust in a row :P

I really should have looked that up before I posted. My spelling is bad enough, not remembering the pronunciation didn't add to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on December 12, 2012, 03:15:49 am

Quote from: Owlbread on December 11, 2012, 01:43:34 pm

Is Toady open in any way to having people do bugfixing for him while he makes new features?

During the last days of DF2010 development, he gave a closed "beta" version to a few carefully selected people to bugtest -- mostly his friends, I believe, but one of the testers was Footkerchief from these forums.

Don't go around asking for alphabeta access, though. If he does it again, it'll certainly be invitation-only again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 12, 2012, 05:01:06 am

I cant recall wich release it was that occured on valentine's day... My girlfriend said toady was an evil and twisted man to ruin so heartily that muche women valentine's day. Maybe this time it will be for christmas :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on December 12, 2012, 05:17:48 am

Christmas will probably be too soon. However, DF2010 got released on April Fools. DF2012 got released on Valentine's Day. What special day has Toady planned for the DF2013 release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Edmus on December 12, 2012, 07:00:47 am

Easter? That seems a somewhat reasonable time frame.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 12, 2012, 07:21:30 am

The newly introduced national holiday of DF Release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on December 12, 2012, 02:23:20 pm

Depending on how much actually remains to be done for this release, and whether or not Toady decides he just wants to push a release out over making sure everything is 100% ready (I seem to recall this happening once before in the time I've played), maybe New Years? Somehow, with all the changes, starting a new year with a new version seems fitting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2012, 03:04:20 pm

The new version will probably be DF2012: Christmas Edition, DF2012: Apocalypse Edition, or DF2013.

It may well be released on Christmas Day or earlier, if the progress is sped up significantly. We haven't had a progress update for days now; as of the last one the dwarven sites were done and Toady had fortress and adventurer un-retirement in progress, and was dealing with clearing out bugs. Kobold caves and finishing succession stuff were supposed to be up next before the release, so if that could be done in the slightly-less-than two weeks until Christmas or 9-10 days until the 21st we may well get a release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 12, 2012, 03:22:15 pm

I think he's been really fast lately - I don't follow the devlog so closely, but compared to some other time periods he's really just cranking out the new features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2012, 04:39:29 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on December 12, 2012, 03:22:15 pm

I think he's been really fast lately - I don't follow the devlog so closely, but compared to some other time periods he's really just cranking out the new features.

Given that, I'd just add a personal note to Toady to please try to get it out on the 21st or 25th because that would be epic in its own sense  8).

We're in an era of new features. It seems a lot of time was taken to get dwarf fortress to work properly in 3D, and after that the major framework for making the game come alive had to be put in (towns, cities, night creatures) and we're coming to the end of that second cycle, and getting a lot of new, high-visibility improvements and additions to the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on December 12, 2012, 06:13:12 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on December 12, 2012, 03:22:15 pm

I think he's been really fast lately - I don't follow the devlog so closely, but compared to some other time periods he's really just cranking out the new features.

the fact that toady is adding major features at a very quick pace is a solid clue that the release is still far away. he'll still take his time to polish the recently introduced features with more patience after building the groundwork for them, and will release only after spending two to four months crushing newly introduced bugs

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 12, 2012, 07:10:48 pm

You dirty fun spoiler! The worst part is that you might be right, from what I learnt since I got here (and what I gather from more experienced bay12ers posts) toady doesnt abruptly release anything... Aaaargh the apocalypse is coming and we wont see anything of the next version :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on December 12, 2012, 08:49:36 pm

Will adamantine ever be changed so that it will still be possible for the fun rush to surprise you? For instance, as it stands the tubes are fairly easy to check and disarm with fortifications, and adamantine can safely be mined from around the edges. It's not really a simulation of dwarves digging too greedily, as I assume it was intended to be, but rather a set amount of safe stuff, before you have to wall up your mine shaft and move on. In the future will there be things like different shaped adamantine veins to make the danger of mining the metal less predictable and actually simulate risk/reward instead of purely reward with a deadly surprise your first time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 12, 2012, 09:00:35 pm

Your questions probably won't be answered unless they're publicly shown and green. No need for spoiler hiding here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on December 12, 2012, 09:02:37 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 12, 2012, 09:00:35 pm

Your questions probably won't be answered unless they're publicly shown and green. No need for spoiler hiding here.

Thank you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 12, 2012, 10:26:49 pm

Quote from: Keldane on December 12, 2012, 02:23:20 pm

Depending on how much actually remains to be done for this release, and whether or not Toady decides he just wants to push a release out over making sure everything is 100% ready (I seem to recall this happening once before in the time I've played), maybe New Years? Somehow, with all the changes, starting a new year with a new version seems fitting.

Yeah, the .31 release back in 2010. He put it out since it'd been like two years since he'd released anything, and although I personally was delighted it was certainly buggy as hell. The whole experience was nothing anyone particularly wants to repeat, least of all Toady.

I really really REALLY doubt we'll get it before the new year- personally, I'm thinking Valentine's Day is a reasonable guesstimate, but my money is on March. Rest of December for Dorfs, early January finishes up the dorf stuff and gets through Kobolds, February for succession stuffs and wrapping everything together, mid-March by the time he gets it to a place he likes. Kobolds are the one I really don't know what he's planning to do there, so I don't know how long it'll take- they might get done in a week if they still just hang out doing nothing in caves, or they might eat up a whole month themselves if Toady feels they've been neglected for too long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on December 13, 2012, 06:20:47 am

I think that mid-March is good. There are a lot of things left to do, and unless Toady hire some people I don't think he can polish all these huge new things so quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on December 13, 2012, 09:02:24 am

if i remember right, toady still has to go back and finish the goblin and elven sites

e:

Quote

09/20/2012
With their industries and troll shearing pits most of the way there, I've reached a stopping point for goblins. There's more to be finished up, but it overlaps with dwarves and I'm going to work through the non-player dwarf fortresses first so I have a better chance of unifying what goes on there code-wise. First up though, I'd like to tackle the elves. The main features here'll be multi-tile trees (including roots and properly-sized mushrooms), fruit, flowers, climbing and jumping

i didn't find anything about elves. there's only two devlogs about elven sites though, maybe toady decided to keep these simple

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on December 13, 2012, 09:12:48 am

I'm a little dissapointed with this upcoming release.  I know it goes a long way toward what DF will end up being, so I'm not unhappy that Toady's doing it, it's just that I won't see a lot of the current changes in fortress mode.  I was hoping for improved siege behavior, hill dwarves, and/or the army arc to be implemented in some way.

Oh well, the adventure mode folks will certainly have a lot to see!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 13, 2012, 09:23:31 am

Quote from: Damiac on December 13, 2012, 09:12:48 am

I'm a little dissapointed with this upcoming release.  I know it goes a long way toward what DF will end up being, so I'm not unhappy that Toady's doing it, it's just that I won't see a lot of the current changes in fortress mode.  I was hoping for improved siege behavior, hill dwarves, and/or the army arc to be implemented in some way.

Oh well, the adventure mode folks will certainly have a lot to see!

Did you check out the latest DF talk (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html)?

Quote from: Toady

There's obviously going to be a lot of cool stuff there for adventure mode, and also in dwarf mode. The main thing dwarf mode gets this time around is this world continuation stuff with succession happening and your civilization not just dying out while you're playing, or whatever happens now with your guys walking on the screen and dying of old age, or I think I may have put in the thing where they just don't show up at all anymore, but you'll actually have that. You'll also be getting armies that are real. So, all the things that we're talking about with evil lieutenants and villains and all this stuff in adventure mode also applies to dwarf mode in terms of who's actually going to be showing up; you'll get people showing up with a story and a reason now, instead of just, like, the yearly goblin attack or whatever. Although, you still won't be able to respond, which is the big thing with the hill dwarves and army stuff we'll get to later.

Also, there's trees.   :)  Also the foundation has been laid for all the stuff you want.  Baby steps are good to make sure things work right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on December 13, 2012, 11:21:05 am

Oh I understand that.  I read the DF talk transcript.  It's all cool stuff, and the world is going to do more, and keep doing stuff after you start playing.  You'll be able to retire fortresses without them just dying out.

But the actual impact of all this during fortress mode is pretty minimal.  That's all I was saying, I was hoping for some big changes to fortress mode.

On a grander scale, it's a lot of cool stuff, and will all lead to a lot more cool stuff down the line.  It's just that short term, it isn't going to affect how the game plays in fortress mode very much.  I really want to be able to wall off my fortress without feeling like I'm cheating...  I was hoping for the goblins to start breaking walls or tunneling under them, to get some more interesting defense going.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 13, 2012, 11:30:08 am

Ah yes, I see what you mean, I too can't wait for digging and climbing invaders.  Hope climbers stand a chance of making it in the next release.  Trees are pretty exciting though for their aesthetic appeal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 13, 2012, 03:02:01 pm

Quote from: Damiac on December 13, 2012, 11:21:05 am

But the actual impact of all this during fortress mode is pretty minimal.  That's all I was saying, I was hoping for some big changes to fortress mode.

Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of this happening; This change is something I've been waiting impatiently for over a 4 year period. You're not going to make me ANY less excited for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on December 13, 2012, 03:32:46 pm

That's fine with me.  You be excited as you want, the more, the better.  I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just express my own opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: spitss on December 13, 2012, 06:47:26 pm

How will religious groups act in future releases, will they exist purely as a passive quest giving entity within a civilisation,  or will they act as a independent faction that actively tries to expand its own influence, eg converting locals, missions to set up new temples , pilgrimages, armed revolts and attempts to establish theocracies.?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Saubauer on December 13, 2012, 07:06:50 pm

I don't know if this was asked before, but do you have plans for black markets and prohibited goods?
Like civilizations or sides forbidding selling or even owning specific goods or stuff made out of illegal materials, for whatever reasons.
People would pay high prices, if they could get their hands on it there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 13, 2012, 09:53:43 pm

Quote from: Saubauer on December 13, 2012, 07:06:50 pm

I don't know if this was asked before, but do you have plans for black markets and prohibited goods?
Like civilizations or sides forbidding selling or even owning specific goods or stuff made out of illegal materials, for whatever reasons.
People would pay high prices, if they could get their hands on it there.

That might work when the Economy gets updated and fleshed out, certainly paired with the fact that nobles and geography tend to restrict the access of certain goods. It's planned (in a remote, foggy future) that historical figures ask for certain items, specially artifacts and stuff made of exotic materials, so you could pursue the career of a shady travelling merchant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 13, 2012, 10:13:05 pm

Was there a black market circa 1400s?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on December 13, 2012, 10:25:00 pm

The black market was invented when the first man told the second man not to take shiny rocks. The third man then offered to sell the second some rocks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 13, 2012, 10:27:06 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 13, 2012, 10:13:05 pm

Was there a black market circa 1400s?

I would imagine so. At the very least, there would be merchants who dodge customs purely for tax reasons (more of a grey market, according to Wikipedia.) In the "illegal goods" sense, you'd probably see wartime societies impose rationing on food, iron, horses, and associated black market folks who supply those things to people and organizations who want them anyway.

Note that I speak with no weight of personal knowledge, merely a quick glance at Wikipedia and general understanding of human nature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 13, 2012, 10:47:50 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 13, 2012, 10:27:06 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 13, 2012, 10:13:05 pm

Was there a black market circa 1400s?

I would imagine so. At the very least, there would be merchants who dodge customs purely for tax reasons (more of a grey market, according to Wikipedia.) In the "illegal goods" sense, you'd probably see wartime societies impose rationing on food, iron, horses, and associated black market folks who supply those things to people and organizations who want them anyway.

Note that I speak with no weight of personal knowledge, merely a quick glance at Wikipedia and general understanding of human nature.

For some reason this reminds me of the Shady Salesman from a couple of the Harvest Moon games...

I can just imagine being in a city and having a dude from the alley call me over and try to sell me an apple that can cause wounds to heal instantly. The question is does the apple do it or not. In real life, no... but in a fantasy story there's a 50/50 chance he could be telling the truth. The truth being the apple does what he says it does and the lie being that apple could do anything from nothing to turning you into another apple.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 13, 2012, 10:54:46 pm

Particularly if trade embargoes get in. "I've got some real nice magic goblets from the Elves, see? As much Sunberry Wine as you can hold..."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 14, 2012, 03:17:02 am

Quote from: monk12 on December 13, 2012, 10:27:06 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 13, 2012, 10:13:05 pm

Was there a black market circa 1400s?

I would imagine so. At the very least, there would be merchants who dodge customs purely for tax reasons (more of a grey market, according to Wikipedia.) In the "illegal goods" sense, you'd probably see wartime societies impose rationing on food, iron, horses, and associated black market folks who supply those things to people and organizations who want them anyway.

Note that I speak with no weight of personal knowledge, merely a quick glance at Wikipedia and general understanding of human nature.

Yes this seems quite reasonable.  I'm trudging through a Hundred Years War history right now, and there doesn't seem to have been the legal concept of "illegal goods" in the way that we understand it today.  Aside from being practically unenforceable (and thus a waste of time) there wasn't much that would be considered bad (weapons were a necessity to travel it seems).

The closest would probably have been government control of certain goods, like wool in England.  In certain circumstances they would enforce export bans to leverage the Flemish (and they hoped to drive up the price to pay off debt).  One can imagine that clandestine smuggling would be in high order at those time.  The dorf nobles already do this, though it is rather whimsical.  :'( If they did it to hurt the importer, that would setup a black market demand nicely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on December 14, 2012, 04:22:46 am

This would need quite a rewrite of the justice system... Punishment is already pretty hardcore if you dont have a prison, since smuggling is a crime against the state (like forgery or tax evasion) it should have an even more hardcore punishment.
IIRC those accused of money forgery in france were fried in oil. Only king slaying might have been more hardcore (having molten metal poured in all orifices, killing hand severed then being dismembered by horses)...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on December 14, 2012, 07:27:20 am

Cloth beds (hammocks) are still planned, right? Maybe we should be able to have our dwarves sleep in furs on the ground too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: spitss on December 14, 2012, 10:31:53 am

In regards to the next release are fruit trees dependent on climate, (apples in temperate, coconuts in tropical) or can they grow anywhere like most crops?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 14, 2012, 11:04:13 am

When will armor get weak points? And will it be species specifc, to account for different placement of organs etc, particularly when you get to the randommen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on December 14, 2012, 03:14:37 pm

Quote from: spitss on December 14, 2012, 10:31:53 am

In regards to the next release are fruit trees dependent on climate, (apples in temperate, coconuts in tropical) or can they grow anywhere like most crops?

As I understand it, there is still no mechanism for planting a specific tree type (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this), so you should be limited to what is already growing in the surrounding area, which is decided by the biome. 

So yes, tree crops should be limited by the climate. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on December 15, 2012, 10:38:42 am

Quote from: hermes on December 14, 2012, 03:17:02 am

Quote from: monk12 on December 13, 2012, 10:27:06 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 13, 2012, 10:13:05 pm

Was there a black market circa 1400s?

I would imagine so. At the very least, there would be merchants who dodge customs purely for tax reasons (more of a grey market, according to Wikipedia.) In the "illegal goods" sense, you'd probably see wartime societies impose rationing on food, iron, horses, and associated black market folks who supply those things to people and organizations who want them anyway.

Note that I speak with no weight of personal knowledge, merely a quick glance at Wikipedia and general understanding of human nature.

Yes this seems quite reasonable.  I'm trudging through a Hundred Years War history right now, and there doesn't seem to have been the legal concept of "illegal goods" in the way that we understand it today.  Aside from being practically unenforceable (and thus a waste of time) there wasn't much that would be considered bad (weapons were a necessity to travel it seems).

The closest would probably have been government control of certain goods, like wool in England.  In certain circumstances they would enforce export bans to leverage the Flemish (and they hoped to drive up the price to pay off debt).  One can imagine that clandestine smuggling would be in high order at those time.  The dorf nobles already do this, though it is rather whimsical.  :'( If they did it to hurt the importer, that would setup a black market demand nicely.

When you have a highly centralized bureaucratic government like imperial China, on the other hand, you have both the ability to profit from strong government control of resources and strong incentives to ignore them and engage in black market activity.

Case is 11th century China, where the government controlled the salt trade for massive profits, but there was massive illegal production and sale. In a fragmented Europe before centralized states you might not see these as often as you might in Asia, with its powerful despotic governments.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 15, 2012, 10:45:11 am

Do you plan on making special starting scenarios for playing in young worlds? With the world activated, is there anything planned for starting a game in year zero? How would that work? It would be interesting to start a fortress with the entire civilization's population in it. I'm guessing the lack of migrants would deserve some explanation in this scenario, unless they are still being generated out of thin air.

How different would the history progression of a world you've played from year zero to 250 behave from one with 250 years generated in worldgen? Will there be still some things that only worldgen can make?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 15, 2012, 03:24:43 pm

When will we get better world names? As it stands, they tend to be a tad ponderous. Different names in different languages would be excellent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 15, 2012, 03:26:29 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 15, 2012, 03:24:43 pm

When will we get better world names? As it stands, they tend to be a tad ponderous. Different names in different languages would be excellent.

They are in different languages...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 15, 2012, 04:30:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 15, 2012, 03:26:29 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 15, 2012, 03:24:43 pm

When will we get better world names? As it stands, they tend to be a tad ponderous. Different names in different languages would be excellent.

They are in different languages...

I think he means that the world have multiple names, one for each language...

Right now, my world's name is in goblin... why is it... is there some reason all the civs call it by the goblin name...

It would make sense for the world to have different names in several languages, but that will probably wait until Toady gets around to letting civs names regions and other locations when they discover, find, or conquer them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on December 16, 2012, 03:20:32 am

I think its safe to assume most large settlements would have a black market for stolen goods at the very least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on December 16, 2012, 05:31:30 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on December 16, 2012, 03:20:32 am

I think its safe to assume most large settlements would have a black market for stolen goods at the very least.

Depends on who they were stolen from, but yeah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on December 16, 2012, 10:17:32 pm

Toady, in the latest DF talk you mentioned:

Quote

and I can't have any levers that trigger something more than twenty tiles away or you might have one part loaded and one part not loaded, so everything will have to be a little more vertical than it would probably be in a player fort when it comes to mechanisms and stuff

In light of that, how do you plan to deal with this in player made fortresses? If an adventurer go and pull a lever in a player made dwarf fotress, and it will probably be more than 20 tiles away, will it not work because it's not loaded? Will you try and do a workaround for that? How many Z levels DF loads before encountering the same issue?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on December 16, 2012, 10:38:41 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on December 16, 2012, 10:17:32 pm

In light of that, how do you plan to deal with this in player made fortresses? If an adventurer go and pull a lever in a player made dwarf fotress, and it will probably be more than 20 tiles away, will it not work because it's not loaded? Will you try and do a workaround for that? How many Z levels DF loads before encountering the same issue?

I'm just guessing, but I think the game loads the entire abandoned dwarf fortress when you enter the site. I could be wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on December 17, 2012, 03:54:52 am

That seems to be the case in my experience. I once made a long, thin fort to test this sort of thing, and in adventure mode the windmills at one end were happily powering things hundreds of tiles away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 17, 2012, 04:02:11 am

I tested this in stonesense, and this is indeed true. the whole fort is loaded, every time you visit in adventure mode. Otherwise, it's just a 3x3 tile area.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 06:47:22 am

Will df gamedesign will have any larger scale mechanics? e.g throwing (some) ores into lava flow will smelt them and then collecting resulting liquid metal. Or any other mechanic that would encourage (or require) building bigger functional structures?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 17, 2012, 06:54:57 am

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 06:47:22 am

Will df gamedesign will have any larger scale mechanics? e.g throwing (some) ores into lava flow will smelt them and then collecting resulting liquid metal. Or any other mechanic that would encourage (or require) building bigger functional structures?

It's called smelting and not melting for a reason: To produce metal from ore[1], you need a reducing agent such as charcoal; there is no reducing agent in magma.
What do yyou mean by bigger functional structures?

[1] Strictly speaking this is not true for a few ores such as sulfide ores that need to be oxidised; however that process as well is more complicated than just throwing them someplace hot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 08:41:47 am

Quote from: Helgoland on December 17, 2012, 06:54:57 am

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 06:47:22 am

Will df gamedesign will have any larger scale mechanics? e.g throwing (some) ores into lava flow will smelt them and then collecting resulting liquid metal. Or any other mechanic that would encourage (or require) building bigger functional structures?

It's called smelting and not melting for a reason: To produce metal from ore[1], you need a reducing agent such as charcoal; there is no reducing agent in magma.
What do yyou mean by bigger functional structures?

[1] Strictly speaking this is not true for a few ores such as sulfide ores that need to be oxidised; however that process as well is more complicated than just throwing them someplace hot.

So why do we have magma smelter?

Edit: and question is not about smelting.It is about a game mechanic(s) smelting was just an example (not very good, but it's still more interesting to build 5x10x10 structure to do something than 3x3 building)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 17, 2012, 09:18:06 am

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 08:41:47 am

So why do we have magma smelter?

Edit: and question is not about smelting.It is about a game mechanic(s) smelting was just an example (not very good, but it's still more interesting to build 5x10x10 structure to do something than 3x3 building)

The magma smelter just uses the heat from the magma, they don't actually melt the ore in it.

As for the other part, there's nothing stopping you from carving a huge magma cistern with a forge suspended out in the middle of it with small passageways etc or whatever other large structure you can imagine. The 3x3 workshop is just the minimum requirement of the actual workspace (and all you really need tbh), and if you feel the work space should be larger just add a few extra workshops in there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 17, 2012, 09:56:03 am

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 06:47:22 am

Will df gamedesign will have any larger scale mechanics? e.g throwing (some) ores into lava flow will smelt them and then collecting resulting liquid metal. Or any other mechanic that would encourage (or require) building bigger functional structures?

Yes, this has been already answered a few pages back (but not with the same question). I understand that current workshops are just placeholders for the next thing, in which we could be able to work with materials and reactions in a more, ermm, realistic way. Workplaces, I think they were called.

I might be wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on December 17, 2012, 12:04:58 pm

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 08:41:47 am

Quote from: Helgoland on December 17, 2012, 06:54:57 am

Quote from: Warmist on December 17, 2012, 06:47:22 am

Will df gamedesign will have any larger scale mechanics? e.g throwing (some) ores into lava flow will smelt them and then collecting resulting liquid metal. Or any other mechanic that would encourage (or require) building bigger functional structures?

It's called smelting and not melting for a reason: To produce metal from ore[1], you need a reducing agent such as charcoal; there is no reducing agent in magma.
What do yyou mean by bigger functional structures?

[1] Strictly speaking this is not true for a few ores such as sulfide ores that need to be oxidised; however that process as well is more complicated than just throwing them someplace hot.

So why do we have magma smelter?

Edit: and question is not about smelting.It is about a game mechanic(s) smelting was just an example (not very good, but it's still more interesting to build 5x10x10 structure to do something than 3x3 building)

I'm fairly sure modular* workshop are planned to be implemented /eventually/.

* Like in Evil Genius

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 17, 2012, 02:32:19 pm

Will the "succession" work include making sure wildlife populations breed and restock themselves or will the main focus for now be civ populations?

Not sure if this was made clear at some point, but thought I might as well ask. Would be nice to not have to worry about for example fish inevitably dying out in embarks with fisherdwarves etc ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 17, 2012, 02:45:43 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 17, 2012, 02:32:19 pm

Will the "succession" work include making sure wildlife populations breed and restock themselves or will the main focus for now be civ populations?

Not sure if this was made clear at some point, but thought I might as well ask. Would be nice to not have to worry about for example fish inevitably dying out in embarks with fisherdwarves etc ^^

In pretty much every instance of succession and the like, Toady has been talking about civilizations, and proper wildlife restocking is part of the adventurer skills stuff on the dev page, so I'd say that chances are that it's planned for civilizations and groups only right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 17, 2012, 06:52:30 pm

Toady, are you considering any population/building prerequisites before a fort can be retired and remain functioning through ad mode and subsequent reclaim? For extreme example, immediately retiring with your 7 embark dwarves before building anything might not be enough to have the site persist as a "Fortress"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 18, 2012, 05:39:41 am

Toady, what with you working on the goblins handlers for their fortresses... i realise this is a long term goal and you'll want to do your own thing with them, but it is time. Da orc's! WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 18, 2012, 06:24:03 am

And that, children, is why you should only post sober.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 18, 2012, 06:32:12 am

Hey, sometimes drunken posting is amusing and highly appropriate!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on December 18, 2012, 04:12:07 pm

I agree. I actually laughed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ubiq on December 19, 2012, 02:06:09 am

Does the reference to pet information mean that all tame animals won't just magically drop dead when a fortress is abandoned? If that's the case, then will we see immigrants from a previous fort show up with their assigned war animals?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 19, 2012, 05:11:59 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 17, 2012, 02:32:19 pm

Will the "succession" work include making sure wildlife populations breed and restock themselves or will the main focus for now be civ populations?

Not sure if this was made clear at some point, but thought I might as well ask. Would be nice to not have to worry about for example fish inevitably dying out in embarks with fisherdwarves etc ^^

I'm pretty sure they already do this, and have for a while. Overfishing isn't related to a failure of fish to spawn anyway, since the animal populations are for the whole region and thus there should be plenty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: XXSockXX on December 19, 2012, 05:38:55 am

Quote from: Cruxador on December 19, 2012, 05:11:59 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 17, 2012, 02:32:19 pm

Will the "succession" work include making sure wildlife populations breed and restock themselves or will the main focus for now be civ populations?

Not sure if this was made clear at some point, but thought I might as well ask. Would be nice to not have to worry about for example fish inevitably dying out in embarks with fisherdwarves etc ^^

I'm pretty sure they already do this, and have for a while. Overfishing isn't related to a failure of fish to spawn anyway, since the animal populations are for the whole region and thus there should be plenty.

I still can overfish a map in a few years. Also there is this problem: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6220, which kind of made me stop playing an adventurer before starting a fort in the same world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 19, 2012, 05:41:40 am

Funnily enough, i laughed at the response. I'll have to try drunk posting sometime  :P.Does the ai fortress building possiblyin any way be applicable to delegating tasks to lower members of the heiarchy, effectively letting the AI do your job, but of course with a margin of effiency equal to that of the skill and wit's of your delegate? For extra fun, you could only return control once a dwarf dies, somewhat of a mii-reclaim. While we're using this pipe dream (though a mini reclaim sounds actually slavagable to these young ears), could it also be used when faction are introduced and try to take some of your power and influence, at least on thier turf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Machiavelli on December 20, 2012, 09:26:50 am

Are there any UI functionalities on the horizon wrt interaction with the game, rather than new features?  The ability to mouse most everything, reference the previous trade agreements with the Mountainhomes (maybe I am just stupid and don't know how to do this), or the option to set the world to continue progressing while you look through the Military or various other menus/set Digging or Trees to be cleared, etc?  You can choose what is important enough or not important enough to stop the world in the .ini, right?  Why shouldn't the world progress during menu operation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on December 20, 2012, 10:58:02 am

military menus already let the game progress, and i think that yes, there is a goal to allow the other menus to be accessed without pausing the game. for the trade agreement thing you can use a macro. you know about macros, right?
mouse is kind of a low priority i think, but since there's already partial mouse support, i'd guess toady is planning to do it eventually

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 21, 2012, 03:58:52 am

Has Adventure and Fortress time unit been synchronized yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 21, 2012, 05:01:57 am

Quote from: Objective on December 21, 2012, 03:58:52 am

Has Adventure and Fortress time unit been synchronized yet?

No. That would be a major project and it's not planned for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 21, 2012, 05:02:58 am

Quote from: Objective on December 21, 2012, 03:58:52 am

Has Adventure and Fortress time unit been synchronized yet?

Synchronized to what?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 21, 2012, 08:35:29 am

The mayan end of the world?

Hey, what if some entities on the world generator also made predictions about the end of the world, just for fun sake?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 21, 2012, 09:06:38 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 21, 2012, 05:02:58 am

Quote from: Objective on December 21, 2012, 03:58:52 am

Has Adventure and Fortress time unit been synchronized yet?

Synchronized to what?

Adventurers and Fortress dwarves run in different time unit. Adventurers can do more in a day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 21, 2012, 09:08:18 am

This is not a bug, it's intended.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on December 21, 2012, 09:10:25 am

What happens to your companions when you retire? Do they join the population of the fort? If you retire an adventurer
with companions in a retired fort and unretire that fort, do the companions appear as members of the fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 21, 2012, 09:36:45 am

Quote from: Japa on December 21, 2012, 09:08:18 am

This is not a bug, it's intended.

I know, but when an adventurer visit a retired fort, won't it bork up the timers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:00:48 am

No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 21, 2012, 10:04:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:00:48 am

No.

How would that work, exactly, when compared to timers like ThatAussieGuy's Tower of Armok doomsday sacrificial thingy?
I mean, I can already foresee the device activating prematurely when the fort is unretired.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:53:20 am

Same amount of ticks, I'm guessing. 72 times per day instead of one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 21, 2012, 11:27:19 am

Quote from: LordBaal on December 21, 2012, 08:35:29 am

The mayan end of the world?

Hey, what if some entities on the world generator also made predictions about the end of the world, just for fun sake?

Now that the world has ended is everything that happens from here on out considered non-canon?

:P

Seriously though. I'd like DF not only to have predictions of the end of the world, but then have the game actively work towards them sometimes. You can't really have a fantasy story generator without a way for a random hero to stop the end of the world. Or in the event the player decides to be a villain... you'd need ways to end the world.

It would be really neat to research the chain of events that lead to such an event as well. Especially, if it required many generations to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. Or if a player brings about the end of the world through seemingly random events that accumulate into some kind of progression.

Spoiler: "Rambling" (click to show/hide)

Player plays as a thief and steals some stuff from various rich dudes. He gets caught and put in jail. While escaping jail he frees a bunch of his fellow prisoners, but dies in the escape. Later the player is doing a bunch of fetch quests, while looking for information on an artifact that disappeared in the town. He meets up with one of the prisoners he just freed with the previous character, but doesn't notice that fact. The freed dude has some information in trade for going to a nearby tomb and retrieving an artifact from there. The player does this and returns and finds out the whereabouts of the artifact he was looking for in trade for the artifact he just got.

Little does the player know at this point that this character was actually a vampire that had been a prisoner for ages. And that the artifact was interesting enough trinket to allow the vampire to convince people to follow him. Which slowly causes the town to become ruled by the vampire. All it took was two rather simple interactions from the player to change a small bit of the world... and the player doesn't even know this is happening because he's playing a fort now.

Granted with stuff like that... it is less of an if DF will get the feature and more of a when. I don't imagine it will be soon, since right now long term events don't really matter much until the game can handle better cause and effect on the short term. And doomsdays would be better left until the worlds can remain stable indefinitely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 21, 2012, 11:30:10 am

Incidentally, will semi-artifacts, e.g weapons which creatures grow attached too and achieve artifact status with, become implemented with NPC's? Clearly, the rules will need to be less iron-cast about using something else when it would be suicidal otherwise, and possibly other such things to prevent the world from being over-saturated, (edit: say such as they being artifacts in name only, but nevertheless having respect or fear for what they've done, though of course being coated with forgotten beast blood or being blessed could explain rather a lot)but damn it, i want to find long lost treasures someday. Not knowing what it was unless you had reason to would also be excellent, though there might be hints (hints which could also mean other things). On the note of long-lost treasures, as you're in the midst of reclaim right now, how about letting us choose how much later we reclaim, instead of one year? An excellent touch would be to have whatever overtook our fortress respond accordingly, and I'm very glad this has been touched upon in a DF talk. When will you get round to it? Also, when will we be able to find body's, weapons and armour laying about which we haven't left ourselves in the wilderness, rather then just fortresses? Of course, if others get there first it should also be taken into account. Also, as trolls have the can learn tag, when will we see at least some of the smarter ones developed further? After all, there's more then one way of taking them being goblin "pets", or the shearing could even be a consensual which they recognize the need for, though that should be quite rare. You'd think a smarter troll would be able to out-muscle goblins in a revolt, particularly if one of them was made to do a lot of blacksmithing.

When will we see what idle dwarves do being developed? After all, i rather doubt they only make friends and grudges. Chiildren might watch Army training and do stick fighting, adults paint, make bet's and play, develop useful technological treatment, writes how to guides on getting layed, juggling and the best use of snowboarding in a siege to a be delivered by zombie with a carrot, play aggresive calvinball (with axes) on the hill dwarves, write informative books on molemarion psychology for trainers, tell stories of their exploits and swear much vengeance; in other words, developing thier fortresses culture, which should develop as it does, complete with the original in-jokes of the embarking dwarves to the grand debate to resolve the conflict between the respectively vying mercantile, medical, varying religions, veterinary, and carpentry wings at to how to best resolve the plague of fiddles released as a warning by a inept previously unknown gremlin general wanted by most every nation in the world and the best use of the recently captured philanthropist and visionary mega-beast which may or may not be part of a wider family and is sitting right next too the greatest milker their race has ever seen, and a apprentice team of lye-makers led by 4 teenage currently prank warring boy and girl cousins, consisting of a sane, bitter female moleman, a male dryad with...drug? problems, a anthropologist male kobold with a sailing lust and manga hair and finally a sorcerous girly batman who has been raised well away from anything vaguely approaching this, and all of whom are looking at the mega-beast with interest. New players are arriving as we speak.

In other words, letting dwarves spontaneously do their own thing and having their own mini (or major) project aspirations which they'll do with or without your influence would be excellent. On a related note, I've heard that you wish to work eventually on language, and indeed there's already a thread on this, but given the complexity we wish to aim for, is there any way you could recruit some of the coding for this from the community? I may well be envisioning this completely wrong, but randomly generating situations and having the community pick the most plausible (vetted) responses to be uploaded in the next update sounds like an excellent forum game at least.

Forgive my wild enthusiasm  :).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 21, 2012, 12:18:09 pm

There's no reason to put glow on your question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on December 21, 2012, 12:48:58 pm

Quote from: Objective on December 21, 2012, 10:04:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:00:48 am

No.

How would that work, exactly, when compared to timers like ThatAussieGuy's Tower of Armok doomsday sacrificial thingy?
I mean, I can already foresee the device activating prematurely when the fort is unretired.

Retired fortresses would obviously follow the adventure mode timescale, as they would have no reason at all to follow the fort mode time scale.

Also, Novel, seriously, take the glow of your question. It hurts my eyes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 21, 2012, 01:24:07 pm

My apologies, thought it was the green button.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 21, 2012, 04:03:31 pm

When will the element of non-sneaking surprise come into play, particularly with climbing? After all, even if your not sneaking and are filing your toenails in a tree, you shouldn't be instantly given away to any bandit passing through, and the same should apply if you're out of their line of sight and not making any unaccustomed noise. After all, if they're surrounded by deer far off rustling grass shouldn't immediately get you killed. When it comes to combat, this also seems applicable, especially if you do something so utterly ridiculous they didn't react in time. Like a baby throwing a rattle at the eye of a demon, or a dwarf cutting off his beard to let himself free.

Most importantly: when will beards exist, and be tuggable and even... "RUN" rippable in game? I realize that coding such monstrous wrath is unimaginable, but you're the man to dare it toady, "OH GOD WHY"... perhaps.[/b]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 04:04:09 pm

Beards do exist, you just can't grasp them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 21, 2012, 04:06:53 pm

Which is the point, Putnam.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on December 21, 2012, 04:26:44 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 21, 2012, 11:30:10 am

Incidentally, will semi-artifacts, e.g weapons which creatures grow attached too and achieve artifact status with, become implemented with NPC's? Clearly, the rules will need to be less iron-cast about using something else when it would be suicidal otherwise, and possibly other such things to prevent the world from being over-saturated, but damn it, i want to find long lost treasures someday. Not knowing what it was unless you had reason to would also be excellent, though there might be hints (hints which could also mean other things). On the note of long-lost treasures, as you're in the midst of reclaim right now, how about letting us choose how much later we reclaim, instead of one year? An excellent touch would be to have whatever overtook our fortress respond accordingly, and I'm very glad this has been touched upon in a DF talk. When will you get round to it? Also, when will we be able to find body's, weapons and armour laying about which we haven't left ourselves in the wilderness, rather then just fortresses? Of course, if others get there first it should also be taken into account. Also, as trolls have the can learn tag, when will we see at least some of the smarter ones developed further? After all, there's more then one way of taking them being goblin "pets", or the shearing could even be a consensual which they recognize the need for, though that should be quite rare. You'd think a smarter troll would be able to out-muscle goblins in a revolt, particularly if one of them was made to do a lot of blacksmithing.

When will we see what idle dwarves do being developed? After all, i rather doubt they only make friends and grudges. Chiildren might watch Army training and do stick fighting, adults paint, make bet's and play, develop useful technological treatment, writes how to guides on getting layed, juggling and the best use of snowboarding in a siege to a be delivered by zombie with a carrot, play aggresive calvinball (with axes) on the hill dwarves, write informative books on molemarion psychology for trainers, tell stories of their exploits and swear much vengeance; in other words, developing thier fortresses culture, which should develop as it does, complete with the original in-jokes of the embarking dwarves to the grand debate to resolve the conflict between the respectively vying mercantile, medical, varying religions, veterinary, and carpentry wings at to how to best resolve the plague of fiddles released as a warning by a inept previously unknown gremlin general wanted by most every nation in the world and the best use of the recently captured philanthropist and visionary mega-beast which may or may not be part of a wider family and is sitting right next too the greatest milker their race has ever seen, and a apprentice team of lye-makers led by 4 teenage currently prank warring boy and girl cousins, consisting of a sane, bitter female moleman, a male dryad with...drug? problems, a anthropologist male kobold with a sailing lust and manga hair and finally a sorcerous girly batman who has been raised well away from anything vaguely approaching this, and all of whom are looking at the mega-beast with interest. New players are arriving as we speak.

In other words, letting dwarves spontaneously do their own thing and having their own mini (or major) project aspirations which they'll do with or without your influence would be excellent. On a related note, I've heard that you wish to work eventually on language, and indeed there's already a thread on this, but given the complexity we wish to aim for, is there any way you could recruit some of the coding for this from the community? I may well be envisioning this completely wrong, but randomly generating situations and having the community pick the most plausible (vetted) responses to be uploaded in the next update sounds like an excellent forum game at least.

Forgive my wild enthusiasm  :).

I wasn't going to laugh or say anything, but then I saw that even your name is "Novel" and I lost my shit. Thank you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 21, 2012, 06:27:48 pm

Oh, you know. Just waiting for VR  :).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on December 21, 2012, 07:08:03 pm

Novel, you might wanna consider just greening the questions themselves and leaving the explanatory text uncolored. The whole point of the green is to keep things less confusing for Toady. It's tempting to do; I know =P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on December 21, 2012, 07:47:51 pm

Quote from: smirk on December 21, 2012, 07:08:03 pm

Novel, you might wanna consider just greening the questions themselves and leaving the explanatory text uncolored. The whole point of the green is to keep things less confusing for Toady. It's tempting to do; I know =P

It's a good point. You're pretty likely to get an 'I'm not sure what you're trying to ask' out of Toady with a WoT like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 21, 2012, 09:44:07 pm

Quote from: Tov01 on December 21, 2012, 12:48:58 pm

Quote from: Objective on December 21, 2012, 10:04:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:00:48 am

No.

How would that work, exactly, when compared to timers like ThatAussieGuy's Tower of Armok doomsday sacrificial thingy?
I mean, I can already foresee the device activating prematurely when the fort is unretired.

Retired fortresses would obviously follow the adventure mode timescale, as they would have no reason at all to follow the fort mode time scale.

Also, Novel, seriously, take the glow of your question. It hurts my eyes.

Won't that mess things up when you unretire the fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:31:28 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 21, 2012, 10:53:20 am

Same amount of ticks, I'm guessing. 72 times per day instead of one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 22, 2012, 12:17:34 am

So, hes asking for perfect continuity from Fort Mode to Adventure Mode. ToadyOne already told us, that that is implausible.

Its probably wont cause a CTD, but yea, I'm sure some weird ass forts out there wont be well replicated in function or more probable, in intention.

But thats an unreasonable request or expectation, and making Fort Mode operate at the same time frame as Adventure Mode, wont fix that, nor if Adventure Mode work at Fort Mode time frame.

As thats not the only compromise that needs to happen, when making Forts retireable and unretireable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 22, 2012, 01:46:18 pm

Will reclamation missions be developed? I'm sure you can think of where this idea came from (thanks Strife26), and i think it's well worth consideration. After all, i hear of plans to make mega-beasts more intelligent; surely a smart beast would be beyond the capability of 7 dwarfs, particularly with assorted minions? Clearly taking into consideration not forcing people into adventurer mode is a good idea, though in some lost forts this is already somewhat of a must, and using a fortress mode-like interface for such a thing would certainly have it's challenges, but doing such in adventurer mode at least doesn't strike me as too difficult. Particularly with the AI fortresses being worked on, having the reclaiming dwarves do their own thing until or if you lead them doesn't strike me as an impossibility, that is unless you simply choose to jump right into it with your adventurer having an option to be counted amongst your beginning dwarves. On the other hand, measures would have to be taken so that such quests only occur in sufficiently difficult situations, and if you don't reclaim it first, there's a good chance someone else will have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 22, 2012, 10:35:22 pm

Looks like we're getting somewhere finally! I think before we get disease we need more healthcare reform.

What kind of file size are you getting for your saves with all the new content added? If you can, could you give us a set of parameters (world size and settings) and the file size please?

Is succession causing a further slowdown of the game during worldgen, and if so how close are we to the point where 64bit or alternative file arrangements (i.e. some kind of virtual memory) are becoming a necessity to avoid crashes?

When we got to DF2012, a lot of people started to get serious problems during worldgen with the game crashing or slowing down, and I'm wondering what we can expect for DF2013.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on December 22, 2012, 10:56:38 pm

How are you planning to compensate for larger file sizes? Will there be a different encryption method? What will this mean for modders?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 23, 2012, 06:44:48 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 22, 2012, 10:35:22 pm

When we got to DF2012, a lot of people started to get serious problems during worldgen with the game crashing or slowing down, and I'm wondering what we can expect for DF2013.

0.34.01 had some crash bugs, and a slow world-gen, but those were fixed in the bug fixing cycle. World gen is reportedly faster than 31.25 now.

It's Likely DF2013 won't have issues with word-gen, but overall it should be on par with the quality of 0.34.01. Some crash bugs are likely in the initial release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on December 23, 2012, 09:49:30 am

Since you're working on improving the succession system, are you planning on adding family names?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on December 23, 2012, 10:50:54 am

So death comes before birth.  I guess Toady's worlds just eventually get pretty morbid at this point.   I look forward to having a new holiday though. 

Happy Reaper Day!  It's the one day of the year where the grim reaper stops hanging out at your fortress and decides to head out into the would for one caffeine fueled triple shift of death!  Then he comes back to your fortress and crashes on your couch for the rest of the year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 23, 2012, 12:18:02 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 22, 2012, 10:35:22 pm

Is succession causing a further slowdown of the game during worldgen, and if so how close are we to the point where 64bit or alternative file arrangements (i.e. some kind of virtual memory) are becoming a necessity to avoid crashes?

The succession is mostly targeted to POST-worldgen activities, so any slowdown would be very minute -- such as those caused by slight restructuring. It may even speed up if he's making any optimizations in the succession's code while he's at it. This leg is to make things that are going on in world gen still keep happening once the world is finished generating, so the real question is if this is going to slow down the game OTHER than worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 23, 2012, 12:26:28 pm

Quote from: Greiger on December 23, 2012, 10:50:54 am

So death comes before birth.  I guess Toady's worlds just eventually get pretty morbid at this point.   I look forward to having a new holiday though. 

Happy Reaper Day!  It's the one day of the year where the grim reaper stops hanging out at your fortress and decides to head out into the would for one caffeine fueled triple shift of death!  Then he comes back to your fortress and crashes on your couch for the rest of the year.

Now I am imagining the reaper all on a caffeine high. "You're too old *slash* and you're too old *slash*... whoa here's an old fella *slash* NOBODY PARTIES LIKE DEATH PARTIES! WHOOOOOOOOOOO! Ah, here's another one *slash*.. oh and hmmm... sorry bro, but you are one day under my cutoff date... see you next year, pal." 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ubiq on December 23, 2012, 08:43:09 pm

Quote from: Toady

Death comes before birth, if you were wondering.

That's probably the best description of Dwarf Fortress ever written.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on December 24, 2012, 03:01:16 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on December 23, 2012, 09:49:30 am

Since you're working on improving the succession system, are you planning on adding family names?

I seem to recall this coming up in one of the DF Talk sessions, and Toady indicated that there was a tendency for one or two family names to completely take over and entire civ's named historical figures, and thus end up meaningless as a means of distinguishing them.  This might have gone away since the populations of "nameless" non-historical figures is much larger now, so there could be a constant injection of new names to the named populace from that direction. 

I would personally really like to see family names go in, at least for certain civilizations - humans because it is something we actually do, and dwarves because there's a sort of clan-based theme that ties in nicely with the idea of dwarves which I've always liked. 

Anyway, my point is that it hasn't (to my knowledge) ever been a significant technical limitation, but rather a design choice to try to keep names unique (and thereby meaningful). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on December 24, 2012, 06:48:50 am

Quote from: Ubiq on December 23, 2012, 08:43:09 pm

Quote from: Toady

Death comes before birth, if you were wondering.

That's probably the best description of Dwarf Fortress ever written.

The difference between birth and death seems insignificant if you spend the last moment of your short life on your mother's arm, used as a shield in battle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 24, 2012, 11:49:47 am

When will metals diversify across races? I can understand if adamantine remains a Dwarven thing (usually), but you'd think humans and goblins would pick up steel. Of course, there's the question of other rare resources for other races, but i suppose that will have to wait until you get to randomized metals. Until then, however, why don't goblins who take out a fortress with adamantine at the least nick the stuff you've made, and with the introduction of non-lethal combat, you'd think they'd try to take the smiths alive, which would add an interesting dynamic as to balancing who you should teach the craft, as well as dwarven civilizations trying to crush or at least remove all evidence/knowledge from the thief's before the knowledge spreads (with what i wouldn't be surprised to be a dedicated sect), which every now and then they should pull off. It would also make for an interesting infiltration quest in adventure mode (with some badass companions), with only time to tell if you've succeeded. It could also make for some interesting conversations with the dwarven liaisons, either trying to hide it from their knowledge or their wroth at it's waste or uncloaked use. Which leads to masking, concealment... yes, i like where this is going. The same could go both ways if the goblins discover something they wish to keep for themselves. It also would make long-term goblin sieges more challenging (with the explanation that they give the weaklings trash), as well as escalating the annoyance of Kobolds, who by all rights should have a black market by now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 24, 2012, 11:54:13 am

For the civilizations with several races, will different districts come into effect, as well as possible amalgamations from cultural influences? Say, with those much sought half-races?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 24, 2012, 02:00:43 pm

Can adventurers become "villains" for fortress mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 24, 2012, 02:55:10 pm

How in-depth do you one day intend the political system to be? Also, will prisoners and jails ever be developed, including conversions of all kinds? While we're on the topic, can you please lay down the realism threshold, say for things such as torture (which i think we'd all be fine with having abstracted) and brothels? Some things no one wants in the game, for obvious reasons, though with night trolls it seems that you're fine with oblique hints. Will Realism be something we'll be able to adjust, from Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings? Inevitably, they'll be mods, but I'd like to know where you stand with the base game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 24, 2012, 03:19:50 pm

Novel: IIRC, Toady is planning for both magicalness and randomness to be adjustable as he goes. Prisoners and jails are definitely planned. Song of Ice and Fire-style fantasy to probably much more magical than LOTR.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on December 24, 2012, 03:57:52 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 24, 2012, 03:19:50 pm

Song of Ice and Fire-style fantasy to probably much more magical than LOTR.

Perhaps better comparison would be Forgotten Realms versus Game of Thrones? First is basicly pentrated by fantastical elements, although not as much as Planescape. Latter features them only as an icing on cake.

EDIT: But I guess we figured the point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 24, 2012, 05:01:43 pm

Quote from: Kappas on December 24, 2012, 03:57:52 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 24, 2012, 03:19:50 pm

Song of Ice and Fire-style fantasy to probably much more magical than LOTR.

Perhaps better comparison would be Forgotten Realms versus Game of Thrones? First is basicly pentrated by fantastical elements, although not as much as Planescape. Latter features them only as an icing on cake.

EDIT: But I guess we figured the point.

I'm pretty sure elves and goblins and whatnot will be prevalent regardless, in vanilla, so more like Forgotten Realms vs LotR.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 24, 2012, 08:22:29 pm

Has Toady finished up with elven sites? Does anyone know if he's made specific mention of rope ladders in conjunction with them? I'd like to know if we're any closer to being able to use some sort of extendable/retractable stair thing for making pits without leaving materials on the bottom. I know the whole path-finding issue but I also remember that it was most likely to be looked at when elven sites in trees came in. I'm fairly certain it hasn't been mentioned but I'm asking before greening.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 25, 2012, 05:38:39 am

Quote from: DG on December 24, 2012, 08:22:29 pm

Has Toady finished up with elven sites? Does anyone know if he's made specific mention of rope ladders in conjunction with them? I'd like to know if we're any closer to being able to use some sort of extendable/retractable stair thing for making pits without leaving materials on the bottom. I know the whole path-finding issue but I also remember that it was most likely to be looked at when elven sites in trees came in. I'm fairly certain it hasn't been mentioned but I'm asking before greening.

He's finished with elf sites for now, but it's possible that like with goblin and dwarf sites, there's some more work to come. Likewise, it seems probable that he'll get to climbing again later before the release. In any event, he hasn't yet mentioned anything regarding climbing aids to be definitely in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 25, 2012, 07:31:40 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on December 25, 2012, 05:38:39 am

Quote from: DG on December 24, 2012, 08:22:29 pm

Has Toady finished up with elven sites? Does anyone know if he's made specific mention of rope ladders in conjunction with them? I'd like to know if we're any closer to being able to use some sort of extendable/retractable stair thing for making pits without leaving materials on the bottom. I know the whole path-finding issue but I also remember that it was most likely to be looked at when elven sites in trees came in. I'm fairly certain it hasn't been mentioned but I'm asking before greening.

He's finished with elf sites for now, but it's possible that like with goblin and dwarf sites, there's some more work to come. Likewise, it seems probable that he'll get to climbing again later before the release. In any event, he hasn't yet mentioned anything regarding climbing aids to be definitely in the game.

Rope ladders turned out to be quite a boon doggle when he attempted earlier, if I recall. (For Fort Mode.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 25, 2012, 03:18:35 pm

When will climbing include beings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 25, 2012, 04:23:57 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 25, 2012, 03:18:35 pm

When will climbing include beings?

For the most part, "When will we get X" questions really have no useful answers - they tend to be "no timeline, but it would be good to have in the game", or something to that effect. The "Ability to jump up on and ride opponents if they are large enough (can happen to you too of course)" is on the development page, under Combat Flow for the Adventurer Hero Role, so it could be on the short list, but I wouldn't count on it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 25, 2012, 04:42:09 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on December 24, 2012, 05:01:43 pm

Quote from: Kappas on December 24, 2012, 03:57:52 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 24, 2012, 03:19:50 pm

Song of Ice and Fire-style fantasy to probably much more magical than LOTR.

Perhaps better comparison would be Forgotten Realms versus Game of Thrones? First is basicly pentrated by fantastical elements, although not as much as Planescape. Latter features them only as an icing on cake.

EDIT: But I guess we figured the point.

I'm pretty sure elves and goblins and whatnot will be prevalent regardless, in vanilla, so more like Forgotten Realms vs LotR.

I demand a Discworld setting. Thanks, Knight Otu, I'll bear that in mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 25, 2012, 04:49:35 pm

How do you see stories being related to the player in the future? I've seen you mention that you'd like to have what going on at the mountain-homes being related to us when appropriate, but when language is developed will factors such as the narrator and retelling come into account? How do you intend to develop Legends mode, and the knowledge available to you in-game? After all, if all the goblins are dead, it doesn't make sense to prepare for their tactics. Lastly, how do you intend to develop archery, and ranged weaponry in general?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 25, 2012, 05:50:04 pm

Are 3D mineral veins going to be introduced with the generated dwarf fortresses? Whenever they come, do you plan to have certain dwarves prefer to reside or construct within certain veins (i.e. a craftsdwarf may pick a room in a native platinum vein)?

Are magma moats going to be a feature in advanced dwarven settlements?


Merry Christmas everyone!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on December 25, 2012, 06:26:59 pm

To expand on the magma moats question: what's the extent of dwarven engineering in computer-run settlements? There will be normal cage and weapon traps, of course, but beyond that, what? Simple floodgate-and-lever irrigation systems? Small pump stacks to create simple drowning traps or more complex irrigation systems? Large pump stacks to ferry magma around? What of minecarts and the many extracurricular uses they can be put to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 25, 2012, 08:30:54 pm

Jesus Christ man...

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

Devblog update on a Christmas Day! This is indeed deserving of a +<<Platinum Goblet+>>+ full of lava.

So, births. Will this stuff be continuing during gameplay when the coming release... is released?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on December 25, 2012, 08:57:01 pm

Births and deaths and so on have always happened during world generation.  The idea now is that all of these things will be happening throughout the world while your fort is active.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quatch on December 25, 2012, 09:32:43 pm

including female bandits giving birth while killing you, I am sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on December 25, 2012, 09:36:58 pm

Quote from: Quatch on December 25, 2012, 09:32:43 pm

including female bandits giving birth while killing you, I am sure.

And then promptly dying of old age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on December 25, 2012, 10:51:17 pm

Didn't Toady say Death comes before birth? In theory, she should die of old age before she gives birth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 25, 2012, 11:03:50 pm

Quote from: Keldane on December 25, 2012, 10:51:17 pm

Didn't Toady say Death comes before birth? In theory, she should die of old age before she gives birth.

I think he just meant, which was happening first, coded first, not their order of operation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 26, 2012, 07:05:25 am

Thanks Otu and Wriggles.

Toady, any news on rope ladders that may potentially have gone in with elven sites and which may further potentially bring them closer to a fortmode implementation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 26, 2012, 08:57:55 am

Was holidays or something of sort ever planned? Just wondering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 26, 2012, 11:18:57 am

Will we be seeing Gremlin sites soon? And what of the non-existent plight of elephant men?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 11:26:01 am

Quote from: Toady One on December 25, 2012, 08:57:01 pm

Births and deaths and so on have always happened during world generation.  The idea now is that all of these things will be happening throughout the world while your fort is active.

Thanks for that. There has been this thing going around that worldgen will no longer continue during gameplay, but that doesn't seem to make sense - or was that the accelerated worldgen? What we're getting seems to be a rewrite of all the major things that happen in worldgen.

Quote from: Novel on December 26, 2012, 11:18:57 am

Will we be seeing Gremlin sites soon? And what of the non-existent plight of elephant men?

Gremlins aren't an entity but you have a point, we don't have sites for animal people or intelligent or semi-intelligent creatures.

Why is only one gremlin available for a region (raws)? Is there a bug that occurs when more than one gremlin appears on the map?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 26, 2012, 11:37:26 am

Quote from: Novel on December 26, 2012, 11:18:57 am

Will we be seeing Gremlin sites soon? And what of the non-existent plight of elephant men?

Maybe I'm wrong (and it's hard to backtrack) but Toady spoke about an adequation of animal men "sites" as soon as he were going to touch the Kobold caves. One of the ideas for this release is to be able to find all the existent historical figures in the worldmap (save a pretty few, like ocean titans and the such), maybe he has something planned for all the unnamed tribes of creatures that tag along, mainly, in the caverns and inside the dungeons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 26, 2012, 11:51:24 am

Quote from: Objective on December 26, 2012, 08:57:55 am

Was holidays or something of sort ever planned? Just wondering.

There are a few references to holy days, festivals, and rituals on the old dev page, and to fairs on the current dev page, which should mostly cover the idea of holidays.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 11:26:01 am

Why is only one gremlin available for a region (raws)? Is there a bug that occurs when more than one gremlin appears on the map?

Most likely to keep gremlin-related frustration to a minimum, while still keeping the gremlin-related fun in the game, and to have some sense of mystery for new players about gremlin-related incidents that would be kind of spoiled by an invasion of gremlins. Besides, it's not quite so constrained - in a recent world I've genned, there were almost as many gremlins as there were giant rats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: XXSockXX on December 26, 2012, 12:46:06 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 11:26:01 am

Why is only one gremlin available for a region (raws)? Is there a bug that occurs when more than one gremlin appears on the map?

I've had a least two in some forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 01:19:20 pm

Quote from: XXSockXX on December 26, 2012, 12:46:06 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 11:26:01 am

Why is only one gremlin available for a region (raws)? Is there a bug that occurs when more than one gremlin appears on the map?

I've had a least two in some forts.

OK. I thought the region population was constrained to one - so if you had one gremlin and killed it off, no further gremlins would appear.

On that note, is repopulation of animals planned for this coming release, especially given the world is coming alive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on December 26, 2012, 05:09:18 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 01:19:20 pm

OK. I thought the region population was constrained to one - so if you had one gremlin and killed it off, no further gremlins would appear.

If your fort spans more than one region, you could get one gremlin per region.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 26, 2012, 05:15:11 pm

You probably mean biome; a fort can have multiple biomes, but will only be in one region.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 26, 2012, 05:16:11 pm

Biomes are regions, in raw terms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on December 26, 2012, 05:22:00 pm

I thought of that because the same multiple-biome trick was used to obtain two sea serpents for Sphalerite's sea serpent farm (sea serpents had the same "1 per region" restriction). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 05:47:13 pm

Will adventurers be able to (and likely to) form families in the place you retire them in? Also, can we retire human adventurers in a dwarven fortress?

If both of these are true, I may have an interesting question:
What if I retire a male and a female human adventurer in a fortress, will it be possible that they'll form a family? Will we be able to have a multi-racial fortresses that way?

Also regarding retired adventurers: besides being able to form a family, what influence will your adventurer have in the town he retires in now that the world is activated and history goes on outside of worldgen? Will our legendary mass-murderering killing machine achieve high posts in the civilization he settles in? You'd think that after killing 10 dragons, 500 bandits and depopulating entire goblin civilizations they would pretty much make that guy a king.

What about having your adventurer become a necromancer and then retiring him in a town? Would that work?
 Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 26, 2012, 06:25:43 pm

How do you wish the magical tech tree to progress, given that you don't wish it to progress past the 1450 stage? After all, with the right mix of magical artifacts, anything could happen. Do you have plans for semi-megabeasts to form, yes, small, but existing civilizations? By all rights the minotaurs should be famed mercenary's of worrying repute.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 26, 2012, 06:34:11 pm

Once the personality rewrite comes about, which combined with the army arc, and who knows even artifacts should make worldgen !!Lively!!, will longer gens be troublesome?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 26, 2012, 06:45:37 pm

Will "tacticus" be a bar game, as mentioned in the old dev page?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 26, 2012, 08:37:49 pm

Quote from: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 05:47:13 pm

Will adventurers be able to (and likely to) form families in the place you retire them in? Also, can we retire human adventurers in a dwarven fortress?

This has been talked about and is planned, but like most things that arent being actively worked on, there is no timeline. And you should be able retires Adventures any where.

Quote

If both of these are true, I may have an interesting question:
What if I retire a male and a female human adventurer in a fortress, will it be possible that they'll form a family? Will we be able to have a multi-racial fortresses that way?

No inter racial forts. ToadyOne has spoken about them as a possibility, but again, no timeline.

Quote

Also regarding retired adventurers: besides being able to form a family, what influence will your adventurer have in the town he retires in now that the world is activated and history goes on outside of worldgen? Will our legendary mass-murderering killing machine achieve high posts in the civilization he settles in? You'd think that after killing 10 dragons, 500 bandits and depopulating entire goblin civilizations they would pretty much make that guy a king.

This was talked about in a Dwarf Talk podcast, but I cant recall which one. But the short of the answer is: It'd be cool if your adventure did have effects like that after he was retired, but the major problem is the game understanding your intent. While not being insurmountable issue, its a none trivial issue to solve.

Quote

What about having your adventurer become a necromancer and then retiring him in a town? Would that work?
 Thanks!

What do you mean by work? I'm pretty sure all retired adventurers, when met again in Adventure Mode, just sorta mill about, and you can ask him about his previous adventures. But they arent that a live yet after you stop playing them. Yet.
[/quote]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 10:19:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 26, 2012, 08:37:49 pm

What do you mean by work? I'm pretty sure all retired adventurers, when meant again in Adventure Mode, just sorta mill about, and you can ask him about his previous adventures. But they arent that a live yet after you stop playing them. Yet.

Well, aren't necromancers supposed to go and start raising zombies and build towers? Will a retired adventurer-necromancer ever be inclined to take such a path? I assume they won't be able to, and just behave as they would now, but perhaps with the world being activated and all,  some other possibilities will be available?

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 26, 2012, 08:37:49 pm

Quote from: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 05:47:13 pm

Will adventurers be able to (and likely to) form families in the place you retire them in? Also, can we retire human adventurers in a dwarven fortress?

This has been talked about and is planned, but list most things that arent being actively worked on. And you should be able retires Adventures any where.

Quote

If both of these are true, I may have an interesting question:
What if I retire a male and a female human adventurer in a fortress, will it be possible that they'll form a family? Will we be able to have a multi-racial fortresses that way?

No inter racial forts. ToadyOne has spoken about them as a possibility, but again, no timeline.

A bit of a contradiction here. You say that we should be able to retire our adventurers anywhere (and that should include the planned "un-retireable" retired dwarven fortresses), but multi-racial forts should be impossible? I think this information could be outdated, considering how things changed in the middle of the development for this release. Toady wasn't planning on letting us un-retire fortresses before, but he changed his mind at some point:

Quote from:  Toady one on 12/03/2012

I talked to my first retired fortress citizen yesterday, and I also went ahead with the unretirement of retired player forts. I expressed some misgivings about fort unretirement in the last Future of the Fortress post, and we'll see how it works out. The main issues are information that is altered for the adventure mode visitor and information that is just lost entirely during the retirement process. It isn't as big a deal when you reclaim a ruined fort, since you expect some rebuilding, but it might be more jarring when the reclaimed fort was left alive. The info in question includes room information, military stuff, burrows, that kind of thing. Theoretically we should be able to keep much more of it, but having an adventurer running around killing dwarves and stealing items could be disruptive.

Quote from:  Toady one on 12/05/2012

I also tested out retiring a dwarven adventurer in a retired fort and then unretiring the fort, and it basically worked out -- the adventurer was listed as a soldier without a squad, which I need to fix, and I need to tweak the items they are carrying, but otherwise they were a proper fortress citizen. If you hand your former adventurer an official position in the fort and then retire the fort and then unretire the adventurer, I guess you'd be controlling an official, but you wouldn't have any actual powers, since we don't have anything set up for that yet in adv mode. When I first started the adventure, I was expecting to have to walk from the main dwarven civ out to my retired fortress, but the game just started me in the retired fort. That kind of drives home that you are just being created out of thing air, but it makes as much sense as starting at any other inhabited dwarven site.

So apparently we'll be able to retire adventurers in retired fortresses, and they'll work as fully functional citizens probably being able to form relationships and families when you un-retire your fortress and start playing fortress mode normally. What he didn't specifically mention if we'll be able to retire humans and elves there, too. Or maybe he did and I missed it? Anyway, the gist of the question is that , if we really ARE able to retire human adventurers in a fortress, when we unretire said fortress how will they behave? Because we'll definetely be able to retire dwarven adventurers, that much I'm sure of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 26, 2012, 10:19:51 pm

He seems to be saying that he hasn't implemented retiring non dwarves to dwarven fortresses, but might do so before this release is out.

Quote from:  12/03/2012 Dev Log

The upside'll be being able to switch between forts (though you can't play them at the same time, and there's no guarantee of survival for retired forts), being able to do odd things like retiring an adventurer in a retired fort and then unretiring the fort with your new citizen (at least if your adventurer is a dwarf -- we haven't handled multiracial forts yet, though it'll likely be allowed)... and whatever else people come up with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 10:31:42 pm

Quote from: King Mir on December 26, 2012, 10:19:51 pm

He seems to be saying that he hasn't implemented retiring non dwarves to dwarven fortresses, but might do so before this release is out.

Quote from:  12/03/2012 Dev Log

The upside'll be being able to switch between forts (though you can't play them at the same time, and there's no guarantee of survival for retired forts), being able to do odd things like retiring an adventurer in a retired fort and then unretiring the fort with your new citizen (at least if your adventurer is a dwarf -- we haven't handled multiracial forts yet, though it'll likely be allowed)... and whatever else people come up with.

He mentioned that he had not gotten to dealing with multi-racial forts, but it was seriously being considered for this release. Likely this would happen when he gets back to dwarf fortresses after dealing with the current focus.

I believe it is "1 gremlin per biome" and the question was why Toady had done that. One can make gremlins appear individually by setting another thing in the raws to 1, as with lions and other lone creatures (this doesn't prevent multiple appearances at the same time from different map edges, but its quite unlikely).

Quote from: Novel on December 26, 2012, 06:45:37 pm

Will "tacticus" be a bar game, as mentioned in the old dev page?

More generally, is any of the content from the old dev page not on the new one likely to make it into the game at some time or other, or has that been completely dropped?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 11:36:37 pm

Cool. So I guess my question about breeding humans in a dwarf fortress stands. I have another one, though:

Now that we have armies going around and wars are more fleshed out, does the nobility and other people that make big decisions now have more personality? You mentioned before that with the advancement of the military arc the lords would become more than appointed "desk officers" whose job is solely to give adventurers their little quests.

With the big lords having personal ambitions, and also dragging other people into their lifestyle I wonder if we'll see a proper "aristocracy" in the next release. When can we expect lords and barons having political marriages and creating their own cast, rather than just being peasants elected into symbolic leadership all the time? I can't wait for us to be stuck with a decadent, inbred, power-hungry nobility bossing everybody around the world, making trouble.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 27, 2012, 12:36:42 am

Quote from: XxoriginxX on December 27, 2012, 12:15:52 am

After a bit of thought, I realized that if death and birth are tracked during fortress mode, would it be possible for your entire civilization to die out as you play due to, say, old age or famine, and result in you being the last of your civ? Would that result in the leader of your fortress becoming the king of that civ (whether it be the expedition leader, mayor, baron, count or duke, whichever you have)?

As far as I know, this is what actually happens during regular gameplay, and the update is planning to change that. It's something more akin to not pulling dwarves out of thin air but bringing them from the neighboring mountainhome. If they're all killed and all the other borders or fortresses are lost, then you lose.

Quote

Now that we have armies going around and wars are more fleshed out, does the nobility and other people that make big decisions now have more personality? You mentioned before that with the advancement of the military arc the lords would become more than appointed "desk officers" whose job is solely to give adventurers their little quests.

With the big lords having personal ambitions, and also dragging other people into their lifestyle I wonder if we'll see a proper "aristocracy" in the next release. When can we expect lords and barons having political marriages and creating their own cast, rather than just being peasants elected into symbolic leadership all the time? I can't wait for us to be stuck with a decadent, inbred, power-hungry nobility bossing everybody around the world, making trouble.

We already have castes of sorts, but they're no more than the aforementioned elected peasants. Maybe they won't be as complex as you're asking them to be, but right now it would be safe to assume that a lot of entity leaders (not just humans, mind you) will have a basic degree of motivation. What not with the bandits roaming, goblins out there causing havoc (just for the sake of it?) and the frightening HFS, now able to get out of their gates.

Boy oh boy. But no, not convenience marriages just yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 27, 2012, 01:59:38 am

Quote from: Valtam on December 27, 2012, 12:36:42 am

Quote from: XxoriginxX on December 27, 2012, 12:15:52 am

After a bit of thought, I realized that if death and birth are tracked during fortress mode, would it be possible for your entire civilization to die out as you play due to, say, old age or famine, and result in you being the last of your civ? Would that result in the leader of your fortress becoming the king of that civ (whether it be the expedition leader, mayor, baron, count or duke, whichever you have)?

As far as I know, this is what actually happens during regular gameplay, and the update is planning to change that. It's something more akin to not pulling dwarves out of thin air but bringing them from the neighboring mountainhome. If they're all killed and all the other borders or fortresses are lost, then you lose.

No, the current version does not track dwarves outside your fortress at all, so they can't die out. Presumably in the upcoming version, other sites could die out due to wars. Old age might be hard, because births tend to outnumber deaths, and dwarves never get too old to breed. It's an open question whether Toady will add famine for this release.

The answer to the other question is unknown too, since Toady has not specified how succession will work in detail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 27, 2012, 08:33:18 am

Quote from: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 05:47:13 pm

Will adventurers be able to (and likely to) form families in the place you retire them in? Also, can we retire human adventurers in a dwarven fortress?

They will be historical figures, so unless Toady specifically excludes them from scheduling, they should be eligible to form relationships, marry, and have children, and most likely also migrate to other towns. You can already retire in any settlement, so what happens there depends on whether Toady gets to the multiracial fortresses for this release or whether he makes them some sort of friendlies, like lagging caravan guards.

Quote from: Ribs on December 26, 2012, 05:47:13 pm

What about having your adventurer become a necromancer and then retiring him in a town? Would that work?
 Thanks!

Assuming no further work on necromancers other than to make them do their thing during actual play, what would likely happen is that the adventurer realizes that he is a necromancer and is supposed to go off to raise the dead and build a tower. Whether that is what you think as working...

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 26, 2012, 10:31:42 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 26, 2012, 06:45:37 pm

Will "tacticus" be a bar game, as mentioned in the old dev page?

More generally, is any of the content from the old dev page not on the new one likely to make it into the game at some time or other, or has that been completely dropped?

Yes, the old dev page is still relevant (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.0). It is simply outdated.

Quote from: Toady One

I wouldn't say the development page is a full picture of the new additions we plan to do as we continue, but they give a pretty good picture.  The core items, reqs, bloats and power goals of the previous pages still represent out plans for the game, and anything not on the new page is still fair game -- it's just the system itself that has been updated, because the previous system wasn't working well (not a single power goal was checked off, for example, and items often became outdated).

Quote from: Valtam on December 27, 2012, 12:36:42 am

As far as I know, this is what actually happens during regular gameplay, and the update is planning to change that. It's something more akin to not pulling dwarves out of thin air but bringing them from the neighboring mountainhome. If they're all killed and all the other borders or fortresses are lost, then you lose.

As King Mir stated, this doesn't happen. What you might be thinking about is the fact that, as you play your fortress, the world around it is static and nothing really replenishes, and when you then enter a human town, the historical figures in it realize that they should have died of old age several years ago, and drop dead (which shouldn't extinct anything anymore with the abstract entity populations, but I haven't tested that).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 27, 2012, 09:09:14 am

When will we see more evil combat styles coming into play, particularly with those overseers you mentioned keeping the goblins in line? I'd expect indiscriminate collateral damage, using nearby "friendly's" as arrow sinks, execution of those running away, all that good stuff. Particularly nasty members of "good" races might even do the same (less openly; usually). On the other hand, will we see beings attempting to sacrifice themselves for dwarves they respect or love, rather then baby shields as we have now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 27, 2012, 09:23:49 am

Quote

Now that we have armies going around and wars are more fleshed out, does the nobility and other people that make big decisions now have more personality? You mentioned before that with the advancement of the military arc the lords would become more than appointed "desk officers" whose job is solely to give adventurers their little quests.

With the big lords having personal ambitions, and also dragging other people into their lifestyle I wonder if we'll see a proper "aristocracy" in the next release. When can we expect lords and barons having political marriages and creating their own cast, rather than just being peasants elected into symbolic leadership all the time? I can't wait for us to be stuck with a decadent, inbred, power-hungry nobility bossing everybody around the world, making trouble.

We already have castes of sorts, but they're no more than the aforementioned elected peasants. Maybe they won't be as complex as you're asking them to be, but right now it would be safe to assume that a lot of entity leaders (not just humans, mind you) will have a basic degree of motivation. What not with the bandits roaming, goblins out there causing havoc (just for the sake of it?) and the frightening HFS, now able to get out of their gates.

Boy oh boy. But no, not convenience marriages just yet.

I actually found where I heard this before; It was in df talk #11. Here's a long quote:

Quote from: toady one

That's the army arc. The army arc, as its stated, might as well be called the army and political arc, or the nobles arc, or something, because there are people driving these actions, and that's what we're going to see a lot of the important changes in personality, and the changes in ... Like, right now there's like the lord and the lady in the castle, or the lady in the castle, there's usually just one or the other ... There's the lord in the castle or the lady in the castle and they're just there, during world generation it was like 'We need a person to sit in this castle and give quests', and so they assign a person to it. So they're more like a desk worker or an office worker who waits for adventurers to come so that they can send them places, and that's not how it's going to be, certainly. Each of those people should be concerned with themselves and concerned with what they want out of life, which is going to be varied, but generally they're going to try and be the most powerful person in the world, probably. Then you'd start to get things like this town and these villages are associated to this castle, and this person has an alliance with this person in this castle, who is associated with these towns and villages, and then when they try and have ... their soldiers will be coming up out of the population, and then they will have the things that they try and do to try and acquire more of those things, or to try and secure trade routes, and the types of things that the caravan arc is going to allow us to do, since we track all that information now. Then each of those people ... Those are just single people, but they will all have their associated hangers-on and other positions that become available so that more people can get pulled into that lifestyle; and then you can have marriages and all that kind of thing. So, it's really the army arc that's going to drive that kind of political information where you have aristocratic nonsense going on, and personalities like that. I don't know if the army arc is also going to lead to things like fellow adventure-type people wandering the world, and of course this all relates into dwarf mode. I usually fixate on one mode or the other when I'm talking, so that was kind of an adventure tangent but those things will all impact dwarf mode as well, especially when you kind of enter into that lifestyle yourself, where you get your fortress up to the point where you're allowed to appoint one of your dwarves as the baron, you kind of get to that. But that should imply that there's a sort of nobility there and there'd be dwarven barons and counts and dukes or whatever we've got now, and the king and/or queen or however the world generation turned out, and they'd be at those different mountainhomes. Right now it just places the king and the queen and you're the only baron or count or duke, it's sort of sad, it's like they just wanted a little buddy to be in the nobility with them. But there should be a whole slew of those things, and then you'd have the relationship with the other mountainhomes, and you might agree with this baron to do something to sort of combat the power of a different baron that just found a big gold vein ... if gold even lives in veins these days.

So my main question here is if we'll see the political changes as well as the military cahnges in this release. In fact, I think there weren't that many changes in the way wars happen. As far as I understend it's the same process we already have in the worldgen right now, the difference being we'll now see it progressing during actual gameplay. So I guess you're right and we won't see the nobility behaving that differently in the next release, but I just wanted to point out that Toady did suggest that the army arc development would go hand in hand with political changes and a more complex nobility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 27, 2012, 10:18:05 am

How much control will we have over retired fortresses? Will we be able to set goals at some point? Will they default to the mission they were sent to do from the Mountainhomes? Will it hinge on what influence the player has created in order to sustain such goals, such as religions, memorials, leaders, deliberate creation of Batdwarf, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on December 27, 2012, 11:12:56 am

Quote from: Novel on December 27, 2012, 10:18:05 am

How much control will we have over retired fortresses? Will we be able to set goals at some point? Will they default to the mission they were sent to do from the Mountainhomes? Will it hinge on what influence the player has created in order to sustain such goals, such as religions, memorials, leaders, deliberate creation of Batdwarf, etc?

OH! OH! Can I field this one? Can I?

(The answer is no. The game can't read your mind.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 27, 2012, 11:31:03 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on December 27, 2012, 11:12:56 am

Quote from: Novel on December 27, 2012, 10:18:05 am

*snip*

OH! OH! Can I field this one? Can I?

(The answer is no. The game can't read your mind.)

At least not yet. Remember, the game is expected to gain sentience some day, given our penchant of giving valuable insight to Toady's secret behavior database.

Quote

When will we see more evil combat styles coming into play, particularly with those overseers you mentioned keeping the goblins in line? I'd expect indiscriminate collateral damage, using nearby "friendly's" as arrow sinks, execution of those running away, all that good stuff. Particularly nasty members of "good" races might even do the same (less openly; usually). On the other hand, will we see beings attempting to sacrifice themselves for dwarves they respect or love, rather then baby shields as we have now?

Take into account that the good vs evil concept is prone to be scrapped sometime in the near future, no timeline given. Dwarven psychology and traits are still a framework that would allow this to happen, the next release will allow creatures to take a few choices in regard of violence and death, now that there will be a combat escalation system, so you'll see fleeing enemies or daring nuts that won't hesitate to pry your skull open with their fingers. It's widely assumed that these kind of actions will be performed according to their personality, so the "doesn't really care about anything anymore" might turn into a pretty cherished status.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 27, 2012, 01:10:48 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on December 27, 2012, 11:12:56 am

Quote from: Novel on December 27, 2012, 10:18:05 am

How much control will we have over retired fortresses? Will we be able to set goals at some point? Will they default to the mission they were sent to do from the Mountainhomes? Will it hinge on what influence the player has created in order to sustain such goals, such as religions, memorials, leaders, deliberate creation of Batdwarf, etc?

OH! OH! Can I field this one? Can I?

(The answer is no. The game can't read your mind.)

Oh come on. I'm merely requesting to give some kind of broad direction to the forts activities, in much the same manner that the mountain-homes will tell us to try and achieve something. It could just be weave as much silk as possible, or fortify the fortress, or engrave everything, or somesuch. I'm not going for build me an empire just yet. When the much vaunted personality re-write comes into play, i don't see it as being particularly hard to cultivate certain goals amongst your dwarves, and that's before we get to how much easier it would be once religions having an impact are put in. I'm not expecting this in at least the more complicated forms in the next release regardless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 28, 2012, 03:16:30 am

My hunch is that retired fortresses won't do anything except stagnate, starve, or be invaded. Making them grow properly is tricky.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 28, 2012, 09:19:42 am

I don't know... will the AI be inclined to carve new modules such as farming and workshop areas in retired player fortresses?  The idea sounds hard to implement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on December 28, 2012, 01:56:46 pm

It might be handy if there was some type of retire menu, where you could tell them what to and not to do, like "Expand onlt below the first cavern," or "You are allowed to build and farm above ground."

More intricate stuff would be... tricky.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: squishynoob on December 28, 2012, 02:13:25 pm

Now that death and birth happen during gameplay, do you plan doing conversion by night creatures in the same fashion?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 28, 2012, 06:15:19 pm

Quote from: squishynoob on December 28, 2012, 02:13:25 pm

Now that death and birth happen during gameplay, do you plan doing conversion by night creatures in the same fashion?

Speaking of this:

Are you going to make make Night Troll conversion fit in with the interaction system or will that always be a separate thing like it is now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on December 29, 2012, 02:52:30 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on December 28, 2012, 06:15:19 pm

Are you going to make make Night Troll conversion fit in with the interaction system or will that always be a separate thing like it is now?

When I asked about this a while back, he said: "It would be ideal to move it over, but it's an extra piece of time, so it might get put off. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2261541#msg2261541)"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Thanks to Broken, Mephansteras, King Mir, Valtam, Vattic, Putnam, monk12, MrWiggles, irdsm, Heph, rhesusmacabre, Knight Otu, Talvieno, Helgoland, Urist Da Vinci, Caldfir, MrWillsauce, Objective, Japa, CaptainArchmage, PTTG??, Demonic Gophers and anybody I missed for helping out with questions this time around.  I also removed a number of suggestion-questions, many that were too vague to address succinctly and so on.

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Quote from: Mephansteras

Quote from: Toady One

For islands, I'm not really sure.  It's one of the things that start scenarios are meant to address -- why are you on an island?  Ideally, it would detect that (it knows where all the land masses are as it stands), and restrict your scenario options based on that -- assuming you choose location first and scenario second.  I'm not sure if you'll pick the location first or the scenario first.  I think that'll probably be a matter of taste.  I'd personally pick the scenario first, but with things like the site-finder and people looking for the ideal fort spot, I imagine being able to pick any location first would be a high importance item to a lot of people.

Will this be a world-gen toggle? Or maybe you're given the map of the world and then given an option to pick site or scenario? Could scenarios actually pick sites for you?

It'd be neat to have some stuff, like founding a trade outpost, be site driven while others, like a shipwreck, be scenario based where it picks a site for you.

Quote from: Captain Archmage

With regards to starting on islands, my question was regarding the upcoming release. Are we going to have starting scenarios in already? As it is you just pick anywhere that isn't mountain or ocean to start, hit embark, and go, even if its a totally stupid Fun jungle on an uninhabited volcanic island with no access to any race. I was wondering whether in those situations in the upcoming release, you'd get deep or hill sites appearing around your fortress (without the implementation of "scenarios").

Yeah, I don't think it needs to be a hard rule, and there could be some scenarios that lead you to a site in a natural fashion.  There's probably a good way to handle the whole thing that avoids an init option or toggle, though that might be proved wrong for some scenario or other that could really go either way in some horrifying fashion.

We don't have starting scenarios yet.  I was entertaining the idea of jumping into them along with fortress retirement, but I'm not sure that would be wise.  You won't have any linkages to hill/deep sites in a formalized fashion at this time.

Quote from: WaffleEggnog

I have a question here (or several questions). Will you be able to, for example, join the milatary of a town/civilisation and be part of their army as they invade places? Because that seems badass. Also, will civs fight for "land" (army vs. army in open battle) or will battles only take place in city's (attack/defend)?

Edit; Oh, and another thing. How will we be able to tell who is on our side and who isnt if 2 of the same races are at war? Will there be some kind of marking that members of a civ wear, or a different color, or it could just be in their name. Also, on the subject of armour, could you kill a member of a civ then wear their armour as a discuise and infiltrate into the other civ?

You can't join an army at this point.  Of course we'd like to allow you to do whatever you like, but we aren't there.  We haven't even arrived at army vs army battles at all, or even city battles.  There isn't anything tactical going on.  Villages just get sacked.  We aren't covering a lot of things we wanted to do for the "army arc" yet.

We haven't gotten there yet, but we were thinking of showing civ symbols on people when it was reasonable to do so.  Every civilization has a symbol already, and for the most part that should address any confusion (though I'm sure the symbols are sometimes identical or whatever else).  Too much flashing is annoying, but color is used for equipment, so there aren't that many options.  Alternate symbols might be a possibility, though that could get a little weird.

Disguises are up on the dev page but we aren't there.

Quote from: Lord Shonus

Will the products of trees have any quality levels, either visible or invisible?

There isn't anything right now.  They are like plump helmets or whatever else.

Quote from: RedReign

Particularly in Adventure Mode, will there be some way of dragging creatures you are in combat with?
I've always wanted to drag a bogeyman around by his feet and see how long I survive. Or drag animals and toss them off cliffs.

Yeah, I think that was a suggestion way back in the original Armok that's now been lingering on the combat pages for a zillion years.  We'll arrive there sometimes.

Quote from: Geen

are we going to see climbing-oriented creatures (i.e. monkeys) be using the new climbing system? Or nests in trees, allowing creatures and characters to steal eggs for sustenance?

They should in certain contexts.  It's the same as with flying creatures.  In combat contexts they can make more decisions that they do for global path-finding.

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Quote from: Edmus

With hillocks springing up about our forts will we see civilians fleeing to our fortress when they are under attack, kind of like the villagers fleeing to the keep.

Quote from: misko27

And on that note, how and to what extent do we communicate with the Hillocks? As of right now it sounds like they are passive, how will they interact with the fort?

The issue with this is the sheer number of dwarves.  Ideally that's something a fort would sometimes accomplish for its surrounding lands, but here it is harder, processor-wise.

I haven't yet added specific hill/deep sites for your fort, so I don't know how it will work.

Quote from: Zalminen

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will Dwarf Fortress try to deliberately make navigable climbing paths up trees and through the tree-tops outside of forest retreats?

I don't understand this one -- you mean to make the elf sites accessible by climbing without blocking things off?  The elves exercise quite a bit of power over the shapes of their trees.

I think what he meant was whether it will be generally possible to move from treetop to treetop in any random forest or whether the trees will be too far apart to actually do that except in elf retreats.

It's often possible, but it doesn't do anything deliberate.

Quote from: Captain Archmage

Will deep sites be built anywhere or just in mountains?

If deep sites can be connected to a fort by a tunnel, that's a permanent trading presence even under siege and ambush with multiple forgotten beasts roaming all the caverns and the circus spilling out uncontrolled into the bottom cavern layer.

Will forgotten beasts invade us through tunnels either in the next release or afterwards? The idea is that if we embark on top of a tunnel, forgotten beasts can arrive through the ends, and if a tunnel is dug to our fortress, we may get forgotten beasts arriving through them.

If a site connected to other settlements by a tunnel falls to siege of the HFS, will the other sites deliberately collapse the tunnel or block it off?

Deep sites are placed in the mountains.  I haven't addressed player forts vs. deep sites yet, in any way, nor player forts vs. hill dwarves.  We aren't to that point yet.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Toady, in the most recent DFtalk you mentioned other dimensions and how Dwarf Fortress is not quite there to implement them. I've also heard in a previous DFtalk that the game is already able to deal with "alternate dimensions", say, from where some night creatures may come from. Do you think players will be able to colonize those alternate dimensions in the future? Its been a theme in some games (i.e. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic).

Yeah, that goes back to at least Master of Magic as far as civ-type video games go, which had an alternate dimension to settle, and aside from the dangers /quirks there, and getting there, there wouldn't be anything stopping you.  I think the trick would be determining when a dwarven civilization has access to it for the embark screen.  Perhaps that's a time when adventurer-based or oregon-trailish based embarks make the most sense, at least for the first site.  Once you have a beachhead, getting more sites for free on embark isn't so bad.

Now when I mention dangers and quirks, that can be significant -- certain places might not be very settleable simply because they aren't permanent enough, etc.  It becomes a tendency to systemetize on the computer, but some magicalness can be maintained, and settleability runs counter to that for the most part.  That said, if you've got a group of seven dwarves that enter plane X, just as an adventurer's party would enter plane X, and they proclaim that they live there...  well, it's a settlement, even if they are idiots.  It's dwarfy enough, anyway.  We'll have to see how it plays out.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Toady, do you plan to accept bitcoin donations or donations through other means than check or Paypal, such as Google Checkout?

I don't plan on holding a bitcoin balance, and I didn't feel comfortable giving bank account information to any of the auto-conversion sites.  I don't remember the obstacles for Google Checkout, but it didn't happen immediately the first time I looked at it.

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Quote from: darklord92

you mentioned wars being fought on the border sites of your civilization, will these sites fall during fortress and adventure play exposing your sites to war, and will your site potentially end up the last standing fortress in the world( of your civilization)?

Quote from: XxoriginxX

After a bit of thought, I realized that if death and birth are tracked during fortress mode, would it be possible for your entire civilization to die out as you play due to, say, old age or famine, and result in you being the last of your civ? Would that result in the leader of your fortress becoming the king of that civ (whether it be the expedition leader, mayor, baron, count or duke, whichever you have)?

It could happen, yeah.  I haven't worked with caravans at all, so you might see some weirdness with them arriving since your civ is still flagged as "alive" (since you are alive).  Once caravans join armies as non-generated people, we can finally make sense of that.

Depending on how the successsion stuff works out, a dwarf of yours would technically be a candidate for the kingship.  I'm not sure how far I'll get with claims and conflicts and all that, or if it's going to remain fairly mechanical.

Quote from: Tov01

Toady, when armies are in and moving about, will your civilization's armies ever come and help defend to your fortress in Dwarf Mode? (perhaps conditional on how important your site is, how close you are to the enemy, ext.)

I imagine that would be automatic, yeah, though one of the principal problems of all of this is handling the numbers and the fact that your site is loaded.  Moving people/armies between hill and deep sites through your fort is the main example -- the numbers can just be too large, so it might end up somewhat artificial.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Toady, you've mentioned that hill dwarves will have mounds. Are these artificial mounds of earth (and possibly rock) that have been piled up by the dwarves, or are they mounds that have have been dug out by the dwarves?

You mentioned that dwarves will have drinking halls, but they won't have taverns until the next release. Will there be new taverns for each site type or will it depend so the drinking halls in hill settlements can become taverns?

They are artificial mounds when the ground is flat, but they can also burrow into hillsides.  I doubt the hill settlements will need different taverns from what they've got now, though it'll all need to be fleshed out.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

Right now I've got forts going from the surface down to the magma and deep sites up in the first layer.  Currently the thinking is to reserve the secret stuff for the forts (not just player ones, but that special category of site), which are also better armed for dealing with deeper troubles from layers two and three.  It'll be fine to make deep sites more interesting over time, but I also don't want to smear things too much, especially since they aren't reclaimable -- this makes keeping the most interesting stuff in forts more important.

Quote from: monk12

If an entire mountainhome is lost, and then a player claims one of the border forts, would the population spread from that fort prefer to spill into the old deep sites, prefer to build new sites, or simply not care? Does the presence of those sites increase the rate at which the population spreads?

I haven't gotten to this part yet -- non-player reclaims and migrations post world-gen, though I think some of it is on the list for this release, so we'll see how it plays out.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Toady, will all ruined dwarf fortresses be reclaimable or will there be fortresses that cannot be reclaimed because of crossing region tiles and so on?

They are all reclaimable, even if that means dealing with some issues there.  I don't have a plan to update the embark interface at this time, but we'd be closer to that.

Quote from: Cobbler89/CaptainArchmage

Toady, do you plan to remove the region tile boundary limitation for player embarks and if so what limitations on embark size will be in effect?

How do dwarf settlements react to aquifers in worldgen? If we have a mountain range with an aquifer, will dwarves just not settle there, or will they construct shafts down to below the aquifer level? How do hill dwarves react to aquifers?

I have no immediate plan to address this.  There are still various annoyances, though I'll address them to the point that reclaims of world gen forts should always work.

Like all other sites in the game, dwarves currently cheat with regards to the aquifer.

Quote from: nighzmarquls

As Cities Grow do they preserve structures from their older 'smaller' versions? How do you manage the interaction of the old proceduraly generated layout and additions?
Is this the same method your thinking to use when overlaping entity sites (one conquering another and then growing)?

Cities don't grow yet, and we'll have to tackle those problems when they do, but yeah, it's all set up in a fairly modular fashion and it should be possible to grow various civ types on top of existing areas, though they do conceptualize things a bit different sometimes, so it might get strange.

Quote from: Talvieno

Toady, will the walls of fortresses be engraved, smoothed, rough, or will it depend on certain factors and wind up being a mix of the three at times?

It'll be a mix, depending on the function of the area.

Quote from: Nyotor Lizardhammers

If Ruined NPC forts are reclaimable, what items should I expect to find scattered around? Will metal items correspond to local ore deposits and/or will armor and weapons usually be iron and steel What creatures would I find lurking in the ruins?

Like the human towns, it'll be the things they were building in world gen.  That leaves some gaps right now, but it'll slowly be changed to include everything.

Quote from: Heph

Does the MoMA have a fixed version of the game or do they download the latest every so often?

I'm not sure what their plans are.  They're going to have a video which is reasonably version-independent, and then a copy of the game off somewhere, which they can update from the web page whenever they feel like it, though they haven't told me how it's going to work.  I don't remember how many of the other games on the list are still being updated, but it is an interesting curatorial problem.

Quote from: Valtam

With the inclusion of Kobold sites, retired Fortresses and kidnap/rescue mechanics in place, are you planning to allow us to reunite a stolen artifact or specially valuable item with it's owner or maker?

I don't have a particular plan for that for this release, though there are a number of mentions in the notes about that sort of thing.

Quote from: Minnakht

Will NPC dwarves have some less conventional things in their settlements, like sizable art? Anything that just looks nice and isn't practical? Or maybe some player 'inventions' like artificial waterfalls/magma use?

Not yet, but I was hoping to get a few of those in.

Quote from: Saraias

Do you have any plans to allow civilizations to progress exotic animal training to fully "Domesticated" now that their history will extend?

Once a fort is successfully retired, will its local resources (minerals, wood, animal products, etc.) become available for trade to future forts of its civilization?

In Fort Mode, will succession be governed entirely by AI, or will the player have some sort of influence over the process?

I don't have any particular plans for animals that come to mind at this point.

The civ caravans rely on some aged material information inside the civ which isn't currently updated after world generation.  That'll have to change at some point, but it can't be fiddled with carelessly.  It might have to wait for more caravan work.

You have control over the initial selection of your baron, and you have control over appointments.  You don't have direct control of elections or heredity, though you can influence elections a bit through friendships, which you have indirect control over.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that we're on the way to having multi-racial forts, are there plans to also make traders behave differently depending on the species of the dealer? For example, if your broker is a human, you might get better deals from human caravans than with a dwarven broker.

I don't have particular plans there.  Any stuff that eventually goes into adventure mode conversation code won't apply since it's not actually a conversation, so it'd have to be handled on its own.

Quote from: evictedSaint

How will the the location of your dwarves be affected by retirement/unretirement of fortresses? Presumably dwarves will be meandering around the fort; if I haven't tunneled into the first cavern, can I expect to find them underground anyways?  What if I were to order my entire population into a room and then build a wall around the exit, blocking them in right before I retire?  Will an adventurer come by later to find the fort mysteriously vanished, save a muffled pounding from behind the wall?  Would retirement/unretirement result in dwarves in impossible locations?

They will start in the areas you've designated for them, if you've designated them.  They will likely circumvent any weird stuff you do like sealing them in a room.  There are going to be a lot of contradictions like that, since it's hard to account for everything.

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Quote from: Japa

Toady, how close does this bring us to being able to play existing historical figures as an adventurer?

Quote from: Deathworks

I am wondering if there could be an option to deliberately start an adventure as a dwarf from the player's fortress. After all, those are basically fully developed during Fortress Mode.

If I remember, the only real obstacle for playing historical figures is how playing somebody important would be utterly meaningless at this point.  Ignoring that, it's just a matter of getting to it.  There are some side issues in terms of spoiling things, or gaming things, but that's all pretty deal-with-able.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

You've mentioned in the latest devblog post (on 5th December 2012 for those who read this post after the apocalypse that won't happen) that the adventurers are literally "pulled out of thin air" and this is noticeable when it comes to forts. Are all individuals "historical figures" now or is there still a site population that is for all intents and purposes nameless, identity-less, and skill-ambiguous besides being of a particular creature type and caste?

If there are still nameless members of a site population, would you consider having ancestry generated at character creation, or would that mess up the game?

When you add multi-racial forts (it looked like a valid thing for forts in the upcoming version as of devblog on 12/3/2012), as some players play goblin fortresses, these will get immigrants from other races. Goblins don't need to eat, but the other races do, so if you had a multi-racial goblin fort would we be able to set up farms anyway?

All individuals were originally historical figures, and we moved away from this because you can't get up to appropriate numbers and still have speed/memory work out without sacrificing some detail.  So there will always be more nameless populations that are then realized, though we still have some tricks in mind to get them to seem more historical than they are.  You can't perfectly ret-con them into the game without messing things up, but you can track some population information and generate information from within that context.

Your civilization won't learn new techniques, so I imagine in your modded case you'll need to import food.

Quote from: Trif

How do you handle items in retired fortresses? Can an adventurer just grab them, or are they fortress property?

I don't have that intermediate category yet, so you can just grab them.  I haven't done the broker yet, which I want to do, so it'll likely be changed before the release.

Quote from: Brotato

(there's no guarantee of survival for retired forts)

This caught my eye right away. What kind of factors affect whether or not a fort survives?  Can we reasonably expect that retired forts will still be attacked by sieges and mega beasts?

(I guess you'd be controlling an official, but you wouldn't have any actual powers)

What happens if an official is killed or leaves the fort while you control him?  Will the position be open again or does that prevent you from putting someone else in charge?

If you come back to a fort after a reasonable amount of time, like 5 or 10 years, can you expect to see the fort changed?  For example, will some old dwarfs be dead from enemies, died if they had an infection that the doctor couldn't fix, old age, bad luck, etc?  Will there be new dwarfs from births and migration, and will they continue to get married while you are gone?  Will new rooms, workshops, farms, and other constructions be built?  i.e. Can we pretty much expect the fort to go on acting as if you're still in charge?

I haven't activated every aspect of the world, so dangers to your retired forts will only be increasing over time.  Right now they might be attacked by armies and lost.  There's also the problem of emigration, especially if you start a new fort.  Once food use is activated, that'll be an additional worry, though I'm not sure how that'll be abstracted after the retire.

Regarding controlling an official (as an unretired adventurer that became an official), it updates your historical state when you go on a journey, but I don't remember if I made adventurers sever position ties when they leave sites.  Probably not.  So you'd still hold the position.  If you die, once I get the succession stuff done, it'll be handled properly.

There are only as many changes to the fort as we have in place for every other site.  Human towns don't change much, so your forts won't change much either.  As we add more post-world gen feature activations, we'll see more there.  You'll see new dwarves born and dwarves getting married and dying of old age.  They won't expand the site until other sites can do the same thing, in which case I'll have to consider how they can do it (since it's a harder problem in player forts).  You definitely can't expect the fort to go on acting as if you're still in charge.  That's a very hard problem, and not really a high priority one.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Progress bars look good on loading screens, but will we see them elsewhere? For example, will workshops get a progress bar on reactions, or will buildings and constructions get a progress bar whilst being built?

Do dwarf fortresses and settlements incorporate minecart tracks yet?

I don't have any particular plans for other progress bars right now.  I feel a little less comfortable with them during play.

I haven't given them minecarts yet.

Quote from: spitss

How will religious groups act in future releases, will they exist purely as a passive quest giving entity within a civilisation,  or will they act as a independent faction that actively tries to expand its own influence, eg converting locals, missions to set up new temples , pilgrimages, armed revolts and attempts to establish theocracies.?

The idea of course is for them to be more interesting.  I don't think treating it as a completely separate faction is exactly how it's going to be thought about, since virtually every member of most religious groups is also going to be a member of some civilization, etc., so there's probably going to be conflicts all up and down the decision making process, which is good.

Quote from: Saubauer

I don't know if this was asked before, but do you have plans for black markets and prohibited goods?
Like civilizations or sides forbidding selling or even owning specific goods or stuff made out of illegal materials, for whatever reasons.
People would pay high prices, if they could get their hands on it there.

I don't have particular plans, but it's certainly reasonable.  Laws regulating trade were certainly already byzantine in places by our 1400 cutoff date, and this led to a lot of smuggling and so on.  Ideally we'll be able to do a lot with that over time.  We'll likely start our first real exploration of law with the thief role, or the merchant role, assuming we keep pushing along those lines.

Quote from: Ribs

Do you plan on making special starting scenarios for playing in young worlds? With the world activated, is there anything planned for starting a game in year zero? How would that work? It would be interesting to start a fortress with the entire civilization's population in it. I'm guessing the lack of migrants would deserve some explanation in this scenario, unless they are still being generated out of thin air.

How different would the history progression of a world you've played from year zero to 250 behave from one with 250 years generated in worldgen? Will there be still some things that only worldgen can make?

I'm not quite sure how it'll work, since I don't have start scenarios fully thought-through.  In a young world, the list would be shorter and that might spur some activity to flesh it out but I'm not sure.

I haven't activated many of the world gen processes for play yet, so history would surely be quite different right now if you try to run it yourself.  Once we have them in, it's hard to say how it'll be different, which is cool from my perspective.  The goal is to not have anything special in world generation -- it should all eventually be possible in play and with more detail (since it isn't trying to cram it all into a semi-reasonable world gen time in real-life minutes).

Quote from: DG

Toady, are you considering any population/building prerequisites before a fort can be retired and remain functioning through ad mode and subsequent reclaim? For extreme example, immediately retiring with your 7 embark dwarves before building anything might not be enough to have the site persist as a "Fortress"?

I think the extreme example might be the only example I go with if anything, since there's such a spectrum of possible fort ideas that it might be dangerous to lay too many restrictions.  It might be reasonable to say that the fort needs to last a year or something like that, without trying to actually look at what's in it.  That'll stop people from claiming land at an extreme rate, which is probably a good thing to do, since you aren't really staking a claim to the land with seven dwarves and a wagon.

Quote from: Ubiq

Does the reference to pet information mean that all tame animals won't just magically drop dead when a fortress is abandoned? If that's the case, then will we see immigrants from a previous fort show up with their assigned war animals?

Abandonment still kills them, as it stands.  This was in reference to retirement, where it was all being deleted.

Quote from: Broken

What happens to your companions when you retire? Do they join the population of the fort? If you retire an adventurer
with companions in a retired fort and unretire that fort, do the companions appear as members of the fort?

I haven't handled this yet.  There's a larger question of what the companion's attachment is to the adventurer in the first place, which is something that needs to be explored and constantly re-examined during play.  I had hoped to get a bit of that in this time, but I'm not so sure now.

Quote from: Putnam

Can adventurers become "villains" for fortress mode?

There are a few pathways right now, although not nearly enough.  Right now I think you'd need to do something like retire in a human town, and perhaps ascend to a leadership position, then you could siege your fort.  It might pull you up just for being a citizen as it stands, actually.  But we don't have things like banditry post world gen yet, outside of the harassment of non-player towns.  If your adventurer becomes a vampire and retires at a dwarf site, they could come to your fort and prey on your citizens.  They'd come with an alias too, so you'd probably have to pick them out by lingering gear or wounds or something.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are 3D mineral veins going to be introduced with the generated dwarf fortresses?

I thought I might add them for mines, but I didn't get around to it.

Quote from: dhokarena56

To expand on the magma moats question: what's the extent of dwarven engineering in computer-run settlements? There will be normal cage and weapon traps, of course, but beyond that, what? Simple floodgate-and-lever irrigation systems? Small pump stacks to create simple drowning traps or more complex irrigation systems? Large pump stacks to ferry magma around? What of minecarts and the many extracurricular uses they can be put to?

I haven't added any of that.

Quote from: DG

Toady, any news on rope ladders that may potentially have gone in with elven sites and which may further potentially bring them closer to a fortmode implementation?

Nope, there weren't any rope ladders in the elven sites.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Why is only one gremlin available for a region (raws)? Is there a bug that occurs when more than one gremlin appears on the map?

There isn't a bug I'm aware of there (so there's probably two), but the way it works, I think that means an average of one per tile in the region, which then averages back out to one for your fort since you are on one tile in the region (though it does look at adjacent tiles which can increase it again).  That system is as old as the hills though and pretty nonsensical.  I'm not sure when or in what way I'll eventually change it.  Part of the problem is that the regions are actually quite small, so they wouldn't actually be able to support very many predators, for example (assuming certain tile sizes, which are forced in this case by things like vision distances and how hunting/combat occurs).  If a single cougar averages 100 square km territory, say, that would be one cougar in a 10x10 world map area (again, just for example), which is not very many cougars at all.  Certainly not a genetically sustainable population.  It's probably difficult to solve in a reasonable way that doesn't lead to a lot of fast extinctions, especially on non-large maps.

Quote from: Ribs

Now that we have armies going around and wars are more fleshed out, does the nobility and other people that make big decisions now have more personality? You mentioned before that with the advancement of the military arc the lords would become more than appointed "desk officers" whose job is solely to give adventurers their little quests.

It still doesn't feel like it is there yet, with the goblin armies, since that's all very simple.  The succession stuff was supposed to help a bit, to give people more things to quibble over, but I've really just got to get started on some fighting between human sites and between dwarf nobles and so on for any of that to come up.  I was hoping to get to a bit of that with the other army stuff that's going on, but it's not entirely clear what'll happen now.

Quote from: squishynoob

Now that death and birth happen during gameplay, do you plan doing conversion by night creatures in the same fashion?

Everything that happens in world generation should eventually make it to regular play, but it's not all going to happen for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 29, 2012, 09:00:02 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 29, 2012, 09:03:07 am

Yes, thank you for all that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on December 29, 2012, 09:53:58 am

Great read, thanks a lot for answering stuff!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 29, 2012, 10:06:12 am

Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 29, 2012, 11:15:52 am

 Yes. Thank you for answering our questions!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 29, 2012, 12:17:41 pm

Awesome, thanks Toady for your priceless time! I feel relieved by touching the ground again with those answers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on December 29, 2012, 01:19:35 pm

Thanks a lot for the answers Toady!
Now I have that urge to play DF but I don't want to because I can't wait for the new version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 29, 2012, 01:20:48 pm

Thank you, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on December 29, 2012, 01:22:43 pm

UPDATE!
WOO!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i dont know if this has been answered, but are there going to be boats?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 29, 2012, 01:55:42 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on December 29, 2012, 01:22:43 pm

UPDATE!
WOO!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i dont know if this has been answered, but are there going to be boats?

Footkerchief has a post here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2015547;topicseen#msg2015547) with relevant quotes. The short of it is that they're planned, but, they're something that's not very dwarf-fitting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 29, 2012, 03:20:19 pm

Thanks for the answers!

Do we still have those buildings overrun with tables and trade goods in computer-run sites? If so reclaiming worldgen forts might yield a vast amount of furniture.

Boats are planned. I also think they are quite dwarf fitting.

Nobody said boats have to be restricted to water, right? This would mean in the future one might have a lava-capable ship to cross a lava lake to a dwarf fortress in the middle of a caldera.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on December 29, 2012, 03:30:13 pm

The *Obsidian Curragh* has ceased to float.  Interrupted by ~Physics~.

The Embark has been struck down!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RAKninja on December 29, 2012, 03:32:17 pm

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

When you add multi-racial forts (it looked like a valid thing for forts in the upcoming version as of devblog on 12/3/2012), as some players play goblin fortresses, these will get immigrants from other races. Goblins don't need to eat, but the other races do, so if you had a multi-racial goblin fort would we be able to set up farms anyway?

Your civilization won't learn new techniques, so I imagine in your modded case you'll need to import food.

so far as i know, nothing prevents goblins from farming.  the only thing is you cannot embark with seeds, by default.

if memory serves, in the current version, abductees tend to starve unless they are made to be [NO_EAT].

i think the major hurdle is that goblins use evil plants (which do not show up ingame still, i believe) or lack tags to use "normal" plants.

as it stands, do hunting and ranching food animals actually provide food to a settlement in worldgen?

oh, as a final note, i recommend removing the no eat and no drink tags from goblins after worldgen, before play, when playing a goblin fort ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bohandas on December 29, 2012, 04:07:47 pm

Other than adding the ability for figures not attached to a fortress to form relationships while the game is running do you plan on making any other changes to the current relationship system before the nest release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 29, 2012, 05:14:40 pm

Just on the offchance I'm missing anything, relevant questions are those which cant be answered succinctly and relate to the near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pbnjoe on December 29, 2012, 06:13:32 pm

It's always awesome to see these FotF replies. It always pumps me up more for the game (like I don't get excited about this constantly anyway :P)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 29, 2012, 06:14:41 pm

Quote from: Novel on December 29, 2012, 05:14:40 pm

Just on the offchance I'm missing anything, relevant questions are those which cant be answered succinctly and relate to the near future?

Usually they're questions that directly relate to recent devlogs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 29, 2012, 06:37:57 pm

With climbing coming in, will we have use for ropes in adventure mode, like say tying an end to a rock or something and using it to climb down a smooth surface?

Or, with non-lethal combat coming in, will we be able to hog-tie someone or otherwise restrain them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on December 29, 2012, 06:53:45 pm

You mentioned goblins not eating in one of your replies. Or something like that, it was in the beginning of the post. Anyways, I and some other people are having a minor and not quite off-topic debate about if goblins are given NO_EAT to keep them alive in worldgen or if they're supposed to not eat. Are goblins supposed to eat or not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 29, 2012, 07:07:20 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 29, 2012, 06:53:45 pm

You mentioned goblins not eating in one of your replies. Or something like that, it was in the beginning of the post. Anyways, I and some other people are having a minor and not quite off-topic debate about if goblins are given NO_EAT to keep them alive in worldgen or if they're supposed to not eat. Are goblins supposed to eat or not?

The cause of this rumor is that Kobold's used to not survive more than 4 years in world gen, untill Toady fixed that bug. Many players then modded kobolds to have NO_EAT as a work around, including I think the Lazy Noob Pack, though the official version had them dieing out.

Goblins were, however, fully intended to have NO_EAT. If you want Toady's authoritative answer instead of mine, however, put your question in lime green.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 29, 2012, 07:14:28 pm

For that matter, has he said if kobolds get the ability to steal food to feed themselves, or do they just get farms now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on December 29, 2012, 07:26:11 pm

I think goblins just preform photosynthesis. Their skin color, yea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 29, 2012, 07:28:01 pm

But they're grey...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 29, 2012, 07:51:57 pm

More efficient.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 29, 2012, 08:10:00 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 29, 2012, 06:53:45 pm

You mentioned goblins not eating in one of your replies. Or something like that, it was in the beginning of the post. Anyways, I and some other people are having a minor and not quite off-topic debate about if goblins are given NO_EAT to keep them alive in worldgen or if they're supposed to not eat. Are goblins supposed to eat or not?

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2243858#msg2243858

Quote

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady do you mean Goblins don't need to eat in any future update or that Goblins won't need to eat until you can get it working properly?

Quote from: Mephansteras

Toady: Could you clairify a bit on the "Goblins don't need to eat" bit? Just curious how that's going to play out and what the reasoning behind it is (from a world lore perspective). Also, even if goblins don't eat what about any other future carnivorous civs? Wolfmen or the like? Do you see yourself adding in herding-based civilizations to accommodate that? Even in our history we have examples of very successful civilizations that did very little actual farming and mostly just herded animals around. The Mongols are probably the best example of that.

In any future update.  I know a few people were dismissive of our decision and called it a cop out, but we thought about these situations (including the Mongols) and rejected them.  Goblins that herd meat animals are insufficiently scary to us.  Goblins that die exclusively violent deaths in great numbers in a potentially vegetationless wasteland are better, and we want to explore a wider variety of possibilities than humans allow -- humans can be Mongols, because the Mongols were human, and we hope to support some human variety eventually.  There are beak dog considerations, etc., but those aren't fundamental -- wrangling some critters isn't as image-shattering as having large herds of meat animals ranging over grasslands with goblin ranchers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 29, 2012, 08:16:49 pm

But what's the in-game explanation? It's not like a bug or unfinished feature that can be ignored for now, that's a fully intended thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on December 29, 2012, 08:22:24 pm

Quote from: misko27 on December 29, 2012, 08:16:49 pm

But what's the in-game explanation? It's not like a bug or unfinished feature that can be ignored for now, that's a fully intended thing.

Photosynthesis!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on December 29, 2012, 08:56:10 pm

I always assume that all cavern plants and NO_EAT critters just absorb the evil that radiates from the planet core. That's why goblins have glowing red eyes. Kobolds have glowing yellow eyes because they feed off evil but they aren't particularly evil.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on December 29, 2012, 08:59:19 pm

Quote from: Mr S on December 29, 2012, 03:30:13 pm

The *Obsidian Curragh* has ceased to float.  Interrupted by ~Physics~.

The Embark has been struck down!

Nethercap would work, no?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 29, 2012, 09:51:55 pm

Quote from: misko27 on December 29, 2012, 08:16:49 pm

But what's the in-game explanation? It's not like a bug or unfinished feature that can be ignored for now, that's a fully intended thing.

"Magic"

Conservation of energy is for science nerds, not dwarf fortress.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 29, 2012, 09:55:49 pm

I have a feeling one day it will be for Dwarf Fortress, for many here ARE science nerds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 29, 2012, 10:45:53 pm

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

A favorite quote of mine, and one I hold in my head whenever doing anything in depth with magic. I'm hoping goblins do get a more official in-game explanation for their lack of eating, though I seem to remember he mentioned something along those lines at some point...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 29, 2012, 11:22:25 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 29, 2012, 10:45:53 pm

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

Great Webcomic. (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205)

Quote

A favorite quote of mine, and one I hold in my head whenever doing anything in depth with magic. I'm hoping goblins do get a more official in-game explanation for their lack of eating, though I seem to remember he mentioned something along those lines at some point...

You might trying asking about it for DF Talk. However, Toady approach is generally to add cool mechanics, and not worry too much about how the magic works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 30, 2012, 06:57:30 am

I swear this goblins not eating thing comes back cyclically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 30, 2012, 07:27:17 am

Quote from: King Mir on December 29, 2012, 11:22:25 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 29, 2012, 10:45:53 pm

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

Great Webcomic. (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205)

You just wasted 5 hours of time I could have spent sleeping. I hope you're happy you added yet another damn comic to my watch list, you sadistic bastard. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 30, 2012, 09:05:49 am

Alright then, but if this is the case, we should look at how it would affect them realistically. For one thing, there's all that extra space for siege weapons, and unlike any other civ inducing starvation is out of the picture. Dedicated goblins would have that much more time on their hands, they could easily seal themselves off and come back in a hundred years with no problem, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on December 30, 2012, 09:48:50 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 29, 2012, 06:37:57 pm

Or, with non-lethal combat coming in, will we be able to hog-tie someone or otherwise restrain them?

I actually asked Toady the exact same question a few months back, it's in one of the FotF posts;

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones

are there any plans to be able to restrain our enemies after we subdue them? Either in terms of affixing them to actual restraints that we have in fortmode (like chains etc.), hogtying them, or tying them up but being able to walk?

Yeah, it's up on the dev page.  Gagging people and tying them up was originally envisioned as a way to deal with certain guards when you infiltrate a villain's site, and it might also come up when you force people to lead you somewhere.  That led to various stuff you might do in dwarf mode with relation to mine carts and all that.  When we allow you to tie people up, I'd expect it to probably all be done at once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uronym on December 30, 2012, 10:20:40 am

I'm fascinated by the potential implications of the unique mechanics in video games. Let's analyze it:

---

First and foremost: How do goblins get their energy?

Goblins are living creatures that do stuff, and because of that, they need energy in some form. However, we know that they do not eat or drink, like most animals; this leaves us with a few options:

• Photosynthesis
• Chemosynthesis
• Thermosynthesis

Photosynthesis?

As several Bay12 watchers have noted before me, it is possible that goblins use photosynthesis. They have various shades of green skin (as seen in their raw files/descriptions) which would resemble the chlorophyll of the many green, photosynthesizing plants on Earth.

Photosynthesis as we know it on Earth requires carbon dioxide. Perhaps goblins kidnap children for carbon dioxide production within their dark fortresses, which would enhance photosynthesis! But this brings us to another point: goblins are typically portrayed as hating light in all of its forms, and, living in dark fortresses and sewers, probably don't get very much of it, making photosynthesis an unlikely candidate.

Chemosynthesis?

Chemosynthesis is another possibility. Chemosynthesis would, like photosynthesis, would greatly benefit from additional carbon dioxide, so it is still possible that goblins capture children for this purpose. Additionally, as goblins are shown to like the deep caverns and digging pits, it's possible they run into pockets of various chemicals that could be synthesized for energy. Perhaps they could use coal, as it has both carbon dioxide (for building their organic matter) and hydrogen (for energy), although I don't know of a life form that does this on Earth, or if this is possible.

Overall, compared to photosynthesis, chemosynthesis seems like a likely potential energy source of energy for our green friends.

Thermosynthesis?

Thermosynthesis is yet another potential energy source. As mentioned previously, goblins like to dig deep, and we know that the magma sea is right below the third cavern layer, which probably makes it very warm. However, goblins have many traits that would lead me to believe they are thermoregulators (they produce their own body heat); for example, they do not bask in the sun, and they can live in cold climates. This would be a waste of energy if one was in the deep, warm caverns, so it's possible that goblins only regulate their temperature when the ambient temperature is too cool.

This has a similar problem to photosynthesis, however, in that goblins often live in sewers. Sewers are probably not warm enough to sustain goblins. Additionally, goblins often come to your fortresses and siege for months, even years. For this, especially in a polar climate, goblins would need to have stored energy previously to their arrival at your gates, and as far as we know, the goblins that attack our fortresses do not appear to be morbidly obese as they would need to be to store sufficient energy to sustain them for those lengths of time. But, it's still not as contradictory as photosynthesis, so I'll say this would be my second guess if chemosynthesis couldn't work out.

---

To the scientifically inclined, such as myself, these are all very good possibilities. But we are drifting away from the point: this is a fantasy game, and Toady, detailed as he can be with many things, may simply want to leave it at magic. Disappointing, but this is probably the case. Nonetheless I will proceed to analyze the other side of the energy coin, consumption.

---

Energy Consumption of Goblins

All three of the potential energy sources detailed above have one problem in common: storage. Problems with each, respectively:

• Goblins spend as little time in the light as they possibly can. They cannot possibly gather and store sufficient energy with this method.
• Goblins may not always have access to these chemicals, for example, in sewers or while laying siege to your fortress.
• Goblins may not always have access to sufficient heat, for example, in sewers or while laying siege to your fortress on a glacier.

So let's observe first the problems with storage.

Energy Storage

We know from descriptions of the goblins that they can be both fat and thin, so it's likely that however they obtain their energy, they store it as fat in a similar manner to humans. Humans can eat anywhere (with convenient pre-packaged snack packs), but because goblins do not "eat" or "drink", there is a problem of storing the energy prior to consumption as well as transporting it. For solar energy, I cannot really see how they could transport "food", but a goblin that utilized chemosynthesis could conceivably store and transport the required chemical energy away from its presumably subterranean source, although we do not see goblins carrying {(lump of coal [10])} when they attack us in the sewers or siege our fortresses, although it's still a possibility.

Consumption

As mentioned previously, it is likely that goblins are thermoregulators (they regulate their body temperature), at least, in the instance that heat is used for energy, while away from their cavernous dwellings. Thermoregulation uses a lot of energy, which could be problematic. Goblins also act as if they have a similar metabolic rate to other humanoids, moving around at a similar speed. Therefore, because they are slightly smaller, goblins probably consume slightly less energy than a human.

There is a possibility, however, that when they are not being attacked or attacking, goblins lay around in their dark fortresses in a dormant state, merely synthesizing and storing energy for when they must attack/defend. If this were the case, goblins, assuming they store energy as humans, in fat, would be morbidly obese and would rely on this energy while away from their homes. This is not always the case; some goblins are thin and others are fat, although it is possible that the thinner goblins have simply been away from their "charging station" longer than the larger ones. Still, a thin goblin at the beginning of a siege is still thin (and not dead) by the end of it, six months later, leaving this an unlikely theorem.

---

To Conclude

In any of the potential energy sources that we explored in this document, there are many loose ends, especially when it comes to storing/transporting it, and we must not forget that Toady probably himself leaves it simply at magic. But, these are my guesses, in order from most probable to least probable, based on factors analyzed in this document:

• Chemosynthesis
• Thermosynthesis
• Photosynthesis

Thank you for reading this mighty word wall!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on December 30, 2012, 11:46:50 am

The explanation for goblins not needing to eat is detailed in several of ThreeToe's stories.  Essentially goblins (like demons) are escaped denizens of the underworld, and being magical extraplanar evil entities, they don't need to eat.  Think about it this way: should demons need to eat?  DF-goblins are essentially minor demons. 

The "science" explanations are nonetheless entertaining. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 30, 2012, 11:50:12 am

Quote from: Uronym on December 30, 2012, 10:20:40 am

To the scientifically inclined, such as myself,

Social sciences, eh? :P

Seriously though: Thermosynthesis is impossible (second law of thermodynamics, if I remember correctly), chemosynthesis is highly implausible (Eating coal? Hydrogen sulphide might have been a better candidate) as they survive above ground as well, and photosynthesis... you got that thing right. Any solution must be magic, one way or the other.

Also coal does not contain carbon dioxide.

I always liked to think that the core radiated magic that also heats up the magma, and that the underground life (and goblins) fed on that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uronym on December 30, 2012, 12:01:11 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on December 30, 2012, 11:50:12 am

Quote from: Uronym on December 30, 2012, 10:20:40 am

To the scientifically inclined, such as myself,

Quote

Social sciences, eh? :P

Seriously though: Thermosynthesis is impossible (second law of thermodynamics, if I remember correctly), chemosynthesis is highly implausible (Eating coal? Hydrogen sulphide might have been a better candidate) as they survive above ground as well, and photosynthesis... you got that thing right. Any solution must be magic, one way or the other.

Also coal does not contain carbon dioxide.

I always liked to think that the core radiated magic that also heats up the magma, and that the underground life (and goblins) fed on that.

You are indeed correct. I meant, that if we refuse to accept magic then chemosynthesis is the most likely. And please excuse the ridiculous number of assumptions and presumptions. I enjoyed analyzing it.

EDIT: fixed quote soup

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 30, 2012, 12:09:08 pm

If this conversation progresses, please remember to use the quote tags properly so that it doesn't look like you're just trying to say what other people have said earlier in the thread. It makes these things far easier to read on everyone's part if the new things you're trying to say are outside of the quote tags.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on December 30, 2012, 02:03:05 pm

I might point out that whatever powers goblins probably powers dogs and turkeys the same way.


...*cough*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 30, 2012, 02:05:28 pm

Don't non-grazer animals occasionally get fed when not in cages?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on December 30, 2012, 03:25:36 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 30, 2012, 02:05:28 pm

Don't non-grazer animals occasionally get fed when not in cages?

They only get fed when trained I think. The rest of the time they need nothing. It's what makes animal powered computers possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 30, 2012, 07:53:08 pm

Another problem with photosynthisis and other explanations is the fact that although goblins don't eat, they still vomit when punched in the gut.
This also means that if they feed off of evil, then evil is actually green like vomit, which would explain the skin color.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on December 30, 2012, 09:31:01 pm

Any updates on dwarven economy for player forts? Right now ownership is communal for players, but is that the case in npc cities too? I can't see thieves having much to do if everyone shares all the stuff, unless they just move stuff from one civ stockpile to another.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 30, 2012, 09:42:06 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 30, 2012, 07:53:08 pm

Another problem with photosynthisis and other explanations is the fact that although goblins don't eat, they still vomit when punched in the gut.
This also means that if they feed off of evil, then evil is actually green like vomit, which would explain the skin color.

Again, though, they're grey, with weird hair colors. Maybe the [EVIL] becomes green after making it through their digestive tract.

On the subject of colons, I think that dwarven farms are so improbably fertile because of their discreet waste disposal. Since everyone gets grower experience, no matter what you set the prefs to, from harvesting crops, perhaps there's a reason everyone decides to visit the farm plots once in a while...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 30, 2012, 10:57:09 pm

Quote from: theqmann on December 30, 2012, 09:31:01 pm

Any updates on dwarven economy for player forts? Right now ownership is communal for players, but is that the case in npc cities too? I can't see thieves having much to do if everyone shares all the stuff, unless they just move stuff from one civ stockpile to another.

The economy hasnt been touched during this development cycle. So the likely answer for an update, is none.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 30, 2012, 11:19:43 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on December 30, 2012, 07:27:17 am

Quote from: King Mir on December 29, 2012, 11:22:25 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 29, 2012, 10:45:53 pm

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

Great Webcomic. (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205)

You just wasted 5 hours of time I could have spent sleeping. I hope you're happy you added yet another damn comic to my watch list, you sadistic bastard. :P

:D
Always happy to share my time-wasters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 30, 2012, 11:24:18 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 30, 2012, 10:57:09 pm

Quote from: theqmann on December 30, 2012, 09:31:01 pm

Any updates on dwarven economy for player forts? Right now ownership is communal for players, but is that the case in npc cities too? I can't see thieves having much to do if everyone shares all the stuff, unless they just move stuff from one civ stockpile to another.

The economy hasnt been touched during this development cycle. So the likely answer for an update, is none.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought Toady stated that he did a little overhaul on item ownership, at least related to what theqmann is asking, so that you can steal stuff without the Hive Mind punching your soul out of your eyesockets. It has more to do with entities than anything else, but the fort inhabitants are still a single entity, so that wouldn't change a lot of things, beside of what I said.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 31, 2012, 02:14:58 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 30, 2012, 07:53:08 pm

Another problem with photosynthisis and other explanations is the fact that although goblins don't eat, they still vomit when punched in the gut.
This also means that if they feed off of evil, then evil is actually green like vomit, which would explain the skin color.

At the moment the concept is that Goblins don't have to eat to survive. That bit has been clearly stated, but no where has it been said that they can't or won't eat if the opportunity arises. Maybe they like to eat and that's why they have the necessary equipment. And maybe that's why you can punch the vomit out of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bloax on December 31, 2012, 04:30:28 am

Just because you don't need food doesn't mean that it isn't delicious nevertheless!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on December 31, 2012, 05:44:00 am

Goblins don't need to eat because they are magic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 31, 2012, 06:16:30 am

They're actually a mobile form of plant. Just like elves are a mobile form of trees, goblins spent part of their life-cycle as goblin-caps. Baby goblins are dropped from the goblin-caps, live life as a goblin, and finally take root and grow as a goblin-cap when they get hurt enough.

Elves have a similar life-cycle, but for above-ground trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 31, 2012, 07:50:01 am

I see, I see. That explains plump helmet men.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 31, 2012, 08:43:34 am

I wonder: Are there any skinny helmet men? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 31, 2012, 09:09:17 am

And it also explains why the elves care not about the caverns! Honestly though, given the amount of thought going into this toady should announce he's put in a answer and leave it up to dwarven !!science!! to deduce what it is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillerClowns on December 31, 2012, 09:48:12 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 30, 2012, 09:42:06 pm

Again, though, they're grey, with weird hair colors.

Different goblin tribes tend towards different colors, ranging from ash grey to spring green. You can check the raws if you don't believe me.

Like others here, I'm also pretty sure goblins can eat, but do so exclusively for pleasure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on December 31, 2012, 12:48:46 pm

I imagine that the theory is that goblins will eventually need to eat, but Toady will first have to code it so that they can raid towns and villages for prisoners and use them as a food source.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 31, 2012, 12:54:41 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on December 31, 2012, 12:48:46 pm

I imagine that the theory is that goblins will eventually need to eat, but Toady will first have to code it so that they can raid towns and villages for prisoners and use them as a food source.

Toady specifically stated more than once that they're not intended to ever need to eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kromgar on December 31, 2012, 02:41:48 pm

Dear Toady:
When the War Arc finally begins are there plans to allow us to control a militia commander sent on the siege of the hamlet like an adventurer?
Also when shall you fix the extremely slow training of warriors? The only efficient way to train a squad of 7 or more dwarves is to throw them in a danger room which is an extremely broken way of training anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RAKninja on December 31, 2012, 03:48:06 pm

Quote from: Japa on December 31, 2012, 12:54:41 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on December 31, 2012, 12:48:46 pm

I imagine that the theory is that goblins will eventually need to eat, but Toady will first have to code it so that they can raid towns and villages for prisoners and use them as a food source.

Toady specifically stated more than once that they're not intended to ever need to eat.

one area i intend to diverge from vanilla.

perhaps, being magical minor demons, gobboos feed of of emotion?  it would explain much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 31, 2012, 03:56:21 pm

Quote from: Kromgar on December 31, 2012, 02:41:48 pm

Dear Toady:
When the War Arc finally begins are there plans to allow us to control a militia commander sent on the siege of the hamlet like an adventurer?
Also when shall you fix the extremely slow training of warriors? The only efficient way to train a squad of 7 or more dwarves is to throw them in a danger room which is an extremely broken way of training anyway.

The slow training does kind of make sense, if you think about it. It would take a good decade or two of intense training for a normal person to "master" a weapon or fighting style. If anything, dwarves get experience too fast for most things. Achieving legendary status at any skill should be rare. So maybe some of it is intentional? You shouldn't expect to have a legion of +5 legendary axedwarves after a few seasons of normal training.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 31, 2012, 05:21:08 pm

Or after a few hours of taking intentional "impossible" shots at a single gopher in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on December 31, 2012, 06:08:24 pm

Storytelling wise I've always thought that Goblins not needing to eat or drink and basically live forever if not killed was just lame. It heads towards that black n white classification of good and evil, and makes you scratch your head wondering why they would even start a civilization in the first place. They apparently don't like each other and they don't need to take care of basic needs to live.  you'd think there'd be more lone goblins just chilling out in some deserted area killing vermin for fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 31, 2012, 06:17:30 pm

Unless they're motivated by a misguided desire to raise the world's children in their "superior" way of life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 31, 2012, 06:52:35 pm

Quote from: snpaa on December 31, 2012, 06:08:24 pm

Storytelling wise I've always thought that Goblins not needing to eat or drink and basically live forever if not killed was just lame. It heads towards that black n white classification of good and evil, and makes you scratch your head wondering why they would even start a civilization in the first place. They apparently don't like each other and they don't need to take care of basic needs to live.  you'd think there'd be more lone goblins just chilling out in some deserted area killing vermin for fun.

Actually, IIRC this is basically what Toady wants to do with goblins. The only reason they hang out is because a demon or particularly powerful goblin forces them to, and even then they don't do much in the way of cooperation. I know when people were asking about how it was going to be possible to sneak through Goblin towers, Toady mentioned that one of the big factors in favor of the infiltrator was that the goblins wouldn't help each other or raise the alarm, and if they weren't important/dutiful they'd likely just ignore you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 31, 2012, 07:33:27 pm

Quote from: Kromgar on December 31, 2012, 02:41:48 pm

Dear Toady:
When the War Arc finally begins are there plans to allow us to control a militia commander sent on the siege of the hamlet like an adventurer?
Also when shall you fix the extremely slow training of warriors? The only efficient way to train a squad of 7 or more dwarves is to throw them in a danger room which is an extremely broken way of training anyway.

If you want Toady himself to answer this, you should change the font color to lime green (or really, any other of it's shades). However, actually there is no 'arc' development system, or at least not definite beginning or end. Features are being implemented on the go, as far as I'm concerned, and while the goal system is still used on account of the features that will be implemented (or the ones we know that will more likely make the cut) it's not so reliable.

Also, fixes come as other features get implemented and they request these fixes, right now there are lots of ways to kill creatures that don't involve warriors, and most of them are merrier, if not a bit "broken", expected from a game that is not even halfway through it's expected goal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on December 31, 2012, 07:46:57 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 31, 2012, 06:52:35 pm

Actually, IIRC this is basically what Toady wants to do with goblins. The only reason they hang out is because a demon or particularly powerful goblin forces them to, and even then they don't do much in the way of cooperation. I know when people were asking about how it was going to be possible to sneak through Goblin towers, Toady mentioned that one of the big factors in favor of the infiltrator was that the goblins wouldn't help each other or raise the alarm, and if they weren't important/dutiful they'd likely just ignore you.

I understand that it's intentional, it just doesn't blend together right to me , I mean if you're some impenitent being that's not tied down  by the basic needs of the common man/creature. Why would you listen to this lone demon, what's to stop every single goblin from running for the hills and living the rest of there lives as hermits that occasionally kill some innocent/or guilty pedestrian, animal, monster.

It's just one demon, he'd have to hunt you all down one by one. Also seeing how a demon can be murdered by some random low level goblin in legends mode, why don't they all disband after  casually killing the the demon that was keeping them all together?

 I can understand the demons not needing to eat or drink because they are Omnipotent beings with an agenda to boot, but making goblins demon lite's just makes them uninteresting in my opinion. It's just undercuts there whole society they've bothered to build, it's like what's the point  other then being evil for the sake for being evil.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Richards on December 31, 2012, 07:56:55 pm

So... 2014 dwarf fortress release then?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 31, 2012, 08:08:48 pm

Also makes it sound like they'd be pretty easy to wipe out, as a military threat. After several of these huge, failed seasonal invasions, you think their flimsy society would dissolve from mutiny.

They must have some kind of ideal of order, though, otherwise they wouldn't punish treason with death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 31, 2012, 11:43:05 pm

Quote from: RAKninja on December 31, 2012, 03:48:06 pm

Quote from: Japa on December 31, 2012, 12:54:41 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on December 31, 2012, 12:48:46 pm

I imagine that the theory is that goblins will eventually need to eat, but Toady will first have to code it so that they can raid towns and villages for prisoners and use them as a food source.

Toady specifically stated more than once that they're not intended to ever need to eat.

one area i intend to diverge from vanilla.

perhaps, being magical minor demons, gobboos feed of of emotion?  it would explain much.

Except how to use emotion as a food source. I doubt that people who are disatisfied with the current idea would be cool with emotion as a food.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on January 01, 2013, 02:57:26 am

Goblin description says they are "A medium-sized humanoid driven to cruelty by its evil nature." Thus we can safely say goblins enjoy inflicting pain,agony,etc on their enemies.We can also gather goblins are smart, they can built towers of slade and forge weapons, they also have a language unlike kobolds. Wouldn't it come to mind even if they ARE evil creatures that they would not band together because a group can over power others(birds of a feather flock together)? Another thought to this argument would be if they are driven to violence would it not be a pack mentality where the strongest becomes the leader? A demon would certainly be able to kill many goblins(aside from the lucky ones) thus becoming "pack leader", the alpha goblin as it were.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on January 01, 2013, 04:30:39 am

Quote from: darklord92 on January 01, 2013, 02:57:26 am

Goblin description says they are "A medium-sized humanoid driven to cruelty by its evil nature." Thus we can safely say goblins enjoy inflicting pain,agony,etc on their enemies.We can also gather goblins are smart, they can built towers of slade and forge weapons, they also have a language unlike kobolds. Wouldn't it come to mind even if they ARE evil creatures that they would not band together because a group can over power others(birds of a feather flock together)? Another thought to this argument would be if they are driven to violence would it not be a pack mentality where the strongest becomes the leader? A demon would certainly be able to kill many goblins(aside from the lucky ones) thus becoming "pack leader", the alpha goblin as it were.

But this contradicts there lore, toady himself has stated that goblins don't like other goblins, so why would they band together with other goblins they don't like for purposes other then the occasional mating act?  People form societies in fear of hunger, thirst, and ultimately death, but a goblin has no need to worry about any of these things(unless he gets murdered, in which he'll most likely have a higher life expectancy by not being in a goblin settlement ).
 
 They should should all  just be acting like  night trolls and kidnap and kill people without  a civ backing them up. A sentient creature truly evil wouldn't bother wasting it's unending life to feed the evil agenda of others, but instead go with his own agenda. They should be total anarchist ,because they don't really need a civ to live. 

  If I was a creature who didn't need to eat , drink, and could live forever I wouldn't bother getting a getting an occupation and contribute to the community.  In fact if I may be so bold I would recede from society and I would just walk the earth and do "WHAT I WANT, WHEN I WANT, AND HOW I WANT IT". Big red would not be enough to deter me from going out on my own, he could be satan himself and I'd still give him the green middle finger. I mean what can he do to me that won't happen if I stay anyway? He's got nothing to threaten me with because I'll be killed if I stay anyway, either by the hands of another goblin or on a suicide siege on Uristmctraplover's fortress. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 01, 2013, 05:28:04 am

Not liking something does not stop people from doing it in order to achieve a goal. Goblins may be like people in that respect. You're simplifying goblins to make an argument against their lack of eating requirement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on January 01, 2013, 05:29:27 am

Re snpaa... I think you're missing the 'evil nature' part.  Yes goblins can be independent but they like doing bad things, so there's a large incentive to band together under a demon or similar such entity to maximise the one thing they do need; death and chaos.  As was posted before, there is some exposition of goblins in Threetoe's stories, where you get the impression that gobbos are in equal measure mean and unempathetic because they have no afterlife, thus no future.

And happy new year everyone!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on January 01, 2013, 07:54:01 am

Quote from: Ribs on December 31, 2012, 03:56:21 pm

Quote from: Kromgar on December 31, 2012, 02:41:48 pm

Dear Toady:
When the War Arc finally begins are there plans to allow us to control a militia commander sent on the siege of the hamlet like an adventurer?
Also when shall you fix the extremely slow training of warriors? The only efficient way to train a squad of 7 or more dwarves is to throw them in a danger room which is an extremely broken way of training anyway.

The slow training does kind of make sense, if you think about it. It would take a good decade or two of intense training for a normal person to "master" a weapon or fighting style. If anything, dwarves get experience too fast for most things. Achieving legendary status at any skill should be rare. So maybe some of it is intentional? You shouldn't expect to have a legion of +5 legendary axedwarves after a few seasons of normal training.

I think that the problem with training is that it takes to much time to train a recluit into
a decent warrior(say, caravan guard level). While legendary warriors should need extensive training and combat experience, a year of
training should be able to give you a competent soldier, and now it can't without micromanagement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on January 01, 2013, 08:37:22 am

Quote from: Broken on January 01, 2013, 07:54:01 am

Quote from: Ribs on December 31, 2012, 03:56:21 pm

Quote from: Kromgar on December 31, 2012, 02:41:48 pm

Dear Toady:
When the War Arc finally begins are there plans to allow us to control a militia commander sent on the siege of the hamlet like an adventurer?
Also when shall you fix the extremely slow training of warriors? The only efficient way to train a squad of 7 or more dwarves is to throw them in a danger room which is an extremely broken way of training anyway.

The slow training does kind of make sense, if you think about it. It would take a good decade or two of intense training for a normal person to "master" a weapon or fighting style. If anything, dwarves get experience too fast for most things. Achieving legendary status at any skill should be rare. So maybe some of it is intentional? You shouldn't expect to have a legion of +5 legendary axedwarves after a few seasons of normal training.

I think that the problem with training is that it takes to much time to train a recluit into
a decent warrior(say, caravan guard level). While legendary warriors should need extensive training and combat experience, a year of
training should be able to give you a competent soldier, and now it can't without micromanagement.

The big problem with training is that dwarves don't spar too often, and teacher/student skills are a little weird right now. But even with that, I can get my dwarves to being "adequate" macemen in a year or two, and I don't think that's too imbalanced. It could go faster, but what bothers me about skills in general is that dwarves seem to evolve them exponentially in a lot of cases.

For instance, a mason will go from dabbing to adequate more slowly than from adequate to professional, becase the better he is at making stone doors the faster he makes them and therefore the faster he gains that skill when he's constantly working. The fact that doesn't happen with combat skills in regular training actually makes them more reasonable than other skills in my opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uronym on January 01, 2013, 09:45:36 am

snpaa: I too find it very displeasing that goblins don't eat or drink. Why stay together, though? They have a little bit of reason to tolerate each other. Imagine if a single goblin attacked your fortress; easily dispatched, even by a mob of untrained civilian dwarves. But an ambush/siege with many goblins is much more difficult to eliminate.

Because they like to cause chaos and misery, they should group together because it lets them produce more chaos and misery in proportion to the number of goblins, and they can all share the chaos and misery with each other.

On another note, the game never says that they don't like inflicting pain and misery upon themselves... in which case, banding together in the miserable goblin settlements would make sense, basically a pain/misery factory.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HySh777 on January 01, 2013, 11:49:05 am

A question that I had, but I don't know if it's been answered/brought up or not:

With the introduction of climbing, will we ever see climbing large creatures in the future? For instance Bronze Colossi/Rocs/Dragons/Hydras? Obviously that's a big undertaking, I'm just wondering if anything like that is planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 01, 2013, 01:45:40 pm

Quote from: HySh777 on January 01, 2013, 11:49:05 am

A question that I had, but I don't know if it's been answered/brought up or not:

With the introduction of climbing, will we ever see climbing large creatures in the future? For instance Bronze Colossi/Rocs/Dragons/Hydras? Obviously that's a big undertaking, I'm just wondering if anything like that is planned.

Toady does talk about this in a Talk. And the answer is yes. Eventually, there will be places you can't reach without climbing or a reaction moment. (IE, You'll need to climb a dragon to reach its head or get a counter attack in when the dragon tries and bites you.)

I can't remember exactly where this is talked about though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on January 01, 2013, 02:57:52 pm

Quote from: DG on January 01, 2013, 05:28:04 am

Not liking something does not stop people from doing it in order to achieve a goal. Goblins may be like people in that respect. You're simplifying goblins to make an argument against their lack of eating requirement.

Im simplifying it a bit because there hereditary attributes and general temperament all point to a individual mentality instead of a pack mentality.    You can still be evil, but you don't need to be a pawn of someone else.

Quote from: hermes on January 01, 2013, 05:29:27 am

Re snpaa... I think you're missing the 'evil nature' part.  Yes goblins can be independent but they like doing bad things, so there's a large incentive to band together under a demon or similar such entity to maximise the one thing they do need; death and chaos.  As was posted before, there is some exposition of goblins in Threetoe's stories, where you get the impression that gobbos are in equal measure mean and unempathetic because they have no afterlife, thus no future.

There evil nature seems like a cop out reason, since there are plenty of creatures in the game that are evil that don't form huge civilizations.  I could see a goblin banding together with others goblins , like for mating, family, or friends and cause panic and dismay with them  but not on a large scale like they are now, because forming a civilizations just doesn't benefit them in the long run.

Also If they have no afterlife why waste this life, doing the bidding of some random demon or humanoid? I think that would motivate them to leave the settlement as well.

Quote from: Uronym on January 01, 2013, 09:45:36 am

snpaa: I too find it very displeasing that goblins don't eat or drink. Why stay together, though? They have a little bit of reason to tolerate each other. Imagine if a single goblin attacked your fortress; easily dispatched, even by a mob of untrained civilian dwarves. But an ambush/siege with many goblins is much more difficult to eliminate.

Because they like to cause chaos and misery, they should group together because it lets them produce more chaos and misery in proportion to the number of goblins, and they can all share the chaos and misery with each other.

On another note, the game never says that they don't like inflicting pain and misery upon themselves... in which case, banding together in the miserable goblin settlements would make sense, basically a pain/misery factory.

That's a good point but I think they would change there whole way of attacking, instead of a suicidal 1 goblin attack  on a nearly impenetrable fortress they would act more like a glorified boogeyman and kill you while lost and bewildered in a forest.

As I said in an earlier reply I think some would band together (because otherwise how would they keep the species going), but just not on a large scale . Also it doesn't necessarily have to be goblins they team up with, it could be any sort of like minded evil creature out there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 01, 2013, 04:45:59 pm

Happy New Year, Bay 12!

Disturbing lack of an end-of-month or end-of-year report.

Goblins don't eat, but players may mod in races which both need to eat and use dark fortresses. How will their worldgen and non-player-controlled farming work in that case?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 01, 2013, 05:26:26 pm

Quote from: Uronym on January 01, 2013, 09:45:36 am

snpaa: I too find it very displeasing that goblins don't eat or drink. Why stay together, though? They have a little bit of reason to tolerate each other. Imagine if a single goblin attacked your fortress; easily dispatched, even by a mob of untrained civilian dwarves. But an ambush/siege with many goblins is much more difficult to eliminate.

Because they like to cause chaos and misery, they should group together because it lets them produce more chaos and misery in proportion to the number of goblins, and they can all share the chaos and misery with each other.

On another note, the game never says that they don't like inflicting pain and misery upon themselves... in which case, banding together in the miserable goblin settlements would make sense, basically a pain/misery factory.

I guess once the kidnapped children grow up and become generals/warlords among the goblins, they instill some more concrete order.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 01, 2013, 06:13:55 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 01, 2013, 04:45:59 pm

Goblins don't eat, but players may mod in races which both need to eat and use dark fortresses. How will their worldgen and non-player-controlled farming work in that case?

Curious to this as well. Although the same could be asked bout captured children. Those surely need to eat...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 01, 2013, 11:54:19 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 01, 2013, 04:45:59 pm

Disturbing lack of an end-of-month or end-of-year report.

Check again. Toady's not instant you know, he's subject to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 02, 2013, 12:02:36 am

Also, takes him a bit to type it up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 02, 2013, 09:05:36 am

As there are he's and she's, are goblins infertile or are  (visible)goblin children? Reading through the old dev page, reference was made to goblin and troll children playing together.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 02, 2013, 01:16:22 pm

Quote from: Novel on January 02, 2013, 09:05:36 am

As there are he's and she's, are goblins infertile or are  (visible)goblin children? Reading through the old dev page, reference was made to goblin and troll children playing together.

Goblins have children all the time. Just check the legends.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 02, 2013, 03:44:38 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on January 01, 2013, 11:54:19 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 01, 2013, 04:45:59 pm

Disturbing lack of an end-of-month or end-of-year report.

Check again. Toady's not instant you know, he's subject to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

Its come up now. Apparently the end-of-year reports take a while to write up compared to the end-of-month reports.

I'm not going to suggest progress has happened yet, but how will succession work when the position holder dies leaving no heirs? Will the Outpost Liason come to ask us to select a new Baron or will a random dwarf be elevated to a position?

Are you planning to make major changes to the style of the HFS sometime in the future? For example, exceptionally high levels of Fun within gigantic mountain spoiler deposits?

Yes, goblins reproduce. I believe there was some bug or cap with a limit on the number of children immortal beings could produce in their lifetime, mostly mentioned regarding elves, who are also immortal.

Toady said goblins won't automatically learn to farm to feed other species, but in gameplay they can build farms and grow food on them once they obtain seeds. I think there should really be a good fix for this before the upcoming release, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 03, 2013, 09:42:54 am

I did say "visible". Will we see goblin children in play?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 03, 2013, 12:19:57 pm

Quote from: Novel on January 03, 2013, 09:42:54 am

I did say "visible". Will we see goblin children in play?

Yes. Once goblin sites are back for us, we will see goblin children there again, too. Most likely you'd be able to find goblin children already in a few human towns, if you're patient enough to search for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on January 03, 2013, 02:29:13 pm

Some questions regarding the new movement/action mechanics:
 You've mentioned that we'll now have a visual indication for the direction a creature is facing. What will it look like? My only reference to this type of mechanic in a game like Dwarf Fortress is in Unreal World, where you have a little arrow on the corner of every character's sprite to indicate direction. But since DF is a little more graphically impaired I wonder how will you do it instead. 

Another thing maybe someone could tell me: will we be able to move backwards, or diagonally/sideways facing foward?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on January 03, 2013, 03:29:31 pm

We will be getting an idication of a creature's arc of vision as well as locus of hearing (details TBA) with the changes in sneaking.  Assuming that a creature has eyes on the front of its head, and further assuming that said head is generally facing the front of its body, this should be a fairly accurate indicator.

How this will play out in Fort mode is yet to be seen.  We have as yet to have been given strong indication of these features making it into Fort mode.

It would appear that Reaction Moments in the Combat/Speed split will involve various types of dodges and side-steps, of which oblique movements you've described could well fall part to.  Whether you'll be able to Moon Walk across a Haunted Glacier remains to be seen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 03, 2013, 03:58:43 pm

It is wrong that I always generate worlds with:
- No demons or Hell.
- Mod goblins to eat and drink and sleep.
- Remove the NO_EAT, NO_SLEEP and others such those from almost all creatures.
- Remove creatures as bronze colossus, fire creatures, magma creatures, the elemental mans (mud, blood and such).
- I allow a single type of vampire and from 1 to 5 types of were beasts because they are cool. I also leave zombies alone because they are cool and I frankly don't know hot to mod them (but I'm trying to find a way to stop single organs as skin or hair from reanimating, I would like Romero kind of zombies more).
- I have been toying with the mod that add firearms because firearms are really dwarfy.

And then play it? I do it because:
- The no daemons worlds are supposed to be faster and less demanding on the PC once a can of HFS has been open.
- I greatly dislike high fantasy such demons and creatures that violate certain physical laws.
- I also don't make use of dwarf atom smashers or perpetual movement machinery. In other worlds I like fantasy worlds with as little magic as possible (if not at all).

However:
- So far, I played under such conditions and found the goblins stay around quite a bit even with the no_eat tag removed. In fact I have never see them go extinct on any of the worlds I made so far. As for the gameplay I still receive sieges from goblins and plenty of wild life both above and under ground.

On a side note I dislike using traps beyond strictly hunting ends, all the enemies shall die by crossbow, hammer and axe!

Sometimes I fell like the worst dwarf player ever! :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on January 03, 2013, 04:08:39 pm

Yeah, I guess a vision "mode" would be a reasonable way of going about it. But that one footprint picture really got my attention. I wonder if more "graphical" interfaces will be added sooner than we thought.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 03, 2013, 11:44:47 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 03, 2013, 03:58:43 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is wrong that I always generate worlds with:
- No demons or Hell.
- Mod goblins to eat and drink and sleep.
- Remove the NO_EAT, NO_SLEEP and others such those from almost all creatures.
- Remove creatures as bronze colossus, fire creatures, magma creatures, the elemental mans (mud, blood and such).
- I allow a single type of vampire and from 1 to 5 types of were beasts because they are cool. I also leave zombies alone because they are cool and I frankly don't know hot to mod them (but I'm trying to find a way to stop single organs as skin or hair from reanimating, I would like Romero kind of zombies more).
- I have been toying with the mod that add firearms because firearms are really dwarfy.

And then play it? I do it because:
- The no daemons worlds are supposed to be faster and less demanding on the PC once a can of HFS has been open.
- I greatly dislike high fantasy such demons and creatures that violate certain physical laws.
- I also don't make use of dwarf atom smashers or perpetual movement machinery. In other worlds I like fantasy worlds with as little magic as possible (if not at all).

However:
- So far, I played under such conditions and found the goblins stay around quite a bit even with the no_eat tag removed. In fact I have never see them go extinct on any of the worlds I made so far. As for the gameplay I still receive sieges from goblins and plenty of wild life both above and under ground.

On a side note I dislike using traps beyond strictly hunting ends, all the enemies shall die by crossbow, hammer and axe!

Sometimes I fell like the worst dwarf player ever!

This could probably do with its own thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:07:37 am

in regards to goblins not eating or drinking. i thought the whole reason for them kidnapping children and enslaving people was to put them to work in the fields to grow food and do other work for them. i think this would make more sense and fit them better than simply being ''magical'' and not needing to eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on January 04, 2013, 12:12:45 am

Actually, it's been written that they kidnap children because they want to raise a leader that's not goblin or demon. They hate the demons, and goblins don't have any leadership ability.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 04, 2013, 01:06:10 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

The problem is goblins aren't as scary if they have to be practical about food. They'd just be Machiavellian or sociopathic humans, instead of torment loving baby-snatchers, because the struggle to survive would undermine their current behavior.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 04, 2013, 03:26:18 am

Quote from: King Mir on January 04, 2013, 01:06:10 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

The problem is goblins aren't as scary if they have to be practical about food. They'd just be Machiavellian or sociopathic humans, instead of torment loving baby-snatchers, because the struggle to survive would undermine their current behavior.

Mordor goblins had huge farms and developped agriculture. It did not stop them from being scarry and dangerous. Being practical about food means having industry. And industry in hands to imortal sociopaths is scarrry as hell.

If we take away food, we also take away reason to form civilization. Besides, struggle to survive is too grand term - i have imagined goblins having efficient fungi production pits where they get their day-to-day bland food.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on January 04, 2013, 03:50:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Members of a new pair don't move to each other's sites yet, though. I'm going to handle that with entity position succession, which is next, so we should see various travellers on occasion when that is done.

I'm assuming you mean people moving to a different location when married. How are you planning to do it? Are we going to see different patrilineal, matrilineal, bileneal, and manyotherlineal descents between cultures? Or is it going to be one system for everyone? That could also potentially lead to doing extended families, so are extended families in your plans for near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:53:39 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

I believe I read somewhere that the only reason goblins don't eat is because toady and threetoe want all goblins to die from being killed. I guess a possible way to have it all blend is if the goblins don't die from not eating or drinking but instead suffer drastic penalties such as being extremely weak,skinny, malnourished, and  anemic. Thus the goblin would stand no chance killing even an average civilian dwarf after starving itself for 10  months. If they're reasonably punished for not eating/drinking then I could easily accept a goblin's settlement/civilization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 04, 2013, 07:32:00 am

Quote from: Japa on January 04, 2013, 12:12:45 am

Actually, it's been written that they kidnap children because they want to raise a leader that's not goblin or demon. They hate the demons, and goblins don't have any leadership ability.

That should be developed like hell. After all, why or should the demons put up with it? I doubt they agree, either. And i imagine the trials of Hercules look tame compared to what the goblins will do to bring them on a level playing field with the demons and other goblin leaders. Finally, it should also open up fresh negotiation options, both in revealing why, and once someone else finally get's in charge.

Also, i doubt that there is no goblin leadership material. After all, who's currently doing the job? I'd rather not pigeonhole one of the main races, considering they seem capable of everything else, and it would be extremely interesting to see how the demons deal with upstart goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 04, 2013, 11:47:46 am

When you meet travelers on the road, will they tell you why they are there? It's one thing to bump into random people in the woods, it's another for them to be all "I'm journeying to Bedscaled to be with my lover!" Especially as development goes on, and people travel between sites for more than two reasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AfterShave on January 04, 2013, 12:20:51 pm

If you place your fortress on a busy road. Will the travellers pass through your site in play? If so, could you play as a "bandit camp" waylaying them?
I would very much like to be the feared bandits of the Pass of Despair in some mountain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 04, 2013, 12:41:02 pm

Will travelers detour along roads and through sites in order to avoid wilderness? Will they try to stay the night in sites, or will they camp in the woods and get eaten by bogeymen?

I know inns are certainly out for this release, but I'm wondering if people traveling for peaceful purposes on the map will plan their journeys differently than armies/bandits/dragons plan theirs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 03:31:44 pm

Quote from: DG on January 03, 2013, 11:44:47 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 03, 2013, 03:58:43 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is wrong that I always generate worlds with:
- No demons or Hell.
- Mod goblins to eat and drink and sleep.
- Remove the NO_EAT, NO_SLEEP and others such those from almost all creatures.
- Remove creatures as bronze colossus, fire creatures, magma creatures, the elemental mans (mud, blood and such).
- I allow a single type of vampire and from 1 to 5 types of were beasts because they are cool. I also leave zombies alone because they are cool and I frankly don't know hot to mod them (but I'm trying to find a way to stop single organs as skin or hair from reanimating, I would like Romero kind of zombies more).
- I have been toying with the mod that add firearms because firearms are really dwarfy.

And then play it? I do it because:
- The no daemons worlds are supposed to be faster and less demanding on the PC once a can of HFS has been open.
- I greatly dislike high fantasy such demons and creatures that violate certain physical laws.
- I also don't make use of dwarf atom smashers or perpetual movement machinery. In other worlds I like fantasy worlds with as little magic as possible (if not at all).

However:
- So far, I played under such conditions and found the goblins stay around quite a bit even with the no_eat tag removed. In fact I have never see them go extinct on any of the worlds I made so far. As for the gameplay I still receive sieges from goblins and plenty of wild life both above and under ground.

On a side note I dislike using traps beyond strictly hunting ends, all the enemies shall die by crossbow, hammer and axe!

Sometimes I fell like the worst dwarf player ever!

This could probably do with its own thread.

I actually started commenting about the goblings not eating and ended up forgetting to make the question I was going to make. :(

- I always wondered if you ever thought of implementing a "research system", where some things became available as certain dates or entities invent/discover/develop them?
- It would be possible to make motorized minecarts to haul/push other carts as opposed to having motorized tracks? You thought of that or think to implement it at some point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 04, 2013, 04:16:22 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 03:31:44 pm

Quote from: DG on January 03, 2013, 11:44:47 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 03, 2013, 03:58:43 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is wrong that I always generate worlds with:
- No demons or Hell.
- Mod goblins to eat and drink and sleep.
- Remove the NO_EAT, NO_SLEEP and others such those from almost all creatures.
- Remove creatures as bronze colossus, fire creatures, magma creatures, the elemental mans (mud, blood and such).
- I allow a single type of vampire and from 1 to 5 types of were beasts because they are cool. I also leave zombies alone because they are cool and I frankly don't know hot to mod them (but I'm trying to find a way to stop single organs as skin or hair from reanimating, I would like Romero kind of zombies more).
- I have been toying with the mod that add firearms because firearms are really dwarfy.

And then play it? I do it because:
- The no daemons worlds are supposed to be faster and less demanding on the PC once a can of HFS has been open.
- I greatly dislike high fantasy such demons and creatures that violate certain physical laws.
- I also don't make use of dwarf atom smashers or perpetual movement machinery. In other worlds I like fantasy worlds with as little magic as possible (if not at all).

However:
- So far, I played under such conditions and found the goblins stay around quite a bit even with the no_eat tag removed. In fact I have never see them go extinct on any of the worlds I made so far. As for the gameplay I still receive sieges from goblins and plenty of wild life both above and under ground.

On a side note I dislike using traps beyond strictly hunting ends, all the enemies shall die by crossbow, hammer and axe!

Sometimes I fell like the worst dwarf player ever!

This could probably do with its own thread.

I actually started commenting about the goblings not eating and ended up forgetting to make the question I was going to make. :(

- I always wondered if you ever thought of implementing a "research system", where some things became available as certain dates or entities invent/discover/develop them?
- It would be possible to make motorized minecarts to haul/push other carts as opposed to having motorized tracks? You thought of that or think to implement it at some point?

1. No.
2. Can't you already do that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 04:30:22 pm

1. Okay... however I would like to get Toady on the line for that one. I suppose you answer is right though.
2. I don't think so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on January 04, 2013, 04:42:37 pm

Quote from: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:53:39 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

I believe I read somewhere that the only reason goblins don't eat is because toady and threetoe want all goblins to die from being killed. I guess a possible way to have it all blend is if the goblins don't die from not eating or drinking but instead suffer drastic penalties such as being extremely weak,skinny, malnourished, and  anemic. Thus the goblin would stand no chance killing even an average civilian dwarf after starving itself for 10  months. If they're reasonably punished for not eating/drinking then I could easily accept a goblin's settlement/civilization.

No. Toady has explicitly stated that goblins will never need to eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 04, 2013, 06:00:45 pm

Technological advancement has come up before, and Toady isn't generally opposed to it. The game already has notions of civ knowledge for animal taming and domestication, and according to the raws, individuals will eventually be able to research (some of) the secrets of life and death without divine aid. It is a rather contentious topic among the fanbase though - many people are opposed to "by date A invent X" and tech trees, and Toady himself has pretty much stated that tech progression shouldn't be static, or even a given - "Sometimes you should have an end of the world event rather than tech progression to a mundane age."

Spoiler: A few links (click to show/hide)

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg994813#msg994813

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg470592#msg470592

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1776138#msg1776138

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 06:05:49 pm

Awesome, I always thought that date x, invent y or "tech trees" are too rigid and false.

I made this suggestion for total war games for example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Implement the techs on a more organic and realistic way, do away the rigid and predictable boring tech tree: I tend to feel tech development in the way it is now, using "trees", is to rigid and false. If it depended upon my choice, the tech tree and the X amount of turns to develop X tech will be gone forever, for all games. I think that as in real life, the "tech tree" should be more organic, along the lines of what you do on regular basis. You siege a lot? You get better at it, by let's say accumulating points after each siege (successful or not), once a certain amount of points are reached you get a upgrade regarding siege warfare. And so on. On the other hand building a lot of ports for example could increase your naval tech, as well as naval battles and do trade by sea.

Other way of acquiring tech would be by trade. But not in screen trade of tech. That was never part of a real diplomacy reunion, but by civil commerce. You know those guys over there have really nice agricultural tools, if you open trading with them then your people will eventually buy those tools and eventually start to copy them and produce them by their own.

And finally by conquest, if you conquer X city or nation you can get some or all the techs that this culture had and you don't (that's how Romans roll anyway). Other more specific "techs" like the Marian Reform could be combination of your actions and dates or places on the map. An example as Rome could be that you should get the gladius after fighting against Iberian troops (or anyone that have that sword) for the first time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 04, 2013, 06:17:51 pm

How about skilled people having a chance for making a discovery every, say, ten years? Then places with a certain specialization will automatically advance quicker in that field than others.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:24:21 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on January 04, 2013, 04:42:37 pm

Quote from: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:53:39 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

I believe I read somewhere that the only reason goblins don't eat is because toady and threetoe want all goblins to die from being killed. I guess a possible way to have it all blend is if the goblins don't die from not eating or drinking but instead suffer drastic penalties such as being extremely weak,skinny, malnourished, and  anemic. Thus the goblin would stand no chance killing even an average civilian dwarf after starving itself for 10  months. If they're reasonably punished for not eating/drinking then I could easily accept a goblin's settlement/civilization.

No. Toady has explicitly stated that goblins will never need to eat.

That's what im getting  to, they still wouldn't need to eat to live but a penalty for that is not being able to be some buff, tough, super endurance having soldier. 

Also toady has stated goblins could still probably eat stuff but they would not  have to eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 04, 2013, 06:34:25 pm

There probably shouldn't be a set system of dates for technology advances, because people will be forced to run their worldgen for long periods of time, although if there is a toggle for choosing between methods of technology advancement it would be acceptable.

When magic goes into the game, you may well get a system for actively researching magic within the game. Its possible to do this without a tech tree but the more abstract the thing becomes, the harder it can get to implement. Its easy to have fireball research as a tech tree, but if you want to make magical research similar to making a specific spell (interaction) in the raws there should be a good procedure for getting there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 06:34:56 pm

Quote from: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:24:21 pm

Quote from: Lord Shonus on January 04, 2013, 04:42:37 pm

Quote from: snpaa on January 04, 2013, 06:53:39 am

Quote from: Vlad on January 04, 2013, 12:22:55 am

ah i see, but theres gotta be a way to have goblins eat that fits with toady's vision of them. raiding villages and caravans is a way but wouldnt be able to sustain a whole civ. using captured enemies as slaves could work too or using less intelligent creatures like trolls, which are already used for their fur. goblins could also be made to eat sentients if they dont already, i could see goblins making dwarf soup after a sucessful siege.

I believe I read somewhere that the only reason goblins don't eat is because toady and threetoe want all goblins to die from being killed. I guess a possible way to have it all blend is if the goblins don't die from not eating or drinking but instead suffer drastic penalties such as being extremely weak,skinny, malnourished, and  anemic. Thus the goblin would stand no chance killing even an average civilian dwarf after starving itself for 10  months. If they're reasonably punished for not eating/drinking then I could easily accept a goblin's settlement/civilization.

No. Toady has explicitly stated that goblins will never need to eat.

That's what im getting  to, they still wouldn't need to eat to live but a penalty for that is not being able to be some buff, tough, super endurance having soldier. 

Also toady has stated goblins could still probably eat stuff but they would not  have to eat.

Anyway they do eat on my games and they seem to hold together just a fine as if they don't. I don't like them not eating either, but that's something easily changeable anyway.

About the tech thing, yeah, the x date then y invent is too rigid but also the simplest way, which is why probably it won't fit on this awesome game anyway. I wondered about this because now that the world is moving forwards along with your fortress it would be interesting to see some tech/magic advance be it on your own fortress or getting it by trade/siege, even if it's something slow.

I agree that it would be more spectacular if the successful civs are the ones that bring forward the tech advancements, specially dwarf. I imagine some dwarf inventing firearms (and getting it's name as a historical figure forever, maybe even a guild of inventors could be conceived) and then this knowledge is spread to all it's civilization, then to friendly dwarven civs, and then after many years and if it's allowed to other trading partners of other species (I see humans accepting them and evels getting shot in the rear) and then finally even getting stolen and reproduced by some of the smarter goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 04, 2013, 08:26:54 pm

Who cares what they do in other games?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 04, 2013, 08:46:34 pm

By my games I meant my own raws of DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 05, 2013, 09:18:54 am

I noticed in the latest answers there were lots of mentions about loyalty


Does this mean that loyalty to a civilization or other faction will be tracked like belief in a diety?

I can see a system like that forming civil war. Your site has lots of group and barony loyalty but civ loyalty across the group is low, and the off-site baron issues a decree ignoring a monarch's mandate, and suddenly civil war!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 05, 2013, 02:19:16 pm

I wonder if, when random loyalty simulation gets advanced enough, we'll get dwarf revolutions against nobles who set draconian mandates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WaffleEggnog on January 05, 2013, 04:22:34 pm

I have a question

Wil you be able to embark underground? As in, not like in the middle of nothing, but maybe creating a Dwarvern settlment in trading tunnels between Dwarf sites, the same way we can embark on roads in the current build?

Another question, will we see caravans activly traveling on roads/tunnels, so we can trade and raid them? And will caravans actuly take your items back to the mountainhomes? Because in the current version, the items in caravans just vanish when they leave the map.

And another question that I just came up with, will you be able to play as Hill/Deep/Whateverthehyell Dwarves and as them embark in caverns or some other area underground?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 05, 2013, 07:21:19 pm

All of that sounds reasonable. Toady has said at least in the upcoming release you won't be able to embark as Hill or Deep dwarves or reclaim those sites, but it sounds to me like its reasonable to expect in the future.

I'd expect underground embarks to arrive sometime after the next release, or in the next release is Toady puts it in for the hell of it, and you'd start out either in a tunnel or in the cavern layer.

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on January 05, 2013, 04:22:34 pm

creating a Dwarvern settlment in trading tunnels between Dwarf sites, the same way we can embark on roads in the current build?

There's actually is difference between embarking on roads and embarking in tunnels. Roads are worldgen constructions, and not sites. The road is part of the landscape and you can embark on it if you can embark on the region tile. The idea with tunnels is one should only be able to embark on them if they are connected to your civilisation's settlements, or if they are open to the caverns.

...

Are the tunnels between settlements going to be completely enclosed or can they be open to the caverns?

Is this upcoming release going to feature any walls as world constructions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 05, 2013, 07:28:24 pm

I'm pleased to report that it will feature walls. Indeed, you'll be pleased to learn that there have been walls since the very beginning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 05, 2013, 08:56:54 pm

I think he's asking about world construction walls, as implied by current civ raws, probably something like Great Walls of Slotted Kingdom

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 05, 2013, 09:00:10 pm

With people moving from site to site, and actually have them travelling, does this mean that if we embark our fort on a road, we might see people from one city travelling to another city, and possibly stop them?

Will this be similar to how adventurers appear when taverns are introduced?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 05, 2013, 09:06:14 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on January 05, 2013, 09:00:10 pm

With people moving from site to site, and actually have them travelling, does this mean that if we embark our fort on a road, we might see people from one city travelling to another city, and possibly stop them?

Will this be similar to how adventurers appear when taverns are introduced?

I think it'll stay abstract for this release - battles and other such stuff won't happen in real-time either, AFAIK.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 05, 2013, 09:08:31 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on January 05, 2013, 09:06:14 pm

I think it'll stay abstract for this release - battles and other such stuff won't happen in real-time either, AFAIK.

Dang it, you could have so much fun with holding immigrants hostage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2013, 09:31:43 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 05, 2013, 08:56:54 pm

I think he's asking about world construction walls, as implied by current civ raws, probably something like Great Walls of Slotted Kingdom

This is exactly what I meant. You get 10 dwarf points.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 06, 2013, 09:48:57 am

Quote from: WaffleEggnog on January 05, 2013, 04:22:34 pm

I have a question

Wil you be able to embark underground? As in, not like in the middle of nothing, but maybe creating a Dwarvern settlment in trading tunnels between Dwarf sites, the same way we can embark on roads in the current build?

Not for this release. But I dont think its been explictly stated as a 'Never Going to Happen' thing.

Quote

Another question, will we see caravans activly traveling on roads/tunnels, so we can trade and raid them? And will caravans actuly take your items back to the mountainhomes? Because in the current version, the items in caravans just vanish when they leave the map.

Not for this release. But ToadyOne has spoken about being more aware of the world around you in Fort Mode. But there hasnt been to much detail in this area, and what has been said has related to Armies roaming off map that you can control.

As far as Traded Items moving around the world. This happens in World Gen currently. So presumably, this will happen in Play, eventually.

Quote

And another question that I just came up with, will you be able to play as Hill/Deep/Whateverthehyell Dwarves and as them embark in caverns or some other area underground?[/color]

I bet the answer, from the almighty Toad is: "That sounds like it'll be fun. But there no timeline." ~~ Unless you mean to take over an NPC Fort? I think the answer to that is no, due to those sites being so large that it cant be render for player control.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 06, 2013, 10:27:28 am

Is there a plan to change the way labor assignment works in the near-or midterm future? DFHack has incorporated a Dwarf Therapist-like feature in a very in-style way, so it should not be too difficult to get it to look good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 06, 2013, 11:15:45 am

Quote from: Helgoland on January 06, 2013, 10:27:28 am

Is there a plan to change the way labor assignment works in the near-or midterm future? DFHack has incorporated a Dwarf Therapist-like feature in a very in-style way, so it should not be too difficult to get it to look good.

Yes, interface will be revamped as soon as a desirable amount of core items are into the release, so that Toady doesn't have to change stuff from version to version just because he implemented a few things that substantially change the way we command and suggest our dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Liamar on January 06, 2013, 05:41:38 pm

Toady, are you planing on giving the players more options to customise their play? In particular, setting a limit to a maximum immigrant wave size, the amount of wealth required to lure new immigrants and making population limit more 'final', not allowing the amount of dwarfes to exeed it?

I've set my population size to 31, and I'm already stuck with 60+ dwarves with babies still sprouting. Hopefully no more immigrants. :/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on January 06, 2013, 06:51:52 pm

Quote from: Liamar on January 06, 2013, 05:41:38 pm

Toady, are you planing on giving the players more options to customise their play? In particular, setting a limit to a maximum immigrant wave size, the amount of wealth required to lure new immigrants and making population limit more 'final', not allowing the amount of dwarfes to exeed it?

I've set my population size to 31, and I'm already stuck with 60+ dwarves with babies still sprouting. Hopefully no more immigrants. :/

I think it's going to be deeper than just being able to put a hard limit to the amount of dwarves you can get, which is very artificial. Toady mentioned that  deep sites and the addition of the much expected hilldwarves are going to serve as a way of "customizing" how many dwarves you'll be wanting in your fort by the way of getting the excess population to settle outside of your fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on January 06, 2013, 11:09:31 pm

They are dwraves! Naturally we want Bookkeepers and accounts in every Hill-dwarf settlement! Someone has to do the taxes and trades!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 06, 2013, 11:27:43 pm

And more importantly, keep track of the booze!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on January 07, 2013, 01:39:21 am

Wow. Sound like this release is setting the ground work for thinks like was of succession and other interesting things to come. Yay!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 07, 2013, 03:08:00 am

Yea. It seems like we're really getting close to see if Dwarf Fortress is actually viable, or have been a fantastic experiment for the last several years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on January 07, 2013, 06:26:55 am

So if there are multiple people vying for power, will each one have an influence with parts of their population? Will the religious sects or other groups eventually start trying to take power? It'd be cool to see a Theocracy or something sprout up.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 07, 2013, 07:52:00 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on January 07, 2013, 06:26:55 am

So if there are multiple people vying for power, will each one have an influence with parts of their population? Will the religious sects or other groups eventually start trying to take power? It'd be cool to see a Theocracy or something sprout up.   

We already have vampire cultists, so it's probably not an unreasonable thing to expect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on January 07, 2013, 11:11:27 am

I understand in later updates the true succession system will be fleshed out and extensive, but...

With the upcoming update, say three Barons/Counts/Dudes are vying for power, and in adventure mode I Butcher two "Convince them to revoke their claims" via my axe, will the 3rd account for this and take power? Or will the dead leaders' sons/daughters/Wives/demon-spawn take over the claims and carry them on?
I’m asking how it will be for this coming update by the way, not in the "Nobles update". I'm just being nosey really :)
Thanks, great game and love it to little wet meaty chunks bits :D

**Edit** Thanks Mr.Wiggles :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 07, 2013, 11:38:23 am

Quote from: Eggman360 on January 07, 2013, 11:11:27 am

I understand in later updates the true succession system will be fleshed out and extensive, but...

With the upcoming update, say three Barons/Counts/Dudes are vying for power, and in adventure mode I Butcher two "Convince them to revoke their claims" via my axe, will the 3rd account for this and take power? Or will the dead leaders' sons/daughters/Wives/demon-spawn take over the claims and carry them on?

I’m asking how it will be for this coming update by the way, not in the "Nobles update". I'm just being nosey really :)
Thanks, great game and love it to little wet meaty chunks bits :D

If this is a meant for ToadyOne, then you'll need to mark it in limegreen, or just green, so he'll pick it up.

But if I understand your question correctly. You're asking if positions once vacant, will be filled? I think the last dev post, says yes, they will be filled. I think the positions have tags on them, to denote if their inheritable or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 07, 2013, 12:15:09 pm

Quote from: Toady

It'll recognize when succession is necessary and try to schedule things effectively, and I set up a claim system so that there can theoretically be more than one person that says that they hold a given civilization's position (three dwarven counts vying for an open monarch position, for example). Competing claims don't have a resolution yet, and I need to work out appointment lists properly.

From this it would seem the the claim system is not complete, so resolution of several claimings is not determined just yet. I guess it could be at random (I would start with that at first if I where programing the game), but maybe we will end up with some fancy mechanic to determinate it, like competitions, assassination attempts (great quests for an adventurer I guess) and even civil war?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on January 07, 2013, 01:19:23 pm

Will any of the position succession stuff that you are working on allow for things like the assigning an office to the position (such as mayor) instead of an individual dwarf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on January 07, 2013, 01:20:59 pm

The claims thing sounds awesome! We can always use a new reason for wars to happen (even if that likely won't be in right away).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 07, 2013, 02:54:59 pm

I can't wait till i get quest from Kivish to assassinate Urist which is his competition for manager job.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 07, 2013, 03:29:47 pm

Dwarf Hoffa anyone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 07, 2013, 03:31:29 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 07, 2013, 12:15:09 pm

Quote from: Toady

It'll recognize when succession is necessary and try to schedule things effectively, and I set up a claim system so that there can theoretically be more than one person that says that they hold a given civilization's position (three dwarven counts vying for an open monarch position, for example). Competing claims don't have a resolution yet, and I need to work out appointment lists properly.

From this it would seem the the claim system is not complete, so resolution of several claimings is not determined just yet. I guess it could be at random (I would start with that at first if I where programing the game), but maybe we will end up with some fancy mechanic to determinate it, like competitions, assassination attempts (great quests for an adventurer I guess) and even civil war?

You seem to be assuming/jumping the gun a bit here, that ToadyOne is done with the Succession system. He probably just giving us a normal dev post, of where he is, and whats been done.

Quote from: BradUffner on January 07, 2013, 01:19:23 pm

Will any of the position succession stuff that you are working on allow for things like the assigning an office to the position (such as mayor) instead of an individual dwarf?

The succession stuff ToadyOne is talking about, is the world progression during play. While this will have some affects for fort mode, he hasnt made any indication that this (room designation) was changed, or that room designation in general are being reworked. I would also hammer a guess that room designation and world progression during play, are not related to each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 07, 2013, 03:51:23 pm

In fact I said so:

Quote from: me

From this it would seem the the claim system is not complete, so resolution of several claimings is not determined just yet.

From there I went on a bit of yes, supposing and jumping the gun. I guess Toady is going to make something that awesome when he gets there. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on January 07, 2013, 06:43:26 pm

Quote from: Toady One

I probably need to further specify some of the positions in the raws as well, since we don't want things like bookkeepers in every hill dwarf site.

Ok... I realize people have already kinda pointed this out... and I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn this into a question... and I can't help myself anyway...

!!I thought bookkeeper was the one official every dwarf settlement needs!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on January 07, 2013, 08:31:06 pm

Every FORTRESS needs a bookkeeper. "Hill dwarf" refers to dwarves living out in the country, but generally in the vicinity of a fortress (as opposed to the fortress itself). Dwarven suburbs, if you will. They generally won't need bookkeepers, it seems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 07, 2013, 08:59:02 pm

I could see them having "chief" positions who do the book-keeping and the trading and act as head of the settlement, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 07, 2013, 10:32:41 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 07, 2013, 11:38:23 am

Quote from: Eggman360 on January 07, 2013, 11:11:27 am

I understand in later updates the true succession system will be fleshed out and extensive, but...

With the upcoming update, say three Barons/Counts/Dudes are vying for power, and in adventure mode I Butcher two "Convince them to revoke their claims" via my axe, will the 3rd account for this and take power? Or will the dead leaders' sons/daughters/Wives/demon-spawn take over the claims and carry them on?

I’m asking how it will be for this coming update by the way, not in the "Nobles update". I'm just being nosey really :)
Thanks, great game and love it to little wet meaty chunks bits :D

If this is a meant for ToadyOne, then you'll need to mark it in limegreen, or just green, so he'll pick it up.

But if I understand your question correctly. You're asking if positions once vacant, will be filled? I think the last dev post, says yes, they will be filled. I think the positions have tags on them, to denote if their inheritable or not.

Actually, I think he's asking whether claims will "chain." So if a Dwarven Count has a claim on an open King position, and dies before that claim is resolved, will his heir (or whoever takes over the Count position) pursue that claim on the King position, or will they abandon it if there are other claimants already vying for it?

I'm guessing the answer will be "Yes eventually, no timetable" and if I had to guess at an vague timetable I'd say "the same time nobles start wanting things and aggressively pursuing claims," but it's worth knowing whether he's given thought to the noble House system that implies, or how far he plans to go with succession for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on January 07, 2013, 10:45:04 pm

 

Quote from: dhokarena56 on January 07, 2013, 08:59:02 pm

I could see them having "chief" positions who do the book-keeping and the trading and act as head of the settlement, however.

I could also see the Bookkeeper as chronoligist of a community keeping tabs on births, deaths and mariages (if dwarves have something like "seperation of Church and state") as well as important events. More like a appointed clerk and aid for the Chief/mayor etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 08, 2013, 12:52:58 am

Oh... Okay.

So if the King Dies, then the Count that was vying for it died. Will the replacement of the Count vie  directly for the King Position, or become a Count then a King?

I dont think this would need any special mechanic to handle. If you're making a system to handle Succession of Entity Position, then it shouldnt be broken by Claimants not being able to Claim. (Hopefully, this inability to claim will become more complex, but I presume, death will be the main reason for a bit.)

So then will Eligible Claimants condense is claiming and go directly for the highest Position available? Or are they forced to do it through iteration. I think making sure it does it through iterative steps would be best.

Things that'll probably need to be handle, are unintentional Claiming Loops. Position A leads to Position B, leads to Postion A.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 06:29:48 am

I had a question

Toady how did you get the voice work for Beyond Quality?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 08, 2013, 06:43:40 am

Quote from: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 06:29:48 am

I had a question

Toady how did you get the voice work for Beyond Quality?

I want to bet a sock on "helium." Just because. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 08, 2013, 07:05:23 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 08, 2013, 12:52:58 am

Oh... Okay.

So if the King Dies, then the Count that was vying for it died. Will the replacement of the Count vie  directly for the King Position, or become a Count then a King?

I dont think this would need any special mechanic to handle. If you're making a system to handle Succession of Entity Position, then it shouldnt be broken by Claimants not being able to Claim. (Hopefully, this inability to claim will become more complex, but I presume, death will be the main reason for a bit.)

So then will Eligible Claimants condense is claiming and go directly for the highest Position available? Or are they forced to do it through iteration. I think making sure it does it through iterative steps would be best.

Things that'll probably need to be handle, are unintentional Claiming Loops. Position A leads to Position B, leads to Postion A.

Technically, he would not have to stop being count to become king, so he can hold both positions and order is irrelevant. He could, of course, stop being count if he would like to and assign this title to someone else.

Count could also be count in two different areas, sort of "double count".

For example, Rudolf II was, at same time:
King of Germany (King of the Romans), King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, Margrave of Moravia, Prince of Piombino, Prince of Transylvania.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 08, 2013, 07:06:38 am

Will there be only one aristocratic hirarchy, or will different civs have different noble positions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 08, 2013, 11:44:33 am

Expanding on that, will there be people who are related to the nobility, but act like regular citizens unless they have a claim to maneuver? For example, the duke's cousin might not be important enough to warrent his own title or any noble perks, but he might have a tenuous claim on succession to the duchy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on January 08, 2013, 02:10:50 pm

Quote from: zwei on January 08, 2013, 07:05:23 am

For example, Rudolf II was, at same time:
[...] Archduke of Austria, Margrave of Moravia, Prince of Piombino, Prince of Transylvania.

Aww, you broke the alliteration :(   Clearly he should've been Tsar of Transylvania.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 08, 2013, 02:20:43 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56 on January 08, 2013, 11:44:33 am

Expanding on that, will there be people who are related to the nobility, but act like regular citizens unless they have a claim to maneuver? For example, the duke's cousin might not be important enough to warrent his own title or any noble perks, but he might have a tenuous claim on succession to the duchy.

How fleshed out - on a scale from germanic tribal chief to Louis XIV - will the aristocracy be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on January 08, 2013, 03:12:26 pm

Will we be seeing factions develop around opposed claimants to a title? If so will the player see or participate in feuds between rival factions take place in game?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 08, 2013, 03:40:44 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on January 08, 2013, 03:12:26 pm

Will we be seeing factions develop around opposed claimants to a title? If so will the player see or participate in feuds between rival factions take place in game?

This one, is probably not an explicit goal but an implicit goal. ToadyOne has spoken about the reemergence of Guild Leaders, and Religious Leaders appearing. There have been talk about, things like Traditional personality trait being contextual based on local and/or regional history. And we can extend the convo about Traditional personality trait, to other personality traits like Loyalist, or Patriots ect ect ect.

I also wanna say that Vampires can get followers when they're pretending in cities. There also Demons impersonating Gods and Mega and Semi Beasts gaining cults/worship.

So there lots of things that are in place to allow for organic formation of factions around emergent leaders. And depending on how these things get more fleshed out over time and work, you can totally get factions forming around leaders.

If it doesnt happen organically, then it might need dedicated mechanics to force it anyway, as having politcol strife within a  country is a great source of narrative, and come on, you gotta have civil wars and minor fights between regions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on January 08, 2013, 05:01:43 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 07, 2013, 11:38:23 am

Quote from: Eggman360 on January 07, 2013, 11:11:27 am

I understand in later updates the true succession system will be fleshed out and extensive, but...

With the upcoming update, say three Barons/Counts/Dudes are vying for power, and in adventure mode I Butcher two "Convince them to revoke their claims" via my axe, will the 3rd account for this and take power? Or will the dead leaders' sons/daughters/Wives/demon-spawn take over the claims and carry them on?

I’m asking how it will be for this coming update by the way, not in the "Nobles update". I'm just being nosey really :)
Thanks, great game and love it to little wet meaty chunks bits :D

If I understand your question correctly. You're asking if positions once vacant, will be filled? I think the last dev post, says yes, they will be filled. I think the positions have tags on them, to denote if their inheritable or not.

Ah yes, I got that, thank you for the reply but I mean Will titles be handed down if they are hereditary, such as kings with a line of succession handed down via relatives and bloodlines, do you think the game will account for this I mean? I don't mean the positions and titles themselves, but the claims to those positions? For example a Duke is killed and a Count lays claim to his *Empty* position, will the son of the now dead Duke also have a claim? Or will the son just automatically be made Duke regardless of the claim by the Count? I Guess what I'm asking is could a character have a claim to a position that isn't vacant? And if so will a dispute such as that stop the position being filled once the current holder dies?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 05:49:28 pm

Ugh, now I have to come up with DFtalk questions...

But the only one I have no one would answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 08, 2013, 06:31:52 pm

What about wider political consequences? A faction has the king assassinated, that leads to a declaration of war on the nation that was backing that faction, etc. Think Archduke Ferdinand and the First European Unpleasantness.

In a similar vein: How fleshed out will diplomacy be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 08, 2013, 06:52:51 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 05:49:28 pm

But the only one I have no one would answer.

Shot anyway, it's worth the risk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 08, 2013, 07:06:25 pm

because there really is no risk

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 08, 2013, 08:32:49 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on January 08, 2013, 06:31:52 pm

What about wider political consequences? A faction has the king assassinated, that leads to a declaration of war on the nation that was backing that faction, etc. Think Archduke Ferdinand and the First European Unpleasantness.

In a similar vein: How fleshed out will diplomacy be?

There are no political consequences for this release really. There are wars happening during play, but that seems to be it. But if you're asking something later down the line. ToadyOne has expressed a great desire to have as much consequence from choices as possible. The same thing for diplomacy too. ToadyOne in a few DFTalks have talked about wanting actions taking by players which arent violent.

Here a collection of the old dev log that you can download and look at. Most, if not all of it are still valid roadmap for DF.
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2307

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 11:04:25 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 08, 2013, 07:06:25 pm

because there really is no risk

I can waste everyone's time and feel personally let down by having the question not answered.

So yeah the risk is feeling sad and useless. So it is hardly "no risk".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 08, 2013, 11:05:55 pm

You won't really be wasting time. Toady's a programmer, if he can read his own C code, he can read English pretty quickly :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 08, 2013, 11:06:24 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 08, 2013, 11:05:55 pm

You won't really be wasting time. Toady's a programmer, if he can read his own C code, he can read English pretty quickly :P

and that 1 second opening and reading will be wasted time. The one second writing it will be wasted time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 08, 2013, 11:27:55 pm

[quote="Neonivek]and that 1 second opening and reading will be wasted time. The one second writing it will be wasted time.[/quote]

But if he asked for those questions, why wouldn't you comply?

Hope it's just sarcasm. I, for one, don't have anything to ask, my mind is bedazzled with all the recent updates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 09, 2013, 01:17:02 am

Quote

I, for one, don't have anything to ask, my mind is bedazzled with all the recent updates

Minor races (any creature not a semimegabeast, power, or megabeast who possesses intelligence) has a lot of questions that can be asked... however there is already an answer: Toady doesn't know. Toady doesn't know what to do with them, not with animalmen and not with anyone else.

Future of megabeasts can be asked. Which I could break down to questions about territory.

Elements outside fire and water and how they are going to be implimented. For example electricity, thunderous sound, currosives, or laser beams.

Ecology balance outside of frequency

I never ran out of questions that I could ask. It is just that I sort of learned that the more ambiguous the question the less Toady knows the answer.

So I COULD, for example, ask him about whether metaphysical existance will happen within the physical plane or if it will be extrapolated. Yet I that is going to get the same answer: He doesn't know and he doesn't care to think about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 09, 2013, 01:23:07 am

DF talk is the most likely place such questions would be  answered so go for it. Especially in a talk where he's already mentioned that they don't have enough questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 09, 2013, 01:42:07 am

Asking how Toady imagines the game will be a long ways down the road is the best kind of question to ask on Fortress Talk, IMO. It's not like this thread in that way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2013, 07:28:26 am

All that soliloquy was as waste of time. Ask the darn questions already!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?  

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 09, 2013, 09:50:44 am

Quote from: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?

Tinker with the raws and they're all yours.

But really, I haven't heard nor read anything about crossing in the near future. We'll just have to wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2013, 10:04:57 am

In the last talk Toady talked about them. If memory serves he mentioned that it will be something that could be done in the future (in vanilla), but not one of the "current" goals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 09, 2013, 10:36:12 am

Quote from: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?

Quote from: Valtam on January 09, 2013, 09:50:44 am

Tinker with the raws and they're all yours.

Happens regularly during standard unmodded play already.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You hack the elf in the lower body with your steel battel axe! The severed part sails off in a bloody arc!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: superbob on January 09, 2013, 12:42:19 pm

(when) will we ever get some (pseudo-)chemical interactions going on? Like in the simplest sense, things decaying/fusing into different things under certain conditions? For example a lot of things would release toxic fumes when heated or burned, requiring ventilation systems (for carbon monoxide, among other things), some other things might react violently to water (like calcium oxide) or acid (once we get more than one kind). Some might react violently to heat or shock, producing blastwaves(releasing lots of compressed gas and heat in a very short time) of various strength. I'm thinking both of constructive (masonry, hygiene) and destructive (exploding minecarts, yay!) applications for this.

Another thing - how about allowing the player to call for austerity measures in fortress mode, or even martial law, where food and booze would be rationed to sustain the fortress for a longer time, during a long siege for example. I know this can be done manually by walling off parts of the food stockpile, but it would be easier just to tell the dwarves not to eat and drink until they're really hungry and unhappy. Also, this might have positive settings, for when the fortress is doing really well, making dwarves eat better and more often, making them happier.

edit:
Sent it to Toady the proper way. Leaving it here in case someone has an opinion on this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on January 09, 2013, 12:44:03 pm

You know, there /is/ a DFtalk thread specifically made for the Dftalk questions.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=44597.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on January 09, 2013, 08:06:03 pm

Do you plan on making the game more moddable in the near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 09, 2013, 08:42:28 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 09, 2013, 08:06:03 pm

Do you plan on making the game more moddable in the near future?

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

Quote from: Putnam

Speaking of interactions, as a modder, are there going to be any expansions of old modding with this release? More tokens for CE_ADD_TAG, more syndrome types, more usage hints, more counter triggers, anything like that? Or is it just a straight shot to expansion and activation of the world?

I think it has been a reasonably straight shot, but there has been a lot added to the raws of course.  For new interaction stuff, there's the vampire senses, and maybe various other things.  In general between expanding the skeleton of the game and bug-fixing, there's the idea of fleshing things out, which for us usually means lots of feature expansion and interconnections of old features of the sort you are talking about, and I don't think we've done much of that over the last many months.  And there probably won't be a lot of it up through this release since we've already bitten off a large chunk.  I'm not sure when I'll get around to more of that.  We'll be at an interesting spot after this release, with any number of directions to go, and we still need to decide which one or ones we'll choose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sotsepmet Koicei on January 09, 2013, 09:09:27 pm

Question: Some time ago, you mentioned planar travel. Hows is that looking? Extraplanar adventures sound ridiculously amazing, and multi-planar fortresses is just... wow. Fighting off threats on multiple levels of existence would be so Fun.

How will adventurers and forts reach into the next plane? Will there be new noble titles for each plane and requirements for each noble? Will they be available from the get-go (via a workshop-like-building?) and simply contain too much danger for the unprepared fortress to breach? Will adventurers need to find special portals, magic places, train a planar skill?

Question: Magic. I'm sorry if this is a dead horse, but since I haven't heard much about it and your questions are drying up, why not? How much magic will be available to dwarves and what form would you like to see it represented in? Will it be limited to alchemy, or hedgewizards, or will schools of magic be available as different classes of soldiers are today? (We have swordsmen, axemen, macemen, why not pyromagi, geomagi, aquamagi?)

Question: Will walls and floors remain indestructible at an ideal 'end' of development?

Question: Will there ever be a way to specify what the subject of a statue/engraving ought to be?

Question: How do you stay so brilliant, charming -and- handsome? Is there some sort of cream or shampoo?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 09, 2013, 09:30:55 pm

Green your questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 09, 2013, 10:12:53 pm

Or, for DF Talk questions, follow the instructions in this thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=44597.0) by sending your questions via email to toadyone@bay12games.com with the subject line "Question for DF Talk"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 10, 2013, 04:03:29 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 09, 2013, 08:42:28 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 09, 2013, 08:06:03 pm

Do you plan on making the game more moddable in the near future?

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

Quote from: Putnam

Speaking of interactions, as a modder, are there going to be any expansions of old modding with this release? More tokens for CE_ADD_TAG, more syndrome types, more usage hints, more counter triggers, anything like that? Or is it just a straight shot to expansion and activation of the world?

I think it has been a reasonably straight shot, but there has been a lot added to the raws of course.  For new interaction stuff, there's the vampire senses, and maybe various other things.  In general between expanding the skeleton of the game and bug-fixing, there's the idea of fleshing things out, which for us usually means lots of feature expansion and interconnections of old features of the sort you are talking about, and I don't think we've done much of that over the last many months.  And there probably won't be a lot of it up through this release since we've already bitten off a large chunk.  I'm not sure when I'll get around to more of that.  We'll be at an interesting spot after this release, with any number of directions to go, and we still need to decide which one or ones we'll choose.

To be fair, i would rather prefer if existing stuff was converted to raws.

For example, Barrels vs Pots - Them both being hardcoded even if they are essentially identical caused many bugs and weirdness because some things slipped.

Furniture.

Also, many things are out of reach for total conversion mods (skill/labor lists).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on January 10, 2013, 07:11:48 am

Have fun writing those claim functions, Toady. We'll have !!FUN!! seeing hat they do, no doubt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 10, 2013, 07:39:37 am

Quote from: zwei

To be fair, i would rather prefer if existing stuff was converted to raws.

For example, Barrels vs Pots - Them both being hardcoded even if they are essentially identical caused many bugs and weirdness because some things slipped.

Furniture.

Also, many things are out of reach for total conversion mods (skill/labor lists).

There's only so much time to convert this stuff to raws, and usually it tends to be hardcoded because, as I understand, Toady keeps it for testing purposes until he feels the feature is stable enough to give us the freedom to fiddle with it however we please. This is the case with necromancer and vampiric reactions, which are pretty recent, and there might be a lot of features that display this same behavior.

Fortunately, he'll give us a lot of things to play with in the next release, both in the notepad and in the in-game sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Liamar on January 10, 2013, 08:09:15 am

Question:

Will we be one day able to assign unskilled Dwarves as Jurneymen to our legendary miners and blcksmiths, so that they perform mundane tasks for their teachers, like material hauling, and learn their trade without wasting so much resources, or digging half the map out? It could be handled similary to 'Conduct a meeting task', except the master does his normal duties while the jurneyman follows him and learns by watching until he's good/old enough to do it himself.

Ideally, children would also be able to become journeymen (Just like in real world), and be more productive. (We, humans, tended to have as many kids as we could to put them to (cheap) work as soon as they can walk.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 10, 2013, 10:00:44 am

Quote from: Liamar on January 10, 2013, 08:09:15 am

Question:

Will we be one day able to assign unskilled Dwarves as Jurneymen to our legendary miners and blcksmiths, so that they perform mundane tasks for their teachers, like material hauling, and learn their trade without wasting so much resources, or digging half the map out? It could be handled similary to 'Conduct a meeting task', except the master does his normal duties while the jurneyman follows him and learns by watching until he's good/old enough to do it himself.

Ideally, children would also be able to become journeymen (Just like in real world), and be more productive. (We, humans, tended to have as many kids as we could to put them to (cheap) work as soon as they can walk.)

Apprentices have been talked about, and its on the DF Eternal Suggestion Voting Thread. ToadyOne answer is probably going to be, "Sounds good. No time line."

This thread, is really meant for things that ToadyOne is actively working on. Or things that might be related to what hes currently working on. Almost anytime he answers a questions about a something that could be done in the future. Its answered with "Sounds good. No time line." DFTalk is generally where he expands on things outside of what hes currently working on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Liamar on January 11, 2013, 06:27:12 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 10, 2013, 10:00:44 am

This thread, is really meant for things that ToadyOne is actively working on. Or things that might be related to what hes currently working on. Almost anytime he answers a questions about a something that could be done in the future. Its answered with "Sounds good. No time line." DFTalk is generally where he expands on things outside of what hes currently working on.

Ok, sorry :s

Questio:

With all the inheritence stuff done now, will the players be able to directly affect the political world by doing quests for historical figures that want to inherit their titles a little sooner, throught means of assasination and/or intrigue? Also, will an adventurer be able to become a king, or obtain any of the positions, and actually influence the world that way?

For example, would it be possible for the player to become a king as an adventurer, start a war with a civilisation, retire, make a fort to build an army to aid it's civilisation in said war, AND have the adventurer Monarch migrate to your fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 11, 2013, 09:32:39 am

No harm, no foul man. If you want to ask questions, which is a good thing, might as well aim your questions that'll get more substantive response.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on January 11, 2013, 09:41:01 am

With these noble and succession updates, we're going to have the Stories subforum clogged up with epic tales of rival houses in no time.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 11, 2013, 09:45:30 am

Quote from: Sotsepmet Koicei on January 09, 2013, 09:09:27 pm

Question: Will walls and floors remain indestructible at an ideal 'end' of development?

Nopes. We do have a cheaty building destroyer right now, with its own tag. But its very limited. ToadyOne has spoken about, with improve sieges of goblins/whatever being able to dig and breach into your fort, and employing more medieval warcraft techniques like possibly sapping, and for siege weapons to be able to breach walls.  Its tied into better fort sieges, and goodness knows what else.

Quote

Question: How do you stay so brilliant, charming -and- handsome? Is there some sort of cream or shampoo?[/color]

Donations. FEED THE TOAD.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 11, 2013, 06:09:47 pm

Will we see some religions have schisms where something like some believing in the divinity of the Demon Glob the Snotball while others claim they are a bunch of heratics, possibly lasting past the destruction of the imitation demon sect leader, maybe creating a dual-religion thing?
And then you get a real faithful Globist determined to purify the church,

Spoiler: and a civil war you didn't expect... (click to show/hide)

Nobody expects the Dwarvish Inquisition!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 12, 2013, 03:04:38 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 11, 2013, 06:09:47 pm

Will we see some religions have schisms where something like some believing in the divinity of the Demon Glob the Snotball while others claim they are a bunch of heratics, possibly lasting past the destruction of the imitation demon sect leader, maybe creating a dual-religion thing?
And then you get a real faithful Globist determined to purify the church,

Spoiler: and a civil war you didn't expect... (click to show/hide)

Nobody expects the Dwarvish Inquisition!

The next release will allow different entities from the same civilization to have enmities based on their own interests, no longer Hive Mind as we know it, so as soon as religion gets fleshed out (not in this release) we will see Holy Wars as reasons for conflict. In the present release, as soon as each civilization gets a new family of rulers (because the old ones didn't have heirs or something like that) they change the 'official religion' and begin to worship a different god from the same civilization; maybe it could root some troubles between the ruling clan and dissenting worshippers of an opposite god, so you would be able to see your given scenario.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 13, 2013, 03:10:25 am

Quote from: Valtam on January 12, 2013, 03:04:38 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 11, 2013, 06:09:47 pm

Will we see some religions have schisms where something like some believing in the divinity of the Demon Glob the Snotball while others claim they are a bunch of heratics, possibly lasting past the destruction of the imitation demon sect leader, maybe creating a dual-religion thing?
And then you get a real faithful Globist determined to purify the church,

Spoiler: and a civil war you didn't expect... (click to show/hide)

Nobody expects the Dwarvish Inquisition!

The next release will allow different entities from the same civilization to have enmities based on their own interests, no longer Hive Mind as we know it, so as soon as religion gets fleshed out (not in this release) we will see Holy Wars as reasons for conflict. In the present release, as soon as each civilization gets a new family of rulers (because the old ones didn't have heirs or something like that) they change the 'official religion' and begin to worship a different god from the same civilization; maybe it could root some troubles between the ruling clan and dissenting worshippers of an opposite god, so you would be able to see your given scenario.

On that note, it would be cool if relationships between deities were added. Like randomly give them grudges, friends, rivals, lovers, parents, and children to give the pantheon a more interesting feel. Plus those relations could be used in religious conflicts down the line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 13, 2013, 05:50:33 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on January 13, 2013, 03:10:25 am

Quote from: Valtam on January 12, 2013, 03:04:38 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 11, 2013, 06:09:47 pm

Will we see some religions have schisms where something like some believing in the divinity of the Demon Glob the Snotball while others claim they are a bunch of heratics, possibly lasting past the destruction of the imitation demon sect leader, maybe creating a dual-religion thing?
And then you get a real faithful Globist determined to purify the church,

Spoiler: and a civil war you didn't expect... (click to show/hide)

Nobody expects the Dwarvish Inquisition!

The next release will allow different entities from the same civilization to have enmities based on their own interests, no longer Hive Mind as we know it, so as soon as religion gets fleshed out (not in this release) we will see Holy Wars as reasons for conflict. In the present release, as soon as each civilization gets a new family of rulers (because the old ones didn't have heirs or something like that) they change the 'official religion' and begin to worship a different god from the same civilization; maybe it could root some troubles between the ruling clan and dissenting worshippers of an opposite god, so you would be able to see your given scenario.

On that note, it would be cool if relationships between deities were added. Like randomly give them grudges, friends, rivals, lovers, parents, and children to give the pantheon a more interesting feel. Plus those relations could be used in religious conflicts down the line.

That will doubtless happen when deities are fleshed out more. No timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 13, 2013, 10:23:10 am

With the succession in the game, does that mean dwarves will re-marry and so on for the upcoming release? If so, have you or are you going to make any other improvements to the system before the release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on January 13, 2013, 10:10:44 pm

Since you are working on Goblin occupations, will you also be doing occupations by other races in this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 13, 2013, 10:27:52 pm

Will goblins treat occupations any differently than other races? I could see where goblins are much more brutal than everybody else, and it would be neat if everyone had their own little conquest quirks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 13, 2013, 11:39:01 pm

I think green should be removed from quote pyramids.

Quote from: Cruxador on January 13, 2013, 05:50:33 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on January 13, 2013, 03:10:25 am

Quote from: Valtam on January 12, 2013, 03:04:38 am

I was referencing two very specific things under one concept with my question, which was not addressed by these answers.

1) Urist Libash nailing his 95 thesises of why elf artifacts are not acceptable for trade on the meeting hall door.
2) Urist the Urist declaring all the old teachings outdated, and now all religious rules have changed.

Religious schisms.. Where one religion becomes two. There are two kinds of historical schims. You have the one where there is a dramatic change from the old to the new (Judiasm to Islam or Catholicism, for example) and you have divergance from doctrine (The protestant reformation being a good example)

I'm thinking if you have multiple claimants to a throne, maybe the framework for it will be applied to religion too. Or maybe not, because of the real danger of real life controversy. It's greater fun as you spread your religion to other civilizations and start to have a large area of uniform religion, and then one civ gets all church of england up in there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 14, 2013, 12:50:32 am

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 14, 2013, 02:23:35 am

Quote from: Vattic on January 14, 2013, 12:50:32 am

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

How Toady sees it is that there are some aspects of Dwarven society which is more advanced then the 1400 cut off. For example Dwarves have certain cuts more advanced then the 1400s.

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 14, 2013, 02:42:31 am

That 1400 relates more closely to medieval feel of the setting rather than strict cutoff for tech.

1400 tech for example includes rudimentary use of guns and canons, but they will likely not be included in vanilla.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 14, 2013, 02:44:10 am

Did toady state that they would not be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 14, 2013, 03:20:32 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 14, 2013, 02:44:10 am

Did toady state that they would not be?

I do not have exact quote, but suggestion threads about guns get hammered by claims that they would not be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 14, 2013, 04:57:44 am

Quote

For example, would it be possible for the player to become a king as an adventurer, start a war with a civilisation, retire, make a fort to build an army to aid it's civilisation in said war, AND have the adventurer Monarch migrate to your fort?

I support this demand/question.
It would be good to know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 14, 2013, 05:02:27 am

Quote from: Neonivek on January 14, 2013, 02:23:35 am

Quote from: Vattic on January 14, 2013, 12:50:32 am

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

How Toady sees it is that there are some aspects of Dwarven society which is more advanced then the 1400 cut off. For example Dwarves have certain cuts more advanced then the 1400s.

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless.  I've poked around wikipedia and compiled the information surrounding the issues here for the convenience of forumgoers. 

Platinum does exist in vary rare native desposits naturally.  Platinum is simply a rare element, and while it was not identified before 1400, there were no actual physical technical limitations to just picking it up, should you be astonishingly lucky enough to find some.  I would agree that it is substantially more abundant in Dwarf Fortress than it ought to be (especially when you chance upon a castle made entirely of native platinum). 

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

Bismuth has been around since ancient times, but was not identified as a unique metal until the 16th century (may have been mistaken for tin or zinc).  In my own mind I'm fine with the metal being in the game as-is, since it was in use since antiquity, and I don't know how Toady would simulate mistaking one metal for another (though once some kind of fantastical generated metals get into the game, perhaps something sensible would become available). 

Nickel-Silver, while not produced until the 19th century, again nothing about its composition would make its production at an earlier time impossible, however it would possibly be more appropriate to use cupronickel in stead, since cupronickel looks the same and was available since antiquity.  As an added bonus, cupronickel is corrosion-resistant in seawater, so if that's ever a thing that gets into the game, it would be a good idea for this alloy to be available. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 14, 2013, 05:04:33 am

Quote

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless

Ohh by all means I am not Footkerchiefing where I'll respond to your question and not answer it forcing you to ask again later. I didn't mean that as a "No Toady answer" deal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on January 14, 2013, 05:36:45 am

Dwarf Fortress updates:

"well, it's been half a year. I've 'touched' on everything going in by now..."

In another developer you'd be like "You only touched!?"

DF is like "Jesus Christ, there's more!?"

It's amazing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 14, 2013, 06:52:48 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 13, 2013, 11:39:01 pm

I was referencing two very specific things under one concept with my question, which was not addressed by these answers.

1) Urist Libash nailing his 95 thesises of why elf artifacts are not acceptable for trade on the meeting hall door.
2) Urist the Urist declaring all the old teachings outdated, and now all religious rules have changed.

Religious schisms.. Where one religion becomes two. There are two kinds of historical schims. You have the one where there is a dramatic change from the old to the new (Judiasm to Islam or Catholicism, for example) and you have divergance from doctrine (The protestant reformation being a good example)

I'm thinking if you have multiple claimants to a throne, maybe the framework for it will be applied to religion too. Or maybe not, because of the real danger of real life controversy. It's greater fun as you spread your religion to other civilizations and start to have a large area of uniform religion, and then one civ gets all church of england up in there.

There's this old core:

Quote

Core63, SUCCESSION, ASSOCIATED CONFLICTS AND SCHISMS, (Future): First of all, succession for positions needs to occur in play, so that dead liaisons are replaced, as well as dead monarchs. Then the process needs to be made messier all around. Wars over succession, schisms over religious disagreements, etc., starting from world gen and coming into regular play. In dwarf mode, you might be involved on one side or the other, directly or indirectly, relying on more involved diplomacy and army code than we currently have, and adventure mode can also gain a lot from such conflicts.

And this old power goal:

Quote

PowerGoal86, THE PROPHET OF AA, (Future): The Church of Aa has become decadent and gifts to the deity have waned, and the priests have been filling their coffers. You appear and claim to be a prophet and say that Aa has abandoned the Church. The priests scoff at you, but you perform a miracle, and there is a schism in the Church and much violence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on January 14, 2013, 07:13:12 am

Quote from: Caldfir on January 14, 2013, 05:02:27 am

Quote from: Neonivek on January 14, 2013, 02:23:35 am

Quote from: Vattic on January 14, 2013, 12:50:32 am

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

How Toady sees it is that there are some aspects of Dwarven society which is more advanced then the 1400 cut off. For example Dwarves have certain cuts more advanced then the 1400s.

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless.  I've poked around wikipedia and compiled the information surrounding the issues here for the convenience of forumgoers. 

Platinum does exist in vary rare native desposits naturally.  Platinum is simply a rare element, and while it was not identified before 1400, there were no actual physical technical limitations to just picking it up, should you be astonishingly lucky enough to find some.  I would agree that it is substantially more abundant in Dwarf Fortress than it ought to be (especially when you chance upon a castle made entirely of native platinum). 

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

Bismuth has been around since ancient times, but was not identified as a unique metal until the 16th century (may have been mistaken for tin or zinc).  In my own mind I'm fine with the metal being in the game as-is, since it was in use since antiquity, and I don't know how Toady would simulate mistaking one metal for another (though once some kind of fantastical generated metals get into the game, perhaps something sensible would become available). 

Nickel-Silver, while not produced until the 19th century, again nothing about its composition would make its production at an earlier time impossible, however it would possibly be more appropriate to use cupronickel in stead, since cupronickel looks the same and was available since antiquity.  As an added bonus, cupronickel is corrosion-resistant in seawater, so if that's ever a thing that gets into the game, it would be a good idea for this alloy to be available.

Yeah... but they're dwarves. They naturally dig deep and live underground, hence they should be far more familliar with ores and magma and coal than 14th century humans, which only very occasionally mine.

Familiarity with these implies discovery, hence dwarves should have far more metallurgy tech than 14th century humans.

More on the subject at hand : is the "will dodge anywhere, even on a 15-z cliff" problem solved ? I'm getting sick of my dwarves dodging into magma moats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on January 14, 2013, 07:54:18 am

that's a feature, not a bug. fighting is messy, and you don't allways look where you're stepping

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 14, 2013, 09:20:47 am

Seven months and nine months later...

...the end is finally in sight.

I'm giving it a tentative arrival date of Valentine's Day to March 1st, and now I'm just waiting for the DF Talk...

I'm gonna be honest, although I'm excited for this release, it's mostly due to the trees, since I rarely play Adventure mode (though that could change). I can't wait to see what Toady decides to do next.

To make this post worthwhile: Toady, how does pairing people up in worldgen work? Does it just randomly pair up different-sex friends, if friend relationships are even tracked in worldgen? And how does it decide who can be friends with whom, if that's how that works?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2013, 01:50:07 pm

Challenge: Get the release out before Valentine's Day. It looks like some crazy stuff - like America defaulting - may be happening afterwards.

I see Toady says he has touched on everything, but we haven't seen anything on kobold sites or caves. Are those just going to be done right before the release?

@Availability of metals: Firstly, metal abundance is different in DF. One boulder of ore can produce enough gold to build a four-tile long wall, which is 4 or 8 meters long in conversion to metric. There's a lot more of it too.

The availability of platinum and aluminium provides some more variety. The fact that in this game, dwarves can use magma for smelting indicates that you cannot just restrict this game strictly to technology available up to the 1400s. Its a different world, and crazy stuff happens in it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on January 14, 2013, 02:16:02 pm

The update is not going to be out before Valentine's Day. He's touched on every category, but he's still adding features (like goblin occupations) related to those. Remember also that even once that's done, there's usually a bugfixing period of at least three weeks to a month after Toady finishes adding all the features to an update. If he were finished with absolutely everything feature-wise right now, I'd guess around March 1st. Since he's not, I'd say you probably shouldn't get your hopes up until sometime around Arbor Day. (Wouldn't that be something, with multi-tile trees going in?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 14, 2013, 03:05:44 pm

Quote from: Naryar on January 14, 2013, 07:13:12 am

Quote from: Caldfir on January 14, 2013, 05:02:27 am

Quote from: Neonivek on January 14, 2013, 02:23:35 am

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

...dwarves should have far more metallurgy tech than 14th century humans.

I was mainly posting to hear what the Toad himself thinks and also aluminium who's presence most puzzles me in game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on January 14, 2013, 04:25:54 pm

Well, we make aluminum in places like northern Russia, where there's tons of electricity from hydroelectric, and nobody to use it. Zap some clay, and you got some wonder metal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2013, 05:55:32 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on January 14, 2013, 04:25:54 pm

Well, we make aluminum in places like northern Russia, where there's tons of electricity from hydroelectric, and nobody to use it. Zap some clay, and you got some wonder metal.

That's the modern industrial process, using bauxite. Native aluminium is found in real life, in volcanic (igneous extrusive) deposits. It comes in a very small size, but then so do IRL gold nuggets. In dwarf fortress, as native aluminium comes in small clusters of either up to 5 or up to 9 tiles, and accordingly drops with 100% yield, you can get up to 20 or 36 bars of aluminium from a single deposit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2013, 05:55:59 pm

Repurpose of post:

With goblins occupying towns, does that mean they will occupy deep dwarf settlements if the fortresses connected to them fall?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 14, 2013, 11:04:03 pm

You've mentioned that once this release and the bugfix releases following it are out, you've got several directions to choose from in terms of where to go development-wise. What are some of those directions you're looking at?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 15, 2013, 02:25:32 am

Quote from: Inarius on January 14, 2013, 04:57:44 am

Quote

For example, would it be possible for the player to become a king as an adventurer, start a war with a civilisation, retire, make a fort to build an army to aid it's civilisation in said war, AND have the adventurer Monarch migrate to your fort?

I support this demand/question.
It would be good to know.

For this upcoming release? Nothing been stated to that effect. But, its an implied goal, if not an explicit goal. ToadyOne has talked about having your Adventure character being able to gain affinity  & reputation with civilizations, and taking on mantels of responsibility or being rewarded with nobility. And from there, its not unreasonable, and probably prudent to have any succession mechanic to eventually included that Adventure being able to take part in it.

Beside that, ToadyOne has also spoken about being able to manage entire countries, or taking on any living historical person in the game and using them as a character, and that also heavily implies that you'd need the ability to preform their given duties.

Its been spoken of, but goodness knows when it'll happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 15, 2013, 03:13:52 am

With story generation being one of the main aims I figure romance will be important. I know sex is a difficult topic but will some kind of abstracted lust be present? I ask because it has been an interesting source of motivation in many stories.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 15, 2013, 03:15:24 am

Well, we already have night trolls who can only be assumed to be doing... things from the very worst pages of DeviantART.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 15, 2013, 05:20:55 am

More generally, it would be awesome that in a few years, a third dwarf fortress game exists ; a sort of strategy game, where you would play entire civilization against other civilizations, and where you could manage the equipment of thousands of dwarfs/elves/humans/giant armored hamster. You could change taxes, choosing who you want to ennoble, or make general, making an army of giant bears and asking for 1000 riders with steel swords...and  You could access to this part of the game either by becoming a capital city as fortress, or by becoming a king as an adventurer !
Well, anyway I don't think it's for tomorrow, perhaps 2020 ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 15, 2013, 05:22:59 am

What about "Crusader Kings 2" mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 15, 2013, 05:51:25 am

Well, if you manage to recruit giant eagles (^^), deal with dragon(s) who are menacing your cities, set a kidnapping policy and launch reclaiming expeditions in deep cities who found hidden dangerous stuff in deep caverns in CK2, why not. But I think DF is rich enough not to relate to CK, or any other Paradox games (the contrary is not always true, though). It's more a LOTR stuff !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 15, 2013, 08:55:46 am

Technically, the kingdom mode is supposed to be the evolution of dwarf fortress mode, and there is a process for that to happen underway. DF2013 V2 or DF2014 may allow us to send armies around the map, or increase the interaction of the fortress to the point where we'll be able to cause stuff to happen in the outside world.

Completely unrelated, has anyone noticed that the only crimes that are dealt with now (as of 0.34.11) are murders (and possibly violation of mandates), and vandalism or disorderly conduct don't trigger any penalties whatsoever?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 15, 2013, 12:44:06 pm

Quote from: Vattic on January 15, 2013, 03:13:52 am

With story generation being one of the main aims I figure romance will be important. I know sex is a difficult topic but will some kind of abstracted lust be present? I ask because it has been an interesting source of motivation in many stories.

I'd also like to add demons and their bad influence and people being corrupted (Like a few Roman emperors, e.g. Caligula and Nero) by power. It's probably something you wouldn't add generally, but we all know that many people of old were prone to do bad things, I'd expect that a world like DF wouldn't be much different. It could be only rumors and people disappearing with a King or just historical mentionings, all ini-toggled, but it may add a lot to the atmosphere...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 15, 2013, 01:32:40 pm

There's already making of gristly trophies by invading armies. Not any rape or sexcrimes outside night trolls and that one story...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pirate Bob on January 15, 2013, 04:26:39 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 15, 2013, 08:55:46 am

Technically, the kingdom mode is supposed to be the evolution of dwarf fortress mode, and there is a process for that to happen underway. DF2013 V2 or DF2014 may allow us to send armies around the map, or increase the interaction of the fortress to the point where we'll be able to cause stuff to happen in the outside world.

Completely unrelated, has anyone noticed that the only crimes that are dealt with now (as of 0.34.11) are murders (and possibly violation of mandates), and vandalism or disorderly conduct don't trigger any penalties whatsoever?

Violation of mandates is definitely dealt with.  I didn't notice a mandate to make shields and failed to complete it, and a poor dwarf with absolutely nothing to do with said mandate (he was an engraver, but it's possible he might have had some minor crafting skills) was chained for a season as a result.  So that hasn't changed.  I haven't yet had any disorderly conduct in my current fort, which is the only 34.11 one that I've taken far enough to activate the justice system.  If no one else has an answer for this, I can coax some dwarves into doing some violence to see what happens...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 16, 2013, 04:19:56 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 15, 2013, 01:32:40 pm

There's already making of gristly trophies by invading armies. Not any rape or sexcrimes outside night trolls and that one story...

I wasn't thinking of rape when I asked the question but instead things like leaders being influenced by a beautiful villain. Also situations like the one in Beowulf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 16, 2013, 05:45:26 am

New devblog update in. It would be nice if we got reports on how things were going each day, including the bugs. Especially the bugs, because they can be incredible.

With these new improvements, will the goblins try to block of the entrances and exits to a player-run dwarf fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 16, 2013, 07:45:36 am

I would love daily updates! However, from personal experience I know programing is something completely absorbing, and sometimes the silence speak volumes of progress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 16, 2013, 11:58:04 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 16, 2013, 05:45:26 am

New devblog update in. It would be nice if we got reports on how things were going each day, including the bugs. Especially the bugs, because they can be incredible.

With these new improvements, will the goblins try to block of the entrances and exits to a player-run dwarf fortress?

Fort Mode sieges havent been changed, but events like that have been stated as a goal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 16, 2013, 01:23:57 pm

When a leader is killed in an attack, will their successor instantly be in power? Or will there be no leader until after the attack has been repelled, if it is repelled?

Also, how does the town defend its self? Is it everyone for themselves? Or are there organized defenses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 17, 2013, 12:48:44 am

Enjoying the devlogs recently.  Succession and occupation sound awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 17, 2013, 01:34:11 am

Can invaders destroy buildings even if the defenders succeed in repelling them? Do the defenders repair buildings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 17, 2013, 06:51:47 am

Will invasions wake up nearby... residents?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on January 16, 2013, 04:19:56 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 15, 2013, 01:32:40 pm

There's already making of gristly trophies by invading armies. Not any rape or sexcrimes outside night trolls and that one story...

I wasn't thinking of rape when I asked the question but instead things like leaders being influenced by a beautiful villain. Also situations like the one in Beowulf.

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2013, 09:41:35 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on January 16, 2013, 04:19:56 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 15, 2013, 01:32:40 pm

There's already making of gristly trophies by invading armies. Not any rape or sexcrimes outside night trolls and that one story...

I wasn't thinking of rape when I asked the question but instead things like leaders being influenced by a beautiful villain. Also situations like the one in Beowulf.

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

Many of the reports that come through announcements, combat, sparring, and hunting logs would earn the game an 18+ rating, if it were not ASCII. The latest set of updates I've put through to the Masterwork succession fortress are highly indicative - continuous rioting, disorderly conduct, vandalism, dehydration, major dysfunction of the legal system, blood-sucking mayors, dwarves forced to drink vomit, dwarves stripping off, going berserk in hospitals, slicing unicorns in half, sieges, rains of beer, massive junk stockpiles...

While I was uploading the files to the website, I actually tried to find a way to mark the ASCII screenshots as "18+ (Violence)", but couldn't find an option to do so.

Toady has said in some other thread on old projects of his that he doesn't want to release certain things that are very politically incorrect. We've already had the removal of certain "naughty words" (many of which are not even "naughty" but just cover politically taboo subjects) with the DF2012 release, although the dictionary was expanded considerably in other ways, so he does find it an issue even if many players don't. I do think the game will need to go someway there when the relationships system gets worked on, and this might even be the next release or so (after DF2013).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzlyAdamz on January 17, 2013, 09:49:56 pm

Asking for general info,

Does anyone know how much interplay there will be between worldgen and play-modes, ie switching between the two?
Also, were there plans to have adventure mode take over historical figures, instead of poofing them into existence?
Also, what about specific goals or directives for more esoteric facets of world gen...see spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?

Made me think, in world gen, if there were both elf and (whatever would find an elf attractive) civilizations in existence, but there had never been a horrible half-elf abomination which one could take control of, then one could select this race and advance world-gen a few dozen years in order to obtain a legitimate (hehe) historical half-elf. Figure it might be doable by marrying two members and forcing one to migrate to the other, (plus either an expanded race selection or a slightly more complex procedural race mixer abomination algorithm), but anyway the thought of playing the first of a kind made me curious.

-edit
@CaptainArchmage
Except for the beer, what's new?


-edit
Not for next release, just planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2013, 09:53:21 pm

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz on January 17, 2013, 09:49:56 pm

Asking for general info,

Does anyone know how much interplay there will be between worldgen and play-modes, ie switching between the two?
Also, were there plans to have adventure mode take over historical figures, instead of poofing them into existence?
Also, what about specific goals or directives for more esoteric facets of world gen...see spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?

Made me think, in world gen, if there were both elf and (whatever would find an elf attractive) civilizations in existence, but there had never been a horrible half-elf abomination which one could take control of, then one could select this race and advance world-gen a few dozen years in order to obtain a legitimate (hehe) historical half-elf. Figure it might be doable by marrying two members and forcing one to migrate to the other, (plus either an expanded race selection or a slightly more complex procedural race mixer abomination algorithm), but anyway the thought of playing the first of a kind made me curious.

I'm not sure if you can retire a fortress and get the game to skip forward a few years in time, Toady can you please confirm this?

Worldgen, or some aspects of it will continue during gameplay as of the next release (what, if anything, is in worldgen that will be left out of the continuation of the world during gameplay?), so even if you were unable to skip forward in time you could still play around as an adventurer or build a new fortress, and the world would continue on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 17, 2013, 10:18:36 pm

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz on January 17, 2013, 09:49:56 pm

Also, were there plans to have adventure mode take over historical figures, instead of poofing them into existence?

The problem with limiting adventurers to pre-existing figures is that the player is severely limited. I think he said he's planning on allowing control of world-gen beings (and potentially megabeasts), but leaving in the retcon-into-existence option as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 17, 2013, 10:41:34 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 17, 2013, 10:18:36 pm

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz on January 17, 2013, 09:49:56 pm

Also, were there plans to have adventure mode take over historical figures, instead of poofing them into existence?

The problem with limiting adventurers to pre-existing figures is that the player is severely limited. I think he said he's planning on allowing control of world-gen beings (and potentially megabeasts), but leaving in the retcon-into-existence option as well.

Yes, the plan is you'll be able to take over an existing historical figure, or you'll be able to create your own character who is assumed to be one of the faceless masses history doesn't mention... yet.

There isn't yet the ability to time-skip, but it's a planned feature. Right now the best you can do is start/abandon a fortress a bunch of times- each new start will cycle the year forward to the next spring. Though actually, with worldgen activities continuing into play, that might change, or be a more involved process. Do world activities advance after an abandon? Will the game simulate world activities before the next fortress is founded?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 18, 2013, 03:07:44 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2013, 09:41:35 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Quote from: Vattic on January 16, 2013, 04:19:56 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 15, 2013, 01:32:40 pm

There's already making of gristly trophies by invading armies. Not any rape or sexcrimes outside night trolls and that one story...

I wasn't thinking of rape when I asked the question but instead things like leaders being influenced by a beautiful villain. Also situations like the one in Beowulf.

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

Many of the reports that come through announcements, combat, sparring, and hunting logs would earn the game an 18+ rating, if it were not ASCII. The latest set of updates I've put through to the Masterwork succession fortress are highly indicative - continuous rioting, disorderly conduct, vandalism, dehydration, major dysfunction of the legal system, blood-sucking mayors, dwarves forced to drink vomit, dwarves stripping off, going berserk in hospitals, slicing unicorns in half, sieges, rains of beer, massive junk stockpiles...

I think point is avoiding self appointed Moral Guardians and Thing of The Children people.

As such, avoiding sex stuff and firearms is enough - they only care if case is easily medialized and game with ascii graphics is going to be safe as long as it does not produce snuff film scripts in its logs

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on January 18, 2013, 03:48:53 am

Quote from: zwei on January 18, 2013, 03:07:44 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2013, 09:41:35 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the dtion of sex, though he was opposed to explicit dtion of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

Many of the reports that come through announcements, combat, sparring, and hunting logs would earn the game an 18+ rating, if it were not ASCII. The latest set of updates I've put through to the Masterwork succession fortress are highly indicative - continuous rioting, disorderly conduct, vandalism, dehydration, major dysfunction of the legal system, blood-sucking mayors, dwarves forced to drink vomit, dwarves stripping off, going berserk in hospitals, slicing unicorns in half, sieges, rains of beer, massive junk stockpiles...

I think point is avoiding self appointed Moral Guardians and Thing of The Children people.

As such, avoiding sex stuff and firearms is enough - they only care if case is easily medialized and game with ascii graphics is going to be safe as long as it does not produce snuff film scripts in its logs

If there's anything DF does do, it's produce the grittiest descriptions of wanton killing ever to come out of a game log.

I don't think Toady's aversion to firearms in DF has anything to do with unwanted attention, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on January 18, 2013, 04:03:25 am

From what I gather, the Toady One wants to keep us playing in the 12th century or so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 18, 2013, 04:15:14 am

Eh, a fantasy world can easily become scifi with enough modding :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 18, 2013, 05:58:07 am

Quote from: Torchy on January 18, 2013, 03:48:53 am

I don't think Toady's aversion to firearms in DF has anything to do with unwanted attention, though.

What was just example of what kind of attention he is avoiding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 18, 2013, 06:13:35 am

Quote from: Dragula on January 09, 2013, 09:31:28 am

Will we ever get half elves?

Pretty sure I've read this is planned.  The exact problem is that the human and elf races (or whatever it is you want to be half of) are defined in the raws, and there isn't an obvious clean way of making something halfway between two text files that's going to make sense.  The presumed first step is to get chimera-types (like centaurs and gryphons) as something that can be generated by the game, and then expand that to more refined creature-mixing systems:

Quote from: DF Talk 19

Threetoe:   Okay, so the last question: 'I was reading the suggestion thread on interspecies breeding the other day, and I was hoping that you could discuss the notion of extending the breeding system to include such things as hybrids to a greater extent, primarily half-breeds among the sapient beings like elves, humans, dwarves, etc., and all the possible fun that arises from that, aside from stuff like discrimination, ethnic cleansing and increased interracial tensions, a more diverse and less static set of races populating the world would no doubt contribute to the richness of the game.'

Toady:   Yeah, I mean we're for it. The snatcher story, for instance, had an elf-goblin hybrid which didn't even have a human component to it.

Threetoe:   Yeah, I've written a few stories about this. We definitely want to entertain these possibilities.

Toady:   Basically, we would have done it already, it's just a matter of overcoming some technical challenges. Do you just create new raws for all of the half forms? Then what happens if there are quarter forms and so on, or if you have one part elf, human, dwarf and goblin? Does it try and average the raws or come up with a one-to-one correspondence between the different body parts? It's kind of like the polymorph problem where you turn into another humanoid and right now your equipment just drops on the ground, even though the werewolf could theoretically hold things and wear things that were stretchy enough, or something, or just stayed on, like a little hat. It doesn't know how to do that, or transfer wounds, for that matter. Once we understand how that works, which is an easier problem than coming up with a mixture of creatures, then there's also the centaur problem, of taking pieces of creatures and gluing them onto each other; taking the top half of a person and gluing them onto most of a horse, except for the head. These are all easier problems than trying to procedurally just come up with the child of two creatures, but it's still an intriguing problem. So I'm not sure I'd just jump in and be, like, here's the half and two-halves breeding can just do a Mendelian genetics type thing, and sometimes they're a whole, sometimes it's one race or another, sometimes it produces another half, like half-elf/half-goblin. It could work that way, but it would be interesting to be able to get something more smeared, but it's difficult. That's part of the reason it hasn't happened yet; it's an intriguing and difficult problem.

So they're going to happen when/if the technical considerations get figured out. 

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2013, 09:53:21 pm

I'm not sure if you can retire a fortress and get the game to skip forward a few years in time, Toady can you please confirm this?

Worldgen, or some aspects of it will continue during gameplay as of the next release (what, if anything, is in worldgen that will be left out of the continuation of the world during gameplay?), so even if you were unable to skip forward in time you could still play around as an adventurer or build a new fortress, and the world would continue on.

I'm fairly certain that the fact that the devlog has focused around all the work to get worldgen activities into play while he hasn't mentioned doing the opposite means that this feature isn't in the upcoming release, but it's pretty high on my wish list for sure. 

As for what happens in woldgen that doesn't during play as of the upcoming release, we've heard nothing about (as far as I am aware): 

• night troll abductions/conversions
• gods cursing mortals or giving them powers
• beast rampages
• new sites being founded
• existing sites expanding
• world-economy stuff

I'm sure there's more, and it is likely that the in-play world will never generate legends that look exactly the same as worldgen stuff, though of course it will get closer. 

Naturally, since I have no quotes on this one, this isn't a definitive answer, but asking "what's not in the upcoming release" is a pretty tough and open-ended question to ask. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 18, 2013, 08:05:09 am

I believe Toady mentioned new sites will be founded, including around your fortress. Curses, rampages, and conversions could also occur within good reason. Toady did mention the sites don't expand though, but it may have been in gameplay - do sites expand in worldgen as of the current release, or not besides the general upscaling from town to city?

Trade does happen in the world and stuff will be moved around from place to place. Getting the economy to work is a completely different matter, and it had been deliberately broken as of DF2010.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on January 18, 2013, 11:13:02 am

Quote from: Novel on January 17, 2013, 06:51:47 am

Will invasions wake up nearby... residents?

I'm assuming you mean things such as night creatures and megabeasts, judging by the ellipsis. Toady hasn't mentioned anything specifically about waking them up, but as soldiers tend to attack nearby enemy units, and semimegabeasts and the like are considered enemies by default, they'll likely go charging into a dragon's lair completely of their own accord, which could be fun to watch. Especially if the now-enraged dragon storms out and starts slaying people. I imagine a large enough army could take it down by themselves, which would be great to see in legends mode, and even cooler to witness firsthand as an allied adventurer.

Basically, yes, it will be possible. But it won't be guaranteed to happen every time.


And a question of my own:
Will NPC sentients have any chance of becoming necromancers/night creatures after world gen is over?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 18, 2013, 05:02:30 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on January 18, 2013, 11:13:02 am

Quote from: Novel on January 17, 2013, 06:51:47 am

Will invasions wake up nearby... residents?

I'm assuming you mean things such as night creatures and megabeasts, judging by the ellipsis. Toady hasn't mentioned anything specifically about waking them up, but as soldiers tend to attack nearby enemy units, and semimegabeasts and the like are considered enemies by default, they'll likely go charging into a dragon's lair completely of their own accord, which could be fun to watch. Especially if the now-enraged dragon storms out and starts slaying people. I imagine a large enough army could take it down by themselves, which would be great to see in legends mode, and even cooler to witness firsthand as an allied adventurer.

Basically, yes, it will be possible. But it won't be guaranteed to happen every time.


And a question of my own:
Will NPC sentients have any chance of becoming necromancers/night creatures after world gen is over?

Though Toady seemed to say that the big beasties don't do much moving around yet. So I assume that means we won't see them interact with armies yet. Unless Toady decides to make them move around sometime before the update is released, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on January 18, 2013, 05:42:18 pm

Not of their own accord, of course. What I meant is, if the area of the map where they are is loaded. The tough part would be staying alive through the attack, of course, which is why I mentioned legends mode - hiding out somewhere while it all went down would be an effective strategy, if you just want to see the aftermath.

Edit: This assumes, of course, that armies will actually move, and not just teleport.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 09:30:18 am

Something I've been mulling over related to the in-game worldgen thing is, will these secondary worldgens update the raws?
Basically what I'm asking is will we be able to generate a "normal" world, play it for awhile, then mod in the discovery of guns to shake things up in a second worldgen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 19, 2013, 10:22:14 am

Quote from: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 09:30:18 am

Something I've been mulling over related to the in-game worldgen thing is, will these secondary worldgens update the raws?
Basically what I'm asking is will we be able to generate a "normal" world, play it for awhile, then mod in the discovery of guns to shake things up in a second worldgen?

Even when we have time skips, they won't be as fast as worldgen. So doing something like that may be impractical, unless you run it overnight or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 10:31:34 am

But theoretically you COULD make modifications to already started games after this update?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 19, 2013, 11:41:08 am

Quote from: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 10:31:34 am

But theoretically you COULD make modifications to already started games after this update?

Maybe. But the update may break compatibility, given all the new things and tags.

I'm almost certain to start a new fort when the release comes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 19, 2013, 03:41:42 pm

I don't think he meant a world generated in this version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 19, 2013, 11:16:11 pm

Quote from: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 10:31:34 am

But theoretically you COULD make modifications to already started games after this update?

You can already make some changes to raws that don't require a re-gen. I imagine that won't change.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 20, 2013, 12:05:47 am

Quote from: devlog 1-19

I needed to add more coordinate information to all of the active historical figures, and that had to be respected all through everywhere, so there went a day, he he he. People are eminently huntable now, though, even when they aren't traveling. I'm also working on a debug mode that lets me zip around and look at all the armies since it isn't easy to get the whole picture just running it in the standard play modes. I'm not sure if it'll be used directly later, but it's at least good to start thinking about that kind of thing. The next real step is to get the goblins to think about controlling the villages associated to the town they are taking simultaneously, so that they can still feed their captive humans once food use goes in (at least some of them, since the largest cities will depend on food from farther away).

What potential applications were you thinking of? Divination spells? Scouting reports for generals and the like? "Kingdom Mode?" Something else entirely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 20, 2013, 10:31:18 am

I really couldn't understand the distinction Toady made between villages and towns. Is he talking about hamlets and regular, keep-and-dungeon towns?

When goblins attempt to capture a village, are they hostile to the entire population of the site as to get control of it? Or will they keep their relationships with neutral and even friendly entities already living there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 20, 2013, 11:36:59 am

Alright, so we have armies moving around the map. These armies are going to include the ones sieging us, right?

Quote from: monk12 on January 20, 2013, 12:05:47 am

What potential applications were you thinking of? Divination spells? Scouting reports for generals and the like? "Kingdom Mode?" Something else entirely?

I believe the idea is if you want to find someone, you can find them. Any historical figure, that is.

If you were referring to debug mode applications for players, it might be something like that. We'd need a magic system first, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 20, 2013, 12:15:00 pm

Quote from: Valtam on January 20, 2013, 10:31:18 am

I really couldn't understand the distinction Toady made between villages and towns. Is he talking about hamlets and regular, keep-and-dungeon towns?

Yes. Your hamlets generally don't have Markets, because their goods are directed to central sites, consisting almost entirely of foodstuffs.

It's like the concept of hill dwarves. Hamlets are "hill humans".

Quote from: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 09:30:18 am

Something I've been mulling over related to the in-game worldgen thing is, will these secondary worldgens update the raws?
Basically what I'm asking is will we be able to generate a "normal" world, play it for awhile, then mod in the discovery of guns to shake things up in a second worldgen?

I believe it would work. There shouldn't be any problem. Just like if you mod in a weapon after genning now and have your people make and use it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 20, 2013, 01:59:34 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 20, 2013, 11:36:59 am

Alright, so we have armies moving around the map. These armies are going to include the ones sieging us, right?

It's at least a plan for the upcoming release. I'm pretty sure there's a better quote than the below for that, but I can't find it right now.

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

Quote

Quote from: Spish

Will the alert system apply to any other sites that are inhabited by armies? Like, say, a conquered player fortress?

Quote from: Phlum

When an alert is given, the offended entity doesn't yet know of the offence, right? In other words, is it possible to kill a guard before he alerts others and not become enemy of a civ?

Player fortresses that have been conquered haven't been shifted over to the new system of occupation, because player fortresses are still not attacked by actual armies (though we're playing to snag that soon).

The cascading nature of alert information is still a work in progress, but yeah, there are going to be different levels of information passed along to the entity depending on when you kill the guard.  Even after the alert is raised, until the guard gives a report, I don't think your information will be passed along -- ideally, even after the report, they'd just have your appearance, but it's still tricky to store that as a properly abstracted chunk of information.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on January 20, 2013, 07:01:32 pm

With the comments on goblins finding food for citizens having to eat, will this include hunting for carnivore races or will those guys still be out of luck and destined to starve in a few years?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 20, 2013, 09:12:42 pm

Quote from: Greiger on January 20, 2013, 07:01:32 pm

With the comments on goblins finding food for citizens having to eat, will this include hunting for carnivore races or will those guys still be out of luck and destined to starve in a few years?

I think Toady's plan is the goblins will take over the food-producing sites for those races, so they will be able to provide food for the citizens who need to eat.

Carnivore races should be able to hunt, though. Any species that has the ethics right and can eat meat should be able to hunt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 21, 2013, 10:21:08 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 20, 2013, 09:12:42 pm

Quote from: Greiger on January 20, 2013, 07:01:32 pm

With the comments on goblins finding food for citizens having to eat, will this include hunting for carnivore races or will those guys still be out of luck and destined to starve in a few years?

I think Toady's plan is the goblins will take over the food-producing sites for those races, so they will be able to provide food for the citizens who need to eat.

Carnivore races should be able to hunt, though. Any species that has the ethics right and can eat meat should be able to hunt.

Goblins capturing hamlets for producing food is kind of a neat idea. They could even use the residents of the town as slaves to man the food producing. I can see some really interesting stories crop out of a situation like that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fifteen years ago the goblins raided our village, since then we have been forced to work the land to barely benefit of our own. This poor town is slowly dying as the residents get older. The children have all be taken to the fort and each  year the goblins come back to take our food and babies. Years ago, we were left with the life-altering thought that we would never see our kids again. Little did we know that never seeing our kids again would have been a good thing. Last year, the goblin caravan had no actual goblins running it. Instead the it was run by our children, but they weren't our children anymore. I hope no one ever feels the pain of be reunited with their children after they have converted. A woman ran out to her son, only to be cut down by him. They came for the food supplies and to take any newly born children. We could only watch in silent horror as our children carried away their own little brothers and sisters back to the tower. We need help, but its already too late.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on January 21, 2013, 10:54:15 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on January 21, 2013, 10:21:08 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fifteen years ago the goblins raided our village, since then we have been forced to work the land to barely benefit of our own. This poor town is slowly dying as the residents get older. The children have all be taken to the fort and each  year the goblins come back to take our food and babies. Years ago, we were left with the life-altering thought that we would never see our kids again. Little did we know that never seeing our kids again would have been a good thing. Last year, the goblin caravan had no actual goblins running it. Instead the it was run by our children, but they weren't our children anymore. I hope no one ever feels the pain of be reunited with their children after they have converted. A woman ran out to her son, only to be cut down by him. They came for the food supplies and to take any newly born children. We could only watch in silent horror as our children carried away their own little brothers and sisters back to the tower. We need help, but its already too late.

That was horribly depressing and painful to read, it sounds absolutely goblin. I'd like to see this happen in game, namely to fight back against it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 21, 2013, 02:14:07 pm

I'd imagine that goblins would also chop up unwanted prisoners / dead enemies for the soup pot of their mortal citizens / slaves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 21, 2013, 03:04:03 pm

Bear in mind goblins kidnap to raise non demon leaders. What that entails is anyone's guess, but whether cruelty is preferred is an open question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on January 21, 2013, 05:59:05 pm

I think a lot of people think of goblins in a much different way than I do. They have a cruel streak in them, but it comes from a place of apathy, anger and boredom. I don't picture many goblins purposefully attempting to make their slaves/kidnapee's lives difficult on purpose. They would have to go out of their way to think of ways to do that. Their creativity is funneled into playing with dead bodies, or other very amusing games that don't require them to think about complex things such as the emotions of others. They're not good with understanding emotions in the first place.

They don't understand food, so when the people they've captured tell them what they need to eat, they should believe them and just think it's weird.

<Human> We have to grow vegetables because they're the most efficient way to feed everyone you want us to.
<Goblin> Whatever, just do all the boring stuff yourself. And do it good!
<Human> Okay!

I think Goblins need leaders from other races because those other races have a greater capacity to be cruel by actually understanding emotional cruelty on a higher level. They need something to aspire to. They need an "art level" cruelty to look up to that they can never seem to grasp without outside help. Humans, elves, and dwarves can do that for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on January 21, 2013, 07:47:44 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on January 21, 2013, 10:21:08 am

Goblins capturing hamlets for producing food is kind of a neat idea. They could even use the residents of the town as slaves to man the food producing. I can see some really interesting stories crop out of a situation like that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fifteen years ago the goblins raided our village, since then we have been forced to work the land to barely benefit of our own. This poor town is slowly dying as the residents get older. The children have all be taken to the fort and each  year the goblins come back to take our food and babies. Years ago, we were left with the life-altering thought that we would never see our kids again. Little did we know that never seeing our kids again would have been a good thing. Last year, the goblin caravan had no actual goblins running it. Instead the it was run by our children, but they weren't our children anymore. I hope no one ever feels the pain of be reunited with their children after they have converted. A woman ran out to her son, only to be cut down by him. They came for the food supplies and to take any newly born children. We could only watch in silent horror as our children carried away their own little brothers and sisters back to the tower. We need help, but its already too late.

[Tolkien nerdiness]
This whole thing reminds me of how after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (a big battle where the good guys lost) the Easterlings (bad guys) enthralled all the Edain (good guys) in Hithlum and forced them to work in the fields while the Easterlings lived a life of comfort in the great halls of the Edain.
[/Tolkien nerdiness]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 22, 2013, 12:16:48 pm

Quote from: Willfor on January 21, 2013, 05:59:05 pm

I think a lot of people think of goblins in a much different way than I do. They have a cruel streak in them, but it comes from a place of apathy, anger and boredom. I don't picture many goblins purposefully attempting to make their slaves/kidnapee's lives difficult on purpose. They would have to go out of their way to think of ways to do that. Their creativity is funneled into playing with dead bodies, or other very amusing games that don't require them to think about complex things such as the emotions of others. They're not good with understanding emotions in the first place.

They don't understand food, so when the people they've captured tell them what they need to eat, they should believe them and just think it's weird.

<Human> We have to grow vegetables because they're the most efficient way to feed everyone you want us to.
<Goblin> Whatever, just do all the boring stuff yourself. And do it good!
<Human> Okay!

I think Goblins need leaders from other races because those other races have a greater capacity to be cruel by actually understanding emotional cruelty on a higher level. They need something to aspire to. They need an "art level" cruelty to look up to that they can never seem to grasp without outside help. Humans, elves, and dwarves can do that for them.

One thing in my mini story that kind of gets left out due to perspective is the kidnappees aren't having their lives made difficult. They are just being educated to live the goblin lifestyle up and to the point where they don't actually remember their parents. And the goblins ensalving the parents was for the express purpose of feeding the kidnappees so that they would survive. By the time the kidnappees are old enough to go out and retrieve the food, they are completely different from who they would have been. Also the goblins aren't exactly making the slaves lives harder by torturing them just by the continued kidnapping of their new born. I even see it in my mind that they continue to grow food because they know that it is for their kids. (And in the case of the kid killing his own mother, it wasn't out of cruelty. Just that the goblins have a strict "you work for us and leave us be; we'll let you live, but you cross us and we won't hesitate to kill" thing going.)

It is a sad setting and depending on how long it goes it may not be possible for the town to have a happy end, but it adds to the flavor of the world. And like someone said above it gives motivation to help out and to see what happens if you do. It is these kinds of things that will make DF a true experience to have. I wouldn't be surprised if someday there is a sub-genre of fantasy that are novels based on player's experiences with DF. I mean that is already kind of a thing with the Let's Plays and succession games, but as DF grows in complexity the more interesting the stories will get.

Quote from: darklord92 on January 21, 2013, 10:54:15 am

That was horribly depressing and painful to read, it sounds absolutely goblin. I'd like to see this happen in game, namely to fight back against it.

Yeah, it popped into my head the moment I thought a little in depth about what being occupied by goblins would entail. I also took into the account that goblins seem to think they are actually saving the kids and would want to keep them alive hence using the hamlet and its people for food production rather than flat out destroying it. I would like to see situations similar to these crop up and then get dealt with. I could see a 13 year old grow up to be 22 or so and then go and try free their younger siblings or friends who were still young enough to be taken. Thus you can generate an adventure right in the middle of the town and start your story right there.

Quote from: CrzyMonkeyNinja on January 21, 2013, 07:47:44 pm

[Tolkien nerdiness]
This whole thing reminds me of how after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (a big battle where the good guys lost) the Easterlings (bad guys) enthralled all the Edain (good guys) in Hithlum and forced them to work in the fields while the Easterlings lived a life of comfort in the great halls of the Edain.
[/Tolkien nerdiness]

Just reminding someone of a Tolkien story is compliment in my book. So thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 22, 2013, 06:43:32 pm

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 20, 2013, 12:15:00 pm

Quote from: BFEL on January 19, 2013, 09:30:18 am

Something I've been mulling over related to the in-game worldgen thing is, will these secondary worldgens update the raws?
Basically what I'm asking is will we be able to generate a "normal" world, play it for awhile, then mod in the discovery of guns to shake things up in a second worldgen?

I believe it would work. There shouldn't be any problem. Just like if you mod in a weapon after genning now and have your people make and use it.

I'm of the understanding that currently the ability to actually produce an item through a reaction is cooked into the civilizations themselves upon creation (year 0 of worldgen) and that can't ever be changed, so setting this up directly wouldn't work.  What might do it is having some "spare reactions" built into your modded civs, which you then change to create the desired item at the end of standard worldgen.  Though I still don't believe Toady's actually got a full-on "switch back to worldgen" option working yet, so you'd actually need to experience all those years (probably through fort mode) in order to get interesting legends relating yo the technology advancement. 

I imagine there will be soe fun to be had on the modding forum with regards to this once the update hits. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on January 23, 2013, 07:59:05 am

I suppose I won't be greening this question as it's not like it even require Toady's answer. I'm just asking the masses here.

Does Toady have an idea for what he should change in the game to prevent tantrum spirals?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 23, 2013, 09:20:33 am

Quote from: Objective on January 23, 2013, 07:59:05 am

I suppose I won't be greening this question as it's not like it even require Toady's answer. I'm just asking the masses here.

Does Toady have an idea for what he should change in the game to prevent tantrum spirals?

I asked something similar for the next DF talk. It may get discussed if we're lucky. I basically asked how much of the current tantrum mechanics are placeholders, and how much of it is working as intended in a longterm sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 23, 2013, 09:32:45 am

There is a Dwarf personality rewrite planned for some time in the future, I assume that is also going to handle tantrum spirals/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 23, 2013, 11:13:43 am

What's wrong with tantrum spirals?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on January 23, 2013, 11:45:59 am

Quote from: Trif on January 23, 2013, 11:13:43 am

What's wrong with tantrum spirals?

Your fort is basically doomed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on January 23, 2013, 11:54:51 am

You will lose most of your population, but migrants arrive happy so there are always a few dwarves who aren't tantruming. Once the tantrum is over you have a fully constructed fortress but with fewer dwarves to take care of. The only problem is keeping your militia strong enough for that point in the game.
I think tantrum spirals are handled just fine. They only happen if the general happiness in your fortress is already low to begin with, which means that conditions there are already terrible. If you have to sleep on the rough stone floor all the time, have seen your friends get slaughtered by a goblin invasion and have just been attacked by a tantruming dwarf, you would get mad too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 23, 2013, 12:07:39 pm

Well, I always thought that tantrum spirals were a pretty neat emergent situation from the happiness mechanics, and also a fitting fall for a fortress of alcoholic megalomaniacs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kiba on January 23, 2013, 04:05:34 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

So infanticide, torture, murder, and other form of violence ok, but not sex?  ???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 23, 2013, 04:06:37 pm

Yea, I rarely have tantrum spirals. Occasionally a good dwarf goes bad, but a strong healthy jail, appropiately sized guard force, and general good quality of the living conditions keep things running smoothly. I think they are actually pretty well representitive of a population that would be subjected to the pressures the dwarves are under. It's just a little rioting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: snpaa on January 23, 2013, 04:25:10 pm

Quote from: kiba on January 23, 2013, 04:05:34 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

So infanticide, torture, murder, and other form of violence ok, but not sex?  ???

Yeah it's sad but that's the way our society works, some media outlet would try to paint it as if dwarf fortress was some sort of rape, sodomy, sex simulator (Ie Mass Effect).

Hopefully in the future it will somehow become moddable. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on January 23, 2013, 05:26:34 pm

I doubt that news outlets would care too much about a game like Dwarf Fortress. They only seemed to be concerned about big titles, not niche ones. Toady doesn't have to submit this game to ratings boards, because it is a freeware title only available online.

Also, a question.
Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 23, 2013, 05:32:14 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 23, 2013, 05:26:34 pm

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

Dwarves go forth and abandon fort / Dwarves go forth and abandon fort

(I really have to buy the old Busta Rhymes stuff sometime, it's just awesome)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 23, 2013, 07:01:58 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 23, 2013, 05:26:34 pm

I doubt that news outlets would care too much about a game like Dwarf Fortress. They only seemed to be concerned about big titles, not niche ones. Toady doesn't have to submit this game to ratings boards, because it is a freeware title only available online.

Also, a question.
Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

While I would support such an addition to the game, you can already just copy the save and do exactly this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr Frog on January 23, 2013, 09:15:47 pm

Quote from: kiba on January 23, 2013, 04:05:34 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on January 17, 2013, 03:36:08 pm

Toady said that he wasn't morally opposed to the depiction of sex, though he was opposed to explicit depiction of rape and other sex crimes. However, he was wary of the media attention it would bring. The stuff you suggest is probably planned, but won't be implemented for quite a while.

So infanticide, torture, murder, and other form of violence ok, but not sex?  ???

I think the difference is that stuff like Unfortunate Accidents, Mermaid Farming, and Dwarven Childcare were designed by players, and was never specifically an end goal for Toady when he implemented the features involved; implementing a frank depiction of sex as a direct design decision, by contrast, would lead to Toady himself being held responsible were someone offended.

I'm not sure if there'd really be a huge Mass Effect-style outrage, though. Bay 12, as a low-visibility, small-scale developer of games for a very niche audience, doesn't seem like a terribly-compelling subject for such a thing. There'd probably be some media attention, but I don't think anyone would care.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzlyAdamz on January 23, 2013, 10:24:22 pm

hmm, in the future I might miss our old dwarven brains. They're...charming, in a way.


Quick question, are unions a future feature?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 23, 2013, 10:36:48 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on January 23, 2013, 09:32:45 am

There is a Dwarf personality rewrite planned for some time in the future, I assume that is also going to handle tantrum spirals/

Last I heard the personality rewrite was reconceptualized from a big, sweeping "overhaul everything" to a "we'll handle it as it comes up." I don't have a quote handy though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 23, 2013, 10:51:21 pm

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz on January 23, 2013, 10:24:22 pm

Quick question, are unions a future feature?

We'll probably see something similar to the guilds of the old economy system.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Dwarven_economy (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Dwarven_economy)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 23, 2013, 11:27:23 pm

Now that the world is really operating during play, how have you found size of world (or other outside variables) to affect FPS, especially during Dwarf Mode? Is there much of a difference between large and pocket regions, or worlds with more or less history?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 24, 2013, 05:09:49 am

Since dwarves could now, theoretically, become necromancers during play, do they require any reading skill to get a tome from a god? Or is the skill just granted for them upon recieving their powers? And would it target fort mode dwarves or adventurer dwarves differently than normal?

Obviously, you won't get dwarves recieving slabs during the time they are in your fortress, at least not while it's active, or during active adventure runs, but I'm talking about dwarves in a non-active place. I want to know if a nick-named dwarf could become a necromancer and turn on their former comrades, as this would make for some great storytelling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 24, 2013, 05:30:06 am

Quote from: Trif on January 23, 2013, 11:13:43 am

What's wrong with tantrum spirals?

[opinion]

Tantrums as they are now are illogical, often disproportionate and often misdirected. That they can turn into tantrum spirals is not an issue. If for example a dwarf is unhappy that their friend was hammered because a mandate wasn't met, they shouldn't punch their baby and throw an anvil at their spouse and feel better afterwards. If instead the angry dwarf organized his peasant friends into an angry mob and led them on a protest march which then descended into brutal violence because the fortress guard tried to break it up, that would be interesting. It's a question of ambition when it comes to what the game can eventually do.

Tantrums are an arbitrary challenge as implemented now, like mandates, until things that should be more challenging become challenging (sieges, food production, water, gaining and maintaining a high population etc). DF is good enough to be free of arbitrary additions or restrictions (wood only beds) in an effort to provide "challenge" or "balance".

Some might argue that they are "dwarfy" and shouldn't change. The same has been said of Boatmudered elephants, 40d carp and the dungeon master cloak fetishist.

[/opinion]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 24, 2013, 06:12:58 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on January 24, 2013, 05:09:49 am

Since dwarves could now, theoretically, become necromancers during play, do they require any reading skill to get a tome from a god? Or is the skill just granted for them upon recieving their powers? And would it target fort mode dwarves or adventurer dwarves differently than normal?

Obviously, you won't get dwarves recieving slabs during the time they are in your fortress, at least not while it's active, or during active adventure runs, but I'm talking about dwarves in a non-active place. I want to know if a nick-named dwarf could become a necromancer and turn on their former comrades, as this would make for some great storytelling.

Is this in the upcoming release?  I was under the impression that the only things that have been moved to play thusfar are invasions, birth/death, and succession stuff.  I don't think any of the night ogre/werewolf/zombie/vampire/necromancer stuff has gotten into play from worldgen yet.  The 06/06/2012 devlog indicates that it is a goal for this release or soon after, but from what I've seen in the log recently, the Toad's mainly been working on the broad background programming that's needed for all these changes to occur and make sense. 

There is however the larger point that comes from your comment - there are a large number of skills in the game right now that don't do anything in fort mode at all, (reading, and now climbing come to mind) while most of the crafting/production skills are useless in adventure mode (I don't think adv mode butchery improves with skill).  Obviously there are plenty of mods that change this, but there's also the question of how these things get set up in worldgen, and if they're going to be generally respected in the new post-worldgen, so to generalize the question:

Toady, do historical figures post-worldgen gain skills yet?  Currently, historical figures spend parts of their lives working as various professions, and they have some matching skills to show for it.  Will someone born post-worldgen do the same, or does the world slowly drift toward skillessness? (I mean for the upcoming release, since it is fairly obvious this ought to happen at some point)

Don't think that's been asked yet anyway. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

Quote from: DG on January 24, 2013, 05:30:06 am

Quote from: Trif on January 23, 2013, 11:13:43 am

What's wrong with tantrum spirals?

[opinion]

Tantrums as they are now are illogical, often disproportionate and often misdirected. That they can turn into tantrum spirals is not an issue. If for example a dwarf is unhappy that their friend was hammered because a mandate wasn't met, they shouldn't punch their baby and throw an anvil at their spouse and feel better afterwards. If instead the angry dwarf organized his peasant friends into an angry mob and led them on a protest march which then descended into brutal violence because the fortress guard tried to break it up, that would be interesting. It's a question of ambition when it comes to what the game can eventually do.

Tantrums are an arbitrary challenge as implemented now, like mandates, until things that should be more challenging become challenging (sieges, food production, water, gaining and maintaining a high population etc). DF is good enough to be free of arbitrary additions or restrictions (wood only beds) in an effort to provide "challenge" or "balance".

Some might argue that they are "dwarfy" and shouldn't change. The same has been said of Boatmudered elephants, 40d carp and the dungeon master cloak fetishist.

[/opinion]

Another example is war:

When fort goes under attack, military repels it without civilian casualties and few soldiers die, there should not be riot as a result. Soldier dying during their job should not give same kind of thought as ordinary death - most of population should be extatic from winning battle and being safe.

Grieving is wrongly modelled as "go on pointless rampage" instead of "be depressed for some time, but recover eventually" (or, in extreme case, blame captain of squad or military commander and beat the shit out of them).

Thoughts are only onedimensional thing and more mental states should be tracked:
 * anger/frustration
 * melancholy/sadness
 * self esteem/ego
 * psychological lability/madness
...

With personality deciding what comes and goes, so that dwarf could cope with death by being very sad, but recovering from it farily quickly, but also build up frustration which does not go away as easily so that fifth death would be his breaking point. While another would let steam off by becoming angry, but eventually become mentally unstable if he does not have job he can focus on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kogan Loloklam on January 24, 2013, 08:02:23 am

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

Quote from: DG on January 24, 2013, 05:30:06 am

Some snips:
"are illogical, often disproportionate and often misdirected." (http://www.wikipedia.org/PTSD)


"they shouldn't punch their baby and throw an anvil at their spouse and feel better afterwards..." (http://www.wikipedia.org/Domestic_abuse)

I agree with these snips. Although only out of context. In context they say tantrum spirals have no real life examples.

A "tantrum spiral" taken at a fortress level resembles a riot, of sorts. Tantrums taken at an individual level resemble people snapping. Could tantrums be modeled better? Sure. But they are still not completely inaccurate. When a Dwarf snaps, it's usually a place you'd see a person snap, and I haven't seen a single incident where it couldn't be a real life example situation with just a little context. The dwarf threw the baby after seeing his best friend die? "The baby wouldn't stop crying! I JUST WANTED A MINUTE OF PEACE!"
A masterwork was defaced and anvil to spouse's head? "I come home after my greatest work was broken, and my damn wife just sat there eating her minced dwarven wine biscuits. I told her to have my cave spider silk socks dusted when I came home. Did she? Nope. So I hit her lazy person in the head with an anvil to motivate her."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 24, 2013, 09:52:45 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 24, 2013, 08:02:23 am

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

Quote from: DG on January 24, 2013, 05:30:06 am

Some snips:
"are illogical, often disproportionate and often misdirected." (http://www.wikipedia.org/PTSD)


"they shouldn't punch their baby and throw an anvil at their spouse and feel better afterwards..." (http://www.wikipedia.org/Domestic_abuse)

I agree with these snips. Although only out of context. In context they say tantrum spirals have no real life examples.

I dare you to find example where where besieged settlement repelled enemy force (that would butcher then given chance) and people went into muderous chaotic riot because few soldiers died.

Problem with your counter examples is that those things grow - in df they just come full strength and then vanish.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 24, 2013, 12:15:57 pm

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 09:52:45 am

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam on January 24, 2013, 08:02:23 am

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

Quote from: DG on January 24, 2013, 05:30:06 am

Some snips:
"are illogical, often disproportionate and often misdirected." (http://www.wikipedia.org/PTSD)


"they shouldn't punch their baby and throw an anvil at their spouse and feel better afterwards..." (http://www.wikipedia.org/Domestic_abuse)

I agree with these snips. Although only out of context. In context they say tantrum spirals have no real life examples.

I dare you to find example where where besieged settlement repelled enemy force (that would butcher then given chance) and people went into muderous chaotic riot because few soldiers died.

Problem with your counter examples is that those things grow - in df they just come full strength and then vanish.

True, but the tantrum spiral cycle is closer to real life examples, except with lots of dwarves in the place of a single person. A TS has an initial event that slowly builds up, until it erupts. Sometimes you have to remember that dwarves are not individual people yet; they are parts of a hive mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on January 24, 2013, 12:26:10 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on January 24, 2013, 12:15:57 pm

True, but the tantrum spiral cycle is closer to real life examples, except with lots of dwarves in the place of a single person. A TS has an initial event that slowly builds up, until it erupts. Sometimes you have to remember that dwarves are not individual people yet; they are parts of a hive mind.

Yes, and these are suggestions directed at taking them from the hive mind state to the point of individuality. Not playing the game as it is, but directed toward what the game itself is striving to become.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 24, 2013, 01:30:53 pm

I meant to talk about the current version, because it seemed to be more of a discussion about the current version.
That's just me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hoveringdog on January 24, 2013, 08:12:44 pm

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

When fort goes under attack, military repels it without civilian casualties and few soldiers die, there should not be riot as a result.

Has to be said, though, that this doesn't happen in a fortress unless there are a lot of other stressors at work. Dwarves that have been sleeping in meager accommodations, suffering long patrols, eating the same monotonous food or none at all, and then, and only then, does the loss of a good friend set them off into inconsolable grief and rage.  It's the last straw, not the sole cause.

I've had mature fortresses where entire squads of legendary dwarves get slaughtered and there's barely a batted eye because everyone is fat, dumb, and happy on their masterwork roasts, legendary dining rooms, and bedrooms like personal palaces.

I do agree, though, that the whole tantrum issue could use a lot more nuance, more like a civil war or insurrection than a hundred unorganized dwarves alone smashing tables or ripping the wings off the geese. But as it is now, after the first two or three years of a fortress, tantrum spirals are usually avoidable unless there's some major, fortress-ending disaster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on January 25, 2013, 12:29:00 am

Quote from: hoveringdog on January 24, 2013, 08:12:44 pm

Quote from: zwei on January 24, 2013, 06:31:35 am

When fort goes under attack, military repels it without civilian casualties and few soldiers die, there should not be riot as a result.

Has to be said, though, that this doesn't happen in a fortress unless there are a lot of other stressors at work. Dwarves that have been sleeping in meager accommodations, suffering long patrols, eating the same monotonous food or none at all, and then, and only then, does the loss of a good friend set them off into inconsolable grief and rage.  It's the last straw, not the sole cause.

I've had mature fortresses where entire squads of legendary dwarves get slaughtered and there's barely a batted eye because everyone is fat, dumb, and happy on their masterwork roasts, legendary dining rooms, and bedrooms like personal palaces.

I do agree, though, that the whole tantrum issue could use a lot more nuance, more like a civil war or insurrection than a hundred unorganized dwarves alone smashing tables or ripping the wings off the geese. But as it is now, after the first two or three years of a fortress, tantrum spirals are usually avoidable unless there's some major, fortress-ending disaster.

An organized tantrum, perhaps an oxymoron, is a pretty scary prospect!  Whilst I expect it is highly likely Toady will look in on tantrum spirals at a later date, I remember he said on DF Talk one time that dwarves are "more human than human", extreme in their emotions and behaviour, and I think tantrum spirals suit this mandate nicely.  The Hobbit movie also conveyed this kind of personality quite well, Dwarves are quick to anger and violence, and perhaps only later would consider that murdering the soapmaker might have been a slight overreaction.  Anyway, perhaps with taverns and non-lethal combat perhaps tantrum lethality will be toned down a bit?

Possibly asked before question...

When goblins raid towns and hunt for leaders, can those leaders and citizens escape?  If so, what do they do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: goblolo on January 25, 2013, 01:06:26 am

In current version we have non-flying tamed birds: eagles, giant cave swallows, etc.
Can we expect them to fly when tamed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2013, 01:08:36 am

Quote from: goblolo on January 25, 2013, 01:06:26 am

In current version we have non-flying tamed birds: eagles, giant cave swallows, etc.
Can we expect them to fly when tamed?

I'd say no, since I don't think there's anything changed in fort mode pathfinding this version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on January 25, 2013, 04:41:53 am

Will the military UI be improved next update, or is it for later updates?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 25, 2013, 10:01:09 am

I, for one, find the UI pretty good the way it is. The uniforms related bugs though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on January 25, 2013, 10:06:19 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 25, 2013, 01:08:36 am

Quote from: goblolo on January 25, 2013, 01:06:26 am

In current version we have non-flying tamed birds: eagles, giant cave swallows, etc.
Can we expect them to fly when tamed?

I'd say no, since I don't think there's anything changed in fort mode pathfinding this version.

jumping and climbing? I believe he said they would be coming to fort mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on January 25, 2013, 11:55:39 am

Don't flying creatures actually fly, albeit only to areas they could walk to? Or is that different for tamed creatures?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

Sorry if somebody mentioned this before, as it seems pretty obvious, but..

Our dwarves are always eating and drinking, but I've never seen one go to the bathroom. Where does all that digested food and beer go?

It just seems with all the detailed needs the dwarves have for food, drink, bathing, social interaction, etc, they should have the need to relieve themselves sometimes. Not to compare DF to any other game, because it's in its own category, but I'm reminded of how in many simulation games, like the Sims for example, the people will pee on the floor or crap themselves if they can't use a bathroom.

I think it would be a fun or funny (hopefully not !FUN!) and realistic additional challenge to add to the game. We would have to make toilets, deal with the miasma, and eventually set up a sewer system, etc, or designate a pooping zone outside.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on January 25, 2013, 09:06:56 pm

And if they do, can you use said excrement for anything?
also, will other animals produce it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2013, 09:12:43 pm

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

Sorry if somebody mentioned this before, as it seems pretty obvious, but..

Our dwarves are always eating and drinking, but I've never seen one go to the bathroom. Where does all that digested food and beer go?

It just seems with all the detailed needs the dwarves have for food, drink, bathing, social interaction, etc, they should have the need to relieve themselves sometimes. Not to compare DF to any other game, because it's in its own category, but I'm reminded of how in many simulation games, like the Sims for example, the people will pee on the floor or crap themselves if they can't use a bathroom.

I think it would be a fun or funny (hopefully not !FUN!) and realistic additional challenge to add to the game. We would have to make toilets, deal with the miasma, and eventually set up a sewer system, etc, or designate a pooping zone outside.

One of the most-suggested things on this forum. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117864.msg3705197#msg3705197)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 25, 2013, 09:29:19 pm

Toady's gone on record as saying one of the biggest reasons dwarves don't need toiletries is because it would be one more thing they need to do instead of doing their jobs, which is already pretty silly in fort mode with all the "taking a day to eat, three days to walk across the map, etc."

Mind you, I don't have the quote handy, but as Putnam has said it's one of the most suggested things on the forum- a little diligence with the search bar should pop it up sooner or later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:32:22 pm

Thanks Putnam! I hadn't seen that before. It covers pretty much what I had in mind. Don't know why I didn't get any results for 'toilet' from the search function before I posted here..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 25, 2013, 11:38:41 pm

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

I just assume that, since Dwarves go to the fields and pick crops no matter what you set their preferences to, they must all be taking their movements there, surreptitiously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2013, 11:40:54 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 25, 2013, 11:38:41 pm

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

I just assume that, since Dwarves go to the fields and pick crops no matter what you set their preferences to, they must all be taking their movements there, surreptitiously.

I think you can turn that off in the "o"rders menu...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 26, 2013, 01:06:13 am

But then I might have to divert smithee production to bedpans...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 26, 2013, 12:07:43 pm

Now that all civilized sites will be actively running "forts", does it mean they get properly furnished?
 I'm tired of seeing those empty houses and keeps. Kobolds don't have enough stuff to do in Adventurer mode (the new mobility options would only help that).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silicoid on January 26, 2013, 02:27:19 pm

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

Sorry if somebody mentioned this before, as it seems pretty obvious, but..

Our dwarves are always eating and drinking, but I've never seen one go to the bathroom. Where does all that digested food and beer go?

It just seems with all the detailed needs the dwarves have for food, drink, bathing, social interaction, etc, they should have the need to relieve themselves sometimes. Not to compare DF to any other game, because it's in its own category, but I'm reminded of how in many simulation games, like the Sims for example, the people will pee on the floor or crap themselves if they can't use a bathroom.

I think it would be a fun or funny (hopefully not !FUN!) and realistic additional challenge to add to the game. We would have to make toilets, deal with the miasma, and eventually set up a sewer system, etc, or designate a pooping zone outside.

Eventually, interactions should get advanced enough that you can 'mod' in bathroom needs in forms of emissions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 26, 2013, 02:29:27 pm

Technically, you can already mod in people pissing all over the place. But why would you even do that. That's disgusting. *files idea away just in case I ever include Gent of Piss into Fortbent*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 26, 2013, 02:50:52 pm

Just simulate it - put a large pot in each bedroom and dump them outside every month :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on January 26, 2013, 02:56:02 pm

but what if they are full of food?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 26, 2013, 03:33:59 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on January 26, 2013, 02:56:02 pm

but what if they are full of food?

thats disgusting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 26, 2013, 04:28:08 pm

I await the day zooming in on a pile of vomit will let me see the chunks of carrot contained within (I didn't even eat carrots what the hell)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 26, 2013, 04:47:56 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on January 26, 2013, 02:56:02 pm

but what if they are full of food?

Then you should worry what your dwarves are eating...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Machiavelli on January 27, 2013, 06:23:10 am

Of course, you could just mark it for dumping (ha!) and have it all dropped in a pit to create a Dwarf offal mass singularity

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Liamar on January 27, 2013, 10:41:43 am

With the new elven sites, climbing and multi-tile trees, will we see some improvements to the elven race, such as often-times suggested "magic" wood types ( eg. Ironoak, stonebark etc.) that could rival metal armors and weapons, in order to make elves suck less? As well as trading with the elves for said wood(That they don't get offended if you resell it) in order to create a sort of a global monopoly for wood imposed by the elves by threat of war? Basically like it's been so far, but more justified logic-wise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 27, 2013, 01:29:45 pm

You may think elves suck, but then again you might not have been invaded by elephant, rhinoceros, and bear cavalry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Liamar on January 27, 2013, 01:49:42 pm

They don't always have acces to such beasts, and not always do they spawn with them.

But no, I have only been besieged by zombies so far, and reverted to adventure mode after catching around 20 necromancers in cages. :|

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 27, 2013, 10:25:13 pm

I think elves need their own fighting styles.  Magic wood would just be metal with a different backstory.  The Threetoe stories and donation rewards have featured elves employing woodland traps, poison (and I think poison gas), animal people allies leading hordes of animals, and also portrayed elves as being a bit more explicitly magical than the other races (except maybe goblins).  Those things plus stone arrowheads and knives should make them a force to be reckoned with.  They'd have trouble getting through full plate and dwarf fortresses, but so does everyone else, and both of those should be at least kind of rare in the world at large.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on January 28, 2013, 12:47:19 am

they're immortal, they should all be legendary in anything they do by now.
that can actually be done through modding, i play with toned down skill rates for dwarves, and pumped up skill rates for elves, my dwarves take years to reach proficiency in any skill, but all elves that visit my forts are legendary in several skills, i tremble in fear of an elven kidnapee showing up leading a squad of gobbs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 28, 2013, 02:21:37 am

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

It's been the subject of some of the most heated arguments in the Suggestions Forum, since it's one of the few things suggested that can get people really up in arms (besides homosexuality).  Specifically, there's the fear that it will result in something like people making "poop moats" that they drown elves in or something, and DF having its reputation warped into "that game where people drown elves in poop".  (Of course, the already-extant atrocities we commit daily and the fact that there are things like mass vomitings in this game don't seem to be considered in this context...)

Although it's mostly shaded by my heavy involvement with the Farming threads, the biggest argument for biological waste products I value, however, is that it links up the Nitrogen Cycle, and serves as a critical means of recycling other nutrients in farmlands.

Or, more bluntly, poop, even dwarf poop, is valuable manure for farming. 

In a world before the Haber-Bosch process invented the capacity to artificially create nitrogen or other fertilizers, you basically couldn't just take nutrients out of the soil and just replace the nutrients with something you buy in a bag from the store.  What you took from the soil, you had to return. 

In fact, even in the modern day, 70% of all the nitrogen in fertilizer is nothing more than decomposed urine.  (And urine is the body's way of getting rid of excess nitrogen from protein you've consumed.) It's just more efficient that way.

Hence, yes, I like sewers, too, but more than that, it lets you change the game from a place where food is spawned ex-nihilo from wet dirt into an actual ecosystem simulator with conservation of mass.  For dwarves to live, they must eat the crops, for crops to live, they must eat the soil, and to replenish the soil, you must decompose the waste.  (Plus, if we can decompose goblin and animal corpses as well, you create a serious "ashes to ashes" theme...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on January 28, 2013, 03:00:28 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on January 28, 2013, 02:21:37 am

Quote from: Big Bear on January 25, 2013, 09:04:08 pm

Will there be a need for toilets sometime?

It's been the subject of some of the most heated arguments in the Suggestions Forum, since it's one of the few things suggested that can get people really up in arms (besides homosexuality).  Specifically, there's the fear that it will result in something like people making "poop moats" that they drown elves in or something, and DF having its reputation warped into "that game where people drown elves in poop".  (Of course, the already-extant atrocities we commit daily and the fact that there are things like mass vomitings in this game don't seem to be considered in this context...)

Although it's mostly shaded by my heavy involvement with the Farming threads, the biggest argument for biological waste products I value, however, is that it links up the Nitrogen Cycle, and serves as a critical means of recycling other nutrients in farmlands.

Or, more bluntly, poop, even dwarf poop, is valuable manure for farming. 

In a world before the Haber-Bosch process invented the capacity to artificially create nitrogen or other fertilizers, you basically couldn't just take nutrients out of the soil and just replace the nutrients with something you buy in a bag from the store.  What you took from the soil, you had to return. 

In fact, even in the modern day, 70% of all the nitrogen in fertilizer is nothing more than decomposed urine.  (And urine is the body's way of getting rid of excess nitrogen from protein you've consumed.) It's just more efficient that way.

Hence, yes, I like sewers, too, but more than that, it lets you change the game from a place where food is spawned ex-nihilo from wet dirt into an actual ecosystem simulator with conservation of mass.  For dwarves to live, they must eat the crops, for crops to live, they must eat the soil, and to replenish the soil, you must decompose the waste.  (Plus, if we can decompose goblin and animal corpses as well, you create a serious "ashes to ashes" theme...)

How would manure be handled though? Would it be an item, or a fluid due to it's affinity with liquid waste?
How would it be processed? How would corpses be processed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on January 28, 2013, 09:13:11 am

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.  To say it would make people think poorly of the game is a little silly, when you consider stuff that's already in the game:

Monsters made of vomit
Children kidnapped/murdered/maimed
The fact that there's a special programmed event where a dwarf goes insane, murders another dwarf, and makes an artifact out of his bones!

I mean, it's a natural, real life, bodily process that has very real implications in the medieval setting the game is set in.

That said, it's his game, and his call. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on January 28, 2013, 09:49:02 am

Quote from: Damiac on January 28, 2013, 09:13:11 am

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.

You can spend few months adding, quite literally, shit.

Or you can add stuff like:

Quote

Guilds and sects should be able to make demands for meeting halls, temples, specific furniture or the resources and time to prepare their own furniture, statues of specific gods throughout the fortress, etc.

...

Starting scenarios giving a back story for your fortress, often related to current world situation

...

Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies

I think choice is clear: Scat-jokes come after we are done with actually cool stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 28, 2013, 01:46:57 pm

Quote from: Damiac on January 28, 2013, 09:13:11 am

I have to say, I don't get toady's weird issue with having 'dwarven waste' in the game.  To say it would make people think poorly of the game is a little silly, when you consider stuff that's already in the game:

That's not Toady's objection, that's what most players who object to it object to.

IIRC, Toady's most recent reason for rejecting it was that he didn't want "more breaks", since dwarves already take breaks for eating, sleeping, drinking, partying, and just being lazy. (That led into arguments for how to take breaks more efficiently - with dwarves eating and drinking at the same time, and then going to the restroom right after...)

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on January 28, 2013, 03:00:28 am

How would manure be handled though? Would it be an item, or a fluid due to it's affinity with liquid waste?
How would it be processed? How would corpses be processed?

Fluids would cause serious problems since it would require rewriting map code - making it a liquid contaminant something you carry in a bucket like milk already is would be easier.

The traditional way of processing liquid waste into lant (basically, ammonia, which has a surprisingly large number of industrial uses for being essentially month-old-pee) was to just leave large buckets of the stuff out for a few weeks to let bacteria decompose it for you.  We already do the same thing for corpses - we already just leave them to decompose, the change is making them decompose into a fertilizer item as well as bone items.  (Maybe some sort of creature or mushroom/worm patch or something could make decomposing faster/more efficient, but that's not necessary.) All it takes is a place for decomposing waste you can keep sealed in to prevent escaping miasma. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 28, 2013, 06:27:19 pm

Having running water both for cleaning an waste would be really cool (pipes, not aqueducts which currently are doable). But as pointed out, there's more pressing stuff and it's not like Toady doesn't want to, it's that it might attract the wrong kind of attention. However games like the sims had this as part of the game play without any kind of negative connotation.

Personally it think that in df having actual mechanics of waste and manure production would be as harmless as having yourself sit on the toilet on the sims, but again, more pressing matters and it the end it's all about what the toad feel comfortable with and what he left within the scope of modding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tevish Szat on January 28, 2013, 06:36:44 pm

While, personally, I support the decision to avoid more detailed bodily functions and more detailed waste than the generic "Grime and filth" material, it would be nice if, on dwarven hygiene and cleanliness, it would be nice to designate a well specifically for cleaning, at which point dwarves would "Clean self" there preferentially and not use the water that was liable to become contaminated/nasty for washing patients or emergency drinking unless no other source was avaliable.  Overseers, naturally, would have ensuring that "Cleaning" wells and "Drinking" wells didn't share a cistern on their own heads.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on January 28, 2013, 07:57:14 pm

Quote from: Tevish Szat on January 28, 2013, 06:36:44 pm

While, personally, I support the decision to avoid more detailed bodily functions and more detailed waste than the generic "Grime and filth" material, it would be nice if, on dwarven hygiene and cleanliness, it would be nice to designate a well specifically for cleaning, at which point dwarves would "Clean self" there preferentially and not use the water that was liable to become contaminated/nasty for washing patients or emergency drinking unless no other source was avaliable.  Overseers, naturally, would have ensuring that "Cleaning" wells and "Drinking" wells didn't share a cistern on their own heads.

See, I like this. Make dwarves "wash" more often- maybe even have them like having private drinking wells/washing wells- and then let it all be abstracted out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 29, 2013, 01:47:54 am

I think the fact that dwarves already have too many "stops" is a non-issue, as my fortress always have buckloads of idle dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on January 29, 2013, 02:14:49 am

Even so, what of younger fortresses? It would crawl at a snail's pace, and not just because of lag.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2013, 02:21:14 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on January 29, 2013, 02:14:49 am

Even so, what of younger fortresses? It would crawl at a snail's pace, and not just because of lag.

Well, again, you could combine breaks - if they go to eat, they might check their thirst, and grab a barrel of drink on the way there, and consume them both in one go, then visit the "dirty well" to "powder their nose beard" or whatever phrase makes things more palatable, all in one trip.  If really need be, you could trim off some of the turns it takes to actually finish a meal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on January 29, 2013, 07:48:16 am

Toady's adding in armies moving around the world map and sacking specific portions of cities in real time, and here you guys are arguing about wanting poop in the game. Never, never, never.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 29, 2013, 08:08:50 am

Adventure Mode is why I don't want poop in this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Naryar on January 29, 2013, 09:13:44 am

We don't really need toilets in this game.

Because it doesn't bring anything new or interesting gamewise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on January 29, 2013, 09:33:01 am

Quote from: thvaz on January 29, 2013, 01:47:54 am

I think the fact that dwarves already have too many "stops" is a non-issue, as my fortress always have buckloads of idle dwarves.

For the peon dwarves that is not a big issue. But what if your manager or legendary+5 Weaponsmith decides to take a break for three months. Then it becomes a bit more annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 29, 2013, 09:47:22 am

Quote from: Naryar on January 29, 2013, 09:13:44 am

We don't really need toilets in this game.

Because it doesn't bring anything new or interesting gamewise.

I'm interested in the sewer management aspect of it. That, and sewage contamination. I don't mind if the details are kept out.

Quote from: Torchy on January 29, 2013, 07:48:16 am

Toady's adding in armies moving around the world map and sacking specific portions of cities in real time, and here you guys are arguing about wanting poop in the game. Never, never, never.

This is a good point why it isn't being added now, but I don't see why we shouldn't talk about a possible future feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 29, 2013, 11:10:50 am

Quote

Toady's adding in armies moving around the world map and sacking specific portions of cities in real time, and here you guys are arguing about wanting poop in the game. Never, never, never.

+1

I like micro-management, but it's too much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 29, 2013, 11:16:09 am

Sewers are not about micromanagement! If you set up an indoor waterfall system it should be easy to add sewers to it! Just have the sewers communicate with the dug out passageways used to let the water exit the map and voilà!
It would be very interesting if the lack of sewer system brought miasma and illness. I would love to see my fort crumble to an end because I created a crappy (bad pun is bad) sewer system that got clogged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 29, 2013, 11:52:57 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on January 29, 2013, 11:16:09 am

Sewers are not about micromanagement! If you set up an indoor waterfall system it should be easy to add sewers to it! Just have the sewers communicate with the dug out passageways used to let the water exit the map and voilà!
It would be very interesting if the lack of sewer system brought miasma and illness. I would love to see my fort crumble to an end because I created a crappy (bad pun is bad) sewer system that got clogged.

Yeah. People act like we are asking to wipe out each dwarf's ass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2013, 12:38:51 pm

Quote from: Naryar on January 29, 2013, 09:13:44 am

We don't really need toilets in this game.

Because it doesn't bring anything new or interesting gamewise.

Now, there's certainly good reason to have trepidation about the subject, and I can respect an argument where someone just honestly says "I don't want toilets because I think it's gross and/or immature," but statements like "this doesn't bring anything new or interesting," is being either intellectually dishonest or willfully blind.

People just said what it would do that is new and what it would add: Verisimilitude, sewer systems and the possible logistic challenges that come with them, fertilizers, and a source of lant/ammonia, whose value as a chemical has made it invaluable since nearly the dawn of civilization.  (Used for fertilizers, dying, cleaning agent, chemistry, and one of the primary components of virtually all explosives known to man, including gunpowder.)

If you can't think of any ways that any of those things change the game, you're just trying not to think about it at all.

(And while we're at it, let's take vomiting out of the game - that "doesn't add anything", right? (It's not like a consequence for subterranean isolationism is a "new" thing, right?) Or is the standard simply that once something is in, it becomes dogma, but if it has yet to go in, and it's not what you want, it's "not adding anything new"?)

It's fine to be opposed to something, but at least be honest about your reasons.

What makes this topic so frustrating is that any time someone tries to have a mature conversation about what it means and what it can do, there will always be a vociferously vocal minority of people who declare that there is absolutely NO way to have a mature conversation about the topic... and then simply treating all reasoning to the contrary as nonexistant.

You don't get points for prophecies you make self-fulfilling by going out of your way to sabotage anything that goes against your predictions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 29, 2013, 01:19:36 pm

There's already sewer management, if you want to create an automated system for clearning contaminants off of dwarves and pets. You've got to set little channels that everyone walks through. put bars, have water flow through them at exactly the right height, and then dispose of that water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on January 29, 2013, 02:37:57 pm

Thank you Kohaku, I agree completely with what you said.

It obviously adds a lot to the game.  To say it's gross/immature, well, it's also something that happens in real life.  Civilizations have to build around this very real fact. 
It's been in other games, such as the sims, and doesn't seem to have ruined that game.
Just because the game doesn't have it now doesn't mean it could never work.  Dwarves probably shouldn't take months to eat or drink anyway, so this could be wrapped all together.

I'm not saying such a change should get any priority.  Just that there are valid reasons why it would be a good addition at some point.  And saying "ewww, poop" isn't exactly a valid argument against it, in a game featuring pus, vomit, guts hanging out, and whatever other disgusting things you can think of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 29, 2013, 04:37:18 pm

Quote

It's been in other games, such as the sims, and doesn't seem to have ruined that game.

Personally, it's one of the main reason I stopped playing the Sims.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 29, 2013, 04:46:32 pm

This has been argued to death in literally dozens of threads. It may or may not be added, but Toady will only think of it when he gets around to overhauling food, drink, and rest. Currently, the position is that it would be a big headache on how to implement without creating a huge processor hog (all the tons of waste in addition to the worn out clothes, random tiny items, fluids, spatters, etc, we already have).

Right now, though, you can still get that kind of gameplay in managing contaminants and refuse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thepodger on January 29, 2013, 05:14:36 pm

Ummm, I kind of would like an interface that isn't actively hostile before adding poops to the game.
Actually, as far as priorities, why don't we just keep that one way down near the bottom.  I'd enjoy more military options, overworld interaction, etc just a teensy bit more than poops.

Really?  Poops needs to be added?  I love that this is such a hot button topic that its already been debated into the dirt.  WTH is wrong with people.

-edited for cranky-

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 29, 2013, 05:26:36 pm

Quote from: thepodger on January 29, 2013, 05:14:36 pm

Ummm, I kind of would like an interface that isn't actively hostile before adding poops to the game.
Actually, as far as priorities, why don't we just keep that one way down near the bottom.  I'd enjoy more military options, overworld interaction, etc just a teensy bit more than poops.

Really?  Poops needs to be added?  And why the fuck has this been discussed a million times before?  What the hell.  This isn't an 'eww poops' reaction.  This is a WTF is wrong with people reaction that this has been debated into the dirt and keeps coming up as a feature that needs to be implemented.

The primary reason it keeps being brought back is becuase waste mgm. is a major element to overcome. The othere reason is that waste products have imporant industurail uses. Urine reduction is still one of the main sources for N2.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on January 29, 2013, 05:27:47 pm

To what extent will the move attack speed split be modifiable?  Would we be able to give each attack different speeds, ease of being reacted to and so on, or will it be a more basic 'This creature moves at this speed and attacks at this speed'?

Also while on the subject any chance of us seeing some attack examples to see the new tags?  :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 29, 2013, 06:50:11 pm

Quote from: Greiger on January 29, 2013, 05:27:47 pm

To what extent will the move attack speed split be modifiable?  Would we be able to give each attack different speeds, ease of being reacted to and so on, or will it be a more basic 'This creature moves at this speed and attacks at this speed'?

Also while on the subject any chance of us seeing some attack examples to see the new tags?  :D

Toady has already stated that there will be both "warm-up" and "cool-down" times for attacks--so I could, for example, make a kind of dangerous forbidden technique that takes 1000 frames to wind up and 500 frames to cool down.

Also while on the subject any chance of us seeing some attack examples to see the new tags?  :D
[/color]

(just repeating that because I would love that)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 30, 2013, 04:25:34 am

Well we have new factional information... does this mean that some goods produced by the conquered civilisations will appear on the trading list of their overlords now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on January 30, 2013, 05:11:59 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 30, 2013, 04:25:34 am

Well we have new factional information... does this mean that some goods produced by the conquered civilisations will appear on the trading list of their overlords now?

And by extension, can we lose access to some goods if the suppliers are conquered?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 30, 2013, 05:20:27 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on January 30, 2013, 05:11:59 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 30, 2013, 04:25:34 am

Well we have new factional information... does this mean that some goods produced by the conquered civilisations will appear on the trading list of their overlords now?

And by extension, can we lose access to some goods if the suppliers are conquered?

Basically, how are trade routes affected by site contests?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 30, 2013, 05:37:43 am

For the next release, If we, as adventurers, liberate a conquered town, will the game recognize its new status?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 30, 2013, 01:06:14 pm

Now that there will be other forts running in real-time, (and also armies), will we be able to see migrant waves in Adventurer mode arriving at other sites, such as fortresses? Or will the sites not increase in population?
My English is bad and I should feel bad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 30, 2013, 01:41:57 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 30, 2013, 05:37:43 am

For the next release, If we, as adventurers, liberate a conquered town, will the game recognize its new status?

Is it even possible to liberate a town, or will the guards respawn when we leave the site, like they do now?
Also, can we enlist the citizens to rebel?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on January 30, 2013, 04:25:12 pm

Just that my Adventurers will now be able to encounter other creatures acting out agendas of their own other than "see Adventurer that isn't friendly to my civ -> attack" sends chills down my spine. This release is shaping up to be amazing!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: k33n on January 30, 2013, 04:51:57 pm

Shouldn't the conquered peoples eventually become assimilated? It makes sense for slaves and their descendants to possess goblin names, clothing, and ethics, I guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 30, 2013, 05:06:20 pm

Names and ethics get already passed on to conquered peoples. Maybe Toady had to change clothing because conquered humans tried to wear goblin-sized clothes. Or maybe clothing is supposed to be a local choice, adapted to the weather conditions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 30, 2013, 06:51:58 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on January 30, 2013, 01:41:57 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 30, 2013, 05:37:43 am

For the next release, If we, as adventurers, liberate a conquered town, will the game recognize its new status?

Is it even possible to liberate a town, or will the guards respawn when we leave the site, like they do now?

I am also interested in this. I would think that it would be possible at one point to force dwarf fortress to recognize that while in a town, the adventurer/whoever else killed 45 people. Even though none of them were historical figures, all of them were residents of the town. Therefore, the town's population count SHOULD go down from 255 to 210. I'd also think it'd be possible to realize that 12 of them were elves, 25 were humans, and 8 were goblins, and adjust populations accordingly. Next time the game loads the town, it should respect that by not generating more than (total population) - (# of historical figures present) non-historical figures.

Toady, with the succession and population information going in this release, will it once again be possible to track populations properly in this manner, and permit a town's population to increase or decrease according to population growth rates and player actions? This release or sometime in the near future?

I wonder, if it'd be possible to track population house-to-house, so that if you murdered everyone living in one part of the city, that section would be (nearly) deserted and new non-historical citizens would only be generated elsewhere, and track how many people it's generated in what locations so that only a total of 210 residents could still be encountered total, not just 210 residents loaded at the same time. Maybe that'd add too much bloat/things to track, but somehow it already has a way to decide whether or not a structure should be abandoned, so possibly that could be updated during play as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: k33n on January 30, 2013, 09:44:37 pm

With sites, can I start as a human slave in a golbin civ, or a dwarf living under Elven occupation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on January 30, 2013, 11:28:37 pm

I had originally put a tentative prediction of release date for around mid-February again...but it looks like that's not gonna happen.

...Late March...?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on January 31, 2013, 02:19:23 am

I'm placing my bets on 2014.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 31, 2013, 05:39:11 am

Quote from: Objective on January 31, 2013, 02:19:23 am

I'm placing my bets on 2014.

ToadyOne wouldnt do that to us again. Hopefully.

I bet March, early April.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jellsprout on January 31, 2013, 07:05:14 am

I predict a Good Friday release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 31, 2013, 07:38:58 am

Quote from: k33n on January 30, 2013, 09:44:37 pm

With sites, can I start as a human slave in a golbin civ, or a dwarf living under Elven occupation?

ToadyOne hasnt said that hes made any changes to how Adventurers start their role, even though thats eventually going to change. Its also not an items that hes said hes going to be working on for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on January 31, 2013, 11:12:18 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 31, 2013, 07:38:58 am

Quote from: k33n on January 30, 2013, 09:44:37 pm

With sites, can I start as a human slave in a golbin civ, or a dwarf living under Elven occupation?

ToadyOne hasnt said that hes made any changes to how Adventurers start their role, even though thats eventually going to change. Its also not an items that hes said hes going to be working on for this release.

It's a valid question, based on:

Quote

08/26/2012  Various family things ended up going on the last few days, so I didn't get much done yet, though there's a start. In adventure mode, it now gives you a breakdown of your situation in the opening paragraph instead of the generic paragraph, and there's an indication of what you are getting into for each civiliations, to the extent that there are such things right now. It also gets some balls rolling right after world generation but before your first game so that the world doesn't start in a weird pre-active state.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 31, 2013, 11:14:22 am

To go along with my earlier question on necromancers, will we see recognizable dwarves being entombed, such as a nicknamed general, and go find them again in their afterlife? Also, will adventurers be mummified? And if so, would they be re-playable?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 31, 2013, 11:18:50 am

Quote from: Calathar on January 31, 2013, 11:12:18 am

It's a valid question, based on:

Quote

08/26/2012  Various family things ended up going on the last few days, so I didn't get much done yet, though there's a start. In adventure mode, it now gives you a breakdown of your situation in the opening paragraph instead of the generic paragraph, and there's an indication of what you are getting into for each civiliations, to the extent that there are such things right now. It also gets some balls rolling right after world generation but before your first game so that the world doesn't start in a weird pre-active state.

That only means that, when you start an adventurer game, you get a few sentences like "You're in Burnedhamlet in The Conquered Nations. Burnedhamlet has been conquered by the Victorious Vices, who have set up their camp at the north of town." Adventurers are still created ex nihilo, as indicated by the devlog in which Toady started as an adventurer in a retired fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Thanks to MrWiggles, EmeraldWind, Trif, Knight Otu, Putnam, Valtam, Ribs, Caldfir, Talvieno, Kogan Loloklam, zwei and anybody I missed for answering questions this time.

Quote from: Bohandas

Other than adding the ability for figures not attached to a fortress to form relationships while the game is running do you plan on making any other changes to the current relationship system before the nest release?

It's the same as ever.

Quote from: Hugo Luman

With climbing coming in, will we have use for ropes in adventure mode, like say tying an end to a rock or something and using it to climb down a smooth surface?

Or, with non-lethal combat coming in, will we be able to hog-tie someone or otherwise restrain them?

I was hoping to do something with ropes and climbing, but it hasn't happened yet.  Tying up people is part of the hero role (oddly enough), but we haven't gotten to that part of it.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Goblins don't eat, but players may mod in races which both need to eat and use dark fortresses. How will their worldgen and non-player-controlled farming work in that case?

I haven't changed anything about how that works.

Quote from: Ribs

You've mentioned that we'll now have a visual indication for the direction a creature is facing. What will it look like? My only reference to this type of mechanic in a game like Dwarf Fortress is in Unreal World, where you have a little arrow on the corner of every character's sprite to indicate direction. But since DF is a little more graphically impaired I wonder how will you do it instead. 

It shows a cone with vision and peripheral vision when you are sneaking around.  Otherwise it doesn't bother telling you.

Quote from: Anatoli

I'm assuming you mean people moving to a different location when married. How are you planning to do it? Are we going to see different patrilineal, matrilineal, bileneal, and manyotherlineal descents between cultures? Or is it going to be one system for everyone? That could also potentially lead to doing extended families, so are extended families in your plans for near future?

I'm not setting up those systems right now.  One of the people is just going to move.

Quote from: monk12

When you meet travelers on the road, will they tell you why they are there? It's one thing to bump into random people in the woods, it's another for them to be all "I'm journeying to Bedscaled to be with my lover!" Especially as development goes on, and people travel between sites for more than two reasons.

This is the intention.  I'm going to deal with it when I get the refugees in (which shouldn't be too long now that I'm back to goblin invasions).

Quote

Quote from: AfterShave

If you place your fortress on a busy road. Will the travellers pass through your site in play? If so, could you play as a "bandit camp" waylaying them?

Quote from: mastahcheese

With people moving from site to site, and actually have them travelling, does this mean that if we embark our fort on a road, we might see people from one city travelling to another city, and possibly stop them?

Will this be similar to how adventurers appear when taverns are introduced?

I still have to do the tile interactions with armies, but I suspect they might want to bypass your site if there's nothing to do there, because it's a horrible time sink to them.  When we have adventurers, they'll be deciding to stop at your tavern, so the time sink will be part of their calculation.  I guess they need a really long drink.

Quote from: monk12

Will travelers detour along roads and through sites in order to avoid wilderness? Will they try to stay the night in sites, or will they camp in the woods and get eaten by bogeymen?

I know inns are certainly out for this release, but I'm wondering if people traveling for peaceful purposes on the map will plan their journeys differently than armies/bandits/dragons plan theirs.

Everybody's col' stupid right now, but they don't have to worry about the same things either.  Once they are subject to the horrors of nature and the night, they'll have to be more prudent.  I'm not sure when that's going to happen.  Probably with inns, like you say.  They are good for that sort of thing.

Quote from: LordBaal

I always wondered if you ever thought of implementing a "research system", where some things became available as certain dates or entities invent/discover/develop them?

I don't think anything will happen with certain dates.  I don't have a specific objection to people discovering things, but it requires some kind of starting point, which I haven't really thought about.

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam

Does this mean that loyalty to a civilization or other faction will be tracked like belief in a diety?

I'm just starting this now, but yeah, there's going to be additional information.  There was always a "strength" variable for the entity links in historical figures, but it wasn't really used for anything.  Now it'll have to be a little more nuanced.

Quote from: WaffleEggnog

Wil you be able to embark underground? As in, not like in the middle of nothing, but maybe creating a Dwarvern settlment in trading tunnels between Dwarf sites, the same way we can embark on roads in the current build?

Another question, will we see caravans activly traveling on roads/tunnels, so we can trade and raid them? And will caravans actuly take your items back to the mountainhomes? Because in the current version, the items in caravans just vanish when they leave the map.

And another question that I just came up with, will you be able to play as Hill/Deep/Whateverthehyell Dwarves and as them embark in caverns or some other area underground?

You can't embark underground for this release, though we may see that when I get to the start scenarios.  Moving groups avoid your fortress right now to avoid the time sink that'll ruin all their plans.  I'm not tracking items yet (though traded items are stuffed away for safekeeping already, and have been for quite a while if I remember).

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are the tunnels between settlements going to be completely enclosed or can they be open to the caverns?

Is this upcoming release going to feature any walls as world constructions?

I'm not sure quite how tunnels are going to end up -- right now they are connected through the layers.  Walls aren't used yet, though the class has been sitting around forever.

Quote from: MasterMorality

So if there are multiple people vying for power, will each one have an influence with parts of their population? Will the religious sects or other groups eventually start trying to take power? It'd be cool to see a Theocracy or something sprout up.

Yeah, that's the stuff I'm working on now, at least with the basic claim and occupation opinions/factions.  We'll get to the religious stuff later.  Helgoland mentioned the vampire cultists, and I'm not sure when they'll be activated.  It'll be scary when that part from world gen is actually up and running in play.

Quote

Quote from: Eggman360

With the upcoming update, say three Barons/Counts/Dudes are vying for power, and in adventure mode I Butcher two "Convince them to revoke their claims" via my axe, will the 3rd account for this and take power? Or will the dead leaders' sons/daughters/Wives/demon-spawn take over the claims and carry them on?

Quote from: monk12

So if a Dwarven Count has a claim on an open King position, and dies before that claim is resolved, will his heir (or whoever takes over the Count position) pursue that claim on the King position, or will they abandon it if there are other claimants already vying for it?

Quote from: Eggman360

Will titles be handed down if they are hereditary, such as kings with a line of succession handed down via relatives and bloodlines, do you think the game will account for this I mean? I don't mean the positions and titles themselves, but the claims to those positions? For example a Duke is killed and a Count lays claim to his *Empty* position, will the son of the now dead Duke also have a claim? Or will the son just automatically be made Duke regardless of the claim by the Count? I Guess what I'm asking is could a character have a claim to a position that isn't vacant? And if so will a dispute such as that stop the position being filled once the current holder dies?

The claims are made by historical figures, so the child will re-evaluate and make up their mind.  That doesn't involve much now, but they do get to decide.  They don't think about how their parent was involved for instance, even if that should be one of the factors.  If there's just a single claim for a while, that remaining person will get the spot (though I imagine that'll be subject to some extra testing later).  If the position is hereditary and their is an heir, the heir gets the spot before anybody else even has their claim AI kick in, but I imagine that's not going to stop historical figures later on from continuing to fuss.

Quote from: LordBaal

From this it would seem the the claim system is not complete, so resolution of several claimings is not determined just yet. I guess it could be at random (I would start with that at first if I where programing the game), but maybe we will end up with some fancy mechanic to determinate it, like competitions, assassination attempts (great quests for an adventurer I guess) and even civil war?

Yeah, the whole point of putting in competing claims was to get the succession struggles mentioned on the dev page, for story and gaming purposes.  It should be really cool once we get some more actions in for them to take.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady how did you get the voice work for Beyond Quality?

I said beyond quality in several silly voices and overlapped them, if I remember.  I might have digitally changed the pitch on some of them, but I don't remember if that came up.

Quote

Quote from: Helgoland

Will there be only one aristocratic hirarchy, or will different civs have different noble positions?

Quote from: dhokarena56

will there be people who are related to the nobility, but act like regular citizens unless they have a claim to maneuver? For example, the duke's cousin might not be important enough to warrent his own title or any noble perks, but he might have a tenuous claim on succession to the duchy.

The hierarchy is set up in the raws.  Civs like humans and goblins can also generate their own (though it's not very interesting).  Hopefully claims will get more interesting over time, but it's pretty basic right now in terms of who is going for what.  Extended families have always been a little iffy in DF, and hopefully I can improve that.  I haven't done it yet.

Quote

Quote from: Maxmurder

Will we be seeing factions develop around opposed claimants to a title? If so will the player see or participate in feuds between rival factions take place in game?

Quote from: Liamar

With all the inheritence stuff done now, will the players be able to directly affect the political world by doing quests for historical figures that want to inherit their titles a little sooner, throught means of assasination and/or intrigue? Also, will an adventurer be able to become a king, or obtain any of the positions, and actually influence the world that way?

Yeah, the basic opinion/factions/politics surrounding these things is the current project.  I'm not sure what actions you'll be able to take (aside from randomly killing people) -- those'll be added in piecemeal like everything else.

Quote from: Helgoland

What about wider political consequences? A faction has the king assassinated, that leads to a declaration of war on the nation that was backing that faction, etc. Think Archduke Ferdinand and the First European Unpleasantness.

In a similar vein: How fleshed out will diplomacy be?

There's nothing interesting now, as usual, aside from the basic mechanics, but I'm putting them in to make stuff like that possible.

Quote from: Dragula

Will we ever get half elves?

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Quote from: Sotsepmet Koicei

Will there ever be a way to specify what the subject of a statue/engraving ought to be?

Probably, yeah.  I vaguely remember when it came up before thinking that some dwarves might be happier working on their own stuff, but that they wouldn't really mind working on a more official fortress project sometimes either.  I don't have a stylistic objection to it.  You can already make very specific mosaics and so on, so being able to carve specific artwork is legitimate as well.  I wouldn't want to remove the dwarves' ability to make their own things as well, of course.

Quote from: Liamar

For example, would it be possible for the player to become a king as an adventurer, start a war with a civilisation, retire, make a fort to build an army to aid it's civilisation in said war, AND have the adventurer Monarch migrate to your fort?

It's a little early for the player to become a monarch, but we are on the slow march there.  Once you get to that point, yeah, having your adventurer monarch migrate to your fort would be automatic.

Quote from: Kogan Loloklam

Will we see some religions have schisms where something like some believing in the divinity of the Demon Glob the Snotball while others claim they are a bunch of heratics, possibly lasting past the destruction of the imitation demon sect leader, maybe creating a dual-religion thing?

Eventually -- that was part of the old Core 63 and as such has migrated over to my new notes, but I don't have a schedule for it.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the succession in the game, does that mean dwarves will re-marry and so on for the upcoming release? If so, have you or are you going to make any other improvements to the system before the release?

That hasn't changed yet.

Quote from: Tov01

Since you are working on Goblin occupations, will you also be doing occupations by other races in this release?

We're starting with goblins, and we're hoping that the succession conflict and other such nonsense will lead to other critters being bad, but they don't send out forces over those concerns yet.  It'll either take that or a realization of existing world gen relationships.

Quote from: monk12

Will goblins treat occupations any differently than other races? I could see where goblins are much more brutal than everybody else, and it would be neat if everyone had their own little conquest quirks.

I expect it's not going to be a desired experience, even in this release, whereas changing human/dwarven/etc. leadership might not matter at all sometimes.

Quote from: Vattic

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

I think people talked about this a bit in the thread, but if I remember aluminum is the only one that's been really controversial.  There are native deposits, but I don't know if they are specks or what.  I'm not attached to it, if that's all there are.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Toady, how does pairing people up in worldgen work? Does it just randomly pair up different-sex friends, if friend relationships are even tracked in worldgen? And how does it decide who can be friends with whom, if that's how that works?

It doesn't even track friendships right now, and there aren't anything like alliances, so it doesn't try to match people politically.  It just pairs them off.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With goblins occupying towns, does that mean they will occupy deep dwarf settlements if the fortresses connected to them fall?

Yeah, they fall more or less under the hamlet category as the human settlements go.  Of course, I'm not simulating battles at this time, and having my paltry goblin armies defeat any of the dwarven fortresses is a little cheap.  They should have to try harder.

Quote from: dhokarena56

You've mentioned that once this release and the bugfix releases following it are out, you've got several directions to choose from in terms of where to go development-wise. What are some of those directions you're looking at?

Inns and taverns (both modes), dwarf mode start scenarios and hill/deep dwarves (these'll be necessary before we do any dwarf mode army stuff), criminal justice system stuff...  but I'm really not sure.  And during the bugfix releases, there might be more focused additions as well.

Quote from: Vattic

With story generation being one of the main aims I figure romance will be important. I know sex is a difficult topic but will some kind of abstracted lust be present? I ask because it has been an interesting driving force in many stories.

I really don't know at this point.  Right now, in the fort, there's the instant where relationships change from "friend" to "lover", and there's some missing stuff there, and the missing stuff can involve all kinds of interesting story stuff like triangles and all that without getting into the sex aspect at all.

Quote

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

When a leader is killed in an attack, will their successor instantly be in power? Or will there be no leader until after the attack has been repelled, if it is repelled?

Also, how does the town defend its self? Is it everyone for themselves? Or are there organized defenses?

Quote from: HugoLuman

Can invaders destroy buildings even if the defenders succeed in repelling them? Do the defenders repair buildings?

It isn't really a question of repelling people at this point, since we haven't gotten to the proper army arc stuff yet.  If there's any fighting, it'll be up to you.  I haven't set up battles yet.

People will make claims on positions reasonably quickly (not instantly).  If the trouble continues for more than a day, you might have a claim made during the trouble.

Quote from: Novel

Will invasions wake up nearby... residents?

Like underground residents?  I didn't particularly think about that one.  Nothing bugs anybody right now outside of the specific things that you bring about in dwarf mode.

Quote from: monk12

There isn't yet the ability to time-skip, but it's a planned feature. Right now the best you can do is start/abandon a fortress a bunch of times- each new start will cycle the year forward to the next spring. Though actually, with worldgen activities continuing into play, that might change, or be a more involved process. Do world activities advance after an abandon? Will the game simulate world activities before the next fortress is founded?

Dealing with the abandonment/post-adventure time-skip is one of the clean-up things on the menu.  It'll have to advance the events, but as you can imagine, that's a reasonably messy process.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

do sites expand in worldgen as of the current release, or not besides the general upscaling from town to city?

In world gen the houses/shops expand on a percentage scale, it tracks what sort of work the town has specialized in, and certain specific buildings are tracked (like temples).  Population is tracked, as are most of the items numerically.  There's quite a bit of information.  It just doesn't have a specific map layout, which is why it is easy to get away with anything there.

Quote from: Talvieno

Will NPC sentients have any chance of becoming necromancers/night creatures after world gen is over?

Not right now, but we'll get there eventually.  Every process from world generation will ideally be continued...  just not yet.

Quote from: monk12

(regarding debug map viewer)
What potential applications were you thinking of? Divination spells? Scouting reports for generals and the like? "Kingdom Mode?" Something else entirely?

Yeah, that sort of thing.  Anything where you'd move a map around in some detail.

Quote from: Valtam

When goblins attempt to capture a village, are they hostile to the entire population of the site as to get control of it? Or will they keep their relationships with neutral and even friendly entities already living there?

I'm not sure what you had in mind...  the bandits and other criminals?  They don't really like anybody.

Quote from: Greiger

With the comments on goblins finding food for citizens having to eat, will this include hunting for carnivore races or will those guys still be out of luck and destined to starve in a few years?

The comment was about post world gen, and you sound like you're talking about world gen, since people still don't eat at all after world gen (outside of your fort).  So two issues might be being conflated here.  Whatever bugs from world gen exist are still bugs.

Quote from: tyrannus007

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

It's probably legitimate to have some kind of restricted mode, but being able to see everything would spoil stuff, including outside threats to your fortress, vampires and whatever else.

Quote from: dhokarena56

Now that the world is really operating during play, how have you found size of world (or other outside variables) to affect FPS, especially during Dwarf Mode? Is there much of a difference between large and pocket regions, or worlds with more or less history?

It isn't time to really get into that yet, so I'm not sure.  I don't think there'll be any issues that I can't make disappear with this stuff.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Since dwarves could now, theoretically, become necromancers during play, do they require any reading skill to get a tome from a god? Or is the skill just granted for them upon recieving their powers? And would it target fort mode dwarves or adventurer dwarves differently than normal?

I haven't continued everything from world gen yet.  That'll take more time, and we've already taken way too much of it.  Each of the interactions has tags saying whether it is teachable and how, so it'll depend on how the knowledge is given.  If the god sets it down on a tablet, and it isn't some kind of magical tablet, the critter will have to read.

Quote from: Caldfir

Toady, do historical figures post-worldgen gain skills yet?  Currently, historical figures spend parts of their lives working as various professions, and they have some matching skills to show for it.  Will someone born post-worldgen do the same, or does the world slowly drift toward skillessness? (I mean for the upcoming release, since it is fairly obvious this ought to happen at some point)

Nah, but they don't actually work either, so it's okay for now.  Once they start producing things again, hopefully I'll remember to make them better at their jobs.  In world gen, they (often) actually work and produce goods, and that's when they get skill.

Quote from: hermes

When goblins raid towns and hunt for leaders, can those leaders and citizens escape?  If so, what do they do?

That's the plan.  They'll probably just camp out or go to the nearest city and complain to you for now.

Quote from: Objective

Will the military UI be improved next update, or is it for later updates?

I haven't changed anything with it.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that all civilized sites will be actively running "forts", does it mean they get properly furnished?  I'm tired of seeing those empty houses and keeps.

It isn't that far along yet.  Specific furnishings in all the various places, like human keeps, isn't in yet.  I'm not sure I even touched those.

Quote from: Greiger

To what extent will the move attack speed split be modifiable?  Would we be able to give each attack different speeds, ease of being reacted to and so on, or will it be a more basic 'This creature moves at this speed and attacks at this speed'?

Also while on the subject any chance of us seeing some attack examples to see the new tags?

Putnam mentioned the pre/post attack speed settings, and those affect every attack.

I still have one more pass to do before I can put up the raws, since I have to do some more thinking about reaction moments.  Hopefully it won't be too long now.

Quote

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

does this mean that some goods produced by the conquered civilisations will appear on the trading list of their overlords now?

Quote from: Lolfail0009

And by extension, can we lose access to some goods if the suppliers are conquered?

Quote from: MrWiggles

Basically, how are trade routes affected by site contests?

I haven't done any of this yet.  There isn't much of a point working with this until we get production back up -- in that case the actual items we already track will be moving around and I can hopefully scrap a lot of the placeholder information, instead of having to massage it based on conquests and all that.

Quote

Quote from: thvaz

For the next release, If we, as adventurers, liberate a conquered town, will the game recognize its new status?

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Is it even possible to liberate a town, or will the guards respawn when we leave the site, like they do now?
Also, can we enlist the citizens to rebel?

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, with the succession and population information going in this release, will it once again be possible to track populations properly in this manner, and permit a town's population to increase or decrease according to population growth rates and player actions? This release or sometime in the near future?

Yeah, we're definitely going to take it to that point.  Of all the interesting things that have opened up, that's one of the easier ones to do, and it's one of the ones we're going to use to keep a sense of having something to do in adventure mode, with all the new stuff happening (as hard as it might be to survive right now -- at least using the Toady-approved method of repeated assaults by berserk new adventurers will work).

Enough of the respawning issues will hopefully be solved for the next release.  Historical figures have always died, but entity populations act weirdly, and that should be fixed before I release it.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that there will be other forts running in real-time, (and also armies), will we be able to see migrant waves in Adventurer mode arriving at other sites, such as fortresses? Or will the sites not increase in population?

They can increase in population through breeding and by marriage (which can also make people leave).  I haven't formalized the dwarf mode migrations as army movements yet -- once that's in, I imagine things'll get pretty crazy.  I'll probably want the start scenario hill dwarf stuff further along to understand how to best integrate those things into dwarf mode.

Quote from: k33n

With sites, can I start as a human slave in a golbin civ, or a dwarf living under Elven occupation?

I don't think it'll let you start in a goblin civ, regardless of the race you pick.  I don't remember if elves occupy anybody in world gen.  I haven't set them to attack other sites yet in play.  I'm not against either of these scenarios, but in the first case, I haven't written enough conversation etc. stuff up for it to make sense to change it from the way it is now, and the second one just might not happen yet.

Quote from: mastahcheese

To go along with my earlier question on necromancers, will we see recognizable dwarves being entombed, such as a nicknamed general, and go find them again in their afterlife? Also, will adventurers be mummified? And if so, would they be re-playable?

They don't handle the dead yet, as they do in world gen.  Every process needs to be done manually, and my world activation has just touched upon some basic important things.  Not that handling dead bodies isn't important.  The only thing that isn't an eventual yes there is the last one...  I haven't really thought about how it would handle your adventurer rising from the dead as an intelligent being after a long break.  It might be fun to play them, but I'm not sure when you'd get to shift perspective.  It would be funny to see the mummy in the list of available adventurers when you start your next game (assuming they weren't put down already).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 31, 2013, 08:18:29 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 31, 2013, 09:42:03 pm

Thanks for the answers! These give me several ideas for fun stories in the next release. Sounds like a lot of worlds will gen with goblins eventually conquering all the humans, though :D

I once generated, by chance, an all-kobold world, and they had no one to steal from but night trolls and megabeasts. What happens if an entity appears somewhere cut off from other peoples vital for their role? Like, for instance, an isolated continent inhabited by a single goblin nation? Do they change their behavior somewhat or search for nonexistent trade partners / victims?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 31, 2013, 10:05:26 pm

Great FotF reply. This release just keeps getting better and better!

As to your question, Hugo, I'd imagine that being unable to perform behaviors associated with them will have next to no effect on entities living in isolation, besides that they simply can't perform those tasks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: o_O[WTFace] on January 31, 2013, 10:26:38 pm

I guess this is a somewhat abstract question, but with the personality/AI work it is somewhat relevant:
Right now the fundamental way players interact with their dorfs is by assigning jobs and ordering stuff built, just like in older versions.  Will this ever change, for example dorfs choose professions, or some kind of economy system doles out job assignments?

I would assume the current system is good enough while any alternative would be lots of work, but I'm curious what the goals are for this. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 31, 2013, 10:31:39 pm

Many thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 31, 2013, 10:34:24 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on January 31, 2013, 10:05:26 pm

Great FotF reply. This release just keeps getting better and better!

As to your question, Hugo, I'd imagine that being unable to perform behaviors associated with them will have next to no effect on entities living in isolation, besides that they simply can't perform those tasks.

But goblins, being very dependent on conquering others for slaves / leaders, probably would have to behave differently in isolation. Maybe eventually they die out from murdering each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 01, 2013, 12:23:00 am

Quote from: o_O[WTFace] on January 31, 2013, 10:26:38 pm

I guess this is a somewhat abstract question, but with the personality/AI work it is somewhat relevant:
Right now the fundamental way players interact with their dorfs is by assigning jobs and ordering stuff built, just like in older versions.  Will this ever change, for example dorfs choose professions, or some kind of economy system doles out job assignments?

I would assume the current system is good enough while any alternative would be lots of work, but I'm curious what the goals are for this.

Yes, it is expected that dwarves assume more roles as their personality and the environment gets fleshed out. An actual, working economy could be jointed with religious beliefs, political motives and deep, varied personality issues, which would make the dwarves less "controllable" than they're now, in a gamey sense of the word, but would allow them to be better simulated and more endearing in narrative terms. Also, we certainly don't know which variables and additions to the interface could be added in the near future, but DF will remain steady as a magnificent game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pbnjoe on February 01, 2013, 01:54:12 am

Always really exciting to see that there's another FotF reply :) love reading them, makes me anticipate the next release even more than I was before, if that's possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RenoFox on February 01, 2013, 05:30:45 am

The human keeps are so large there's no way for archers to shoot down from their towers. Will they be scaled down, or will the archer code be changed to shoot further downwards?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on February 01, 2013, 08:09:39 am

Thanks a lot for the answers, Toady!

1. You mentioned succession stuff in the last FotF, and said heir take up the place of the king instantly. What if the heir is a one year old, do he still get the position? Did you implement/plan to implement a regency mechanic, with an ambitious regent getting claims to the throne, or holding the power until the regent reach a certain age, 12 years old for example.

2. Will Dwarf and Elvens sites have items they usually do, like small breastplates in dwarf sites? Will there be steel items now?

3. Do you plan to do something for the next release about the time the undead raise? Some people think it's not so much, but it's basically impossible to reach a necromancer without turning undead or sneaking through. In that subject, do you plan to add melting points so the undead can be destroyed by lava? Do you plan to nerf down player characters that turn vampire/necromancer, because those are unstoppable killing machines right now.

4. Don't remember if you answered this already, but do you plan to do something in this release about the dwarf/human issue with nature and critters? I mean, it's love it or kill it. Every animal runs from a dwarf or tries to kill it. Will we have more "shy" animals who usually run form you and some others that don't mind you passing as long as you don't go on a killing spree or start shouting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 01, 2013, 08:14:41 am

Quote from: RenoFox on February 01, 2013, 05:30:45 am

The human keeps are so large there's no way for archers to shoot down from their towers. Will they be scaled down, or will the archer code be changed to shoot further downwards?

Didnt toady install arking behavior for projectiles? If so you would have just to shot in the generall direction ... i amnot sure if the AI got an update though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 01, 2013, 09:00:01 am

Is anyone compiling list of changes upcomming for next release?

Becaise I totally forgot about sneaking and vision range in adventurer mode. What other "suprises" are there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on February 01, 2013, 09:39:23 am

Oh man, it's gonna be a while. Could be another eleven-month release before we're finished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 01, 2013, 09:51:38 am

Yeah, it looks like Toady will be missing his own prevision by at least some months.

zwei:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 01, 2013, 10:04:48 am

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

To clarify: Would we have to worry about a pair of giant eagles nesting in the tree above the fort and carrying dwarves off to feed to their young?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on February 01, 2013, 11:13:44 am

 Will there be holidays and festivities in future releases? Like will their be traditions and such like dancing or feasintg, etc? and will they change over time or revert to the more traditional forms at points due to conflicting cultures? and will your adventurer be able to partake in these events?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on February 01, 2013, 11:27:37 am

Quote from: tahujdt on February 01, 2013, 10:04:48 am

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

To clarify: Would we have to worry about a pair of giant eagles nesting in the tree above the fort and carrying dwarves off to feed to their young?

Quote from: Zavvnao on February 01, 2013, 11:13:44 am

Will there be holidays and festivities in future releases? Like will their be traditions and such like dancing or feasintg, etc? and will they change over time or revert to the more traditional forms at points due to conflicting cultures? and will your adventurer be able to partake in these events?

These are both questions that fall under the "Could be seen in the game, but not in this release, and no set timeline for their implementation." I think the second one is closer to implementation than the first, and possibly something that comes in with inns and taverns -- but I am not holding my breath.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EternallySlaying on February 01, 2013, 11:44:13 am

1)Since in the future we will be able to retire fortresses, will we be able to affect the trade with our fortresses and adventures? As an adventurer, clearing an influential gang might, for instance, make the path to a retired fortress safer, allowing for cheaper trade. Also will this fortress's resources and exports be considered for trade for other player fortresses in the same kingdom; or as an adventurer, find in markets things that these fortresses produced when not necessarily at the fortress they were produced?

2)Once Guilds are introduced, can we expect these groups to declare things on a macro scale? If there is a mining guild in the capital, and members migrate to the current fort and induct all your miners, and they declare they must have ☼iron ring☼ and -gabbro mug-, will you be expected to uphold this declaration in other forts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 01, 2013, 12:54:00 pm

Quote from: Heph on February 01, 2013, 08:14:41 am

Quote from: RenoFox on February 01, 2013, 05:30:45 am

The human keeps are so large there's no way for archers to shoot down from their towers. Will they be scaled down, or will the archer code be changed to shoot further downwards?

Didnt toady install arking behavior for projectiles? If so you would have just to shot in the generall direction ... i amnot sure if the AI got an update though.

Projectiles can fly in arcs now, but the AI doesn't aim accordingly, so they still have their little sphere of attack. Since that issue is on Toady's list anyways, human fortresses will probably stay as huge as they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on February 01, 2013, 05:10:13 pm

YAY! Update!

For a limited legends screen, will it be something you need to talk to caravans for,with each caravan providing different info, thereby also promoting trade or will there be something else? i think it might be cool to see my dwarves talking to caravan guards and learning that say, a king has a new lover or something. you know, gossip.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 01, 2013, 05:13:30 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 01, 2013, 10:04:48 am

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

To clarify: Would we have to worry about a pair of giant eagles nesting in the tree above the fort and carrying dwarves off to feed to their young?

That would be awesome. If weaponized, you'd have the coolest guard dogs, and maybe even dump the old bones on the heads of invaders every once in a while XD

Then again, Giant Eagles received a huge downgrade when all the new giant/men animals were introduced. Giant Kea though....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 01, 2013, 05:15:25 pm

Quote from: EternallySlaying on February 01, 2013, 11:44:13 am

1)Since in the future we will be able to retire fortresses, will we be able to affect the trade with our fortresses and adventures? As an adventurer, clearing an influential gang might, for instance, make the path to a retired fortress safer, allowing for cheaper trade. Also will this fortress's resources and exports be considered for trade for other player fortresses in the same kingdom; or as an adventurer, find in markets things that these fortresses produced when not necessarily at the fortress they were produced?

2)Once Guilds are introduced, can we expect these groups to declare things on a macro scale? If there is a mining guild in the capital, and members migrate to the current fort and induct all your miners, and they declare they must have ☼iron ring☼ and -gabbro mug-, will you be expected to uphold this declaration in other forts?

1) Right now caravans are still abstract, as far as I remember. The only moving stuff around the world are small goblin armies, bandits, lovers and a few megabeasts or other surprising creatures that create ruckus around. Being that for now, they'll ignore hostile obstacles in their routes; however, Toady has said that there will be certain issues if your neighboring trading partners are wiped out or become hostile, so maybe that could block the expected, abstracted caravan movement.

2) There's no timeline or framework for guilds right now, so any answer given by anyone would be, at best, a wishful thinking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 01, 2013, 05:21:53 pm

So we have a future of the fortress reply and a monthly report in the same day.  Excellent!

Will we be seeing the return of the Royal Guard anytime soon in an upcoming release and if so, what do you see them doing?

Royal Guard were a much-talked-about feature of versions of Dwarf Fortress before DF2010, and in DF2010 were a squad lead by the hammerer (I think?) who were intended to defend various nobles. I'm wondering whether any interesting changes have happened with the movement of nobles and changes to the system of positions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 01, 2013, 05:36:58 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 01, 2013, 05:21:53 pm

So we have a future of the fortress reply and a monthly report in the same day.  Excellent!

Will we be seeing the return of the Royal Guard anytime soon in an upcoming release and if so, what do you see them doing?

They didnt function well, and will probably be seeing a return, eventually. But the three discussed avenues of where to go from here, doesnt seem to nessicate having royal guards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 01, 2013, 05:40:08 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 01, 2013, 05:21:53 pm

So we have a future of the fortress reply and a monthly report in the same day.  Excellent!

We used to have devlogs every day. I miss those times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on February 01, 2013, 06:44:07 pm

But oh, man, it's gonna be a long while before the release. Ain't no way it's coming out this month, probably not in March neither.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 01, 2013, 07:41:48 pm

Asked a question here, but never mind that. I'm so very excited about the next release. I think when it comes out, after failing my first fortress, I'll go into the legends mode and write a fanfic about the world I was in, looking for the important figures and such. It sounds like there'll be more interesting stuff to discuss now. I came up with this idea earlier, but decided to wait for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nekronuke on February 01, 2013, 08:13:33 pm

1. With all these changes, will we get the ability to tell an outpost liaison to relay information to the mountainhomes? Mainly about the number of migrants. Things like- Lots of work: could bring in larger migrant waves while 'In Danger' would restrict the number of dwarves, or send more militia minded dwarves/adventurers.

2. If we retire a fort, and visit it as an adventurer, then retire that adventurer there, could we in theory populate a fortress with superdwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 01, 2013, 08:30:14 pm

Quote from: nekronuke on February 01, 2013, 08:13:33 pm

2. If we retire a fort, and visit it as an adventurer, then retire that adventurer there, could we in theory populate a fortress with superdwarves?

You can kinda-sorta do this already, especially if your civ has a very small pool of historical figures. Just retire lots of high-skill adventurers in a site owned by the civ, then create a fortress under it's name somewhere in the world. Your adventurers have the same chance to show up as migrants as any other historical figure, so you will eventually see some immigrate there. Maybe not an especially high concentration, but you'll see a few.

However, in the next version I almost guarantee that what you are suggesting will work in some manner; if we can retire forts as permanent sites under the supervision of the parent civ, then we can retire adventurers there. If the adventurers remain as residents there indefinitely, then they should still be there if you reclaim/take back control of the fortress. Whether or not they are dwarves will make the biggest difference: if they are not dwarves, they will not be a proper member of the fortress population and you will not normally be able to give them orders. Unless Toady accounts for multi-race fortress populations this version, which I haven't heard anything about yet.

Toady, if you could clarify: since retired adventurers become members of the civilization they retire in and are historical figures, does that mean they have a chance to be paired off to a marriage partner, move to their partner's town (or their partner to theirs) and raise children, just like any other historical figure?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 10:23:36 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 01, 2013, 05:13:30 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 01, 2013, 10:04:48 am

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

To clarify: Would we have to worry about a pair of giant eagles nesting in the tree above the fort and carrying dwarves off to feed to their young?

That would be awesome. If weaponized, you'd have the coolest guard dogs, and maybe even dump the old bones on the heads of invaders every once in a while XD

Then again, Giant Eagles received a huge downgrade when all the new giant/men animals were introduced. Giant Kea though....

Aren't flying creatures still borked because pathfinding isn't capable of tracking flying through anything other than flood-fill?  (Meaning that tamed flyers forget how to fly because they start pathing like dwarves.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 10:59:12 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 01, 2013, 08:30:14 pm

You can kinda-sorta do this already, especially if your civ has a very small pool of historical figures. Just retire lots of high-skill adventurers in a site owned by the civ, then create a fortress under it's name somewhere in the world. Your adventurers have the same chance to show up as migrants as any other historical figure, so you will eventually see some immigrate there. Maybe not an especially high concentration, but you'll see a few.

You can also just make an adventurer and murder all the historical figures, then create a series of adventurers that retire into those civs to up the odds if we have actually-on-the-map NPC forts this time.

(Of course, this would be more useful if we could actually train useful skills besides combat in Adventure Mode instead of just being legendary in combat skills, swimming, knapping, and not much else.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 01, 2013, 11:11:10 pm

Quote from: nekronuke on February 01, 2013, 08:13:33 pm

1. With all these changes, will we get the ability to tell an outpost liaison to relay information to the mountainhomes? Mainly about the number of migrants. Things like- Lots of work: could bring in larger migrant waves while 'In Danger' would restrict the number of dwarves, or send more militia minded dwarves/adventurers.

2. If we retire a fort, and visit it as an adventurer, then retire that adventurer there, could we in theory populate a fortress with superdwarves?

I'm pretty sure the first one is something that won't be in this release, it's a feature Toady is willing to implement in one form or another, no timeline. I don't have a quote handy for that one though.

Second one, however,

Quote from: devlog 12-05-13

I also tested out retiring a dwarven adventurer in a retired fort and then unretiring the fort, and it basically worked out -- the adventurer was listed as a soldier without a squad, which I need to fix, and I need to tweak the items they are carrying, but otherwise they were a proper fortress citizen. If you hand your former adventurer an official position in the fort and then retire the fort and then unretire the adventurer, I guess you'd be controlling an official, but you wouldn't have any actual powers, since we don't have anything set up for that yet in adv mode. When I first started the adventure, I was expecting to have to walk from the main dwarven civ out to my retired fortress, but the game just started me in the retired fort.

So yes, you can totally retire dwarven adventurers in your forts, then unretire the fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Brotato on February 01, 2013, 11:12:47 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 10:59:12 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 01, 2013, 08:30:14 pm

You can kinda-sorta do this already, especially if your civ has a very small pool of historical figures. Just retire lots of high-skill adventurers in a site owned by the civ, then create a fortress under it's name somewhere in the world. Your adventurers have the same chance to show up as migrants as any other historical figure, so you will eventually see some immigrate there. Maybe not an especially high concentration, but you'll see a few.

You can also just make an adventurer and murder all the historical figures, then create a series of adventurers that retire into those civs to up the odds if we have actually-on-the-map NPC forts this time.

(Of course, this would be more useful if we could actually train useful skills besides combat in Adventure Mode instead of just being legendary in combat skills, swimming, knapping, and not much else.)

I'm kind of shocked to suddenly recognize that the idea of murdering everyone else just to increase the likelihood of better migrants is no longer shoking, (i.e. Before Dwarf Fortress) or even mildly horrifying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 01, 2013, 11:30:34 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 10:23:36 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 01, 2013, 05:13:30 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 01, 2013, 10:04:48 am

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

To clarify: Would we have to worry about a pair of giant eagles nesting in the tree above the fort and carrying dwarves off to feed to their young?

That would be awesome. If weaponized, you'd have the coolest guard dogs, and maybe even dump the old bones on the heads of invaders every once in a while XD

Then again, Giant Eagles received a huge downgrade when all the new giant/men animals were introduced. Giant Kea though....

Aren't flying creatures still borked because pathfinding isn't capable of tracking flying through anything other than flood-fill?  (Meaning that tamed flyers forget how to fly because they start pathing like dwarves.)

But this is if there's wild ones nesting in the trees around the fort...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 11:38:41 pm

Since we are getting a movement/everything else split for speed, and the concept of running starts, are there plans for coding other types of special movements/attacks coming soon for animals/monsters soon?

I.E. A snake that slithers slowly, but can coil and lunge quickly for an instant strike.  Falcons diving.  Crocodiles doing a death roll.  Etc.

(Of course, if we are talking about lunges, it also opens the question of adventurers/bandits leaping out of the shadows in a sudden sneak attack...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 02, 2013, 12:14:02 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 11:38:41 pm

Since we are getting a movement/everything else split for speed, and the concept of running starts, are there plans for coding other types of special movements/attacks coming soon for animals/monsters soon?

I.E. A snake that slithers slowly, but can coil and lunge quickly for an instant strike.  Falcons diving.  Crocodiles doing a death roll.  Etc.

(Of course, if we are talking about lunges, it also opens the question of adventurers/bandits leaping out of the shadows in a sudden sneak attack...)

And by extension, will there be different speeds for dwarves moving from A(lcohol) to B(ooze) than for dwarves mining, carving, fishing ect?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: rhesusmacabre on February 02, 2013, 04:37:09 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 01, 2013, 11:38:41 pm

Since we are getting a movement/everything else split for speed, and the concept of running starts, are there plans for coding other types of special movements/attacks coming soon for animals/monsters soon?

I.E. A snake that slithers slowly, but can coil and lunge quickly for an instant strike.  Falcons diving.  Crocodiles doing a death roll.  Etc.

Snakes, at least, have come up before:

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:05 am

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

There are pre- and post-strike time periods.  I haven't altered snakes yet, but that's the sort of thing we'll be able to do.  A snake could be allowed to strike within 2 clicks for example, but take 10 or more to recover, or whatever makes sense.

How quickly do entities move across the world map, and does the speed vary for groups of different sizes or take difficult terrain into account?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 02, 2013, 05:13:05 am

I hope the speed/move split results in new attributes for weapons. A dagger and a spear would have very fast recovery times in their attacks, while an axe or mace, being an unbalanced weapon, would take a significant longer time. In the same way, swings would be generally slower to recover than thrusts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 02, 2013, 05:38:06 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 02, 2013, 05:13:05 am

I hope the speed/move split results in new attributes for weapons. A dagger and a spear would have very fast recovery times in their attacks, while an axe or mace, being an unbalanced weapon, would take a significant longer time. In the same way, swings would be generally slower to recover than thrusts.

Weapons are not all equal in terms of what exact move you do.

I'd imagine if you extend with a spear it would take longer to recover. As well with Maces and Axes you could do other kinds of strikes to get a greater recovery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2013, 11:20:15 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 02, 2013, 05:38:06 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 02, 2013, 05:13:05 am

I hope the speed/move split results in new attributes for weapons. A dagger and a spear would have very fast recovery times in their attacks, while an axe or mace, being an unbalanced weapon, would take a significant longer time. In the same way, swings would be generally slower to recover than thrusts.

Weapons are not all equal in terms of what exact move you do.

I'd imagine if you extend with a spear it would take longer to recover. As well with Maces and Axes you could do other kinds of strikes to get a greater recovery.

Well, in a different thread on topics of weapons (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122126.15), I think a more relevant question would have to do with how long it takes to recover when a target moves out of its tile while you are aiming at them. 

That is, a huge, heavy pike and a dagger might both go through a stab motion relatively quickly, (pike taking longer for its mass, but not cripplingly longer,) but if it's a matter of swinging your weapon around on a target who's circling around you, a 14-foot-long pike (4.5 meters) is going to be significantly more cumbersome to swing around.  Those really long pikes can't be flipped around vertically, either, you have to swing it over your head or turn your whole body.

Spears, meanwhile, provided they are the single-hand short spears (which they seem to be, as you can carry a shield with one) are more wieldy since you can hold it at the center of mass and change its angle more rapidly.

---

Quote from: rhesusmacabre on February 02, 2013, 04:37:09 am

Snakes, at least, have come up before:

Then I'll ungreen that question and ask something slightly different, since after thinking about it, I kind of wanted to ask a different version of the other half of that question a little more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2013, 11:32:59 am

You've been talking about sprinting/charging to gain speed and momentum, but on the topic of a "lunge" (burst of speed from a readied position), especially from hiding, will we be able to hold a prepared special action waiting for proper timing?  Like a snake waiting coiled, a cat waiting to pounce, or a thief waiting for a mark to come within striking distance?

(I suppose it would be the equivalent of a "readied action" in D&D, but not quite as rigid a "one standard action", like a croc bursting out of the water to get close and snap its jaws at a wildebeast all in a quick flurry.)

EDIT:
I'm going to re-word this again in a later post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on February 02, 2013, 11:52:37 am

Do you plan to add the philosopher back later with more usefulness? Or are they scrapped?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on February 02, 2013, 11:54:47 am

Quote from: arkhometha on February 01, 2013, 08:09:39 am

3. Do you plan to do something for the next release about the time the undead raise? Some people think it's not so much, but it's basically impossible to reach a necromancer without turning undead or sneaking through. In that subject, do you plan to add melting points so the undead can be destroyed by lava? Do you plan to nerf down player characters that turn vampire/necromancer, because those are unstoppable killing machines right now.

You could also lure the undeads away from the necromancer, make them collapse, then throw them in a pond until the necromancer's corpse supply run out, just sayin'

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on February 02, 2013, 02:33:45 pm

Quote from: Objective on February 02, 2013, 11:54:47 am

Quote from: arkhometha on February 01, 2013, 08:09:39 am

3. Do you plan to do something for the next release about the time the undead raise? Some people think it's not so much, but it's basically impossible to reach a necromancer without turning undead or sneaking through. In that subject, do you plan to add melting points so the undead can be destroyed by lava? Do you plan to nerf down player characters that turn vampire/necromancer, because those are unstoppable killing machines right now.

You could also lure the undeads away from the necromancer, make them collapse, then throw them in a pond until the necromancer's corpse supply run out, just sayin'

I know, but this is just taking advantage of the necromancer AI not being that smart. I like undead hands, heads, nails and hair as much as the next guy, but as it is now, an adventurer can become an unstoppable killing machine by just reviving the dead non stop. Some form of cooldown would help to control both players and NPC reviving. Maybe the Necromancer could have a pool of power to draw from, and once emptied, it slowly recharges. That way we could have waves of undead raising again but you could actually beat it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 02, 2013, 03:36:48 pm

I beat a Necromancer tower in adv mode once with an axe and full steel plate. Still died, but only because of a cheapshot at the last second by the necromancer himself (this was when 34.X was first released and being near zombies made dead things rise).

But yeah, the rate of raising is a bit OP'd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2013, 06:35:38 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 02, 2013, 03:36:48 pm

I beat a Necromancer tower in adv mode once with an axe and full steel plate. Still died, but only because of a cheapshot at the last second by the necromancer himself (this was when 34.X was first released and being near zombies made dead things rise).

But yeah, the rate of raising is a bit OP'd.

Theoretically, besides making raising just take a really long time, drawing a casting circle, or something that otherwise means it isn't an instant effect you can do whenever, you could also make the special actions take stamina or magically making you hungry or something that puts some sort of limit on how much you can do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 02, 2013, 06:43:48 pm

Well currently, a simple fix would be to increase the WAIT_PERIOD:x token on necromancers to something a wee bit higher (say to 120 or so.) It basically acts as a cool-down timer. Currently their wait period is 10, which lets them use the interaction on nearly every turn they take. If it's raised to ~100-150, they'd have to wait 8-12 turns or something like that before performing the interaction again, which makes it a wee bit easier to assault a necromancer tower, as they couldn't resurrect the dead every turn. Reducing the number of corpses they can target at once may also help some. They currently do not have a max target number.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheSharkable on February 02, 2013, 07:31:39 pm

Toady, modding the old dwarven economy back in is one of my favourite things to do with a long termish fort. I was just wondering if anytime after this release cycle you could consider fixing it as I thought this was something that would go in the caravan arc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 02, 2013, 07:37:33 pm

Quote from: TheSharkable on February 02, 2013, 07:31:39 pm

Toady, modding the old dwarven economy back in is one of my favourite things to do with a long termish fort. I was just wondering if anytime after this release cycle you could consider fixing it as I thought this was something that would go in the caravan arc?

The caravan arc is about making trade happen between settlements, and is unrelated to the old dwarven economy.

Maybe some version of the dwarven economy will come back at some point, but it's not on the dev-list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 03, 2013, 03:59:01 am

Quote from: King Mir on February 02, 2013, 07:37:33 pm

Quote from: TheSharkable on February 02, 2013, 07:31:39 pm

Toady, modding the old dwarven economy back in is one of my favourite things to do with a long termish fort. I was just wondering if anytime after this release cycle you could consider fixing it as I thought this was something that would go in the caravan arc?

The caravan arc is about making trade happen between settlements, and is unrelated to the old dwarven economy.

Maybe some version of the dwarven economy will come back at some point, but it's not on the dev-list.

It is to on the Dev List, and was on the bumbled quick release short term dev list we had not so long ago.

Its defiantly a near future item.  And I can see having Inns for Fort Mode requiring the fort mode economy being reduxed, if ToadyOne and ThreeToes go in that direction after this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 03, 2013, 04:59:57 am

Toady

Current what needs to be added or thought through before we can start seeing Regeneration (or rather the ability to regrow bodyparts or heal major damage)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on February 03, 2013, 11:19:46 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 03, 2013, 04:59:57 am

Toady

Current what needs to be added or thought through before we can start seeing Regeneration (or rather the ability to regrow bodyparts or heal major damage)?

For Dwarfs? I think it's not in the plans. For beasts? Werebeasts already do this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 03, 2013, 11:59:15 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on February 03, 2013, 03:59:01 am

Quote from: King Mir on February 02, 2013, 07:37:33 pm

Quote from: TheSharkable on February 02, 2013, 07:31:39 pm

Toady, modding the old dwarven economy back in is one of my favourite things to do with a long termish fort. I was just wondering if anytime after this release cycle you could consider fixing it as I thought this was something that would go in the caravan arc?

The caravan arc is about making trade happen between settlements, and is unrelated to the old dwarven economy.

Maybe some version of the dwarven economy will come back at some point, but it's not on the dev-list.

It is to on the Dev List, and was on the bumbled quick release short term dev list we had not so long ago.

Its defiantly a near future item.  And I can see having Inns for Fort Mode requiring the fort mode economy being reduxed, if ToadyOne and ThreeToes go in that direction after this release.

World economy is on the dev list. In fort dwarven economy is not. And no, inns for fort mode don't necessarily need the fort economy to have working inns. It's not in the plans for it.

Toady has said that some form of fort economy will probably come back eventually, but if it were coming any time soon, it'd be on the dev-list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 03, 2013, 02:28:10 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on February 03, 2013, 11:19:46 am

For Dwarfs? I think it's not in the plans. For beasts? Werebeasts already do this.

That's kind of a hack side-effect of how were-transformations are implemented.  It means all transformations work like that (which isn't necessarily desirable) and nothing else does work like that, so no trolls that regenerate, for example (which may be desirable).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 03, 2013, 05:01:03 pm

With new mobility-related stuff, does that mean we can see grappling hooks happening?

Also, slightly unrelated, but are there plans for aimed ranged attacks (firing and throwing), so that we aren't just hoping that we hit something worth hitting?

Yeah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BFEL on February 03, 2013, 07:44:38 pm

I have an interesting one:

Since in-game worldgens are going to be a thing, and many mods require a new worldgen to actually start working...will you be able to say, play some vanilla for awhile, then mod guns into the raws and do a in game worldgen and suddenly everyone has guns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 03, 2013, 07:59:59 pm

Quote from: BFEL on February 03, 2013, 07:44:38 pm

I have an interesting one:

Since in-game worldgens are going to be a thing, and many mods require a new worldgen to actually start working...will you be able to say, play some vanilla for awhile, then mod guns into the raws and do a in game worldgen and suddenly everyone has guns?

No, not at all.

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: mastahcheese

Since dwarves could now, theoretically, become necromancers during play, do they require any reading skill to get a tome from a god? Or is the skill just granted for them upon recieving their powers? And would it target fort mode dwarves or adventurer dwarves differently than normal?

I haven't continued everything from world gen yet.  That'll take more time, and we've already taken way too much of it.  Each of the interactions has tags saying whether it is teachable and how, so it'll depend on how the knowledge is given.  If the god sets it down on a tablet, and it isn't some kind of magical tablet, the critter will have to read.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 04, 2013, 07:01:31 am

In regards to BFEL's question and Putnam's response:

I believe that Putnam is correct - getting guns to show up during gameplay-worldgen (we need a name for this... succession?) without having been in worldgen won't work (unless something has changed significantly), but not for he cited reason.  In that quote, Toady is talking about interactions/abilities like vampirism.  Presumably guns are a weapon, not a skill, so the issue is elsewhere. 

The problem is that a weapon type "showing up" is decided by the entity raws, which are copied into the world save at the start of worldgen.  There are some workarounds to get it so that your fortress alone could produce guns post-worldgen, but actually getting them into the hands of a civ (so you can see people out on the street with them) is a different matter. 

This might change whenever Toady updates the economic code to be a little more reasonable with materials available and goods produced, since right now, the game isn't very good at having civilizations produce goods based on raw-defined reactions.  Right now, dwarves always have steel, even when the civ has no access to iron or flux (in addition to a whole bunch of other strangeness), plus weapons are not produced by reactions (not at the vanilla forge anyway). 

So, barring someone doing something really sneaky and clever I haven't thought of (or hacking your savefiles somehow) this sadly won't be possible in the upcoming release.  As I said though, once some more economic stuff gets moved over to the raws, the issue will likely be resolved. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 04, 2013, 03:46:27 pm

(I was specifically citing the "not everything has been moved over" part)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 05, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Toady, what is the planned shape of the world? Will it be a sphere? A cylinder?
Inspired by this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0)
The OP was concerned about distortion of maps as they approached the poles, making landmasses seem larger, like Greenland. DF doesn't do that.
Edit: Thanks NW_Kohaku

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 05, 2013, 12:53:58 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 05, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Toady, what is the shape of the world?
Inspired by this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0)

I can almost guarantee his answer will be something like "right now it's just a square". There might be interesting future development with more advanced cosmology and whatnot in the future but I don't think the physical shape of the planet is something Toady has worried about much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 05, 2013, 01:09:45 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 05, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Toady, what is the shape of the world?
Inspired by this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0)

You should give the context of the question in a succinct format, rather than just leaving a thread link for Toady to go after - he already is just skimming over this thread.

More pointed questions to the topic would be, "Does the map represent the whole world?" and "Given infinite time to get over programming complications, what shape of world would you most want to make DF into?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 05, 2013, 03:00:19 pm

Might we ever see such things as passing through one edge of the world and coming out the other side (like a sphere) or falling off the edge of the world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on February 05, 2013, 03:04:45 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 05, 2013, 03:00:19 pm

Might we ever see such things as passing through one edge of the world and coming out the other side (like a sphere) or falling off the edge of the world?

In most grid based games where you can wrap around the world you either end up with a cylinder or a torus.  Getting a true sphere would involve some VERY tricky math and Display tricks in order to get reducing width tiles (or reduced number of tiles) as your approach the "poles".  IMHO it isn't really worth the headache, but if anyone could pull it off, the great Toad could.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 05, 2013, 03:41:17 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 05, 2013, 01:09:45 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 05, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Toady, what is the shape of the world?
Inspired by this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122411.0)

You should give the context of the question in a succinct format, rather than just leaving a thread link for Toady to go after - he already is just skimming over this thread.

More pointed questions to the topic would be, "Does the map represent the whole world?" and "Given infinite time to get over programming complications, what shape of world would you most want to make DF into?"

In My Name is Immaterial's defense, I think the question as it is already stands on its own fairly well, so Toady could decide quite easily to not look at the thread itself. I don't think if the question had been given like that without a link to another thread, anyone would have complained that the question wasn't clear by itself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 05, 2013, 04:08:27 pm

Speaking of re-wording a question... I actually have re-thought my previously rethought question once again, and want to ask it a different way (or rather, a two-part way).

Currently, in Adventure Mode, when I fire a crossbow, it basically means that I'm going to completely lose control of combat for a dozen or so turns.  Everything happens without me being able to even see what is going on, much less react.  (Which doesn't mean much now, but when we get into a mode where we can command our followers, having a commander out of combat for a dozen turns causes problems...) In some cases, I can fire a bolt only to get half a dozen pages of combat reports, and see one unit dead and three others critically wounded with no particular clue as to how things got that way aside from an overly-technical and not-particularly-helpful combat report.  (Which only gives information on actual wounds, not where everyone was, or which alligator was inflicting them.)  Sometimes, a character has fled from combat or fallen into a ravine, and I have no idea where they went.

How will "turns" take place when players can use abilities that take dozens of normal turns?  Will we be able to cancel out of actions or give orders to followers during long wind-ups?

Conversely, what about "held" actions, like a snake coiled and waiting to strike, a crocodile waiting at the water's edge for an ambush, or a thief waiting to pounce on a passerby from hiding, with some sort of wind-up already taken place, and an action primed to go? Will there be a way for "turns" to take place at a pace that makes sense for a player to watch the action and understand what's going on? (Or will held/readied actions not exist at all?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on February 05, 2013, 05:13:33 pm

On the world topology issue Toady has already talked about it in DF talk 5 (which has the best intro by Rain seeker and Captain)....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rainseeker:   I just thought it was a funny comment on that one. From Andrew K; 'On world generation you recently noted that the world in game isn't the whole world, i.e. it only has one pole. How permeable is the edge to new things coming in?'
Toady:   Nothing comes in right now, there used to be migrants that were generated on the edges and they would get these foreign culture entities, which would be much like the entities that are within the world except they just have different selections of items and things. And that's the idea right now because when we hit wards there are going to be potential depopulation problems and all kinds of other trouble, and one of the possible solutions of that is just to allow things to come in from the sides. Now I know some people are going to dislike that because if things come in from the sides then the effects that you're having on the world are very local and you might not feel that you have as much control as you want to have over the situation, so certainly an init thing or a world parameter thing most likely that you can just check and be like 'nah, my edges are not permeable'. Then in that case we could even do something like have them always be water, or have them drop off into space. Doing things like having the world be a torus, meaning that the left edge and right edge wrap, or have it be ... I'm not sure what happens if you go in through the top and come out through the top on another side, like if you're actually trying to create a sphere you're probably actually creating some weird projected space, just some mess. The left and right edges wrapping is more like one face of an annulus and then having the top wrapped to the bottom would be very weird, especially if it was from the pole to the desert, that would be a torus but that's ... you know. But any kind of option it just has to be supported by the pathfinding routine, which is easy enough, you just give it a few extra rules; I mean the world pathfinding routine not the dwarf mode pathfinding routine. Although, does that mean that you'd be able to settle a site half on one edge and half on the other, and then you'd have to be able to load those blocks correctly. There are certain annoyances that you get there, like when the adventurer walks through the edge it has to know how to load the blocks correctly. It's not a huge problem but it's a little issue. That's the obstacle there, so that's why we've just gone with this local region, those are the two reasons; first it's the easiest to implement, second it allows you to repopulate regions more easily. But we're open to helping people that want to have rounder more self contained worlds.
Rainseeker:   Very good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 05, 2013, 05:45:40 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 05, 2013, 04:08:27 pm

Conversely, what about "held" actions, like a snake coiled and waiting to strike, a crocodile waiting at the water's edge for an ambush, or a thief waiting to pounce on a passerby from hiding, with some sort of wind-up already taken place, and an action primed to go? Will there be a way for "turns" to take place at a pace that makes sense for a player to watch the action and understand what's going on? (Or will held/readied actions not exist at all?)

Just a bit of speculation from my end:
Since there are now attack modifiers based on movement speed for charging and the likes, not moving at all (i.e. skipping a turn) could have an influence on combat as well. So if the player chooses to stand still, the game could interpret this as preparation for a more accurate attack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 05, 2013, 06:09:09 pm

Quote from: Trif on February 05, 2013, 05:45:40 pm

Just a bit of speculation from my end:
Since there are now attack modifiers based on movement speed for charging and the likes, not moving at all (i.e. skipping a turn) could have an influence on combat as well. So if the player chooses to stand still, the game could interpret this as preparation for a more accurate attack.

What about preparation for... well, just about anything else?

What about if you want to jump higher by crouching down low, and trying to measure the distance to the top of the cliff for a standing jump, rather than a running jump?  What about the difference between aiming a bow and preparing for a melee strike?  What if you're trying to give commands to allies, and are waiting for them to complete a certain task or to back them up if they fail at something.  (I spend time teaching my followers how to swim, for example, getting them into the water, then guiding them out if they start having trouble until they get to novice.) 

For that matter, if there's a difference between movement and other action speeds, when you skip a turn, which speed does the game use to determine when your turn comes up next? 

If we can sit there waiting on a frame-by-frame basis, and we have "reactions" that let us interrupt the actions of another unit, can we just sit there skipping frame-by-frame to interrupt all the actions of an enemy?

What this is doing is starting to merge the difference between the turn-based adventurer mode and the pseudo-real-time of Fortress Mode, and possibly also the real-time of other games.  There's a bit of a reason that most roguelikes don't do this sort of thing - it opens up an even greater complexity than either real-time or most roguelike games have.  (Not that I'm saying it's a bad thing to try doing - it's just that some of the ramifications are a little tricky to swallow.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on February 06, 2013, 04:18:20 am

Will Armok ever appear (read:exist) in the game world? What role would he have? Will he be the patron of the dwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 06, 2013, 08:57:19 am

Quote from: Objective on February 06, 2013, 04:18:20 am

Will Armok ever appear (read:exist) in the game world? What role would he have? Will he be the patron of the dwarves?

AFAIK, Armok is more like the representation of the player rather than an actual in-game deity to be worshipped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on February 06, 2013, 10:33:58 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on February 06, 2013, 08:57:19 am

Quote from: Objective on February 06, 2013, 04:18:20 am

Will Armok ever appear (read:exist) in the game world? What role would he have? Will he be the patron of the dwarves?

AFAIK, Armok is more like the representation of the player rather than an actual in-game deity to be worshipped.

While I guess Three Toe's stories are not the gospel truth for the development plan, he wrote that Armok is a persistent entity that create things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 06, 2013, 11:19:15 am

Oh almighty Toad, I have a question for you.

Is there some planing on a better undead system? I mean, it gets tiring to fight animated hair, hides and such, so what I'm really asking is that if you are thinking into a more "classical" representation of undead, where the pieces that fall don't stay alive and ultimately only smashing the head or decapitation would stop the zombies. And if not, do you see a system like that possible to mod?

Related to that, I wonder (and I'm sure this has been asked a thousand times) how much modable you want dwarf fortress to be. What things you will like/plan to left hardcoded in the game and what things you plan ultimately to left in raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 06, 2013, 12:33:33 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on February 06, 2013, 08:57:19 am

AFAIK, Armok is more like the representation of the player rather than an actual in-game deity to be worshipped.

That's just one of those persistent urban legends...

Quote from: Toady One on August 04, 2010, 08:00:04 am

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.

The player is the Expedition Leader/Mayor/Militia Commander/other nobles.  (Unless they're an adventurer, in which case it's even less ambiguous.)

That's part of the point of bookkeepers (you don't have exact accounts of what's in your fort unless you have a bookkeeper tracking it for you) and murders going unnoticed until a dwarf actually sees and reports it.  You don't know something until the fortress command structure could reasonably know something (you're not supposed to be omniscient), and things are progressing further in that direction as time goes on.

---

Quote from: LordBaal on February 06, 2013, 11:19:15 am

Related to that, I wonder (and I'm sure this has been asked a thousand times) how much modable you want dwarf fortress to be. What things you will like/plan to left hardcoded in the game and what things you plan ultimately to left in raws?

It may have changed, but one of his old goals was to raw-ify everything.  It's just that many of the game's older features are hard-coded shortcuts and hacks that are too much trouble for Toady to get around to rewriting any time soon, but at the same time, for the past few years, almost everything but the procedurally-generated stuff is raw-modifiable. 

I'm not sure on how much he even wants to make some of the procedurally-generated creatures raw-modifiable.  (Including the zombies.)  Some things, like HFS, might always be hard-coded, for all I know. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 06, 2013, 12:47:43 pm

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of things I wonder about it. For example HFS right now can be deactivated by setting the amount of clowns to 0 (I always do). I'm curious of what things Toady could consider(if any) so important and core to the game that he left them hardcoded forever in order to prevent people modding those hypothetical features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 06, 2013, 01:34:39 pm

Quote from: Objective on February 06, 2013, 04:18:20 am

Will Armok ever appear (read:exist) in the game world? What role would he have? Will he be the patron of the dwarves?

Here's a quote (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1413312#msg1413312) about that:

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Intelligent Shade of Blue

Will Armok ever make an appearance in DF? Like as a deity that all dwarves worship (in addition to their other, lesser gods)?

Right now, you can't for instance add a stock pantheon for a modded race (like one from real-world mythology).  I think when you are able to do that in the raws or an editor or whatever, Armok would probably be a top candidate for stock universe example raws.  Armok has kind of enjoyed the history of being in the original Dragslay, functioned as a joke about the player, served as an explanation for each save game, etc., and for the future, the stock entry is where I'd see it happening.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 06, 2013, 01:58:54 pm

So in the process of making a game we could choose from procedural made deities like right now and pre-made, pantheon like ones? Cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 06, 2013, 02:33:01 pm

I don't think there's anything that toady considers too important to put in the raws. It's just that putting things in the raws takes dedicated effort, and it's not worth rewriting old code just to put stuff in the raws. When a subsystem gets reworked, then it'll go in the raws.

So for HFS, it's actually possible more details will be modable when Toady reworks how HFS interacts with the world when it is released, particularly if that invloves weakening it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 06, 2013, 11:06:29 pm

Quote from: Objective on February 06, 2013, 10:33:58 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on February 06, 2013, 08:57:19 am

Quote from: Objective on February 06, 2013, 04:18:20 am

Will Armok ever appear (read:exist) in the game world? What role would he have? Will he be the patron of the dwarves?

AFAIK, Armok is more like the representation of the player rather than an actual in-game deity to be worshipped.

While I guess Three Toe's stories are not the gospel truth for the development plan, he wrote that Armok is a persistent entity that create things.

Quote from: Knight Otu on February 06, 2013, 01:34:39 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Intelligent Shade of Blue

Will Armok ever make an appearance in DF? Like as a deity that all dwarves worship (in addition to their other, lesser gods)?

Right now, you can't for instance add a stock pantheon for a modded race (like one from real-world mythology).  I think when you are able to do that in the raws or an editor or whatever, Armok would probably be a top candidate for stock universe example raws.  Armok has kind of enjoyed the history of being in the original Dragslay, functioned as a joke about the player, served as an explanation for each save game, etc., and for the future, the stock entry is where I'd see it happening.

Here in Knight Otu's quote you see that Armok functions as all of the above. Yes, he will be a god in the game eventually, but he has also been recognized as the player.

And really, in a game where you can decide how your world works when telling your story... if you want to BE Armok then you are Armok. Simple as that. Me, on the other hand, imagine Armok as a sort of anti-zen state that my mind can get into. Armok is that little voice in your head that whispers "ALL BURN " every time an elf walks onto the borders of your fort. When you reach that moment where you give in and let the magma flow that is Armok.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 07, 2013, 11:44:50 am

Have you done anything with Kobold sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 07, 2013, 12:53:37 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 06, 2013, 11:06:29 pm

Quote from: Toady One

... Armok has ... functioned as a joke about the player, served as an explanation for each save game, etc.,

Here in Knight Otu's quote you see that Armok functions as all of the above. Yes, he will be a god in the game eventually, but he has also been recognized as the player.

There's a difference between saying that Armok has functioned as a joke about the player and saying that Armok is the player. 

The problem is that this joke has been passed along so many times that it has become urban legend, and many new players are simply being taught "you are Armok" and don't understand they're supposed to be the fortress nobles. 

It makes it severely annoying when I have to continuously repeat myself on this topic because people don't get the difference between what's a joke, and what the actual in-game explanations for things are.  (Enjoying kitten-mashing, for example, is not just nothing but a player joke, but one that Toady doesn't even seem to appreciate much.)

All Toady was saying there was that when stock deities were put in, Armok would be a prime candidate for a stock deity. Not as a metaphysical explanation for the player, but just as a reference and a nod to all the jokes about Armok over the years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 07, 2013, 03:05:39 pm

Quote from: Novel on February 07, 2013, 11:44:50 am

Have you done anything with Kobold sites?

Not yet. Toady mentioned back in December that, map-wise, he still had some fort work and kobold sites to do, and he hasn't worked on maps since then. Presumably we'll see in the devlogs when he gets back to maps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 07, 2013, 08:22:32 pm

Personally, I prefer generated deities to stock ones, gives the world more flavor. Also, it would be cool if the ambiguity of the gods' existence could be randomly generated, having some worlds where they go around having bastards and throwing lightning, others where they simply pass out curses to people who pee on their lawn, and some where they don't do anything and might only exist as cultural forces.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 07, 2013, 09:58:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 07, 2013, 12:53:37 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 06, 2013, 11:06:29 pm

Quote from: Toady One

... Armok has ... functioned as a joke about the player, served as an explanation for each save game, etc.,

Here in Knight Otu's quote you see that Armok functions as all of the above. Yes, he will be a god in the game eventually, but he has also been recognized as the player.

There's a difference between saying that Armok has functioned as a joke about the player and saying that Armok is the player. 

The problem is that this joke has been passed along so many times that it has become urban legend, and many new players are simply being taught "you are Armok" and don't understand they're supposed to be the fortress nobles. 

It makes it severely annoying when I have to continuously repeat myself on this topic because people don't get the difference between what's a joke, and what the actual in-game explanations for things are.  (Enjoying kitten-mashing, for example, is not just nothing but a player joke, but one that Toady doesn't even seem to appreciate much.)

All Toady was saying there was that when stock deities were put in, Armok would be a prime candidate for a stock deity. Not as a metaphysical explanation for the player, but just as a reference and a nod to all the jokes about Armok over the years.

I think you might be playing this a bit too seriously there. Firstly, Armok being a joke about the player and the player being Armok are not different things, they are the same. The joke IS "the player is Armok". That aside, if players want to pretend they're Armok instead of the fortress nobles then why not let them? Even if Armok is eventually represented in the game, role players will role play and there will be players that want to be Armok. There's no reason to get annoyed with people if they play the game with a different mindset to you. It is like getting annoyed at kids playing in the sandbox for making sand mounds when you think they should be making sand castles.

And talking about in-game explanations... where are these in-game explanations? I never saw them and likely a lot of other people missed them as well. I've seen a lot that Toady has said, but nothing like that in the game itself... and I didn't even realize I was meant to be playing as the fortress nobles... since my nobles and me obviously don't see eye-to-eye. I pretty much figured that everything was up to the individual's interpretation and I generally go with whatever the person telling the story seems to be going with when I read another player's story. I may not be playing the game right, but hey I can have my fun the way I like it. That's the reason I love DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 08, 2013, 02:44:13 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 07, 2013, 09:58:35 pm

I think you might be playing this a bit too seriously there. Firstly, Armok being a joke about the player and the player being Armok are not different things, they are the same. The joke IS "the player is Armok". That aside, if players want to pretend they're Armok instead of the fortress nobles then why not let them? Even if Armok is eventually represented in the game, role players will role play and there will be players that want to be Armok. There's no reason to get annoyed with people if they play the game with a different mindset to you. It is like getting annoyed at kids playing in the sandbox for making sand mounds when you think they should be making sand castles.

And talking about in-game explanations... where are these in-game explanations? I never saw them and likely a lot of other people missed them as well. I've seen a lot that Toady has said, but nothing like that in the game itself... and I didn't even realize I was meant to be playing as the fortress nobles... since my nobles and me obviously don't see eye-to-eye. I pretty much figured that everything was up to the individual's interpretation and I generally go with whatever the person telling the story seems to be going with when I read another player's story. I may not be playing the game right, but hey I can have my fun the way I like it. That's the reason I love DF.

If you're going to keep dredging this topic up, at least take it seriously enough to read what you're commenting on.

I posted this just in the last page.  It was only a single response back in this same conversation before you interjected.

Quote from: Toady One on August 04, 2010, 08:00:04 am

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.

Your entire line of argument is completely invalid for bringing into this discussion.  We weren't talking about what was fun. We were talking about what Toady stated Armok's role was.  This "everything is subjective" refrain is no excuse because we were talking about something with a simple yes or no answer, and the answer is "No."  It isn't some badge of honor to talk about how not knowing things that you never bothered looking up makes you feel great. 

This is the exact reason why these sorts of topics just keep cycling all over the forums.  It was not a funny meme the first time, and only gets more annoying every time.  (Don't bother trying to tell me how this nonsense (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122474.15) is supposed to be funny.) Let this topic die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 08, 2013, 03:46:53 am

*put back the flame thrower in the "friendly online interactions" drawer*
Darn it, too late... Yarr, maybe next time...

IMO we shoud not let FotF die, if we do where shall we ask our questions?

Can anyone tell me where I can find threetoes stories? I read in the "hard fact about Sapients" topic that they are not kept secret but I dont have the faintest clue about their actual location.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 08, 2013, 05:14:33 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 08, 2013, 03:46:53 am

Can anyone tell me where I can find threetoes stories? I read in the "hard fact about Sapients" topic that they are not kept secret but I dont have the faintest clue about their actual location.

There's a link to them on the home page of the Dwarf Fortress site (not the forum). Alternatively, here you go (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_story.html).

As for the Armok discussion, I agree with NW_Kohaku, but that said, I don't mind if people take some liberties with that when it comes to storytelling or fanfictions or some such. When talking about how it's going to be handled for the actual game, however, I think it's good to know the facts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on February 08, 2013, 07:10:26 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 08, 2013, 03:46:53 am

*put back the flame thrower in the "friendly online interactions" drawer*
Darn it, too late... Yarr, maybe next time...

IMO we shoud not let FotF die, if we do where shall we ask our questions?

Can anyone tell me where I can find threetoes stories? I read in the "hard fact about Sapients" topic that they are not kept secret but I dont have the faintest clue about their actual location.

I think he meant 'topic' as in 'topic of discussion'

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 08, 2013, 07:36:40 am

I know, I was just playing dumb ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 08, 2013, 08:26:27 am

On a closure on that point. You can't possibly be a god as you are neither omnipresent or at leas omniscient. There's actually a lot of work to do if you want to know things like how many stews you have, and even then the information feed to you by your inventory keeper might not be accurate.

On the other hand if you want to pretend you are Amork, why not? You are the one playing. Just that the gameplay have some limitations that some people might consider are not limitations a god might face for example. But as always, each is free to believe what each wants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 08, 2013, 08:49:23 am

The omniscient god archetype is not the most used irl, for each monotheistic religion that believe in such gods I can easily name three others with multiple gods that plot and fight each other. Wich could not take place if they were omniscient : there would be no incentive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 08, 2013, 10:08:49 am

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: dhokarena56

You've mentioned that once this release and the bugfix releases following it are out, you've got several directions to choose from...

Inns and taverns (both modes), dwarf mode start scenarios and hill/deep dwarves (these'll be necessary before we do any dwarf mode army stuff), criminal justice system stuff...  but I'm really not sure...

I'm really looking forward to seeing dwarf mode start scenarios.

Will dwarf mode start scenarios include the ability to embark from your old fort, bringing a selection of animals and dwarves and retiring the old fort instead of being forced to abandoning it to start a new one? Or will that come later?

(I'm referring to something like the Reuse dwarves from abandoned fortresses (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=74595.0) thread. It has come up numerous times and I think it was addressed at one point.)

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: monk12

There isn't yet the ability to time-skip, but it's a planned feature. Right now the best you can do is start/abandon a fortress a bunch of times- each new start will cycle the year forward to the next spring. Though actually, with worldgen activities continuing into play, that might change, or be a more involved process. Do world activities advance after an abandon? Will the game simulate world activities before the next fortress is founded?

Dealing with the abandonment/post-adventure time-skip is one of the clean-up things on the menu.  It'll have to advance the events, but as you can imagine, that's a reasonably messy process.

Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 08, 2013, 10:14:15 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 07, 2013, 08:22:32 pm

Personally, I prefer generated deities to stock ones, gives the world more flavor. Also, it would be cool if the ambiguity of the gods' existence could be randomly generated, having some worlds where they go around having bastards and throwing lightning, others where they simply pass out curses to people who pee on their lawn, and some where they don't do anything and might only exist as cultural forces.

Though, once there are stock deities there will still be generated deities too. Sort of like how you can have stock werebeasts or generated werebeasts in the game right now. Stock deities will be kind of fun to though for modding. Mods that are based on series with a mythos of  their own could have gods from their source material. (Putnam's DBZ mod could have the Kai as deities for instance.)

But I also look forward to generating worlds with completely new sets of gods. This goes double when the gods get a little more fleshed out and are able to do more. In fact, this kind of makes me curious as to how far Toady might go with the deities. The Greek gods seemed to play a big part in the mythology they were in and were usually the catalyst for what ever was going on in a given story. I'm curious if Toady will allow gods themselves to start wars or if he'll take the more realistic approach of having the followers start a war in the god's name or possibly both...

I honestly would like to see a mixture of both.

What level of interaction do you see the gods having on the world when they are done? Will it ever reach levels of interaction compared to the Greek gods or the Jewish God where their interactions can bring about huge historical changes in a world?

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 08, 2013, 10:08:49 am

Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.

He's referring to the fact that when you start a fortress it must start the next first day of Spring. Meaning if you play as an adventurer and then start a fort there's going to be up to a year gap between the adventurer's end and the fortress's beginning. Stuff needs to happen in that gap.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 08, 2013, 02:44:13 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 07, 2013, 09:58:35 pm

blah blah blah

re: blah blah blah

I never intended on starting an argument.

You mentioned you got annoyed by constantly having to correct people's assumption that the player is Armok.
I was only pointing out that there really is no point to let yourself get annoyed by it because people will do what they will do.
As long as certain people find something fun then they will continue to do what they want.

I also realized by your reply that we have different definitions for the phrase "in-game". So I apologize for that misunderstanding. To clarify mine, in-game means to me that whatever information you are talking about can be found in the game, not in supplemental material. Your idea of in-game seems to include information that is provided via "Word of God" (for lack of a better phrase). I just misunderstood what you meant as a result.

My point in the second paragraph is that playing the game currently doesn't seem to inform the player that they are playing as the nobility. So I think it can be quite easy and forgivable for the average player to simply not know or care at this point. Later on when it is more obvious, you might not even need to correct people anymore.

Once again, I didn't intend to start an argument. I just wanted to point out there's no need for you to be annoyed because you have to correct people over and over again. Because chances are that correcting them doesn't really do anything to change their minds because they are having fun believing what they do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 08, 2013, 01:42:45 pm

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 08, 2013, 10:08:49 am

Will dwarf mode start scenarios include the ability to embark from your old fort, bringing a selection of animals and dwarves and retiring the old fort instead of being forced to abandoning it to start a new one? Or will that come later?

(I'm referring to something like the Reuse dwarves from abandoned fortresses (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=74595.0) thread. It has come up numerous times and I think it was addressed at one point.)

Dwarf mode start scenario's aren't going in this release, so I doubt toady will be able to answer this one.

However, retiring a fort will be in, so it's reasonable to expect that he will make it work with the existing features when he does add it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on February 08, 2013, 02:42:48 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 08, 2013, 10:14:15 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 07, 2013, 08:22:32 pm

Personally, I prefer generated deities to stock ones, gives the world more flavor. Also, it would be cool if the ambiguity of the gods' existence could be randomly generated, having some worlds where they go around having bastards and throwing lightning, others where they simply pass out curses to people who pee on their lawn, and some where they don't do anything and might only exist as cultural forces.

Though, once there are stock deities there will still be generated deities too. Sort of like how you can have stock werebeasts or generated werebeasts in the game right now. Stock deities will be kind of fun to though for modding. Mods that are based on series with a mythos of  their own could have gods from their source material. (Putnam's DBZ mod could have the Kai as deities for instance.)

But I also look forward to generating worlds with completely new sets of gods. This goes double when the gods get a little more fleshed out and are able to do more. In fact, this kind of makes me curious as to how far Toady might go with the deities. The Greek gods seemed to play a big part in the mythology they were in and were usually the catalyst for what ever was going on in a given story. I'm curious if Toady will allow gods themselves to start wars or if he'll take the more realistic approach of having the followers start a war in the god's name or possibly both...

I honestly would like to see a mixture of both.

What level of interaction do you see the gods having on the world when they are done? Will it ever reach levels of interaction compared to the Greek gods or the Jewish God where their interactions can bring about huge historical changes in a world?

In regards to the quoted question, Will the fleshing out of divine interaction provide us with an option set at world-gen, much the way 'Mineral Frequency' or 'Megabeast Frequency' is handled currently? This would allow us to set up worlds with different flavors in regards to the god question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 08, 2013, 10:21:00 pm

Speaking of world gen parameters, will we ever be able to set them to be completely randomized, as opposed to specific numbers or even weighted numbers? Random mineral scarcity, werebeast types, max cavern passage density, etc?

We could have something like:
Large Island
Large Region
Medium Island
Medium Region
Small Island
Small Region
Pocket Island
Pocket Region
Surprise Me

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on February 08, 2013, 11:28:17 pm

Awesome update, and happy birthday to Scamps!   I may have been reading poorly, but did Bembul's name change because of his captivity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 09, 2013, 12:20:00 am

If it did it was just a typo, he he he.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 09, 2013, 12:38:25 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 09, 2013, 12:20:00 am

If it did it was just a typo, he he he.

When you hear that he he he, you know somethings about to go down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 09, 2013, 01:59:08 am

And yes, happy birthday to your cat! Mine is currently shredding my leg...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 09, 2013, 02:30:21 am

Mine is sleeping inside a sweater. Its a pretty chilly night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 09, 2013, 04:52:51 am

Happy birthday Scamps! I wish I had my cats around :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on February 09, 2013, 05:56:19 am

Since you're waiting to put in taverns until after release, what do you mean by fake taverns? Will they be in the release, and if so how will they differ from real taverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 09, 2013, 08:08:27 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on February 09, 2013, 05:56:19 am

Since you're waiting to put in taverns until after release, what do you mean by fake taverns? Will they be in the release, and if so how will they differ from real taverns?

Presumably it'll be like the fake taverns in the hill dwarf settlements Toady mentioned earlier - just people standing around pretending to be drunk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 09, 2013, 10:01:25 am

Happy birthday, Scamps!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on February 09, 2013, 10:54:38 am

Three cheers for Scamps, jolly little Scamps!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matt_S on February 09, 2013, 01:54:35 pm

So it seems I share my birthday with Scamps.  This pleases me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 09, 2013, 02:50:33 pm

Quote from: Matt_S on February 09, 2013, 01:54:35 pm

So it seems I share my birthday with Scamps.  This pleases me.

The S must stand for Scamps!

Quote from: Knight Otu on February 09, 2013, 08:08:27 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on February 09, 2013, 05:56:19 am

Since you're waiting to put in taverns until after release, what do you mean by fake taverns? Will they be in the release, and if so how will they differ from real taverns?

Presumably it'll be like the fake taverns in the hill dwarf settlements Toady mentioned earlier - just people standing around pretending to be drunk.

Maybe they got kicked out and didn't notice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tabithda on February 09, 2013, 07:39:03 pm

Not sure if it has been asked before, but... With the new vision cones, is there any way to look behind yourself without having to taking a step in that direction? For example, if you were being chased and you wanted to see if that bronze colossus was still running after you, would you be able to look behind yourself without having to stop running to see if you lost it or not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 09, 2013, 08:28:15 pm

With history progressing even during Fortress Mode, would we see a diplomat coming to tell us that all of the immediate royal family were killed during the "Siege of Pointy Sticks", and the only living heir is a potash maker in the fort? That would be interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 10, 2013, 01:15:01 am

One of our three cats keeps trying to press keys on the keyboard, my wife is cuddling him now. Happy birthday to Toady's owner, Scamps!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 10, 2013, 04:35:54 am

Quote from: Tabithda on February 09, 2013, 07:39:03 pm

Not sure if it has been asked before, but... With the new vision cones, is there any way to look behind yourself without having to taking a step in that direction? For example, if you were being chased and you wanted to see if that bronze colossus was still running after you, would you be able to look behind yourself without having to stop running to see if you lost it or not?

Only enemies have cones of vision. Adventurers still have their 360° view - mostly to avoid situations like this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Glanzor on February 10, 2013, 08:03:43 am

Does the new succession system include the succession of bandit leader positions as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on February 10, 2013, 11:59:35 am

Currently, items in adventure mode never rot or decay.

Now that the world is updated, will items in adventure mode, for example meat left in a fortress site, ever rot?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on February 10, 2013, 01:00:11 pm

Will religious organizations carry out goals like other entities?
Religious orders don't really seem to do much. They could do things related to their deity's sphere (e.g. Worshipers of a god of freedom setting up an underground railroad, or worshipers of a god of disease spreading plagues.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 10, 2013, 02:40:35 pm

Quote from: Broken on February 10, 2013, 11:59:35 am

Currently, items in adventure mode never rot or decay.

Now that the world is updated, will items in adventure mode, for example meat left in a fortress site, ever rot?

This will probably have to wait until farms can replenish food in the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 10, 2013, 03:30:24 pm

Quote from: Just Some Guy on February 10, 2013, 01:00:11 pm

Will religious organizations carry out goals like other entities?
Religious orders don't really seem to do much. They could do things related to their deity's sphere (e.g. Worshipers of a god of freedom setting up an underground railroad, or worshipers of a god of disease spreading plagues.)

I don't think that some sphere gods would be automatically evil and have evil murderous followers. A god of death and fortresses might be in charge of protecting the dead, for instance, or a god of disease could have followers that make regular goat sacrifices to stop diseases from breaking out. Said god of disease might also be a fertility or health god. Conversely, a god of health might have followers who exterminate the sick or deformed. There are so many possibilities!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 10, 2013, 05:40:38 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 10, 2013, 03:30:24 pm

Quote from: Just Some Guy on February 10, 2013, 01:00:11 pm

Will religious organizations carry out goals like other entities?
Religious orders don't really seem to do much. They could do things related to their deity's sphere (e.g. Worshipers of a god of freedom setting up an underground railroad, or worshipers of a god of disease spreading plagues.)

I don't think that some sphere gods would be automatically evil and have evil murderous followers. A god of death and fortresses might be in charge of protecting the dead, for instance, or a god of disease could have followers that make regular goat sacrifices to stop diseases from breaking out. Said god of disease might also be a fertility or health god. Conversely, a god of health might have followers who exterminate the sick or deformed. There are so many possibilities!

This makes sense. I don't think any of the spheres should have an alignment. The alignment of the god should be based on the god's personality and even then the alignment could be subjective to perception. IE. A god of war can be ambitious and whether the god is evil or good depends on whether you think conquering through war is good or bad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 10, 2013, 08:08:46 pm

And the behaviors of followers could vary between sects. For instance, with Dionysus, you have people who worshiped him by making wine, and then you have some people who worshiped him by getting drugged up and ambushing people in the woods. A malignant god might have followers who try to placate him/her with sacrifices, as opposed to being an organized force of evil, and you might have a benevolent god whose followers might nonetheless be genocidal fanatics.

And, as in real life, the behaviors based on the beliefs of followers can have huge effect and initiate many stories, whether or not the deity has actual supernatural power.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on February 10, 2013, 08:22:03 pm

Perhaps there will be different forms of a god.
like a god in the form of a dwarf is nice to dwarves, but if it goes into the form of a elk or something then you better run.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 02:43:51 am

It can be more dynamic then that personally. Yet the game should never call to question whether or not a god is good or evil.

However lets say there is a god of disease who needs to keep track and control all the world's diseases. He has the Disease sphere AND he has the "Control Disease" Job.

A religion with a pantheon could made this god their "devil" or rather their diety who isn't meant to be worshipped, whether or not that diety is evil... Or it is a "evil" diety who is meant to be worshipped in order to appease them or calm them down.

Yet there are more dimensions then that. There are dieties who are villainous yet nessisary (Set), Act evil but really arn't, have shattered psyches and thus can act evil (Hel), are rogues who do bad things but are overall good (Loki, pre-ragnerok), are beyond morality (Typhon, who is just a blindly destructive monster), or who are evil but can be sweet talked into being good.

It is why I honestly think pantheons should be created because gods as entirely individual beings leaves out any dynamic you can get from them together.

---

Also I like to think that what a diety does is also seperate from spheres... yet tend to dictate it. A god of death is likely the only diety who will run an underworld.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 11, 2013, 03:13:55 am

Mutatory gods... Sounds like ??FUN??

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 03:27:24 am

Toady refusing a low hanging fruit...   ???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 11, 2013, 04:25:59 am

Toady wants to release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 11, 2013, 04:31:48 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 03:27:24 am

Toady refusing a low hanging fruit...   ???

It wasn't a low-hanging fruit. He refrained from going off on a massive tangent since existing mechanics handled it fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 05:03:10 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 11, 2013, 04:31:48 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 03:27:24 am

Toady refusing a low hanging fruit...   ???

It wasn't a low-hanging fruit. He refrained from going off on a massive tangent since existing mechanics handled it fine.

Well, it might be somewhat subjective which fruits are seen as low-hanging ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on February 11, 2013, 05:17:52 am

Is it conceivable that, in adventurer mode, hospitals could be implemented someday ?
A sort of place where you should pay for medical fixing, for you or your companions ?

I mean, well, okay your hand can be broken, but unlike in fortress mode where it's quite "easy" to fix it, there is nothing (even in biggest towns) to fix it. It's quite..unrealistic ? Especially when you see experimented suturer or wound dresser coming to your fortress...coming...apparently...from nowhere (I mean, where did they start ?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 11, 2013, 06:28:38 am

Quote from: Inarius on February 11, 2013, 05:17:52 am

Is it conceivable that, in adventurer mode, hospitals could be implemented someday ?
A sort of place where you should pay for medical fixing, for you or your companions ?

I mean, well, okay your hand can be broken, but unlike in fortress mode where it's quite "easy" to fix it, there is nothing (even in biggest towns) to fix it. It's quite..unrealistic ? Especially when you see experimented suturer or wound dresser coming to your fortress...coming...apparently...from nowhere (I mean, where did they start ?)

Quote from: DF Talk #12

Capntastic:   Ghouls asks 'Will we ever be able to receive medical care in adventure mode? I know losing is supposed to be fun, but smashing a bandit's skull with my peg leg would be even better.'
Toady:   That's good, it come from a positive place rather than saying that losing is supposed to be fun but I hate losing ...
Rainseeker:   It's not.
Toady:   Yeah, it's not fun when I lose both my legs and can't walk around. But no, he's coming from a positive place where he wants to smash people's skull with his peg leg. The adventure more health care, I think we mentioned somewhere that it was one of those things, when we set up the new dev page and the dev page had all the stuff on it - the newest one that had a lot of adventure mode stuff and we were like 'you can be the hero' 'you can be thief' 'you can dive into ruins' 'you can kill night creatures', all this stuff - and adventure mode healthcare just wasn't on that list, even though it's important. It's definitely one of the things we're going to do and we just kind of blanked on putting it up there. We didn't talk about it that much, like exactly what you want to be able to do, but certainly the things you've got in dwarf mode like crutches and splints and being able to bandage yourself - all that kind of thing that you need to survive - you'd be able to do, especially overcoming those things like you're not dying but you are missing one of your legs. Right now the solution in dwarf mode, assuming it worked which it probably doesn't, and I'm doing healthcare bugs, is using a crutch, and so in adventure mode you'd be able to do the same thing. Now when we get to prosthetics, that's one of those things that has been up on the dev notes for a while and one of those things where it's like 'When is the right time?' Any time is the right time, but that's true of almost anything, so I don't know when that type of medical care is going in, no idea, but it's something we want to do because it's all thematically appropriate to run around with peg legs and hooks and Zach and I just saw Enter the Dragon last night, so you can have all kinds of replaceable hands I guess; a lions paw, and the big knives on your hand, and the natural iron hand that you've got that looks like your hand, and you can also keep your old skeleton of your hand there as a souvenir, apparently that's how it's done ... You will be able to see adventure care, but we're not sure when, it's one of those things that seems like a pressing issue because you die all the time in adventure mode, but that's not a new thing ... So I'm not sure when it should happen, it seems like something you want to do, but who knows when.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:31:43 am

Quote from: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Why is everyone vouching for the game's continuation of monotheistic worship in a polytheistic world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on February 11, 2013, 08:44:16 am

Gods should be like in tales of ancient rome or greece. Anthropomorphic gods who have their own activities and can eventually use with the people who trust in them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on February 11, 2013, 10:13:51 am

With the recent news in mind: are there going to be situations in which an otherwise hereditary or upon-death post is succeeded to, but the previous owner doesn't die and wasn't conquered- ie they were pressured into resigning or were kicked out by a bigwig?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 11, 2013, 10:21:14 am

Quote from: Inarius on February 11, 2013, 08:44:16 am

Gods should be like in tales of ancient rome or greece. Anthropomorphic gods who have their own activities and can eventually use with the people who trust in them.

That should give demigods some history.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 11, 2013, 11:32:55 am

Quote from: Japa on February 11, 2013, 04:25:59 am

Toady wants to release.

Its very nearly one year since the last big release, so I think its time. I know there are still caves to sort out.

Happy Birthday to Scamps!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 11:50:47 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 05:03:10 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 11, 2013, 04:31:48 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 03:27:24 am

Toady refusing a low hanging fruit...   ???

It wasn't a low-hanging fruit. He refrained from going off on a massive tangent since existing mechanics handled it fine.

Well, it might be somewhat subjective which fruits are seen as low-hanging ones.

Toady was making fun of its own tendency on going after "low hanging fruits" that werent so low hanging after all. I just commented about it. I want a release ASAP, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 11:52:21 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

...others go on patrol or hang out in the fake-taverns that I put in to aggregate soldiers, monster hunters, scouts and drunks.

Will we be seeing monster hunters in the next release?

Also, I sort of disagree with others about a release soon. I would LOVE a release soon, but I would much prefer a complete one. I can wait three to four months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 11:53:49 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 11:50:47 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 05:03:10 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 11, 2013, 04:31:48 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 11, 2013, 03:27:24 am

Toady refusing a low hanging fruit...   ???

It wasn't a low-hanging fruit. He refrained from going off on a massive tangent since existing mechanics handled it fine.

Well, it might be somewhat subjective which fruits are seen as low-hanging ones.

Toady was making fun of its own tendency on going after "low hanging fruits" that werent so low hanging after all. I just commented about it. I want a release ASAP, too.

Right, that's how I interpreted it as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Saiko Kila on February 11, 2013, 11:57:00 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:31:43 am

Quote from: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Why is everyone vouching for the game's continuation of monotheistic worship in a polytheistic world?

Maybe because it is the most widespread form of worship in a polytheistic world? In real life, it is very rare to worship different gods in the same way, even in you believe in many of these. Not that there are many polytheistic religions left to study…

And in the known examples, the gods, spirits of ancestors and spirits of inanimate objects are all usually mixed up, and it depends on the follower who he worships most.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on February 11, 2013, 01:33:40 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 11:52:21 am

Also, I sort of disagree with others about a release soon. I would LOVE a release soon, but I would much prefer a complete one. I can wait three to four months.

A bit of a false dichotomy. The release is not incomplete without it, Toady has even commented on that point to this effect. And you're going to be waiting three or four months even without this tangent to begin with, so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 11, 2013, 02:58:52 pm

At least that gives me time to finish my TC, finally. Started in 31.25, then update, had to retrofit, then keep working...

Say, what would a god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals do? Just found one while digging through legends

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on February 11, 2013, 03:23:34 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 11, 2013, 02:58:52 pm

At least that gives me time to finish my TC, finally. Started in 31.25, then update, had to retrofit, then keep working...

Say, what would a god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals do? Just found one while digging through legends

A game of Russian Roulette?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 11, 2013, 03:28:53 pm

Said god "commonly appears as a Grey Parrot." So, the parrot god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals. I wonder how gods like that would behave when they get fleshed out a bit more?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 03:42:07 pm

Quote from: Willfor on February 11, 2013, 01:33:40 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 11:52:21 am

Also, I sort of disagree with others about a release soon. I would LOVE a release soon, but I would much prefer a complete one. I can wait three to four months.

A bit of a false dichotomy. The release is not incomplete without it, Toady has even commented on that point to this effect. And you're going to be waiting three or four months even without this tangent to begin with, so.

I think My Name is Immaterial may have been speaking more generally, not necessarily about the specific example mentioned in the latest "Current Development" update. I may be wrong, though.

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 11, 2013, 03:28:53 pm

Said god "commonly appears as a Grey Parrot." So, the parrot god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals. I wonder how gods like that would behave when they get fleshed out a bit more?

If they have specific workings for the specific things a god can be god of, but leave it kind of open to emergent behavior (e.g. through just making the thing in question give the god goals/ideals, for instance), then those sorts of combinations could be so cool and interesting. I can't wait! But then, that's true for so many planned features of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 11, 2013, 03:43:28 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 11, 2013, 03:28:53 pm

Said god "commonly appears as a Grey Parrot." So, the parrot god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals. I wonder how gods like that would behave when they get fleshed out a bit more?

It's clearly similar to Baron Samedi.

That's the neat thing about procedural religion- no matter how weird it is, it makes sense. God of Snakes, craftsmanship, and mines? Then the society believed that caves were the burrows of great wurms, and associated the crafting of metals with the source down deep in the earth, where the Wurm-kings still delve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 11, 2013, 04:58:27 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 11, 2013, 03:43:28 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 11, 2013, 03:28:53 pm

Said god "commonly appears as a Grey Parrot." So, the parrot god of Death, Gambling, and Festivals. I wonder how gods like that would behave when they get fleshed out a bit more?

It's clearly similar to Baron Samedi.

That's the neat thing about procedural religion- no matter how weird it is, it makes sense. God of Snakes, craftsmanship, and mines? Then the society believed that caves were the burrows of great wurms, and associated the crafting of metals with the source down deep in the earth, where the Wurm-kings still delve.

Fixed that for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 11, 2013, 05:01:55 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:31:43 am

Quote from: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Why is everyone vouching for the game's continuation of monotheistic worship in a polytheistic world?

Probably because that's how D&D does it, so people are used to it.

Quote from: Saiko Kila on February 11, 2013, 11:57:00 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:31:43 am

Quote from: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Why is everyone vouching for the game's continuation of monotheistic worship in a polytheistic world?

Maybe because it is the most widespread form of worship in a polytheistic world? In real life, it is very rare to worship different gods in the same way, even in you believe in many of these. Not that there are many polytheistic religions left to study…

And in the known examples, the gods, spirits of ancestors and spirits of inanimate objects are all usually mixed up, and it depends on the follower who he worships most.

Historically, everyone tended to worship all the major gods that were venerated in their culture or region. There is easily enough evidence to see historical cases of this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 03:42:07 pm

Quote from: Willfor on February 11, 2013, 01:33:40 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 11:52:21 am

Also, I sort of disagree with others about a release soon. I would LOVE a release soon, but I would much prefer a complete one. I can wait three to four months.

A bit of a false dichotomy. The release is not incomplete without it, Toady has even commented on that point to this effect. And you're going to be waiting three or four months even without this tangent to begin with, so.

I think My Name is Immaterial may have been speaking more generally, not necessarily about the specific example mentioned in the latest "Current Development" update. I may be wrong, though.

You are on the mark, exactly. I would like the most of the hero role, with sites for everyone, rebuilding, and maybe even mounts. Its almost there, but there is still plenty left to do.
Also, I believe that I said I would prefer a release later, but would be fine with one soon. Its just my assessment, but its Toady's choice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:54:57 pm

Quote

Probably because that's how D&D does it, so people are used to it

Dungeons and dragons has... one... setting with a polytheistic religion. Admittingly you still have to chose a patron... but it exist.

Though as always I hope Toady doesn't let Dungeons and dragons pull him down to their level. Dungeons and dragons settings were always meant to be taken with a HUUUUUGE grain of salt.

Quote

Historically, everyone tended to worship all the major gods that were venerated in their culture or region. There is easily enough evidence to see historical cases of this

Major AND minor. Often religions included what I am going to call a "Personal god" such as the House gods of the Romans or the Ancestor gods of certain African tribes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 11, 2013, 11:02:52 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:54:57 pm

Quote

Historically, everyone tended to worship all the major gods that were venerated in their culture or region. There is easily enough evidence to see historical cases of this

Major AND minor. Often religions included what I am going to call a "Personal god" such as the House gods of the Romans or the Ancestor gods of certain African tribes.

It goes as far as Animism (say some shinto variations) where anything has its personal soul and powers and thus demanded a certain degree of respect. One could make the Point that DF Elves life with similiar form of religion respecting the living entities (animals, sentients, plants) and Recognizing the higher ones like Spirits of the forrest.

Some "Neo-pagan" denominations also know local guardian spirits. And heck even many christians arent far from it by recognizing Angels, the Mother of Jesus or certain Saints  (or even all 3) as target for worship and prayer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 12, 2013, 01:31:25 am

On the topic of gods and worship in DF, I have dug up the following post by the Toad, which has his answers to a few questions regarding the subject:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2562124#msg2562124

I would imagine that before you can worry about the level of interaction of a god with the world (or, for that matter, their existence) you need a framework where gods are very active, and then try to randomize things so that a bunch of different behaviors get represented.  From the quotes we have on the topic, Toady seems to be working toward a world where the gods are in fact real and interacting entities.  In the past, the gods did exactly nothing, which is a pretty good placeholder for the extreme of non-interacting deities, but it would appear that this was indeed just a placeholder, and not canon for the DF universe. 

Whatever the system eventually becomes, I'm sure it will be interesting, though how in-depth sphere-aligned interactions the player can see will be is a question.  Are all those spheres going to end up with interactions (like necromancy coming from gods of death), or even multiple interactions per sphere?  What does it even mean for a bunch of the spheres to have a sentient force motivated by their ideals?  What would such a being do?  Cool to think about, despite how far off it all probably is. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 12, 2013, 02:34:20 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

I would like the most of the hero role, with sites for everyone, rebuilding, and maybe even mounts.

Speaking of mounts, is there talk of that being fixed for Fortress Mode soon-ish? Other races have been able to ride creatures since forever. And I would really love to see dwarves finally able to ride on horses and war bears and such. It'd change the dynamic and importance of certain creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on February 12, 2013, 04:28:50 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 11, 2013, 08:31:43 am

Quote from: zwei on February 11, 2013, 02:59:10 am

I would prefer that gods are nonexsitent, only created by worship and since that worship is basically collection of memes, prone to mutations, spread, merges and whatnot.

So that if one sect of "disease god" gets dominated people focused on healing, it eventually drifts apart and "god of health" which has aditional "Altruism" sphere comes to be, while "disease god" still exists.

On the other hand, when "god of axes" woshippers also worship "god of spears" and vice versa, they would get merged to god which "wields axe in one hand, spear in the other and fights with both, insisting terror on lesser beings" or become god-brothers and their worship merged.

I would also like dead-religions woshiping nonexistent entity when there is not enough faith to animate god anymore (or ever).

Why is everyone vouching for the game's continuation of monotheistic worship in a polytheistic world?

How did you get monotheistic from this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 12, 2013, 04:35:03 am

Just the idea of always boiling down to worshipping one god.

As well a lot of people were discussing it, I just had to chose a quote.

Could be worse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 12, 2013, 04:43:07 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 11, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 11, 2013, 03:42:07 pm

I think My Name is Immaterial may have been speaking more generally, not necessarily about the specific example mentioned in the latest "Current Development" update. I may be wrong, though.

You are on the mark, exactly. I would like the most of the hero role, with sites for everyone, rebuilding, and maybe even mounts. Its almost there, but there is still plenty left to do.
Also, I believe that I said I would prefer a release later, but would be fine with one soon. Its just my assessment, but its Toady's choice.

I am inclined to agree with you. I am anxious for a release, to be sure -- especially because I want to try my hand at Dwarf Fortress fanfiction writing once it occurs, based entirely on the characters, entities, places and events in Legends mode for an actual world I generated, perhaps even played some -- but I would like any feature that goes into the release to be done well. After all, a feature being a major feature in a release probably implies that, aside from bug fixes and perhaps some fleshing out early on afterwards, it's not going to be dealt with again for a while. So if something big is lacking about them, or they're not quite right in some way that is unlikely to be addressed by said bug fixes etc., it probably will take a while for that to be dealt with. Maybe? At any rate, I just like anything to go in to go in well, and I'd rather have that be the case and wait a bit longer, than have an earlier release where it's not necessarily the case.

Of course, that's a different issue than where it concerns an actual tangent that is only vaguely connected to one of the features currently under development, and that is likely to come up later in the context of an update where it's more relevant as a feature. In those cases, yeah, it's probably good to skip those for the time being. But if they are in fact somewhat connected, especially if they're fairly easy to implement along with the other things going in, I'd probably say go for it. What it all comes down to is, I feel like the speed of release should not be too important a factor.

Quote from: Caldfir on February 12, 2013, 01:31:25 am

[Stuff about gods interacting with the world.]

Ah, so those 'things a god can be a god of' as I called them before are actually referred to as spheres. Sorry about that.

Yeah, that's more or less what I was thinking of, whether each sphere would have its own interaction(s), or give certain goals to its god(s), or whether that would be just some subset of spheres, or whether it would work differently entirely. And whether we can expect a god of multiple spheres to act in interesting ways depending on the specific combination of spheres. Should those question be green? I followed along since the last FotF update, but I forget if it already came up as such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 07:16:28 am

Question for the community

Is this release have the combat split already? I cannot remember and I cannot infer.

Toady will ruins be associated with the civilisation or will it be more neutral so that, for example, a completely different entity could do something with it?

Such as other civilisations, creatures, or non-civilised sapient beings

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 13, 2013, 10:05:37 am

Quote from: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 07:16:28 am

Question for the community

Is this release have the combat split already? I cannot remember and I cannot infer.

Unless combat split means the split in combat speed and movement speed, I don't know what it means. If that is what it means, then I believe this release did have that, yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 10:08:36 am

I am really curious as to how mighty Hydras will be with that release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 13, 2013, 08:41:56 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 10:08:36 am

I am really curious as to how mighty Hydras will be with that release.

****. Hadn't thought of that. 7 bite attacks at once... Hopefully ballistae are back to being powerful again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 13, 2013, 08:48:12 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 10:08:36 am

I am really curious as to how mighty Hydras will be with that release.

That? It's this. I do believe that, yes, hydras can attack with each of their heads in one turn now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on February 14, 2013, 01:04:50 am

The hydra is always the truest indication.

Quote from: Toady One

03/10/2010 I started testing out the hydra this morning and found I couldn't quite hack off its heads with an adamantine two-handed sword. While I was working through the numbers there, I got a crash report which ended up being this horrible intermittent doesn't-happen-with-any-debug-information-enabled beast I've only finished off just now, so I'll be back at the hydra tomorrow! I understand what's happening with the neck severing now so I should be able to get to testing bleeding, KOs, and so on without much trouble.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 14, 2013, 01:07:54 am

Ah, 6/18/12.

Quote

[The combat move/speed split will] also clean up some weirdness with rider combat that was exacerbated by the changes of the last week. Splitting movement and combat reactions should lead to some cool side benefits, such as creatures like horses and cheetahs being able to move quickly without getting extra attacks, and things like hydras and many-armed critters being able to use numerous attacks at once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 14, 2013, 03:51:50 pm

That makes me think...
With being able to perform multiple attacks at once such as dual-wielding, will any special affects happen from kicking with both feet at once? Will we fall to the ground if we attempt this, or are we assumed to be ninjas?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on February 14, 2013, 03:53:22 pm

Can we jump down onto baddies, knocking them down and stabbing them at the same time or similar things?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 14, 2013, 04:05:01 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 14, 2013, 03:51:50 pm

That makes me think...
With being able to perform multiple attacks at once such as dual-wielding, will any special affects happen from kicking with both feet at once? Will we fall to the ground if we attempt this, or are we assumed to be ninjas?

I really hope not, we've had arguments over this exact line of thought before... windmilling your arms around at the same time doesn't exactly properly model dual-weapon combat any better than being able to kick with two legs at a time without falling down models martial arts in general.

I would certainly hope some sort of "balance" or "concentration" mechanic comes into play to prevent someone from blocking an attack with a shield, from the right, chopping someone's head off with an axe with their right hand on a creature to their left, while firing off their Heat-Seeking Armor-Piercing Spitwad (no-handed weapon) at a dragon behind them.  The Munchkin card game (http://munchkin.wikia.com/wiki/Munchkin) made up that last one as a specific joke on the sorts of abuse players will typically try to make up to get more attacks in a round...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 14, 2013, 04:39:29 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 14, 2013, 04:05:01 pm

... on the sorts of abuse players will typically try to make up to get more attacks in a round...

Such as wielding 47 shields in one hand, and attacking with all of them at one time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 14, 2013, 04:48:41 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 14, 2013, 04:39:29 pm

Such as wielding 47 shields in one hand, and attacking with all of them at one time.

Yes, I really hope we get a mechanic that stops nonsense like that from happening, much less getting worse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 14, 2013, 10:41:53 pm

I hope for a single bugged release with incredibly unbalanced 47-shield hijinks before the fixed one 24 hours later, so we can have the most hilarious arena fights ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 15, 2013, 01:39:08 am

As I recall, the downside of queueing up a ton of attacks is supposed to be that it leaves you increasingly open to reaction-moments for those you are attacking to respond.  If that's the case then that's a pretty good estimation of the reason it's stupid to try simultaneous kick/punch/stab maneuvers in real life - doing so is complicated and harder to pull off. 

Quote from: Devlog on 06/22/2012

Things haven't been very exciting recently -- the gutting of combat and movement code is fairly wide reaching, and there won't be anything interesting to report for a few days yet. I did manage to explode myself by having a goblin load up five overlapping swings with the same sword that all struck in erroneous and rapid succession. Once all that's working you should be able to, for example, thrust at the same time with two daggers at one or more opponents (with various penalties etc. that you might expect from attempting that) -- stabbing both eyes or doing a double kill, that kind of thing. The interface there has a chance to veer to further clunkiness, so we'll probably have you default to a single action on your turn with the power to initiate multiple simultaneous actions with an additional keypress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 15, 2013, 01:43:53 am

Might things currently try to perform as many attacks as once, regardless of penalties? Can we set things to do that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 15, 2013, 02:29:04 am

Quote from: Caldfir on February 15, 2013, 01:39:08 am

As I recall, the downside of queueing up a ton of attacks is supposed to be that it leaves you increasingly open to reaction-moments for those you are attacking to respond.  If that's the case then that's a pretty good estimation of the reason it's stupid to try simultaneous kick/punch/stab maneuvers in real life - doing so is complicated and harder to pull off.

Sure, but that aspect of having it be complicated and harder to pull off will have to be put in somehow. And kicking with both feet, for example, should be trickier than stabbing with two daggers at a time or some such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 15, 2013, 02:40:58 am

Maybe Legendary Fighters get to punch, stab, and kick with all their fists, daggers, and feet at the same time. Where as a less skilled fighter trying that punches, stabs, and kicks himself in the lower body, and is propelled by the force of the blow!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 15, 2013, 03:16:14 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 15, 2013, 02:40:58 am

Maybe Legendary Fighters get to punch, stab, and kick with all their fists, daggers, and feet at the same time. Where as a less skilled fighter trying that punches, stabs, and kicks himself in the lower body, and is propelled by the force of the blow!

An excellent example of such a difference can be found on Red Vs Blue Season 8 Episode 10.

But seriously, will creatures be able to queue a combination of attacks and abilities? Or even attacks and jobs... It would be amusing to see one of my Deathcaster Sapiocoatl fire off a venom web at an attacker, then promptly harvest it for +frozen sapiocoatl venom thread+.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: kulik on February 15, 2013, 04:20:25 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 13, 2013, 08:48:12 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on February 13, 2013, 10:08:36 am

I am really curious as to how mighty Hydras will be with that release.

That? It's this. I do believe that, yes, hydras can attack with each of their heads in one turn now.

Although it doesn't makes much sense if they could do that against one small target. Wouldn't the heads collide in mid air?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on February 15, 2013, 05:22:06 am

Quote from: kulik on February 15, 2013, 04:20:25 am

Although it doesn't makes much sense if they could do that against one small target. Wouldn't the heads collide in mid air?

Like hitting all the keys on a typewriter at once ...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 15, 2013, 10:00:30 am

Quote from: mendonca on February 15, 2013, 05:22:06 am

Quote from: kulik on February 15, 2013, 04:20:25 am

Although it doesn't makes much sense if they could do that against one small target. Wouldn't the heads collide in mid air?

Like hitting all the keys on a typewriter at once ...

Lol, I never would have thought of the typewriter analogy.  :D

Well if you think about it penalties would emulate that in a way. But oddly enough is a hydra has a serpentine neck like in Disney's Hercules, you could argue that two of its heads can attack at once so long as they are aiming from and for different sides of defender's body.

Plus there's also the idea that the instant of attack is a bit longer and the heads don't attack exactly at the same time just rapidly in a small frame of time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 15, 2013, 11:48:36 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 15, 2013, 10:00:30 am

Quote from: mendonca on February 15, 2013, 05:22:06 am

Quote from: kulik on February 15, 2013, 04:20:25 am

Although it doesn't makes much sense if they could do that against one small target. Wouldn't the heads collide in mid air?

Like hitting all the keys on a typewriter at once ...

Lol, I never would have thought of the typewriter analogy.  :D

Well if you think about it penalties would emulate that in a way. But oddly enough is a hydra has a serpentine neck like in Disney's Hercules, you could argue that two of its heads can attack at once so long as they are aiming from and for different sides of defender's body.

Plus there's also the idea that the instant of attack is a bit longer and the heads don't attack exactly at the same time just rapidly in a small frame of time.

Dunno if it works already like that, but are abilities "bound" to certain bodyparts?
If so, would giving hydras ability to breathe fire allow them to fire seven streams of "hydrafire" at once/in shorter periods of time than it works currently?

Because gorynyches are a huge !FUN!-inducing material. (3-7-headed flying dragons - how isn't that fun?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 15, 2013, 11:52:24 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 15, 2013, 02:29:04 am

Quote from: Caldfir on February 15, 2013, 01:39:08 am

As I recall, the downside of queueing up a ton of attacks is supposed to be that it leaves you increasingly open to reaction-moments for those you are attacking to respond.  If that's the case then that's a pretty good estimation of the reason it's stupid to try simultaneous kick/punch/stab maneuvers in real life - doing so is complicated and harder to pull off.

Sure, but that aspect of having it be complicated and harder to pull off will have to be put in somehow. And kicking with both feet, for example, should be trickier than stabbing with two daggers at a time or some such.

Well, what I'm worried about is that the penalties won't really be large enough to reflect reality.

It's like the modern thing where people try to make some archers look "badass" by making them fire more than one arrow from a bowstring at once - it's just incredibly stupid, since there's a finite amount of force the bowstring can impart, and you're dividing it between both arrows.  (Meaning, you're firing two arrows that will have less than half the actual force behind them, be far less accurate, and likely do no damage even if they hit.)

Trying to kick with both legs isn't just stupid because you'll fall on your ass, it's stupid because you won't be able to get any power behind your kicks, anyway, without having something to press off of. 

Windmill-swinging dual-weapons is likewise stupid because without balance, you can't throw your body weight behind the attack, and without that weight, you have no momentum to lend the attack enough power to pierce a target.

In fact, to a degree, the game already kind of models this well - it's not getting a bunch of attacks in quickly that matters, it's getting that one lethal attack in.  A two-handed weapon that cleaves a limb or a spear thrust that hits a vital organ is worth more than even hundreds of bruises.

I'm just hoping that this update helps move DF combat more towards a model like what you see in something like Mount and Blade, where it's a matter of guarding and feinting and blocking and shoving and positioning and trying to wait for the moment where you can get in that strike that knocks them off-balance, and then going for a brutal finisher, rather than a game where you just windmill your swords at someone and hope that sheer volume of strikes leads to a lucky crit or more aggregate damage.

I'd rather DF combat be like a puzzle game where you try to force the opponent into an error than this kind of utter crapshoot where you just try to roll more dice than the opponent to get lucky first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Escapism on February 15, 2013, 12:04:59 pm

Will there be any kind of conduit of information from the rest of the world to your fort regarding succession and army activities? Asking caravans or diplomats for news etc.

If so, will that information be useful? Being able to predict imminent goblin attacks because a nearby village was recently razed, for instance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 15, 2013, 01:28:49 pm

For the record, 2-legged kicks do make you fall on your back and knock the wind out of you, but they also knock the target down and possibly break their ribs. You basically jump forward with both legs first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on February 15, 2013, 01:29:38 pm

Quote from: Escapism on February 15, 2013, 12:04:59 pm

Will there be any kind of conduit of information from the rest of the world to your fort regarding succession and army activities? Asking caravans or diplomats for news etc.

If so, will that information be useful? Being able to predict imminent goblin attacks because a nearby village was recently razed, for instance.

an extension to this:
If so will it be through the liason? replacing one of the "you've carved a fine place for yourself" dialogues with some news of what is going on in the world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 15, 2013, 04:22:49 pm

Now that we have vision arcs implemented, how are we supposed to determine what direction is a certain creature looking in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on February 15, 2013, 04:39:28 pm

i think it shows in a certain mode.
hit button, triangles appear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on February 15, 2013, 04:56:02 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on February 15, 2013, 04:22:49 pm

Now that we have vision arcs implemented, how are we supposed to determine what direction is a certain creature looking in?

Do you mean other than looking at the visible on-screen vision arc?

My understanding is that you go in to stealth mode and the vision arcs show up on screen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 15, 2013, 08:11:53 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 15, 2013, 01:28:49 pm

For the record, 2-legged kicks do make you fall on your back and knock the wind out of you, but they also knock the target down and possibly break their ribs. You basically jump forward with both legs first.

2-legged kicks with a running start to build momentum do that. 

For that matter, you can do much the same thing with one leg if you're doing a jump-kick, or even just a running tackle, or better yet, a spear-first charge, especially since Toady is throwing in the rules for a running start in this release, so that there's little reason to get confused between an attack with momentum and without momentum.

From a standing position (like a regular kick, but with both legs at the same time, which is what was being discussed,) it's just sweeping your own legs out from under yourself and maybe brushing the target before you land butt-first on the floor.  That's why it was used as an example of either defying physics or suicidal stupidity, depending on how the code was implemented.

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 14, 2013, 03:51:50 pm

With being able to perform multiple attacks at once such as dual-wielding, will any special affects happen from kicking with both feet at once? Will we fall to the ground if we attempt this, or are we assumed to be ninjas?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 15, 2013, 11:34:27 pm

New Devlog!

Okay, so I wasn't too surprised at the restraint he showed with the criminal tangent, but I didn't expect him to pass up a conversation overhaul, particularly with all the new information he needs to be able to impart to the player with all the volatile political situations going on now. I still feel giddy every time he says the word "insurrection," though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 16, 2013, 01:38:37 am

Honestly, conversations is one of few things I totally wouldn't mind if Toady delved into now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 16, 2013, 01:41:37 am

I do agree that conversation should be more than:

"Hello Thresher."
"Hello Dwarf. My name is Fliggles McIggles."
"What needs murdering?"
"Iggles McFliggles the vampire, who lives in the dungeon here."
"Care to join me?"
"No."
"Bye then."
"Don't die."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 16, 2013, 01:42:23 am

Procedural Poetry?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 16, 2013, 02:45:31 am

Quote from: Japa on February 16, 2013, 01:42:23 am

Procedural Poetry?

He's threaten it before!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 16, 2013, 01:09:20 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on February 16, 2013, 02:45:31 am

Quote from: Japa on February 16, 2013, 01:42:23 am

Procedural Poetry?

He's threaten it before!

Twice!

Quote from: Core59

LOVE AND ROMANCE:
Though some of the dialog is likely to be an entertaining trainwreck, especially if coupled with a random poem generator (yes, that's a threat), love of all sorts is very important for driving stories and situations and needs to come in all over the place -- world generation, the world during play, dwarf mode and adventure mode.

Quote from: Core100

NEW LANGUAGE ITEMS:
Parchment, vellum and their buddies then books, songs, poems... all for your entertainment (and horror, if there are random poems).

Though in all seriousness, we probably wont be seeing random poetry for a while. But if you can't wait, you can find plenty through Google.
Toady was threatening us. They're horrible...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 16, 2013, 02:32:53 pm

I'm hoping he hops right back in on conversations with the next feature release. At least, whenever taverns go in, since it'd be nice to do some barhopping and drunken boasting and the like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flesh Render on February 16, 2013, 03:19:58 pm

Hi there. What are you working at, "Bay12 team?" I play DF only several weeks and I am copletely struck by difficulty of this game, so I am amateur but I have some ideas that might improve game mechanics.
1. Tame goblins, it would be pleasure to have them in dwarf army. It would be great to have elven of human mates.
2. I want to be able to go out from general map. I want to have a possobility of bulding co-fortresses to improve my civilization.
3. Add to the game more facilities like new chairs, tables and more else.
4. Opportunity to have dwarf neighobors with their own fortresses and forts, politics(allyes, foes, neutrallity etc )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2013, 03:23:38 pm

Quote from: Flesh Render on February 16, 2013, 03:19:58 pm

Hi there. What are you working at, "Bay12 team?" I play DF only several weeks and I am copletely struck by difficulty of this game, so I am amateur but I have some ideas that might improve game mechanics.
1. Tame goblins, it would be pleasure to have them in dwarf army. It would be great to have elven of human mates.
2. I want to be able to go out from general map. I want to have a possobility of bulding co-fortresses to improve my civilization.
3. Add to the game more facilities like new chairs, tables and more else.
4. Opportunity to have dwarf neighobors with their own fortresses and forts, politics(allyes, foes, neutrallity etc )

Over here is where you want to post that. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0) Suggestions are discouraged 'round here.

2 is planned.

Not sure what 3 means.

4 is planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 16, 2013, 05:44:35 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 15, 2013, 08:11:53 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 15, 2013, 01:28:49 pm

For the record, 2-legged kicks do make you fall on your back and knock the wind out of you, but they also knock the target down and possibly break their ribs. You basically jump forward with both legs first.

2-legged kicks with a running start to build momentum do that. 

For that matter, you can do much the same thing with one leg if you're doing a jump-kick, or even just a running tackle, or better yet, a spear-first charge, especially since Toady is throwing in the rules for a running start in this release, so that there's little reason to get confused between an attack with momentum and without momentum.

From a standing position (like a regular kick, but with both legs at the same time, which is what was being discussed,) it's just sweeping your own legs out from under yourself and maybe brushing the target before you land butt-first on the floor.  That's why it was used as an example of either defying physics or suicidal stupidity, depending on how the code was implemented.

It's called a dropkick. You need good leg strength and jumping ability, but with proper skill you can totally just jump up and kick someone in the chest with both feet from a standing start. It's more of a wrestling than a striking thing, though, since it's ill-advised when fighting multiple opponents, but it's still completely possible and viable 1 on 1, with the right amount of skill.

You can see an example of how kicking with both feet with a somewhat less than running start might be used in adventure mode, at 2:40 in this video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MicK7DrFUAw&t=2m40s)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 17, 2013, 01:42:59 am

I know trees aren't in active development, but there is a subject that has been causing me some anxiety.  I don't believe that the multitile trees have roots yet, but there are some common misconceptions about how roots grow that I very much hope don't end up perpetuated by dwarf fortress.  Namely, many people mistakenly believe that the average tree's roots are a mirror copy of the above-ground branches in structure - with deep roots and spreading branches, however this is not in general the case. 

Most trees have few roots deeper than two feet below the surface (relevant link (http://okeechobee.ifas.ufl.edu/News%20columns/Trees%20&%20Construction.htm)).  The reason for this is that trees don't have any active circulation, and as such every cell in the tree needs to have reasonably nearby access to air.  If artificial means are used to create aerated soil deeper than that (tunnels) then the roots might be able to grow there, but you wouldn't expect to find many roots when deeper than a few feet.  A noteworthy exception is the root system of oak trees, which include a central tap root (relevant link (http://ceres.ca.gov/foreststeward/oaks.html)). 

I do realize, on the other hand, that it sounds cool to have to dig around the roots of a forest, so from a gaming (as opposed to simulation) perspective, that might be the choice that gets made. 

So here's my question:
How deep do you plan on having tree roots get?  Are they planned for this release? If not, do trees (for now) just end at the surface with nothing beneath but soil?

edit: ungreened because answered - thanks! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 17, 2013, 06:46:21 am

Quote from: Caldfir on February 17, 2013, 01:42:59 am

I know trees aren't in active development, but there is a subject that has been causing me some anxiety.

Perhaps it's just because it's late here, but trees as a source of anxiety made me laugh.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 17, 2013, 07:27:00 am

Fortunately my father has a background in botany, and we talked that out before I even checked that stuff out online, since he was curious about what I was working on.  I don't remember if it was in any of my older notes, but I know it is for this version.  They might not spread far enough depending on memory concerns, and they might not intermingle right, and any number of interesting things might not happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 17, 2013, 07:32:43 am

Hah. Here I was collecting quotes, and Toady himself ninja's me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 17, 2013, 07:54:35 am

I wanted to relieve Caldfir's stress, he he he.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 17, 2013, 09:43:04 am

I believe this was discussed at some point, but I can't remember where. It was probably in the devlog, but I'm not sure, so I figured I'd just ask here. Someone here probably remembers. What I was wondering about is, what was changing about entity AI in this update? That is, I seem to remember they got goals in this update that they tried to achieve, and an adventurer could now have relations with each individual entity, and perhaps the entities with each other as well. However, I don't remember if that was talk for the future, or for the current upcoming release. Since it's already been talked about, I thought I wouldn't make this a green question, and just ask the people here -- hope that's alright.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 17, 2013, 11:20:58 am

It's alright with me! I believe you were thinking of Toady's original plans for the update, detailed in the devlog for 06/06/12:

Quote from: Toady One

It's time to activate the world now. The overall idea is that entities such as town governments, bandit gangs, criminal organizations, necromancer cults, etc., will have goals and act to carry them out, replacing losses and reacting to your acts as you arise to interfere or aid them, with a generous helping of tension between historical figures frosted with beast antics.

Some initial work is required, but we're going to try to move through it quickly this time. I'm currently taking the preliminary step of detailing entity claims to sites based on purpose, location, time of day, and so on. Then the plan is to use these to get entity representatives such as guards and dirt bags out on the streets, along with regular citizens with varying views on the entity claims, and to get them all interacting with each other and adventurers a bit. That'll set the stage for the visible realignment of entity claims as the game progresses, and it'll give you some material to work with. Specific quests are going to start to drop out of the game as we proceed, to be replaced by you doing what you want with respect to the various groups and reacting to their direct intervention in your affairs. Now that we'll have the site control situation a little more fleshed out, we're also going include a bit of exposition, both for your home town when you start and when you talk to people in places you visit, though you might still happen upon trouble before you hear anything. [...]

If I understood correctly, Toady is currently working on tying entity interaction, succession claims and the new sites together, so the next release can't be too far away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 17, 2013, 12:49:44 pm

Quote from: Trif on February 17, 2013, 11:20:58 am

It's alright with me! I believe you were thinking of Toady's original plans for the update, detailed in the devlog for 06/06/12:

Right, I think that's what I was thinking about. Thank you! That does sound really good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 17, 2013, 03:57:32 pm

Oh wow - thanks for the quick answer Toady! 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on February 17, 2013, 04:54:31 pm

Somehow, I have gotten the impression that the goblins will only be occupying human sites in the upcoming version. Is this correct, or can the sites of every major race get occupied by goblins? Does this include the sites of other goblin civs? If a player-made fortress succumbs to dwarf mode invasion or gets occupied post-retirement, will we be able to send an adventurer there to start a rebellion? Will it be possible to re-activate (without a reclaim party) a fortress that was liberated in adventure mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Richards on February 17, 2013, 11:59:10 pm

So I guess Toady is going for year release, bug fixes, year release kind of thing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 12:04:35 am

Quote from: Richards on February 17, 2013, 11:59:10 pm

So I guess Toady is going for year release, bug fixes, year release kind of thing?

It's actually been only 8 months since 0.34.11's release :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 18, 2013, 12:05:05 am

Quote from: Mopsy on February 17, 2013, 04:54:31 pm

Somehow, I have gotten the impression that the goblins will only be occupying human sites in the upcoming version. Is this correct, or can the sites of any major race get occupied by goblins? Does this include the sites of other goblin civs? If a player-made fortress succumbs to dwarf mode invasion or gets occupied post-retirement, will we be able to send an adventurer there to start a rebellion? Will it be possible to re-activate (without a reclaim party) a fortress that was liberated in adventure mode?

Probably not, but you might be able to send an adventurer, "soften up" the invaders, then send in a reclaim party after.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on February 18, 2013, 12:39:00 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 12:04:35 am

It's actually been only 8 months since 0.34.11's release :P

16 More weeks...hmmm... doesn't sound that bad. Anticipating the next releases its a big part of Dwarf Fortress experience!  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 18, 2013, 12:41:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 12:04:35 am

Quote from: Richards on February 17, 2013, 11:59:10 pm

So I guess Toady is going for year release, bug fixes, year release kind of thing?

It's actually been only 8 months since 0.34.11's release :P

Well, I'm pretty sure that's not what he's going for, but it does seem to be how it's working out, yes :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 18, 2013, 01:11:25 am

Quote from: monk12 on February 18, 2013, 12:41:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 12:04:35 am

Quote from: Richards on February 17, 2013, 11:59:10 pm

So I guess Toady is going for year release, bug fixes, year release kind of thing?

It's actually been only 8 months since 0.34.11's release :P

Well, I'm pretty sure that's not what he's going for, but it does seem to be how it's working out, yes :P

To be more exact, it's like how Toady tends to make a release, find out when people start playing that there's some sort of crippling bug that was added in that release, and then release a hotfix the next day.  This tends to create alternating versions where one has a crippling bug and the next does not.  This, in turn, led to the "even number/odd number" idea people had with versions. 

When Toady sets to work on these sorts of things, he tends to wind up getting easily diverted down what he originally thought was a minor side issue, and all of a sudden, we have a whole new interaction system and vampires and werewolves out of nowhere, and release gets pushed back 6 months to schedule in coding in all the ramifications.

In fact, Toady has been having his long stretches of focus upon adding large amounts of new content get shorter recently - it was way more than just one year when it was the jump from 40d to 0.31.01. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 18, 2013, 09:53:38 am

I'm as anxious as any one for the next release. I however don't mind him taking all the time he wants/need to do it better. And of course, we can't realistically expect him to find and squash all the bugs, so it's important to download the "odd" version of the game and try them out. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:23:05 pm

We can nick-name our dwarves and companions in adventure mode, but will we ever be able to nick-name other things? Like animals, enemies, items, and the like?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:24:50 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:23:05 pm

We can nick-name our dwarves and companions in adventure mode, but will we ever be able to nick-name other things? Like animals, enemies, items, and the like?

You can do that already. Try it out!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:52:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:24:50 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:23:05 pm

We can nick-name our dwarves and companions in adventure mode, but will we ever be able to nick-name other things? Like animals, enemies, items, and the like?

You can do that already. Try it out!

How?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:53:09 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:52:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:24:50 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:23:05 pm

We can nick-name our dwarves and companions in adventure mode, but will we ever be able to nick-name other things? Like animals, enemies, items, and the like?

You can do that already. Try it out!

How?

l-->unit-->y

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 18, 2013, 11:08:56 pm

Yup. Same way you nickname your companions. I gave a dingo the proffession and nickname "stupid bitch," and hacked her leg off. The leg is identified as "'stupid bitch''s left rear leg."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 19, 2013, 12:15:25 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 18, 2013, 11:08:56 pm

Yup. Same way you nickname your companions. I gave a dingo the proffession and nickname "stupid bitch," and hacked her leg off. The leg is identified as "'stupid bitch''s left rear leg."

Don't think you can nickname items that were never attached to a stupid bitch, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 19, 2013, 01:31:15 am

Well, true. That would be a neat feature for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 19, 2013, 11:10:33 am

Quote from: Heph on February 11, 2013, 11:02:52 pm

Quote

Historically, everyone tended to worship all the major gods that were venerated in their culture  And heck even many christians arent far from it by recognizing Angels, the Mother of Jesus or certain Saints  (or even all 3) as target for worship and prayer.

As a Christian, I feel compelled to say that only the Catholics believe that, and they are even weirder than normal Christians.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 19, 2013, 11:26:14 am

Not that there's such thing as "normal" Christians. But that conversation was over I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 19, 2013, 12:40:43 pm

Hooo boy this might get bad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 19, 2013, 01:11:13 pm

Not harm intended. But when was the last time you actually knew some one "normal"? If you say something besides "never in my life" you are lying. Who defines what's normal? Can all we be measured by the same standards? But that's enough off topic, I think the point was already answered, all that it rest is to wait for Toady to answer the questions related to the game marked on green about it (if any, I don't remember) on the next Future of the Fortress reply.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 19, 2013, 01:19:44 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on February 19, 2013, 01:11:13 pm

Not harm intended. But when was the last time you actually knew some one "normal"? If you say something besides "never in my life" you are lying. Who defines what's normal? Can all we be measured by the same standards? But that's enough off topic, I think the point was already answered, all that it rest is to wait for Toady to answer the questions related to the game marked on green about it (if any, I don't remember) on the next Future of the Fortress reply.

I am totally O.K. with people seeing "Christians" as not normal. But, let's stop this topic now and talk about impaling kitties on bronze spikes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on February 19, 2013, 01:29:54 pm

I actually thought he was rejecting the difference between Catholics and 'normal' christians.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on February 19, 2013, 01:55:59 pm

We're all weird to different people in different places, and we're all minorities in our own unique combinations of ways. *"The More You Know" Star*

Back onto DF development:

Can you tell us what dialogue is going to be like in the updated adventure mode? Are there going to be dialogue options like "Ask about..." "Offer..."? Or maybe generated dialogue trees (Name/Job/Bye)?

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 19, 2013, 05:28:35 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on February 19, 2013, 01:55:59 pm

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

My guess is that most of that will be who you are talking to, and choosing specific dialogue options. You would ask the captain of the the town guard for a hero-type quest, or you might ask him with your knife or coin for leads on thief-type 'quests'.
For example, in the example you provided, you could ask "Would you like to do business?" instead of "Do you have work for my sword/axe/hammer/backpack-loaded-with-the-corpses-of-my-foes?".
But I only wish I knew the mind of Toady. As I don't, this is only a guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 19, 2013, 07:35:04 pm

Does insurrection only work for goblins, or can we also stir up a rebellion against vampire leaders / false gods who lay oppressive edicts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 19, 2013, 11:14:26 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:53:09 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:52:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2013, 02:24:50 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 18, 2013, 02:23:05 pm

We can nick-name our dwarves and companions in adventure mode, but will we ever be able to nick-name other things? Like animals, enemies, items, and the like?

You can do that already. Try it out!

How?

l-->unit-->y

Yes, you can do this in adventure mode, I guess in the original question I sould have separated "dwarves" from "companions in adventure mode", I meant nick-naming animals and enemies in fortress mode, and for nameing items in general, such as a +copper pick+

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 19, 2013, 11:17:13 pm

There's probably a DFhack plugin that'll do that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on February 20, 2013, 07:41:50 am

Quote from: Bronze Dog on February 19, 2013, 01:55:59 pm

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

From what I remember from a DF talk, there won't be quests given in that way in the future. You'll have entities who want certain things and that will tell you that they want certain things should you come across them. You'll then get rewarded for doing those things, regardless of whether you were formally asked to do so or not. So if for example this lord hates that lord, then he will (ideally) reward you for any action that will hurt that lord, whether that action is stealing from him or killing him. So it's less of doing things a certain way (hero,thief,etc.) and more of doing what the entity wants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 20, 2013, 08:03:16 am

That system is awesome. Still, a more direct "hiring you to do X" system should be in place always, just that perhaps not all the characters would be so desperate or in dire need to actually hire you to steal/rescue/kill/kidnap/escort another entity.

This way you can also get real mercenary adventures too, instead of just going around doing favors to people hopping they reward you. Specially if/when they start to lie and are actually your enemies in disguise or simply evil jerks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on February 20, 2013, 11:45:53 pm

I can see it now... Titan McViolentMurderMonster yells his list of kills at you until the dead of night. By then, you have passed out and he slits your throat.

I know that you'll probably be able to cut off the conversation but I wanted to make that statement

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on February 21, 2013, 12:07:19 am

No, you interrupt his list of kills with a slice to the throat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 21, 2013, 12:29:07 am

Quote from: Japa on February 21, 2013, 12:07:19 am

No, you interrupt his list of kills with a slice to the throat.

I'm happy this is now possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 21, 2013, 02:13:41 am

This latest update sounds amazing :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 21, 2013, 02:40:41 am

Quote from: monk12 on February 21, 2013, 12:29:07 am

Quote from: Japa on February 21, 2013, 12:07:19 am

No, you interrupt his list of kills with a slice to the throat.

I'm happy this is now possible.

The Swamp Titan Numzok stands before you.
Swamp Titan: I am he who felled Urist McHero, once revered by those who knew no better!
Swamp Titan: I crushed Olith LeRandomPeasant under a mountain of hatred!
Swamp Titan: Dakost Mc-
You: Prepare to die!
The spinning copper boning knife strikes the Swamp Titan in the throat and the severed part sails off in an arc!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on February 21, 2013, 07:20:36 am

This is ridiculously cool. 

This with the reactions events:

The Goblin swodsman strikes at your head with the copper sword.
You grab the goblins lower right arm.
You scream "IN 654 I STRANGLED A WOLF IN THE FORESTS OF DISEMBOWELED CONCUBINES!"
You stab the Goblin in the stomach with your bronze spoon, piercing the guts through the troll fur tunic.
The Goblin looks sick.

Or:

"My name is Urist Swordhaver. You killed my father in 357 in the village of Madgits. Prepare to die."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 21, 2013, 09:06:37 am

Does it mean we can more effectively spy on people, if they actually talk between each other?
I want to see that happen - you know, with the refined sneaking system and new mobility in place...

Toady, could we see ability to hide in regular containers in this release? The functionality (at least in my eyes) is not much different from that of the cages, but you could be able to freely walk in and out of them. Although it would require making it so that one is in sneaking mode when hidden in such, and therefore wouldn't appear on contents list when looking at a barrel or whatever.
More of a suggestion than question, but whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on February 21, 2013, 10:04:04 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on February 21, 2013, 07:20:36 am

"My name is Urist Swordhaver. You killed my father in 357 in the village of Madgits. Prepare to die."

"My name is Urist Swordhaver.  I killed your son in 289 in the hillock of Ragecrystal.  Prepare to die."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dishwater on February 21, 2013, 10:59:04 am

I wonder if the "conversation" can hurt people from its loudness.
For example imagine a forgotten beast shouting at you and bursting your eardrums,
that would be quite fun and annoying at the same time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 21, 2013, 11:02:34 am

What about over hearing others conversations? See, I'm not an adventurer player at all, so I don't know if that's possible already, but it would be cool to sneak upon some goblings and hear what they talk about (if at all) of things like their next target or why they are here or how's the leader of the expedition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 21, 2013, 11:36:59 am

Quote from: LordBaal on February 21, 2013, 11:02:34 am

What about over hearing others conversations? See, I'm not an adventurer player at all, so I don't know if that's possible already, but it would be cool to sneak upon some goblings and hear what they talk about (if at all) of things like their next target or why they are here or how's the leader of the expedition.

It's not possible yet, outside the market shouts, and it seems unlikely to come in for the next release. It is planned, though, mostly for the thief role (which does have decent overlap with the insurrection plot).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 21, 2013, 02:42:29 pm

Toady, will NPCs always interrupt a conversation when faced with danger, since it takes up a turn of their time, or will we explicitly be able to have a civilized chat with our companions whilst hacking bandits to bits?

Because that would be absolutely hilarious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 21, 2013, 03:00:00 pm

While thinking of this I keep repeating the scene of the Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where the gal and the guy gets married by the other pirate while fighting on the deck of the ship.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 21, 2013, 05:27:00 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 21, 2013, 02:42:29 pm

Toady, will NPCs always interrupt a conversation when faced with danger, since it takes up a turn of their time, or will we explicitly be able to have a civilized chat with our companions whilst hacking bandits to bits?

Because that would be absolutely hilarious.

Well, the update did say it was

Quote from: devlog

either simultaneously with their other actions (like walking and fighting) or instead of them

so in that sense it doesn't necessarily take up a turn of their time, it sounds like. I don't know if your NPC companions will be likely to take such a pragmatic approach to it, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 06:22:51 pm

Just because there has been so much recent discussion of attacking 47 times simultaneously, penalties for multiple actions in a turn, and conversations in the middle of combat, I wrote up a (relatively short) Suggestion Thread for discussing concepts like Balance and Concentration in battle into a formalized mechanic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123179.0) rather than individual penalties.

Since we're not really supposed to discuss suggestions in this thread, I'd invite those who are talking about the topic into that thread to continue the discussion.

However, while I'm on the topic, I do want to ask:
What are your current plans regarding how combat penalties for pulling stunts to behave?  As in, what sort of "flow" to combat do you want it to have?  Do you want combat to basically be stand-up attack trading like now, but with just putting in penalties for doing crazy things, or can trying to be Jet Li wind up with you flat on your face? 

Do you want to make combat less a matter of hacking at opportune times, or more of trying to knock the opponent down to get that opportunity to strike "the decisive blow"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on February 21, 2013, 09:34:47 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 21, 2013, 05:27:00 pm

Quote from: devlog

either simultaneously with their other actions (like walking and fighting) or instead of them

so in that sense it doesn't necessarily take up a turn of their time, it sounds like. I don't know if your NPC companions will be likely to take such a pragmatic approach to it, though.

I can only hope and pray that one day some manner of skill-check-based conversation options will make it in, such that my character with creation points invested in Comedian and a similarly-skilled companion can toss witty, context-sensitive puns back and forth to each other about the enemies they're killing, even while in the process of killing them. Action movie style, y'know?


Kogan Adventuredwarf (shouted as he cuts the legs out from under a bandit chief): "'Aye Saravesh, wot's the difference between a catapult, an' a bandit chief from the neck up?"

Saravesh Companioneer (calling back, while running a goblin through with his spear): "I dunno Kogan, what is it?"

Kogan Adventuredwarf (he swings, hacking the bandit's head clean off and sending it sailing off in an arc eight tiles away): (pauses as he watches the head land) "A good hundred 'an thirty yards, I'd say."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 21, 2013, 09:56:28 pm

I just wish there could be separate point pools for social skills and physical skills. I mean, it's not like people training in the army spend absolutely no time socializing, so having someone have no clue about how to tell a joke because they spent time training doesn't make much sense.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 06:22:51 pm

What are your current plans regarding how combat penalties for pulling stunts to behave?  As in, what sort of "flow" to combat do you want it to have?  Do you want combat to basically be stand-up attack trading like now, but with just putting in penalties for doing crazy things, or can trying to be Jet Li wind up with you flat on your face? 

And if we have a lot of experience in the appropriate skills, can we Jet Li and make other people flat on their faces?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 10:42:18 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 21, 2013, 09:56:28 pm

I just wish there could be separate point pools for social skills and physical skills. I mean, it's not like people training in the army spend absolutely no time socializing, so having someone have no clue about how to tell a joke because they spent time training doesn't make much sense.

For that matter, I'm not much fan of the min-max-happy way the current point-buy system works for Advneturers - attributes like strength and agility are head-and-shoulders better than attributes like musicality, which has no in-game use, and basically exists to be subtracted from for an extra attribute point. 

If you're going to use a point-buy system, then the costs have to accurately reflect the value.

Otherwise, it makes more sense to do random attribute scores with re-rolls so that there's at least a chance for characters with different levels of oddball stats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on February 22, 2013, 01:34:05 am

The bit about adventurers storing stuff learned in their heads makes me think of Monkey Island where Guybrush has to fight the lesser pirates and collect the best insults and rejoinders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 22, 2013, 01:39:18 am

Quote from: DG on February 22, 2013, 01:34:05 am

The bit about adventurers storing stuff learned in their heads makes me think of Monkey Island where Guybrush has to fight the lesser pirates and collect the best insults and rejoinders.

If you can use your witty banter to throw an opponent off guard with your social skills, that might not be far off. That makes me wonder...

Will we ever be able to taunt/demoralize opponents in such a way that it might cause some form of penalty for them to perform actions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 22, 2013, 02:51:28 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 22, 2013, 01:39:18 am

Quote from: DG on February 22, 2013, 01:34:05 am

The bit about adventurers storing stuff learned in their heads makes me think of Monkey Island where Guybrush has to fight the lesser pirates and collect the best insults and rejoinders.

If you can use your witty banter to throw an opponent off guard with your social skills, that might not be far off. That makes me wonder...

Will we ever be able to taunt/demoralize opponents in such a way that it might cause some form of penalty for them to perform actions?

...like reading them your list of kills? (hehehehuhuahuahua!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 22, 2013, 03:39:57 am

Bronze Colossus: ...AND THAT IS WHY I AM IMPRESSIVE. PREPARE TO DIE!
The honey badger has become enraged!
The bronze colossus has been struck down.

Taunting might backfire sometimes, maybe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on February 22, 2013, 09:01:01 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 22, 2013, 01:39:18 am

If you can use your witty banter to throw an opponent off guard with your social skills

Yes. I want this.

I want this today.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 22, 2013, 09:35:38 am

Nex thing up : talk your foes into suicide.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on February 22, 2013, 11:13:25 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 10:42:18 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 21, 2013, 09:56:28 pm

I just wish there could be separate point pools for social skills and physical skills. I mean, it's not like people training in the army spend absolutely no time socializing, so having someone have no clue about how to tell a joke because they spent time training doesn't make much sense.

For that matter, I'm not much fan of the min-max-happy way the current point-buy system works for Advneturers - attributes like strength and agility are head-and-shoulders better than attributes like musicality, which has no in-game use, and basically exists to be subtracted from for an extra attribute point. 

If you're going to use a point-buy system, then the costs have to accurately reflect the value.

Otherwise, it makes more sense to do random attribute scores with re-rolls so that there's at least a chance for characters with different levels of oddball stats.

There's always going to be a min/max build(s) with a point-buy system, that's just unchangeable. For what we have right now, though, my adventurers routinely have points in "useless" skills because I'm creating the adventurer as a person instead of just min/maxing their combat potential. Being penalized in points for this is fine, so far as I'm concerned -- not everyone is a jack of all trades, and being an empathetic adventurer with a strong background in swimming but not particularly well-built or trained in combat suits my needs fine ... I don't want separate pools of point-buy, because that would defeat the purpose of creating well-rounded adventurers with flaws or non-min/maxed builds.

Something like a randomizer would be a good option for people like me and I imagine some other types of Adventure Mode players to have access to, though, so I'm all for that as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on February 22, 2013, 04:14:07 pm

Will we be seeing a change to how companions are recruited with the new conversation system? Specifically will it become more context based?

ie.
Adventurer: "Will you join me on my adventure?"
Urist McMeatshield: "What is in it for me?"
Adventurer: "I am on a quest to kill the bandit master Snodub Randomname."
Urist McMeatshield: "I know this fiend! in 132 he killed my dear aunt Agnus!"
Urist McMeatshield: "I would be honored to join your quest!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dae on February 22, 2013, 04:46:25 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 22, 2013, 09:35:38 am

Nex thing up : talk your foes into suicide.

Hannibal Lecter did this in Silence of the Lambs right ? Got into someone's mind so perfectly he could torture a man into swallowing his own tongue overnight.

However, in the context of a fight, this isn't really possible. Reptilian brain takes over, rage is favored over sorrow ; any mental pain is "recycled" as anger fuel.
You'd have to exhaust someone enough for the adrenaline to recede before being able to tap into more complex mental processes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 22, 2013, 07:40:20 pm

Quote from: Emily Murkpaddled on February 22, 2013, 11:13:25 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 10:42:18 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 21, 2013, 09:56:28 pm

I just wish there could be separate point pools for social skills and physical skills. I mean, it's not like people training in the army spend absolutely no time socializing, so having someone have no clue about how to tell a joke because they spent time training doesn't make much sense.

For that matter, I'm not much fan of the min-max-happy way the current point-buy system works for Advneturers - attributes like strength and agility are head-and-shoulders better than attributes like musicality, which has no in-game use, and basically exists to be subtracted from for an extra attribute point. 

If you're going to use a point-buy system, then the costs have to accurately reflect the value.

Otherwise, it makes more sense to do random attribute scores with re-rolls so that there's at least a chance for characters with different levels of oddball stats.

There's always going to be a min/max build(s) with a point-buy system, that's just unchangeable. For what we have right now, though, my adventurers routinely have points in "useless" skills because I'm creating the adventurer as a person instead of just min/maxing their combat potential. Being penalized in points for this is fine, so far as I'm concerned -- not everyone is a jack of all trades, and being an empathetic adventurer with a strong background in swimming but not particularly well-built or trained in combat suits my needs fine ... I don't want separate pools of point-buy, because that would defeat the purpose of creating well-rounded adventurers with flaws or non-min/maxed builds.

Something like a randomizer would be a good option for people like me and I imagine some other types of Adventure Mode players to have access to, though, so I'm all for that as well.

Only in real life, people don't lack personalities or social skills just because they spend time training in something physical. I'd like seperate pools so that you might put points into swimming at the cost of spearman, or consoler at the cost of comedian, but not spearman at the cost of consoler.

Alternately, just increase the total number of points to spend but limit how many can be spent on physical/mental attributes/skills. This limit could be more than half for either category, so that you could still put more into one than the other, but not put all into one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Newbunkle on February 22, 2013, 08:52:33 pm

Quote from: Torchy on February 22, 2013, 09:01:01 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 22, 2013, 01:39:18 am

If you can use your witty banter to throw an opponent off guard with your social skills

Yes. I want this.

I want this today.

"You fight like a dairy farmer." ... "How appropriate. You fight like a cow." ... ?

That would be hilarious. XD

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 22, 2013, 08:58:56 pm

Quote from: Newbunkle on February 22, 2013, 08:52:33 pm

Quote from: Torchy on February 22, 2013, 09:01:01 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 22, 2013, 01:39:18 am

If you can use your witty banter to throw an opponent off guard with your social skills

Yes. I want this.

I want this today.

"You fight like a dairy farmer." ... "How appropriate. You fight like a cow." ... ?

That would be hilarious. XD

But in dwarf fortress, the latter would be a compliment. Damn hooves and horns...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 22, 2013, 09:50:39 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 22, 2013, 08:58:56 pm

But in dwarf fortress, the latter would be a compliment. Damn hooves and horns...

Not to mention, due to token streamlining, they have more powerful jaws than a crocodile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 22, 2013, 11:38:14 pm

These latest updates make me wonder if perhaps we'll be able to give some basic orders to our followers sometime soon.  Being able to yell for people to break off their attack on the herd of camels or whatever seems like it fits with what's being done.  Also the devlog seems to hint at the possible near-future of equipping one's followers, which would be a very good thing. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Edmus on February 22, 2013, 11:46:39 pm

The bane of many adventurer is the night time kobold ambush.
 In the event of an ambush could we call our soldiers to us as to not be so scattered? and in such a scenario how likely are they to route?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 22, 2013, 11:57:30 pm

So companions will be more fleshed out and needing reasons, but hopefully we can still have fire-forged friends who will follow you to the HFS and back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 23, 2013, 12:06:24 am

Quote from: bit of new devlog

I haven't handled drunks yet -- the "hey, that sounds like fun!" agreement is kind of a loose sort-of-understanding, and not really a "meeting of the minds" since one party to the agreement is pickled. In that case, I'm not sure there really needs to be an agreement but rather a periodic BAC check on the companion link.

This is hilarious and I can't wait to roll into town, rile up a bunch of drunks, hand out swords and bits of metal on a stick, roll up to the goblins and watch them all sober up at the same time. Should be good fun when they sober up out in the woods halfway to a dragon's lair and no idea how to get home.

And near-term equipping of allies sounds very good to me, I hope it makes it in for this release! Given the general state of the adventure mode economy there are few items I can't afford to live without, and plenty of stuff to hand out to willing allies. I wonder how far we are from Training the Peaceful Villagers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrainingThePeacefulVillagers)- personal guess is that it'll come in with the rest of the thief role.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 23, 2013, 12:19:49 am

Tedious squad equipment management: now in Adventure mode too.

At some point, will we be able to have a big bag (or mule, or other storage system) and just tell our buddies to take what they want/need?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 23, 2013, 12:21:56 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 22, 2013, 11:57:30 pm

So companions will be more fleshed out and needing reasons, but hopefully we can still have fire-forged friends who will follow you to the HFS and back.

Yeah, I'm definitely leaving room in the companion link for this so that an association can outlive the original agreement.  Zach and I were discussing the post-insurrection period yesterday, where you'd essentially have a chat with all your partners and see who's up for Stage 2 of the adventuring life, and at that point personality might come up as much as anything, without the "but my profession is X so I'd rather not" part getting in the way of everything.  So if you recruit 20, 12 survive and you keep 4 after the talk, they might stick around forever since it is deep-rooted in their mindset.  We can work on further bonds of friendship and so on after that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 23, 2013, 12:25:12 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 23, 2013, 12:21:56 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 22, 2013, 11:57:30 pm

So companions will be more fleshed out and needing reasons, but hopefully we can still have fire-forged friends who will follow you to the HFS and back.

Yeah, I'm definitely leaving room in the companion link for this so that an association can outlive the original agreement.  Zach and I were discussing the post-insurrection period yesterday, where you'd essentially have a chat with all your partners and see who's up for Stage 2 of the adventuring life, and at that point personality might come up as much as anything, without the "but my profession is X so I'd rather not" part getting in the way of everything.  So if you recruit 20, 12 survive and you keep 4 after the talk, they might stick around forever since it is deep-rooted in their mindset.  We can work on further bonds of friendship and so on after that.

Awesome! I look forward to dialogue with my new brothers/sisters in arms :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 12:34:23 am

Question:

Are there plans for civilizations to randomly have religious prohibitions against eating or drinking certain things?

Fat Tuesday and the onset of Lent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent) got me thinking of this. But I was wondering, with all the spheres and random deities and religious stuff, if it would be appropriate for certain religious taboos, like a civ might have one or more deities forbid the consumption, sale, and/or production of alcohol, poultry, or fish, or meat, or alcohol, veggies, eggs, etc. Or maybe just a single plant or animal.

Though, obviously, this would have to be in moderation else trade would be hurt and, in extreme cases, civs might start to starve.

I figured, though, that if a civ was in short supply of food they'd just ignore the religious mandate. People would be like, "Yeah... but I'm starving! If there's nothing else to eat, to heck with that!" :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 23, 2013, 12:52:38 am

And it might only be for certain days, and it might come from a myth influenced by historical events or other not so random things. For instance, a civilization worshiping a rat got might consider rat meat too holy to eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 23, 2013, 05:30:29 am

Which of the changes in this upcoming release, if any, will percolate into Legends mode, and in what ways? In other words, how will Legends mode change?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bralbaard on February 23, 2013, 07:06:15 am

Quote from: Toady one

In our ongoing 'moments of restraint' boss rush, I'm currently up against the conversation engine.

I can only assume that Toady lost the battle of restraint against the conversation engine, and that he is now forced to add in lots of new features. This is absolutely fine, as the new changes look very, very cool.

I just fear that he might add in that random poetry generator he threatened us with in the past...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 23, 2013, 07:42:06 am

Oh great toady, I come before you as a humble and happy servant, my question is have you done something regarding soldiers eating and drinking while on duty and not storing their food to root in chests on their barracks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 23, 2013, 08:04:17 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 23, 2013, 12:19:49 am

Tedious squad equipment management: now in Adventure mode too.

In fortress mode it is as tedious as you want it to be, to be honest. Granted, it won't always work, but at least the framework is there and may be used in adventurer mode too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on February 23, 2013, 08:27:37 am

Toady, are you going to use the new agreement code from Adventure Mode to expand at all on trade agreements or diplomatizing in Fort Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 11:57:07 am

Quote from: Bralbaard on February 23, 2013, 07:06:15 am

I just fear that he might add in that random poetry generator he threatened us with in the past...

 :(  You just had to remind him of that, didn't you?  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 23, 2013, 12:03:54 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on February 23, 2013, 08:27:37 am

Toady, are you going to use the new agreement code from Adventure Mode to expand at all on trade agreements or diplomatizing in Fort Mode?

Quote from: Toady One

The agreements will eventually be used to handle actual contracts you make with mercenaries and so on (and I also have them in mind to gobble up all the dwarf mode agreements in time as well)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 23, 2013, 12:10:45 pm

I love the new devlog. How many games even HAVE periodic BAC checks for your underlings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on February 23, 2013, 12:17:41 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 23, 2013, 12:10:45 pm

I love the new devlog. How many games even HAVE periodic BAC checks for your underlings?

Gentlemen, I see the answer now. In order to keep good underlings that won't flee at every instance, we must keep them constantly liquored up. Need to fight that dragon? Grab some swords, grab some alcohol, and shanghai some drunkards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: toboo123 on February 23, 2013, 01:41:25 pm

Will there ever be the ability for same sex relationships, it doesn't seem to like something that would be to hard and the sexual orientation of Dwarf would add even more complexity to it's personality, plus I want an all gay fort so I don't have to deal with children?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 02:37:12 pm

Quote from: toboo123 on February 23, 2013, 01:41:25 pm

Will there ever be the ability for same sex relationships, it doesn't seem to like something that would be to hard and the sexual orientation of Dwarf would add even more complexity to it's personality, plus I want an all gay fort so I don't have to deal with children?

If you have a question or suggestion for Toady, it is courteous to first check out the semi-official Dwarf Fortress Wiki (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page) in case an answer or solution could be found readily.

As it turns out, DF already supports the feature you want. Check out the wiki page on Children (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Children):

Quote

"Resident" female dwarves may also give birth to children. This can be stopped or reduced by editing the BABY_CHILD_CAP setting in the d_init.txt file.

Aside from stopping pregnancies altogether, you could also use this setting to adjust the ratio of adults to children - allowing limited childbirth in proportion to your fort's growth. Details on d_init.txt and how to find and change it are also on the wiki (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:D_init.txt) (and inside the file itself).

On adding gay dwarves to DF:

Obviously, that'd be a touchy and controversial subject. It's a "hot" political and religious topic right now. As such, I would be surprised to see Toady add this or even touch it. For that matter, I'm not aware of many games in which orientation comes up.

Anyway, it has been proven that the old study which suggested about 10% of the population is gay was flawed and inaccurate. Recent statistics suggest it's much closer to 1 or 2%:

* Only one in 100 Britons is gay despite long-held myth... (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314720/Only-1-100-Britons-gay-despite-myth-71-say-Christian.html)
* Statistics on the percentage of the population that are homosexual & lesbian (http://carm.org/percent-population-homosexual)
* Gay, lesbian and bisexual population figures released in the UK (http://digitaljournal.com/article/298002)

If you think about that, 2% is a very small percentage to simulate in a sim game such as DF. In most forts a gay dwarf would have a hard time finding another gay dwarf to start a relationship with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on February 23, 2013, 03:19:36 pm

There is no debate needed on this topic at all. Toady has said that he fully intends to add homosexuality, but like with ALMOST ALL THINGS there is no definite timeline for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on February 23, 2013, 03:23:28 pm

Sure, but some fortresses have 200 dwarves- at which point, there's 2-4 curly-bearded dwarves out there. It wouldn't be a problem in most fortresses, but if the players make a point of it...

However, I think the interesting story-driven stuff is key, and as much as it is interesting to have a diplomatic kerfuffle because of unusual behavior on the part of the king's consort, it's just as interesting for the king's consort to be a secret night creature, and that's already implemented.

I say, if whatever system Toady One comes up with for handling romance in general can easily and seamlessly handle extra-fey-mooded dwarves, then I'm ok with it. If it doesn't, then that's fine too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 23, 2013, 03:25:28 pm

There isn't a page on the wiki for gay dwarves.  From what I read of that question, the "don't want children" part was just an aside, and the main question was about the current heternormative nature of the game.

There are numerous topics in the suggestions forums (that either get locked or deleted entirely because they can be lightning rods for, shall we say, "violently divergent views").

Quote from: Willfor on February 23, 2013, 03:19:36 pm

There is no debate needed on this topic at all. Toady has said that he fully intends to add homosexuality, but like with ALMOST ALL THINGS there is no definite timeline for it.

Can you find a quote that says that?  The only quotes I found said that he wasn't against it but that isn't the same as "fully intends to add".

I.E. From an older FotF (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg1088744#msg1088744)

Quote

These days it might look like a political stake driven into the ground, but that's simply not the case.  As for where it goes from here, it's sort of a choice of which realities you want to model, which you want to idealize, which you want to omit, and how they are all prioritized -- I've added lots of physical characteristics now, without racism, and that more or less points toward adding sexual orientations and having them all merge in naturally in every society.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on February 23, 2013, 03:44:14 pm

That must have been what I was thinking of. At the same time, this is the guy who initially designed Liberal Crime Squad, and was forced to not release an anti-animal cruelty game due to this very player base. Generally speaking, I am quite confident it will make it into the game at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 04:31:39 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 23, 2013, 03:23:28 pm

Sure, but some fortresses have 200 dwarves- at which point, there's 2-4 curly-bearded dwarves out there.

You have a point. However, a) most forts fail before becoming that populous, b) you could easily get a mismatch with such small numbers (1 gay dude and 1 gay gal, 3 gay dudes, etc.), and c) having 2-4 gay people live together does not necessarily mean that they will pair off. People won't necessarily get along and relationships are more complex than that.

Though, of course, one could code it to ignore compatibility - even though DF already simulates couple compatibility to some degree.

Quote from: PTTG?? on February 23, 2013, 03:23:28 pm

However, I think the interesting story-driven stuff is key, and as much as it is interesting to have a diplomatic kerfuffle because of unusual behavior on the part of the king's consort, it's just as interesting for the king's consort to be a secret night creature, and that's already implemented.

Ah, I was thinking in terms of Fort Mode.  :-[  I don't play Adventure Mode or examine the legends often enough for that to occur to me. But I guess you have a point.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 23, 2013, 03:25:28 pm

There are numerous topics in the suggestions forums (that either get locked or deleted entirely because they can be lightning rods for, shall we say, "violently divergent views").

That's what I was afraid would happen with this subject. And I don't want to see this thread locked and started over just yet.

Quote from: Willfor on February 23, 2013, 03:44:14 pm

...this is the guy who initially designed Liberal Crime Squad, and was forced to not release an anti-animal cruelty game due to this very player base. Generally speaking, I am quite confident it will make it into the game at some point.

I had forgotten about that, too. Even as a text game that's not intended to be taken seriously, I couldn't bring myself to play Liberal Crime Squad. It just felt wrong to me.

Again, good point. Yeah, he probably will get to it eventually.

But before then, I'd expect the current fort-mode relationships to get an overhaul or update. Right now dwarves marry for life. They become lovers and that can lead to becoming spouses. But they never get another spouse or even lover if one of them dies. Is that the way dwarves are intended? Or will they eventually get other lovers or spouses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 23, 2013, 07:14:36 pm

Well, Night Trolls already take same sex partners roughly 50% of the time. Even with low percentage of the population being affected, Dwarf Fortress isn't exactly a game where something won't be added just because it's unlikely to be statistically significant in most forts. Societies can have different attitudes towards orientation as well, i.e. Ancient Greece.

In hard survival, peasant life, people historically tended to get married for life, and chose carefully. Amongst the nobles and city dwellers, though, one could probably expect a fair amount of mistresses and cheating and whatnot, because people there can afford to break off relations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 23, 2013, 08:49:12 pm

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 04:31:39 pm

But before then, I'd expect the current fort-mode relationships to get an overhaul or update. Right now dwarves marry for life. They become lovers and that can lead to becoming spouses. But they never get another spouse or even lover if one of them dies. Is that the way dwarves are intended? Or will they eventually get other lovers or spouses?

Just FYI, Glitch(TMG) has a thread on alternative reproduction (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122321.0) that is currently active, which has included a good deal of discussion on alternative marriage arrangements as well as just things like asexual reproducing creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 24, 2013, 04:59:45 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 23, 2013, 07:14:36 pm

Well, Night Trolls already take same sex partners roughly 50% of the time.

Are you sure? I've only seen that in modding, with night creatures that have both relevant tags on the same castes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 07:00:04 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 02:37:12 pm

As such, I would be surprised to see Toady add this or even touch it. For that matter, I'm not aware of many games in which orientation comes up.

Toady's second biggest playable game, Liberal Crime Squad, allows you to seduce characters and completely ignores gender for this process.

As for games where orientation comes up, the medieval marriage sim Crusader Kings 2 models homosexuality as a reduction to fertility rate as well as some secondary effects.  There are a whole host of RPGs that let the player take same-sex love interests, and some of these actually take the orientation of the character in question into account (Mass Effect for example has a few female characters who go both ways but most characters are straight).  Characters in games are slowly becoming more varied sexually just like characters in all other stories, although games are lagging behind on this, probably because devs play it safe and stories in games are often secondary.  Off the top of my head, Assassin's Creed 2 outright tells the player Da Vinci is gay the moment you meet him, and Bayonetta is obviously into the S of S&M.

Its not the norm at all, but sexual orientation does come up in games, including a few that prove gay characters don't ruin commercial success.  Toady seems to be at least open to the idea.  His general attitude towards bringing sex (and sexuality by extension, I would assume) into DF is that he isn't personally opposed to the idea but he's cautious because he knows it can create controversy.  He's said relatively little on the subject and hasn't committed to either including it or not including it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 24, 2013, 08:26:06 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 04:31:39 pm

You have a point. However, a) most forts fail before becoming that populous, b) you could easily get a mismatch with such small numbers (1 gay dude and 1 gay gal, 3 gay dudes, etc.), and c) having 2-4 gay people live together does not necessarily mean that they will pair off. People won't necessarily get along and relationships are more complex than that.

Though, of course, one could code it to ignore compatibility - even though DF already simulates couple compatibility to some degree.

And anyway, why does it matter? So the gay people end up more likely to stay single, not because it's hard-coded that way, but as an emergent thing due to the numbers involved. I think that's fine. In fact, it could make for interesting stories/character development (when that sort of thing is more developed in the game) to have gay people have trouble finding mates. It's not necessarily unrealistic either, especially for, say, small villages, assuming that 1 to 2% number is correct (I personally think it's somewhere between that and the 10% given before, but that's neither here nor there).

But anyway, it's true that there's plenty of threads on the subject, and further discussions on the subject might be better off in there.

It does make me wonder, though... has any indication been given on when romance and such will be implemented in more detail, or how high of a priority Toady considers it to be? Also, what were those few (four, I believe) possible paths of development after the current release again that Toady mentioned recently? I think it was in the devlog, but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone remember?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 24, 2013, 08:32:58 am

Although I'm not against the idea, I would prefer Toady focusing its time in more interesting features than homosexual characters and relationships, given how underdeveloped are the sex and relationships aspects of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 24, 2013, 09:17:11 am

That's all nice and good, but could we stop the derailment now?
If you want to continue the discussion, feel free to necro read one of these threads:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66677.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82822.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106704.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119260.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121317.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on February 24, 2013, 10:18:02 am

So excited with the recent conversation devlogs, I've always longed for more autonomy in my dwarfs (both in Fortress and Adventure modes). Having my hired companion say enough is enough and walk out on me with the set of chainmail I provided him before I showed him the dragon's lair is absolutely a-okay with me. :D Very excited!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 24, 2013, 02:58:39 pm

So how will the BAC check for companion loyalty work? Will they just up and say "goodbye" and whatever time, or will they wait until they wake up from camp, say "we need to talk" and tell you like that? Also, with the way courage was being worked on this release, would that check be done whenever you come up against a partiucular nasty foe, or when you get out numbered?

I could totally see a horde of companions following you, and once you turn the corner and the minotaur shows his face, half your party just says "forget this!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 24, 2013, 04:26:47 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 24, 2013, 02:58:39 pm

So how will the BAC check for companion loyalty work? Will they just up and say "goodbye" and whatever time, or will they wait until they wake up from camp, say "we need to talk" and tell you like that?

*waking up*

"Wait, where am I? Who are you? What am I wearing? AND OH ARMOK, WHOSE BLOOD IS THIS?! IS THIS AN EAR STUCK IN MY TEETH?!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 24, 2013, 07:02:48 pm

With different factions starting thier own wars and such, and individual dwarves being tied to their fations apart from other dwarves, will we ever see something such as a civil war happen in a fort? Such as friendly migrants coming in, and then when a war breaks out, will they have to choose between their former loyalties or their new ones?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 08:55:09 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 24, 2013, 08:26:06 am

It does make me wonder, though... has any indication been given on when romance and such will be implemented in more detail, or how high of a priority Toady considers it to be?

From the old dev document, which was replaced by the current more short-term and easier to maintain documentation, there are several mentions of romance and its related issues.  There's a love and romance core goal (which means we won't be in DF 1.0 until we have love and romance), as well a relationship arc that includes getting married and having kids as an adventurer.  There's also a powergoal that implies a detailed simulation of sexual attraction: 

Quote

PowerGoal68, MAGICAL IDIOT PEEPER, (Future): Hearing of her exotic beauty, the young knave uses a ring to open a portal in the wall of the princess's bedroom, wrenching a small cylinder of stone out of the wall via its magical powers. However, the stories had all been told by Southmen, and she was in fact quite unattractive by the different standards of his culture.

According to that document, love and romance will begin being implemented in greater detail one short arc after the army arc.  However be aware DF's development can be unpredictable outside of the short-term.  If you're interested, you can check out the document here:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html
Its quite the read.  It's outdated but still represents the general character of where Toady wants to take DF.

Quote from: Trif on February 24, 2013, 09:17:11 am

That's all nice and good, but could we stop the derailment now?

There's less than a page of combined posts for this "derailment", even if you include "stop talking about this" posts.  Hardly cause for complaint, given how massive this thread is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 24, 2013, 09:15:29 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 24, 2013, 04:26:47 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on February 24, 2013, 02:58:39 pm

So how will the BAC check for companion loyalty work? Will they just up and say "goodbye" and whatever time, or will they wait until they wake up from camp, say "we need to talk" and tell you like that?

*waking up*

"Wait, where am I? Who are you? What am I wearing? AND OH ARMOK, WHOSE BLOOD IS THIS?! IS THIS AN EAR STUCK IN MY TEETH?!"

"How long have I been wielding these yak wool trousers as a weapon? Whose ARE these!?!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 25, 2013, 02:12:18 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 08:55:09 pm

According to that document, love and romance will begin being implemented in greater detail one short arc after the army arc.

Oh! I was familiar with the document, but I did not realize that the ordering of the arcs on that page also represented the ordering of their implementation, at least as planned by Toady at that time. Is that really the case?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 03:25:29 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 25, 2013, 02:12:18 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 08:55:09 pm

According to that document, love and romance will begin being implemented in greater detail one short arc after the army arc.

Oh! I was familiar with the document, but I did not realize that the ordering of the arcs on that page also represented the ordering of their implementation, at least as planned by Toady at that time. Is that really the case?

No. It wasn't when it was a valid design document, and now that it was replaced by another document, it is even less so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 25, 2013, 03:27:04 am

Might even get to relationships before armies, so that we can have Helen of Troy scenarios right off the bat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 25, 2013, 04:07:37 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 25, 2013, 03:27:04 am

Might even get to relationships before armies, so that we can have Helen of Troy scenarios right off the bat.

I know people are really excited for the army arc, but I would definitely be cool with that :)

Quote from: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 03:25:29 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 25, 2013, 02:12:18 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 08:55:09 pm

According to that document, love and romance will begin being implemented in greater detail one short arc after the army arc.

Oh! I was familiar with the document, but I did not realize that the ordering of the arcs on that page also represented the ordering of their implementation, at least as planned by Toady at that time. Is that really the case?

No. It wasn't when it was a valid design document, and now that it was replaced by another document, it is even less so.

Good to know, thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xoseph on February 25, 2013, 10:22:45 am

Agreements:

Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you, with the new agreement system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 25, 2013, 10:27:37 am

I guess one could always hire "bodyguards" or become good friend of a huge guy that lacks pro-activity but is good at fighting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 10:52:56 am

Quote from: xoseph on February 25, 2013, 10:22:45 am

Agreements:

Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you die in your place while you kill everything else, with the new agreement system?

Fixed :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 25, 2013, 10:53:36 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 10:52:56 am

Quote from: xoseph on February 25, 2013, 10:22:45 am

Agreements:

Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you die in your place while you kill everything else, with the new agreement system?

Fixed :)

Greenbean'd!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 25, 2013, 01:44:02 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 03:25:29 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 25, 2013, 02:12:18 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2013, 08:55:09 pm

According to that document, love and romance will begin being implemented in greater detail one short arc after the army arc.

Oh! I was familiar with the document, but I did not realize that the ordering of the arcs on that page also represented the ordering of their implementation, at least as planned by Toady at that time. Is that really the case?

No. It wasn't when it was a valid design document, and now that it was replaced by another document, it is even less so.

Whoops.  I saw the caravan and army arc next to each other and assumed all the arcs were all in order.  Reading the list again its obviously not the case.

On agreements, will our adventurers' fame and social skills still determine how well they can get people to follow them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 25, 2013, 02:20:06 pm

I think it will have something to do. Don't know if actual numbers would depend upon it but my guts tell me that eventually those skills will at least make easier to convince them without resorting to money or other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 25, 2013, 10:00:08 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 25, 2013, 10:53:36 am

Quote from: thvaz on February 25, 2013, 10:52:56 am

Quote from: xoseph on February 25, 2013, 10:22:45 am

Agreements:

Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you die in your place while you kill everything else, with the new agreement system?

Fixed :)

Greenbean'd!

C'mon, guys, I know we had a whole homosexuality/relationship derail in there but it's still only two days ago!

Quote from: Toady One on February 23, 2013, 12:21:56 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 22, 2013, 11:57:30 pm

So companions will be more fleshed out and needing reasons, but hopefully we can still have fire-forged friends who will follow you to the HFS and back.

Yeah, I'm definitely leaving room in the companion link for this so that an association can outlive the original agreement.  Zach and I were discussing the post-insurrection period yesterday, where you'd essentially have a chat with all your partners and see who's up for Stage 2 of the adventuring life, and at that point personality might come up as much as anything, without the "but my profession is X so I'd rather not" part getting in the way of everything.  So if you recruit 20, 12 survive and you keep 4 after the talk, they might stick around forever since it is deep-rooted in their mindset.  We can work on further bonds of friendship and so on after that.

Though I'm pretty sure they aren't so much "wandering adventurers" as they are "bored soldiers looking for a quick, glorious death."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 26, 2013, 01:04:20 am

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Will we be able to confuse people in conversation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 26, 2013, 01:32:18 am

Wait!  Everyone, stop fighting!  I have something important to tell you!

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 26, 2013, 01:04:20 am

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

*confused looks from everyone*

*stab*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 26, 2013, 10:00:30 am

remember that fine documentary, entitled "ethel the frog"...

"This was largely due to his merciless use of sarcasm, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 27, 2013, 02:16:09 am

Newest update sounds interesting and... I don't know, sophisticated. Not the part of the update I'm most excited about, but still nice to hear about the way it's going to work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2013, 03:23:57 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 27, 2013, 02:16:09 am

Newest update sounds interesting and... I don't know, sophisticated. Not the part of the update I'm most excited about, but still nice to hear about the way it's going to work.

Being able to have meaningful military achievements isn't exciting to you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 27, 2013, 05:48:17 am

Quote from: Cruxador on February 27, 2013, 03:23:57 am

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 27, 2013, 02:16:09 am

Newest update sounds interesting and... I don't know, sophisticated. Not the part of the update I'm most excited about, but still nice to hear about the way it's going to work.

Being able to have meaningful military achievements isn't exciting to you?

It is, just not as exciting as some of the other stuff (e.g. multitile trees). I'm weird I know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on February 27, 2013, 05:54:56 am

I agree with you. The minecart update was something I could not wait for. From what I understand in the future adventure mode will get all the improvments while fort mode will have to wait for them to "trickle" down?
I dont play much adventure mode because I find it a bit shallow, but this is going to change (less time to dedicate to fort mode and all those new shiny things in adv mode)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 27, 2013, 07:56:55 am

Will the results of the decisions the entity make related to the death of an overlord lead to an variable outcome?

For example, the death of the overlord could trigger a new overlord chosen from inside the invading force if there is another historical member with a claim near it, or the abandonment of the conquered village if there isn't.

This way, we couldn't be sure if killing the overlord would always result in the liberation of the site, though it would be likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 27, 2013, 08:12:35 am

From what I understood, in this release killing the leader makes the occupation force leave, however he's already put in place a mechanism where later, killing the leader makes the occupation force either leave or something else (like simply choosing a new leader), depending on other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 27, 2013, 12:57:21 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on February 27, 2013, 08:12:35 am

From what I understood, in this release killing the leader makes the occupation force leave, however he's already put in place a mechanism where later, killing the leader makes the occupation force either leave or something else (like simply choosing a new leader), depending on other things.

Quote

For the goblin military occupation, this might be a condition that gets them to leave town, especially for this release where I need to force it a bit.

I think it was a bit unclear, hence the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on February 27, 2013, 03:55:20 pm

I had thought of priest/cultist/paladin for an alternative adventurer type in another thread, which leads me to wonder: What sorts of goals are religious figures going to have for adventurers? Will their religious spheres influence their desires? Will demon pretenders have goals beyond those of a cruel but otherwise normal ruler? Can an adventurer spread his religion?

I think fighting night creatures might work as a default religious desire, at least for non-evil priests. Recovering or destroying artifacts might be fitting. Causing trouble for rival gods seems simple enough. Overthrowing demon pretenders would work for factions that weren't fooled by the act.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 27, 2013, 04:59:43 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on February 27, 2013, 03:55:20 pm

Recovering or destroying artifacts might be fitting.

That sounds like a cool idea. That way, artifacts could become more meaningful even before they get actual powers/special properties. And then when those eventually make it in, the things people want with them would be expanded on, obviously, but there could already be simple desire/destroy goals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xoseph on February 27, 2013, 07:32:44 pm

When bragging about our kills, will we be able to lie?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 27, 2013, 07:51:25 pm

Quote from: xoseph on February 27, 2013, 07:32:44 pm

When bragging about our kills, will we be able to lie?

You mean like seeing someone else bleed to death after slaying a dragon and claiming the (two) kills, or lugging around a hydra's tooth saying you killed it when it's just a baby tooth?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 27, 2013, 07:56:52 pm

A vampire baby's tooth? Because I think hydras are pretty damn pointy in the tooth department >_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 27, 2013, 10:50:29 pm

Sooo... the goblins will react to having a dead leader... but the news might not travel instantly. Neat.

I'm probably going to take the body to the center of a patrol area and toss it there for the goblins to find faster.

Then I'd probably go and try again, but hide the body never to be found. Just to see how the response time differs.

With the new stealth system, doing this is going to be quite fun I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 28, 2013, 04:48:34 am

Quote from: Devlog

Toady One The Museum of Modern Art people wanted me to pass along that the video game exhibit is opening this Saturday, and that their senior curator is going on The Colbert Report tonight to talk about video games and the exhibition.

Disappointment; Paola Antonelli didn't so much as mention video games. Engaging speaker, but that's about it. Interview here (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/424243/february-27-2013/paola-antonelli). You should probably watch the rest of the episode as well, if only for the hilarious Halls sponsorship bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:53:33 am

Yeah, the "Paola Antonelli discusses a new video game installation at the MOMA" from their web page didn't really happen.  Oh well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Thanks to Valtam, Willfor, Trif, MrWiggles, Eric Blank, monk12, Putnam, Caldfir, Cruxador, NW_Kohaku, BradUffner, hermes, Knight Otu, King Mir, Aseaheru, My Name is Immaterial, PTTG??, Parisbre56, Whatsifsowhatsit and anybody I missed for answering or helping to answer questions this time around.  If your question doesn't appear below, it may very well have been answered shortly after you asked it, so it might be worth it to zip over to your post history and check out the thread from that point.

Quote from: HugoLuman

I once generated, by chance, an all-kobold world, and they had no one to steal from but night trolls and megabeasts. What happens if an entity appears somewhere cut off from other peoples vital for their role? Like, for instance, an isolated continent inhabited by a single goblin nation? Do they change their behavior somewhat or search for nonexistent trade partners / victims?

There's nothing interesting at this point.  They'll have their trade goods etc. based on the local environment, and they'll trade with local trade partners, but they don't make any deeper adaptive decisions or anything.

Quote from: o_O[WTFace]

I guess this is a somewhat abstract question, but with the personality/AI work it is somewhat relevant:
Right now the fundamental way players interact with their dorfs is by assigning jobs and ordering stuff built, just like in older versions.  Will this ever change, for example dorfs choose professions, or some kind of economy system doles out job assignments?

There are people that want to handle job decisions to people that want the game to play more like Majesty or even more hands-off than that (e.g., just a watch-only simulation).  I don't have any particular plans to change how things work right now, but I'm not really wedded to it either.  In an ideal world, I guess, as the "official will of the fortress", your level of control would depend on the sort of government/society you are running, but it's wishful thinking to say that I'd be able to work with that any time soon or to make the game more things for more people.

Quote from: RenoFox

The human keeps are so large there's no way for archers to shoot down from their towers. Will they be scaled down, or will the archer code be changed to shoot further downwards?

Whenever I get around to fixing bugs like this, hopefully I'd change any problems with the shooting rather than altering the map to workaround them.

Quote from: arkhometha

1. You mentioned succession stuff in the last FotF, and said heir take up the place of the king instantly. What if the heir is a one year old, do he still get the position? Did you implement/plan to implement a regency mechanic, with an ambitious regent getting claims to the throne, or holding the power until the regent reach a certain age, 12 years old for example.

I haven't implemented regency, though, yeah, it does make you think about these things while working with the code.  I'm not sure when I'll get around to that sort of thing, since there are some annoyances setting it up.  As it stands, three year olds will make decisions and so on.  It's a work in progress.

Quote from: arkhometha

2. Will Dwarf and Elvens sites have items they usually do, like small breastplates in dwarf sites? Will there be steel items now?

I haven't addressed any weird material deficits at this point.  They'll have the items they create in world gen, and those are all dwarf-sized for dwarves.

Quote

Quote from: arkhometha

3. Do you plan to do something for the next release about the time the undead raise? Some people think it's not so much, but it's basically impossible to reach a necromancer without turning undead or sneaking through. In that subject, do you plan to add melting points so the undead can be destroyed by lava? Do you plan to nerf down player characters that turn vampire/necromancer, because those are unstoppable killing machines right now.

Quote from: LordBaal

Is there some planing on a better undead system? I mean, it gets tiring to fight animated hair, hides and such, so what I'm really asking is that if you are thinking into a more "classical" representation of undead, where the pieces that fall don't stay alive and ultimately only smashing the head or decapitation would stop the zombies. And if not, do you see a system like that possible to mod?

I haven't changed it for the next release yet, though if I remember a goal is to at least get through "pulping" before the next release comes up to avoid permanent reraises.  I don't have a problem with extended the interaction effects to allow more targeting information concerning tissues or whatever it would be, but beyond pulping I don't have a timeline for any of that.

Quote from: arkhometha

4. Don't remember if you answered this already, but do you plan to do something in this release about the dwarf/human issue with nature and critters? I mean, it's love it or kill it. Every animal runs from a dwarf or tries to kill it. Will we have more "shy" animals who usually run form you and some others that don't mind you passing as long as you don't go on a killing spree or start shouting.

I haven't addressed specific different behaviors, but ever since the rewrite with the bandits and non-lethal combat, animals have been different.  There's a bit of a combat deficit now that needs to be addressed, and I'm not sure exactly where it'll land by the time of the release.  The AI requires reasons for everything now, and I haven't hit all of the old conflict points (and some of them, like geese attacking you for the glory of the town, hopefully won't be re-added).

Quote from: tahujdt

Will we have creatures nesting in trees?

There's nothing like that right now.  Just another one of those things that it would be nice to have at some point.

Quote from: Zavvnao

Will there be holidays and festivities in future releases? Like will their be traditions and such like dancing or feasintg, etc? and will they change over time or revert to the more traditional forms at points due to conflicting cultures? and will your adventurer be able to partake in these events?

We've all of that in the dev pages in some form or another, but there's no timeline, as usual.  Taverns and inns aren't so far off in the grand scheme of things, and something will happen somewhere there with regard to music or games or at least one thing that isn't purely functional.

Quote

Quote from: Aseaheru

For a limited legends screen, will it be something you need to talk to caravans for,with each caravan providing different info, thereby also promoting trade or will there be something else? i think it might be cool to see my dwarves talking to caravan guards and learning that say, a king has a new lover or something. you know, gossip.

Quote from: tahujdt

With history progressing even during Fortress Mode, would we see a diplomat coming to tell us that all of the immediate royal family were killed during the "Siege of Pointy Sticks", and the only living heir is a potash maker in the fort? That would be interesting.

Quote from: Escapism

Will there be any kind of conduit of information from the rest of the world to your fort regarding succession and army activities? Asking caravans or diplomats for news etc.

If so, will that information be useful? Being able to predict imminent goblin attacks because a nearby village was recently razed, for instance.

Quote from: darklord92

If so will it be through the liason? replacing one of the "you've carved a fine place for yourself" dialogues with some news of what is going on in the world?

I've always liked the idea of learning actually information from the visitors to your fortress, but I've never been able to move on it because nothing happened in the world post world-gen.  Now that some things actually happen in the world, we can move toward this, but it might not happen for this time.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, if you could clarify: since retired adventurers become members of the civilization they retire in and are historical figures, does that mean they have a chance to be paired off to a marriage partner, move to their partner's town (or their partner to theirs) and raise children, just like any other historical figure?

Yeah, that's how the situation stands at this point.  I don't recollect placing any specific barriers for them.  It's the kind of thing that people might want to have some control over, but there's currently no mechanic in place to give you any control over their behavior.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre

How quickly do entities move across the world map, and does the speed vary for groups of different sizes or take difficult terrain into account?

I'm not going to address terrain difficulties until you or your dwarves actually experience problems like that traveling zoomed in -- like having thick underbrush or mud lead to slow travel.  The only real problem now are rivers and buildings, in terms of your own travel, and traveling armies are subject to some restrictions there (for convenience, I haven't messed with rivers away from towns yet vs. army pathing).  Group size travel speeds is one of the in-limbo items in the notes for this release.  I don't imagine it would take more than a few minutes to add in some simple form, but it hasn't yet been added.

Quote from: Objective

Do you plan to add the philosopher back later with more usefulness? Or are they scrapped?

The philosopher as a single dwarf called "the philosopher" is likely out.  Adding dwarves with a philosophical bent that get into arguments and get followers and sway segments of the population toward one way of thinking or another are something we'd like to do.

Quote from: Neonivek

Current what needs to be added or thought through before we can start seeing Regeneration (or rather the ability to regrow bodyparts or heal major damage)?

There are choices to be made regarding ordering of the tissues as they return and how to store a half-restored tissue, but I don't think any of that'll end up being a big deal.  If you want to have the "little hand" thing, where a little hand grows out of an arm stub and then grows back to full size, that'd also need to be a decision of some kind, but I might have the variables for that sitting around, sort of.  That case would be a little more annoying.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

With new mobility-related stuff, does that mean we can see grappling hooks happening?

Also, slightly unrelated, but are there plans for aimed ranged attacks (firing and throwing), so that we aren't just hoping that we hit something worth hitting?

Back when I started climbing for this release, I think grappling hooks was sort of a wish-list feature that was going in depending on whether or not I felt like I had the time, and I haven't really gotten to anything with ropes at this point at all.

I'm all for being able to aim at what you want to aim at, and it's the kind of thing I imagine will happen fairly early on next time I mess with ranged combat, but I don't know when that'll be.

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Quote from: NW_Kohaku

How will "turns" take place when players can use abilities that take dozens of normal turns?  Will we be able to cancel out of actions or give orders to followers during long wind-ups?

Conversely, what about "held" actions, like a snake coiled and waiting to strike, a crocodile waiting at the water's edge for an ambush, or a thief waiting to pounce on a passerby from hiding, with some sort of wind-up already taken place, and an action primed to go? Will there be a way for "turns" to take place at a pace that makes sense for a player to watch the action and understand what's going on? (Or will held/readied actions not exist at all?)

For that matter, if there's a difference between movement and other action speeds, when you skip a turn, which speed does the game use to determine when your turn comes up next?

If we can sit there waiting on a frame-by-frame basis, and we have "reactions" that let us interrupt the actions of another unit, can we just sit there skipping frame-by-frame to interrupt all the actions of an enemy?

What are your current plans regarding how combat penalties for pulling stunts to behave?  As in, what sort of "flow" to combat do you want it to have?  Do you want combat to basically be stand-up attack trading like now, but with just putting in penalties for doing crazy things, or can trying to be Jet Li wind up with you flat on your face?

Do you want to make combat less a matter of hacking at opportune times, or more of trying to knock the opponent down to get that opportunity to strike "the decisive blow"?

Quote from: HugoLuman

And if we have a lot of experience in the appropriate skills, can we Jet Li and make other people flat on their faces?

Quote from: mastahcheese

With being able to perform multiple attacks at once such as dual-wielding, will any special affects happen from kicking with both feet at once? Will we fall to the ground if we attempt this, or are we assumed to be ninjas?

Quote from: HugoLuman

Might things currently try to perform as many attacks as once, regardless of penalties? Can we set things to do that?

Quote from: Lolfail0009

But seriously, will creatures be able to queue a combination of attacks and abilities? Or even attacks and jobs... It would be amusing to see one of my Deathcaster Sapiocoatl fire off a venom web at an attacker, then promptly harvest it for +frozen sapiocoatl venom thread+.

The only example I remember from upthread about an ability taking "dozens" of turns was the post-fire period of a ranged weapon, which probably shouldn't exist as such.  That needs to be replaced by loading.  But in general, I haven't set it up yet so that you can baby-sit your actions as they progress, and I don't know if you'll be able to do that.  As a default, especially for movement, it should be that you do one action to completion when you start one action, and the next easiest thing is to queue a few actions and then let you commit to them, in which case you might get control back when either one or all of them are finished.  Which way is best is probably action-dependent.  The period-key wait is still used to pass a good chunk of time, so it just sends you forward 10 clicks.  Reaction moments are an automatic event, independent of the wait structure, but they are analogous to things you'd be able to do if you had a 1-click wait, pretty much, once more options are in place.  There could be some sort of issue about waiting for reactions if you had a 1-click wait, but since you wouldn't have an action, and the enemy would be mid-action, you are the one at a disadvantage, and you are dependent on the game to give you a chance to interrupt the in-progross enemy action, and that can be made character skill-based, which is a fine thing.  It just might be abusable until it is set up correctly, taking 1-click waiting into consideration.

I agree that it's better to have a fight with some structure to it, where it feels like there has been a flow of what has happened, rather than a single opportunity that came up, but I think there was a characterization of that path as a "puzzle game" which I don't think is the direction I want to go, at least if that means there's an abstracted system (like the match-3 game in puzzle quest for an extreme example) that doesn't have much to do with fighting.  I wouldn't want to play adventure mode if it were like that.  This is related to the issue of player vs. character skill, though they are different problems.  Anyway, it's not as if the fighting has been strictly attack trading up until this point -- you could wind up on the ground if you screwed up a charge etc., and I prefer to have that sort of motion going on.  Adding more options will only make the fights more dynamic, and that was the whole purpose of reaction moments, but that's a really local mechanic time-wise.  We lack some overall structure and some mechanics to force a bit of patience.  Fatigue is probably the closest thing we've got for that, and through the years various things like being off-balance and so on have come up, but it needs to be placed in a framework that doesn't just make it like an opportunity strike.  This is somewhat difficult, since there's a huge psychological aspect to fighting that isn't in the game at all (for example, learning your opponent's habits).  If that's the "puzzle" that's supposed to be solved, it has to be done in a way that doesn't make the game completely annoying.  If it happens in such a way that your options improve or degrade based on who's the better fighter, over time, as your character feels people out, it might be better, but that isn't much different from waiting for a ! to show up, it just takes a little longer, but that could be all the difference that is necessary to have a "cool fight" worthy of a legend.  We'll have to see.

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

Quote from: Thundercraft

Will dwarf mode start scenarios include the ability to embark from your old fort, bringing a selection of animals and dwarves and retiring the old fort instead of being forced to abandoning it to start a new one? Or will that come later?

I'm not sure what the first push on dwarf mode start scenarios will entail.  Any start scenario that involves historical figures would involve your old inhabited forts in the list of candidates by default, so your forts will be involved to the extent that any world gen fort is involved.  Now that fortress retirement is in, your forts really are like other sites in pretty much every way (they just have some inconveniences related to the fact they they aren't generated but instead live on the disk, but that shouldn't impact historical figures at all).

Quote from: Thundercraft

Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.

In the current version, there's something like a two week skip for a new adventurer and a skip to the next spring for a fortress.  The ramifications for such a thing vs. the new active-world mechanics have not been addressed, and I'm not sure what'll end up replacing the time-skip if anything.

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Quote from: EmeraldWind

What level of interaction do you see the gods having on the world when they are done? Will it ever reach levels of interaction compared to the Greek gods or the Jewish God where their interactions can bring about huge historical changes in a world?

Quote from: O11O1

Will the fleshing out of divine interaction provide us with an option set at world-gen, much the way 'Mineral Frequency' or 'Megabeast Frequency' is handled currently? This would allow us to set up worlds with different flavors in regards to the god question.

Yeah, I think there are some power goals with divine intervention and so on (no doubt they were goofy), and I'm for having worlds that have set-ups like this, with all kinds of different levels of involvement and multiple simultaneous physical forms and whatever strangeness.  I've seen setting up the creation stories as one of those places where we might start seeing Armok 1's planned world gen parameters for high-magic/low-magic settings and so on, but it's far enough out in the future that I have no idea how it'll play out.  As with the curse etc. parameters, I fully expect any god/magic stuff to be removable or amplifiable in the parameters, and that's how I want to set it up.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Speaking of world gen parameters, will we ever be able to set them to be completely randomized, as opposed to specific numbers or even weighted numbers? Random mineral scarcity, werebeast types, max cavern passage density, etc?

It would still need to be governed in some way, I think, to avoid having a reject-heavy random parameter set.  There's room for randomization, especially with the kinds of reject-independent parameters you mentioned, but it can't be everywhere.

Quote from: Glanzor

Does the new succession system include the succession of bandit leader positions as well?

Yeah, it all works the same way, though it might be a little weird with groups that only have a few people.

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Quote from: Just Some Guy

Will religious organizations carry out goals like other entities?

Quote from: Bronze Dog

What sorts of goals are religious figures going to have for adventurers? Will their religious spheres influence their desires? Will demon pretenders have goals beyond those of a cruel but otherwise normal ruler? Can an adventurer spread his religion?

They are still utterly uninteresting at this point, and I'm not sure how they will be realized.  We've posted lots of goals in the past, but it is all pretty much off in the future rather than on the plate for a near-term release.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

With the recent news in mind: are there going to be situations in which an otherwise hereditary or upon-death post is succeeded to, but the previous owner doesn't die and wasn't conquered- ie they were pressured into resigning or were kicked out by a bigwig?

I haven't done that within a single entity at this point.  It's certainly a reasonable enough thing to have happen, and it's important for lots of different stories, but for now I've just got one entity causing another to become less powerful.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Will we be seeing monster hunters in the next release?

They have always been there, but they don't hunt monsters post-world-gen any more than they did before.  You are still their best hope of getting another chance at their profession.  Setting single civilized creatures like monster hunters loose will be a fun future moment, but it isn't for this release.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady will ruins be associated with the civilisation or will it be more neutral so that, for example, a completely different entity could do something with it?

Such as other civilisations, creatures, or non-civilised sapient beings

They know which civ made the buildings there, and depending on how the site was lost, there can be an entity site claim on the site, but there's nothing that excludes other entities except for their natural proclivities.  I haven't done post-world-gen reclaims yet, but right now there are those old tags that might stop humans from saying "hey, let's go live in that old dwarf fort!".  At the same time, there can be cross-site conquests in world gen, but that doesn't involve displacing entire populations.  I'd certainly like megabeasts and bandits and so on to take shelter wherever, and have humans from a different civ reclaim another human ruin say, but having races reclaim different races' sites shouldn't be common.  Having dwarves decide to live in the forest for no reason would be bad, unless they have absolutely no other options...  and even then...  death first!  Maybe.

Quote from: Aseaheru

Can we jump down onto baddies, knocking them down and stabbing them at the same time or similar things?

I don't remember how falling down on people works currently, but I don't think that part has changed.  There's the new jump command, but it really just turns you into a projectile that knows how to land correctly.  I haven't gotten back to the part where moves and attacks are combined now that the split has happened.  I'm not sure what'll be done exactly when that rolls back around.

Quote from: Mopsy

Somehow, I have gotten the impression that the goblins will only be occupying human sites in the upcoming version. Is this correct, or can the sites of every major race get occupied by goblins? Does this include the sites of other goblin civs? If a player-made fortress succumbs to dwarf mode invasion or gets occupied post-retirement, will we be able to send an adventurer there to start a rebellion? Will it be possible to re-activate (without a reclaim party) a fortress that was liberated in adventure mode?

I've been testing human sites since I haven't finished all of the stuff I want to do with the other sites, but I don't think there will be any restrictions.  In this pre-army fighting release, it is a little weird to just hand them dwarf fortresses, since that would include your retired forts, which is strange, since player fortresses are reasonably easy to defend when prepared by an experienced player.  If your fort can be captured, then you should be able to unretire it if you liberate it, yeah.  I haven't handled dwarf-mode invasions as occupations though -- they still kill everybody, and you don't have a way to succumb to an occupation.

Quote from: Bronze Dog

Can you tell us what dialogue is going to be like in the updated adventure mode? Are there going to be dialogue options like "Ask about..." "Offer..."? Or maybe generated dialogue trees (Name/Job/Bye)?

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

There are options for bringing up rumors/incidents and so on, and these go to separate option lists.  Many of the old options are still there and work like before, but I've still got a few of those to cannabilize.  I'm not going for a full rewrite though.  Doing things like asking where a store is are not part of this, but you might be able to ask where a town is that has been invaded.  I still haven't dealt with some of the main issues with the current conversation engine and that's not in the cards for this time.

I'm not sure how the reputation will be handled.  I've removed the "hero" hf-entity link and merged it with the vampire etc. information from world gen, so there's this overall entity reputation that has lots of different variables.  It hasn't gotten to the point where that matters yet though, and I'm not sure how it'll play out.  At least it's already in a place where you certainly won't be getting "heroic" fame as a trader, once you can get fame as a trader, so it should be neat once more roles go in.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Does insurrection only work for goblins, or can we also stir up a rebellion against vampire leaders / false gods who lay oppressive edicts?

Here's a paraphrase of a reply I sent to somebody who asked something similar elsewhere: "It depends partially on town guards or how those soldiers in the castles are stored.  I haven't changed it yet, and what it would need is the oppressive laws historical event to split the entity populations up so that there can be some guards that identify more with the kingdom than their own cultural identity.  This isn't really a hard change, so I've got a note about addressing it, but there's a chance it won't work out, or that it won't fit to use occupying army mechanics for regular town guards.  A vampire ruler having people dragged off as blood chattel isn't all that different from being ruled by the goblins, so I'm hopeful for the moment, anyway.  A key difference is that your example uses rulership of the existing entity rather than the old entity being displaced by a new entity, so it's not the same exact mechanism to get a new group in power."

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, will NPCs always interrupt a conversation when faced with danger, since it takes up a turn of their time, or will we explicitly be able to have a civilized chat with our companions whilst hacking bandits to bits?

Right now it doesn't account for such free-spirited banter, so you'll just be ignored by them.  It doesn't necessarily waste a turn though, since we can do lots of simultaneous actions now, so it won't be bad if they can do it at some point.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will we ever be able to taunt/demoralize opponents in such a way that it might cause some form of penalty for them to perform actions?

It would be funny.  Nothing like that for this time.

Quote from: Maxmurder

Will we be seeing a change to how companions are recruited with the new conversation system? Specifically will it become more context based?

Yeah -- this question was posted a few hours before the dev logs on insurrections and getting people to go along with you for a period of time and agreements and all that, so we'll go with those dev logs for the answer.

Quote from: Edmus

In the event of an ambush could we call our soldiers to us as to not be so scattered? and in such a scenario how likely are they to route?

I haven't done anything tactical yet.  The main issue as things stand now is probably stealth vs. your companions being idiots, since it sort of invalidates the whole new stealth system.

Quote from: Cruxador

At some point, will we be able to have a big bag (or mule, or other storage system) and just tell our buddies to take what they want/need?

I'm not sure how equipment for companions will work out.  I don't think it'd be good to have to micro-manage all of your companions' stuff, since it makes them like play toys and I don't think they'd appreciate it, but I haven't set anything up yet.  If we ever do that "create and play a party" feature, you'd probably have an option to micromanage things.  All that said, if the first equipment related command is to hand somebody a single item, I wouldn't be surprised, and that's slow-motion micromanagement, if the items are accepted.

Quote from: Thundercraft

Are there plans for civilizations to randomly have religious prohibitions against eating or drinking certain things?

I don't have any particular plans, but I think there were some bloats or power goals from the old pages tangentially related to that stuff.  We're all for that kind of modeling, but I'm not sure when we'll get to look at stuff like that.

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit

Which of the changes in this upcoming release, if any, will percolate into Legends mode, and in what ways? In other words, how will Legends mode change?

There are a number of new historical events that get logged during play, there are some new goings-on in world gen, and it has a new relationship for traveling companions that is listed, but I haven't changed the overall mode in any significant way that I recall.

Quote from: LordBaal

have you done something regarding soldiers eating and drinking while on duty and not storing their food to root in chests on their barracks?

I haven't done anything with that.  In general, stuff that looks more like bugs just hasn't been addressed.  There will be lots of bug-fixing, old and new, after the release, as before.

Quote from: mastahcheese

So how will the BAC check for companion loyalty work?

That was just a joke about the ridiculousness of the current situation.  I haven't done anything with drunkenness yet.  They are still permanent drunks and cannot awaken from their nightmare stupor.  It should be way more interesting when alcohol actually does something.

Quote from: mastahcheese

With different factions starting thier own wars and such, and individual dwarves being tied to their fations apart from other dwarves, will we ever see something such as a civil war happen in a fort? Such as friendly migrants coming in, and then when a war breaks out, will they have to choose between their former loyalties or their new ones?

Ideally things like that'll come up, but not for this release, unless something goes horribly wrong like before.

Quote from: xoseph

Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you, with the new agreement system?

Yeah, those people all hang out at the fake taverns now, and the same conditions apply for them.  I'm not sure that'll always be the case, but it's still the case now.

Quote from: EnigmaticHat

On agreements, will our adventurers' fame and social skills still determine how well they can get people to follow them?

It works the old way for the regular tavern dwelling people during normal times, but insurrection agreements are currently independent of a lot of social factors.  It would make sense later on to force some more work to go into gathering people, but this is a more basic release than that, and the conversation engine is not the focus of the rewrites I'm doing, even though I had to put some work into it.  In particular, it's still quite unclear how conversation skills are going to be used in adventure mode, either by you or against you or in any way at all.

Quote from: thvaz

Will the results of the decisions the entity make related to the death of an overlord lead to an variable outcome?

For example, the death of the overlord could trigger a new overlord chosen from inside the invading force if there is another historical member with a claim near it, or the abandonment of the conquered village if there isn't.

This way, we couldn't be sure if killing the overlord would always result in the liberation of the site, though it would be likely.

I'd wanted to get to that, but I'm cutting all the corners I can now.  I think it'll probably be one outcome for now, and once I can get a messenger sent or a competent subordinate to take over the responsibilities, it can start to look at the insurrection in a more practical way.  It'll be looking at some other variables now to get the gobs to leave, but the messiness of the overlord situation will see that way always work at this point, I think.  After a bloody explosion in the central tower of the castle, having the subordinate rise up is sort of tricky to handle, since you kind of have to leave first -- any situation where the units are still loaded is a mess right now, since you don't yet get to witness all of the intricacies of political decision-making.  It has to happen off-screen or at least telepathically, until I get to that stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 28, 2013, 06:33:00 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on February 28, 2013, 07:30:08 am

Thanks for all the great answers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 28, 2013, 08:05:25 am

Super! This is awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on February 28, 2013, 09:00:20 am

Thank you Toady! I had a new question.

With the increase in dialogue options and time passing in conversation, will NPCs reach a point where they get tired of a conversation that is just about random rumors and incidents, and tell you so and/or just walk away? Probably not for this release since you said

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I still haven't dealt with some of the main issues with the current conversation engine and that's not in the cards for this time.

but in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Drunken on February 28, 2013, 10:04:45 am

With regard to the question in the last post from Toady:"Is there some planing on a better undead system? I mean, it gets tiring to fight animated hair, hides and such, so what I'm really asking is that if you are thinking into a more "classical" representation of undead, where the pieces that fall don't stay alive and ultimately only smashing the head or decapitation would stop the zombies."

I have to point out, the way it is in DF is the classical representation of undead. With the exception of hair, all stories of undead I heard created before the very recent pop culture versions (last couple of decades)  had undead that were animated by magic, and were virtually indestructible. Mostly there was some kind of logic, ie. they had to have a muscle in the body part to move, but generally animated body parts were the norm. The 'cut off the head or destroy the brain' style undead comes from the much more modern concept of virus outbreak zombies where some kind of vague biological explanation is expected. I miss the old style zombies and am glad that they still exist here if nowhere else, although I don't have a problem with it being scaled back a bit so that some of the more ridiculous cases are reduced.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flesh Render on February 28, 2013, 11:08:00 am

It would be great to add more furniture into the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Awessum Possum on February 28, 2013, 11:12:11 am

Will we see non-Goblin occupations in this release? i.e. Dwarves occupying Goblin fortresses, Humans occupying Elf forests, or Elves occupying Dwarf forts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomsod on February 28, 2013, 01:28:43 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

From my experience in adventure mode, from 1 z-level high you just fall and get stunned, but any higher and you'll most probably take damage. Althrough I think I once managed (with much savescumming) to jump down 4 levels with only a few bruises, and I suspect water dampens your fall. Not sure to what extent, but jumping from 2 stories into a pool only got me stunned instead of bruising.
Also I remember there was a thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93256.0) where migrants were dropped from varying heights for science and doctor training. You may want to look into it if you're interested.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 01:51:05 pm

Quote from: Tomsod on February 28, 2013, 01:28:43 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

From my experience in adventure mode, from 1 z-level high you just fall and get stunned, but any higher and you'll most probably take damage. Althrough I think I once managed (with much savescumming) to jump down 4 levels with only a few bruises, and I suspect water dampens your fall. Not sure to what extent, but jumping from 2 stories into a pool only got me stunned instead of bruising.
Also I remember there was a thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93256.0) where migrants were dropped from varying heights for science and doctor training. You may want to look into it if you're interested.

Yes, but Toady just posted that jumping dwarves know how to land. So it's likely they can land safely if they jump off a one z-level cliff. Or maybe not, maybe you can only safely jump horizontally.

Now I'm really talking about adventure mode dwarves, since fort mode dwarves probably aren't smart enough to try to jump.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on February 28, 2013, 01:59:19 pm

Quote

Now I'm really talking about adventure mode dwarves, since fort mode dwarves probably aren't smart enough to try to jump.

Seems to me there's room to argue that they might be smart enough to not try to jump. Even with knowledge of how to land, I imagine dwarves who know how to jump will find ways to die horribly from it, player-controlled or otherwise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on February 28, 2013, 03:26:19 pm

Thanks for the replies, Toady!

Just wondering for future releases,
When more things are RAW-ified, and I think it was mentioned somewhere that tokens for some aspects of the raws will spread to others, will we ever be able to set up position tokens into the creature files themselves? For example, setting up a noble-like position to wolves or whoever to make the "alpha" wolf with the responsibility of leading the pack, or something along those lines, allowing us to set up a psuedo-entity structure among individual creeatures, without them actually having their own entity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on February 28, 2013, 04:33:31 pm

Quote from: Awessum Possum on February 28, 2013, 11:12:11 am

Will we see non-Goblin occupations in this release? i.e. Dwarves occupying Goblin fortresses, Humans occupying Elf forests, or Elves occupying Dwarf forts?

This isn't a direct answer to the question but:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Mopsy

Somehow, I have gotten the impression that the goblins will only be occupying human sites in the upcoming version. Is this correct, or can the sites of every major race get occupied by goblins? Does this include the sites of other goblin civs? If a player-made fortress succumbs to dwarf mode invasion or gets occupied post-retirement, will we be able to send an adventurer there to start a rebellion? Will it be possible to re-activate (without a reclaim party) a fortress that was liberated in adventure mode?

I've been testing human sites since I haven't finished all of the stuff I want to do with the other sites, but I don't think there will be any restrictions. 

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady will ruins be associated with the civilisation or will it be more neutral so that, for example, a completely different entity could do something with it?

Such as other civilisations, creatures, or non-civilised sapient beings

They know which civ made the buildings there, and depending on how the site was lost, there can be an entity site claim on the site, but there's nothing that excludes other entities except for their natural proclivities.  I haven't done post-world-gen reclaims yet, but right now there are those old tags that might stop humans from saying "hey, let's go live in that old dwarf fort!".  At the same time, there can be cross-site conquests in world gen, but that doesn't involve displacing entire populations.  I'd certainly like megabeasts and bandits and so on to take shelter wherever, and have humans from a different civ reclaim another human ruin say, but having races reclaim different races' sites shouldn't be common.  Having dwarves decide to live in the forest for no reason would be bad, unless they have absolutely no other options...  and even then...  death first!  Maybe.

Since the hard part about coding this would be getting the sites occupy-able (and the first quote indicates this is definitely going to happen for this release), and entities are (according to the second quote) able to take over existing ruined sites (assuming the entity preferences match) this seems quite possible.  The only reason this might not happen is because of flavor reasons (Tarn and Zack prefer the idea of elves simply burning cities to the ground and leaving or something), which would almost certainly be a moddable behavior. 

The only real question is if this is going to be tied to the [BABYSNATCHER] entity token, which seems unlikely, since there are already existing entity position tokens relating to conquered sites ([CONQUERED_SITE] in fact) indicating that the "overlord" or other "forced administrator" behaviors are probably going to end up linked in that way, though that isn't 100% guaranteed knowledge. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2013, 05:42:00 pm

On the topic of dwarves occupying a "ruined" forest retreat being a fate worse than death, wouldn't the making of such a decision be more practically made in-simulation through having the mechanics of building a fortress taking a specified amount of labor, and the value of a given site having a specified amount of benefit?

That is, an existing town with a wall has a defensive bonus of such-and-such for warfare, so if you find an abandoned town, it's easier to build a dwarf fortress from already inside abandoned human walls.  Meanwhile, elven towns have nothing of value to dwarves (since they're built to be in touch with that vile Nature Spirit nonsense) so they'd always prefer to just build their own camp than sit in an elven retreat. 

Having a cultural idea of what "use" a place offers makes sense when we're going beyond just the strictly static concepts of what each race's cultures are like, and have procedurally adaptive societies, since maybe human cultists of some sort of farming deity might like elven retreats, while a human-civ-with-dwarves-and-war-gods-and-technological-bent might say it's still crap. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on February 28, 2013, 06:55:20 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

Depends how lucky you're feeling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2013, 08:29:07 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

To pull back up Toady's quote...

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't remember how falling down on people works currently, but I don't think that part has changed.  There's the new jump command, but it really just turns you into a projectile that knows how to land correctly.  I haven't gotten back to the part where moves and attacks are combined now that the split has happened.  I'm not sure what'll be done exactly when that rolls back around.

That would probably mean 1 tile, 2 with negligible injuries, just like if they had been dropped from a retracting drawbridge.  (Possibly with a bonus save against injuries for landing properly.)

It depends on the total mass of the creature in question, though - I remember having modded creatures that were super-massive that would shatter into a billion pieces from a single-tile drop. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on February 28, 2013, 09:37:09 pm

Thanks a lot Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Genoraven on February 28, 2013, 10:55:00 pm

I can't wait to make an adventurer that specializes in jumping at people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 01, 2013, 03:45:37 am

Quote from: Genoraven on February 28, 2013, 10:55:00 pm

I can't wait to make an adventurer that specializes in jumping at people.

Pfft. Flying races!

Take 5z dive bombs onto THAT ONE BANDIT that killed all of your adventurers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Flesh Render on March 01, 2013, 09:44:36 am

Toady, will you add a possibility of atacking goblin forts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 01, 2013, 09:47:37 am

Quote from: Flesh Render on March 01, 2013, 09:44:36 am

Toady, will you add a possibility of atacking goblin forts?

In Adventure mode this will now be possible, yes. As for Fortress mode we'll have to wait until the Army arc for that.

(It's also customary to green questions for Toady so he can more easily sort them out of the static ;) )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pirate Bob on March 01, 2013, 09:49:34 pm

I'm not sure if the "combat tweaking" you mention in the March report will involve ranged combat, but if it does you might find the testing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0) a group of us did helpful.  The results are summarized on the Material Science (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science) page of the wiki and in this bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516).  Urist da Vinci also found that some unusual rounding was occurring when determining projectile velocities, which is reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6262).  If this does interest you and you would like any explanation and/or further testing, please let me know.

Edit:  I forgot to mention that I also wrote a summary in a Google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lytX4_1zwGqiiKcQ2Zsw-1YvPxz4vb1v5ECretSGUvM/edit) as well.  I will try to have a look at this document this weekend to make sure it is up-to-date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on March 01, 2013, 10:46:05 pm

You mentioned "fake" taverns in the last reply. Do you mean that the taverns you have now are one-dimensinal and "fake," or that there are some establishments masquerading as taverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 01, 2013, 10:47:57 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 01, 2013, 10:46:05 pm

You mentioned "fake" taverns in the last reply. Do you mean that the taverns you have now are one-dimensinal and "fake," or that there are some establishments masquerading as taverns?

Pretty sure the former.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 01, 2013, 11:10:51 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 01, 2013, 10:47:57 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on March 01, 2013, 10:46:05 pm

You mentioned "fake" taverns in the last reply. Do you mean that the taverns you have now are one-dimensinal and "fake," or that there are some establishments masquerading as taverns?

Pretty sure the former.

Yeah, right now they're just places for drunks and mercenaries to hang out, as opposed to the fleshed out things they'll be when he does inns and taverns for both modes. I'm pretty sure resistance to goblin occupation isn't organized enough to have a secret HQ, or it would have been mentioned before now. Hopefully the latter makes it in during the thief role so there can be Legitimate Businessman's Social Clubs and the like as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 12:12:07 am

Quote from: Pirate Bob on March 01, 2013, 09:49:34 pm

I'm not sure if the "combat tweaking" you mention in the March report will involve ranged combat, but if it does you might find the testing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0) a group of us did helpful.  The results are summarized on the Material Science (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science) page of the wiki and in this bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516).  Urist da Vinci also found that some unusual rounding was occurring when determining projectile velocities, which is reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6262).  If this does interest you and you would like any explanation and/or further testing, please let me know.

Edit:  I forgot to mention that I also wrote a summary in a Google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lytX4_1zwGqiiKcQ2Zsw-1YvPxz4vb1v5ECretSGUvM/edit) as well.  I will try to have a look at this document this weekend to make sure it is up-to-date.

I echo this Toady, will you consider taking a look at that research and maybe change bows and crossbows so they are not railguns anymore?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 02, 2013, 12:56:39 am

I can't wait for the day when we can cause insurrections against perfectly fine regimes that everyone was fine and happy living with until we come along and convince them they aren't. You know, just for kicks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 01:20:17 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 02, 2013, 12:56:39 am

I can't wait for the day when we can cause insurrections against perfectly fine regimes that everyone was fine and happy living with until we come along and convince them they aren't. You know, just for kicks.

Well, you kinda can do that right now. Start a loyalty cascade and watch a civil war going on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 02, 2013, 05:44:24 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 28, 2013, 08:29:07 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 28, 2013, 07:58:17 am

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

To pull back up Toady's quote...

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't remember how falling down on people works currently, but I don't think that part has changed.  There's the new jump command, but it really just turns you into a projectile that knows how to land correctly.  I haven't gotten back to the part where moves and attacks are combined now that the split has happened.  I'm not sure what'll be done exactly when that rolls back around.

That would probably mean 1 tile, 2 with negligible injuries, just like if they had been dropped from a retracting drawbridge.  (Possibly with a bonus save against injuries for landing properly.)

It depends on the total mass of the creature in question, though - I remember having modded creatures that were super-massive that would shatter into a billion pieces from a single-tile drop.

Yes, that's precisely what my question is in follow up to. I want to know what it means to "know how to land".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 02, 2013, 05:59:54 am

Quote from: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 12:12:07 am

Quote from: Pirate Bob on March 01, 2013, 09:49:34 pm

I'm not sure if the "combat tweaking" you mention in the March report will involve ranged combat, but if it does you might find the testing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0) a group of us did helpful.  The results are summarized on the Material Science (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science) page of the wiki and in this bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516).  Urist da Vinci also found that some unusual rounding was occurring when determining projectile velocities, which is reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6262).  If this does interest you and you would like any explanation and/or further testing, please let me know.

Edit:  I forgot to mention that I also wrote a summary in a Google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lytX4_1zwGqiiKcQ2Zsw-1YvPxz4vb1v5ECretSGUvM/edit) as well.  I will try to have a look at this document this weekend to make sure it is up-to-date.

I echo this Toady, will you consider taking a look at that research and maybe change bows and crossbows so they are not railguns anymore?

1. This is a suggestion not a question.
2. He already made these weapons much slower in this release. As he mentioned in the recent FotF answers, they now have a delay after firing, though he plans to replace that with a proper reloading mechanic at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 02, 2013, 07:04:43 am

Toady, in the FotF reply, you also mentioned giving alcohol effects. Judging by how alcohol is a base for dwarves ("they need alcohol to get through the working day"), how would it effect life in the fort?
Elaborating on the question: What effects would drink have on dwarves and their productivity? Could they become just like Drunks and useless for a few hours? Or are they already simple enough to not have real visible effects?

I understand it's not coming any time soon, but it caught my attention because of its "everyday" effects for the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pirate Bob on March 02, 2013, 07:58:31 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 02, 2013, 05:59:54 am

Quote from: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 12:12:07 am

Quote from: Pirate Bob on March 01, 2013, 09:49:34 pm

I'm not sure if the "combat tweaking" you mention in the March report will involve ranged combat, but if it does you might find the testing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0) a group of us did helpful.  The results are summarized on the Material Science (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science) page of the wiki and in this bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5516).  Urist da Vinci also found that some unusual rounding was occurring when determining projectile velocities, which is reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6262).  If this does interest you and you would like any explanation and/or further testing, please let me know.

Edit:  I forgot to mention that I also wrote a summary in a Google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lytX4_1zwGqiiKcQ2Zsw-1YvPxz4vb1v5ECretSGUvM/edit) as well.  I will try to have a look at this document this weekend to make sure it is up-to-date.

I echo this Toady, will you consider taking a look at that research and maybe change bows and crossbows so they are not railguns anymore?

1. This is a suggestion not a question.
2. He already made these weapons much slower in this release. As he mentioned in the recent FotF answers, they now have a delay after firing, though he plans to replace that with a proper reloading mechanic at some point.

2.  I am nearly certain this is not true.  Crossbows and bows have always had a huge delay after they are fired (edit - at least since DF2010 - I can't say before that), and I don't believe anything has changed about this yet.  The change is that with the new combat mechanics Toady could break down the firing of ranged weapons into loading, aiming etc, and he indicated in the last FotF that he might do so:

Quote

The only example I remember from upthread about an ability taking "dozens" of turns was the post-fire period of a ranged weapon, which probably shouldn't exist as such.  That needs to be replaced by loading. 

If he does this, then it stands to reason he might balance ranged attacks at the same time.  I figured it couldn't hurt to mention that we have a mountain of testing results that he could look at if he wants to balance ranged weapons.  Or not.  I don't know if he will find our results useful or if he even wants to balance ranged weapons.  That's up to him. 

If you want to debate whether ranged weapons should be balanced, I don't believe this is the place, as Toady doesn't have time to read long debates (a.k.a. flaming  :P).  Consider another thread, such as our original testing (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0) thread (or start your own).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 02, 2013, 09:25:47 am

Balancing old features is, in my opinion, something that Toady does not do effectively. Toady does a reasonable job getting things right the first time, but inevitably some added features are realized to be unbalanced. Yet there is no process for re-balancing features after they are added. The closest thing is that unambiguously broken features get added as bugs. Bug fix cycles fix critical bugs, but balance issues tend not to be critical when they are added as bugs, and often they aren't added as bugs, because it's not clear that they are intended to be unbalanced or not. This is unfortunate, because you'd thing that the rolling development cycle would be ideal for re-balancing.

Still, we can hope. Maybe we will get balanced range weapons. And balanced siege machines.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tps12 on March 02, 2013, 10:47:23 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 02:37:12 pm

On adding gay dwarves to DF:

Obviously, that'd be a touchy and controversial subject. It's a "hot" political and religious topic right now.

Haha, legal gay marriage might be controversial (in some places), but the existence of homosexuality is pretty well settled at this point, I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nicolo on March 02, 2013, 12:38:35 pm

could be a solution to the overpopulation of children problem
maybe a specific noble could mandate dorf marriage either way

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 02:01:53 pm

Quote from: tps12 on March 02, 2013, 10:47:23 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 23, 2013, 02:37:12 pm

On adding gay dwarves to DF:

Obviously, that'd be a touchy and controversial subject. It's a "hot" political and religious topic right now.

Haha, legal gay marriage might be controversial (in some places), but the existence of homosexuality is pretty well settled at this point, I think.

I don't see why Toady would do it, I'd rather have him spend his time making the game than adding flavor for people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 02, 2013, 02:27:30 pm

Quote from: tps12 on March 02, 2013, 10:47:23 am

Haha, legal gay marriage might be controversial (in some places), but the existence of homosexuality is pretty well settled at this point, I think.

It doesn't matter, it's a lightning rod for trolling or abusive posting. 

Did you look at those threads linked back from where you quoted? Half of them end in Toady saying "This thread has been reported several dozen times per day, so it's locked. I banned so-and-so."

And those are the threads that were merely locked - there are more that had so much crap in them that they were deleted (and more people banned).

So, again, don't bring the topic up in this thread, as it tends to attract the sort of people who make inflammatory statements who only wind up getting banned.

Quote from: arkhometha on March 02, 2013, 02:01:53 pm

I don't see why Toady would do it, I'd rather have him spend his time making the game than adding flavor for people.

As if the game isn't full of flavor already...  It's not like it had to be dwarves and elves and goblins.

It'll probably go in when Toady has done enough personality rewrites to make any sort of romance actually possible.  And yes, I'd actually like to see personality advances worked on to the point where dwarves have goals and desires and act upon them rather than being happy automatons until the day their happiness meter hits 0 and they go into self-destruct rampage mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 02, 2013, 11:14:23 pm

to the crossbow-people:
i think the two first guys on the topic are talking about different stuff, one is talking about the projectiles flying too fast through the air, the other one about crossbows taking long to reload and then people started discussing past each other...

edit: damn typos

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: UristTheGrey on March 03, 2013, 11:27:34 am

Since camps were fixed, do you plan on adding a non-animal tribes? Maybe like a barbaric dwarf tribe that acts like a bandit camp. You could perhaps get a quest to wipe them out or maybe try to befriend them

Is this too much right now or is there something similar planned in a future release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Organum on March 03, 2013, 12:11:11 pm

Quote from: UristTheGrey on March 03, 2013, 11:27:34 am

Since camps were fixed, do you plan on adding a non-animal tribes? Maybe like a barbaric dwarf tribe that acts like a bandit camp. You could perhaps get a quest to wipe them out or maybe try to befriend them

Is this too much right now or is there something similar planned in a future release?

If you've got a question for Toady, you're supposed to make it green.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 03, 2013, 12:51:06 pm

Quote from: UristTheGrey on March 03, 2013, 11:27:34 am

Since camps were fixed, do you plan on adding a non-animal tribes? Maybe like a barbaric dwarf tribe that acts like a bandit camp. You could perhaps get a quest to wipe them out or maybe try to befriend them

Is this too much right now or is there something similar planned in a future release?

Dwarfs can already become bandits.
But regarding non-animal tribes, the plan is to randomly generate creatures that form tribes and civilizations eventually. Toady and Threetoe talked about it in the last DF Talk:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Threetoe: Okay, this next question is from James, he asks 'Will you ever begin to include randomized main races, or will the player interactable races always be limited to token dwarves, elves, goblins and humans? And a smattering of chimera tribes' ... the animal people.
Toady: Is that what he means by the smattering of ... I don't know how to say these words, is it chimera? Yeah, it must be the animal people. Unless you meant something else.
Threetoe: Yeah, we could always just call the animal people something else, other than turtle man, we could make it some other name and still be a turtle man.
Toady: I think it's always been in the plan to have randomized main races, it was up on the old dev pages, I don't remember if it made it anywhere on the new dev pages or not? I think it might actually be there. Maybe not. It would be the last one, because doing randomized civilizations is an extra step beyond randomized monsters. Because we've kind of been easing in, we have the forgotten beasts now, we've got the titans, those are randomized. We have some of the underworld creatures randomized and we wanted to ease in to having some of the regular kind of monsters in the woods and stuff, randomizing those with a few extra night creature entries at some point and then kind of ease in to having some randomized regular creatures and then finally adding in randomized civilization creatures. The problem with randomized civilization creatures is there needs to be a lot of exposition or you're just going to be completely confused about what's going on, but it would definitely be an option, I think there would be a slider or something for how strange you want your world to be because we definitely think having dwarves and elves and goblins is cool for a lot of people just to kind of understand what's going on without having to do a lot of extra reading.

None of that will happen in the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: New man on March 03, 2013, 01:30:37 pm

In current version I can't use tunnels for Fast travel. Will you fix this? Please, make our travels more comfotable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 03, 2013, 01:31:26 pm

Quote from: New man on March 03, 2013, 01:30:37 pm

In current version I can't use tunnels for Fast travel. Will you fix this? Please, make our travels more comfotable.

That's a suggestion.

Anyway, define "tunnels".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 03, 2013, 02:22:32 pm

Tunnels dug by world gen gobbos and dwarves, I presume?

Wait, does this mean surface animal people are getting camps and mini-civs like the cavern ones?

Also, the thing about the randomly generated mix-n-match critters, like scaled mammals or furred reptiles or birds with spider legs, they all seem about the same somehow. What's the difference between demons and forgotten beasts if they can both be giant firebreathing skinless hamsters?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 03, 2013, 05:28:50 pm

My question (I wanted to talk about it a few days ago, but seeing the word tunnel reminded it to me) :

If I, as a Dwarf, build a fortress which creates a tunnel under a portion of water between two places (which would be, otherwise, very distant, and suddenly becomes much nearer), will the game "knows" it, and will friendly army could use it to travel to the other side to attack sites on the other side ? I mean, even if i retire, for example ?


Typical example of this kind of maps : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens/medium.png , in the bottom. Going from one side to another takes months. Imagine there are goblins on the left side, and humans on the other side and that you build a 4x4 fortress in the middle, with a "tunnel" between the two banks of the strait ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 03, 2013, 07:13:07 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 03, 2013, 05:28:50 pm

If I, as a Dwarf, build a fortress which creates a tunnel under a portion of water between two places (which would be, otherwise, very distant, and suddenly becomes much nearer), will the game "knows" it, and will friendly army could use it to travel to the other side to attack sites on the other side ? I mean, even if i retire, for example ?

Toady already stated that moving npcs will activly avoid player sites for various purposes, so I doubt they would be able to know

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 04, 2013, 10:47:19 am

Quote from: Inarius on March 03, 2013, 05:28:50 pm

My question (I wanted to talk about it a few days ago, but seeing the word tunnel reminded it to me) :

If I, as a Dwarf, build a fortress which creates a tunnel under a portion of water between two places (which would be, otherwise, very distant, and suddenly becomes much nearer), will the game "knows" it, and will friendly army could use it to travel to the other side to attack sites on the other side ? I mean, even if i retire, for example ?


Typical example of this kind of maps : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens/medium.png , in the bottom. Going from one side to another takes months. Imagine there are goblins on the left side, and humans on the other side and that you build a 4x4 fortress in the middle, with a "tunnel" between the two banks of the strait ?

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 04, 2013, 11:27:14 am

The end is finally in sight. It took a long time, but the last devlog (as of 3rd March 2013) shows that a few things are also going to be fixed. It looks like certain regions will become more habitable.

When you say some reaction things will be fixed, are those to do with the new combat system or the building reactions (i.e. custom production of gauntlets or boots or whatever it is that is bugged)?

Now that undead are going to have pulping and rebalancing, are we also going to see secure sarcophagi, so properly buried dwarves will no longer get out of storage?

Looking forward to the release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 04, 2013, 11:47:34 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 03, 2013, 02:22:32 pm

Wait, does this mean surface animal people are getting camps and mini-civs like the cavern ones?

I don't think Toady is going to add any extra site types for the moment, but I definitely want to be able to define these sorts of mini-civs which have minimal influence and footprint on their surroundings yet have some civ-like behaviors like living in a specific location as a community and making their goods like clothing and tools, having historical figures like the tribe leader etc. Toady, will we ever see the cavern civ code used above-ground, where a mini-civ could exist as something other than a gang of bandits (although technically they could be a tribe of jerks who steal and murder)? Will we see any more detail put into the cavern civs' sites, culture, and behaviors as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: New man on March 04, 2013, 11:53:22 am

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

How about adding ships for trade and travel in Adventure Mode and navies for war at sea? Also, I want sea megabeasts and pirates. Pirate navies may make raids on seaside towns or hamlets. I think, adventurer may make his pirate band and be bad boy :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 04, 2013, 12:06:13 pm

Quote from: New man on March 04, 2013, 11:53:22 am

How about adding ships for trade and travel in Adventure Mode and navies for war at sea? Also, I want sea megabeasts and pirates. Pirate navies may make raids on seaside towns or hamlets. I think, adventurer may make his pirate band and be bad boy :)

1. This is a suggestion not a question.
2. All of this is planned for some point in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kyphis on March 04, 2013, 03:30:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Cruxador

At some point, will we be able to have a big bag (or mule, or other storage system) and just tell our buddies to take what they want/need?

I'm not sure how equipment for companions will work out.  I don't think it'd be good to have to micro-manage all of your companions' stuff, since it makes them like play toys and I don't think they'd appreciate it, but I haven't set anything up yet.  If we ever do that "create and play a party" feature, you'd probably have an option to micromanage things.  All that said, if the first equipment related command is to hand somebody a single item, I wouldn't be surprised, and that's slow-motion micromanagement, if the items are accepted.

I can picture it now... "Urist McDwarf offers apple to Legolas McElf" "Legolas McElf Declines apple" "Urist McDwarf offers apple to Legolas McElf" "Legolas McElf Declines apple" "Urist McDwarf offers apple to Legolas McElf" "Legolas McElf Declines apple" "Urist McDwarf knocks Legolas McElf to the ground!" "Urist McDwarf offers apple to Legolas McElf" "Legolas McElf gratefully accepts apple"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 04, 2013, 03:45:35 pm

As Cruxador post the question I get it exactly the other way around, instead of micromanagement it would help to not micromanage anything, you'll simply have a mule (other animal) carrying the stuff for you, and your followers (or the ones you select) get access to all the weapons/equipment/food you have there and pick up things according to their needs/desires/skills, hence some peasant that doesn't have a bow can reach into the bag and pick up a bow, to help you out in fights instead of fighting with it's bare hands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 04, 2013, 04:12:06 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 04, 2013, 03:45:35 pm

As Cruxador post the question I get it exactly the other way around, instead of micromanagement it would help to not micromanage anything, you'll simply have a mule (other animal) carrying the stuff for you, and your followers (or the ones you select) get access to all the weapons/equipment/food you have there and pick up things according to their needs/desires/skills, hence some peasant that doesn't have a bow can reach into the bag and pick up a bow, to help you out in fights instead of fighting with it's bare hands.

Yeah, that's what I was going for. I sort of figured that just handing over an item would be the first way to do it, since it's probably the easiest to implement, but I was wondering what else was on the table. Sounds like not much is planned out in particular yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 04, 2013, 06:09:23 pm

Nope but having mounts and pack animals on adventure mode will be really cool. I haven't played adventure mode much to this date, I can count my adventurers with the fingers of one hand and I would have spare fingers. Not because I dislike it, but rather I was waiting for being able to retire and go back to fortress before doing it.

In any case pack animals and such are crucial for several adventures careers, and like everything else, from mating behavior of jellyfish up to a great unifying quantum physics theory, eventually it will be in the game.

Once it's done, it will be more realistic that reality, and then one day, we'll realize we are actually the simulation, dwarves are playing with us and Toady is God.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on March 04, 2013, 06:24:54 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

Interesting question. From memory, doing that in the present game already does something similar; your fort can be used to connect two previously disconnected regions for trade/civ contact. That said, the system in place now is a lot more rudimentary than the updates Toady's making...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 04, 2013, 06:38:31 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 04, 2013, 11:27:14 am

The end is finally in sight. It took a long time, but the last devlog (as of 3rd March 2013) shows that a few things are also going to be fixed. It looks like certain regions will become more habitable.

When you say some reaction things will be fixed, are those to do with the new combat system or the building reactions (i.e. custom production of gauntlets or boots or whatever it is that is bugged)?

Definitely the new combat system; "reaction moments" have been mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on March 04, 2013, 07:01:57 pm

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on March 04, 2013, 06:24:54 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

Interesting question. From memory, doing that in the present game already does something similar; your fort can be used to connect two previously disconnected regions for trade/civ contact. That said, the system in place now is a lot more rudimentary than the updates Toady's making...

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's already the case. If you find a sea separating two continents and can span it with a single embark, the game will consider it "bridged" even if you don't actually build a physical bridge or tunnel. So if you abandon and re-embark somewhere on continent A, civs from continent B can show up if they're in range.

Of course, Toady's probably altering a lot of code to get changes in, so this might get broken/taken out for now. No way to be sure 'til release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 04, 2013, 07:15:16 pm

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on March 04, 2013, 06:24:54 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

Interesting question. From memory, doing that in the present game already does something similar; your fort can be used to connect two previously disconnected regions for trade/civ contact. That said, the system in place now is a lot more rudimentary than the updates Toady's making...

Yes you can do this, use forts to connect islands. But post world gen, almost nothing happens, so that isn't very important. Also, armies and caravans just jump over rivers, so I guess if the game does this post world gen they would just over using sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on March 05, 2013, 10:57:31 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

i don't think they make tunnels under seas, only under mountains.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 06, 2013, 07:58:45 am

More progress devlogs. I like it when stuff gets done and "ready to go".

Quote from: greenwatering on March 05, 2013, 10:57:31 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 04, 2013, 11:33:58 am

Quote

Assuming you retired the fort, based on how Toady has talked about patrols being aware of bridges, I expect this to work. However, Toady has also said armies don't yet need a bridge to cross a river outside a site.

To cross rivers, yes. But seas ? My question was if you build a fortress which creates a channel between two sides of a sea (not a river) and after that retire (or not), will armies take this into account for trade or war ?

i don't think they make tunnels under seas, only under mountains.

This deserves a question.
Are we going to be able to dig (or are dwarves going to be able to dig) tunnels under the ocean to connect regions at all, if not in the coming release in future versions? It seems pretty appropriate for dwarves to colonise a land and dig a tunnel back to the mountainhomes.

How long do you think it should take to dig a tunnel between Diamondforge and New Boatmurdered as a function of distance in region tiles between them and dwarves working?

Are we going to be able to name our fortresses "New <insert fortress name here>"? What about completely custom names, as we can do for military squads? As indicated in the previous question, you'd be able to have a fort named "New Boatmurdered".

(if its not too much to do, I'd actually put a request in for at least a "New <fortname>" this release. Yes, I know there's a forum for dat.)

The new combat changes, does this mean dual-wielding dwarves in fort mode are going to use both their weapons in combat, allowing berserk sword-wielding squads and dual-wielding shieldhammer* dwarves?

*Shieldhammer dwarves as in dwarves carrying two shields for defence and bashing skulls.

Back to tunnels, if a civilisation has colonised two mountain ranges, will we see dwarven tunnels underneath non-mountain biomes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 06, 2013, 08:01:11 am

CaptainArchmage, this (about tunnel) has already been asked (by me).

Quote

If I, as a Dwarf, build a fortress which creates a tunnel under a portion of water between two places (which would be, otherwise, very distant, and suddenly becomes much nearer), will the game "knows" it, and will friendly army could use it to travel to the other side to attack sites on the other side ? I mean, even if i retire, for example ?

(3rd of March)

But I think this is a quite important question, with some important consequences. (will we see armies travelling in one or two updates, and using our tunnel ?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 06, 2013, 12:59:10 pm

Whoops sorry @Inarius.

I think we already have armies travelling in the upcoming release, just avoiding our fortresses. I don't know how easy it would be to have an army march through a dwarf fortress, but I think there could be some interesting collisions if our fortress is built over a road and the army needs to use it. It would be a potential source of !!FUN!! and siege weapon use.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 06, 2013, 03:39:52 pm

It might be possible for a retired player fortress to be used as a connection in this way, but not during play.  In fact it would probably work to just claim a site that spans the two continents and do nothing about tunnels or bridges. 

That is to say, if fortresses spanning continents are considered to be a "connection" at all ever then it is likely to be all of them always regardless of local constructions.  Otherwise fortresses simply aren't considered connections at all.  For the upcoming release it is almost guaranteed to be one of these two. 

In the future, when armies are moving during play, and it becomes possible for one to march through your fort, it might be addressed (getting a reasonable hierarchical path grid for the fort surface wouldn't be too awful) but essentially the issue is getting the army to march through the fort in a non-insane way, when the fortress might be designed in a number of pathological ways.  It isn't impossible, but is on the level of difficulty of a full pathfinding rewrite (in fact, to do the desired task efficiently, some kind of room-based pathfinding algorithm would be almost a necessity) so it won't make it in as something Toady "forgot to mention". 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 04:28:28 pm

Quote from: the devlog 03/05

I finally finished the basic simultaneous attack option today and spent some time double-stabbing rib cages in the arena with shiny blue daggers, that kind of thing.

This sounds like exactly the wrong way to do dual-wielding that was exactly what I was afraid of...

It sounds like he's just making it so that if you have two weapons in your hands, you can just windmill your swords at people and deal twice as much damage with two weapons as with one, completely regardless of how actual physics works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 06, 2013, 04:59:03 pm

All I understood from this is that you are able to stab with two daggers, nothing out of the world. I guess that the bigger the weapon you are double wielding, the less options you have or the more time they take.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 06, 2013, 05:46:28 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 04:28:28 pm

Quote from: the devlog 03/05

I finally finished the basic simultaneous attack option today and spent some time double-stabbing rib cages in the arena with shiny blue daggers, that kind of thing.

This sounds like exactly the wrong way to do dual-wielding that was exactly what I was afraid of...

It sounds like he's just making it so that if you have two weapons in your hands, you can just windmill your swords at people and deal twice as much damage with two weapons as with one, completely regardless of how actual physics works.

Well, to be fair, double-stabbing should be realistically possible, right? It might not be the best/most obvious thing to do in an actual combat situation, but it's not something that in principle should require an insane ninja-like amount of skill, let alone be entirely impossible. At least to do it at all -- doing it well might be another question. I'm no expert, mind you...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nil Athelion on March 06, 2013, 06:24:52 pm

On randomized world-gen having problems with rejection-heavy parameters:  Would it be possible for the world-gen process to identify what kind of rejection error, and then change the relevant parameters?  If the world-gen has random parameters, it doesn't really have to generate the world with exactly those parameters, just any set that is random.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on March 06, 2013, 07:50:26 pm

Actually, this got me thinking... I've mentioned my plans for an enormous ice wall (a la Game of Thrones) in the past, but I never actually asked;

In the inverse of earlier discussion, can player fortress (and sites in general) block progress?

As in, let say we built a wall between two impassable mountain ranges, or from an ocean to a major river, blocking off multiple otherwise inaccessible world map tiles; would armies etc. be able to path through our sites up into the guarded area?

Even if it doesn't take fort layout into shape, it could be interesting; just having retired forts only pass allied/neutral armies while stopping enemies would be amazing (No goblins! Trespassers will be degrinched). Especially if forts that got abandoned/conquered did become passable; hold the line at all costs!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 10:10:24 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 06, 2013, 05:46:28 pm

Well, to be fair, double-stabbing should be realistically possible, right? It might not be the best/most obvious thing to do in an actual combat situation, but it's not something that in principle should require an insane ninja-like amount of skill, let alone be entirely impossible. At least to do it at all -- doing it well might be another question. I'm no expert, mind you...

Actually, no, it shouldn't be realistically possible to double-stab someone with the same amount of force that you can do a lunge with a knife with just one hand. 

That's the whole point of balance.  That's why schools on martial arts always focus upon footwork - attacking someone with a weapon isn't just your hand moving independent of your body, it's a full-body motion. 

If you don't include the notion that a character's full force is committed to the attack, and just make it mechanically that one arm acting completely independent of the body, combat performs like this looks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ARLSii23w8).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 06, 2013, 10:12:18 pm

Plus, I think that double-thrusting would put you in a great position to get knocked on your stomach/bashed in the head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 06, 2013, 10:48:19 pm

Well really, the pertinent question is whether both attacks receive full force when making two attacks at once- if you're using a pair of adamantine blades you don't need to put a huge force behind your attack to do serious damage, whereas if you're using crappier weapons it almost certainly won't be worth it (barring freakish skill / the concept of feinting is implemented.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 11:11:33 pm

Quote from: monk12 on March 06, 2013, 10:48:19 pm

Well really, the pertinent question is whether both attacks receive full force when making two attacks at once- if you're using a pair of adamantine blades you don't need to put a huge force behind your attack to do serious damage, whereas if you're using crappier weapons it almost certainly won't be worth it (barring freakish skill / the concept of feinting is implemented.)

The more pertinent question is whether or not Toady is working towards building a full system of understanding combat, so that all individual actions are understandable within the same framework, or just adding random things without any relation to one another.

D&D-style dual-wielding, where two weapons means twice as many attacks with just some -2 penalty to damage is completely contrary to the sort of combat he's been otherwise trying to work towards.

There is a reason that there was essentially only a couple dual-wielding weapon fighting school that ever sprung up, and it sprung up for formalized duals amongst people not wearing armor, and where, even then, the off-hand weapon was made for defense, not offense.  Against armor, an off-hand weapon is useless, and a shield is much better protection.

Likewise, jumping attacks (which are already being talked about) are not taught in any martial school for the simple, obvious reason that you lose your balance quite easily attacking while mid-air, and you never want to be lying prone in melee.

Barring something like jumping up to swat at a bat or some other very small creature, attacking an armored, balanced opponent with their feet planted in a jump attack is just going to wind up with you bouncing off them or them swatting you aside because you'll have no leverage.  This needs to be reflected in the game's mechanics.

And the problem is, it seems like Toady doesn't seem to know it:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 06, 2013, 11:13:54 pm

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on March 06, 2013, 07:50:26 pm

Actually, this got me thinking... I've mentioned my plans for an enormous ice wall (a la Game of Thrones) in the past, but I never actually asked;

In the inverse of earlier discussion, can player fortress (and sites in general) block progress?

As in, let say we built a wall between two impassable mountain ranges, or from an ocean to a major river, blocking off multiple otherwise inaccessible world map tiles; would armies etc. be able to path through our sites up into the guarded area?

Even if it doesn't take fort layout into shape, it could be interesting; just having retired forts only pass allied/neutral armies while stopping enemies would be amazing (No goblins! Trespassers will be degrinched). Especially if forts that got abandoned/conquered did become passable; hold the line at all costs!

That will probably happen in the future, but your idea would not work unless the fort blocked was built in a narrow valley that lead to a plain surrounded by mountains, more specifically very high cliffs. Otherwise the army would just take a detour if it didn't want to pass by your fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on March 06, 2013, 11:37:43 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on March 06, 2013, 11:13:54 pm

That will probably happen in the future, but your idea would not work unless the fort blocked was built in a narrow valley that lead to plain surrounded by mountains, more specifically very high cliffs. Otherwise the army would just take a detour if it didn't want to pass by your fort.

Hence why I mentioned the building across multiple world tiles; I'm saying if I cover every single passable route to an area in a solid line of dwarven fortresses, not just plonking one down alone in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not expecting this to be easy, just finding out if it's possible :P

Edit: Also, and vaguely related; Does the direction enemies attack from (on the local fortress scale) depend on the direction they approach from on the world map? Either currently, or in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 07, 2013, 01:50:31 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 04:28:28 pm

This sounds like exactly the wrong way to do dual-wielding that was exactly what I was afraid of...

Or, it sounds like, you know, exactly the right way to test a new feature.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 11:11:33 pm

And the problem is, it seems like Toady doesn't seem to know it:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

I don't get you here, this quote from Toady shows he is well aware of the potential problems of a system that is really very difficult to abstract into game mechanics, and which he is going to look into in further detail at a later date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 07, 2013, 02:18:26 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 10:10:24 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 06, 2013, 05:46:28 pm

Well, to be fair, double-stabbing should be realistically possible, right? It might not be the best/most obvious thing to do in an actual combat situation, but it's not something that in principle should require an insane ninja-like amount of skill, let alone be entirely impossible. At least to do it at all -- doing it well might be another question. I'm no expert, mind you...

Actually, no, it shouldn't be realistically possible to double-stab someone with the same amount of force that you can do a lunge with a knife with just one hand. 

That's the whole point of balance.  That's why schools on martial arts always focus upon footwork - attacking someone with a weapon isn't just your hand moving independent of your body, it's a full-body motion. 

If you don't include the notion that a character's full force is committed to the attack, and just make it mechanically that one arm acting completely independent of the body, combat performs like this looks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ARLSii23w8).

I have personally punched someone in the face and ribs simultaneously, blacking their cheek and causing them to double up. Using my hands both at the same time neither robbed me of all momentum nor caused me to become a limp ragdoll. Of course your force is divided between your two daggers, but if you stab the same person with both of them, you still use your forward momentum on both points, which still translates to poking a nasty hole in someone wherever you press. You don't exactly need the full force of your body to wound someone with a sharp dagger.

A lunging forward strike with two daggers would be in some ways similar to thrusting with a short, two-pronged spear using both hands, especially if the points of contact were near each other. And with a slender blade, you can perfectly well shank someone to death using the force of your arm alone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 07, 2013, 02:30:19 am

Quote from: hermes on March 07, 2013, 01:50:31 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 11:11:33 pm

And the problem is, it seems like Toady doesn't seem to know it:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

I don't get you here, this quote from Toady shows he is well aware of the potential problems of a system that is really very difficult to abstract into game mechanics, and which he is going to look into in further detail at a later date.

That's what I was thinking too, to be honest.

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 07, 2013, 02:18:26 am

[...]if you stab the same person with both of them, you still use your forward momentum on both points

Right. Or so I would also think, at any rate. Which is why I thought the double stab (although I might have made it more clear that I meant against a single target, but it sounded like that's what Toady was talking about as well in the devlog... or, actually, come to think of it, that could be taken either way) would be okay.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 06, 2013, 10:10:24 pm

Actually, no, it shouldn't be realistically possible to double-stab someone with the same amount of force that you can do a lunge with a knife with just one hand.

But I didn't really say it would be the same amount of force.

At any rate, I think you might be right, NW_Kohaku, that it might be a bit weird this next release, but I think that's okay so long as Toady looks into it in a future release more focused on combat. And I think he tends to do pretty good research and get scientifically and physically accurate features in the game most of the time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 07, 2013, 02:43:53 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 07, 2013, 02:18:26 am

I have personally punched someone in the face and ribs simultaneously, blacking their cheek and causing them to double up. Using my hands both at the same time neither robbed me of all momentum nor caused me to become a limp ragdoll. Of course your force is divided between your two daggers, but if you stab the same person with both of them, you still use your forward momentum on both points, which still translates to poking a nasty hole in someone wherever you press. You don't exactly need the full force of your body to wound someone with a sharp dagger.

A lunging forward strike with two daggers would be in some ways similar to thrusting with a short, two-pronged spear using both hands, especially if the points of contact were near each other. And with a slender blade, you can perfectly well shank someone to death using the force of your arm alone.

This is already far too similar to the "I can cut through three sides of beef, so of course a claymore can cut through three heavily armored knights without any loss of momentum" arguments that go on in the Mount and Blade forums...

Whatever arbitrary things you can claim to do are beside the point - what this game needs to start modeling if these sorts of battles are to make any sort of sense is some realistic notion of balance.

You're even saying yourself what is essentially my point: That it's not the most sane or effective means of combat. 

The problem is it's not modeled in the game.  Therefore, it is currently the most sane and effective means of combat in DF until the mechanics are in place to ensure they aren't.

Quote from: hermes on March 07, 2013, 01:50:31 am

I don't get you here, this quote from Toady shows he is well aware of the potential problems of a system that is really very difficult to abstract into game mechanics, and which he is going to look into in further detail at a later date.

Which is why I'm saying he's starting down the wrong path. 

You don't start with the details, and work out the big picture later, it just makes a mess of everything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 07, 2013, 02:52:16 am

Sometimes it's diffiult to visualize why dual-wielding is a bad idea. It can help to imagine the difference between throwing something at a target with one hand as opposed to throwing two things at a target with both hands at the same time. There'll be the arguments that it's not the same thing, but the principle is the same. Then there's the argument that it's not about accuracy or damage, but rather the extra attacks you get if you attack with one hand and then the other right after and so on. Again if you visualize throwing, you can intuitively see that doesn't make sense either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 07, 2013, 03:43:30 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on March 07, 2013, 02:43:53 am

-snip-

I didn't say anything about heavily armored knights, and neither did Toady. He said he was using adamantine blades, so it's not really possible to infer how momentum modeled at this point, given the strange properties of adamantine. If it works by just letting you choose 2 attacks at once, then going on the current system one stab might be "easier strike" while the other "difficult strike." This might mean that one blow sticks the enemy but they get a counterattack on the other and stick you. Still unrealistic, but that would still be a drawback to making two attacks at once.

But you can't assume that it's not modeled in the game; Toady's post didn't indicate anything about that. He merely said he was testing simultaneous attacks, not which aspects or whether or not the dual-stabbing gave him advantage over other arena contestants.

Quote from: DG on March 07, 2013, 02:52:16 am

Sometimes it's diffiult to visualize why dual-wielding is a bad idea. It can help to imagine the difference between throwing something at a target with one hand as opposed to throwing two things at a target with both hands at the same time. There'll be the arguments that it's not the same thing, but the principle is the same. Then there's the argument that it's not about accuracy or damage, but rather the extra attacks you get if you attack with one hand and then the other right after and so on. Again if you visualize throwing, you can intuitively see that doesn't make sense either.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying a double-stab is better, I'm just saying it's not abysmally horrible and nigh-impossible to pull off. First off, assume neither opponent is armored. Used effectively, a double-stab isn't like throwing, but more like thrusting with a 2-handed weapon. Imagine a shove: you put a hand on each shoulder blade, or one on the shoulders and one on the middle of the back, and push. Now imagine the same motion, but instead of pressing with the palm of your hands you press with the tips of 2 knives. No trying to do different actions with each hand just doing the same motion with both, spaced slightly apart. The closer the points, the more similar to using 2 hands to thrust the same knife.

More than likely, you just have the offhand shank in case your other hand gets grabbed or otherwise incapacitated, but should you find yourself in position to stab with both, you could make two nasty punctures. It's not an insane or irrational way to fight, it's just that the opportunity to double-stab doesn't come up as often.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Crashmaster on March 07, 2013, 04:53:13 am

A stabbing sword or foil benefits from reach and due to body positioning wielding a second would seem pointless unless dying to dual opponents.
For a slashing attack the argument is way different. A lot more slashing then stabbing in knife fights, unless you're fighting a guy who doesn't have a knife, then just stab away. A double-stab to me would seem the sort of thing done from ambush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JapMGyUbT68
You can't argue dual-wielding is too mentally difficult to be effective because it can be trained and seems competitive. Escrima in particular is brutal and lethal.  It seems more about flow then attacking with both hands simultaneously.
When it comes to full armor you can't fight with knives or light swords anyways but you should be able to shield bash and slash/ stab at the same time dual-wielding-wise... of course in DF you could wield two ultra-light one-hit kill adamantine longswords that cleave steel armor and the skill and strength to use them both - what attacks would there be for a shield to block ?

I would think simultaneous dual attacks would have to be handled differently; damage penalty and longer recovery back to balance point as opposed to sword-weaving style's multiple high-speed twice the attack/ defense opportunities at a penalized efficacy.

ugh it's way late...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 07, 2013, 08:02:05 am

As for the double stabbing in the rib cages, what I pictured in my head was a scissor movement from behind the victim, where both arms closed by the sides, hopefully puncturing the lungs or something, not thrusting forwards with both arms like giving a double stockade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 07, 2013, 09:03:03 am

Duel wielding daggers against an unarmored opponent should be effective. Daggers aren't meant to produce a forceful attack. They're meant to cut and bleed the opponent. You can cut deeply with a dagger without the full force of you body and legs behind it. Armor that's vastly inferior to the weapon strength isn't a barrier either, so adamantine daggers vs steal or steal daggers vs leather should work about the same as against unarmored opponents.

This strategy doesn't work with other weapons, except possibly the short sword, which is effectively a long dagger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on March 07, 2013, 09:24:57 am

Also, jumping attacks are taught in some martial arts. A flying side kick is effective, you've got your whole body mass flying at the target.  You see superman punches in MMA.  Just because they're not like in martial arts movies doesn't mean they don't exist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 07, 2013, 09:37:57 am

Nothing too exciting in the newest update as far as I'm concerned, but it's good to hear of the progress. Still very anxious for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nokao on March 07, 2013, 10:11:20 am

To write well into this post I will wait for the new version, avoinding to ask already made feats.

But I would definitely love to manage better (and geograhpically) interaction between reigns in the world, in fortress mode.
I already saw some screenshot about that in the website, but I still don't know if it's Adventure only.
A "cartographer" noble should be added in Fotress mode, to gain informations trought caravans of the surroundings.

If that is made, in the future we could also see an underworld map done in the same way (commercing with only underground races like drows or monsters). It would be really great.
Forgotten Realms - Underdark

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 07, 2013, 10:37:37 am

Quote

smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass
split in half from the crown to the chin
torn apart
pierced through entirely
incinerated
is shattered
collapses into a lump of gore
is cloven asunder
is torn into pieces
is pierced through completely
is incinerated
explodes in gore
is mostly cut away from the rest of the torso
is ripped into loose shreds

Making their glorious return at last.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 07, 2013, 10:51:14 am

Quote from: Nokao on March 07, 2013, 10:11:20 am

-snip-

This sounds like it belongs in the suggestions board.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 07, 2013, 11:18:20 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 07, 2013, 10:37:37 am

Quote

smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass
split in half from the crown to the chin
torn apart
pierced through entirely
incinerated
is shattered
collapses into a lump of gore
is cloven asunder
is torn into pieces
is pierced through completely
is incinerated
explodes in gore
is mostly cut away from the rest of the torso
is ripped into loose shreds

Making their glorious return at last.

Oh, "Explodes in gore," how I've missed you!
Can't wait to see another small child punch a raptor in the lower body, causing it to explode in gore. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 07, 2013, 11:43:41 am

I couldn't help be bothered by the fact that finished player fortresses contribute absurdly massive amounts of data to the filesize of a world region folder. What is up with that? Is it a coding oversight or an unavoidable side-effect of being able to store player-created (non-seed generated) fortresses?

I ask because this issue almost single-handedly ruined the fun and exciting prospect of a Succession World. For example, here's a large region before (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5755) and after (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6845) only 12 or so player fortresses had been added to the world. The folder had swollen to an utterly ridiculous 800mb, almost 3 times the size of the world when it started, and took noticeably quite a bit longer to save. I don't even want to think about how big it would've gotten if we had went through all 64 turns, haha.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 07, 2013, 11:46:58 am

Quote from: Spish on March 07, 2013, 11:43:41 am

I couldn't help be bothered by the fact that finished player fortresses contribute absurdly massive amounts of data to the filesize of a world region folder. What is up with that? Is it a coding oversight or an unavoidable side-effect of being able to store player-created (non-seed generated) fortresses?

I ask because this issue single-handedly ruined the fun and exciting prospect of a Succession World. For example, here's a large region before (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5755) and after (http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6845) only 12 or so player fortresses had been added to the world. The folder had swollen to an utterly ridiculous 800mb, almost 3 times the size of the world when it started.

I think you mean almost 30 times. Unless history has been run a VERY long time I get large regions at 30-50MB.

I know there is a lot of information to be stored, but there may be ways to reduce the inflation of file size. Along with the need for optimization or even simplification of the way some of the checks done during the game work, this affects the long-erm playability of saves and can mess with the the intentions of the current upcoming release, which is to allow long-term playability on the same world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: squishynoob on March 07, 2013, 12:25:00 pm

If nobody has asked yet,

Now that movement/combat speeds are split, which attributes (or skills) determine each?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on March 07, 2013, 12:30:55 pm

With climbing and whatnot, will goblins climb down on ropes from Giant Cave Swallows or Giant Bats?
I can imagine, after you and your band of heavily armed friends break into the dark fortress, that goblins with crossbows will strafe you from on high.
On that note, do you have any plans to fix the flying pathing bug? I can inmagine that that particular bug would have a lot to do with climbing pathing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 07, 2013, 01:38:59 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on March 07, 2013, 12:30:55 pm

With climbing and whatnot, will goblins climb down on ropes from Giant Cave Swallows or Giant Bats?
I can imagine, after you and your band of heavily armed friends break into the dark fortress, that goblins with crossbows will strafe you from on high.
On that note, do you have any plans to fix the flying pathing bug? I can inmagine that that particular bug would have a lot to do with climbing pathing.

What flying path bug?

And I'm almost sure Toady did not do climbing ropes yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on March 07, 2013, 02:05:03 pm

A lot of posts since the last one...

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 07, 2013, 03:43:30 am

But you can't assume that it's not modeled in the game; Toady's post didn't indicate anything about that. He merely said he was testing simultaneous attacks, not which aspects or whether or not the dual-stabbing gave him advantage over other arena contestants.

Yes he did:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

He's saying he doesn't have a system that is at all satisfactory for it yet.

Besides which, consider how many systems Toady has done some preliminary work upon, and then forgotten to ever come back to.  When's the last thing that Toady changed, left broken, and then actually came back to fix?

The last one I remember was the mining scarcity, and that took a two-year gap to actually fix.  By then, there were people who had only played without scarcity, and they were constantly complaining about not being able to build solid gold pyramids on every single embark, as if that was a perfectly natural thing to have enough gold mined from any random hole in the ground to make a solid gold pyramid.

Hence, it's worth flagging down the obvious pitfalls now, when it doesn't seem like Toady is aware of them, before he makes a mistake and doesn't come back to fix it for years afterwards.

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 07, 2013, 03:43:30 am

Just to be clear, I'm not saying a double-stab is better, I'm just saying it's not abysmally horrible and nigh-impossible to pull off.

But what I'm saying isn't that it's impossible to pull off, I'm saying it's not better, and you agree with that.  I'm just saying that there's nothing yet to indicate that Toady is going to code constant double-stabbing not to be better, and he should be warned before he gets too far into coding it that way that it shouldn't be that way.

Quote from: Damiac on March 07, 2013, 09:24:57 am

Also, jumping attacks are taught in some martial arts. A flying side kick is effective, you've got your whole body mass flying at the target.  You see superman punches in MMA.  Just because they're not like in martial arts movies doesn't mean they don't exist.

You're thinking of unarmed martial arts, which is different from armed martial arts. 

I'm talking about the jumping-sword-first attacks you do see in movies because they're showy, but incredibly stupid, especially if we assume we're dealing with armored adventurers. (Because why wouldn't they be?) Just because you see something in wrestling or wire-fu movies doesn't make it an effective combat technique.

No school of martial arts based around armed combat teaches jumping attacks because it's extremely likely to wind up with you knocked down and struggling to get back up... and the whole point of armor is that you're almost impossible to kill while wearing it as long as you aren't lying prone on the floor. 

You can't make these transitive claims that because jump-kicking someone from behind works between unarmed and unarmored combatants when one combatant is unawares will automatically mean there shouldn't be anything different against an armed, armored, aware opponent.  And that's exactly the claim that's being made because you aren't bothering to make the distinction.

Quote from: Crashmaster on March 07, 2013, 04:53:13 am

You can't argue dual-wielding is too mentally difficult to be effective because it can be trained and seems competitive. Escrima in particular is brutal and lethal.  It seems more about flow then attacking with both hands simultaneously.
When it comes to full armor you can't fight with knives or light swords anyways but you should be able to shield bash and slash/ stab at the same time dual-wielding-wise... of course in DF you could wield two ultra-light one-hit kill adamantine longswords that cleave steel armor and the skill and strength to use them both - what attacks would there be for a shield to block ?

I would think simultaneous dual attacks would have to be handled differently; damage penalty and longer recovery back to balance point as opposed to sword-weaving style's multiple high-speed twice the attack/ defense opportunities at a penalized efficacy.

ugh it's way late...

Escrima, though, is one of those few martial arts that does actually have two weapons... (and is focused, again, on unarmored targets.) 

And how does that work?  You still only attack with one weapon at a time - you guard or feint with the other one. The only thing a second weapon does is allow for an opportunity to attack, guard, or feint from either side of the body.

And again, the thing I'm arguing here is what you're arguing at the same time - that having two weapons doesn't just mean you deal twice as much HP of damage, and that concepts like balance are actually considered (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123179.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tabithda on March 07, 2013, 02:09:10 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on March 07, 2013, 01:38:59 pm

What flying path bug?

A fortress mode "bug"(more of an oversight of sorts really...) wherein fortress civilians who are capable of flight will not path in open space tiles but will still fly over walls and the like to get to a location provided there is a land route to that location.  This results in things like not flying over a river to escape a goblin, or a mason flying over a wall(with no route to the top of said wall) to get to a building site and then proceeding to repath while on the wall, causing the mason to think he is stuck on the wall despite the fact that he flew up there to begin with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 07, 2013, 02:48:45 pm

NW_Kohaku, I mostly agree with you, but the whole thing was already discussed quite intensively at an earlier stage, so I think Toady has in fact been warned by now. And if he leaves it broken for a few years, only to come back to it much later, that only means that there's so much other stuff to deal with that would have been postponed instead if he had worked on that thing originally. The bulk of the combat stuff just isn't scheduled for this release.

Of course, it makes sense, given that he is now working at it to some extent, that Toady at least starts it up in the right direction, but he still has to end up with something wholesome enough to accept for the time being. I think he'll be able to figure out how to deal with it for now, even if it is going to be "walking a fairly idiotic line" for the time being. If that's how he thinks it will be, that's probably because that's the best he can do with the time he is willing to spend on it for the time being.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 07, 2013, 03:11:04 pm

I'm worried about the size of the file as you retire more and more fortress...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on March 07, 2013, 04:29:22 pm

Quote from: Tabithda on March 07, 2013, 02:09:10 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on March 07, 2013, 01:38:59 pm

What flying path bug?

A fortress mode "bug"(more of an oversight of sorts really...) wherein fortress civilians who are capable of flight will not path in open space tiles but will still fly over walls and the like to get to a location provided there is a land route to that location.  This results in things like not flying over a river to escape a goblin, or a mason flying over a wall(with no route to the top of said wall) to get to a building site and then proceeding to repath while on the wall, causing the mason to think he is stuck on the wall despite the fact that he flew up there to begin with.

What I meant was that when Goblins get up in the air, they will get stuck up there because they are using their own pathing routine instead of the mount's. Fixing the other one would be nice too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Damiac on March 07, 2013, 04:33:21 pm

I think you're assuming an awful lot from just a little information Kohaku.  I haven't seen anywhere that said duel wielding = double damage. All I've seen on the matter is Toady double stabbing something, which made no mention of attack speed or anything else.

And yes, I was speaking of unarmed styles, which of course would be quite different from armed vs armor.  While duel wielding might still have a place, and a practical use, you'd be right to say it's not realistic to make it a more effective fighting style.  Of course, why bother even including it at all if it's never useful?

Wielding two weapons does allow you to leverage drawing one back against thrusting the other, which in effect increases the speed which you can attack with effective strikes. 

Aside from all that, no matter what, I'm sure whatever we get will be somewhat silly and unrealistic in one way or another.  I hope you can live with that, because I think you will have to.

Also, wire-fu is the most realistic genre of media, I don't know why you'd every say otherwise.  Except maybe pro-wrestling, which is true to life and not staged in any way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 07, 2013, 04:45:08 pm

Quote

No school of martial arts based around armed combat teaches jumping attacks because it's extremely likely to wind up with you knocked down and struggling to get back up

This is rather incorrect and you forget that most martial arts that arn't relatively modern (like Boxing) are also armed.

Armed combat teaches jumping because often you will need to jump. What it doesn't teach you is how to jump badly and often these jumping attacks have VERY specific uses.

For example sometimes with a staff weapon they are used to gain space quickly if needed, or they are used to put your entire weight into an attack.

As well there are many martial arts that are rather "flowery" but are so because of how they are performed or because of exibitions (Even Boxing has a few flashy moves that are illegal because they are too powerful). Or rather many martial arts, especially armed martial arts, teach moves because they are showey.

Quote

I think you're assuming an awful lot from just a little information Kohaku

I often don't read everything Kohaku says mostly because it isn't important to what I want to respond to.

For example I will now complete the Kohaku quote and see if there was anything I needed to listen to.

Quote

You can't make these transitive claims that because jump-kicking someone from behind works between unarmed and unarmored combatants when one combatant is unawares will automatically mean there shouldn't be anything different against an armed, armored, aware opponent.  And that's exactly the claim that's being made because you aren't bothering to make the distinction

Nothing. I said that there are "Jumping attacks" in martial arts and even armed martial arts. So everything after this is moot because it doesn't need to be informed by what was said here.

So my suggestion when someone makes huge posts is that really not everything said is important and you don't have to respond to everything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 07, 2013, 05:57:30 pm

Effective, practical jump attacks work on the same principle as how cougars kill things, i.e., a tackle. Body mass of combatant + gravity = lots of force, unless they're tiny. The physics mechanics for jump attacks would likely be used for birds of prey dive-bombing things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 07, 2013, 06:17:02 pm

I think a jump attack would certainly let one put a lot of force behind an attack, but you'd need some measure of skill and balance if you don't want to hurt yourself or immediately lose the advantage.

Also, I think birds of prey largely decellerate drastically before tackling or grasping their prey. If they collided at full speed they'd risk serious injury, whereas their dive-bombing technique allows them to locate prey from high above and close in very quickly with minimal time for the prey to react or escape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 07, 2013, 11:27:47 pm

i think some people are generalizing a little too much, so just for information:

-while there rarely are any cases where this is true, attacking with both hands at once does not inevitably come with a disadvantage
-remove the thing about "rarely" from the point above once you realize that blocking basically means attacking an attacking arm/leg/weapon
-jumping and attacking at once does not mean you have to jump towards your target for it to be of use
-jumping does not automatically lessen your balance, it can actually often be used to improve your balance

i only have experience with karate and kung fu, but im sure this is true for other martial arts and forms of combat as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 07, 2013, 11:53:49 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 07, 2013, 06:17:02 pm

I think a jump attack would certainly let one put a lot of force behind an attack, but you'd need some measure of skill and balance if you don't want to hurt yourself or immediately lose the advantage.

Also, I think birds of prey largely decellerate drastically before tackling or grasping their prey. If they collided at full speed they'd risk serious injury, whereas their dive-bombing technique allows them to locate prey from high above and close in very quickly with minimal time for the prey to react or escape.

While not using the full speed of their dives, the purpose of the dive is not merely to reach the prey, only to slow down then attack from a standstill. Peregrine falcons peak at 120 miles per hour but still impact with their talons at about 80 mph. Fact is, most raptors have strong, flexible bones in their feet for high-speed impact, though they usually finish off their prey by tearing the throat. Golden eagles can and have broken the arms of falconers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 08, 2013, 12:42:52 am

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 08, 2013, 12:50:00 am

Hmm... I can just imagine an insane adventure trying to ride a claymore to the ground like a pointy pogo stick to try and impale someone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 08, 2013, 01:59:34 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 08, 2013, 12:42:52 am

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

Seeing as nothing like this exists in real life, flying creatures with material culture and weapons, modelling it "realistically" would be difficult. But I guess on things like this, requiring both imagination due to novelty and real consideration for physics (unlike magic), we get into the really fun territory of speculative fiction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bralbaard on March 08, 2013, 03:00:46 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 08, 2013, 01:59:34 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 08, 2013, 12:42:52 am

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

Seeing as nothing like this exists in real life, flying creatures with material culture and weapons, modelling it "realistically" would be difficult. But I guess on things like this, requiring both imagination due to novelty and real consideration for physics (unlike magic), we get into the really fun territory of speculative fiction.

They would use archers only, raining death from above while safely out of reach from your melee squad, or your archers who would have to fire upwards.
There is certainly no need for them to risk getting hurt while fighting those puny humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 08, 2013, 03:49:41 am

...humans?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 08, 2013, 04:01:21 am

Quote from: Bralbaard on March 08, 2013, 03:00:46 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 08, 2013, 01:59:34 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 08, 2013, 12:42:52 am

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

Seeing as nothing like this exists in real life, flying creatures with material culture and weapons, modelling it "realistically" would be difficult. But I guess on things like this, requiring both imagination due to novelty and real consideration for physics (unlike magic), we get into the really fun territory of speculative fiction.

They would use archers only, raining death from above while safely out of reach from your melee squad, or your archers who would have to fire upwards.
There is certainly no need for them to risk getting hurt while fighting those puny humans.

Except, you know if they run out of arrows. I'd expect a fighting style involving building momentum as the wingbeat brings the body up, and then delivering the strike as the body sinks between wingbeats. Probably striking the head and shoulders. They'd likely use something pole-based, maybe with a weight or pointy bit on the bottom, for thumping faces with. Things might really be interesting for combat with other aerial foes, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 08, 2013, 09:12:00 am

Urist Vultan, Hawkman Prince: "Onward my brave Hawkmen!  And may this be known forever, as Flash Gordon's Day!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on March 08, 2013, 12:57:12 pm

While down there, behind his hardened walls Merciless Ming prepare his uber powerful super secret gatling crossbow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 08, 2013, 03:05:53 pm

When the new version comes out, will the sheriff once again acknowledge reports of dwarven violence? I.e, will we be able abuse the Justice System to supress the violent populace like the good old days? :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 08, 2013, 04:48:48 pm

Quote from: Spish on March 08, 2013, 03:05:53 pm

When the new version comes out, will the sheriff once again acknowledge reports of dwarven violence? I.e, will we be able abuse the Justice System to supress the violent populace like the good old days? :D

It's unlikely that the next version will have any specific fixes unrelated to the active development, but the bugfix period afterwards could have that fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on March 09, 2013, 01:52:01 am

Quote from: Caldfir on March 06, 2013, 03:39:52 pm

It might be possible for a retired player fortress to be used as a connection in this way, but not during play.  In fact it would probably work to just claim a site that spans the two continents and do nothing about tunnels or bridges. 

That is to say, if fortresses spanning continents are considered to be a "connection" at all ever then it is likely to be all of them always regardless of local constructions.  Otherwise fortresses simply aren't considered connections at all.  For the upcoming release it is almost guaranteed to be one of these two. 

In the future, when armies are moving during play, and it becomes possible for one to march through your fort, it might be addressed (getting a reasonable hierarchical path grid for the fort surface wouldn't be too awful) but essentially the issue is getting the army to march through the fort in a non-insane way, when the fortress might be designed in a number of pathological ways.  It isn't impossible, but is on the level of difficulty of a full pathfinding rewrite (in fact, to do the desired task efficiently, some kind of room-based pathfinding algorithm would be almost a necessity) so it won't make it in as something Toady "forgot to mention".

This is one of these places where non-perfect pathfinding would be realistic, though!  Why would an army whose members have no connection to your site know its way around your fort, if the path wasn't obvious? 

Really, I'd think the most realistic thing to have happen if an army can't get through your fort would be for them to march up anyway as if they could, and have their inability to get through cause a diplomatic incident (... or worse) between your fort and the entity controlling the army.  It'd be reasonable for them to interpret trying to prevent free passage of their armies as contending for military power yourself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 09, 2013, 02:56:13 am

Yeah, and that would still be a nightmare to work on programmatically. It would be an ideal solution, yes, but would it be an ideal use of time? Probably not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on March 09, 2013, 03:48:48 am

Quote from: Spish on March 08, 2013, 03:05:53 pm

When the new version comes out, will the sheriff once again acknowledge reports of dwarven violence? I.e, will we be able abuse the Justice System to supress the violent populace like the good old days? :D

You asked about this in a previous FOTF question, and I made a bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6235) for it.  It is on my list to send to Toady once we get to the 2nd round of bug fixing.  If you have a save showing it in the process of happening, please upload one to DFFD (http://dffd.wimbli.com) and post a link in the bug report (or PM me the link and I'll post it).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 09, 2013, 08:16:49 am

Quote from: Bralbaard on March 08, 2013, 03:00:46 am

raining death from above

Warning, freakingly huge image. I don't know why is so freaking huge.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://imaginarywars.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-27-10-49-56.jpg)

 :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 09, 2013, 10:35:48 am

White Dwarf is a pretty nice magazine, though it got to be a bit high-end now. For some reason it seems more popular on the east coast than the west.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 09, 2013, 06:25:53 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 09, 2013, 08:16:49 am

Quote from: Bralbaard on March 08, 2013, 03:00:46 am

raining death from above

Warning, freakingly huge image. I don't know why is so freaking huge.
 :P

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[img width=500]http://imaginarywars.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-27-10-49-56.jpg[/img]
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Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://imaginarywars.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-27-10-49-56.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 10, 2013, 12:57:29 am

Quote from: Dwarfu on March 09, 2013, 03:48:48 am

You asked about this in a previous FOTF question, and I made a bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6235) for it.  It is on my list to send to Toady once we get to the 2nd round of bug fixing.  If you have a save showing it in the process of happening, please upload one to DFFD (http://dffd.wimbli.com) and post a link in the bug report (or PM me the link and I'll post it).

Precisely why I'm asking again, Toady responded by simply admitting he didn't know the justice system was broken. Despite having gone through a drastic overhaul, my dungeons (much like my heart) are emptier than ever; it is a waste.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on March 10, 2013, 05:36:14 pm

Add a toaster creature with the prefstring "for my ability to slice bread".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 10, 2013, 05:41:17 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on March 10, 2013, 05:36:14 pm

Add a toaster creature with the prefstring "for my ability to slice bread".

i really should

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 10, 2013, 06:15:22 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on March 10, 2013, 05:36:14 pm

Add a toaster creature with the prefstring "for my ability to slice bread".

Wow, I was just reading SCP when I come over here and there's a random post about my own description here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 10, 2013, 09:54:30 pm

Hey Toady, it's ok and healthy to take days off! Don't burn yourself!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KrEstoF on March 10, 2013, 11:27:47 pm

Toady, could you explain in more detail what your plans for this "pulping" are? Is it basically some sort of hit point system for each body part, where if it accumulates enough bludgeoning (or I suppose even slashing) damage, it gets turned into a useless pulp? Will the affects of pulping be gradual for the most part? And also, would it now be possible for bogeymen or any weak animal for that matter to literally punch you to death, reducing your adventurer to a bloodied pulp, without, say, just disabling the lungs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 11, 2013, 01:04:35 am

They can already bruise your guts and internal organs to a bloody pulp, causing death from organ failure, but more often just kill you with traumatic brain injury.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fniff on March 11, 2013, 01:07:46 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 10, 2013, 06:15:22 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on March 10, 2013, 05:36:14 pm

Add a toaster creature with the prefstring "for my ability to slice bread".

Wow, I was just reading SCP when I come over here and there's a random post about my own description here.

Wow, you guys are such SCP nerds, you're talking about me like a twat. You guys are such dorks when you are talking about me in the first person. I mean come on, I'm not even real!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 11, 2013, 08:44:00 am

Don't you worry about a thing Toady, it's the best for the game for you to stay cool and have some relaxing time away from the keyboard. Sometimes it's even helpful as your might come back with a fresh idea or some new found perspective on X module or Y procedure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 11, 2013, 12:03:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 11, 2013, 08:44:00 am

Don't you worry about a thing Toady, it's the best for the game for you to stay cool and have some relaxing time away from the keyboard. Sometimes it's even helpful as your might come back with a fresh idea or some new found perspective on X module or Y procedure.

Yeah, I know that when I'm working on modding something, I'll get stumped on how to do something, and it'll hit me later on how to do it perfectly.

On an unrelated note,
Will we ever see plants with the ability to move? Either those simalar to magical treants or as mundane as the common tumbleweed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 11, 2013, 12:40:48 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 11, 2013, 12:03:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 11, 2013, 08:44:00 am

Don't you worry about a thing Toady, it's the best for the game for you to stay cool and have some relaxing time away from the keyboard. Sometimes it's even helpful as your might come back with a fresh idea or some new found perspective on X module or Y procedure.

Yeah, I know that when I'm working on modding something, I'll get stumped on how to do something, and it'll hit me later on how to do it perfectly.

On an unrelated note,
Will we ever see plants with the ability to move? Either those simalar to magical treants or as mundane as the common tumbleweed?

Grimelings are supposed to be living weed (they aren't yet), complete with the enigmatic VEGETATION token. Older versions also had a "dummy" treant creature that never appeared because it had no biomes with that same token. These treants were in the pre-release game as a magical power of elf druids.

So, all signs point to yes but, as so often, there's no set timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 11, 2013, 02:37:27 pm

Grimelings do have all their tissues the same as those for plants, which in effect makes them unkillable in combat. They don't have need for photosynthesis or fertile soil to survive, but right now neither do plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 12, 2013, 02:23:04 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 11, 2013, 02:37:27 pm

Grimelings do have all their tissues the same as those for plants, which in effect makes them unkillable in combat. They don't have need for photosynthesis or fertile soil to survive, but right now neither do plants.

And then all of sudden, Grimeling trees.
Or Anvil trees. Or candy trees.


Who said money doesn't grow on the trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 12, 2013, 08:24:09 am

That will be a thing in the next release.

See prior discusion concerning steel short sword fruiting trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 12, 2013, 09:41:27 am

I wonder when we'll be able to have trees that throw their steel-pointy-fruit at you...

Say, are we going to see anything like randomly generated trees with bizarre fruits or blossoms? Like random syndrome fruit or miscellaneous items?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 12, 2013, 10:28:20 am

Are we going to see a return of the economy some day? If so how do you think it would be managed?
[craziness]I know this is more a suggestion, but the way I see it a fortress is well a fortress, a military thing where is okay to order everyone around, but after a while, if it becomes a mountain home or a "city" A reduced control over the civilian activity could work, where you designate workspaces, rooms and dig-able areas where the civilians can go around their businesses, make the workshops they want, work in whatever they want and pay you taxes over it, then those taxes could be used to pay salaries and equipment of state miners/soldiers/public workers/bureaucrats, and fund government/military constructions like walls, fortifications, siege equipment and other things.[/craziness]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 10:46:30 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 12, 2013, 10:28:20 am

Are we going to see a return of the economy some day? If so how do you think it would be managed?
[craziness]I know this is more a suggestion, but the way I see it a fortress is well a fortress, a military thing where is okay to order everyone around, but after a while, if it becomes a mountain home or a "city" A reduced control over the civilian activity could work, where you designate workspaces, rooms and dig-able areas where the civilians can go around their businesses, make the workshops they want, work in whatever they want and pay you taxes over it, then those taxes could be used to pay salaries and equipment of state miners/soldiers/public workers/bureaucrats, and fund government/military constructions like walls, fortifications, siege equipment and other things.[/craziness]

Its going to return sometime, but is there any indication of how many releases it will take before that get worked on, even as guesstimate given the state of things now? At the moment the original release schedule has been totally changed, so we've got world activation and sites have been restored and are present. I can see that taverns will be a thing in the very near future, possibly next major release or alternatively as a minor release after the big one comes.

Is it just me or is the front page http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 12, 2013, 10:58:32 am

It's down since yesterday for me, well yesterday it was kind of random where sometimes it loaded and other times it doesn't. Today is as death as Chavez.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 12, 2013, 11:07:42 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 12, 2013, 10:28:20 am

Are we going to see a return of the economy some day? If so how do you think it would be managed?
[craziness]I know this is more a suggestion, but the way I see it a fortress is well a fortress, a military thing where is okay to order everyone around, but after a while, if it becomes a mountain home or a "city" A reduced control over the civilian activity could work, where you designate workspaces, rooms and dig-able areas where the civilians can go around their businesses, make the workshops they want, work in whatever they want and pay you taxes over it, then those taxes could be used to pay salaries and equipment of state miners/soldiers/public workers/bureaucrats, and fund government/military constructions like walls, fortifications, siege equipment and other things.[/craziness]

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 10:46:30 am

Its going to return sometime, but is there any indication of how many releases it will take before that get worked on, even as guesstimate given the state of things now? At the moment the original release schedule has been totally changed, so we've got world activation and sites have been restored and are present. I can see that taverns will be a thing in the very near future, possibly next major release or alternatively as a minor release after the big one comes.

Yeah, it'll happen when taverns happen, as discussed in DF Talk #12 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html):

Quote

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...

[...]

Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there. So that kind of thing for them in particular, just dwarves from your fortress coming in, it's really just going to be an activation of music and like I said story telling. I don't know if there's going to be a particular service industry, like people serving drinks to your own dwarves, if they just go to the stockpile and grab some stuff, they don't pay for it or anything, just hang out and it's just an extension of the meeting hall/dining hall concept for them. Where it gets more interesting is when you involve people that aren't economically a part of your fortress, then you've got people that you'll actually be able to charge for drinks, charge for staying, if you want to: it might not be something you want to do to a diplomat, but it might the dwarven way of doing things. I haven't quite decided about that particular one. But you've also got merchants coming in, and depending on the location of your fortress you might also have travellers showing up or bandits showing up. There's nothing that says that the bandits don't hang out at a dwarven tavern and then move on, because there's plenty of them just lingering around, and also if you build your fortress out in the wilds they're more likely to be the closest people. This might be the time when we start making adventurer type people and mercenary type people move around a little bit and in that case you'd have some additional visitors there as well. I know in the first release which is going to predate the tavern release there's going to be people moving between towns and villages, going to markets and so on, and depending on the location of your fortress you could bump into some people's associated movements like that, although jamming your fortress in between the villages and towns ... that's a little tight. It'd be kind of funny, but it's a strange location for a dwarf fortress.

[...]

Toady:   So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.

Given that big releases are always followed by upheaval and reshuffling of dev priorities, it's hard to say when that'll be.  Some older quotes on the economy:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1457383;topicseen#msg1457383

Quote from: Toady One

Quote

Quote from: Baughn

I mean market economics. Supply and demand.

As an example, currently if you build only luxurious bedrooms, the poor dwarves don't get to use them at all yet most bedrooms will stay empty. That's of course not realistic; the price will be what the market can bear, and no more - basically, the dwarves should bid on bedrooms.

(As an aside, "and no more" only applies where there are no ongoing maintenance costs, but since such things aren't in the game yet.. well, if the market couldn't bear the maintenance they'd go derelict, not just stay empty.)

Of course, bedrooms are just the most obvious example. This applies to everything that enters the economy, including money itself; minting more (without a corresponding increase in economic size) should cause inflation, minting too little deflation - and as real life shows, both can be very bad things (though especially deflation). Insufficient money would cause the economy to not work properly, too much.. well, that depends on how, exactly, the new money is distributed.

I can think of plausible exceptions to the economy, like nobles not wanting the rabble to have rooms as good as they do, but they should be exceptions - not the rule. Which is to say, first make the market economy work, then consider noble/personality-driven exceptions.

Quote from: Quatch

Will dwarves, other than nobles*, get mood-thoughts from encountering dwarves at different relative wealth. Such as a poor dwarf seeing a rich dwarf. Would that depress or inspire? Instill envy? Can dwarves sense the magnitude of wealth difference?

Yeah, supply and demand are up for the trader role, and they'll start once we have the amount of things counted up on sites and the availability established through trade connections.  Demand is a bit trickier, but it'll be more clear once the resources are in use.  That will propogate over to your fortress vs. the caravans.  The specific elements of the dwarven economy that exist more in isolation could be handled once that's up, but I'm not sure which of them will survive.  The introduction of sprawl around the fort could change the rental situation drastically, but the overall price setting would apply there, assuming rooms in your fortress aren't so rare and the outside population so vast that they aren't all the exceptions you mentioned.  It's hard to say how it'll turn out.

As for the reactions of one dwarf to another, part of the problem has been that the personality system we are using doesn't really lend itself to questions like this.  It is a very non-judgmental system.  We're working out some changes to it that'll work for villains and also apply in situations like this, where a dwarf might be given to envious thoughts, for instance, though it's a special case and there are going to be a lot of avenues that open up once we have the new information.  I'll have to be careful with the distributions here to stop all of your dwarves from being deeply, deeply flawed, beyond what you might expect from dwarves.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2154630;topicseen#msg2154630

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: Jiri Petru

Are there any plans for an in-fortress economy in the near future (I mean as part of the next few updates)? It's not specifically mentioned on the list but seeing as this is the "caravan arc", i though might be hidden under a larger goal.

When we get to taverns and inns, we'll see what comes up.  That would be a time to try something, but I'm going to stay focused on the stated goals as best as I can.  Which isn't saying much, I guess, he he he.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 11:47:16 am

Well the site is fixed now for me.

If taverns are going in the next big release, that means we can expect to have the economy up then. It may be bugged. If its going to be done in a lot of smaller releases*, which I think would be preferable, it may go in before taverns.

One of the big advantages to having some kind of economy is it would allow us to build stores when expanding the fortress.

An example of a small short-term release was the addition of minecarts to Dwarf Fortress.

*Kerbal Space Program is shifting from doing big releases to doing more smaller releases over a shorter period of time. I don't know how feasible this is for dwarf fortress but KSP changed some of its version management tools, which allowed them to do the smaller releases without messing up the development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: qav1 on March 12, 2013, 07:38:18 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 11:47:16 am

Well the site is fixed now for me.

If taverns are going in the next big release, that means we can expect to have the economy up then. It may be bugged. If its going to be done in a lot of smaller releases*, which I think would be preferable, it may go in before taverns.

One of the big advantages to having some kind of economy is it would allow us to build stores when expanding the fortress.

An example of a small short-term release was the addition of minecarts to Dwarf Fortress.

*Kerbal Space Program is shifting from doing big releases to doing more smaller releases over a shorter period of time. I don't know how feasible this is for dwarf fortress but KSP changed some of its version management tools, which allowed them to do the smaller releases without messing up the development.

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 07:57:16 pm

Quote from: qav1 on March 12, 2013, 07:38:18 pm

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update :D

This. I think having smaller updates with the same aims would really help with things. If we had, for example, elf sites released in October or November or whenever they were done, we'd have a hands-on example of how the multi-tile trees were doing. It would save a lot of the massive clean-up that happens before the big releases and I'd strongly recommend it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 12, 2013, 08:41:34 pm

The objective of "more smaller releases releases" has been a stated goal several times in recent history.  While sometimes this is effective, sometimes it simply isn't feasible, and it's not at all clear to me that it is actually "better", despite the fact that "more frequent releases" sounds better.

A longer release schedule means that various community games and mods have a chance to update and standardize.  I have also found that I only really bother playing a new fort when I know that a new DF version is a long way off, since I know I will have time to complete the fort to my satisfaction before there are new features to tempt me away from it. 

I'd say that probably the optimal release time would probably actually be somewhere around maybe 6 months, plus however much time it takes to get the minor bugfix releases out.  Anything less than 3 months and I know I would personally spend all my time on the forums "waiting for the next release" rather than actually playing. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 12, 2013, 08:59:46 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2013, 07:57:16 pm

Quote from: qav1 on March 12, 2013, 07:38:18 pm

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update :D

This. I think having smaller updates with the same aims would really help with things. If we had, for example, elf sites released in October or November or whenever they were done, we'd have a hands-on example of how the multi-tile trees were doing. It would save a lot of the massive clean-up that happens before the big releases and I'd strongly recommend it.

The problem with this particular example is that the release had a lot of open ends when the elf sites were done. Goblin sites were unfinished because Toady needed some elements from the dwarf sites, and the whole army interaction wasn't done - which was the reason why non-human sites were tackled in the first place. Development isn't always a linear process. Toady talked about it in the latest DF talk.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: DF Talk #20

Toady One: [...] we started back with non-lethal combat and bandits harassing people in town, right, and then we moved on, we added tracking, and we have armies moving around and then we went over to the sites, because we needed the sites to be added in and then the original point of the thing was to get some of this birth stuff succession stuff going on, which is what I'm right in the middle of now. So we're finally touching upon that but there were points, like with the army part, I needed the sites to get that done to my satisfaction and now that I've done a lot with the sites, I can go back and do the army stuff that I didn't finish. So there's going to be a lot of, now, revisiting of the old topics that were set up for this release. I don't think we've had any really terrible feature creep this time, it's not like one of the other releases that had nothing to do with night creatures and then ended up being three or four months worth of work on night creatures, right, so this has all been very topical. But we have to go back and revisit a lot of things now because we have been kind of skipping from point to point as we need things, because none of these things, the features that we've added in could really be done in isolation. They could be done up to a certain point in isolation, then you need to work on another one, and now we need to come back and link them all together again and clean up some unfinished business. So it'll be a little while yet, it's not like when I finish succession it's like Boom! release, that's not how it's going to be, I have to go back and clean some stuff up. That's kind of normal though, I always have to go back and fix stuff up.

And by the way, we had a small release last year. v0.34.08 introduced minecarts and the hauling changes. It was done in one and a half months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 12, 2013, 09:43:36 pm

Not to mention that elf sites also required the running and jumping and climbing necessary to navigate elf sites.

The Toad is on record as in favor of shorter release intervals, but sometimes a feature is interwoven with many other features, and sometimes Toady adds things just to make the release fun instead of "well it's the exact same game but with bigger trees." As long as we stay away from post-40d times, I'm perfectly content.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ravaught on March 13, 2013, 01:54:47 am

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 13, 2013, 02:55:10 am

Quote from: ravaught on March 13, 2013, 01:54:47 am

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

I'm sure someone will dig up various quotes giving Toady's previous answers to this briefly, but apart from that, I think it's a bit unfair to act as if there's never any work done on the UI. There's been tweaks and improvements to it most of the previous few releases such as being able to quickly assign dwarves into military squads, splitting up certain information windows into tabs and other small tweaks here and there. From what he's said previously he'll probably keep doing it this way, adding where appropriate and making small improvements over time to keep up with the new additions, and hopefully at some point get into a possessed mood to fix the proffession assignment menu. It's workable as it is so I don't really see any big rush to fix it right now ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 13, 2013, 03:11:22 am

One update a year is fine for me.
I think it's easier like this. Every 3 months or 6 months mean more time to debug the game, and less to create new features; because he will take more time to make the game actually playable. I think it's easier to fix all the bugs in a few weeks, ONCE a year, than do it every months to make a new version playable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on March 13, 2013, 03:37:50 am

Quote from: Inarius on March 13, 2013, 03:11:22 am

One update a year is fine for me.
I think it's easier like this. Every 3 months or 6 months mean more time to debug the game, and less to create new features; because he will take more time to make the game actually playable. I think it's easier to fix all the bugs in a few weeks, ONCE a year, than do it every months to make a new version playable.

Fixing bug in something that you coded year ago is much harder and time consumingb that fixing bugs you made three months ago.

You have to fix them anyway and the earlier bug is found, the easier and faster it is to fix.

Not to mention that if source of bug is wrong approach or code pattern, it saves time rewriting anything that made use of it in subsequent development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 13, 2013, 07:52:00 am

Quote from: ravaught on March 13, 2013, 01:54:47 am

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

The last UI updates were the split unit screen in 0.34.01, the stone tabs in 0.34.03, the squad assignments (and nicknames) in 0.34.08 and the resizable unit, stocks, world gen and embark screens in 0.34.10.

But like for all features, there is no timeline for UI updates.

The parser you mentioned comes up frequently as a suggestion as well (some call it a third party interface or API). There was a lengthy discussion thread a few years ago, and Toady wrote a detailed response (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg237594#msg237594) why he's against it. And here's some more explanation (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg238694#msg238694) a bit later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 13, 2013, 08:45:06 am

Quote from: Caldfir on March 12, 2013, 08:41:34 pm

The objective of "more smaller releases releases" has been a stated goal several times in recent history.  While sometimes this is effective, sometimes it simply isn't feasible, and it's not at all clear to me that it is actually "better", despite the fact that "more frequent releases" sounds better.

A longer release schedule means that various community games and mods have a chance to update and standardize.  I have also found that I only really bother playing a new fort when I know that a new DF version is a long way off, since I know I will have time to complete the fort to my satisfaction before there are new features to tempt me away from it. 

I'd say that probably the optimal release time would probably actually be somewhere around maybe 6 months, plus however much time it takes to get the minor bugfix releases out.  Anything less than 3 months and I know I would personally spend all my time on the forums "waiting for the next release" rather than actually playing.

This. Also this long development times take out the save game compatibility issues that might bother The Toad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on March 13, 2013, 10:47:30 am

i found the devlog a la "i was taking a peaceful walk in the park, when suddenly... relatives!" amusing.
toady, your devlog from 2013/03/07 makes me believe dodging is now an active(read: player controlled) action instead of something automatic, is this true? can you give us some details on how this will work? are there other mechanics players will have more control over themselves with the next release?

/unrelated
-i have strong incentive to believe, that toady knows what he is doing. people trying to tell him what to do probably just waste their and his time.
-i can barely read anything written in green when reading from my mobile phone: people, use _limegreen_ how you are supposed to, at least read the OP of a thread before responding please, show some common sense.

edit: typos, as always... >.>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomcost on March 13, 2013, 12:43:25 pm

Will Thralls have the same pulping mechanics as animated dead?

I hope that not, it will make them much less scary.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 13, 2013, 03:18:00 pm

Quote from: Tomcost on March 13, 2013, 12:43:25 pm

Will Thralls have the same pulping mechanics as animated dead?

I hope that not, it will make them much less scary.

In all likelihood, yes. There isn't much reason to make an exception in the code just because you're trying to pulp thrall-flesh rather than elf-flesh. They could get damage reduction (we already have tokens for that) if Toady feels that pulping makes thralls too easy to kill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 13, 2013, 08:30:47 pm

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomcost on March 13, 2013, 08:44:09 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 13, 2013, 08:30:47 pm

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

The question would be then: Do pulping only happen when the body dies? If yes, then thralls wouldn't be able to be pulped. If not, you could pulp a body part still attached to a body. Or at least that's what I understand.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 13, 2013, 09:44:03 pm

Quote from: Tomcost on March 13, 2013, 08:44:09 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 13, 2013, 08:30:47 pm

But thralls aren't risen like normal undead, they go straight from life to unlife without actually dying, and cannot get back up once they're down. There's no reason to pulp them.

Unless, of course, you can just mash any corpse into permanently broken salsa after death just in case there's a necromancer hiding under a grate or something, or you're just brutal.

The question would be then: Do pulping only happen when the body dies? If yes, then thralls wouldn't be able to be pulped. If not, you could pulp a body part still attached to a body. Or at least that's what I understand.

The devlog covered this:

Quote from: devlog

03/07/2013 Toady One Next up is a list of old combat mechanics that need to be moved over to the new action system. Every creature's "turns" used to work more or less with a single delay variable which was used all over the place, and many non-combat actions will still work that way in the next release (since I don't need to put it off further converting the 80 remaining minor cases), but there are some combat activities that should be converted now so that that system at least is homogeneous -- dodging, twisting weapons, that sort of stuff. In particular, the last tweaks I need to do for combat reaction moments rely on getting all of the timers interlaced, and I'll need all the combat actions for that to avoid weird arbitrary waits that the reactions don't see. Once that's more fluid, we'll have a clearer picture of exactly what sort of combat mess we have overall. Hopefully a mess that'll be ready for lots of wholesome undead pulping. I guess living things would get pulped too by default sometimes, although rotten tissue should probably be more pulpable, like those month-old forensic cubes they find in trash cans and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 13, 2013, 09:47:52 pm

Would pulping just apply to anything coming from a creature by default, allowing ridiculous things like pulping bronze or gabbro?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 13, 2013, 09:52:37 pm

HugoLuman, that is dwarven manufacture!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 13, 2013, 10:07:56 pm

No, dwarven manufacture requires workshops to do things like that with bare hands or random weapons. Adventurers have no workshops!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 13, 2013, 10:14:57 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 13, 2013, 10:07:56 pm

No, dwarven manufacture requires workshops to do things like that with bare hands or random weapons. Adventurers have no workshops!

The Dfhack guys would like a word with you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 13, 2013, 10:25:41 pm

The way I envision "pulping" is just a step beyond all-red damage is currently.  For things that move under their own power, pulping shouldn't really have any effect when it happens, since a fully damaged limb is unusable. 

I'm pretty sure that thralls aren't going to be any easier to deal with, since their whole deal seems to mainly be immunity to pain (which seems to afford an enormous advantage in combat), and if you can get a part fully damaged then it can't be used anyway, regardless of pulping. 

The only place it ought to show up is with zombies, and perhaps material-based creatures, though once again, I would expect that mangling a bronze leg into a pulp wouldn't be easy to do (and I suppose "dusting" or "rubble-ing" might be better descriptors).  The mechanic is (from what I understand) something to handle situations where the damage done to a part is extremely extensive, to the point where it seems strange that it can still be used by the creature. 

What you should probably actually be worried about is how much HARDER the (proper non-thrall) undead are going to be in upcoming versions.  Right now the fact they use hit points makes them very very easy to defeat.  The pulping changes mean they are going to be moved back to the standard combat mechanics, but with some way to damage them beyond repair, but this will probably be very difficult to do.  My expectation is that zombies are going to end up somewhat stronger than their living or husked counterparts, and that unless Toady does some reaction-timer stuff along with the combat mechanics, necromancers are going to be (even more) completely unstoppable. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 13, 2013, 11:45:23 pm

I don't think they're going to get stronger. The point of pulping is to make Necromancers not completely unstoppable, not to give their minions a weakness in compensation for a power increase. The point of raised undead is that they can be called up in huge numbers to overwhelm defenses, while individually being cannon fodder, while husks, being rarer, are very tough enemies but only have 1 life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 13, 2013, 11:50:50 pm

Pulping is so that:

1. Reraising is no longer permanent.

2. (I think) the arbitrary hit-point system that undead currently use is no longer necessary.

3. It'll probably help with the whole "skull turning into dust and somehow not losing structural integrity" issue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ravaught on March 14, 2013, 01:41:29 am

Quote from: Trif on March 13, 2013, 07:52:00 am

Quote from: ravaught on March 13, 2013, 01:54:47 am

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

The last UI updates were the split unit screen in 0.34.01, the stone tabs in 0.34.03, the squad assignments (and nicknames) in 0.34.08 and the resizable unit, stocks, world gen and embark screens in 0.34.10.

But like for all features, there is no timeline for UI updates.

The parser you mentioned comes up frequently as a suggestion as well (some call it a third party interface or API). There was a lengthy discussion thread a few years ago, and Toady wrote a detailed response (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg237594#msg237594) why he's against it.

Yep, he sure did. I read them then, and I read them again today just to refresh my memory. They don't change anything, honestly. I have an immense amount of respect for Toady and what he does as a developer, but that doesn't mean that I am not going to continue questioning what I see as, and Toady admits as, bad design decisions. In those posts you linked he openly acknowledges the poor state of the UI, the wacky keybindings and other such things. He just says he 'doesn't like working on them.' As for the third party interfaces, well, he certainly has a right to do as he pleases for whatever reasons he wants. I just hope it doesn't bite him in the long run.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 14, 2013, 02:49:04 am

I just thought of this after reading about various mega project works and epic feats of skill performed by players, but they aren't things that legends will remember, for example, building a magma cannon, or having an adventurer swim across an entire ocean.

So this makes me have to ask, Will we ever get the ability to enter in our own entries into the legends, so that we can remember specific events that the game wouldn't normally recognize?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 14, 2013, 06:02:37 am

Quote from: Caldfir on March 13, 2013, 10:25:41 pm

The way I envision "pulping" is just a step beyond all-red damage is currently.  For things that move under their own power, pulping shouldn't really have any effect when it happens, since a fully damaged limb is unusable. 

I'm pretty sure that thralls aren't going to be any easier to deal with, since their whole deal seems to mainly be immunity to pain (which seems to afford an enormous advantage in combat), and if you can get a part fully damaged then it can't be used anyway, regardless of pulping. 

The only place it ought to show up is with zombies, and perhaps material-based creatures, though once again, I would expect that mangling a bronze leg into a pulp wouldn't be easy to do (and I suppose "dusting" or "rubble-ing" might be better descriptors).  The mechanic is (from what I understand) something to handle situations where the damage done to a part is extremely extensive, to the point where it seems strange that it can still be used by the creature. 

What you should probably actually be worried about is how much HARDER the (proper non-thrall) undead are going to be in upcoming versions.  Right now the fact they use hit points makes them very very easy to defeat.  The pulping changes mean they are going to be moved back to the standard combat mechanics, but with some way to damage them beyond repair, but this will probably be very difficult to do.  My expectation is that zombies are going to end up somewhat stronger than their living or husked counterparts, and that unless Toady does some reaction-timer stuff along with the combat mechanics, necromancers are going to be (even more) completely unstoppable. 

Creatures do get an arbitrary buff if they are killed and then raised and I assume it was done to make them more difficult. Find a creature that is skinny, kill it, raise it, and then check its description. You'll notice that it's now giant and packed with muscles. To be scientific you can weigh the corpse before it's raised and then again once you kill the zombie; you'll see that the zombie corpse weighs more. I did some testing on dragons and their zombies for a thread where I was trying to prove if undead worldgen dragons start out fully grown but the changing weight of zombies thwarted me. There was also the zombie bacon thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 14, 2013, 06:38:59 am

How does the hospital handle pulped limbs? Will a pulped hand get amputated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2013, 10:17:25 am

Quote from: Trif on March 14, 2013, 06:38:59 am

How does the hospital handle pulped limbs? Will a pulped hand get amputated?

My expectation is that pulping causes the body part to completely collapse, with the remnants falling to the ground, leaving nothing to amputate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 14, 2013, 10:31:26 am

I'm the only one feeling uncomfortable with all the pulping? I mean, it's going to be used only against undead? How is decided when to pulp what and who?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2013, 10:48:38 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 14, 2013, 10:31:26 am

I'm the only one feeling uncomfortable with all the pulping? I mean, it's going to be used only against undead? How is decided when to pulp what and who?

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 13, 2013, 09:44:03 pm

The devlog covered this:

Quote from: devlog

03/07/2013 Toady One Next up is a list of old combat mechanics that need to be moved over to the new action system. Every creature's "turns" used to work more or less with a single delay variable which was used all over the place, and many non-combat actions will still work that way in the next release (since I don't need to put it off further converting the 80 remaining minor cases), but there are some combat activities that should be converted now so that that system at least is homogeneous -- dodging, twisting weapons, that sort of stuff. In particular, the last tweaks I need to do for combat reaction moments rely on getting all of the timers interlaced, and I'll need all the combat actions for that to avoid weird arbitrary waits that the reactions don't see. Once that's more fluid, we'll have a clearer picture of exactly what sort of combat mess we have overall. Hopefully a mess that'll be ready for lots of wholesome undead pulping. I guess living things would get pulped too by default sometimes, although rotten tissue should probably be more pulpable, like those month-old forensic cubes they find in trash cans and stuff.

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 13, 2013, 09:47:52 pm

Would pulping just apply to anything coming from a creature by default, allowing ridiculous things like pulping bronze or gabbro?

While the term "pulping" is ridiculous when applied to bronze, the concept is not.  You know how, no matter how many times you "shatter" or "dent" a bronze colossus's arm, it never falls apart?  Pulping will hopefully fix that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 14, 2013, 12:30:08 pm

I really hope a pulped appendage does NOT fall off.  You'd see your war duckling fleeing from his sentry post dragging a useless bag of wing bone paste from his shoulder after being knocked back by the goblin maceman.

Also, since the BONE layer should provide only a fraction of its original resistance, it should be easier to, subsequently, cause the area to sail off in an arc.

I am actually hoping that "pulp" isn't, as a state, a thing, like bruised or shattered.  I'd like to think it's more detail and/or analysis, as well as persistence, in the tissue damage data.  Thereby, IF Urist McUnluckySwordswarf's Right Arm has had 8 of the wrist bones broken, as well as a cumulative sum of 8 fractures between both the radius and ulna, and each has at least two breaks, THEN Urist McUnluckySwordsdwarf's Right Arm has been pulped, gaining a PULPY flag, and is no longer eligible for further raises.

If that is true, then it may be possible to treat, on a living dwarf, PULPY extremities (limited to HAND, FOOT, UPPER/LOWER ARM/LEG ?) with metal rods and Surgery, eventually healing to a maximum of INHIBITED perhaps, with much scarring.

I can't say if that's what is on the plate for this release, but that seems like what would be the eventual goal for deep, detailed modeling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 14, 2013, 12:51:00 pm

Well, for it to work as a way to get rid of undead (which can be raised from titans or whatever crazy stuff) pulping would probably need to apply to arbitrary parts.  I don't imagine that any part destroyed beyond the abilities of a necromancer to animate will be recoverable ever.  If the dwarf's arm gets turned into purée then I'm pretty sure that at the very least the nerves are severed (the the part will never be usable) and at most it would just kinda fall off.  I imagine it will end up working a lot like severs do now, but with a slow buildup. 

Also to clarify: in my previous post I wasn't saying that the pulping changes would be an intentional "buff to undead", but rather that the current hit-points system makes them extremely weak combatants, and that the removal of that system will very likely lead to much more dangerous undead (albeit not infinitely reraisable ones). 

I for one look forward to the change.  There are a number of cases where combat right now just makes completely no sense at all, and this ought to go a long way to fixing a number of them.  If pulping happens all the time to everything then yeah, that would be stupid and annoying, but I doubt that's the intention.  Mostly it will probably be noticeable in those weird situations where your dwarves have been hacking at a sponge (or whatever) for an entire season and are starting to die of starvation while the completely mangled sponge just sits there accumulating unlimited amounts of damage. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 14, 2013, 01:12:06 pm

Yeah, most living things are going to die to blood loss or organ damage before pulping, I expect, unless the player is being deliberately sadistic, which quite frankly I also expect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 14, 2013, 01:22:45 pm

What really doesn't make sense is things like skin, hair, and oyster shells reanimating, and being deadly. Some things really ought to be considered pulped by default, and little mussel shells neither have very sharp edges nor much mass, and thus no way should they kill anyone if they start flopping around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 14, 2013, 01:27:04 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 14, 2013, 01:22:45 pm

What really doesn't make sense is things like skin, hair, and oyster shells reanimating, and being deadly. Some things really ought to be considered pulped by default, and little mussel shells neither have very sharp edges nor much mass, and thus no way should they kill anyone if they start flopping around.

Can they even Flop around?

Obviously these are muscular muscled mussels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomcost on March 14, 2013, 02:17:51 pm

Has Toady stated that animated dead will lose their hit point sistem? If not, pulping would be only a means of preventing that gobling hand in the dinning hall from not letting your dwarves eat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2013, 02:56:27 pm

Quote from: Tomcost on March 14, 2013, 02:17:51 pm

Has Toady stated that animated dead will lose their hit point sistem? If not, pulping would be only a means of preventing that gobling hand in the dinning hall from not letting your dwarves eat.

Yes, in DF Talk #14: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_14_transcript.html)

Quote

Rainseeker:   So the more wounds a creature has the easier it is to kill, or, how do you kill one of these creatures?
Toady:   Well if it's already wounded then it has a lesser attack capacity, especially if things are missing and chopped off, and you can hack off their heads and arms ... If a zombie has no grasping portions and it has no head then it collapses; so that's one way to go, is to hack it to pieces. Otherwise we've still got this system in where it just takes the amount of force that has been applied to it and you're kind of shaking loose the animation effect and then it just collapses, which is kind of like saying hit points, there's just a little bit more to it than that but not much, it's basically hit points, and that is until we get combat pulping, like really so that you can take a mace or a baseball bat or whatever and beat it into a pulp, an actual pulp. Then we won't need that system anymore, but we require pulping and there's no pulping so there's still a kind of crude damage that it just keeps track of in an abstract way for the animation effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 14, 2013, 08:02:30 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 14, 2013, 01:22:45 pm

What really doesn't make sense is things like skin, hair, and oyster shells reanimating, and being deadly. Some things really ought to be considered pulped by default, and little mussel shells neither have very sharp edges nor much mass, and thus no way should they kill anyone if they start flopping around.

I kinda like those things and I hope Toady doesn't get rid of that.

And I do imagine pulping as in, turned into pasta and unrecoverable. Or very tiny bits. Could be done to a living thing, but the thing would already be dead anyway, so it makes sense only with the undead. Or the sadistic. Maybe dwarves could, in a berserker mood, beat other things until they due and after that, pulping them a little?

Anyway, this will certainly make handling undead and sponge monsters more easy or at least realistic. I wonder if Toady will change fortress mode squad behavior along with the combat changes he is working on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 14, 2013, 09:20:50 pm

I just hope "pulping" won't be an actual verb ingame, as "strike the swordsman in the left lower arm with your +iron mace+, pulping it!" sounds... bad. Hopefully he just means it as a technical term.

Skin doesn't make much sense as an undead, and neither does having every single product of the creature reanimate. Skin has no structure whatsoever, unlike bone or muscle, and really doesn't have any way of hurting people even if it did flap around. Right now, the skin is treated as having the mass of the entire creature and so breaks bones by "pushing." Also, what's to stop necromancers from just making people's leather clothes kill them if skin reanimates? What's really that different between tanned leather and leathery mummy skin?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on March 14, 2013, 10:01:40 pm

I expect it will play out like ye olde Liberal Crime Squad.
Urist's head is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 14, 2013, 10:08:55 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 14, 2013, 09:20:50 pm

I just hope "pulping" won't be an actual verb ingame, as "strike the swordsman in the left lower arm with your +iron mace+, pulping it!" sounds... bad. Hopefully he just means it as a technical term.

Skin doesn't make much sense as an undead, and neither does having every single product of the creature reanimate. Skin has no structure whatsoever, unlike bone or muscle, and really doesn't have any way of hurting people even if it did flap around. Right now, the skin is treated as having the mass of the entire creature and so breaks bones by "pushing." Also, what's to stop necromancers from just making people's leather clothes kill them if skin reanimates? What's really that different between tanned leather and leathery mummy skin?

Bone also doesn't have much structure. You need tendons and muscles to keep it up, otherwise the skeleton just crumbles. What keeps it together in DF is the necromancer magic, so skeletons raise and attack you. The same thing can be done with muscle, hair and skin. A hollow man, made only of skin. You could argue that it can't hit hard but then again, it's using magic to keep things together, so it probably could. I would be okay with necromancers reanimating tissue, bonding them together to create hollow, hair or muscle only monsters. Of course, they would need to be destructible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tov01 on March 14, 2013, 11:03:25 pm

Could you elaborate on what your plans for dual-wielding are? And will it be modeled after dual-wielding in real life (i.e. not all that effective in most circumstances), or the more stereotypically "gamey" dual-wielding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 15, 2013, 12:59:31 am

Quote from: arkhometha on March 14, 2013, 10:08:55 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 14, 2013, 09:20:50 pm

I just hope "pulping" won't be an actual verb ingame, as "strike the swordsman in the left lower arm with your +iron mace+, pulping it!" sounds... bad. Hopefully he just means it as a technical term.

Skin doesn't make much sense as an undead, and neither does having every single product of the creature reanimate. Skin has no structure whatsoever, unlike bone or muscle, and really doesn't have any way of hurting people even if it did flap around. Right now, the skin is treated as having the mass of the entire creature and so breaks bones by "pushing." Also, what's to stop necromancers from just making people's leather clothes kill them if skin reanimates? What's really that different between tanned leather and leathery mummy skin?

Bone also doesn't have much structure. You need tendons and muscles to keep it up, otherwise the skeleton just crumbles. What keeps it together in DF is the necromancer magic, so skeletons raise and attack you. The same thing can be done with muscle, hair and skin. A hollow man, made only of skin. You could argue that it can't hit hard but then again, it's using magic to keep things together, so it probably could. I would be okay with necromancers reanimating tissue, bonding them together to create hollow, hair or muscle only monsters. Of course, they would need to be destructible.

That's the thing though: bone is rigid, and so has structure, while muscle contracts/expands, giving it motion. Zombies have at least one or the other, so they have plausible structural support, with the aid of a little magic, but if the magic could just make anything structurally stable enough to animate, why would pulping work in the first place? If skin, which if separate means it was cut up to be removed, can animate, why not unrecognizably mangled limbs?

Currently, all butchery products except meat, fat, and nervous tissue will reanimate. Shouldn't the act of cutting up a creature into it's individual component tissues break it down enough for it to not work? You can't reanimate a leg, but you can reanimate a solitary leg bone if you butcher the leg? That's how it works in the current release.

I can understand individual animated bones, skulls, and mussel shells (though they shouldn't be lethal, much less equally lethal to a complete zombie), as they have rigid structure to them, but animal peelings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 15, 2013, 02:39:23 am

I thought things had to have a grasp or be a head (or equivalent thereof) in order to be reanimated in the current version? I've never been able to reanimate legs as a necromancer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 15, 2013, 07:29:37 am

Actually that sounds like a more sensitive way to go, as long it has a head and at least an arm keep animated. If it lacks both head and arms its not going to help too much the necromancer in the first place, so maybe he simply stop wasting magic on it.

Today talked about that a bit, however I haven't been playing a lot lately, patiently waiting for the new release, so I wouldn't know exactly how it's working now.

I'm with HugoLuman in that "pulping" sounds... wrong, just wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 15, 2013, 02:38:29 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2013, 12:59:31 am

Currently, all butchery products except meat, fat, and nervous tissue will reanimate. Shouldn't the act of cutting up a creature into it's individual component tissues break it down enough for it to not work? You can't reanimate a leg, but you can reanimate a solitary leg bone if you butcher the leg? That's how it works in the current release.

Looks like someone hasn't played Fortress Mode in a long time. This was changed in the initial wave of bugfixes after DF2012 was released.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 15, 2013, 03:11:38 pm

I'm pretty sure butchery products till reanimate, including bones and shells.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 15, 2013, 03:46:45 pm

Quote from: Spish on March 15, 2013, 02:38:29 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2013, 12:59:31 am

Currently, all butchery products except meat, fat, and nervous tissue will reanimate. Shouldn't the act of cutting up a creature into it's individual component tissues break it down enough for it to not work? You can't reanimate a leg, but you can reanimate a solitary leg bone if you butcher the leg? That's how it works in the current release.

Looks like someone hasn't played Fortress Mode in a long time. This was changed in the initial wave of bugfixes after DF2012 was released.

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2013, 03:11:38 pm

I'm pretty sure butchery products till reanimate, including bones and shells.

The wiki says that HugoLuman is right: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Necromancer (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Necromancer) and http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Zombie (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Zombie).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on March 15, 2013, 11:03:12 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2013, 12:59:31 am

Quote from: arkhometha on March 14, 2013, 10:08:55 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 14, 2013, 09:20:50 pm

I just hope "pulping" won't be an actual verb ingame, as "strike the swordsman in the left lower arm with your +iron mace+, pulping it!" sounds... bad. Hopefully he just means it as a technical term.

Skin doesn't make much sense as an undead, and neither does having every single product of the creature reanimate. Skin has no structure whatsoever, unlike bone or muscle, and really doesn't have any way of hurting people even if it did flap around. Right now, the skin is treated as having the mass of the entire creature and so breaks bones by "pushing." Also, what's to stop necromancers from just making people's leather clothes kill them if skin reanimates? What's really that different between tanned leather and leathery mummy skin?

Bone also doesn't have much structure. You need tendons and muscles to keep it up, otherwise the skeleton just crumbles. What keeps it together in DF is the necromancer magic, so skeletons raise and attack you. The same thing can be done with muscle, hair and skin. A hollow man, made only of skin. You could argue that it can't hit hard but then again, it's using magic to keep things together, so it probably could. I would be okay with necromancers reanimating tissue, bonding them together to create hollow, hair or muscle only monsters. Of course, they would need to be destructible.

That's the thing though: bone is rigid, and so has structure, while muscle contracts/expands, giving it motion. Zombies have at least one or the other, so they have plausible structural support, with the aid of a little magic, but if the magic could just make anything structurally stable enough to animate, why would pulping work in the first place? If skin, which if separate means it was cut up to be removed, can animate, why not unrecognizably mangled limbs?

Currently, all butchery products except meat, fat, and nervous tissue will reanimate. Shouldn't the act of cutting up a creature into it's individual component tissues break it down enough for it to not work? You can't reanimate a leg, but you can reanimate a solitary leg bone if you butcher the leg? That's how it works in the current release.

I can understand individual animated bones, skulls, and mussel shells (though they shouldn't be lethal, much less equally lethal to a complete zombie), as they have rigid structure to them, but animal peelings?

No, bones make as much sense as skin. Bone is rigid but it can't be keep together without magic. And skeleton-only undead exist. The same way, skin and other things are held together and animated by magic.
If skin can't be held by magic, why a skeleton could be? Bones are hard, but aren't connected to each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 12:37:38 am

Connecting bones together is a lot less work than making a skin stay up. A skeleton wired together has a lot more integrity than a skin stitched closed. Plus, if it's just the skin, that means its been peeled off the creature and isn't in an intact shape to begin with, while a whole skeleton is. Why should pulping work if a skin that's been cut into a big sheet with little semblance to it's original shape can still move? Pulping and reanimating peeled skin have to be mutually exclusive, or else it's not consistent.

And hair, hair should certainly not reanimate. Shaved wool from a butchered sheep coming alive is just... awful. Again, as with skin, if Necromancers can raise it, why can't they animate wool fabric? Why can't they make people's wool clothing kill them? Because that would be stupid. But by the logic of being able to reanimate things like hair, pulping should not work and necromancers should reanimate the very soil, since it contains decomposed particles from the dead.

With pulping, hair and rawhide must stay dead. It's simply inconsistent otherwise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 16, 2013, 01:00:34 am

It's not inconceivable, with the state that the game is in right now, that post-butchered skin is literally a full, intact piece of skin that, if it were to be animated, would appear to be the original creature standing upright.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 01:09:02 am

There was a similar deal on some children's show about a guy who's scared of everything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on March 16, 2013, 03:14:13 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 01:09:02 am

There was a similar deal on some children's show about a guy who's scared of everything.

You may well be referring to the Soul Eater anime, in which an individual who was scared of everything eventually started to lash out at everything and, consequently, had Death himself remove his skin and use it as a sack in which to bind his now-helpless form. When he's eventually released, he's able to animate his own skin to appear as clothing and to attack, but technically his muscles, bones, and all internal organs were still intact. The skin was just hideously stretched whenever he wanted it to be.

For my part, I really like the idea of being able to reanimate skin separate from the rest of the body. It's creepy, especially with some of the images people made and the suggestions they had on how such a skin would attack when it was first revealed that it was possible. Perhaps 'hollow men' could be specifically reintroduced at a later date with a 'shredding' mechanic? Actually, now that I suggest it, isn't that basically what pulping would represent to a hollow man? The only real difference would be changing their attacks to include strangulation and possibly stretching around peoples' faces to suffocate them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 03:22:01 am

Asura is mad, not terrified. Actually scratch that, he totally is.

No, this was definitely not Soul Eater, and
HOW THE HELL COULD SOUL EATER BE CONSIDERED A CHILDREN'S SHOW?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 16, 2013, 03:25:26 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 03:22:01 am

Asura is mad, not terrified. Actually scratch that, he totally is.

No, this was definitely not Soul Eater, and
HOW THE HELL COULD SOUL EATER BE CONSIDERED A CHILDREN'S SHOW?

It's anime.

Plus the manga is published as shonen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 03:25:52 am

Point taken.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 16, 2013, 03:43:40 am

As well the art style and first sections of Soul Eater are meant to invoke the style of a children's show with its more adult elements comming later. (and don't you DARE mention the fanservice. I've seen childrens anime with tons of fanservice. Heck Marchen Awakens Romance is for kids and it was one step away from being a hentai)

Which, may I add, is becoming extremely common now adays to the point where you REALLY cannot judge the tone of an anime even five episodes in because they often just set up a tone just to intentionally sabatage it later. One that used it that may not be considered bad is "When they Cry" which used the peaceful small town angle to contrast with the horror that was actually going on as well as heighten it further.

Mind you this is terribly terribly off topic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 03:48:52 am

True, but led me conclude the tangent with a mention of little miss nekkid cat-that's-not-a-witch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on March 16, 2013, 12:38:38 pm

Hope you feel better soon, ToadyOne!

You've mentioned that we should be able to still just run into people and trigger our attacks that way. How does that work with ranged attacks? In more general sense, how does the new reaction system apply to ranged combat? Would we have chances to, say, catch the occasional arrow from the air (or just shield block it). Do we get attacks of opportunity on bowmen we've gotten into melee with?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 16, 2013, 12:49:05 pm

It doesn't work with ranged attacks; he's talking about the system where you walk into creatures to attack them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 03:11:03 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 16, 2013, 01:00:34 am

It's not inconceivable, with the state that the game is in right now, that post-butchered skin is literally a full, intact piece of skin that, if it were to be animated, would appear to be the original creature standing upright.

Right now, the post-butchered skin is just an item with a few properties attatched to it. Butchery products, unlike severed body parts, have no defined shape. It's one of those things that isn't actually coded, just implied, like whether a limb is currently flexed or straightened. The reason they kill people is that butchery objects, when animated, are treated as having the mass of the entire, whole creature, so every push is as if some strong person hurled the whole body at you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 16, 2013, 03:35:15 pm

I know. I'm saying that you're making assumptions about shape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 03:47:04 pm

Some things have to be assumed, unless otherwise stated. For instance, waste and sex are implied though not specifically coded. Unless Toady says dwarves actually use some magical process to remove the skin completely intact from the animal, we must assume that they use the real life process of actually cutting the skin and peeling it off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 16, 2013, 04:49:24 pm

Many of the butchery products are just a "meat" item, but I believe the skin is tracked as a "corpse component", which has the potential to track a body's worth of data.  The bones are also stored this way.  I don't remember what else is like that -- the skull probably, but the skull isn't considered a head, and also things like nervous tissue.  So when the bones or skin are raised, it remembers which parts and tissues they are.  If the mass is incorrect, that's just a bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 16, 2013, 05:08:37 pm

Hope you feel better!

Also, on having your character know infoformation on how a battle is going,
Will the amount of information available in combat be based on our observer level or oter skill, or do we just know everything for now?

EDIT: Toady answered in recent devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on March 16, 2013, 05:24:56 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 16, 2013, 03:47:04 pm

Some things have to be assumed, unless otherwise stated. For instance, waste and sex are implied though not specifically coded. Unless Toady says dwarves actually use some magical process to remove the skin completely intact from the animal, we must assume that they use the real life process of actually cutting the skin and peeling it off.

But... That's how skinning works in the real world. It's not like peeling a potato, they take the whole thing off in one big piece, usually with  like 1-3 incisions total:

Case skinning is a method where the skin is peeled from the animal like a sock. One would usually use this method if the animal is going to be stretched out or put in dry storage. Many smaller animals are case skinned, leaving the skin mostly undamaged in the shape of a tube.
Although the method of case skinning individual animals varies slightly, the general steps remain the same. To case skin an animal, it should be hung upside down by its feet. A cut should be made in one foot, and continued up the leg, around the anus and down the other leg. From there the skin can be pulled down the animal as though removing a sweater.
Open skinning is a method where the skin is removed from the animal like a jacket. This method is generally used if the skin is going to be tanned immediately or frozen for storage. A skin removed by the open method can be used for wall hangings or rugs. Larger animals are often skinned using the open method.
To open skin an animal, the body should be placed on a flat surface. A cut should be made from anus to lower lip, and up the legs of the animal. The skin can then be opened and removed from the animal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinning)

So, yeah, when you're skinning an animal, you end up with one, big, animal shaped piece. Which, under "magic logic" means that a necromancer should be able to make a big hollow monstrosity out of it. I've always envisioned the animated skins killing dwarves by wrapping the dwarf up inside itself and constricting till he suffocates, sort of like reverse-wearing the dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 05:35:28 pm

Quote from: Toady One on March 16, 2013, 04:49:24 pm

Many of the butchery products are just a "meat" item, but I believe the skin is tracked as a "corpse component", which has the potential to track a body's worth of data.  The bones are also stored this way.  I don't remember what else is like that -- the skull probably, but the skull isn't considered a head, and also things like nervous tissue.  So when the bones or skin are raised, it remembers which parts and tissues they are.  If the mass is incorrect, that's just a bug.

Oh, thanks for clearing that up. Still, doesn't getting skin requiring butchering the main part part of a corpse? (the UPPER_BODY bit)

I know how skinning works in real life, and I still don't think a removed outer layer counts as whole enough to start moving. That said, they don't kill by constriction, they kill by blunt force in the game. And if skin and hair reanimates, what's to stop necromancers from just animating people's clothes and constricting people to death? If a severed limb reanimates, and skin reanimates, then logically any piece of leather, fur, or hide clothing should too. In fact, what's to stop them from just having people's dandruff stand up and burrow into their skull?

For the record, no one's defending animated hair/wool, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on March 16, 2013, 06:23:45 pm

I say keep it in because, one, it makes the game more FUN, and two, because zombie-aided wool farms are A-OK.

Plus, watching your ARMY OF REANIMATED HAIR-GOLEMS strangle entire cities to death? priceless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 16, 2013, 06:28:42 pm

Animated fluff is kinda silly, and as far as combat goes, nearly completely harmless. Unless it's method of killing you is to shove itself down your throat; that could technically be fatal due to suffocation.

If hair/wool-based undead persist, I'd say we ought to make sure they can't push you to death or something, or that dwarves just kinda laugh and blow them away with a little slap. Perhaps their main purpose as an undead is to serve as a sort of creepy apparition to frighten dwarves like ghosts. But made of hair.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 06:43:13 pm

Quote from: laularukyrumo on March 16, 2013, 06:23:45 pm

I say keep it in because, one, it makes the game more FUN, and two, because zombie-aided wool farms are A-OK.

Plus, watching your ARMY OF REANIMATED HAIR-GOLEMS strangle entire cities to death? priceless.

Why stop there? Why not give necromancers control over every piece of matter that was ever part of any living creature? In fact, necromancers should just be omnipotent. That would save us a lot of trouble. It's not as if they're already overpowered, and extremely annoying when you're not controlling them. It's not as if Toady was introducing pulping to make them more balanced or have them make more sense or anything.

Toady wants consistency, as can be evidenced by removing the arbitrary hitpoint system. But in the case of reanimated wool, the distinction between free floating wool and clothes is also arbitrary. To be consistent, there must either be no hair zombies, or hair zombies and clothes zombies. Furthermore, hair was never even living tissue in the first place, so it can't be dead tissue. And this non-living excretion by living organisms can revive, but clumps of actual meat and nervous tissue don't?

They don't because porkchops and sirloins and extracted nerves are technically "pulped" because they're so chopped up. Clumps of non-living keratin are even more unsuitable. And really, push attacks need a rework, mass translates directly into damage (which is why giant sponges kill people).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on March 16, 2013, 06:59:04 pm

I don't have too much trouble imagining animated skins doing a "hollow man" act or attacking like a blob. I don't see them as a brute force sort of horror, more a "ambush, envelop, and suffocate" thing, which would probably take some basic intelligence. If this were D&D, I wouldn't make it something necromancers regularly do, or something that'd regularly self-animate in evil places, more a specialty undead monster that requires extra attention in some way or another. But since this is Dwarf Fortress, I don't know how to restrict it to that. I'd probably favor removing the animation of skin over making it a generic undead thing.

And yeah, I'm against animated hair/wool. An additional technical excuse: As I see it, hair's not really "alive" when it's still attached to a living person and growing, so it can't really die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Arek on March 16, 2013, 07:50:28 pm

Since we will be able to equip friendly NPCs in goblin controlled settlements or elsewhere, would we be able as necromancers to arm our undead minions too (given they are suitable for it, like at least body with legs and at least one arm, or some similar restriction?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 08:53:30 pm

Quote from: Arek on March 16, 2013, 07:50:28 pm

Since we will be able to equip friendly NPCs in goblin controlled settlements or elsewhere, would we be able as necromancers to arm our undead minions too (given they are suitable for it, like at least body with legs and at least one arm, or some similar restriction?

I'm going to guess that, by default, it will work. Maybe it will have some glitches at first with them rejecting stuff?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on March 16, 2013, 09:09:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 16, 2013, 05:35:28 pm

 And if skin and hair reanimates, what's to stop necromancers from just animating people's clothes and constricting people to death? If a severed limb reanimates, and skin reanimates, then logically any piece of leather, fur, or hide clothing should too. In fact, what's to stop them from just having people's dandruff stand up and burrow into their skull?

See, that's where the "pulping" comes in. Tanning the rawhide, cutting the tanned hide up into panels and stitching those panels into a shirt is effectively destroying the original skin - it is rendered into an object that in no way resembles it's original state. Which is, at the core, what the whole "pulping" thing is about. Destroying the animated object to the point it it unrecognizable.

For the record, I do not support reanimated hair's viability.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 16, 2013, 09:14:18 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on March 16, 2013, 09:09:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 16, 2013, 05:35:28 pm

 And if skin and hair reanimates, what's to stop necromancers from just animating people's clothes and constricting people to death? If a severed limb reanimates, and skin reanimates, then logically any piece of leather, fur, or hide clothing should too. In fact, what's to stop them from just having people's dandruff stand up and burrow into their skull?

See, that's where the "pulping" comes in. Tanning the rawhide, cutting the tanned hide up into panels and stitching those panels into a shirt is effectively destroying the original skin - it is rendered into an object that in no way resembles it's original state. Which is, at the core, what the whole "pulping" thing is about. Destroying the animated object to the point it it unrecognizable.

For the record, I do not support reanimated hair's viability.

Actually an interesting distinction, in that it suggests that clothing made of whole animal hides should be valid targets for necromancy even if most mundane clothing isn't. I can imagine some rich human's dead fox scarf coming to life in a most awkward position, or something like Hercules's Nemean Lion Skin suddenly getting feisty at an inopportune moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 16, 2013, 09:44:43 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on March 16, 2013, 09:09:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 16, 2013, 05:35:28 pm

 And if skin and hair reanimates, what's to stop necromancers from just animating people's clothes and constricting people to death? If a severed limb reanimates, and skin reanimates, then logically any piece of leather, fur, or hide clothing should too. In fact, what's to stop them from just having people's dandruff stand up and burrow into their skull?

See, that's where the "pulping" comes in. Tanning the rawhide, cutting the tanned hide up into panels and stitching those panels into a shirt is effectively destroying the original skin - it is rendered into an object that in no way resembles it's original state. Which is, at the core, what the whole "pulping" thing is about. Destroying the animated object to the point it it unrecognizable.

For the record, I do not support reanimated hair's viability.

But what's to stop dandruff? If skin peeled from a mangled severed limb revives, what's to stop skin cut into panels? Why is tanned leather unsuitable for reanimation but embalmed/dried out mummy skin perfectly fine? The thick, outermost layer of skin on a living person is dead, what's to stop a necromancer from seizing control of that and making it kill someone?

Does pulping require completely pureeing the offending dead matter, or does, say, causing multiple fractures to a limb put it down for good? Are we talking pumpkin pie or just smashed jack-o-lantern?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 16, 2013, 10:55:46 pm

I agree that something should be done about strange undead, but it has nothing to do with the current "pulping" work (in terms of programming at least).  It's a problem with how butchery is treating certain items. 

As Toady already pointed out, the issue with those undead showing up isn't a problem with the undead system, it's a problem with butchering currently working like perfect extraction of the skin and hair from the creature.  That means that the skin and hair have "hands" and a "head" if the creature had skin or hair covering hose parts.  Since the DF arbitrary distinction of an "animatable corpse" is something with hands and/or a head that come from an appropriate creature, this makes them valid targets.  By contrast, wool or tanned hides no longer have specific body parts, and cannot be reanimated.  Really, if you think about it, it's a pretty good approximation of how most magically animated stuff from real myth works - if it looks enough like a man, and it was part of a man's body, you can turn it into an undead-man. 

The issue is then less with necromancers having overreaching powers, and more that dwarves are able to peel things way too well. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 16, 2013, 11:02:31 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on March 16, 2013, 10:55:46 pm

The issue is then less with necromancers having overreaching powers, and more that dwarves are able to peel things way too well.

That is a very disturbing notion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on March 16, 2013, 11:50:43 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on March 16, 2013, 10:55:46 pm

Really, if you think about it, it's a pretty good approximation of how most magically animated stuff from real myth works - if it looks enough like a man, and it was part of a man's body, you can turn it into an undead-man.

...and there we have it folks, DF uses a variation of the magic system from Brandon Sanderson's novel, Warbreaker.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 17, 2013, 01:52:55 am

Well there will probably be multiple magic methods

But as always I hope Necromancy as it currently is (In that it is an ability with no cost that can raise any number of dead in a single moment it wishes) remains in some form.

I'd ask Toady about that, but it seems like one of those "I don't know yet" kind of questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 17, 2013, 05:08:42 pm

With the way that towns and cities will build roads when enough people are moving between them, will roads be built to our own active forts? And if so, how will this work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 17, 2013, 06:33:31 pm

Will the framework for retired player fortresses have improvements that apply to abandoned/conquered ones as well?

I.E. regarding things like item scattering, NPC location, abandoned pets, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 17, 2013, 09:19:31 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 17, 2013, 05:08:42 pm

With the way that towns and cities will build roads when enough people are moving between them, will roads be built to our own active forts? And if so, how will this work?

There's some relevant chatter from DFTalk stuff:

Quote from: DFTalk 3

Rainseeker:   Okay, XSI asks: [8]'Dwarven strongholds seem to have tunnels between them, would it be possible to eventually make one of those in fortress mode; probably useful to get migrants and dwarf caravans while being sieged?'

Toady:   I think there's a dev item on that, I don't know if it was called 'deep outposts' or something like that, and I think it originally sprang forth from a suggestion someone posted so there's probably a few posts on it as well. We're definitely for that; the issues that arise are the same issues that always arise when you have off-site sites. How do you connect it up? How does digging commence off map? And the same thing would go to like building an aboveground wall, or aboveground roads and that kind of thing; how do you build that site when your view is restricted to a single fortress? But I think those questions are just a matter of making a good decision about it; I don't think that they're super hard and we're definitely planning to do that, especially because those tunnels are there. The fact that the tunnels are there is one of those things that kind of demands satisfaction in terms of actually being able to do it yourself or getting rid of them. So it's just a matter of ... Right now you can't designate digging on the edge of your map, and if you can designate 'I want to dig there, I want to dig a tunnel' then that's got to be some kind of special requirement or you have to have say five or six miners leave the map and do that digging for you and it's going to tie into a number of things. It's going to tie into having little - like when you become a capital - having outposts outside of your map and sending armies off the map, having those larger populations that we talked about last time; all of it ties in again to that kind of thing so I imagine those questions will start to be answered around that time.

For some reason I thought that quote was more recent than it is... maybe something similar was said in #20 but the transcript isn't available right now. 

Anyway, the plan is for those world constructions (roads and tunnels and walls) to eventually make it to your fort, but the expectation is that usually it's going to require the player to have some input there.  Like, roads aren't going to just "show up" without you actively trying to get a road, since that would probably annoy many players (I'm 100% certain the AI would be completely stupid with road placement).  Like other stuff, there has been no mention of site expansion, growth, or placement for this release, nor has there been any mention of world constructions forming during play, so it is unlikely to be in the upcoming release. 

Someday though!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 17, 2013, 10:12:59 pm

Thank you Caldfir! That helped me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on March 19, 2013, 01:34:37 pm

Are we going to be able at some point to send our military to attack other settlements? Are our kings and generals going to demand to "borrow" our militaries at some point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 19, 2013, 01:49:05 pm

Quote from: MDFification on March 19, 2013, 01:34:37 pm

Are we going to be able at some point to send our military to attack other settlements? Are our kings and generals going to demand to "borrow" our militaries at some point?

This is the long-awaited Army Arc: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Quote

Military
    Dwarven armies
        Ability to send out fortress dwarves to lead larger groups of surrounding dwarves out around mid-level maps (or just go alone)
        Ability to send equipment and fortress dwarves out to train surrounding dwarves
        Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies
        Ability to set fires and select supplies to haul back when sacking a site

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 19, 2013, 03:07:22 pm

The closest we could get is retiring a fort, starting an adventurer and convincing the military in the fort to join you to go on a rampage.
Speaking of which, Toady - do the non-dwarven sites count as reclaimable? So that we could just go on a raiding party to gain control of a dark fortress or the like? Also the dwarven, but non-player-controlled-BEFORE sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 19, 2013, 03:25:02 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 19, 2013, 03:07:22 pm

The closest we could get is retiring a fort, starting an adventurer and convincing the military in the fort to join you to go on a rampage.
Speaking of which, Toady - do the non-dwarven sites count as reclaimable? So that we could just go on a raiding party to gain control of a dark fortress or the like? Also the dwarven, but non-player-controlled-BEFORE sites?

Pretty sure the answer to the first question is "no". The last time it was asked, the latter question got what was at best a "maybe" focussing on the difficulties. Perhaps things have changed on that front, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 19, 2013, 07:58:17 pm

I seem to recall that abandoned worldgen fortresses are supposed to be reclaimable, but only fortresses since they are guaranteed to be small enough to be playable (all the other sites can go up to 17x17 or something), with a possibility that abandoned human forts might be reclaimable in the near future as well (possibly even for this release, but no solid word on that yet). 

Worldgen dwarf fortresses are almost certainly reclaimable:

Quote from: DFTalk 19

Threetoe:   I was thinking, you'll be able to reclaim your own fortresses and now the actual mountainhomes themselves that the other dwarves created.
Toady:   Yeah, there's going to be just a menu of interesting options right from the beginning of the world, if the dwarves had a hard time of it and their whole civilization was wiped out.

Other dwarven sites are definitely not reclaimable:

Quote from: Devlog 2012-11-21

Toady One: I'm working on deep dwarven sites, and it should include a bit of early work on fortresses as well, since the basics of their individual living arrangments and industry should be about the same. Deep sites claim areas much larger than forts (the size of human towns in the current version -- up to 17x17 embark tiles), and a lot of this will probably be devoted to farms in the cavern layers, but I'm hoping for something reasonably different from a human village underground. These kind of sites aren't reclaimable (because they are too large), so the amount of farms won't clash with the time-compressed nature of farming in fort mode. Aside from the living, farming and workshop areas, there'll be zones for mining and storage as well. Certain of them have barons, and those'll have an additional area.

Musings on the idea of reclaiming ruined human castles: (not the quote I was looking for but I can't seem to find it anywhere)

Quote from: DFTalk

Rainseeker:   (Indiana Jones theme)
Toady:   That's right, exactly. The proper ruins from older civilizations, and we're going to have to go through world generation and make sure that there are enough wars and famines and plagues and migrations and so on to make sure that there are nice isolated hidden ruins, then you'd be able to go into those. In dwarf mode, right now all you can do is reclaim your previous fortresses, so there are a couple of angles here. Once there are actual fortresses with maps, which would be another adventure mode thing, just being able to go visit a fortress, then opening up reclaim on those is a lot more legitimate. Right now we just can't do it because they don't even have maps, you'd be reclaiming a blank cliff face and there'd be nothing there. So once that's handled then we can start doing that. I like the idea of a historical reclaim, it's just kind of a start scenario; you shouldn't just be able to reclaim your old fortresses you should be able to go to old ones. The only downside is that maybe you'd be getting massive amounts of treasure you don't deserve, but then there should be proper guardian beasty type things and trouble.
Rainseeker:   Or else it'll already be scavenged.
Toady:   There's kind of a risk/reward thing going on there that should naturally come out of how adventure mode works, and if the place is so isolated and hidden that there's treasure there with no-one guarding it then you probably wouldn't be able to reclaim it because you don't know about it, until someone finds a map, or whatever. So that's the situation there. I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.
Rainseeker:   Yeah, especially if you went inside the castle before you started digging.
Toady:   Yeah, and you could clean it up. It'd be a fixer upper. And you could rebuild the walls, and kill the zombies and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 20, 2013, 05:32:16 am

I can't wait to see how smartly stupidly the new sites are generated.
Since dwarves have a certain detrimentality when it comes to that.


17x17 sites sound like a HUGE amount of Fun to wipe out.
Or raid, whatever floats your boat.

Also, Toady - I hope that killing a stray cat or an old man in the woods with no witnesses doesn't cause the entire civ (animals included) hate us anymore?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on March 20, 2013, 06:43:40 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 20, 2013, 05:32:16 am

17x17 sites sound like a HUGE amount of Fun to wipe out.
Or raid, whatever floats your boat.

...well, at least until your PC melts down :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 20, 2013, 07:21:20 am

Then it really IS !!FUN!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 20, 2013, 07:34:50 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on March 20, 2013, 06:43:40 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 20, 2013, 05:32:16 am

17x17 sites sound like a HUGE amount of Fun to wipe out.
Or raid, whatever floats your boat.

...well, at least until your PC melts down :P

Naah.
THERE AIN'T BE A THING MY PC COULDN'T HANDLE!

We'll see, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on March 20, 2013, 09:26:35 am

A random thought I just had. Will it be possible to hire mercenaries from caravans into your military on a temporary basis?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 20, 2013, 09:35:26 am

I don't think that is going to be possible this release, just because Toady hasn't mentioned anything specifically about that, but I bet that'll be possible in the future in the event a caravan gets trapped in your depot during a siege; being able to coordinate benefits them in that they have the chance to make it home earlier. Then again, maybe in the future they'll just hang out in the inn instead of going insane, and force you to deal with the siege on your own while eating all your grub. Though the elves will probably still lose it...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 20, 2013, 10:05:21 am

Quote from: MDFification on March 20, 2013, 09:26:35 am

A random thought I just had. Will it be possible to hire mercenaries from caravans into your military on a temporary basis?

Yes, it's planned for taverns and inns. Toady talked about it in DF Talk #12.

Quote from: DF Talk #12

Toady One: [...] There's the option of perhaps having mercenaries stick around in your fortress, we thought about that a bit, you might be able to hire them and put them into squads ... you might not be able to change all their weapons, and you wouldn't have armor for them necessarily that fits, but it seems like a reasonable thing for people that don't want to focus on that; they just want to have some of those guys around. You'd probably just get the money right back from the drinking and gambling immediately. We were originally thinking about doing just adventure mode taverns and inns, and then we remembered ... there was this suggestion around 2008 or something on the forum for dwarf mode inns. I don't remember if we had talked about it at all before then, or if that was just a random suggestion that popped up back then ... So we saw taverns and inns on the dev page and we were like 'Okay, let's do dwarf mode inns too', so it's a little strange. It's certainly one of those things that popped out on the release list when we put that up, because we hadn't talked about it very much; that's the reason we're talking about it now. So basically you've got more interesting people visiting your fortress and you might be able to convince them to stick around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 20, 2013, 11:53:20 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 20, 2013, 05:32:16 am

Also, Toady - I hope that killing a stray cat or an old man in the woods with no witnesses doesn't cause the entire civ (animals included) hate us anymore?

This was confirmed in the devlog: (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-02-26)

Quote

02/26/2013 Toady One Lately I've been standing in the keep with a skill-inflated hero, stabbing the site's goblin overlord in the head with a spear, and seeing what happens. Now that the entities occasionally make decisions through their leaders and people also claim positions that are open, my project is to insert a possible period in between where an entity has a decision to resolve, doesn't have a leader step up when it thought it had one, and has a moment of discomfort. This places a rumor in their entity about the missing leader. Related rumors also show up when you tell somebody about the killing or when somebody sees you do it and makes it out of the loaded area. For the goblin military occupation, this might be a condition that gets them to leave town, especially for this release where I need to force it a bit. This time, you'll be hunted by site patrols exclusively before you get to the site leader, if you are causing trouble before you attempt the overlord. It'll be different later I suspect, but I need to settle on a few workable scenarios now while I get mechanics in.

There's also the matter of the body and finding the body, which is a bit more abstract sometimes than what happens in dwarf mode, but fortunately I've got all the dwarf mode witness/incident stuff lying around for the easy half of this. The troublesome case is when you've left a body without any witnesses in an area where there'd normally be some traffic, but nobody finds it before you split -- when an area is offloaded, and everybody's location is abstracted, it just has to wing the event of finding the body, but later on when it isn't beneficial for a body to be found you'd want to be able to have a body not be discovered for a long time if it is in an out-of-the-way location. Right now, if it doesn't let the entity know about the body, the goblins will still figure out their leader is gone, but they'd have to wait until they try to set up their next set of patrols (since the leader is involved in that decision). It would also be nice to tie the body finding event to the... bury or otherwise deal with the mess event, since people just don't live clean lives at this point.

It was also discussed in DF Talk 19 (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html):

Quote

Toady:   Yes, it's going to be a much more reasonable town to punch a horse in.
Rainseeker:   'Punch a horse in'?
Toady:   Yes, because when you punch a horse in the currently released version all the livestock will descent on you and tear you to pieces before the first person even gets there.
Rainseeker:   'The chickens! No, the chickens!'
Toady:   Yes, it becomes a horror movie immediately, the second you mess around with the animals, which might be an environmental message, but it's not really the one we wanted to send in the game. So there'll be more reasonableness all around, it'll be a lot of fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on March 20, 2013, 05:01:08 pm

I look forward to being able to murder people and get away with it without the ''Hive Mind'' knowing about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 20, 2013, 10:19:40 pm

Heh. I suspect that "Papa Roach - Getting Away With Murder" will be a popular song for peoples' first few minutes of fiddling with these mechanics. :P

Toady; once a body is found, and there was a witness, but they also died before they could report it to anyone else, will they still have any way to pin it on the adventurer? Or will eliminating witnesses prevent them from figuring out what happened?

Somewhat related: Will killing livestock or pets count as murder for this current release or will it be a separate crime/ignored until a separate crime can be planned out for it? For that matter, will livestock, or at least those without the CAN_LEARN/CAN_SPEAK tags, count to the game as a "reliable witness" who can report a crime and get a pike shoved through your head, or have you already handled that? Getting ratted out by a cat or somebody's horse would be silly, even if it kinda makes sense with any of the animal people living as pets in an elven site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 20, 2013, 10:27:43 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 20, 2013, 10:19:40 pm

Getting ratted out by a cat or somebody's horse would be silly, even if it kinda makes sense with any of the animal people living as pets in an elven site.

Or all those ducks in fort mode reporting vampires, and vampires blaming ducks XD

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 20, 2013, 11:49:59 pm

Say my fortress is the mountainhome, and the king (along with his entire family) suffers an "unfortunate accident." Will the reigning baron of the mountainhome get first dibs on succeeding him? Or will it still take those random schmuck barons into account?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 21, 2013, 07:43:47 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 20, 2013, 10:27:43 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 20, 2013, 10:19:40 pm

Getting ratted out by a cat or somebody's horse would be silly, even if it kinda makes sense with any of the animal people living as pets in an elven site.

Or all those ducks in fort mode reporting vampires, and vampires blaming ducks XD

What? Do you dare to think this: (http://a.wattpad.net/cover/274659-256-355487.jpg)
Is silly or not possible??

Look at my angry face now:(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_m6aJOwGpyfI/TMmUz6dY7FI/AAAAAAAAIak/oVv28KQMgDE/s1600/count+duckula+3_duckula.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 21, 2013, 07:55:08 am

Thank you LordBaal.  You have saved me the effort of looking up a suitable Count Duckula reference.  Well played.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 21, 2013, 12:41:25 pm

One great feature of DF2010 or 0.31 were the bugged-out maps that had surface magma flow, close-to-the-surface or above-surface adamantine spires, and special forts. Are there any plans to make a worldgen option to allow these bugged-out maps to appear, or could they return by popular demand?

These were really special !!features!! of those versions and while DF2012 brought in great new things, I miss the opportunity to find bugged-out spires at the surface.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 21, 2013, 12:58:35 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 21, 2013, 12:41:25 pm

One great feature of DF2010 or 0.31 were the bugged-out maps that had surface magma flow, close-to-the-surface or above-surface adamantine spires, and special forts. Are there any plans to make a worldgen option to allow these bugged-out maps to appear, or could they return by popular demand?

These were really special !!features!! of those versions and while DF2012 brought in great new things, I miss the opportunity to find bugged-out spires at the surface.

No, there are no plans, but you could post a suggestion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 21, 2013, 06:32:18 pm

If we depopulate a site as an adventurer, can we still retire in it like the current version? Or will they become like abandoned forts /worldgen ruined sites, and not allow retiring?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on March 22, 2013, 06:25:29 am

I really want to read a combat log of the new system now...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 22, 2013, 08:31:19 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on March 22, 2013, 06:25:29 am

I really want to read a combat log of the new system now...

A toad versus a cavy would be a reasonable fight.  This release is going to be just huge, some core aspects of gameplay are really getting improved.  *stops buying games to save money until DF release*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 08:45:03 am

Quote from: hermes on March 22, 2013, 08:31:19 am

*stops buying games to save money until DF release*

Is DF even going to cost anything at all when it reaches 1.0?
Unless you plan to directly support Toady, which is another story.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on March 22, 2013, 08:50:00 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 22, 2013, 08:45:03 am

Is DF even going to cost anything at all when it reaches 1.0?

no, never

Quote

Unless you plan to directly support Toady, which is another story.

yeah, that

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on March 22, 2013, 09:16:18 am

and then you get very nice items from you donating.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 09:50:08 am

Quote from: Aseaheru on March 22, 2013, 09:16:18 am

and then you get very nice items from you donating.

Socks.
Socks everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 22, 2013, 11:14:15 am

This is a masterfully crafted sock. It menaces with spikes of argyle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on March 22, 2013, 11:57:56 am

This is The Scent of Victory, a rope reed fiber sock. It is studded with golden toes. It is decorated with an image of the goddess Nike in rope reed fiber. The goddess is swooshing through the air.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 12:08:47 pm

[QUESTION PART] Toady, will there be an option to further generate a world's history after the world itself was generated?
[SUGGESTION PART] When choosing the gamemode, press [insert key here] to simulate history further along, choose the amount of time (could be manually put) and the generation screen pops up again, but now it's only the world's history that it simulates.



Doesn't SEEM to be this hard, and will be really useful due to forts being able to work independently and whatnot.
But again, I might be wrong about its difficulty to code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 22, 2013, 12:28:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

I think it's because if they were 16x16, you'd end up with the sites all aligned perfectly on a grid pattern where they take up a single embark region in some cases. With 17x17, there's just enough of a difference that they couldn't exist on a perfect grid, and you see some gaps between them in places.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 12:34:28 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 22, 2013, 12:28:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

I think it's because if they were 16x16, you'd end up with the sites all aligned perfectly on a grid pattern where they take up a single embark region in some cases. With 17x17, there's just enough of a difference that they couldn't exist on a perfect grid, and you see some gaps between them in places.

That being said, 16x16 sites are not impossible to see, is my guess.
But think about it - four times the usual fortress size is one hell of a place, isn't it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 22, 2013, 12:58:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

My guess is that because the sites are not playable, 16x16 was not considered. So 17x17 was chosen because that's the largest size that intersects at most 4 region tiles. 18x18 could intersect 9 tiles, leading to complications, but anything from 2x2 to 17x17 intersects at most four.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GaGrin on March 22, 2013, 01:05:02 pm

Quote from: devlog

... Committing your weapon to defensive actions also means it is not attacking, although creating opportunities for counter-strikes should mitigate that and allow the direction of combat to flip back and forth.

Does this include the notion of single-time counters?

By "single-time counter" I mean using your attack as the defence, rather than a parry followed by a riposte (which would be two actions and therefore
 a two-time counter).

To use a real world example, in longsword most of the ideal techniques involve a principle called master-strikes whereby the combatants strike in such a way to offset their opponent's strike at the same time as landing their own. These are not two separate actions, they're a single cut or thrust that has both the defensive and offensive qualities.  Obviously in practice this often doesn't work because you're working against the exact same intention; but when well executed the attack IS the defence.

The very first technique in Meyer's longsword is the Zornhau - a diagonal cut, that is used both as a primary attack and also as the counter to that attack with timing and slight change in the direction of the step.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 02:28:44 pm

This was probably brought up before, but what happens to worlds generated before this release? Will they still be functionable or are all previous worlds now only worth of archiving? (or something like being reseeded...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 22, 2013, 03:47:02 pm

On a Mac or Linux computer, even an old one, it is possible to play a 16x16 embark. I believe it should also be possible to run a 16x16 embark on Windows with the large-address-aware patch. The trouble with 16x16 embarks is they just run slowly. I did run a 16x16 embark with a river flowing through a lake and it went at about 5FPS on a laptop, back in 0.31.12 or so. I'm considering establishing a 16x16 site just for the hell of it. I believe the 17x17 sites just were not meant to be played or reclaimed, though we can clearly use embark anywhere to start on them.

Personally, I think when the new version comes out, it would be important to do some optimisations or even simplifications to the calculations so the game just runs faster. I believe this will become a requirement by the natural enlargement of the game, just as restoring sites and having worldgen stuff carry on into gameplay were forced by the new development choices. A similar thing is happening over at Kerbal Space Program (KSP), where the expansion of the game has reached a point where optimisations have to be made, else the RAM usage will become ridiculously large and cause trouble with making the new additions. One of the changes to be made to KSP is a method to offload things out of the RAM when not in use, and something like that might work for Dwarf Fortress.

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 22, 2013, 02:28:44 pm

This was probably brought up before, but what happens to worlds generated before this release? Will they still be functionable or are all previous worlds now only worth of archiving? (or something like being reseeded...)

What I'd like to see are tools or ways to import over old worlds from 0.31.12 or 0.31.25, which can hack in the missing material. That, and a way to hack in some new modded plants and have them show up in region tiles without regenerating the world.

Are animal populations going to regenerate properly in the new release, so we won't be running out of two-humped camels or giant kangaroos or naked mole dogs or other !!FUN!! creatures just from the environmental impact of a 400 dwarf fort?

What about cave fishing, is that going to work? Also just a little reminder dwarven milk doesn't show up because purring maggots are in cavern layer two rather than one. If a dwarf fortress or deep site extends down to cavern layer two or three does that give the dwarven civilization access to the wood and creature products from that cavern?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 22, 2013, 04:55:30 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 22, 2013, 12:34:28 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 22, 2013, 12:28:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

I think it's because if they were 16x16, you'd end up with the sites all aligned perfectly on a grid pattern where they take up a single embark region in some cases. With 17x17, there's just enough of a difference that they couldn't exist on a perfect grid, and you see some gaps between them in places.

That being said, 16x16 sites are not impossible to see, is my guess.
But think about it - four times the usual fortress size is one hell of a place, isn't it?

You can try a 16x16 embark, but it'll crash. DF can't use that much memory. Also, 16x16 is... 16 times a normal embark, not 4 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 22, 2013, 05:00:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 22, 2013, 04:55:30 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 22, 2013, 12:34:28 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 22, 2013, 12:28:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 22, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

I think it's because if they were 16x16, you'd end up with the sites all aligned perfectly on a grid pattern where they take up a single embark region in some cases. With 17x17, there's just enough of a difference that they couldn't exist on a perfect grid, and you see some gaps between them in places.

That being said, 16x16 sites are not impossible to see, is my guess.
But think about it - four times the usual fortress size is one hell of a place, isn't it?

You can try a 16x16 embark, but it'll crash. DF can't use that much memory. Also, 16x16 is... 16 times a normal embark, not 4

Toady should share a picture of the new sites so we can see what we're dealing with here.
Not necessarily those 17x17 sites (not like he could show them in one pic), but an example sites of all the new types.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on March 22, 2013, 05:01:09 pm

It wouldn't be 16x's bigger than normal because I believe the default embark is either 3x3 or 4x4. If 16x16 was 16x's bigger your fort world be only 1 tile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on March 22, 2013, 05:06:38 pm

Geometry! 16x16 can be made out of 16 4x4 squares.

4*4 = 16 tiles.
16*16 = 256 tiles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 22, 2013, 05:59:45 pm

Given what has been stated about the difficulty's of fighting multiple combatants, when will highly skilled adventurer's be able to go the full batman (with the relevant requisite player skill) again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 22, 2013, 06:16:57 pm

As you intend to tie forts into the world by giving in-game purpose to their creation, will you be taking other steps to make starting a fort more interesting? Personally, i always find it the most difficult part to get into, and I'd like to have my initial options expanded in getting to know the area.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 22, 2013, 07:03:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 22, 2013, 04:55:30 pm

You can try a 16x16 embark, but it'll crash. DF can't use that much memory. Also, 16x16 is... 16 times a normal embark, not 4

I've been able to, I just had to start loading from before dinner began, and come back when I was done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 22, 2013, 07:08:47 pm

Ill try a 16x16 embark on my computer and see how long it takes to embark. I'll post the results on here.

Based on the Kerbal Space Program development information, it would be possible to make 16x16 embarks easier but it would require offloading from RAM, and probably the other optimizations to be made as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 22, 2013, 07:12:54 pm

You can easily run 16x16 if you turn of underground features.

Useful for overworld fortresses. Not so much if you were planning on ever using that pickaxe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on March 22, 2013, 07:42:19 pm

@Bronzedog: .......wow i didn't think about it like that.

I feel really stupid now lol, I suck at math :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 22, 2013, 07:49:49 pm

Yes, I know this probably belongs in the "What's going on in your fort" thread, but I'll post it here since I said I would.

The fortress of Lînemthîkut, "Facebook", has been established. It took about 7 minutes to embark after hitting "enter" with other highly intensive processes running in the background. This is not a new computer, and it is a laptop. The embark is 16x16 and it has all three cavern layers, and all other features present. There is a worldgen road and bridge, which is a 7-tile-wide floor with a few walls crossing the map. There are 139 z-levels below the ground, and the sky is quite high up since the dwarves stopped in the middle of a deep river valley. The thing that likely prevents the efficient running of these 16x16 embarks is the lack of optimization. FPS is about 5-10 with a brook flowing right across the map, right after embark.

The memory usage statistics show the application uses 1.45GB of RAM, or roughly 350MB more than DF does running normal sized 4x4 or smaller embarks 1GB more RAM than DF does running a 3x5 embark.
Fixed this

That's smaller than the 2GB limit for Large Address Aware applications if run on Windows. Maybe the thing uses more memory on windows, I don't know. This isn't a reason not to switch to Large Address Aware Mode though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 22, 2013, 07:52:26 pm

My DF uses 350 MB normally, and that's with Fortbent as it currently is. Not sure what's up with your copy to be using 1.1 normally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 22, 2013, 07:56:11 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 22, 2013, 07:52:26 pm

My DF uses 350 MB normally, and that's with Fortbent as it currently is. Not sure what's up with your copy to be using 1.1 normally.

Actually, that was run over WINE. I can check whether mac-usable Dwarf Fortress does the same with a normal sized fort though, I have a 3x5 fortress with a decent population, that has 15/16ths of the normal 4x4 embark size in terms of tiles.

Edit: The wagon at Facebook is being unloaded, and I am having spikes of up to 24-25 frames per second. There are a few lag spikes, likely because of the brook. RAM usage has fallen to 1.41GB. For reference, a highly loaded web browser could be about 850MB? RAM usage for my web browser is about 750MB at the moment with two tabs open, counting the multiple processes it has running.

This performance is actually better than I had the last time I tried a 16x16 embark. Over the course of writing this DF's RAM usage continues to fall.

It looks like one major source of low FPS is the behaviour of fluids. I have noticed this during weather events on other maps when the murky pools refill.

Edit2: On reload of the 16x16 embark, the RAM usage went to 1.71 GB. WTF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 22, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

The file size for the game was about 53MB, and it took about 3 minutes to save without a web browser open. I checked the 3x5 embark and it uses 390MB of RAM when loaded into the game, so yes, there is a considerable increase in the RAM usage. After unloading the 16x16 save file, the game took 200-250MB or so of RAM. When newly opened in the background, it takes 10.9MB (why is there a difference?).

For some reason I am seeing dwarfort.exe as having 4 threads, too.

Edit: So given the quick test and other information, the main sources of low FPS (and targets for optimization or simplification) are:
-fluids in motion
-tracking objects
-pathfinding
-amount of stuff needed to be accessed or stored in RAM

Edit2: As noted in the previous post, RAM usage jumped up to 1.71GB after reload. FPS was 25-30 but had massive lag spikes that brought it down to 10 or less for a moment or so. Digging operations in progress. Most other dwarves just standing around doing nothing for now.

After the second save: DF Memory usage at 423MB. It looks to me like a lot isn't being cleared out of RAM.

After loading again, after the second save, after completely closing DF and opening it again: DF memory usage back to 1.66GB as expected.

If anyone wants I can upload the save to them. However, for further testing I want to go somewhere without flowing water to see how that goes.

Do you have any good ways to simplify the handling of fluids or items so they don't really clog up the simulation, even on "reasonably sized" maps?

Here's my impression of the 16x16 map: Its a brilliant choice if it can be made more friendly in terms of speed. The size of the site in terms of hard disk data isn't that much higher and there's a maximum on space for expansion. If players were able to use 16x16 maps, it would make more of outdoor sieges and development, as well as increase the need for minecarts. The embark Lînemthîkut has a lot of diorite layers with gold and tetrahedrite, but there is also schist present beneath the diorite with veins of sphalerite. In the north-east, however, there is a large quantity of mudstone, which means iron is accessible. However, to drag the hematite and limonite over to the main fortress, one would need to invest in minecarts.

LastEdit: Well there goes the fortress, there's no flux on the map. Time to embark somewhere else!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dirty foot on March 22, 2013, 09:47:36 pm

After asking in Dwarf Mode forums, I was told I should ask here.

What happens to the king when you abandon? Does he go back to the mountainhome?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on March 23, 2013, 02:37:55 am

@CaptainArchmage: I think maybe you're not getting the full memory footprint reported by your OS; as far as I'm aware, the entire map's tiles are always loaded when you have a fort running.  If you have 139 z-levels  down beneath the surface, then neglecting any air above the fort that gives 139*(16*48)^2 = 81,985,536 tiles.  The minimum data stored per tile is ~12 bytes, meaning the absolute minimum amount of memory your map can possibly take up in main memory is close to 983,826,432 bytes, or just under a gig, before adding creatures, history, or items.  I would guess that you're getting reports about the active or possibly physical memory being used by the program, rather than the actual amount of allocated memory.  Since much of the map (and history and whatever else) probably isn't getting looked at very often, this number would be much lower.  On reload, you're getting to see the full number very briefly.  ~1.7 gigs sounds reasonable for the amount of data a 16x16 embark has loaded; and if you happened to settle on a location deeper than the one you did (I've frequently seen ~200 z-levels), or if you had a longer world history, then you'd be crashing.  (correct me if I'm mistaken about this interpretation)

In the future, perhaps it would be prudent for the game to simply not load regions of unexplored solid rock in order to save space in main memory as an optimization, and I'm certain there are other potential improvements to both the space and speed limitations that DF has, but like everything it's a matter of priority.  I would probably personally prefer optimizations to worldgen so that I can reasonably generate a 2000-year-world or so, or perhaps the ability to create player forts that straddle regions, but we'll see what gets done and when. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: de5me7 on March 23, 2013, 10:35:08 am

interesting developments in combat choices

Have you considered introducing offensive dodging?

This may already be in, but what i mean by this is; In martial arts, its often common to dodge to a position where you can more easily attack. This might be combined with a parry in one move.

For example, if someone is attacking me with a weapon in their left hand, i might dodge right next to them to their right, so they cannot hit me (due to their body being in the way and the limited reach of their left arm) and parry simultaniously just to prevent any attack getting through.

In game terms this would mean combining a dodge with a parry move, and the dodge leaving me next to my target with a higher hit percentage on my next attack.

I would expect such a move to be only available for either an skilled warrior/and or slightly risky.

Are feints implimented in the combat system?

e.g. can i pretent to attack with my left arm, inducing a block, parry or dodge, to then make the real attack with my right?

I would expect this to be only available to more skilled warriors and yeild a higher hit precentage or negate the dodge or parry for the second attack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 23, 2013, 12:53:20 pm

Quote from: de5me7 on March 23, 2013, 10:35:08 am

interesting developments in combat choices

Have you considered introducing offensive dodging?

This may already be in, but what i mean by this is; In martial arts, its often common to dodge to a position where you can more easily attack. This might be combined with a parry in one move.

For example, if someone is attacking me with a weapon in their left hand, i might dodge right next to them to their right, so they cannot hit me (due to their body being in the way and the limited reach of their left arm) and parry simultaniously just to prevent any attack getting through.

In game terms this would mean combining a dodge with a parry move, and the dodge leaving me next to my target with a higher hit percentage on my next attack.

I would expect such a move to be only available for either an skilled warrior/and or slightly risky.

Are feints implimented in the combat system?

e.g. can i pretent to attack with my left arm, inducing a block, parry or dodge, to then make the real attack with my right?

I would expect this to be only available to more skilled warriors and yeild a higher hit precentage or negate the dodge or parry for the second attack.

Feints could be pretty awesome if one has multiple ways to attack simultaneously (ie. 4 arms etc.)

Toady, can you share some in-game peeks of the new version? A combat log, elf and dwarf sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 23, 2013, 12:55:04 pm

I'd just like the raws :V

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 23, 2013, 02:32:39 pm

Quote from: de5me7 on March 23, 2013, 10:35:08 am

Have you considered introducing offensive dodging?

Suggestions is thataway.

Quote from: de5me7 on March 23, 2013, 10:35:08 am

Are feints implimented in the combat system?

Nope, they'd have been mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 23, 2013, 02:56:40 pm

Can world-gen dwarf fortresses, as distinct from other sites, cross 16x16 world tile boundaries? If so, will will such fortresses be playable now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 23, 2013, 03:22:20 pm

While watching a DF LP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8k-JPYj0gg) on YouTube, I suddenly remembered, although I might be mistaken, that dwarves who were children at the end of world gen don't grow up during play, so even if they turn 12 or older during the first play, if they come to your fort as migrants they will still be children. The LP in question did have several 13-year-old children.

With several world gen activities such as births and deaths now going on during fortress mode play, do children also turn into adults (and babies into children, if that was also ever a similar issue) in-game, off-site, so that you no longer get migrant children age 12 or above? (Already answered so green color removed, thanks!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 23, 2013, 03:45:19 pm

Since both death and birth are coming in next release, I highly doubt that adulthood won't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 23, 2013, 04:01:30 pm

As a matter of fact, growing up is confirmed for the next version. The one snag that may still be is the fast-forward when starting a new game, but that should be handled by the time of the release.

Quote

Children grow up throughout the world now, as you are playing, and new relationships are scheduled properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on March 24, 2013, 05:33:56 am

Oh, cool! Thank you. Yeah, I would've expected as much as well, just wanted to be sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 12:11:50 pm

This really should have been on the AMA, but I didn't think of it until now.
How many boxes of crayons have you guys gone through for making the crayon rewards?
I'm guessing it's a rather large amount.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 25, 2013, 03:09:14 pm

You're probably tired of this question, but whatever, here goes:

What's the projected ETA as of now? What is there left to implement (aside from cleanup and bug-fixing)? Could we expect the release by mid-April?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 25, 2013, 04:34:43 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 25, 2013, 03:09:14 pm

You're probably tired of this question, but whatever, here goes:

What's the projected ETA as of now? What is there left to implement (aside from cleanup and bug-fixing)? Could we expect the release by mid-April?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 25, 2013, 05:08:13 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 25, 2013, 03:09:14 pm

You're probably tired of this question, but whatever, here goes:

What's the projected ETA as of now? What is there left to implement (aside from cleanup and bug-fixing)? Could we expect the release by mid-April?

Based on the fact that 3 month ago Toady predicted that the next version would be released right about now, my personal prediction is that it will be released no later than mid June. That is, he probably wasn't off by more than 100%.

Programmers always have difficulty predicting how long something will take. I haven't found actual statistics for how much they underestimate by, and Toady's estimate was particularly bad because he didn't itemize how long each remaining component will take. I have heard of projects being 50% late, but that doesn't take into account projects that get canceled because of unforeseen challenges and delays. So his estimate being off by 100% seems reasonable.

Of course, any new figure he gives would be more useful than extrapolating from three months ago, even if he gives a best case estimate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 06:20:51 pm

How will the new multi-level trees interact with bogeymen? Will climbing a tree be a viable means of safety, or can they just teleport up into them? Also if they can, will they appear in trees above you and jump down on you normally?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 25, 2013, 06:23:42 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 06:20:51 pm

How will the new multi-level trees interact with bogeymen? Will climbing a tree be a viable means of safety, or can they just teleport up into them? Also if they can, will they appear in trees above you and jump down on you normally?

As of now, some bogeymen can fly (they have wings in their description) and some can't. Some worlds are generated with no flying bogeymen. You'll definitely have to worry about the flying ones if you're in a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 06:41:17 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 25, 2013, 06:23:42 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 06:20:51 pm

How will the new multi-level trees interact with bogeymen? Will climbing a tree be a viable means of safety, or can they just teleport up into them? Also if they can, will they appear in trees above you and jump down on you normally?

As of now, some bogeymen can fly (they have wings in their description) and some can't. Some worlds are generated with no flying bogeymen. You'll definitely have to worry about the flying ones if you're in a tree.

I didn't ask about the flying ones, that's obvious, I'm asking about the bogeyman's pathfinding for the purpose of them teleporting, would they recognize the tree, and prefer that over the ground?
Although it does make me think, If it's possible for a creature to be so heavy that it crashes through tree branches, would it be possible for a bogeyman to appear in a tree, and then immediatly fall through?
Due to thier small size, I doubt it, but it would be hilarious if it happened.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 25, 2013, 07:14:46 pm

So with the addition of nonlethal combat in adventure mode, do we have the option of challenging (or better yet, instigating) random jerks to one-on-one fistfights and training our fighting skills thusly?

Seems like it would be a fun and relatively safe way to train basic combat skills before venturing out into the harsh wilderness. Especially if you're starting as a super-lightweight peasant. Obviously this would make more sense in a tavern setting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 25, 2013, 07:42:11 pm

I like the idea of climbing trees to escape bogeymen, it being an instinctual human response to pursuit and bogeymen being based on instinctual fear.

Are adventurers drawn from existing population pools of their starting civ? I.E., does creating and losing adventures repeatedly slowly depopulate a civ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 25, 2013, 07:50:39 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 25, 2013, 07:42:11 pm

Are adventurers drawn from existing population pools of their starting civ? I.E., does creating and losing adventures repeatedly slowly depopulate a civ?

Nope. Adventurers and fortress mode expeditions are presently generated out of thin air.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 08:06:02 pm

Quote from: Spish on March 25, 2013, 07:50:39 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 25, 2013, 07:42:11 pm

Are adventurers drawn from existing population pools of their starting civ? I.E., does creating and losing adventures repeatedly slowly depopulate a civ?

Nope. Adventurers and fortress mode expeditions are presently generated out of thin air.

Yeah, Toady has stated in a few places that this needs to be fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on March 25, 2013, 08:11:01 pm

With the new but earlier established "Combat Mind" changes and more dynamic decisions on whether to engage or not, will victims of a tantruming dwarf ever decide to fight back, or a good friend or great samaritan could intervene with the assault?

Will we be able to issue an arrest upon an active tantrumer or suspected criminal to prevent further damages without necessarily yet issuing blind conviction for a heinous crime?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 25, 2013, 08:18:40 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 25, 2013, 08:06:02 pm

Quote from: Spish on March 25, 2013, 07:50:39 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 25, 2013, 07:42:11 pm

Are adventurers drawn from existing population pools of their starting civ? I.E., does creating and losing adventures repeatedly slowly depopulate a civ?

Nope. Adventurers and fortress mode expeditions are presently generated out of thin air.

Yeah, Toady has stated in a few places that this needs to be fixed.

He said that in response to questions about whether they use existing historical figures, which we know they don't. I'm just wondering whether, to put the math another way, a retired adventurer adds 1 to the population or doesn't change it (the case if said adventurer were subtracted from the number upon creation).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 25, 2013, 10:54:07 pm

Will the new succession for dead kings, etc, result in 'factions' forming within your fortress? E.g., half the population wants Urist McBaron to be king, and the other half wants Urist McMayor to be king. Will the player be able to directly influence the decisions?
Could this, in extreme cases, result in civil war within the fortress?
I think it would be pretty cool to have a popup saying "Urist McBaron has declared war upon Urist McMayor and his supporters!" and the player can choose whether to support the baron or the mayor, and have the other side marked as Rebels. Or maybe he could control the whole population in a fort-wide loyalty-cascade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 25, 2013, 11:29:00 pm

Killed both nobles, back to work you louts! Politics is no excuse to shirk hauling duty!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 26, 2013, 12:30:21 am

"Urist McHammerer has claimed the throne!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 26, 2013, 06:13:05 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 25, 2013, 10:54:07 pm

Will the new succession for dead kings, etc, result in 'factions' forming within your fortress? E.g., half the population wants Urist McBaron to be king, and the other half wants Urist McMayor to be king. Will the player be able to directly influence the decisions?
Could this, in extreme cases, result in civil war within the fortress?
I think it would be pretty cool to have a popup saying "Urist McBaron has declared war upon Urist McMayor and his supporters!" and the player can choose whether to support the baron or the mayor, and have the other side marked as Rebels. Or maybe he could control the whole population in a fort-wide loyalty-cascade.

Nopes.
But this is the ground work for that stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 26, 2013, 12:28:56 pm

Will there be support for ways, preferably in-game, of influencing your retired fortress sometime down the line? Up too and including, once it's properly done, what to do on a war footing or your stance on adventurer's? I'll be honest with you, this stems from a desire to expand the possibilities of succession forts. Passing along a world with your fort rather then vice versa has so many possibilities. I could truly appreciate the evil overlord list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Babylon on March 26, 2013, 03:51:44 pm

With the new inheritance rules will Baron etc and King be replaced in a fortress if they die?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 27, 2013, 02:20:27 am

Quote from: Babylon on March 26, 2013, 03:51:44 pm

With the new inheritance rules will Baron etc and King be replaced in a fortress if they die?

The short answer to this is almost definitely "yes", but I'd like to get a bit more info on how exactly it will go down too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 27, 2013, 07:59:40 am

Depending upon how that works, it may be more complicated choosing whom to appoint as your Baron going forward.  Gone may be the days of picking a Fish Dissector with no ambitions who likes wood, buckets and cows for their haunting moos.  You may be in trouble when this Baron suffers an "unfortunate accident" and his cousin comes into the Barony, enjoying such things as Yellow Diamond, Windows, Blow Guns and Giant Loach Man Tripe.  They may well begin appreciating Magma until you inherit a suitable replacement.

On a related note, if we get this type of familial inheritance to on-site nobles, will off-site family be suitable candidates?  If so, will we be guaranteed their arrival on-site within X migration waves, or a special migration wave?

Please ready the Incoming Noble Quarantine Initiative Honored Citizens Reception and Enculturalization Suite.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on March 27, 2013, 11:54:56 am

Quote from: Mr S on March 27, 2013, 07:59:40 am

will off-site family be suitable candidates?  If so, will we be guaranteed their arrival on-site within X migration waves, or a special migration wave?

If we do, that would be an excellent reason for dwarves angered at being governed by outsiders to commit crimes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 27, 2013, 03:08:53 pm

Quote from: Spish on March 07, 2013, 11:43:41 am

I couldn't help be bothered by the fact that finished player fortresses contribute absurdly massive amounts of data to the filesize of a world region folder. What is up with that? Is it a coding oversight or an unavoidable side-effect of being able to store player-created (non-seed generated) fortresses?

Quoting myself because of something weird I've just noticed. Apparently, visiting these abandoned fortresses with an adventurer seems to reverse the size increase somehow (I just watched a pocket world drop from 270mb to 150mb to after visiting two fortresses, and all the way down to 26.4mb after visiting the rest), so the problem isn't as bad as I had thought. I'm still curious how 8 fortresses can near-double the datacost of a large world, though.

Are post-player fortresses not automatically being packed away or something? :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 27, 2013, 04:07:05 pm

Toady mentioned before that information about fortresses is altered in some way for adventure mode visitors, so that probably accounts for your observations. They might not work the same way in the new version.

Quote from: Toady One on 12/03/2012

I talked to my first retired fortress citizen yesterday, and I also went ahead with the unretirement of retired player forts. I expressed some misgivings about fort unretirement in the last Future of the Fortress post, and we'll see how it works out. The main issues are information that is altered for the adventure mode visitor and information that is just lost entirely during the retirement process. It isn't as big a deal when you reclaim a ruined fort, since you expect some rebuilding, but it might be more jarring when the reclaimed fort was left alive. The info in question includes room information, military stuff, burrows, that kind of thing. Theoretically we should be able to keep much more of it, but having an adventurer running around killing dwarves and stealing items could be disruptive.

Quote from: Toady One on  12/15/2012

I'm still working on unretiring forts. AS I mentioned before, there's quite a bit of information that used to be removed, and it wasn't all lost at the same point, so some of the pieces are harder to find than others, and some of it is not easily maintainable with intervening adventure visits. Next up are pet information and stockpile data. It's difficult to predict how long it'll take overall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on March 27, 2013, 08:33:48 pm

Are there plans to allow active forts to decide to sever ties with their original mountainhomes, and form more agreements with foreign and their own civs, such as military assistance, joining a civilization, decisions affecting political standing of dwarves and entities, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 27, 2013, 10:49:04 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 27, 2013, 08:33:48 pm

Are there plans to allow active forts to decide to sever ties with their original mountainhomes, and form more agreements with foreign and their own civs, such as military assistance, joining a civilization, decisions affecting political standing of dwarves and entities, etc?

If so, my first succession game will be reborn, the original intent possible!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on March 28, 2013, 03:42:37 am

Yay new Blog post.

With the new adjustments to the combat, have the sieges become relatively harder or easier? Do the besiegers have any new tricks up their sleeves? Will armies retreat when bested and route back off-site to fight another day? Has the Flier pathing been fixed, so they cannot be stopped with a moat and a bridge?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: bluephoenix on March 28, 2013, 06:03:25 am

Oh man, I reached the stage again of where I am not sure whether to start a new fort or not because of the soon to be released update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 28, 2013, 06:11:04 am

Quote from: DVNO on March 28, 2013, 03:42:37 am

Yay new Blog post.

Do the besiegers have any new tricks up their sleeves? Will armies retreat when bested and route back off-site to fight another day? Has the Flier pathing been fixed, so they cannot be stopped with a moat and a bridge?

No.

None of those things are touched upon adding in new reactions or adding in none lethal combat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on March 28, 2013, 07:39:57 am

Every time Toady talks about fixing bugs, such as the Aardvark Cliffhanger, I can't but help imagining what bugs won't get squashed, or how squashing one bug might make another comicly prevalent.  And I giggle a little.

I love this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 28, 2013, 07:45:53 am

I feel like we're coming towards the release faster and faster. (the cliffhanger - either a strange bug or an awesome feature)

I just wish Toady could share a full battle log using the new system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dragula on March 28, 2013, 09:10:11 am

Quote from: Toady One

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Is it possible to sort out the raws in such manner as half-breeds can be generated as the game goes? Half-elves, half-dwarves, or however you have chosen to split races/species.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 28, 2013, 11:26:40 am

Is aiming ranged attack in for this release or can we consider that something a bit further down the road?
With the combat system rework, it only makes sense, but - you're the developer here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

Quote from: Dragula on March 28, 2013, 09:10:11 am

Quote from: Toady One

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Is it possible to sort out the raws in such manner as half-breeds can be generated as the game goes? Half-elves, half-dwarves, or however you have chosen to split races/species.

I'm going off the cuff here- I'm not privy to the code- but I suspect that while it might be a relatively simple project to compare two creature raws as they are now and then just average out/combine raws, and maybe roll randomly to select from conflicting possibilities... doing this in a way that usually produces satisfying outcomes might require a more complex RAW notation so that notable features from a race are preserved well while avoiding such sillyness as a half-elf inheriting a pair of arms from its elven mother, and pair of arms from its human father, coming out of the process looking like a badly-designed spider.

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

Certainly some interesting challenges. However, I like the idea that animal-men and half-breeds might exist naturally in the game world. It would give animal-men more connection to the world if they are definitively tied to a certain event centuries ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 28, 2013, 11:46:22 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

Quote from: Dragula on March 28, 2013, 09:10:11 am

Quote from: Toady One

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Is it possible to sort out the raws in such manner as half-breeds can be generated as the game goes? Half-elves, half-dwarves, or however you have chosen to split races/species.

I'm going off the cuff here- I'm not privy to the code- but I suspect that while it might be a relatively simple project to compare two creature raws as they are now and then just average out/combine raws, and maybe roll randomly to select from conflicting possibilities... doing this in a way that usually produces satisfying outcomes might require a more complex RAW notation so that notable features from a race are preserved well while avoiding such sillyness as a half-elf inheriting a pair of arms from its elven mother, and pair of arms from its human father, coming out of the process looking like a badly-designed spider.

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

Certainly some interesting challenges. However, I like the idea that animal-men and half-breeds might exist naturally in the game world. It would give animal-men more connection to the world if they are definitively tied to a certain event centuries ago.

If we end up having this feature in, I'm just going to play as half-human half-elf and name him Gelu.
Again, props to those who understand.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on March 28, 2013, 12:08:07 pm

Toady, how is scamps doing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 28, 2013, 12:16:32 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 28, 2013, 12:08:07 pm

Toady, how is scamps doing?

Toady discussed Scamps in the recent AMA on Reddit. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/?sort=new&limit=500)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on March 28, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

What are martial trances really and why are they unique to dwarves? Is there any canonical reason for them that isn't just that dwarves are the feature of Dwarf Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 28, 2013, 12:30:58 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 28, 2013, 11:26:40 am

Is aiming ranged attack in for this release or can we consider that something a bit further down the road?
With the combat system rework, it only makes sense, but - you're the developer here.

I imagine it hasn't changed since your last question a month ago- I'm pretty sure he'll mention it in the devlog since he knows it's an often-requested feature, and unless I mistake my guess he's doing the bare minimum necessary on his to-do list in order to get a release out.

Quote from: Toady

Quote from: DarkDXZ

    With new mobility-related stuff, does that mean we can see grappling hooks happening?

    Also, slightly unrelated, but are there plans for aimed ranged attacks (firing and throwing), so that we aren't just hoping that we hit something worth hitting?

Back when I started climbing for this release, I think grappling hooks was sort of a wish-list feature that was going in depending on whether or not I felt like I had the time, and I haven't really gotten to anything with ropes at this point at all.

I'm all for being able to aim at what you want to aim at, and it's the kind of thing I imagine will happen fairly early on next time I mess with ranged combat, but I don't know when that'll be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 28, 2013, 01:06:45 pm

I imagine that he could take care of that with a smaller release after this major one. (an example of "smaller" release being the minecart/hauling overhaul one)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: syyrah on March 28, 2013, 01:31:49 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 28, 2013, 11:46:22 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

Quote from: Dragula on March 28, 2013, 09:10:11 am

Quote from: Toady One

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Is it possible to sort out the raws in such manner as half-breeds can be generated as the game goes? Half-elves, half-dwarves, or however you have chosen to split races/species.

I'm going off the cuff here- I'm not privy to the code- but I suspect that while it might be a relatively simple project to compare two creature raws as they are now and then just average out/combine raws, and maybe roll randomly to select from conflicting possibilities... doing this in a way that usually produces satisfying outcomes might require a more complex RAW notation so that notable features from a race are preserved well while avoiding such sillyness as a half-elf inheriting a pair of arms from its elven mother, and pair of arms from its human father, coming out of the process looking like a badly-designed spider.

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

Certainly some interesting challenges. However, I like the idea that animal-men and half-breeds might exist naturally in the game world. It would give animal-men more connection to the world if they are definitively tied to a certain event centuries ago.

If we end up having this feature in, I'm just going to play as half-human half-elf and name him Gelu.
Again, props to those who understand.

Note to self: Leaving apocalyptic artifacts to hippie blooded albinoes may result in !!xWORLDx!!.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 28, 2013, 02:14:02 pm

Quote from: syyrah on March 28, 2013, 01:31:49 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 28, 2013, 11:46:22 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

Quote from: Dragula on March 28, 2013, 09:10:11 am

Quote from: Toady One

We have them in our stories, and we don't really have objections to it.  Sorting out the raw creature definitions is a mess.

Is it possible to sort out the raws in such manner as half-breeds can be generated as the game goes? Half-elves, half-dwarves, or however you have chosen to split races/species.

I'm going off the cuff here- I'm not privy to the code- but I suspect that while it might be a relatively simple project to compare two creature raws as they are now and then just average out/combine raws, and maybe roll randomly to select from conflicting possibilities... doing this in a way that usually produces satisfying outcomes might require a more complex RAW notation so that notable features from a race are preserved well while avoiding such sillyness as a half-elf inheriting a pair of arms from its elven mother, and pair of arms from its human father, coming out of the process looking like a badly-designed spider.

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

Certainly some interesting challenges. However, I like the idea that animal-men and half-breeds might exist naturally in the game world. It would give animal-men more connection to the world if they are definitively tied to a certain event centuries ago.

If we end up having this feature in, I'm just going to play as half-human half-elf and name him Gelu.
Again, props to those who understand.

Note to self: Leaving apocalyptic artifacts to hippie blooded albinoes may result in !!xWORLDx!!.

The thing is you also need a human with a sword that menaces with spikes of ice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on March 28, 2013, 03:34:19 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

I don't know why people don't find centaurs and bird-men and so forth to be creepy, because they're creepy, and for exactly this reason.  You can't make them by swapping out part for cognate part (like DF's mammalian animal-men); you've got to, like, cut the horse off at the neck and the human off at the midsection and stitch disparate bits together, and at that point you may as well be Cyriak (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chagen46 on March 28, 2013, 06:31:37 pm

Toady, is it ever planned for humans (maybe even other races) to actually split into ethnic groups--not just with their own culture, but looks as well (such as people living near the equator/in hot climates being a little darker in general)? Will there ever be ethnic rivalry/hatred between these different ethnic groups, should they ever exist?

As someone who loves to study culture and the like, I think this would be quite nice to see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 28, 2013, 06:32:49 pm

Yes. It is planned for humans especially.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 28, 2013, 08:10:06 pm

Quote from: finka on March 28, 2013, 03:34:19 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 28, 2013, 11:37:03 am

At the same time, wings are limbs, and when you have eagle-men, those guys might work best with arms AND wings, even though that technically makes them six-limbed.

I don't know why people don't find centaurs and bird-men and so forth to be creepy, because they're creepy, and for exactly this reason.  You can't make them by swapping out part for cognate part (like DF's mammalian animal-men); you've got to, like, cut the horse off at the neck and the human off at the midsection and stitch disparate bits together, and at that point you may as well be Cyriak (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw).

Or maybe just have hands on the ends of the wings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 28, 2013, 11:39:43 pm

Considering the last segment of the wing is actually the bird's hand and fingers, it may make more sense for them to develop the old vestigial claws/excess finger/thumb at the wrist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 29, 2013, 01:45:56 am

Basically, a hand with 2 fingers and a thumb.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 29, 2013, 02:30:05 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 28, 2013, 12:16:32 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 28, 2013, 12:08:07 pm

Toady, how is scamps doing?

Toady discussed Scamps in the recent AMA on Reddit. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/?sort=new&limit=500)

The fact that this is the question you had a ready answer to jump in with amused me a fair bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 29, 2013, 02:07:58 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Moreover, can blocks/tiles be destroyed if something heavy enough/fast enough hits them?

You know - you throw somebody at the wall and he just flies right through it (breaking the spine and shattering all the bones, but still flies through).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 29, 2013, 03:46:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Yep.

When ToadyOne was adding mine carts he had an infinite acceleration like issue. I dont know if he artificially caps speeds or if there is a derived terminal velocity from physical characteristics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on March 29, 2013, 09:09:12 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 29, 2013, 02:07:58 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Moreover, can blocks/tiles be destroyed if something heavy enough/fast enough hits them?

You know - you throw somebody at the wall and he just flies right through it (breaking the spine and shattering all the bones, but still flies through).

You'd know if Toady implemented destructible walls or tiles. It would be a huge change to how the engine handles them (which means Toady would definitely mention it in the log) and a lot of people would be buzzing on how to weaponize it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 29, 2013, 09:25:01 pm

Quote from: irdsm on March 29, 2013, 09:09:12 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 29, 2013, 02:07:58 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Moreover, can blocks/tiles be destroyed if something heavy enough/fast enough hits them?

You know - you throw somebody at the wall and he just flies right through it (breaking the spine and shattering all the bones, but still flies through).

You'd know if Toady implemented destructible walls or tiles. It would be a huge change to how the engine handles them (which means Toady would definitely mention it in the log) and a lot of people would be buzzing on how to weaponize it.

I imagine this will be something that might get consideration when goes to work on the stuff he called the Army Arc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 29, 2013, 10:10:30 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 29, 2013, 03:46:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Yep.

When ToadyOne was adding mine carts he had an infinite acceleration like issue. I dont know if he artificially caps speeds or if there is a derived terminal velocity from physical characteristics.

I did some experimentation on this, and my notes said that it takes one or two ticks (alternating) for any object or creature to fall a tile at full speed. I tested this with BCs, chickens, arrows, and lead minecarts. They all fell at the same speed. I tested it in the arena, so I dont know if this is 100% accurate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on March 30, 2013, 12:24:50 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 29, 2013, 10:10:30 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 29, 2013, 03:46:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Yep.

When ToadyOne was adding mine carts he had an infinite acceleration like issue. I dont know if he artificially caps speeds or if there is a derived terminal velocity from physical characteristics.

I did some experimentation on this, and my notes said that it takes one or two ticks (alternating) for any object or creature to fall a tile at full speed. I tested this with BCs, chickens, arrows, and lead minecarts. They all fell at the same speed. I tested it in the arena, so I dont know if this is 100% accurate.

I'm pretty sure that an arrow being dropped and an arrow being fired follow two different rules regarding speed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 30, 2013, 01:06:16 pm

Er if you take aerodynamics out every object should fall with the same speed right? Whether it's a feather or a pound of lead the acceleration should be always ~9.8 m/s².  If you know how to include aerodynamics into a game like DF pleace step up :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on March 30, 2013, 02:19:17 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 30, 2013, 12:24:50 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 29, 2013, 10:10:30 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 29, 2013, 03:46:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Yep.

When ToadyOne was adding mine carts he had an infinite acceleration like issue. I dont know if he artificially caps speeds or if there is a derived terminal velocity from physical characteristics.

I did some experimentation on this, and my notes said that it takes one or two ticks (alternating) for any object or creature to fall a tile at full speed. I tested this with BCs, chickens, arrows, and lead minecarts. They all fell at the same speed. I tested it in the arena, so I dont know if this is 100% accurate.

I'm pretty sure that an arrow being dropped and an arrow being fired follow two different rules regarding speed.

So far as I can tell, projectiles use something similar to simple Newtonian projectile physics, neglecting atmospheric effects. That being the case, the timing would be identical for an arrow dropped and an arrow fired, assuming the arrow was, in fact, fired horizontally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 30, 2013, 06:42:58 pm

Well, they should all fall at the same speed. So thats what expected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 08:54:16 pm

Does DF use gravity or just everything-follows-decreasing-z-levels?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 30, 2013, 09:18:33 pm

There's a curve to things now, and ramps can launch minecarts, so... well, it's not gravity, but it's a good enough facsimile of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 30, 2013, 09:38:09 pm

Doesn't apply to shot archery though. Those still just use strait line motion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 10:02:46 pm

By the time this game is finished it will be a life simulator. The game will be sentient, but incoherent due to so many different minds being processed, and eighty times as much alcohol. WE SHALL INEBRIATE OUR COMPUTERS!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on March 30, 2013, 10:24:17 pm

BUHAHAHAA!
So it will be a super-computer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 10:33:46 pm

It would have to be to be able to consume that much +sunshine [25]+

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 30, 2013, 10:38:44 pm

All computers will be biological by the time DF is finished, so its possible. Trying to use alcohol to cool a modern computer would probably be a bad idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 30, 2013, 11:08:07 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 30, 2013, 10:38:44 pm

All computers will be biological by the time DF is finished, so its possible. Trying to use alcohol to cool a modern computer would probably be a bad idea.

Still beats air, and if it's strong enough, it's non conductive. So it would work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 11:15:21 pm

Old-style moonshine?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 30, 2013, 11:16:40 pm

All we need to do to get organic computers is train mouse brains or something to form processors of selected inputs, train them to develop their thought processes in terms of code as they grow, develop a method of life support for them, and convince toady to convert DF into organic-brain code.

I'm thinking develop them with chloroplasts in tissue on the back of a standard electronic monitor which they provide output to; then they're literally solar-powered, apart from other nutritional needs. The problem is they may have short lifespans especially in the hands of small children and morons, be less than appropriately durable and susceptable to climate change as any organism is so they wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for outdoor use, they'd get both computer viruses that make them go stark raving mad AND organic viruses and bacterial infections, and PETA would fucking murder anyone that used one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 11:22:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 30, 2013, 11:16:40 pm

All we need to do to get organic computers is train mouse brains or something to form processors of selected inputs, train them to develop their thought processes in terms of code as they grow, develop a method of life support for them, and convince toady to convert DF into organic-brain code.

I'm thinking develop them with chloroplasts in tissue on the back of a standard electronic monitor which they provide output to; then they're literally solar-powered, apart from other nutritional needs. The problem is they may have short lifespans especially in the hands of small children and morons, be less than appropriately durable and susceptable to climate change as any organism is so they wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for outdoor use, they'd get both computer viruses that make them go stark raving mad AND organic viruses and bacterial infections, and PETA would fucking murder anyone that used one.

In other words, it's the most fucking dwarven computer in history.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 30, 2013, 11:25:48 pm

A truely dwarven computer would be dug out of a mountain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on March 31, 2013, 01:29:38 pm

Quote from: blue sam3 on March 30, 2013, 02:19:17 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on March 30, 2013, 12:24:50 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 29, 2013, 10:10:30 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 29, 2013, 03:46:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on March 29, 2013, 01:09:58 pm

is terminal velocity currently implemented or will things comtinue to accelerate until collision when falling?

Yep.

When ToadyOne was adding mine carts he had an infinite acceleration like issue. I dont know if he artificially caps speeds or if there is a derived terminal velocity from physical characteristics.

I did some experimentation on this, and my notes said that it takes one or two ticks (alternating) for any object or creature to fall a tile at full speed. I tested this with BCs, chickens, arrows, and lead minecarts. They all fell at the same speed. I tested it in the arena, so I dont know if this is 100% accurate.

I'm pretty sure that an arrow being dropped and an arrow being fired follow two different rules regarding speed.

So far as I can tell, projectiles use something similar to simple Newtonian projectile physics, neglecting atmospheric effects. That being the case, the timing would be identical for an arrow dropped and an arrow fired, assuming the arrow was, in fact, fired horizontally.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=120502.msg3878036#msg3878036

1. The new projectiles that are capable of parabolic paths do experience constant gravitational acceleration.
2. There is a terminal velocity, but you have to fall very far to get to it.
3. Objects that fall a large distance go faster, and get to such a speed that they can cause serious injuries on (or explode) creatures.

You can't fall far enough in the arena to get valid testing results.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 31, 2013, 04:20:47 pm

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on March 31, 2013, 01:29:38 pm

You can't fall far enough in the arena to get valid testing results.

Unless, of course, you modify the arena layout.
Or am I missing something crucially important here?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on March 31, 2013, 04:56:10 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2013, 11:22:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 30, 2013, 11:16:40 pm

[snip]

In other words, it's the most fucking dwarven computer in history.

I had had an idea along similar lines, but using grape vines instead of mice - but I see that using something with a pre-existing brain would greatly accelerate the process of making a bioprocessor, so what we obviously must do is genetically manipulate more and more plant genes into generations of mice, until they are more plant then mouse, and THEN train their brains from seeding to maturity to be computers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 31, 2013, 10:23:19 pm

Thanks to Caldfir, Trif, Putnam, mastahcheese, King Mir, Knight Otu, Dwarfu, CaptainArchmage, Manveru Taurënér, Spish, MrWiggles, PTTG??, Footkerchief, monk12, and irdsm for helping out with answers this time.  Remember that if your question didn't appear below, and you colored it green, it was probably addressed by one of the above people, or it didn't follow the guidelines in the OP.

Quote from: King Mir

How many z levels can a dwarf jump down without getting hurt?

If they jump-jump, as opposed to flopping over, it appears to be two tiles.

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit

With the increase in dialogue options and time passing in conversation, will NPCs reach a point where they get tired of a conversation that is just about random rumors and incidents, and tell you so and/or just walk away? Probably not for this release ... but in the future?

Yeah, I've thought about it a bit, and it'll probably end up like that.  As long as you have options to look back at what people tell you, there's no need to let you bother them over and over about the same stuff, unless they are really lonely or something -- in that vein, there's no reason why you're going to be the only one driving the conversation, once they have some reason to be interested in talking about something.

Quote from: Awessum Possum

Will we see non-Goblin occupations in this release? i.e. Dwarves occupying Goblin fortresses, Humans occupying Elf forests, or Elves occupying Dwarf forts?

It's not the emphasis, but I'm not sure what'll happen yet.  This isn't the army arc, so the more armies we have marching and taking sites, the stranger things will be, until they actually start fighting each other.  I'm taking baby steps with the goblin invasions, and I'm not sure other occupations is the proper route forward from there.  On the other hand, you can already have these as a consequence of world generation, and those are more likely to be there to see.  Quite likely, depending on how I finish up guards.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Just wondering for future releases, when more things are RAW-ified, and I think it was mentioned somewhere that tokens for some aspects of the raws will spread to others, will we ever be able to set up position tokens into the creature files themselves? For example, setting up a noble-like position to wolves or whoever to make the "alpha" wolf with the responsibility of leading the pack, or something along those lines, allowing us to set up a psuedo-entity structure among individual creeatures, without them actually having their own entity?

I'm really not sure how stuff like that will work, things like the potentially complex social structures of regular animals.  I don't know if it'll co-opt entity code, since there is a lot of baggage there as well.  I haven't planned it out, in any case.

Quote from: Wimopy

What effects would drink have on dwarves and their productivity? Could they become just like Drunks and useless for a few hours? Or are they already simple enough to not have real visible effects?

He he he, I have no idea.  If they drink as much as they do, and human-style drunkenness is added, I don't think the game would be exactly playable, but having them remain utterly sober at all times would be creepy.  But yeah, they could already behave drunkenly enough that I don't need to change it much.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, will we ever see the cavern civ code used above-ground, where a mini-civ could exist as something other than a gang of bandits (although technically they could be a tribe of jerks who steal and murder)? Will we see any more detail put into the cavern civs' sites, culture, and behaviors as well?

We are playing catch up, as usual, and we just added the main races' sites for this release.  All of the animal people need to be properly fleshed out, and things like semimegas and the animal societies from the earlier question are also relevant.  We certainly hope to expand on the silly fake camps that are generated for underground layer civs to the point that they are properly realized.

Quote

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

The new combat changes, does this mean dual-wielding dwarves in fort mode are going to use both their weapons in combat, allowing berserk sword-wielding squads and dual-wielding shieldhammer* dwarves?

*Shieldhammer dwarves as in dwarves carrying two shields for defence and bashing skulls.

Quote from: Tov01

Could you elaborate on what your plans for dual-wielding are? And will it be modeled after dual-wielding in real life (i.e. not all that effective in most circumstances), or the more stereotypically "gamey" dual-wielding.

Quote from: GaGrin

Does this include the notion of single-time counters?
...
The very first technique in Meyer's longsword is the Zornhau - a diagonal cut, that is used both as a primary attack and also as the counter to that attack with timing and slight change in the direction of the step.

People will probably end up using whatever objects they are holding, yeah.

I don't have a specific model I'm following for dual-wielding.  I'm happy enough with heavily penalizing simultaneous strikes for now, and other simultaneous actions like multiple deflections, and thinking about general clunkiness a bit (e.g. holding a halberd in the off-hand might penalize you just by existing), just to keep the game in a general sense of order as we navigate the move/attack split.  If that allows some swash-buckly/fency-type fending off of multiple opponents for highly skilled characters, I don't think it's terrible.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to make judgments about the efficacy of dual-wielding and so on.  Decisions must be made at some point, but I'm hesitant to commit to anything now.  I don't have the combat arc framework for it.

I haven't altered the basic nature of parrying in the game.  When we get around to the meat of combat style rewrites and so on, I'm willing to include various techniques as they come up.  Depending on how specific they are, they could fit better as a possible part of a style that is generated, or if general enough they might work as a technique for a weapon class, etc.

Quote from: Novel

Given what has been stated about the difficulty's of fighting multiple combatants, when will highly skilled adventurer's be able to go the full batman (with the relevant requisite player skill) again?

The ability to block several simultaneous attacks with the same weapon is not likely to be added as a non-magical ability, or without respect to special circumstances (such as a shield or large weapon blocking more than one attack from similar directions).  That doesn't mean you can't fight multiple opponents.  You just have more of a reason to avoid being surrounded now.

Quote from: Osmosis Jones

In the inverse of earlier discussion, can player fortress (and sites in general) block progress?
...
I'm saying if I cover every single passable route to an area in a solid line of dwarven fortresses, not just plonking one down alone in the middle of nowhere.

Player fortresses are more of a barrier than other site types, since we can't handle the number of units that might come passing through reliably, so you could game the system.  You'd know you were being silly though.

Quote from: Osmosis Jones

Does the direction enemies attack from (on the local fortress scale) depend on the direction they approach from on the world map? Either currently, or in the future?

It doesn't matter right now.  But it will, yeah, this is one of the reasons why we took fortresses and put them into the "seamless" world map.  Way back when, it didn't even try.  Now that the armies are positioned on the map, having them come in from the right direction will be the natural choice, although the exact timing of me putting it in will depend on me noticing to do it and that sort of thing.

Quote from: Spish

I couldn't help be bothered by the fact that finished player fortresses contribute absurdly massive amounts of data to the filesize of a world region folder. What is up with that? Is it a coding oversight or an unavoidable side-effect of being able to store player-created (non-seed generated) fortresses?

I'm not sure it is unavoidable, but the size of the data definitely suffers from being non-seed generated, so the difference will be pronounced sometimes.  We run it through a compression algorithm already, so we'd probably have to deal with the amount of data to do much better.  I haven't checked out what the largest culprits are, and I'm not sure which data gets saved post-abandon vs. what gets cleaned out in adventure mode that would cause any observed changes.  It does some processing there, but I doubt that'll help much with retired fortresses coming down the line now.

Quote from: squishynoob

Now that movement/combat speeds are split, which attributes (or skills) determine each?

The movement rules are the same as before -- it uses strength and agility both, and the size of extra layers (e.g. fat) can change your speed.  This is all settable in the gait definitions now, although str and agi are the only supported stats at this point.

Attack speeds are trickier -- there isn't enough resolution in the system to vary the speeds click-wise, so attributes are still used in the rolls instead.  At some point I could have the fractionally faster people get their actions shifted forward in a queue within a given click, but I haven't messed with that yet.  Attack speeds can be varied by choice (you can apply different adjectives to your strikes to vary their properties), and the observer skill lets you read the timing and qualities of incoming attacks, so more skilled people have a lot more control over the flow of things, which mitigates the lack of skill-speed somewhat.  I still haven't gotten into the weeds of it though, and won't for this release.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

This just isn't addressed at this point.

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Quote from: KrEstoF

Toady, could you explain in more detail what your plans for this "pulping" are? Is it basically some sort of hit point system for each body part, where if it accumulates enough bludgeoning (or I suppose even slashing) damage, it gets turned into a useless pulp? Will the affects of pulping be gradual for the most part? And also, would it now be possible for bogeymen or any weak animal for that matter to literally punch you to death, reducing your adventurer to a bloodied pulp, without, say, just disabling the lungs?

Quote from: HugoLuman

Does pulping require completely pureeing the offending dead matter, or does, say, causing multiple fractures to a limb put it down for good? Are we talking pumpkin pie or just smashed jack-o-lantern?

Quote from: Trif

How does the hospital handle pulped limbs? Will a pulped hand get amputated?

I don't have specific mechanics planned yet -- it's the sort of thing that'll rapidly change as I muck around and refamiliarize myself with the combat damage details.  The bruising/etc. system are sort of like hitpoints, but there are many different types and they also have an area of effect and other rating numbers that mush everything, and I suspect pulping could end up as kind of an amalgam of that data with all of the actually cutting wounds.  Once the amalgamated number is "bad enough", it would fall apart.  Even if that's a single number, it's quite unlike hitpoints in that it comes from a collection of explicit varied data, all of which can be changed individually and have different effects on the score.  I don't have a feel right now for how long pulping will take or how variations in size and material will impact the speed of it.  It needs to be fast enough for undead tissue that multiple reraises are less silly.

For hospitals, it won't be clear until I start whether or not pulping will always lead to severs.  For a critter like a gabbro man or something, "pulping" would be more crumbly and severful, but a mashed and incomprehensible jumble of meat doesn't necessarily imply a sever for a regular critter.  In that case, I'd lean toward amputation, I think.  If pulps end up as severs, it won't be any different from a regular one (aside from ruining the part that drops to avoid reanimation).

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will we ever see plants with the ability to move? Either those simalar to magical treants or as mundane as the common tumbleweed?

Knight Otu brought up grimelings, as plant-like creatures, and I'm not sure what the future will hold in terms of blurring the line between units and trees, etc.  The new trees are more interesting tile-wise, which'll let us theoretically thing about some strange options.  The whole treant question is more complicated now, of course, if they are supposd to be actual moving trees.  It's whiffable in a single-tile way.  But yeah, I'm not really sure what'll happen.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Say, are we going to see anything like randomly generated trees with bizarre fruits or blossoms? Like random syndrome fruit or miscellaneous items?

The list of randomly generated stuff slowly increases, and random vegetation is on the official list.  Syndrome fruit is very common in fairy tales, so it's definitely fair to do, but I don't know if it'll be in the first iteration.  It very well could be, since the random vegetation will likely first occur in lands with a heavy theme one way or another.

Quote from: eux0r

toady, your devlog from 2013/03/07 makes me believe dodging is now an active(read: player controlled) action instead of something automatic, is this true? can you give us some details on how this will work? are there other mechanics players will have more control over themselves with the next release?

You can choose to commit to an active form of defense, which'll give you a bonus there and reduce your passive chances, or you can take your regular passive rolls.  It's not a crucial thing yet, but as actions lead to other actions, it should become interesting over time.  Right now, I'm just trying to deal with the consequences of the blowing up of the old system without committing to the whole combat rewrite.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will the amount of information available in combat be based on our observer level or oter skill, or do we just know everything for now?

Yeah, I just did that part.  You can get information like which item/part is coming at you and what the target body part is, and information about timing, the swing type and the character (heavy/precise/wild/etc.) of the attack if you are really good.

Quote from: Arek

Since we will be able to equip friendly NPCs in goblin controlled settlements or elsewhere, would we be able as necromancers to arm our undead minions too (given they are suitable for it, like at least body with legs and at least one arm, or some similar restriction?

I don't recall if your undead get added to your companion list, and I suppose it'll also depend on whether or not the initial equipment interface is conversation driven.  If you can't dress a non-talker, you'd be out of luck.  I'm not sure how it'll end up.

Quote from: Spish

Will the framework for retired player fortresses have improvements that apply to abandoned/conquered ones as well?

I.E. regarding things like item scattering, NPC location, abandoned pets, etc.

Nope, it's not related.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady; once a body is found, and there was a witness, but they also died before they could report it to anyone else, will they still have any way to pin it on the adventurer? Or will eliminating witnesses prevent them from figuring out what happened?

Somewhat related: Will killing livestock or pets count as murder for this current release or will it be a separate crime/ignored until a separate crime can be planned out for it? For that matter, will livestock, or at least those without the CAN_LEARN/CAN_SPEAK tags, count to the game as a "reliable witness" who can report a crime and get a pike shoved through your head, or have you already handled that? Getting ratted out by a cat or somebody's horse would be silly, even if it kinda makes sense with any of the animal people living as pets in an elven site.

They don't have any ways to investigate crimes right now.  It's difficult to do, just as real police work can be difficult, but you will be at a disadvantage when they start pinning things on strangers, since you'll mostly be a stranger if you travel at all.  Killing all of the witnesses works as long as you prevent them from being off-loaded -- as it stands, if a witness is off-loaded, you are out of luck, even if you find them again shortly thereafter.

I'm hoping most of the stupidity around animal killing will be removed, but it isn't done yet.  I'm pretty sure they can't be witnesses.

Quote from: Spish

Say my fortress is the mountainhome, and the king (along with his entire family) suffers an "unfortunate accident." Will the reigning baron of the mountainhome get first dibs on succeeding him? Or will it still take those random schmuck barons into account?

It doesn't understand usurpation and taking control of the apparatuses of power and so on.  There isn't any actual mutual war or proper understanding of such things yet, so claims aren't handled in a very natural or intelligent way.

Quote from: HugoLuman

If we depopulate a site as an adventurer, can we still retire in it like the current version? Or will they become like abandoned forts /worldgen ruined sites, and not allow retiring?

I'm not 100% sure, since I haven't finished that section yet.  The entity will get scrubbed from the site, but if the last guy passes away one instant and you retire the next, it might not have caught up with you yet.  It depends on how expensive the checks are and if I run them during all the special cases, etc.  Eventually a dead site would be a dead site and not retire-able.  Once you can claim a site with your own adventurer group, you'd be able to retire again, but that's not going in this time.

Quote from: Sizik

Is there a reason NPC sites go up to 17x17, and not a (theoretically) playable 16x16?

There are so many issues even with a 16x16 that it wasn't really a consideration.  The 16x16 is just an artificial embark screen restriction in any case, with a few coordinate problems which are fixable.  If we can figures out playing a 16x16, 17x17 isn't much larger.  Doing things like playing human etc. villages is a post 1.0 goal, and so not worth thinking about in any serious way now, given how long this is taking.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

This was probably brought up before, but what happens to worlds generated before this release? Will they still be functionable or are all previous worlds now only worth of archiving? (or something like being reseeded...)

The seeds won't generate the same worlds, if I remember.  History is certainly different now, in any case.  If you're talking about save compatibility, that's definitely not worth the time to support for large releases like this, since it would add months to the time.

Quote from: Novel

As you intend to tie forts into the world by giving in-game purpose to their creation, will you be taking other steps to make starting a fort more interesting? Personally, i always find it the most difficult part to get into, and I'd like to have my initial options expanded in getting to know the area.

The "start scenarios" are sort of all-encompassing as a topic, so I imagine they'll get pretty interesting as they are implemented, even on the first pass.  Setting up your relationship with any hill dwarves around or that you brought along would tend to happen early on, for instance.  The above ground area itself could afford to be more interesting as well, but we don't have a lot there other than a few dev items about terrain features and interactions with some local critters.  The start scenario also determines the nature of your relationship with the larger dwarven civilization, but much of that likely won't come to fruition in the first season, unless it's a really strict scenario about being hunted or something.

Quote from: dirty foot

What happens to the king when you abandon? Does he go back to the mountainhome?

I haven't changed how those groups are handled, but there are some refugee items remaining on the list that might take care of it, depending on what I get to.

Quote from: King Mir

Can world-gen dwarf fortresses, as distinct from other sites, cross 16x16 world tile boundaries? If so, will will such fortresses be playable now?

I don't remember if I addressed it.  Maybe not.  I've written it down now in any case.  The easy way to do it will be to stop them from crossing the boundaries, since I'm still not sure how bad it would be to let player-controlled sites exist in multiple squares.  It might not be a problem, but I haven't had time to check and it's not a quick thing to do.

Quote from: mastahcheese

How many boxes of crayons have you guys gone through for making the crayon rewards?

We went through several smaller boxes at first (3 maybe), but we eventually splurged for one of those...  I don't remember if it was 128 or 160...  a giant spiral thing with three layers.  It is still going, though I've lost a few colors.  I'm not sure if we'll get a new one, or if we'll just try for replacement crayons for colors like black that tend to go first.  We're almost at the decision point.

Quote from: mastahcheese

How will the new multi-level trees interact with bogeymen? Will climbing a tree be a viable means of safety, or can they just teleport up into them? Also if they can, will they appear in trees above you and jump down on you normally?

If it's possible for a creature to be so heavy that it crashes through tree branches, would it be possible for a bogeyman to appear in a tree, and then immediatly fall through?

I don't think the bogeymen ever teleport nearby, but it could just be a vision check, in which case they could pop up on the other end of a trunk if there's something there to support them...  I thought it was distance based though.  I also don't remember if their placement is elevation-based or walkability-based, in which case they might all be generated on the ground in all cases.  If suppose if they show up on rooftops, that would answer that.  And of course, Putnam mentioned the fliers, in which case trees aren't so safe.

Whether it's elevation-based or not, there's likely a check for walkability, in which case unusable branches would be off limits.  That's all pretty uninteresting right now though -- there are just twigs vs. branches vs. heavy branches, without finely-grained checks.

Quote from: Spish

So with the addition of nonlethal combat in adventure mode, do we have the option of challenging (or better yet, instigating) random jerks to one-on-one fistfights and training our fighting skills thusly?

Jerks don't always fight one-on-one.

Quote from: iceball3

With the new but earlier established "Combat Mind" changes and more dynamic decisions on whether to engage or not, will victims of a tantruming dwarf ever decide to fight back, or a good friend or great samaritan could intervene with the assault?

It's not that complicated yet.

Quote from: Novel

Will there be support for ways, preferably in-game, of influencing your retired fortress sometime down the line? Up too and including, once it's properly done, what to do on a war footing or your stance on adventurer's? I'll be honest with you, this stems from a desire to expand the possibilities of succession forts. Passing along a world with your fort rather then vice versa has so many possibilities. I could truly appreciate the evil overlord list.

It's hard to say what'll happen in the future, but if there are things like edicts that you make (formalizing some standing orders, or however), then those'll last after retirement.  Laws aren't really formalized in the game at all at this point.  Hopefully it'll all be done in some sensible uniform framework later on.

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Quote from: Babylon

With the new inheritance rules will Baron etc and King be replaced in a fortress if they die?

Quote from: Mr S

On a related note, if we get this type of familial inheritance to on-site nobles, will off-site family be suitable candidates?  If so, will we be guaranteed their arrival on-site within X migration waves, or a special migration wave?

There will be a replacement, but it won't necessarily be somebody in your fortress at the time -- if it's a family position and the next person in line is off somewhere else, they'd get the nod, but this leads to the off-site problem.  I haven't addressed this.  I can't guarantee their arrival, since things can be complicated by their other responsibilities.  It's the sort of thing that should make the game interesting, but I'm not sure when I'll handle each of the interfering cases.

Quote from: iceball3

Are there plans to allow active forts to decide to sever ties with their original mountainhomes, and form more agreements with foreign and their own civs, such as military assistance, joining a civilization, decisions affecting political standing of dwarves and entities, etc?

You can already do this in a basic sense when you refuse the barony.  The only reason you don't get attacked is because that sort of civ invasion isn't supported yet.  But yeah, eventually we're hoping to give you choices as your fortress becomes a piece of the world that others care about.  Your initial status will depend on your start scenario, and that'll probably set up your initial choices as well, but start scenarios aren't meant to force too much.  They just let your fortress make some kind of initial sense to everybody, including yourself as the decision maker.

Quote from: MrWillsauce

What are martial trances really and why are they unique to dwarves? Is there any canonical reason for them that isn't just that dwarves are the feature of Dwarf Mode?

It has been a long time, but we might have wanted to give lone dwarves caught in an ambush by multiple opponents in fortress mode more of a chance to have a heroic moment.  I have no idea now.  It's just another quirky thing like the strange moods dwarves get for artifact creation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 31, 2013, 10:34:39 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 31, 2013, 11:13:01 pm

Neat! I'm getting more excited for this release by the day :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on March 31, 2013, 11:16:38 pm

Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 31, 2013, 11:44:06 pm

Thanks for the answers as always :)

Quote

There will be a replacement, but it won't necessarily be somebody in your fortress at the time -- if it's a family position and the next person in line is off somewhere else, they'd get the nod, but this leads to the off-site problem.  I haven't addressed this.  I can't guarantee their arrival, since things can be complicated by their other responsibilities.  It's the sort of thing that should make the game interesting, but I'm not sure when I'll handle each of the interfering cases.

It would be odd if the newly appointed replacement-noble gets some sort psychic message.  The news hopefully travel with the caravans. Such stuff actually could be a good chance to introduce a mail-system XD. Like trading slabs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 01, 2013, 12:02:34 am

Quote from: MrWillsauce on March 31, 2013, 11:16:38 pm

Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?

Actually, your adventurers do have preferences right now, you just can't view them while in adventure mode. I have a fortress running right now where I got a former adventurer that I had retired in the mountain home, and he has a full set of preferences, for random objects, food and drink, personality traits and mannerisms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 01, 2013, 12:10:53 am

New answers on April Fools day (well, East Coast, anyway)

Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 01, 2013, 12:12:01 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady!
And sorry for asking a stupid question...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 01, 2013, 12:15:35 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on April 01, 2013, 12:02:34 am

Quote from: MrWillsauce on March 31, 2013, 11:16:38 pm

Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?

Actually, your adventurers do have preferences right now, you just can't view them while in adventure mode. I have a fortress running right now where I got a former adventurer that I had retired in the mountain home, and he has a full set of preferences, for random objects, food and drink, personality traits and mannerisms.

This is wrong; memory hacking reveals that adventurers have no preferences at all. They're probably generated when the adventurer shows up in fort mode.

The personality traits, however, are given to your adventurer; my current one has a self-discipline and dutifulness that are both pretty low :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on April 01, 2013, 12:38:20 am

I can attest to the above. There was a fortress that was all about starting at the beginning of the world, and several adventurers starting the first mountain home. When the adventurers eventually got there, they had preferences and personality traits. However, the personality traits seems to be derived from a similar medium due to them all having rather similar drives for adventure and so such. Everything else is, presumably, generated when they arrive. Although there were some instances of odd coincidences relating to preferences, it is most likely just that, coincidences.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 01, 2013, 12:40:20 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 01, 2013, 12:15:35 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on April 01, 2013, 12:02:34 am

Quote from: MrWillsauce on March 31, 2013, 11:16:38 pm

Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?

Actually, your adventurers do have preferences right now, you just can't view them while in adventure mode. I have a fortress running right now where I got a former adventurer that I had retired in the mountain home, and he has a full set of preferences, for random objects, food and drink, personality traits and mannerisms.

This is wrong; memory hacking reveals that adventurers have no preferences at all. They're probably generated when the adventurer shows up in fort mode.

The personality traits, however, are given to your adventurer; my current one has a self-discipline and dutifulness that are both pretty low :P

In my experience, Adventurers always get high altruism and adventurousness by default, but other than that they're as varied as anyone else. The preferences generated upon joining the fort stick with them. Also, they can gain faiths in adventure mode by talking to priests about something or other.

And unless you drink alcohol during adventure mode, they'll show up with "...needs alcohol to get through the working day, and can't even remember the last time he/she had some."

ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 01, 2013, 04:14:02 am

Quote

Creature variations can now take argument strings which replace argument markers in the variation definition (the arguments are different speed numbers in this case). The use of lines of the variation can also be made conditional on these arguments.

What's the format for passing these arguments to the variation?

Will there be any way to use a match as conditional? Example: to not try to add a tail if there's "TAIL" in the base creature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 01, 2013, 09:44:56 am

Quote from: HugoLuman

In my experience, Adventurers always get high altruism and adventurousness by default, but other than that they're as varied as anyone else.

Interesting. If true, I hope Toady tweaks the altruism bit, since I'd imagine it wouldn't fit the thief archetype outside of the Robin Hood model. Adventurousness is probably a given, since even a trader needs some drive to go out into the dangerous world so he can make a profit.

It'd be nice to see preferences and such while playing as the adventurer, to add a bit of roleplaying. I now have an urge to play a kobold thief who steals both useful items and odd trinkets that match his preferences.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 01, 2013, 10:14:28 am

Well, you can always hack their personality to something you want. I guess for now the altruism is high to explain why someone risks their life for peasants they don't know: they "genuinely enjoy helping others."

As it stands right now, Adventurers make the ideal fort citizens. Compassionate ("genuinely enjoy helping others") and open-minded ("loves fresh experiences"), but also not easily fazed ("doesn't care much about anything anymore") and can handle themselves in a fight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 01, 2013, 10:32:49 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 01, 2013, 10:14:28 am

Well, you can always hack their personality to something you want. I guess for now the altruism is high to explain why someone risks their life for peasants they don't know: they "genuinely enjoy helping others."

As it stands right now, Adventurers make the ideal fort citizens. Compassionate ("genuinely enjoy helping others") and open-minded ("loves fresh experiences"), but also not easily fazed ("doesn't care much about anything anymore") and can handle themselves in a fight.

I may have to read up on how to do that hacking, though some fun could be had with random preferences. "We have reports of a kobold thief stealing steel daggers, precious jewelry, money, prepared meat, and... chairs."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gokajern on April 01, 2013, 12:08:13 pm

Will it be possible to modify the layout of human, dwarven, goblin, etc, sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 01, 2013, 12:31:31 pm

Indications are that, eventually, yes, but almost certainly not in this release.

BTW, thanks for the replies Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 01, 2013, 12:39:31 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 01, 2013, 10:14:28 am

but also not easily fazed ("doesn't care much about anything anymore") and can handle themselves in a fight.

Note that this is because COMBATHARDNESS goes up at a ridiculous rate in adventurer mode; getting hit can raise it by 2-4 points per hit (source: memhacking).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 01, 2013, 01:37:09 pm

Though it's not quite so ridiculous if that particular adventurer has carved a bloody swathe through the bandits and animals of the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 01, 2013, 07:48:28 pm

It is pretty ridiculous when it went up to 100 over the course of a fight against a badger, though.

"I've seen some shit, man. The badger... you don't even know, man. That badger was just... god damn. It scratched my arm. Tore the muscle."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 01, 2013, 11:36:43 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 01, 2013, 07:48:28 pm

It is pretty ridiculous when it went up to 100 over the course of a fight against a badger, though.

"I've seen some shit, man. The badger... you don't even know, man. That badger was just... god damn. It scratched my arm. Tore the muscle."

That's some heavy shit, man.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 02, 2013, 01:09:39 am

"The fucking MUSCLE. Do you know what it's like, being scratched that hard?"

"Anyway, let's go on to the next person. How about you, Udib?"

"I've had 3 children. One was impaled on spikes. The second was stabbed in the face by a goblin. The third was beaten to death by her own berserking father".

"Yeah, that's bad... but this badger was something."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 02, 2013, 05:09:41 am

Quote from: Gokajern on April 01, 2013, 12:08:13 pm

Will it be possible to modify the layout of human, dwarven, goblin, etc, sites?

ToadyOne doesnt have any plans in the near future to put the town generation into raws. No strict to my understanding though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 02, 2013, 09:07:00 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 02, 2013, 05:09:41 am

Quote from: Gokajern on April 01, 2013, 12:08:13 pm

Will it be possible to modify the layout of human, dwarven, goblin, etc, sites?

ToadyOne doesnt have any plans in the near future to put the town generation into raws. No strict to my understanding though.

I'm pretty sure he has mentioned somewhere before that he plans on making the city rules into raws, but that won't be around for probably a good long time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fractalman on April 02, 2013, 01:16:10 pm

Quote from: Wastedlabor on April 01, 2013, 04:14:02 am

[snip]
Will there be any way to use a match as conditional? Example: to not try to add a tail if there's "TAIL" in the base creature.[/color]

...
do you mean "will there be exception-handling for duped raws", or do you mean letting the user say, via the raws, "if (creature already has tail) then {don't add tail} else{add tail}"...

Will world-generation errors be added back in as an available world-generation parameter?

Will there be an option to EXPLICITLY enable the reality-warping power of duped raws if/when you get around to stopping the issues with duped raws?


Yeah.  World-gen errors, for which 2047 or 2048 tall candy spires are not unheard of. I'd say more, but there's already a whole topic about it. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 02, 2013, 01:26:40 pm

Quote from: fractalman on April 02, 2013, 01:16:10 pm

do you mean "will there be exception-handling for duped raws", or do you mean letting the user say, via the raws, "if (creature already has tail) then {don't add tail} else{add tail}"

The second. When I'm generating random creatures using variations it'd be nice if some of the variation tags were conditional to the base creature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 02, 2013, 01:34:59 pm

Dr. Urist McMephesto, Cheif Genetics Dwarf, "Here we have the the four-assed monkey, a four-assed ostrich, a four-assed mongoose, a mouse/duck, a gorilla/mosquito, a rabbit/fish, a four-assed frog, a seven-assed Galapagos Turtle, loads of pissed off turkeys."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 02, 2013, 01:35:32 pm

These tree questions may have been asked already, but I couldn't find them.

Will we be able to use whole trees as defenses? That is, will we be able to use a giant oak as a wall or a bridge?

Will there be stumps left behind after we cut down trees? I imagine that stumps would be kind of like boulders, blocking caravans.

Will trees have varying hardness, affecting chopping time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 02, 2013, 02:28:36 pm

Will the tree size directly affect the amount of resources obtainable from that tree? Ie. a large branching oak will provide way more wood than something more similar to trees currently in the game.

Simply since the screenshots you previously provide make those trees look goddamn huge (which is a very good thing imho).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on April 02, 2013, 03:20:38 pm

Can someone catch me up on the sheer quantity of stuff in this release? :P. I mean, new sites, trees, insurgencys, unarmed and what reads like greater controls to the point of deciding how to parry (YES!), tracking (with at least one example beyond the usual senses) and stealth, even Retiring forts, and all the hidden fun stuff we may discover, and i would not be at all surprised if I'm missing several other things!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 02, 2013, 03:33:22 pm

Quote from: Novel on April 02, 2013, 03:20:38 pm

Can someone catch me up on the sheer quantity of stuff in this release? :P. I mean, new sites, trees, insurgencys, unarmed and what reads like greater controls to the point of deciding how to parry (YES!), tracking (with at least one example beyond the usual senses) and stealth, even Retiring forts, and all the hidden fun stuff we may discover, and i would not be at all surprised if I'm missing several other things!

Here's what I know of that's coming:

- fort retirement - you can now "retire" an active fort and be able to visit it with an adventurer or make another fort elsewhere.
- elf, dwarf and goblin sites - you can finally visit them and slaughter their inhabitants or do other stuff with them
- multi-tile trees - well, self-explanatory, I suppose.
- running, jumping, climbing - basically, Assassin's Creed enters Dwarf Fortress. Only thing is, it's not as easy anymore.
- new combat system - I honestly have trouble with that one...I'd need to be given a combat log to understand it. Or let me play it. (unarmed  combat, movement/combat speed split, reaction moments, parrying, active dodging - wishfully hoping for aimed ranged attacks for sniping and whatnot)
- expanded stealth system - vision arcs, sounds and whatnot. Will be Fun.
- more stuff with historical figures - loyalty cascades (father-son thingy), figures growing up in real-ish-time, couples moving to one another's sites.
- site occupations - mainly by gobs, but other races may follow.
- insurrections - self-explanatory-ish - you gather some warriors/peasants to help you fight out the occupants.
- tracking


(the latest report kinda cues that the release is really close, but that's just my thinking...)
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 02, 2013, 04:14:38 pm

You forgot the whole "actions of the player actually affect the world in meaningful ways" thing :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 02, 2013, 04:19:36 pm

There's a google doc that someone was hosting that has a complete list of changes for this release. You'd have to search this thread to find it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDorf on April 02, 2013, 04:27:19 pm

I'm really hyped for this release! :D Let's hope it arrives in as soon as possible.

Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.


Edit:

Quote from: King Mir on April 02, 2013, 04:19:36 pm

There's a google doc that someone was hosting that has a complete list of changes for this release. You'd have to search this thread to find it.

Didn't notice this until after I had posted. I'll try to find the list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 02, 2013, 06:36:12 pm

Quote from: TheDorf on April 02, 2013, 04:27:19 pm

I'm really hyped for this release! :D Let's hope it arrives in as soon as possible.

Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.


Edit:

Quote from: King Mir on April 02, 2013, 04:19:36 pm

There's a google doc that someone was hosting that has a complete list of changes for this release. You'd have to search this thread to find it.

Didn't notice this until after I had posted. I'll try to find the list.

Stealth has gotten a dramatic overhaul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 02, 2013, 07:24:07 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 02, 2013, 04:19:36 pm

There's a google doc that someone was hosting that has a complete list of changes for this release. You'd have to search this thread to find it.

No need, I have it bookmarked: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 02, 2013, 10:31:29 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 02, 2013, 06:36:12 pm

Quote from: TheDorf on April 02, 2013, 04:27:19 pm

I'm really hyped for this release! :D Let's hope it arrives in as soon as possible.

Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.


Edit:

Quote from: King Mir on April 02, 2013, 04:19:36 pm

There's a google doc that someone was hosting that has a complete list of changes for this release. You'd have to search this thread to find it.

Didn't notice this until after I had posted. I'll try to find the list.

Stealth has gotten a dramatic overhaul.

I think the problem lies partially in that the things NPCs can see are not the same as what the player can see. Right now, NPCs don't suffer from the "fog of war" and vision impairment that players do during bad weather or at night; even if you have no idea where they are or that they are there, they can see you just fine and once you come within range for them to begin interacting with you (which I think is a circle with the same radius as your vision arc in perfect daytime weather) they will immediately either attack you or run away. But even outside that radius they can prevent you from beginning sneaking if there isn't an obstacle in between you, so right now if a polar bear spots you from thirty tiles away in a blizzard you'd be completely oblivious to it's presence besides that you couldn't sneak or enter fast travel. Until it saunters up and tears your guts out.

It would honestly be GREAT if NPCs either experienced visual impairment in bad weather/night, or if the player could sorta see them outside our vision radius, even as an indistinct block that nearly blends with the background or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on April 03, 2013, 12:19:39 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 02, 2013, 10:31:29 pm

It would honestly be GREAT if NPCs either experienced visual impairment in bad weather/night, or if the player could sorta see them outside our vision radius, even as an indistinct block that nearly blends with the background or something.

This. Oh my god. This. SO ANGRY that I literally can't ever sneak unless I enable stealth in a town, then NEVER FAST-TRAVEL AND NEVER ALLOW A CREATURE TO SPOT ME. It's just dumb.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 03, 2013, 01:02:12 pm

Critters in the new version will have vision cones while you're sneaking, so it should be much more reasonable to sneak around now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on April 03, 2013, 03:14:10 pm

I hope that eventually vision will be fixed so we can see for miles like in real life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 03, 2013, 03:21:52 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on April 03, 2013, 01:02:12 pm

Critters in the new version will have vision cones while you're sneaking, so it should be much more reasonable to sneak around now.

Urists McGrylls alike, rejoice!
Myself included.

Also, tracking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on April 03, 2013, 05:20:31 pm

Quote from: Vlad on April 03, 2013, 03:14:10 pm

I hope that eventually vision will be fixed so we can see for miles like in real life.

A 6ft person, looking over a flat area with no obstructions with perfect visibility can see about 3 1/4 miles.
Assuming a dwarf is 3ft tall, he would be able to see 2 1/5 miles under the same conditions.
Keep in mind that's absolutly perfect conditions.  You are only likely to get about 2/3 of that distance max in real life conditions.
That's all based on the math from here
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/horizon.html

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 03, 2013, 08:25:56 pm

I wonder if there will be complaints about sneaking no longer being a perfect cloaking device.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfOfTheLand on April 04, 2013, 01:08:00 am

When is the new release coming out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 04, 2013, 01:09:26 am

Quote from: DwarfOfTheLand on April 04, 2013, 01:08:00 am

When is the new release coming out?

When Toady feels it's ready.

Which is to say, I have no idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on April 04, 2013, 01:57:48 am

With the combination of DF2012 animal training and active history, will our civilization be able to capture, tame, and use exotic beasties once we, the player, have provided them with the knowledge to do so?

If the goblins can do it, why not the dwarves too :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 04, 2013, 11:51:27 am

Quote from: Spish on April 04, 2013, 01:57:48 am

With the combination of DF2012 animal training and active history, will our civilization be able to capture, tame, and use exotic beasties once we, the player, have provided them with the knowledge to do so?

If the goblins can do it, why not the dwarves too :)

Get a roc breeding program going.
Supply your civ with giants birds of war.

BTW, Birds of War sounds like a sweet civ name on its own.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mokkun on April 04, 2013, 12:36:49 pm

1. Will there be any way to use the leftovers of metalic / gem /stone other material Forgotten Beast?
1b. Will there be any spesial bonuses from items made from forgotten beast items (including leather)?
2. Whit fortress retirement comming, will there be possible to sett up a fort to lets say export Sliver roots? (and glumprong trees)
3. Orchards, if I got it right, like farm plots for trees, Do Dwarves get access to them? seems it could be good to have a farm for trees and Nether-caps. ;) Will trees get seeds for orchard, or other ways to grow the trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on April 04, 2013, 01:39:28 pm

Quote from: Spish on April 04, 2013, 01:57:48 am

With the combination of DF2012 animal training and active history, will our civilization be able to capture, tame, and use exotic beasties once we, the player, have provided them with the knowledge to do so?

And if the answer is yes, will they be able to use our retired fortress as an outpost for collecting exotic beasties they otherwise would not have access to?

Wishful thinking, I know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 04, 2013, 02:37:09 pm

Omo has come, its a bloated blob of fat with tentacles.

One month, two axes dwarves and some processing later,

LE NOUVEL OMO LAVE PLUS BLANC QUE BLANC

French fries to whomever finds whom I just quoted :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 04, 2013, 03:26:28 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: BradUffner on April 03, 2013, 05:20:31 pm

Quote from: Vlad on April 03, 2013, 03:14:10 pm

I hope that eventually vision will be fixed so we can see for miles like in real life.

A  person, looking over a flat area with no obstructions with perfect visibility can see about .
Assuming a dwarf is  tall, he would be able to see  under the same conditions.
Keep in mind that's absolutly perfect conditions.  You are only likely to get about 2/3 of that distance max in real life conditions.
That's all based on the math from here
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/atmos_refr/horizon.html

It depends significantly on the altitude at which the Dwarf is standing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2013, 03:45:58 pm

Quote from: Mokkun on April 04, 2013, 12:36:49 pm

1. Will there be any way to use the leftovers of metalic / gem /stone other material Forgotten Beast?
1b. Will there be any spesial bonuses from items made from forgotten beast items (including leather)?
2. Whit fortress retirement comming, will there be possible to sett up a fort to lets say export Sliver roots? (and glumprong trees)
3. Orchards, if I got it right, like farm plots for trees, Do Dwarves get access to them? seems it could be good to have a farm for trees and Nether-caps. ;) Will trees get seeds for orchard, or other ways to grow the trees?

1. Not this release.
1b. Probably a maybde.
2. If not in this release (I haven't heard anything about fixing trade, and that's a pretty big step), probably in a later one.
3. Haven't heard anything, so again, prob not this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vlad on April 04, 2013, 04:20:06 pm

@BradUffner @Blue Sam3

Yeah dwarves live up in the mountains which gives them an excellent view of the surrounding countryside. But even on a flat plane, the increase in view distance would still be huge compared to what we currently have now. Feels like all our adventurers are almost blind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 04, 2013, 04:27:10 pm

Quote from: Mokkun on April 04, 2013, 12:36:49 pm

3. Orchards, if I got it right, like farm plots for trees, Do Dwarves get access to them? seems it could be good to have a farm for trees and Nether-caps. ;) Will trees get seeds for orchard, or other ways to grow the trees?

We won't be getting tree farming this release, unfortunately, but Toady plans to give us deliberate ways to farm trees in fortress mode in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on April 04, 2013, 11:01:43 pm

Will sliding under enemies be a combat reaction?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on April 04, 2013, 11:16:32 pm

Can we power-slide chop at enemies legs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on April 05, 2013, 12:41:18 am

Is Toady planning to make Weapon Quality matter in combat situations? Will we see Multiple-Material items implemented in the future? (I would guess: army arc?) Do you guys think it would make for a good addition? You know, with the combat rewritten and all that.

IRL when choosing a weapon one would consider its overall quality, how good it fits in the hand, its sharpness and weight etc. Material and its density would come second to that IMO.
 I mean of course Iron will always be better choice then copper, but what if it's poorly made and blunt?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 05, 2013, 12:44:06 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 04, 2013, 04:27:10 pm

Quote from: Mokkun on April 04, 2013, 12:36:49 pm

3. Orchards, if I got it right, like farm plots for trees, Do Dwarves get access to them? seems it could be good to have a farm for trees and Nether-caps. ;) Will trees get seeds for orchard, or other ways to grow the trees?

We won't be getting tree farming this release, unfortunately, but Toady plans to give us deliberate ways to farm trees in fortress mode in the future.

Cannot. Wait. Do want!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 05, 2013, 01:18:32 am

Right now, trees seem fairly gigantic in comparison to most buildings and people. Each seems about 3-6 z levels high, while most human buildings are 1-3. The trunks are 2x2 but people are just 1 tile, making each tree like some kind of great big baobab or sequoia.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on April 05, 2013, 04:19:20 am

Most average neighborhood trees are at least 3 times the height of a sburban house, let alone a medieval hut.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 05, 2013, 04:25:18 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 01:18:32 am

Right now, trees seem fairly gigantic in comparison to most buildings and people. Each seems about 3-6 z levels high, while most human buildings are 1-3. The trunks are 2x2 but people are just 1 tile, making each tree like some kind of great big baobab or sequoia.

Your perception of scale is all kinds of messed up. Do you live in a city or something? There's very few trees that don't get to be twice the height of a single story house in just a few years, and double the width of a human can be as little as a few decades. Since these are presumably natural-growing trees (rather than planted by landscapers or loggers) many of them are likely hundreds of years old. The current size/shape seems to be modeled on oaks, and is appropriate to a lot of deciduous trees. It would be cool to see some trees that really do redwoods justice, but they would be a lot taller than anything in the game currently, besides geological features such as mountains. I believe they're not in because of the hardware issues implicit in calculating all those extra Z-levels, although a fort or elven encampment in a redwood forest would be incredibly awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 05, 2013, 07:11:39 am

I've seen wild apricot trees that were like four stories high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ozfer on April 05, 2013, 08:21:41 am

Since sites are becoming more dynamic, along with the NPCs, will site naming ever be changed to make more sense within context of the events and people that happened there?  Along that line, will sites ever be renamed by NPCs?  If goblins capture a city, would its name be converted to goblin-language?  It would be cool if the "Glade of Prancing" was renamed to "The Glade of Fear" after a Dragon settled there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Abitbol on April 05, 2013, 09:18:09 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on April 04, 2013, 02:37:09 pm

Omo has come, its a bloated blob of fat with tentacles.

One month, two axes dwarves and some processing later,

LE NOUVEL OMO LAVE PLUS BLANC QUE BLANC

French fries to whomever finds whom I just quoted :P

Coluche approved

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 05, 2013, 09:19:23 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2013, 04:25:18 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 01:18:32 am

Right now, trees seem fairly gigantic in comparison to most buildings and people. Each seems about 3-6 z levels high, while most human buildings are 1-3. The trunks are 2x2 but people are just 1 tile, making each tree like some kind of great big baobab or sequoia.

Your perception of scale is all kinds of messed up. Do you live in a city or something? There's very few trees that don't get to be twice the height of a single story house in just a few years, and double the width of a human can be as little as a few decades. Since these are presumably natural-growing trees (rather than planted by landscapers or loggers) many of them are likely hundreds of years old. The current size/shape seems to be modeled on oaks, and is appropriate to a lot of deciduous trees. It would be cool to see some trees that really do redwoods justice, but they would be a lot taller than anything in the game currently, besides geological features such as mountains. I believe they're not in because of the hardware issues implicit in calculating all those extra Z-levels, although a fort or elven encampment in a redwood forest would be incredibly awesome.

But the trees even surpass many human forts, which is obviously not so good for the fort. And if 2x2 is supposed to be the size of an average bedroom, then that's an enormous tree. An adult human can wrap his/her arms around or almost around most trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 05, 2013, 10:47:26 am

I agree that the height of the trees is not a problem. On the other hand I think the width of the trunks is far too much for trees of that height. I forgot who put up an ascii mock-up in this thread when trees first started getting worked on but I liked their idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on April 05, 2013, 12:26:49 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 09:19:23 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2013, 04:25:18 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 01:18:32 am

Right now, trees seem fairly gigantic in comparison to most buildings and people. Each seems about 3-6 z levels high, while most human buildings are 1-3. The trunks are 2x2 but people are just 1 tile, making each tree like some kind of great big baobab or sequoia.

Your perception of scale is all kinds of messed up. Do you live in a city or something? There's very few trees that don't get to be twice the height of a single story house in just a few years, and double the width of a human can be as little as a few decades. Since these are presumably natural-growing trees (rather than planted by landscapers or loggers) many of them are likely hundreds of years old. The current size/shape seems to be modeled on oaks, and is appropriate to a lot of deciduous trees. It would be cool to see some trees that really do redwoods justice, but they would be a lot taller than anything in the game currently, besides geological features such as mountains. I believe they're not in because of the hardware issues implicit in calculating all those extra Z-levels, although a fort or elven encampment in a redwood forest would be incredibly awesome.

But the trees even surpass many human forts, which is obviously not so good for the fort. And if 2x2 is supposed to be the size of an average bedroom, then that's an enormous tree. An adult human can wrap his/her arms around or almost around most trees.

You are confusing sleeping quarters in a wealthy area of modern society with those of medieval peasants. And you are confusing trees that have been around for a relatively short period (read: almost all trees you're likely to have seen, unless you live in the right place) with trees that have stood for millennia (most of which near where most people live have long (and I really do mean long here) since been felled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Haprenti on April 05, 2013, 01:26:37 pm

With pulping coming to prevent Necromancers and reanimation to be too strong, do you plan to ever add a limit to the number of corpses a necromancer is able to reanimate at a time ? With something like a necromancer skill to increase our corpse cap and/or our range. And making reanimating creature that are far stronger than us possibly go berserk because of its strong will being able to be partially free from our control over them, but not being strong enough to be sane.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Darchitect on April 05, 2013, 02:03:15 pm

• Which tiles will be used for the trees?
• Have you given any more thought to allowing us to split the graphics off the curses_640x300.png so we can create proper tilesets?
• Is the code already in place to do all that? We can already create tiles for all the animals and humanoids, since we can access their raw files.
• Do you have a timeline to "rawify" all the things we don't have access to currently?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 05, 2013, 02:48:59 pm

Quote from: Darchitect on April 05, 2013, 02:03:15 pm

• Which tiles will be used for the trees?
• Have you given any more thought to allowing us to split the graphics off the curses_640x300.png so we can create proper tilesets?
• Is the code already in place to do all that? We can already create tiles for all the animals and humanoids, since we can access their raw files.
• Do you have a timeline to "rawify" all the things we don't have access to currently?

1.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_1.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_2.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_3.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_4.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_5.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_6.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_7.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_8.png

2. You already can. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository)
3. You already can. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset)
4. No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 05, 2013, 02:56:28 pm

Quote from: Darchitect on April 05, 2013, 02:03:15 pm

• Which tiles will be used for the trees?
• Have you given any more thought to allowing us to split the graphics off the curses_640x300.png so we can create proper tilesets?
• Is the code already in place to do all that? We can already create tiles for all the animals and humanoids, since we can access their raw files.
• Do you have a timeline to "rawify" all the things we don't have access to currently?

1) It'll depend, but the default is as follows (with the wall tiles forming the trunk):

Quote

Nothing is final (and it can all be changed in the raws), but the 1/4 tiles are branches heavy enough to climb (but they still have some leaves), the single lines are heavy enough to climb on but won't have leaves/fruit, the semi-colons are too light for climbing (I haven't started climbing yet), and the little pentagons are parts of the trunk that slope or taper.

Quote

Quote

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

Yeah, you can change each of the tiles.  The d_init file has the defaults, and the raws have any special tiles for specific trees.  For the 1/4th you'd probably just need to change the d_init one.

2) That's Full Graphical Support from the ESV, and the following quote almost certainly still applies. <Fake-edit - assuming you mean giving new tiles to hard-coded items, which is the way I read your post, rather than just change the existing tileset, in which case, Putnam has the answer.>

Quote

In the case of supporting tiles for each game object, I need to figure out the deal with all the new SDL code before I can lay anything out in stark terms.  The textures are stored differently (in a single atlas if it still works that way), and I'm not sure if it'll be feasible to move to full item/map texture support without altering the way that works.

3) Presumably, no. <Fake-edit - see above.>

4) There is never a timeline for features that aren't actively being worked on. Just the plan to do so eventually (and rawifying as much as possible is a plan).

Quote from: Haprenti on April 05, 2013, 01:26:37 pm

With pulping coming to prevent Necromancers and reanimation to be too strong, do you plan to ever add a limit to the number of corpses a necromancer is able to reanimate at a time ? With something like a necromancer skill to increase our corpse cap and/or our range. And making reanimating creature that are far stronger than us possibly go berserk because of its strong will being able to be partially free from our control over them, but not being strong enough to be sane.

Ever is a long time. However, Toady has mentioned that, eventually, the interaction system will evolve into a full-fledged magic system where presumably skill and costs will be allowed to be a factor.

Quote

Quote

Is there any plan to have undead scale with the power of the necromancer?

Eventually it'll be a full magic system with a whole lot of scaling sort of things and tweaks and specific personalized alterations to effects and various coolness, but for now it is utterly dull.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Darchitect on April 05, 2013, 04:06:54 pm

Putnam,

Thanks for the pics! Hadn't seen those yet.

Knight Otu,

Yes, I did mean access to the hard-coded items. I'd really love to create a tileset where every item can have it's own graphic. No more well/bees/ants and dyer's shops that use colored rubble. And a tile for each kind of weapon. And one-tile bridges that are visibly different between their up and down states. So many things. I understand why Toady would be freaked out by having to adjust his entire engine to accommodate all that.

Out of curiosity, what does ESV stand for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 05, 2013, 04:24:19 pm

Eternal Suggestions Voting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 05, 2013, 04:45:09 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 05, 2013, 04:24:19 pm

Eternal Suggestions Voting.

Viewable here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php), if you'd care to cast your own votes or see what has been discussed. Graphics Support is currently #4. I don't know how much it is still used/maintained (#23- Retire a Fortress looks like it'll be knocked off this release) but it's still a good at-a-glance idea of the more popular suggestions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 05, 2013, 05:01:59 pm

Now the thing to remember about Eternal voting is it is just a way to tell Toady what things the community wants the most.

It isn't a vote where Toady is bound to add something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 05, 2013, 06:34:47 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 05, 2013, 02:48:59 pm

Quote from: Darchitect on April 05, 2013, 02:03:15 pm

• Which tiles will be used for the trees?
• Have you given any more thought to allowing us to split the graphics off the curses_640x300.png so we can create proper tilesets?
• Is the code already in place to do all that? We can already create tiles for all the animals and humanoids, since we can access their raw files.
• Do you have a timeline to "rawify" all the things we don't have access to currently?

1.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_1.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_2.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_3.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_4.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_5.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_6.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_7.png
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_8.png

2. You already can. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository)
3. You already can. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset)
4. No.

Also http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 05, 2013, 09:47:17 pm

i wonder if we will ever get something cool like the front view from the dfma in the main game. holds great potential, especially for adventurer-mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 05, 2013, 10:05:51 pm

Quote from: blue sam3 on April 05, 2013, 12:26:49 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 09:19:23 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 05, 2013, 04:25:18 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 05, 2013, 01:18:32 am

Right now, trees seem fairly gigantic in comparison to most buildings and people. Each seems about 3-6 z levels high, while most human buildings are 1-3. The trunks are 2x2 but people are just 1 tile, making each tree like some kind of great big baobab or sequoia.

Your perception of scale is all kinds of messed up. Do you live in a city or something? There's very few trees that don't get to be twice the height of a single story house in just a few years, and double the width of a human can be as little as a few decades. Since these are presumably natural-growing trees (rather than planted by landscapers or loggers) many of them are likely hundreds of years old. The current size/shape seems to be modeled on oaks, and is appropriate to a lot of deciduous trees. It would be cool to see some trees that really do redwoods justice, but they would be a lot taller than anything in the game currently, besides geological features such as mountains. I believe they're not in because of the hardware issues implicit in calculating all those extra Z-levels, although a fort or elven encampment in a redwood forest would be incredibly awesome.

But the trees even surpass many human forts, which is obviously not so good for the fort. And if 2x2 is supposed to be the size of an average bedroom, then that's an enormous tree. An adult human can wrap his/her arms around or almost around most trees.

You are confusing sleeping quarters in a wealthy area of modern society with those of medieval peasants. And you are confusing trees that have been around for a relatively short period (read: almost all trees you're likely to have seen, unless you live in the right place) with trees that have stood for millennia (most of which near where most people live have long (and I really do mean long here) since been felled.

There are very few tree species with natural lifespans that long. And I'm not confusing wealthy modern bedrooms with medeival ones. A tree the girth of a room which can hold a bed, a chest, and a cabinet is a very fat tree indeed. Hell, even a tree with the girth of just a bed is huge. The trees I can think of which approach that size are redwoods, sugar-cone pines, sequoias, figs, baobabs, and certain tropical hardwoods. Oaks, spruces, elms, firs, willows, maples, larches, yews, fruit trees, and pretty anything else you'd find outside a rainforest doesn't approach that girth. I live in a suburb and often visit mountains and national forests, and I've seen giant sequoias up close.

As for Z-levels, I don't think 1 z-level equals 1 foot, more like 10. 20 z levels should be sufficient to represent a redwood or giant sequoia. Using that math, that makes mountains around 2,000-4,000 feet high, a realistic mountain size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 05, 2013, 10:41:41 pm

Well, you have to realize that these are dwarven beds that you are comparing them to, after all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 01:00:12 am

Yeah the trees are fat, but they aren't particularly tall. Toady did talk about 30z or 20z tall trees being possible, but that was before he implemented them. 27z would be like the Grant Tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 06, 2013, 01:06:38 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 01:00:12 am

Yeah the trees are fat, but they aren't particularly tall. Toady did talk about 30z or 20z tall trees being possible, but that was before he implemented them. 27z would be like the Grant Tree.

Which has a trunk diameter of about 5m, right? What're the dimensions of a tile meant to be again?

Quote from: Haprenti on April 05, 2013, 01:26:37 pm

With pulping coming to prevent Necromancers and reanimation to be too strong, do you plan to ever add a limit to the number of corpses a necromancer is able to reanimate at a time ? With something like a necromancer skill to increase our corpse cap and/or our range. And making reanimating creature that are far stronger than us possibly go berserk because of its strong will being able to be partially free from our control over them, but not being strong enough to be sane.

From the wiki: "Necromancers who have a sufficient following may use their zombie slaves to build dark towers, a task that requires at least 50 followers" http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Necromancer
DF doesn't seem like the type of game that wants to allow the AI to do things that the player couldn't theoretically do so I assume you would be able to get at least that many followers and probably more. Of course there's a difference between directly controlling that many zombies as a fighting force and simply animating them like puppets. So there's merit in considering limits on how it would work and a sense of the "strength" of different necromancers that is not tied exclusively to how many zombies they curently have. But that's when questions start becoming suggestions. I'd guess that Toady hasn't thought about it much yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 03:11:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 06, 2013, 01:06:38 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 01:00:12 am

Yeah the trees are fat, but they aren't particularly tall. Toady did talk about 30z or 20z tall trees being possible, but that was before he implemented them. 27z would be like the Grant Tree.

Which has a trunk diameter of about 5m, right? What're the dimensions of a tile meant to be again?

2x2x3, in meters.

General Grant is 8.8 meters wide at the base, not counting the root spread. So that'd be near enough to 4 tiles wide.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 06, 2013, 03:59:58 am

DF planet has 150% Earth's gravity. That's why you get so many dwarves and fat trees. :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 06, 2013, 04:59:03 am

And why the mantle lies not 200 metres below the surface.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 06, 2013, 07:37:57 am

The trees are getting their own raw files. Toady hasn't specified what exactly will be in them, but it's a reasonable bet you'll be able to specify things like height, trunk width, branch spread/density, growth rates, and so on. So there's likely to be at least one or two 'Realistic Trees' mods.

Relevant quote:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: CLA

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

Quote from: smirk

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

The growth parameters are all in there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 06, 2013, 08:10:20 am

Quote from: smirk on April 06, 2013, 07:37:57 am

So there's likely to be at least one or two 'Realistic Trees' mods.

Realistic trees, who wants that. I'm thinking already how to attach web spitting tentacles as tree limbs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 06, 2013, 08:11:59 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: smirk on April 06, 2013, 07:37:57 am

The trees are getting their own raw files. Toady hasn't specified what exactly will be in them, but it's a reasonable bet you'll be able to specify things like height, trunk width, branch spread/density, growth rates, and so on. So there's likely to be at least one or two 'Realistic Trees' mods.

Relevant quote:

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: CLA

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

Quote from: smirk

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

The growth parameters are all in there.

also, i already asked toady about the relation of tree height to width seen on the pictures he posted and he answered the trees seen on the pictures were still subject to change. so he was at least made aware of the super-fat-tree-problem when he was working on trees

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 06, 2013, 08:27:27 am

While tree sizes could use some tweaking they aren't really that far off. It's also good to remember that tile sizes are all just approximations, a tree taking up 2x2 tiles doesn't mean that it's 4x4 meters, it meant that tree is somewhere between 2 and 4 meters in width. I agree things might be a bit over the top at the moment but not that far off (And we've yet to see what variation there'll be between different tree types as well)

Trees really can get much larger than what most people think though (even commonly considered "smaller" tree species). The really wide ones though are usually found outside of forests in more open and fertile areas. Trees adapt their growth pattern to their surroundings, growing wider but shorter if they have no competition for sunlight and lots of space, and taller but slimmer in denser forests where they have to compete for the available sunlight and growing taller than their neighbors gives an advantage. While this would be awesome to see simulated it would probably not be worth the effort though.

Regardless, I doubt Toady has put much effort into validating growth values for every single tree species in the game to correspond perfectly to reality (and he really shouldn't), as this is the perfect example of the type of thing we the community can help with and have done in the past. We just have to wait until the release and then we can check and cross-check the different growth values for each species and supply data and sources to Toady for any that might tweaking and he can quickly change the values for the next release ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on April 06, 2013, 10:25:27 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 06, 2013, 08:27:27 am

Regardless, I doubt Toady has put much effort into validating growth values for every single tree species in the game to correspond perfectly to reality (and he really shouldn't), as this is the perfect example of the type of thing we the community can help with and have done in the past. We just have to wait until the release and then we can check and cross-check the different growth values for each species and supply data and sources to Toady for any that might tweaking and he can quickly change the values for the next release ^^

Basically this. We can do some research and petition Toady so we have realistic trees done by a community effort.

Also, I'm fairly certain that some of these trees are meant to be elven retreat trees, that are magically larger because elves aren't apes and thus can't live in branches (without houses).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 11:38:44 am

The community's ability to add realism is limited by what Toady foresees though. If an option isn't in the raws, it can't be tweaked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 06, 2013, 02:08:54 pm

Trees. Are we going to be able to carve them out as a miner would carve out stone, or would we still be limited to felling them?

Also, what's remaining on the to-do list for this release so far?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 06, 2013, 02:45:26 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on April 06, 2013, 10:25:27 am

elves aren't apes

Hmm... they'd be primates, though, right? Seeing as they're humanoid (as are dwarves) and humans are primates? To be fair, I still don't really see elves climbing trees and swinging from branch to branch, so it's not like your post does not still have merit regardless.

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 11:38:44 am

The community's ability to add realism is limited by what Toady foresees though. If an option isn't in the raws, it can't be tweaked.

True enough. At least in this instance, though, it appears that option (of having the community pitch in) is available.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 06, 2013, 03:20:00 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on April 06, 2013, 10:25:27 am

elves aren't apes

I doubt that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 06, 2013, 03:34:47 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 03:11:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 06, 2013, 01:06:38 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 01:00:12 am

Yeah the trees are fat, but they aren't particularly tall. Toady did talk about 30z or 20z tall trees being possible, but that was before he implemented them. 27z would be like the Grant Tree.

Which has a trunk diameter of about 5m, right? What're the dimensions of a tile meant to be again?

2x2x3, in meters.

General Grant is 8.8 meters wide at the base, not counting the root spread. So that'd be near enough to 4 tiles wide.

Yes, but you have to realize the General Grant, the Grizzled Giant, and other such trees are very exceptional trees. While there are trees that get that wide, they are by no means common. Trees out in plains don't tend to get super wide at the base, they tend to develop very wide-spreading boughs, like acacia trees do. That, or they become shrubs. Trees and other plants generally develop extraordinarily broad trunks if they live in an arid environment, so they can store water better, or if they're really tall, to support the weight. 1x1 seems sufficient for the trunk of most trees, 3x3 is simply immense.

Quote from: Putnam on April 06, 2013, 03:20:00 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on April 06, 2013, 10:25:27 am

elves aren't apes

I doubt that.

Well, you might say elves didn't evolve in the same way that humans evolved, from animals. In fact, in many fantasy worlds people were just created by gods or something. Elves might evolve from faeries or spirits, who for some reason had incentive to anthropomorphize, and goblins evolve from corrupted elves, as the convention goes. Or perhaps human-imitating spirits -> fae -> goblins -> elves, if you want a twist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 03:53:06 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 06, 2013, 03:34:47 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 03:11:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 06, 2013, 01:06:38 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 01:00:12 am

Yeah the trees are fat, but they aren't particularly tall. Toady did talk about 30z or 20z tall trees being possible, but that was before he implemented them. 27z would be like the Grant Tree.

Which has a trunk diameter of about 5m, right? What're the dimensions of a tile meant to be again?

2x2x3, in meters.

General Grant is 8.8 meters wide at the base, not counting the root spread. So that'd be near enough to 4 tiles wide.

Yes, but you have to realize the General Grant, the Grizzled Giant, and other such trees are very exceptional trees. While there are trees that get that wide, they are by no means common. Trees out in plains don't tend to get super wide at the base, they tend to develop very wide-spreading boughs, like acacia trees do. That, or they become shrubs. Trees and other plants generally develop extraordinarily broad trunks if they live in an arid environment, so they can store water better, or if they're really tall, to support the weight. 1x1 seems sufficient for the trunk of most trees, 3x3 is simply immense.

Yeah, I agree they're too fat. The  General Grant Tree was a bit of a tangent, but I do hope Toady implemented them too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 03:56:49 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 06, 2013, 02:45:26 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 06, 2013, 11:38:44 am

The community's ability to add realism is limited by what Toady foresees though. If an option isn't in the raws, it can't be tweaked.

True enough. At least in this instance, though, it appears that option (of having the community pitch in) is available.

We will presumably have some control over how trees grow, but it remains to be seen how versatile the system is. We don't know if trunk thickness can be varied independently of hight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 06, 2013, 04:13:10 pm

While I don't think we should be having ultra-thick trees all over, I'd be disappointed if elves don't eventually choose their sites based on the presence of groves of giant sequoias or mountain ash. Say, an elven city with structures and everything built in a giant banyan swamp would be pretty cool...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 06, 2013, 04:30:09 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 06, 2013, 02:08:54 pm

Trees. Are we going to be able to carve them out as a miner would carve out stone, or would we still be limited to felling them?

Also, what's remaining on the to-do list for this release so far?

It would be quite awesome if we could that to the larger than 3x3 tile trees at least. It wouldn't necessarily hurt the tree either. The xylem or wood in the middle of a tree mostly just provides extra support, which the tree can manage just fine without.

This would actually provide for a very neat and easy solution for the elves to move up and down from whatever treehouses they may have up in the canopies now that I think about it. They could simply either have the tree grow an up/down staircase with openings where necessary (possibly even magical opening and closing of bark to cover the entrance) or even partly carve them out themselves as it's all dead wood which should make it ok to them.

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 06, 2013, 03:34:47 pm

Yes, but you have to realize the General Grant, the Grizzled Giant, and other such trees are very exceptional trees. While there are trees that get that wide, they are by no means common. Trees out in plains don't tend to get super wide at the base, they tend to develop very wide-spreading boughs, like acacia trees do. That, or they become shrubs. Trees and other plants generally develop extraordinarily broad trunks if they live in an arid environment, so they can store water better, or if they're really tall, to support the weight. 1x1 seems sufficient for the trunk of most trees, 3x3 is simply immense.

Actually, at least as far as northern european trees goes (which is what I'm most familiar), growing alone in an open plain promotes growing really wide since there's no shortage of space and it better supports the wide-spreading boughs you mentioned. Oak trees are the prime example of this, but I've personally seen both spruce, linden, pine and even birch grow far wider out in the open than they normally do in a forest (the birch in question was almost a meter wide!). It's actually quite logical, when there's no competition for sunlight there's no reason to grow tall to try and get above the neighboring trees, and resources are instead better allocated spreading as wide as possible. Finding an oak tree more than 2 meters wide in these parts is by no means hard, despite "our" best efforts to get rid of them. Also, a tree the size of General Grant would probably be best represented by 5x5 tiles at least.

One also has to take into account that a tree showing as 3x3 tiles in-game doesn't mean that it's 6x6 meters. It just means that that tree is large enough to reach well into all 9 tiles. And if we want trees that one can fit inside the trunk of (which realistically would work with a 1x1 tile tree) some measure of abstractation is required. I still agree with the general sentiment expressed that trees that wide may be a bit too common going by the initial preview screenshots, but it also depends a lot on which species of tree those were supposed to represent.

Edit: Almost forgot to add, my source for this is 3 years of biology studies specializing in ecology :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 06, 2013, 04:58:52 pm

1-2 meters is hardly wide for a tree, and I always assumed that was the length of a tile anyway. Presumably, we could have "hollow" tree tiles that one could get inside through a hole, without having to have solid 1-tile walls around the hollow space. We know that 3x3 is about the size of a smithy, so that puts it about 18-30 feet. 5x5 trees should be reserved for things like that famous mexican cypress.

EDIT: I'm assuming he won't get it straightened out until he gets to multi-tile creatures, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 06, 2013, 05:32:05 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 06, 2013, 03:34:47 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 06, 2013, 03:20:00 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on April 06, 2013, 10:25:27 am

elves aren't apes

I doubt that.

Well, you might say elves didn't evolve in the same way that humans evolved, from animals. In fact, in many fantasy worlds people were just created by gods or something. Elves might evolve from faeries or spirits, who for some reason had incentive to anthropomorphize, and goblins evolve from corrupted elves, as the convention goes. Or perhaps human-imitating spirits -> fae -> goblins -> elves, if you want a twist.

Toady's goblins are derived from demons or something like that, actually. They came from hell, which is why they don't eat.

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 06, 2013, 04:13:10 pm

While I don't think we should be having ultra-thick trees all over, I'd be disappointed if elves don't eventually choose their sites based on the presence of groves of giant sequoias or mountain ash. Say, an elven city with structures and everything built in a giant banyan swamp would be pretty cool...

Or if elves (whether passively or actively) enable trees to grow extra huge and old. Although the sort of elves normally depicted as living within tree trunks are the sort that are about knee-high to a human. Tolkein-based elves tend to build homes cantilevered  (http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/48323/Omdatta_Tyagi.jpg)off the (http://fantasieland.wikispaces.com/file/view/treehouse_01.jpg/35299463/treehouse_01.jpg) trunks (http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/af/df/books,elves,eragon,fantasy,fairytale,forest-afdf843ca28746ae35b3c4cb696c438b_h.jpg).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 06, 2013, 05:34:26 pm

Keep in mind DF elves /are/ smaller than humans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 06, 2013, 05:55:29 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 06, 2013, 05:34:26 pm

Keep in mind DF elves /are/ smaller than humans.

They're 6/7 the size of a human. Even if they're the same proportion as humans, that makes them only a head shorter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 06, 2013, 05:56:18 pm

Dwarves are the same size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 06, 2013, 06:14:22 pm

The DF units are a measure of volume. I like to take it as dwarves are short and rotund, goblins are human-proportioned but smaller as a whole, and elves are very tall and thin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on April 06, 2013, 06:18:02 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 06, 2013, 06:14:22 pm

The DF units are a measure of volume. I like to take it as dwarves are short and rotund, goblins are human-proportioned but smaller as a whole, and elves are very tall and thin.

I think that's the case, seeing as how the elves insult the dwarves with short jokes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 06, 2013, 06:30:19 pm

I'm going to guess that dwarves are short and stocky, while elves and goblins are long and lanky, and humans are like Shaq to all.

As for their origins, seeing as DF will eventually generate fantasy worlds rather than recreating a very specific one but with a different map, I'm going to guess the origin of species is ambiguous and left open to interpretation. The three basic conventions are creationism, standard evolution, and supernatural evolution.

Whatever party responsible for creating the world could have created them all as separate lineages. Dwarves, elves, and goblins could have split off from humans due to living with certain influences (demons, the underground, nature spirits, deities of various spheres, primal magical forces, etc. The other races could have come from various spirits or other supernatural entities interbreeding with humans, or are the descendants of such entities who took humanoid form or became anthropomorphic for whatever reason.

Elves could literally be descended from whatever natural force they worship, sprung from the soil as it's envoy to mankind or something. Dwarves could be likewise for the more mineral parts of the earth. Both could then have gone there own way after forgetting about the whole ambassador thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on April 06, 2013, 11:12:10 pm

Pulping was one of the things I've been most excited for but I'm concerned about the ability of pulped things to heal. Wouldn't the muscle be damaged to the point of irreparable disuse, even if it healed to not be a danger to the victim (no internal bleeding, infection etc.)?

Will the nerve damage and bones shattered to dust from the pulping of a limb by repeated hammer strikes render that limb permanently unusable? Will bones be able to heal being completely pulverized?

Granted, I am very tired and not particularly aware of the ability for the body to heal from a similar situation in real life, but I'd imagine there'd be a point for blunt trauma to render bones to nothing and muscle unusable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 06, 2013, 11:26:24 pm

Muscle can heal from a surprising amount of damage, but there's a point where it just becomes a useless mass of scar tissue. If a bone gets pulverized to dust, there's really nothing that can be done, barring superhuman regeneration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 06, 2013, 11:31:01 pm

I guess the idea is that "pulping" is really all about the undead and reanimation.  Sometimes the damage is too much to heal from, and sometimes, perhaps more rarely, it is just several breaks that you'd be able to heal from in real-life but which preclude animation from working.  In both cases, it'll have the over-the-top combat announcement, but the exact natural of the injuries will determine if the dwarf can successfully convalesce.  There'll be a time in the future where you might be able to grind a critter into a new sort of tissue slurry material, but I decided it wasn't worth it at this point, and it wasn't really what I was looking for to solve this problem.  The parts are still essentially pulp when they sustain this much damage, and I don't think useful healing will be that common, especially with nerves as they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 02:06:29 am

Hmmm

Toady have you gave any more thought into creatures being made out of Sand, Water, or Air but who aren't weak or fragile?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 03:08:05 am

I think a better term for this is not pulping but mangling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on April 07, 2013, 03:14:43 am

I recall you said that even the most mangled limb will not automatically sever.
But suppose the main structure of a limb (in a man's case, the bone) is ruined beyond all integrity so that the limb is hanging by a few muscle threads, would a sufficiently damaged limb be easier to sever by blade or even by 'pinching'?

Also, will 'colliding with an obstacle' still burst a creature apart to its component limbs, or will it also use the new system and become a gooey, unbutcherable mess -ruining many an efficient butcher's tower?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 04:07:39 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 03:08:05 am

I think a better term for this is not pulping but mangling.

Pulping is better for the image. It essentially is when something is just a useless pile of meat or chalk or dust.

While a Mangled arm could be really damaged but still functional enough for the undead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on April 07, 2013, 05:18:53 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 06, 2013, 05:32:05 pm

Or if elves (whether passively or actively) enable trees to grow extra huge and old. Although the sort of elves normally depicted as living within tree trunks are the sort that are about knee-high to a human. Tolkein-based elves tend to build homes cantilevered  (http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/48323/Omdatta_Tyagi.jpg)off the (http://fantasieland.wikispaces.com/file/view/treehouse_01.jpg/35299463/treehouse_01.jpg) trunks (http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/af/df/books,elves,eragon,fantasy,fairytale,forest-afdf843ca28746ae35b3c4cb696c438b_h.jpg).

As I mentioned, trees from Elven trees can be larger because of elven "magic". To quote a Toady Devlog:

Quote

  There are lots of orchards now, and the elves grow other important trees for various purposes. The orchards are currently stuck with the products from the old tree raws (chestnuts, mangos and coconuts), but that should be diversified significantly. The residential etc. trees aren't strictly natural, so you'll get some places that are flatter and smoother grown into them, but even those trees still use the standard tree growing algorithm and there's plenty of regular vegetation to go around.

Also not even humans are guarantee to have common ancestry with apes in DF. As HugoLuman stated, they could have come from gods creation. Elves, that are normally seem as more "magical" creatures, probably didn't come from them.


And wouldn't be better if we asked Toady about trees directly? Like, will we be able to modify the raws for trees so to make them more realistic and how close to reality (in both of height and width) the new trees are?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wastedlabor on April 07, 2013, 07:25:11 am

Quote from: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 04:07:39 am

Pulping is better for the image. It essentially is when something is just a useless pile of meat or chalk or dust.

They should have quality modifiers so we can tell how likely they are to rise again.

This is a fine useless pile of Giant Mosquito. It's made of finely pulped Giant Mosquito meat, finely pulped Giant Mosquito brain and finely pulped Giant Mosquito ichor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 07, 2013, 11:44:32 am

Quote from: Chronas on April 07, 2013, 03:14:43 am

Also, will 'colliding with an obstacle' still burst a creature apart to its component limbs, or will it also use the new system and become a gooey, unbutcherable mess -ruining many an efficient butcher's tower?

Actually, things colliding with an obstacle haven't butchered or exploded into gore on impact for a long time now. They just fracture whatever part they landed on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 12:30:24 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 04:07:39 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 03:08:05 am

I think a better term for this is not pulping but mangling.

Pulping is better for the image. It essentially is when something is just a useless pile of meat or chalk or dust.

While a Mangled arm could be really damaged but still functional enough for the undead.

But it's not a pile of chalk or dust. It's just a body part with so many broken bones, that it can't be made to grasp or bite anymore. That's why the term pulping is confusing; it's not a pulp. Turning things to dust isn't in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 04:01:21 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 12:30:24 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on April 07, 2013, 04:07:39 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 07, 2013, 03:08:05 am

I think a better term for this is not pulping but mangling.

Pulping is better for the image. It essentially is when something is just a useless pile of meat or chalk or dust.

While a Mangled arm could be really damaged but still functional enough for the undead.

But it's not a pile of chalk or dust. It's just a body part with so many broken bones, that it can't be made to grasp or bite anymore. That's why the term pulping is confusing; it's not a pulp. Turning things to dust isn't in this release.

If something with a rock arm has been "Pulped" it has been dusted :D

Quote

They should have quality modifiers so we can tell how likely they are to rise again

Well something that is pulped simply cannot rise again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 07, 2013, 06:35:59 pm

No, Toady explicitly said that pulping does not mean completely pounding out any structural integrity until the flesh is liquid goop. A rock arm that's "pulped" would just be smashed apart, not completely pounded into dust. "Graveled" maybe, but not "dusted." If we had to liquefy everything to defeat it for good, then Necromancers would wipe out all life and they game would be unplayable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 08, 2013, 01:05:55 am

Which is precisely why I suggest the term mangled over pulped. It's closer to what Toady has described.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 08, 2013, 04:27:05 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 08, 2013, 01:05:55 am

Which is precisely why I suggest the term mangled over pulped. It's closer to what Toady has described.

This man speaks sense. Toady's already had to put energy into explaining what pulping isn't as far as DF is concerned, simply because of the term.




Now, entirely unrelated...

Toady, regarding elves. Do you and Threetoe envisage that they will have physical characteristics adapted to an arboreal live-style beyond what normal humans have? Random examples of what I mean: claws to grab onto bark, ball and socket wrist joints like a gibbon, prehensile tails, whatever. Or in your minds are their adaptions to living in trees entirely the engineered or magical structures they have in the trees (like ladders, houses, sentient vines that reach down to lift them up when required, whatever)? From what I can tell their only current physical advantage over humans for living in trees is their lighter weight. Do you imagine that will change?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 08, 2013, 08:06:36 am

I agree "mangled" is probably a better term. Might be other good words to be found in a thesaurus to convey gross injury of the sort. Looking, "mutilated" also seems appropriate.

On elves, I typically imagine the forest types as shaping trees through magic or careful cultivation to create stairs, ladders, and the like. Alternatively, "high elves" would probably add on artsy spiral staircases made of mithril or whatever so they can show off their workmanship and ascend in a dignified manner, rather than stooping to climb like an animal or worse, a lowly human. Defensively, I can see them joining multiple trees with walkways, limiting the easy ground access points, forcing invaders to climb the hard way. Yet another alternative that comes to mind is the use of flying mounts to get into the trees.

Of course, if Toady prefers pointy-eared Tarzans, it's his game and setting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 08, 2013, 08:12:31 pm

*Notes that "lowly humans" are taller than all elfs :D

Animalistic clawed monkey elves sounds too... un-elfish. Probably ladders and good ol' fashioned hominid tree scrambling. Homo Sapiens isn't that bad when it comes to climbing things. Better than the vast majority of other vertebrates, to be sure, especially with a little training, so add human-shaped to natural elven grace and agility, and you'd have pretty decent tree-climbers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 08, 2013, 08:41:08 pm

I feel like "mutilated" might be a better term, as "mangled" used to be what we called red wounds back in 40d. Er, get off my lawn, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 08, 2013, 09:19:15 pm

"Mutilated" to me sounds like maybe their nose got cut off, while "mangled" to sounds like they got their arm caught between gears in industrial machinery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 08, 2013, 09:30:05 pm

Pulping was never going to be an in-game word, if that's what this discussion is about.  It's just my dev term and the name of the flag.  I think I didn't think of mangled in part because I see a limb with flayed muscle as mangled even if it isn't broken to the point of non-animation, and partially because of what monk12 brought up (it is a "red wound" from the old game).  "Mangled" is a fine word though, and I'm going to use it on a provisional basis for the bodies.  Combat itself will be more flowery.  "Pulp" was possibly going to come up depending on how far along the flesh-slurrying-ness was going to go, but it didn't come up.

"Mutilated" is already used in game to describe corpses with missing parts.  That didn't get at whether or not a body can be raised, and that's confused now by the pulping of parts.  In order to aid adventure mode necromancers and people in dwarf mode managing body piles, I went ahead with "mangled" for damaged, unanimatable corpses.  So you can raise a "mutilated corpse", which might be missing an arm or something, but you can't raise a "mangled hand".  If the corpse is also missing body parts, it can be mutilated as well...  so you can have a "rotten mangled mutilated human corpse", he he he.  Or was it mutilated then mangled?  I don't remember now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 08, 2013, 09:49:21 pm

You could use something like "Devastated" to get away from the alliteration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 08, 2013, 10:07:13 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 08, 2013, 09:49:21 pm

You could use something like "Devastated" to get away from the alliteration.

"Mezbuth McMarksdwarf was mauled by the many mutilated mangled monkey mummies, in Mastermourn, the goblin monolith"

Edit: Hey, wait, how would you get a mangled mummy?

In terms of the usability of mangled bodies, does ressurection follow a different rule than raising? Or is a mangled corpse beyond being ressurected as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 09, 2013, 12:25:11 am

I imagine mummies and husks will still be significantly physically tougher than zombies. Someone could conceivably sustain damage that would make their corpse unusable, yet survive long enough to get husked. And that is terrifying indeed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 09, 2013, 12:36:51 pm

Quote from: MaximumZero on April 08, 2013, 09:49:21 pm

You could use something like "Devastated" to get away from the alliteration.

Or Destroyed, which would be a clear way of showing that something can't be raised.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 09, 2013, 03:03:56 pm

Something doesn't sound quite right about that, though. Those are more item or architecture adjectives. "Devasted" limb sounds pretty cheesy. "Ahg, my leg! You destroyed it!" Doesn't sound right, does it? Mangled is perfect, and I can't recall anywhere it's used in the current release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 09, 2013, 03:33:59 pm

I think "mangled beyond recognition" would be a good way to describe it, especially in a wound listing ("His hand is mangled beyond recognition").

edit: parentheses, what are they good for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on April 09, 2013, 04:29:13 pm

Toady, what are your thoughts on making us able to self mutilate as a way of getting rid of deadly infections

All this mangling is only going to make your adventurer look even more silly for not being able to cut off festering, pus producing disfigured appendages that will obviously lead him to certain death. While amputation isn't a guaranteed solution, it's still better than doing nothing...

Maybe it's going to be introduced when medical skills are advanced and incorporated into adventure mode. Do surgeons amputate limbs in dwarf mode right now? I don't think it's done even there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 09, 2013, 09:03:39 pm

That would be cool. I guess how much will and pain tolerance you have determines whether or not you cut off your necrotising finger, or pass out halfway through, leaving a larger wound leading to further infection :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 09, 2013, 09:07:53 pm

Besides pulping, are we going to be able to do anything to prevent corpses in sarcophagi from raising with the regional effects?

This Hydra test, does that involve the hydra regrowing heads?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 09, 2013, 09:11:26 pm

Hmm, having to mangle corpses before burial would cause severe unrest. Didn't he say he planned to make sarcophagi hold better, depending on the weight of it's material (and thus the lid)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 09, 2013, 09:43:16 pm

Quote from: Ribs on April 09, 2013, 04:29:13 pm

Toady, what are your thoughts on making us able to self mutilate as a way of getting rid of deadly infections

Dangerous at best: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html)

Quote

PowerGoal183, JUST A LITTLE MORE!, (Future): You are running through the woods when you get shot in the gut by a barbed arrow. The bowel is knicked, and the wound goes septic. You dig desperately at the wound but it only ends up getting more dirty and infected. Eventually your digging becomes so vigorous that your guts pop out through the hole.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 09, 2013, 09:07:53 pm

This Hydra test, does that involve the hydra regrowing heads?

No.  Regeneration is a separate feature that hasn't been mentioned for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 09, 2013, 10:46:59 pm

What specifically in the raws prevents the multi-attack penalty for hydras? Some kind of [AUTONOMOUS] tag on each head? Does the body itself attack independently of the heads? (kicking, etc.)

The fact that hydras are legit now is all kinds of cool beans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 09, 2013, 11:54:18 pm

Quote from: monk12 on April 09, 2013, 10:46:59 pm

What specifically in the raws prevents the multi-attack penalty for hydras? Some kind of [AUTONOMOUS] tag on each head? Does the body itself attack independently of the heads? (kicking, etc.)
The fact that hydras are legit now is all kinds of cool beans.

Im guessing that the body will follow one of the heads, and the rest will be independant, so basically you have "hydra head 1 + body" and 6 more independant heads. But that's just a guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 10, 2013, 03:43:02 am

From Toady's wording, it seems to be an attack flag, so it would be the attack definitions that get the tag. Would mean that things like mariliths that wield six weapons at once without penalty likely aren't possible unless there are other mechanics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 10, 2013, 03:57:48 am

They can wield the six weapons at once, and use them to defend and so on (which would work pretty well against other weapons as things stand), and attack with any single one they want while the others are defending (which leaves five defending weapons, which is good) -- or they can attack with a few weapons simultaneously at a penalty and defend with four, etc.  Why they shouldn't be penalized for simultaneous attacks is more complicated, since the arguments for the penalties have to do in part with putting your body into things and using stance points to anchor strikes and so on, and that is partially independent of the number of arms (though arms coming from the same direction could be anchored the same way, perhaps).  I haven't done anything with that.  Hydras have special flags for their bite attacks because they can be performed simultaneously without penalty, since the hydras necks are independent and the body isn't involved to nearly the same degree.

But, yeah, the larger point hasn't been addressed for wielded objects... if you had some sort of hydra-neck-limb independent of the body that should be able to whip a weapon around independently, it can't be done yet.  I went with attacks since it is a higher resolution than the body part, and you can imagine scenarios where a single body part has an independent attack, a regular attack, and a bad-for-multi-attack (a tag which is used for kicks now).  At the same time, there does need to be some sort of bp-wielding-item handling -- and it has to play nice with the item flags, since items also have the hydra-style independence flag available, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 10, 2013, 04:01:37 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 10, 2013, 04:03:05 am

Quote

They can wield the six weapons at once, and use them to defend and so on (which would work pretty well against other weapons as things stand), and attack with any single one they want while the others are defending (which leaves five defending weapons, which is good) -- or they can attack with a few weapons simultaneously at a penalty and defend with four, etc.  Why they shouldn't be penalized for simultaneous attacks is more complicated, since the arguments for the penalties have to do in part with putting your body into things and using stance points to anchor strikes and so on, and that is partially independent of the number of arms (though arms coming from the same direction could be anchored the same way, perhaps).  I haven't done anything with that.  Hydras have special flags for their bite attacks because they can be performed simultaneously without penalty, since the hydras necks are independent and the body isn't involved to nearly the same degree.

It is honestly sound Toady like you are edging towards the combat arc where you might have to flesh out combat styles. Though given its intensity I have no doubt it isn't coming out anytime soon (or even this year)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 10, 2013, 04:46:12 am

The attack/move split opened a chasm in the game that needed to be cleaned up, and we added some stuff to that according to taste (all of this parry stuff came up because having attacks separated out as their own move over several clicks made the old system of deflection too ridiculous), but I'm definitely not doing combat styles, stances, reach, good wrestling... etc. this time.  That'll be in a not-this-release release.  So it's half-assed, as usual.  We're aiming for playable, and I don't think that needs the combat styles.  They'd be nice, but I'm exercising self control and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on April 10, 2013, 06:41:30 am

Good to see the hydra test went well. That's always a nice milestone nearing the end of the release. Good luck with non-lethal combat, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 10, 2013, 06:47:52 am

Everyone loves a Hydra test!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 10, 2013, 08:04:53 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 10, 2013, 06:47:52 am

Everyone loves a Hydra test!

Especially with wookie style dismemberment.  Combat sounds really great now.  It's pretty incredible when the core combat mechanics become as detailed as this, and yet they are only a fraction of the whole game. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 10, 2013, 09:28:34 am

So HOW close is the release now?
Since combat is seemingly almost done, and I suppose that there isn't a whole lot else after that. (pulping/mangling, kobold camps, non-lethal combat?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 10, 2013, 09:53:06 am

Quote from: Devlog

Next up'll be some tweaks to non-lethal combat damage and yielding, which'll get us out of combat and back to other things.

It'll also get adventures out of combat and back to other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 10, 2013, 11:15:42 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 10, 2013, 09:28:34 am

So HOW close is the release now?
Since combat is seemingly almost done, and I suppose that there isn't a whole lot else after that. (pulping/mangling, kobold camps, non-lethal combat?)

The rest of the dwarf site work (Toady mentioned that some Fort stuff isn't done yet), finalizing site stuff in general (he mentioned that some goblin stuff overlapped with dwarf work), finalizing succession stuff, finalizing tracking, finalizing trees and tree-related jobs, possibly some entity faction work and raw entry, and of course pre-release cleanup.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 10, 2013, 11:58:31 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 10, 2013, 11:15:42 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 10, 2013, 09:28:34 am

So HOW close is the release now?
Since combat is seemingly almost done, and I suppose that there isn't a whole lot else after that. (pulping/mangling, kobold camps, non-lethal combat?)

The rest of the dwarf site work (Toady mentioned that some Fort stuff isn't done yet), finalizing site stuff in general (he mentioned that some goblin stuff overlapped with dwarf work), finalizing succession stuff, finalizing tracking, finalizing trees and tree-related jobs, possibly some entity faction work and raw entry, and of course pre-release cleanup.

FINALIZE ALL THE THINGS!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 10, 2013, 02:06:27 pm

But not too final that one cannot go back to them later, of course! :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2013, 04:52:51 pm

I'm really curious as to how powerful a hydra is now.

I mean there's a lot of factors to consider and I'm not really sure how they weigh against each other.
It is definitely an interesting consideration. I look forward to seeing how this works out. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 10, 2013, 04:57:55 pm

It sounds like hydras will be terrifying opponents in single combat, being able to make multiple attacks simultaneously or in rapid succession. I wouldn't want to face them alone, for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on April 10, 2013, 05:05:13 pm

Hydras were already terrifying opponents to begin with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 10, 2013, 08:02:22 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

How would you strangle a creature with seven different airways? That's how I always stealth-fight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on April 10, 2013, 08:05:08 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on April 10, 2013, 08:02:22 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

How would you strangle a creature with seven different airways? That's how I always stealth-fight.

One head at a time. Just cut off the blood flow to the brain.
Edit: Wait a second, If there is a brain in each hydra head, which one controls the body?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 10, 2013, 08:15:43 pm

Or, you know, open some blood vessels and wait. That's how I often sneak fight. That, or keep opening blood vessels until it dies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2013, 09:34:35 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

At least the hydra can't look in more than one direction at once (yet). A hydra with perfect radial vision wouldn't be sneaked on easily.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 10, 2013, 09:46:01 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on April 10, 2013, 08:05:08 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on April 10, 2013, 08:02:22 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

How would you strangle a creature with seven different airways? That's how I always stealth-fight.

One head at a time. Just cut off the blood flow to the brain.
Edit: Wait a second, If there is a brain in each hydra head, which one controls the body?

Hydras are clearly like big chickens; The body is largely autonomous. Though I suspect that the heads act as a singular consciousness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 10, 2013, 10:24:41 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2013, 09:34:35 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

At least the hydra can't look in more than one direction at once (yet). A hydra with perfect radial vision wouldn't be sneaked on easily.

Barring coming up on it sleeping or seriously badass skillz.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 11, 2013, 12:49:49 am

7 heads, but...one heart.

Go for the heart, Boo, go for the heart!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 11, 2013, 01:18:26 am

Will we ever be able to come upon beasts asleep in their lairs? Or will they always be awake and alert for balance reasons?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 11, 2013, 01:39:40 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on April 10, 2013, 09:34:35 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 10, 2013, 06:23:23 pm

As usual, I imagine the victorious adventurer will be the legendary sneak.

At least the hydra can't look in more than one direction at once (yet). A hydra with perfect radial vision wouldn't be sneaked on easily.

We don't know that. The new vision arc may vary from creature to creature, and hydra's might well have 360 vision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 11, 2013, 01:44:33 am

If they've got a head pointed every which way at all times, sure. Sounds a bit tiring unless they've got necks going weird ways so backwards is actually resting position. Maybe field of vision can vary depending on how alert a creature is and thus how much it's looking around?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 11, 2013, 09:32:41 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 11, 2013, 12:49:49 am

7 heads, but...one heart.

Go for the heart, Boo, go for the heart!

Is it bad that I just imagined a miniature giant space hamster leaping towards a gnoll and burrowing into it's chest?

I always imagined hydra heads in almost a perpetual state of discomfort, only two or 3 ever managing to stay in a comfortable positions and all the other heads fighting to try to push them out of the way so they can be comfy instead.   Poor hydra heads... :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 11, 2013, 11:16:22 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on April 10, 2013, 08:05:08 pm

Edit: Wait a second, If there is a brain in each hydra head, which one controls the body?

All of them, as can be verified in the arena.

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 11, 2013, 01:18:26 am

Will we ever be able to come upon beasts asleep in their lairs? Or will they always be awake and alert for balance reasons?

Beasts don't sleep in their lairs because they don't do anything in their lairs.  There are many dev items about fleshing out their existence: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

Quote

Adventurer Role: Slayer of Night Creatures

    Night creatures and the undead
        Replace skeletons and zombies with generalized generated types of creature corruption/undeath etc.
        Causes -- existing from the beginning, death circumstances, being cursed, focusing on specific historical figures at first
        Goals, if any, as individuals, even if it is murdering or mutilating wayfarers in the woods
        Weaknesses, restrictions on movement, other limitations
        Nicknames for them that are used by the villagers
    Torment the living
        Night creatures must act out their goals during play
            Villagers should react using the same systems as with villains or player thieves, so that you can overhear conversations or use bounty-type systems
        Some victims can end up drained as subvillains or slaves in the same way a bandit leader has subordinates
        Stranger/thief tracking systems could be used to generate some paranoia surrounding night creatures with a human/etc. appearance or that utilize human/etc. slaves
        Diseases/plagues could be included as indirect torments, as well as famine once site resources can be assailed
    Hunting them down
        Sometimes they are trackable through methods above, sometimes there are special signs
        Killing them might ultimately require burying or burning a body, etc.
        Religious or other groups might be able to tell you how to defeat or protect yourself from a night creature and support you with supplies if you can provide reports of its activity/victims etc.
    Curses and exposure
        Can be cursed by night creatures when you put them down
        The slaves of night creatures could have extreme effects from proximity that also affect you if you make a business of hunting them

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 11, 2013, 11:37:06 am

Heh. Silly thought, since a lot of adventure players like to turn themselves into necromancer vampire werellamas: What if NPCs could accuse you of being a night creature? I doubt Toady has that sort of thing in mind for the next update, though, just the regular methods of getting caught. I do recall a thread or two where retired night creature adventurers were called out by their predecessors.

I am getting curious about that line about night creatures cursing you when you put them down. I might have forgotten if it's been covered, but what kind of curses will they be able to put on you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 11, 2013, 01:24:39 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 11, 2013, 11:37:06 am

I am getting curious about that line about night creatures cursing you when you put them down. I might have forgotten if it's been covered, but what kind of curses will they be able to put on you?

The game already has a general curse ("interaction" (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Interaction_token)) system that includes were-curses, vampirism, husk-ifying, and the mummies' bad-luck curse.  Those would all be fair game for night creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 11, 2013, 01:34:30 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 11, 2013, 11:37:06 am

Heh. Silly thought, since a lot of adventure players like to turn themselves into necromancer vampire werellamas: What if NPCs could accuse you of being a night creature? I doubt Toady has that sort of thing in mind for the next update, though, just the regular methods of getting caught. I do recall a thread or two where retired night creature adventurers were called out by their predecessors.

I am getting curious about that line about night creatures cursing you when you put them down. I might have forgotten if it's been covered, but what kind of curses will they be able to put on you?

Toady talked about curses in relation to mummies (who already have the "bad luck" curse they put on tomb robbers) - the ideas should work out the same for curses other night creature put on you (in addition to the stuff that already exists, as Footkerchief points out). From DF Talks:

Quote

There are different styles of curses, they can just go hardcore and give you some disease or turn you ... or just kill you or whatever; that would be kind of boring though. So other things they could do is ... either just kind of by giving you some kind of bad vibe, or by making you completely hideous or half-rotted or something they could kind of ostracize you from society, that was one of the things we were going to toy were. We were going to toy with having them have other things in the crypt that get disturbed and maybe haunt you; no matter where you go you've always got something slowly shambling after you or whatever, so that whenever you sleep you'd have to deal with the fact that this thing has found you, and then you'd have to run off again or kill it temporarily and then continue on.
...
So with multiple worlds and stuff, that would be a great thing to eventually have ... like, as a curse, you just straight up get sent to a bad world ... you know, there's lots of rocks here and not much else. You make a mummy mad, and then that's what they do ...

From a FotF reply:

Quote

Quote from: EmeraldWind

From the sound of Threetoe's teaser in the Dev Log, it sounds curses can possibly alienate you from normal not cursed individuals. Will these curses be causing effects that might make you unpleasant for normals to deal with?
For example, a curse of sores or a curse of ugliness.  I imagine these types of curses might make it in because of how they are tied to mummies in fiction and simply want to know if they are within the scope of working on mummies. The idea of a curse making you an outcast is not uncommon either and that what it sounds like could happen from the Dev Log...
These powerful beings that can be disturbed. Will they all be Historical Figures that have been buried or will they be other Fun things as well?

I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work yet, but something that separates you from people is what we are after, whether it's warty or a bad vibe or whatever ends up happening.
We are starting with historical figures that have been buried, and perhaps that's all we'll get to.

One of the ThreeToe stories (A Terror to Behold) also has some night creature evilness going on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 11, 2013, 01:56:09 pm

Thanks for digging that up. Forgot all about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 11, 2013, 11:32:01 pm

omg omg omg OMG omg omg omg

Can we have attack raws now pretty please?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 12, 2013, 12:03:40 am

You mentioned the lower extreme of combat states being horseplay- does this mean rough-housing is in for children/animals?

Do accidents occur, particularly with mismatched opponents (two kittens playfighting isn't so bad, a gorilla and a kitten moreso)

Mostly I ask because I read that line in the voice of the chief Marauder from Adventure Time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fieari on April 12, 2013, 01:10:01 pm

What are all the severity scales?  For instance, you mention "Lethal without Quarter"... does that imply you have a "Lethal but Quarter Will Be Given" level?  At what point would a foe realize that you've escalated from Lethal but Quarter to Lethal Without Quarter?  (I assume the player will know when your enemy has escalated when they shout "NO MERCY!" at you)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on April 12, 2013, 06:50:42 pm

Are you planning to make throwing less overpowered?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 12, 2013, 08:18:49 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 12, 2013, 06:50:42 pm

Are you planning to make throwing less overpowered?

ToadyOne plans to make throwing even stronger, there are a series of pending bugs that prevent thrown objects from acting as strong as they should.

>.>
<.<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 12, 2013, 09:27:38 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 12, 2013, 08:18:49 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 12, 2013, 06:50:42 pm

Are you planning to make throwing less overpowered?

ToadyOne plans to make throwing even stronger, there are a series of pending bugs that prevent thrown objects from acting as strong as they should.

>.>
<.<

Yeah, throwing used to be overpowered circa 40d, but since the 2010 release it's been underpowered if anything (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=344).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 12, 2013, 10:14:32 pm

Foot, I think your sentient search engine gave you the wrong bug.  That one seems to be about throwing creatures.  The question was about killing people by throwing a spear through their chest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 12, 2013, 10:53:43 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 12, 2013, 10:14:32 pm

Foot, I think your sentient search engine gave you the wrong bug.  That one seems to be about throwing creatures.  The question was about killing people by throwing a spear through their chest.

Oh yeah, the other throwing, the one that is actually overpowered.  That needs the ranged combat overhaul, which probably won't happen for a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 13, 2013, 04:46:50 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 12, 2013, 10:53:43 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 12, 2013, 10:14:32 pm

Foot, I think your sentient search engine gave you the wrong bug.  That one seems to be about throwing creatures.  The question was about killing people by throwing a spear through their chest.

Oh yeah, the other throwing, the one that is actually overpowered.  That needs the ranged combat overhaul, which probably won't happen for a while.

Although I haven't yet killed a zombie elephant with water, I killed an archer by throwing ice at his head (jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain etc.).
That was one hell of a shot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 13, 2013, 04:58:09 am

You could kill someone with a hunk of ice and a good throwing arm. In fact, you could kill someone with a baseball. Easily. Just as long as they weren't wearing a helmet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 13, 2013, 09:37:35 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 13, 2013, 04:58:09 am

You could kill someone with a hunk of ice and a good throwing arm. In fact, you could kill someone with a baseball. Easily. Just as long as they weren't wearing a helmet.

the problem however isnt that its possible to kill someone by throwing things. the problem is the way you kill people when you throw things at them. in df, you can break someones legs by throwing pebbles and when you hit someones head the cause of death is not trauma from the brain hitting the skull or something like that, but the skull being jammed through the brain, as usual. but im pretty sure things like that will be addressed at some point, i dont think there is a need to ask for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on April 13, 2013, 10:39:30 am

If the combat state is at the brawl level, will an NPC surrender to another NPC if the player just stands back and doesn't get involved?

Can the player be not involved in a ongoing fight/brawl in a town that they visit, or is one side likely to view the player as an enemy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 13, 2013, 11:10:59 am

I'm fine with thrown rocks being potentially lethal to a humanoid. There's a reason stoning was (and in some nasty places, still is) a method of execution. Thrown pebbles, not so much, unless you're adding a sling, slingshot, or other such force multiplier to the equation.

I suppose it makes some sense if there's no air resistance in the calculation as people have said. Light objects would lose more inertia to air resistance, so without it a pebble would be more like a bullet. Tumbling comes to mind as another aspect, thinking about the bullet comparison. Modern firearms use rifling to spin the bullet and gyroscopically stabilize it. Fletching does the same for arrows and bolts. Without that sort of stability, accuracy would probably be the factor to suffer the most with light throwing ammo.

As for the skull being jammed through the brain, I tend to envision that as a fractured skull fragment being forced into the brain, but that's my human rationalization. To the code and the raws, they're probably just interchangeable layers.

One thing I think should get added sooner or later: Helmets with visors and other face guards. Though I wonder if that might make things a little too easy for dwarves in full candy armor. Still, there are ways to kill dwarves without involving armor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 13, 2013, 11:36:20 am

Although, are those stones you pick up in Adventure mode really pebbles? Aren't they literally called "stones"? Are there pebbles anywhere in the game right now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 13, 2013, 01:10:10 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 13, 2013, 11:10:59 am

-snip-
I'm fine with thrown rocks being potentially lethal to a humanoid. There's a reason stoning was (and in some nasty places, still is) a method of execution. Thrown pebbles, not so much, unless you're adding a sling, slingshot, or other such force multiplier to the equation.
-snip-

hm, it might be true that they arent pebbles, but i still think they are far smaller than a brick. judging from the distance you can throw them they fit comfortably in a hand.
_my_ legs dont snap like twigs if you throw something like that at me, im pretty sure about that.

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 13, 2013, 11:10:59 am

-snip-
As for the skull being jammed through the brain, I tend to envision that as a fractured skull fragment being forced into the brain, but that's my human rationalization. To the code and the raws, they're probably just interchangeable layers.
-snip-

the way you envision it is probably how it is intended, however, that is not how you die if you get hit by a baseball or a small rock.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 03:09:22 pm

Do you think in development games like starbound (by the people of terraria) represent any hoped for random plants generated in future releases visually? each forest is random on the planet

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 13, 2013, 03:42:19 pm

Quote from: eux0r on April 13, 2013, 01:10:10 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 13, 2013, 11:10:59 am

-snip-
I'm fine with thrown rocks being potentially lethal to a humanoid. There's a reason stoning was (and in some nasty places, still is) a method of execution. Thrown pebbles, not so much, unless you're adding a sling, slingshot, or other such force multiplier to the equation.
-snip-

hm, it might be true that they arent pebbles, but i still think they are far smaller than a brick. judging from the distance you can throw them they fit comfortably in a hand.
_my_ legs dont snap like twigs if you throw something like that at me, im pretty sure about that.

Quote from: Bronze Dog on April 13, 2013, 11:10:59 am

-snip-
As for the skull being jammed through the brain, I tend to envision that as a fractured skull fragment being forced into the brain, but that's my human rationalization. To the code and the raws, they're probably just interchangeable layers.
-snip-

the way you envision it is probably how it is intended, however, that is not how you die if you get hit by a baseball or a small rock.

While thrown objects probably need a better max speed calculation, slings were used as deadly weapons for thousands of years.  Sling bullets are about as big as a child's fist and mass between 50 and 500 grams.  Slings have ranges up to about 400m, or about 1/4 mile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 13, 2013, 04:07:06 pm

Or in other words, current throwing mechanics assume everyone has a base-quality pigtail sling with them. To make it more "accurate", throwing needs to be nerfed, but slings be implemented and made even more OP with the addition of quality modifiers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on April 13, 2013, 04:15:12 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 03:09:22 pm

Do you think in development games like starbound (by the people of terraria) represent any hoped for random plants generated in future releases visually? each forest is random on the planet

Randomly generated plants are planned, but Starbound wasn't an inspiration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 06:26:52 pm

Quote from: Trif on April 13, 2013, 04:15:12 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 03:09:22 pm

Do you think in development games like starbound (by the people of terraria) represent any hoped for random plants generated in future releases visually? each forest is random on the planet

Randomly generated plants are planned, but Starbound wasn't an inspiration.

I know, I just meant is it going to be that amount of random generation. I am not good at these questions X3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on April 13, 2013, 07:20:47 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 06:26:52 pm

Quote from: Trif on April 13, 2013, 04:15:12 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 13, 2013, 03:09:22 pm

Do you think in development games like starbound (by the people of terraria) represent any hoped for random plants generated in future releases visually? each forest is random on the planet

Randomly generated plants are planned, but Starbound wasn't an inspiration.

I know, I just meant is it going to be that amount of random generation. I am not good at these questions X3

Ah! Well, we know that trees are going to be quite varied.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Auning

How moddable will the following be: tree shape, size, quantity of fruit bearing
Will all trees have different defined varieties of leaves/petals/etc? For example, pine trees will have pine needles, oak trees will have oak leaves, palm trees will have palm fronds.
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
With the implementation of the other new sites, will this in turn allow for more variety with human sites, since the code has been expanded upon?
Will trees legitimately spread through methods such as seeds in fruit, or will they still just spawn?

As for the first few lines, yeah, all pretty good there.  Haven't done anything with sap.  I haven't expanded human sites, but yeah, the potential increases as I add non-human sites, but not really modding wise for this time.  I haven't gone down into actual seeding yet.

Quote from: Devlog 09/28/2012

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

Since plant shapes and the growths themselves are going to be moddable, there will be many possibilities for random plants.
Neither Starbound nor the new DF version are released yet, but I'm fairly sure that with the potential for bronze sword trees, random generation in DF will be at least on par with Starbound.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on April 13, 2013, 07:37:17 pm

Hasn't it already been established that the lack of resistance a skull provides is because the curvature of objects is not considered? In other words, skulls are more brittle because the geometric force deflection of objects isn't considered in DF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 13, 2013, 08:11:29 pm

Quote from: CLA on April 13, 2013, 07:37:17 pm

Hasn't it already been established that the lack of resistance a skull provides is because the curvature of objects is not considered? In other words, skulls are more brittle because the geometric force deflection of objects isn't considered in DF?

One of the largest issues with Dwarf Fortress is that for a lot of things... How is Toady doing to know?

He could add something that would imitate that aspect of the skull (a sort of structural integrity stat) but for everything else what is he going to put down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on April 14, 2013, 02:49:25 am

Quote from: CLA on April 13, 2013, 07:37:17 pm

Hasn't it already been established that the lack of resistance a skull provides is because the curvature of objects is not considered? In other words, skulls are more brittle because the geometric force deflection of objects isn't considered in DF?

Nope. A wood arrow currently (in vanilla DF) can fracture adamantine armor and tear the flesh underneath. I say "fracture" because this is a function of blunt (impact) damage rather than piercing (shear) damage. Most projectiles are rather high energy right now, and the bone is just weak vs blunt damage.

All thrown objects travel at the same velocity (100, 1/10 of default bolt velocity), so heavy objects that have a small contact area will do more damage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 14, 2013, 04:06:22 am

404: Page not found.

Jokes aside, Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on April 14, 2013, 05:02:27 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 14, 2013, 04:06:22 am

404: Page not found.

Jokes aside, Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

Stuff like the Hydra Testing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 14, 2013, 05:36:20 am

Quote from: O11O1 on April 14, 2013, 05:02:27 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 14, 2013, 04:06:22 am

404: Page not found.

Jokes aside, Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

Stuff like the Hydra Testing?

Stuff like the Hydra Testing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on April 14, 2013, 12:07:50 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 14, 2013, 04:06:22 am

404: Page not found.

Jokes aside, Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

That would slow Toady down, I'd rather he not doing it.

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on April 14, 2013, 02:49:25 am

Quote from: CLA on April 13, 2013, 07:37:17 pm

Hasn't it already been established that the lack of resistance a skull provides is because the curvature of objects is not considered? In other words, skulls are more brittle because the geometric force deflection of objects isn't considered in DF?

Nope. A wood arrow currently (in vanilla DF) can fracture adamantine armor and tear the flesh underneath. I say "fracture" because this is a function of blunt (impact) damage rather than piercing (shear) damage. Most projectiles are rather high energy right now, and the bone is just weak vs blunt damage.

All thrown objects travel at the same velocity (100, 1/10 of default bolt velocity), so heavy objects that have a small contact area will do more damage.

Yeah, the problem with the bow/crossbow is that they are more akin to railguns. I hope Toady fix that soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: xaritscin on April 14, 2013, 12:10:04 pm

i wonder, will we si a fix in the flux stone bug in the next version?, its practically impossible to generate a world with flux stone under "metal = everywhere"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 14, 2013, 12:32:37 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on April 14, 2013, 12:07:50 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 14, 2013, 04:06:22 am

404: Page not found.

Jokes aside, Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

That would slow Toady down, I'd rather he not doing it.

That was my thought too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jamoecw on April 14, 2013, 02:38:11 pm

in regards to the drunkenness of dwarves, perhaps they have a different brain chemistry than humans, and thus get drunk off of water, as their brain needs alcohol to function.  so a dwarf bed ridden by injury would drink water as it helps with healing, but would be drunk off his ass, while a healthy dwarf would drink alcohol to keep from being drunk.  furthermore if different creatures need different things then trading with another civilization would be beneficial for goods they don't need but that you do, and vice versa.  imagine if humans only drink alcohol occasionally, then good dwarven alcohol would be a luxury item to them, with a wider range of price that they would be willing to spend for it based on their own wealth, after all a poor settlement would waste precious resources on something that wasn't necessary.  while a poor dwarf civ would pay for cheap alcohol pretty consistently, as it was necessary to their survival.

so i guess my question is this:
is there any plans for different civilizations having different necessities, allowing for different dynamics to the trading system, and (eventually) requirements when running a non dwarf fort, such as humans not needing alcohol to function, or maybe elves needing nuts as part of their diet (as dwarves need alcohol)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on April 14, 2013, 03:29:32 pm

Quote from: jamoecw on April 14, 2013, 02:38:11 pm

is there any plans for different civilizations having different necessities, allowing for different dynamics to the trading system, and (eventually) requirements when running a non dwarf fort, such as humans not needing alcohol to function, or maybe elves needing nuts as part of their diet (as dwarves need alcohol)?

Yes, it's intended, but as for the requirements for non-dwarf forts, it has been answered up there a couple of times that they'll be properly implemented when all the desired aspects of running a dwarf fortress are implemented. Well, who knows, "no timeline", as always.

As soon as the economy gets it's rails, there will surely be things like demand and willingness to pay (also things to pay for, both in fortresses and adventures), also different currency exchanges based on avaliability and wealth; right now the only stuff that might be considered as a traveller's cheque are gems, and one civilization's coins are completely worthless for the next one. Maybe there will be space to freely develop alternative economy models that aren't restricted to capitalism and obnoxious wealth accumulation, or maybe different cultures and races will lean towards certain preferences. I think that'll happen after caravans, travellers and in-site workers (human quarries, elven orchards) become less abstracted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 15, 2013, 01:44:51 pm

I think pre-medieval currency value was based mainly on metal content and purity.

coins are suposedly pure gold, worth literally their weight in gold.
counterfeit currency of inferior alloy are a possible villainous plot twist for the far future.

Overlord: "Here you go Hero: 100 Golden coloured coins from my personal chests. As a reward for your exploits!"
Hero: "Yay!"
later that day, at the armourer's ...
Hero : "Thanks for making that wonderful steel plate master smith! Here is your money."
Shopkeep: "Hey! What are you trying to pull? These are gilded lead coins! Guards!!!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 15, 2013, 05:27:36 pm

Would have been funny is the Overlord and armorer was the same person

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 15, 2013, 06:16:55 pm

You just know that's going to be one of the first bugs we get if counterfeit coins are a thing; adventurer is given counterfeit coins, attempts to spend them in trade or whatever with whomever just gave him the coins, who then calls the guards on 'em.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 15, 2013, 08:36:43 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 15, 2013, 06:16:55 pm

You just know that's going to be one of the first bugs we get if counterfeit coins are a thing; adventurer is given counterfeit coins, attempts to spend them in trade or whatever with whomever just gave him the coins, who then calls the guards on 'em.

Bug, or feature?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 15, 2013, 09:04:30 pm

regardless, it's gonna be reported as one initially.   

Speaking of guards, though, which update(s) are properly behaving guards replying to shopkeepers/lifters planned for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 15, 2013, 10:37:08 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 15, 2013, 09:04:30 pm

regardless, it's gonna be reported as one initially.   

Speaking of guards, though, which update(s) are properly behaving guards replying to shopkeepers/lifters planned for?

Later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 15, 2013, 10:42:49 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 15, 2013, 10:37:08 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 15, 2013, 09:04:30 pm

regardless, it's gonna be reported as one initially.   

Speaking of guards, though, which update(s) are properly behaving guards replying to shopkeepers/lifters planned for?

Later.

So, we're not sure yet, but not this update, nor the one after?
Rats. I was kinda waiting for that before I tried adventure mode again. >.>
What? Don't look at me like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 15, 2013, 10:45:41 pm

The only update we know of is this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 15, 2013, 10:59:10 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 15, 2013, 10:42:49 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 15, 2013, 10:37:08 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 15, 2013, 09:04:30 pm

regardless, it's gonna be reported as one initially.   

Speaking of guards, though, which update(s) are properly behaving guards replying to shopkeepers/lifters planned for?

Later.

So, we're not sure yet, but not this update, nor the one after?
Rats. I was kinda waiting for that before I tried adventure mode again. >.>
What? Don't look at me like that.

The update after this will likely be a hotfix of some sort. As for the next feature release, that's probably more than a year away and probably won't contain anything of the sort, if only because there's a lot of things to work on still and more tavern/caravan stuff is still the immediate priority. However, the current release contains some stuff that might be relevant; guards won't necessarily deal with everything lethally and knowledge about your crimes won't spread to everyone instantly, but only when a witness leaves the loaded area.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 15, 2013, 11:07:43 pm

I knew it wasn't too far off. At least some of the relevant behaviors have been dealt with.
Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ozfer on April 16, 2013, 09:32:44 am

In the post where you mentioned the hydra shaking a persons arms off at the same time, will combat ever get to the point where someone being shaken around would take fall damage when they are released (If the creature is large enough)?  The Hydra being as tall as it is, it seem like there would be a fair drop.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on April 16, 2013, 10:18:27 am

Do you think complex biology ane biochemistry, such has homeostasis of one's body being maintained by hormones and the actions of the organs such as the interactions between the body's individual organ systems may eventually be a consideration? Or is this something you are looking to actively avoid?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 16, 2013, 11:06:43 am

Quote from: iceball3 on April 16, 2013, 10:18:27 am

Do you think complex biology ane biochemistry, such has homeostasis of one's body being maintained by hormones and the actions of the organs such as the interactions between the body's individual organ systems may eventually be a consideration? Or is this something you are looking to actively avoid?

More organ links to function and syndromes linked to organ failure were among the plans for the big 2010 release (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg398829#msg398829), but Toady had to skip them to get the release out. Those parts at least are likely to be revisited. Getting all the way down to hormones seems unlikely, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 16, 2013, 11:11:56 am

Quote from: Ozfer on April 16, 2013, 09:32:44 am

In the post where you mentioned the hydra shaking a persons arms off at the same time, will combat ever get to the point where someone being shaken around would take fall damage when they are released (If the creature is large enough)?  The Hydra being as tall as it is, it seem like there would be a fair drop.

Accounting for a creature's height in combat is a feature that Toady has discussed several times, e.g. in DF Talk #9 (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript.html):

Quote

Rainseeker:   Let's talk about martial arts. So I see that you have specific skills for fighting monsters, you have a skill for hand-on-hand combat against a dragon ...
Toady:   I'm not sure how specific it's going to be, but once we put in things like if you're fighting a giant who's way taller than you then it would make sense that if people have been doing that for centuries then they'd have strategies. I'm not sure what those are going to be specifically, if it just gives you a knowledge against a monster and a bonus then that would be the easiest way to do it, but it would be way more fun to have particular things that you can do, to jump up on them, or attack them when they're swinging down at you, people practicing strikes to hack a dragon in the head when it comes down to bite them or whatever. There might be stereotyped ways of doing that, although I don't think enough people fight dragons and survive to really learn that stuff ... it'd be kind of weird to see the training facilities with the giant cardboard dragons, people practicing against them ...
[...]
Capntastic:   So what about climbing? Like if you're fighting a giant and you climb up its back and stab it in the neck?
Toady:   Yeah, like all the old Ray Harryhausen movies had them jumping up on the back of the cyclops and hacking on it and stuff, and people bring up Shadow of the Colossus too, which is cool. All that stuff's pretty cool, the question would be how can you do that in our kind of visually impoverished environment, and would it be as fun? It's obviously not going to be as exhilarating in some sense, but it would still be entertaining. We have that thing up on the dev pages where it's like 'being able to jump up and ride on your opponents' and I guess it would just be like that. Depending on how those zones work out you can jump either onto the middle zone of a larger creature, like if you're jumping up on a troll you could try to jump and grab a hold of its back ... I don't know if you'd be doing that twin daggers climb up its back, but ...
Rainseeker:   That might smart.
Toady:   Yeah, you might get smacked by a big troll fist ... It's interesting to think of how it all works together, because there's wrestling ... because during a brief time during the throw the guy is really off balance but he might be riding you in a sense even though he's so off balance or in the process of a slow motion fall that he can't really do much with it. Although I guess there have been a few weird times where they recover and choke people with their legs when they're being picked up by them and so on, there's some weird stuff. So that's one thing where you're kind of being carried by somebody, partially, and you're kind of falling, and you're kind of riding them, and then there's riding a horse which is like a Shadow of the Colossus thing, and then there's the actual version where you're climbing up a dragon or jumping up on an oliphaunt like Legolas in the movie, climbing all over its trunk and shooting it in the brain and all that kind of thing. So there's all those different things and the question is do those play nice together, is that all one unified system, because then you can do that. But you don't want to have to go up to your horse and be like 'attack horse: jump on its back' and you're like 'you are now riding your horse', that'd be kind of silly. We haven't obviously come up with the specifics there, but it would be fun and fitting with all of the fantasy predecessors to be able to jump up on a large beast, so it's important to do that. I guess once you're on it in a simplified version it's like 'you are riding on the dragon's left lower leg' and you'd be 'move up' and you'd cry up the body part tree, it could do a path search on it or something, and you climb up the leg and then you're on the dragon's lower body, and then it's like 'do you want to try and jab your spear into the dragon's wicked spleen or do you want to go up higher?' and you could climb up and eventually be riding around on the dragon's neck. Then you'd be able to get attacks on it but it would be able to get attacks on you that you'd have more difficult dodging, or it could go to the ground and try to smash one of its zones into the ground.
Rainseeker:   Yeah I don't want to just give him digestion problems, I want to actually kill the darned thing.
Toady:   By the time we're done you're not going to have access to a dragon's head all that often. When we get the thing in where a combat move takes time to execute then if a dragon tries to bite you and you're a good enough fighter that you get the reaction on that then it would say 'the dragon is coming to bite you, what do you want to do?' and that body part would now be accessible to you, it'd be like 'well I'd like to try and hack his head off', and that would be an option that you can go for.
Rainseeker:   Take that risk.
Toady:   Or 'I'd like to jump on the dragon's head when he's coming to bite me' and then you could jump up on in when he's coming, then he'll miss his attack and you'll be riding a dragon's head ... and your friends won't be able to help you because when the attack is over you'll be lifted well up into space; however high zone one is set to be off of the ground where they can't reach you, and then you'll be sitting there trying to stab a dragon's eyes out or something, and he'd be sitting there trying to wipe you off like a cat with its claws, or maybe it'd just shake ...
Rainseeker:   Once you get this mechanic installed you should have a contest in arena mode to see how long people can ride the dragon, before you get bucked off.
Toady:   I guess that's the same thing with the cows when you jump up on a bull, and I guess if you try and ride a chicken then it should just get squashed.

Quote from: iceball3 on April 16, 2013, 10:18:27 am

Do you think complex biology ane biochemistry, such has homeostasis of one's body being maintained by hormones and the actions of the organs such as the interactions between the body's individual organ systems may eventually be a consideration? Or is this something you are looking to actively avoid?

Beaten on this link, but I have a quote: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.0)

Quote

More organ links to function
Syndromes linked to failure of body systems (instead of materials)
Digestive venoms and generalization of bruises/blisters/necrosis to other damage types
Move many death effects over to brain death (maintaining original cause text)
Wound infection and sepsis
Other diseases

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 16, 2013, 11:26:12 am

Something tells me that horseplay is going to be absolutely deadly, and we are going to have to invent some new fort design aspects to minimize its deadliness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 16, 2013, 11:53:46 am

Wrestling sparring can already bypass the sparring protection with throws.  The throw is harmless, but the skidding along the ground and impact is just as letal as actual combat throwing.  I'm actually using a squad of wrestlers (wearing helmets) to keep my doctors from getting rusty. 

It stands to reason that without something changed in that horseplay throws can be just as dangerous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 16, 2013, 02:03:52 pm

after watching this (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/) very interesting thing and reading the

Spoiler: df-talk-9-quote (click to show/hide)

Quote

Toady:   I'm not sure how specific it's going to be, but once we put in things like if you're fighting a giant who's way taller than you then it would make sense that if people have been doing that for centuries then they'd have strategies. I'm not sure what those are going to be specifically, if it just gives you a knowledge against a monster and a bonus then that would be the easiest way to do it, but it would be way more fun to have particular things that you can do, to jump up on them, or attack them when they're swinging down at you, people practicing strikes to hack a dragon in the head when it comes down to bite them or whatever. There might be stereotyped ways of doing that, although I don't think enough people fight dragons and survive to really learn that stuff ... it'd be kind of weird to see the training facilities with the giant cardboard dragons, people practicing against them ...

something intriguing came to my mind...
Toady, what are your thoughts on procedurally developing knowledge ingame? (example/specification uncoloured below)
the stuff you mentioned in the df talk footkerchief brought up mentions people developing fighting techniques using experience. do you think something along the lines of "in some random fight, alice randomly grabs bobs right arm with her left - alice randomly attacks bobs right side with her right - since bob cant defend this side the blow lands to great effect -  alice now uses the technique *grab arm and attack same side* as a specific martial technique and passes it down to her students" is feasible? this is just a fighting example since thats what the df talk was about there, but there are surely other possibilities for procedural generation of knowledge.
obviously this would result in worlds with longer history to be richer, with diversified cultures and short-history-worlds to lack such depth, so i dont know how much that works in your intentions(maybe you want short-history-worlds to have just as much depth).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nimbby on April 17, 2013, 06:04:26 pm

If you were an adventure mode vampire for a few years, given that it is possible for dead to now be entombed during play (I think), could you recruit a mummy of someone who knew and liked you during life?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 17, 2013, 06:25:08 pm

Quote from: Nimbby on April 17, 2013, 06:04:26 pm

If you were an adventure mode vampire for a few years, given that it is possible for dead to now be entombed during play (I think), could you recruit a mummy of someone who knew and liked you during life?

That would be hilarious.
*knocks on coffin lid*
"Wanna go adventuring with me?"
"Ok."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 17, 2013, 06:41:34 pm

YES! We must have that! That would be the best thing, ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Button on April 17, 2013, 07:12:35 pm

Will the combat improvements in this update include allowing flying domestic animals to fight in three dimensions/dodge upwards even when they aren't right next to a wall?

I know aerial pathfinding isn't in the cards yet, but it would be nice if my war birds could take advantage of the 3rd dimension in combat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 17, 2013, 07:32:05 pm

Quote from: Nimbby on April 17, 2013, 06:04:26 pm

If you were an adventure mode vampire for a few years, given that it is possible for dead to now be entombed during play (I think), could you recruit a mummy of someone who knew and liked you during life?

I asked about entombing earlier, and no, that won't happen. You also won't get more vampire/werebeast curses or necromancers. Eventually, everything that happens in world gen will happen in play, but right now it's still sketchy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on April 17, 2013, 09:28:47 pm

Quote from: Nimbby on April 17, 2013, 06:04:26 pm

If you were an adventure mode vampire for a few years, given that it is possible for dead to now be entombed during play (I think), could you recruit a mummy of someone who knew and liked you during life?

Vampires/necromancers are able to recruit mummys in the current version. However iirc you need to either have high social stats or get be famous with its civ to be able to convince them to follow you. They make pretty great allies because they auto-raise any corpses in the area. Walking through a large city with a Mummy and +300 zombies in tow is quality entertainment, at least until the zombie loyalty cascade starts that is...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 18, 2013, 07:44:21 am

Oooh!  I've never seen a zombie loyalty cascade!  Please tell me there are vids.  This sounds like quality entertainment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on April 18, 2013, 05:12:56 pm

You mentioned that combat state can be adjusted in the arena now.  How many combat states are there?  If someone punches you, how much of an escalation is it to hit them with, say, a training sword?  Or the skull of a dragon you killed?

On a loosely related note, if someone attacks you with a sword and you fight back empty-handed, do you have a chance of lowering the combat state, or alternatively, scaring your attacker with this show of confidence?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on April 18, 2013, 06:39:16 pm

Quote from: Mr S on April 18, 2013, 07:44:21 am

Oooh!  I've never seen a zombie loyalty cascade!  Please tell me there are vids.  This sounds like quality entertainment.

It's actually a rather annoying 'feature' that can happen both on zombies that have been around for some time and zombies that are freshly raised. I've actually had necromancer adventurers killed as a result of raising something that turned out to be very very hostile when I was already engaged in battle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: runlvlzero on April 20, 2013, 09:55:43 am

Toady, I don't know if you read every single reply you get here and I did not want to spam your email in box...

But I have been watching the front page every few days and seeing the progress updates you are posting. The idea's you've been implementing.

YOU AND YOUR GAME ARE FRIKKIN AWESOME. The best. THANK YOU! Super excited about the next release =)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 20, 2013, 11:03:45 am

Quote from: runlvlzero on April 20, 2013, 09:55:43 am

Toady, I don't know if you read every single reply you get here and I did not want to spam your email in box...

But I have been watching the front page every few days and seeing the progress updates you are posting. The idea's you've been implementing.

YOU AND YOUR GAME ARE FRIKKIN AWESOME. The best. THANK YOU! Super excited about the next release =)

So say we all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nimbby on April 20, 2013, 02:36:38 pm

This is just a question for anyone willing to answer: has Toady stated whether or not mega-beasts can claim settlements if they rampage there during world gen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 20, 2013, 03:08:37 pm

I'm pretty sure he hasn't talked about that, but I highly doubt that megabeasts will be laying claim to sites they destroy this release, and if they ever do they probably won't do so except in special cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 20, 2013, 03:16:33 pm

Almost definitely not for this release (I think only entities lay claims for that one, but don't quote me on that). However, it is a plan for the future that (semi)megabeasts should be able to share "villain" behaviors where appropriate - so beastlike dragon like we currently have might only claim a site as the new place for its hoard, but an ettin might well do it for worldly power or even religious/mythical reasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on April 20, 2013, 03:36:51 pm

I'd definitely like it if creatures other than demons took control of civs. Powerful creatures can rule through intimidation, and sneaky ones through guile and intrigue. I imagine that'll be easier for Toady to do once he's gotten acts of villainy standardized.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 20, 2013, 04:04:45 pm

I could see an ettin ruling a village by sitting in the nearby fort and demanding tribute, but somehow I doubt they'd be smart enough to rule a city or country. The larger the populace, the little pure strength matters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on April 20, 2013, 04:37:09 pm

How will you handle telling us what's happened when reclaiming a fort? Will we have to rely on engravings, the moods and history's of the dwarfs, etc? I was espousing the idea of setting it to procedurally generated music :P. Would, once taverns get into the picture, reminiscing there-in and other opportunities we set up act as ways of learning the history we've missed? Will outstanding monsters and bandit's remain a problem?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on April 20, 2013, 04:56:56 pm

Quote from: Novel on April 20, 2013, 04:37:09 pm

How will you handle telling us what's happened when reclaiming a fort? Will we have to rely on engravings, the moods and history's of the dwarfs, etc? I was espousing the idea of setting it to procedurally generated music :P. Would, once taverns get into the picture, reminiscing there-in and other opportunities we set up act as ways of learning the history we've missed? Will outstanding monsters and bandit's remain a problem?

Right now it's assumed to be a briefing text, not unlike the one that appears in the beginning of every fortress, so you get a more-or-less clear idea of your scenario. Toady hasn't told us anything about what are the dwarfs doing once we retire our player fortress, or if they have some tendency to engrave their most important shenanigans; if that's so, then the question remains where in the fortress, or if they're designating some area just for historic purposes, like a "captain's log" room.

Getting those questions answered (and only if they need some sort of answer) is pretty feasible in adventure mode, so that we're encouraged to play both modes in tandem.

As of taverns, nothing has been said yet, but it would be not only a source of history, but also a mean to know about far-to-reach places and getting knowledge of the current world affairs. Maybe genning a world without revealing its history could be a doable challenge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 21, 2013, 10:39:10 am

Quote from: Valtam on April 20, 2013, 04:56:56 pm

Quote from: Novel on April 20, 2013, 04:37:09 pm

How will you handle telling us what's happened when reclaiming a fort? Will we have to rely on engravings, the moods and history's of the dwarfs, etc? I was espousing the idea of setting it to procedurally generated music :P. Would, once taverns get into the picture, reminiscing there-in and other opportunities we set up act as ways of learning the history we've missed? Will outstanding monsters and bandit's remain a problem?

Right now it's assumed to be a briefing text, not unlike the one that appears in the beginning of every fortress, so you get a more-or-less clear idea of your scenario. Toady hasn't told us anything about what are the dwarfs doing once we retire our player fortress, or if they have some tendency to engrave their most important shenanigans; if that's so, then the question remains where in the fortress, or if they're designating some area just for historic purposes, like a "captain's log" room.

Getting those questions answered (and only if they need some sort of answer) is pretty feasible in adventure mode, so that we're encouraged to play both modes in tandem.

As of taverns, nothing has been said yet, but it would be not only a source of history, but also a mean to know about far-to-reach places and getting knowledge of the current world affairs. Maybe genning a world without revealing its history could be a doable challenge.

You know what would be even better?
Building a tavern yourself. (that other people will recognize as such and visit)

It requires Fortress mode skills incorporated into Adventure mode, which I hope is gonna be a thing soon. (relatively soon, at least - ie. the next update AFTER this one)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chagen46 on April 21, 2013, 12:07:45 pm

Quote from: cephalo on April 16, 2013, 11:26:12 am

Something tells me that horseplay is going to be absolutely deadly, and we are going to have to invent some new fort design aspects to minimize its deadliness.

Oh lord I can just imagine it. This release goes out and everyone's dwarves are killing themselves during little skirmishes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 21, 2013, 04:14:38 pm

Quote from: Chagen46 on April 21, 2013, 12:07:45 pm

Quote from: cephalo on April 16, 2013, 11:26:12 am

Something tells me that horseplay is going to be absolutely deadly, and we are going to have to invent some new fort design aspects to minimize its deadliness.

Oh lord I can just imagine it. This release goes out and everyone's dwarves are killing themselves during little skirmishes.

We need mining helmets.  I.E. hats that protect against falling rocks and scrapping your face against the floor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 21, 2013, 10:48:03 pm

Quote from: Toady

Zach and I are also preparing for a trip in three days, for a CCP panel discussion on art over in CCPland.

CCP?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 21, 2013, 10:52:28 pm

Quote from: Sizik on April 21, 2013, 10:48:03 pm

Quote from: Toady

Zach and I are also preparing for a trip in three days, for a CCP panel discussion on art over in CCPland.

CCP?

Yes, all I can get Googling is stuff on the Chinese Communist party.  Though of course they may be hosting a forum on game art...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 21, 2013, 10:53:24 pm

This one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCP_Games)  They develop EVE Online, a DF MoMA-buddy, and they're having the MoMA design curator and the Canabalt guy and me over for a panel on games and art and stuff as part of their giant party.  Sort of a surprising happening, but it should be fun to visit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 21, 2013, 11:46:38 pm

Will patrols loaded in the area the player is in respond to crimes occurring there at the time? Such as if the player is involved in a nice, noisy brawl with some NPC criminals or something, guards will come to break it up?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on April 22, 2013, 12:04:53 am

Good luck on the CCP-thing, Toady and ThreeToe, and have fun guys! You deserve it!

Give those commies hell. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Communism itself is fine. Human greed fucked it up.

Subject dropped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 22, 2013, 02:34:12 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 21, 2013, 10:53:24 pm

This one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCP_Games)  They develop EVE Online, a DF MoMA-buddy, and they're having the MoMA design curator and the Canabalt guy and me over for a panel on games and art and stuff as part of their giant party.  Sort of a surprising happening, but it should be fun to visit.

Thanks, and sounds pretty decent of them to have invited you.  Hope you enjoy the trip!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 22, 2013, 02:48:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Communism itself is fine. Human greed fucked it up.

Subject dropped.

Subject picked.

Communism itself is not fine.

It is Envy vs. Greed with lust for power as cheerleader. It is result of people being stupid enough to be taken advantage off and then delivering mob justice.

It is just pseudo-intelectual wet dream that ignores basics of human psychology and is quite evil in I-know-what-is-best-for-you way. In reality, it is just political tool to gain power by rallying masses and giving them convenient enemy (their boss) they already hate and envy.

Communism works by awakening raider-pillager-mob mentality.

There is nothing good that can even come out of such thing.

Source: I live in post-communist country.

Subject dropped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: maanahr on April 22, 2013, 03:36:21 am

CCP's fanfest will also be streamed for free at http://www.twitch.tv/ccp
The Art Panel is on Saturday 27th 11:00 GMT.

See also https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2904672#post2904672

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chronas on April 22, 2013, 03:53:07 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Subject dropped.

You didn't even need to bring it up, it was a joke.

That said, I can't wait for CCP's shindig, I was really looking forward to more information on WoDO, and now Toady's gonna be there too it'll only get even more interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 05:47:33 am

Quote from: zwei on April 22, 2013, 02:48:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Communism itself is fine. Human greed fucked it up.

Subject dropped.

Subject picked.

Communism itself is not fine.

It is Envy vs. Greed with lust for power as cheerleader. It is result of people being stupid enough to be taken advantage off and then delivering mob justice.

It is just pseudo-intelectual wet dream that ignores basics of human psychology and is quite evil in I-know-what-is-best-for-you way. In reality, it is just political tool to gain power by rallying masses and giving them convenient enemy (their boss) they already hate and envy.

Communism works by awakening raider-pillager-mob mentality.

There is nothing good that can even come out of such thing.

Source: I live in post-communist country.

Subject dropped.

Human greed taints the altruistic mentality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 22, 2013, 12:28:20 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 05:47:33 am

Quote from: zwei on April 22, 2013, 02:48:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Communism itself is fine. Human greed fucked it up.

Subject dropped.

Subject picked.

Subject dropped.

Human greed taints the altruistic mentality.

That is all highly inappropriate for this sector of the forums. The Wrath of the Toad may descend upon us all if it does not end!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 22, 2013, 12:34:38 pm

The political system isn't evil (except inherently totalitarian ones), but countries with corruption or ambitious and charismatic leaders all tend to wind up the same. There's not much difference between a country where everything belongs to the government and one guy controls the whole government, and a country where everything belongs to a company that's owned by the head of state.

When you think about it, there's never been an actual Communist country, seeing as those claiming it wound up like it in name only. How can people control the means of production if they can't vote on it? No one can say whether Marx was right or not since nowhere ever passed through the steps of development in the right order (he said a country would have to be a capitalist republic first for it to work.)
[/derail]

Taking this in a more on-topic direction, I can't wait till the game's advanced enough for impoverished, malnourished peasants to have an insurrection.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on April 22, 2013, 12:36:20 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 22, 2013, 12:28:20 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 05:47:33 am

Quote from: zwei on April 22, 2013, 02:48:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2013, 01:56:37 am

Communism itself is fine. Human greed fucked it up.

Subject dropped.

Subject picked.

Subject dropped.

Human greed taints the altruistic mentality.

That is all highly inappropriate for this sector of the forums. The Wrath of the Toad may descend upon us all if it does not end!

Take it here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=17.0), here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70529), or here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=87619).

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 22, 2013, 12:34:38 pm

Taking this in a more on-topic direction, I can't wait till the game's advanced enough for impoverished, malnourished peasants to have an insurrection.

That would be awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 22, 2013, 01:33:31 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 22, 2013, 12:34:38 pm

Taking this in a more on-topic direction, I can't wait till the game's advanced enough for impoverished, malnourished peasants to have an insurrection.

We call it tantrum spirals

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 22, 2013, 08:00:08 pm

To rephrase better:
[WE] can't wait until the game's advanced enough for impoverished, malnourished peasants to have an [ORGANIZED] insurrection [WHERE PARTICIPANTS SURVIVE] [AND THE OTHERS DON'T].

And before anyone says we call that a Loyalty Cascade, that is still unorganized.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on April 22, 2013, 08:20:39 pm

Loyalty cascades also have the side effect of, if you succeed in guiding the rebels to victory and exterminating all loyalists, causing the cascade to resume every time you get new migrants, as I'm pretty sure they come as loyalists by default since the new faction doesn't actually have establishments in existence yet.

So yes. Make this a new Feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 22, 2013, 10:07:48 pm

Quote from: zwei on April 22, 2013, 01:33:31 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 22, 2013, 12:34:38 pm

Taking this in a more on-topic direction, I can't wait till the game's advanced enough for impoverished, malnourished peasants to have an insurrection.

We call it tantrum spirals

That's not an insurrection, that's a everyone kills everyone else, maybe 1 survivor free-for-all. It's not a mutiny. An insurrection requires sides, of which there are none in a tantrum spiral.

Loyalty cascades are closer, but are an unintended bug that doesn't have lasting effects on loyalty, or result in new mayors/counts/governors/whatever emplaced by victorious rebels, and don't result spontaneously from unhappy living conditions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on April 23, 2013, 10:27:40 am

1st FotF post.

can we ever have vanilla workshops removed (for modding)?  i started a discussion on it here.


http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125204.msg4183251#msg4183251

2nd question
could trader pathfinding ever be used to circumvent walls by building ramps into red areas?

started discussion here
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121451.msg4174411;topicseen#msg4174411

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on April 23, 2013, 12:21:31 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on April 23, 2013, 10:27:40 am

1st FotF post.

can we ever have vanilla workshops removed (for modding)?  i started a discussion on it here.


http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125204.msg4183251#msg4183251

2nd question
could trader pathfinding ever be used to circumvent walls by building ramps into red areas?

started discussion here
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121451.msg4174411;topicseen#msg4174411

Toady is particular about his questions being in green. Its just easier for him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 23, 2013, 12:33:30 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on April 23, 2013, 10:27:40 am

1st FotF post.

can we ever have vanilla workshops removed (for modding)?  i started a discussion on it here.


http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125204.msg4183251#msg4183251

Also, this and many other interesting ideas can be found in the eternal suggestions list. here (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/eternal_voting.php)
:)
I think it is. "Workshops to room designation system"
edit: No it is "Workshops to raws"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I recently tried to add stonehammers, which would require above and "modable weapon crafting". My votes currently are on are on workshop raws, labour-tools to be modded and taverns.
edit: numbers change with # votes

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 23, 2013, 01:26:12 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on April 23, 2013, 10:27:40 am

1st FotF post.

can we ever have vanilla workshops removed (for modding)?  i started a discussion on it here.


http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=125204.msg4183251#msg4183251

2nd question
could trader pathfinding ever be used to circumvent walls by building ramps into red areas?

started discussion here
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121451.msg4174411;topicseen#msg4174411

The first is a suggestion, not a proper question and thus not appropriate to this thread. Do check it out in ESV as has been mentioned. As for ramps circumventing walls, I think that's supposed to happen? If wagons won't go up constructed ramps that's a bug. If you mean that ramps should allow a wagon to be on multiple z-levels, thereby fitting through narrow gullies, then that's another suggestion and one that doesn't really make much sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on April 23, 2013, 01:37:53 pm

well the trader pathfinder system could be used for invaders (so they can build ramps).  the post I linked to goes into more detail on it

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 23, 2013, 01:54:35 pm

Improved invader behavior is planned. From the dev page:

Quote

Improved sieges

    Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
    More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
    Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
    Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
        Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
        Ability to build bridges/ramps
        Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
    Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
        For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
    Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

I do not really see where the more constrained trader pathfinding (if you're talking about wagons, otherwise I'm pretty sure they're using the same system already) would help invader pathing, in any case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 23, 2013, 06:35:59 pm

I hope there will be a limit on how much invaders can act like fort mode dwarves to get in. Digging through bedrock to get into a fort would realistically take months, unimpeded. Generally, sappers could only get in through soil. It wasn't until the advent of gunpowder that castle walls often got breached, as opposed to the occupants slowly weathered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 23, 2013, 10:27:49 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 23, 2013, 06:35:59 pm

I hope there will be a limit on how much invaders can act like fort mode dwarves to get in. Digging through bedrock to get into a fort would realistically take months, unimpeded. Generally, sappers could only get in through soil. It wasn't until the advent of gunpowder that castle walls often got breached, as opposed to the occupants slowly weathered.

But Fort Mode is 72x faster then Adventure Mode. So it can take multiple months, but it'll be couple tens of minuets, like it alway is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 23, 2013, 10:52:10 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 23, 2013, 10:27:49 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 23, 2013, 06:35:59 pm

I hope there will be a limit on how much invaders can act like fort mode dwarves to get in. Digging through bedrock to get into a fort would realistically take months, unimpeded. Generally, sappers could only get in through soil. It wasn't until the advent of gunpowder that castle walls often got breached, as opposed to the occupants slowly weathered.

But Fort Mode is 72x faster then Adventure Mode. So it can take multiple months, but it'll be couple tens of minuets, like it alway is.

Yes, but that also means they take several weeks (or something like that) to just walk from the edge of the map to your fortress. In other words, you can't always go by that exactly. And then the question becomes, will it be calibrated by how fast the in-game days pass, or by how fast the rest of the siege's simulation goes? I think it might look silly in the former case, as they might perhaps pretty much walk through rock as quickly as they walk across the map. (Or maybe not, I haven't done the math, but you see my point.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 24, 2013, 12:22:14 am

Yea, but thats been a long standing issue with Fort Mode time acceleration forevers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 24, 2013, 01:00:52 am

Yeah, honestly I hope that acceleration at least becomes optional some time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 24, 2013, 05:12:00 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 24, 2013, 12:22:14 am

Yea, but thats been a long standing issue with Fort Mode time acceleration forevers.

I know, I just mean that given that, it can go either way in terms of deciding how fast to make siegers do certain things (and in different cases as well), i.e. as fast as makes sense with the speed of time passing by, or as fast as makes sense with how long it takes them to do other things (such as crossing the map). Personally, I think the latter option would be better, otherwise I think it would just seem weird if they do some things very fast and some things very slowly.

Quote from: Cruxador on April 24, 2013, 01:00:52 am

Yeah, honestly I hope that acceleration at least becomes optional some time.

Oh, me too, that would be brilliant. Although I think that would mean that everything would need to be slowed down immensely in terms of real time, so that, for example, building a workshop takes a long time. (Either that or forts will just be allowed to develop much more quickly in game time.) And a long time (real time) would pass between events, on average. It might get boring, at least to most people, but I would definitely still like the option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 24, 2013, 05:35:35 am

Well, everything would be about 72 times slower.

So, a game year would take about 72 hours of play time. You'd be doing nothing for most of the hours you'd playing.

It'd be close to 36 play hours before the first caravan arrived.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 24, 2013, 05:47:27 am

Exactly. Like I said, it might be boring. But I'd give it at least one serious try, because the inconsistency with the time bothers me a bit as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 24, 2013, 09:14:50 am

If you slowed down time (or rather lengthened a year as I prefer to describe it) you could put in proper day/night cycles, you could give dwarves social lives and communal rituals, you could do lots of things to fill in the hypothetical 72 hours that aren't really feasible for DF as it is now. From memory, this has been thrashed out in a few different threads and I don't recall many people changing their minds from their preconceived preference, whether it be the ones agitating for a slowdown or the ones championing the status quo.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 24, 2013, 09:30:21 am

Kinda what DG said, yeah.

Just because time flows 72x more slowly doesn't mean we won't then have the chance to abandon the seasonally-based arrival of the caravans. 72x more stuff can occur in a given year, so you'd be safer leaving the game unpaused so your dwarves can do their thing, and can make more designations while unpaused, and trouble may occur less often. Especially now that Toady intends to have the frequency of invasions switched over to some algorithm depending on the local political climate and distance to hostile entities; if you live right next door you'll get besieged early and often, but if you live some distance away, with many friendly settlements in-between, the goblins may be very rare. Caravan arrivals may work the opposite. It would mean succession games would need to change the way they choose how long to play, though, because few people can put in the 5-10 hours it takes to charge through a year right now in many succession games. At that point, instead of playing for a year, they just say "you have a week to get done as much as possible."

I think that if fortress mode were slowed down, there would be more time for other interesting things to occur in a given year, such as wandering traders and adventurers to show up, largely unannounced, and interact with your dwarves at the inn or markets you've developed. That also goes for hill dwarf and cavern sites around your fortress; there could constantly be some small population of merchants and citizens doing business, dwarves can have personal possessions (clothing and furniture in their houses) and private lives (producing goods to trade) in-between government (player) mandates, and a semi-capitalist economy, while you can still pop in at any time to tell your broker to go trade with them for this or that to add to your official horde. As it stands, dwarves don't live on a day-to-day basis, but rather take immense swathes of time to get your jobs done and thus there's little room to implement personal interactions in-between. Their "breaks" could be replaced by unpaid vacation where they go back to their personal lives, and they'd spend smaller and smaller fractions of the year eating, drinking, sleeping and partying. It could end up being far more efficient. Especially when you need to get the damn broker to go trade; the diplomatic caravans can still hang around for a month even if local merchants spend on average a day or two, but your broker won't spend that entire damn month goofing off; he only needs a couple hours to eat and drink at max every day, so even if sleep takes ~1/3 of the time there's still a large period in which they have nothing but their government-mandated labors to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on April 24, 2013, 06:53:41 pm

Well, the other way to resolve the anomaly, and my preference, would be not to slow fortress mode down but to speed up within fortress mode the things which cause the discrepancy: e.g. let the dwarves walk 72 times in each tick, not just once.  Really not too implementationally different -- we'd still need the above changes to time spent eating and all that -- but far less glacial. 

If you worry it loses empathisability too much, as you can't watch your dorfs walking around... well, if the result was really a reintegration of the two different timescales, it needn't be so hard to code it so that you could switch to adventure-mode clock speed and follow someone if you want to. 

If you object that the current pathing algorithm couldn't handle that... well, that's probably enough of an objection to defeat this in practice.  But given the amount of time DF burns on pathing, I say an abstraction of it wouldn't be unwelcome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 25, 2013, 02:39:05 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 24, 2013, 05:35:35 am

You'd be doing nothing for most of the hours you'd playing.

I already play mostly like that, with DF running on an auxiliary monitor. Only thing is that I have to do a lot of work at once to get things running early on, and then I often lose forts because I haven't gotten around to setting something or other up in time.

Quote

It'd be close to 36 play hours before the first caravan arrived.

In the current system, but Toady's going to change the system so you have semi-permanent farmer's markets. If he fixes the time, there could also be more than one merchant caravan per season, but instead an organic number depending on your location relative to trade routes.

Quote from: DG on April 24, 2013, 09:14:50 am

If you slowed down time (or rather lengthened a year as I prefer to describe it) you could put in proper day/night cycles, you could give dwarves social lives and communal rituals, you could do lots of things to fill in the hypothetical 72 hours that aren't really feasible for DF as it is now. From memory, this has been thrashed out in a few different threads and I don't recall many people changing their minds from their preconceived preference, whether it be the ones agitating for a slowdown or the ones championing the status quo.

When was the last time you saw many people changing their minds from their preconceived preferences in an internet argument?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 25, 2013, 02:49:52 am

All this talk has made me even more convinced (so I guess I didn't change my mind either, at least not qualitatively) that I would indeed like to see such a system. I still see problems with it, but there's problems with the current system as well, and it would certainly be interesting to at least try out. Unfortunately, it seems like it would probably be a lot of work to do, and probably isn't very high priority, even though Toady did mention in the Roguelike Radio interview that the time discrepancy was the one thing that bothered him most about the game in its current state (if I recall correctly, and I'm paraphrasing). Finka's solution, I suppose, would be easier to implement, but not what would have my personal preference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 25, 2013, 03:29:28 am

If year took 72 realtime hours, we would have 10 minute days ingame. Which would mean that day/night cycle would be feasible and that stuff like vampires or were creatures would be much better.

Addition of day/night cycle would be awesome and propably gamechanger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 25, 2013, 08:31:35 am

Also, in real life, according to a BBC documentary I saw last night, 98.3% of the dwarf fortress fall before reaching their first year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 25, 2013, 09:15:06 am

Quote from: zwei on April 25, 2013, 03:29:28 am

If year took 72 realtime hours, we would have 10 minute days ingame. Which would mean that day/night cycle would be feasible and that stuff like vampires or were creatures would be much better.

Addition of day/night cycle would be awesome and propably gamechanger.

The trouble I am seeing with this is 72 realtime hours is a long time. You do a lot of pausing in 72 hours of simulation time....

To get the days and nights in properly, you could make the year slightly longer (say 4 hours instead of about 1 hour at 100 FPS), and make the days last longer too (so there are fewer days in a year). Reducing the passage of time of the year should also be tied to improvements in FPS, so the rate does not drop much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 25, 2013, 09:43:44 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 25, 2013, 02:39:05 am

When was the last time you saw many people changing their minds from their preconceived preferences in an internet argument?

Maybe after a NW_Kohaku wall o' text. It helps if one side is clearly wrong, but this time-scale discussion is based on a persons opinion of how they imagine an unimplemented change would play so I guess it's even less likely that people will change their minds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 25, 2013, 02:28:54 pm

NW_Kohaku just takes pleasure in utterly annihilating our hopes and dreams. :P

I also doubt the argument will ever be settled. Having a way to test it objectively would be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 25, 2013, 04:12:20 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 25, 2013, 08:31:35 am

Also, in real life, according to a BBC documentary I saw last night, 98.3% of the dwarf fortress fall before reaching their first year.

there is a documentary on this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 25, 2013, 05:00:38 pm

Err.. sure, yeah... why not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 25, 2013, 05:56:13 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 25, 2013, 05:00:38 pm

Err.. sure, yeah... why not?

If you'll check out my sig, you'll see that I'm doing a DF podcast. I'm still working on it and getting some helpers, but there's one episode already. (Here's a hint: it's no good.) That kind of report sounds like something I could do.
#shamelesspromotion

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 26, 2013, 09:01:16 am

Quite possibly, with the slowed down time, one would pause less?
In any case, paused playeractivities would not increase with slower dwarf-time, as those would take place paused anyhow.

I'm tentatively pro- . . . an optional fast-setting would be cool to have with this, which could use the current steps settings when no critical processes are being run that require this increased detail? Resetting temporarily to something similar to how it is currently or even condensing/abstracting more, making dwarfs jump across the map.
Though something like that would probably require Toady1 to keep two separate sets of code? 
A whole lot of work in any case.
Maybe a way to see your fortress grow in a fast abstracted way will eventually evolve from being able to temporarilly leave fortress mode.
Will it eventually be possible to leave the Fortress and see it evolve/cope in hisory mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 26, 2013, 09:17:58 am

That's most of what's this release its supposed to be. In the next release you'll be able to leave the fort without abandoning it. That's it, you'll be able to create a fort, leave it to it's own. Then make adventurer(s) or another(s) fort(s), and then go back (not needing to reclaiming it) to the first fort if it's still on foot.

My guessing is that while you are away from the fort, and as history (I think, don't quote me on that) goes along with gameplay now, the fortress you create but are not currently attending will keep up with the rest of the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AlmightyOne on April 26, 2013, 09:23:19 am

Wow so with ALL the possible things we make when we run a fortress,no matter how crazy it is, it will still continue to function even after we leave it for sometime and even keep up with the world's history.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 26, 2013, 11:22:54 am

Quote from: AlmightyOne on April 26, 2013, 09:23:19 am

Wow so with ALL the possible things we make when we run a fortress,no matter how crazy it is, it will still continue to function even after we leave it for sometime and even keep up with the world's history.

It'll still be off-loaded, so the most complicated things might not work as intended, especially if they involve fluids. But the things that are simulated (economic and military stuff) should work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AlmightyOne on April 26, 2013, 11:41:43 am

Quote from: Cruxador on April 26, 2013, 11:22:54 am

Quote from: AlmightyOne on April 26, 2013, 09:23:19 am

Wow so with ALL the possible things we make when we run a fortress,no matter how crazy it is, it will still continue to function even after we leave it for sometime and even keep up with the world's history.

It'll still be off-loaded, so the most complicated things might not work as intended, especially if they involve fluids. But the things that are simulated (economic and military stuff) should work.

Getting really impatient now for the new release, I would really like to see how this gets implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on April 26, 2013, 11:52:55 am

I have a question: Why fight between which is better, slow time or fast time, when you can have the option to swap between them during play? Thus if you want to get something quickly done, speed time up, if you want to watch things as they progress, slow it down. This way things aren't glacial, although you would notice that sped up time would move by faster due to the game then being centered around slow play, you could still play in fast mode if you wished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 26, 2013, 12:19:07 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on April 26, 2013, 11:52:55 am

I have a question: Why fight between which is better, slow time or fast time, when you can have the option to swap between them during play? Thus if you want to get something quickly done, speed time up, if you want to watch things as they progress, slow it down. This way things aren't glacial, although you would notice that sped up time would move by faster due to the game then being centered around slow play, you could still play in fast mode if you wished.

Of course, that would be ideal. But I'm not so sure about feasibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on April 26, 2013, 12:59:23 pm

How many bug-fix releases do you expect to need to do after the new version is released so the game is in a stable state?
Edit: Is this better phrased?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 26, 2013, 01:27:06 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on April 26, 2013, 12:59:23 pm

How many bug-fix releases do you expect to need to do after the new version is released?

The only accurate answer would be "a few"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 26, 2013, 01:34:50 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on April 26, 2013, 12:59:23 pm

How many bug-fix releases do you expect to need to do after the new version is released?

That isn't really an answerable question. "As many as needed" or "Until I feel I need to add features to the game again" are probably the closest you can get as a realistic answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 26, 2013, 02:28:16 pm

I don't know, but it could be quite a few, specially this being, as far I'm concerned, the biggest update ever made (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm relative new to DF). I haven't counted the bugfixes Toady has made for past versions, but is safe to assume quite a few.

With this update, the foundations are lay for a lot of things like true armies marching around, true merchants, and so on. But what's more important, it enhances and expands the scope of the game as we can now dynamically really build up empires, even if it has to be one place at the time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 26, 2013, 02:47:10 pm

Quote from: Areyar on April 26, 2013, 09:01:16 am

Quite possibly, with the slowed down time, one would pause less?
In any case, paused playeractivities would not increase with slower dwarf-time, as those would take place paused anyhow.

I'm tentatively pro- . . . an optional fast-setting would be cool to have with this, which could use the current steps settings when no critical processes are being run that require this increased detail? Resetting temporarily to something similar to how it is currently or even condensing/abstracting more, making dwarfs jump across the map.
Though something like that would probably require Toady1 to keep two separate sets of code? 
A whole lot of work in any case.
Maybe a way to see your fortress grow in a fast abstracted way will eventually evolve from being able to temporarilly leave fortress mode.
Will it eventually be possible to leave the Fortress and see it evolve/cope in hisory mode?

You will be able to leave fortress mode in this release. However, it will not be possible to resume wordgen, as that would require re-abstracting the fort. So you could build another fort, look in legends, or play as an adventurer, but not to run worlgen again. The ability to skip forward in time at a slower rate has not been announced, except for the automatic time skips before starting a new fort or adventurer. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on April 26, 2013, 03:20:18 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 26, 2013, 02:28:16 pm

I don't know, but it could be quite a few, specially this being, as far I'm concerned, the biggest update ever made (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm relatively new to DF).

The 2010 release came out after 1 year and 7 months, which would be the biggest update in terms of development time. The update with the biggest changes was probably the transition from 2D to 3D.

Still, the upcoming update is very exciting. I think it has a very good mixture of playable features and framework for future improvement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 26, 2013, 03:48:56 pm

And how long this has taken? According to my mayan calendar we are a tad over a year now. Maybe this will take that much too.

Oh, I'm sure going from 3d to 2d was some pretty awesome madness, I wasn't a fan of the game yet sadly.

Codewise, I wonder what take more lines. I guess not even the Toad knows.
Toady, how many lines of code make up DF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 26, 2013, 03:49:56 pm

A video posted a while back had that mentioned. I think it's ~320,000?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on April 26, 2013, 05:43:39 pm

It was this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ZwVuGB_PI). About 380,000 lines of code by last December.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on April 27, 2013, 05:35:34 am

In future, will there be some provision in the raws for the way a civilization treats members of other races who fall under its sway in the course of its military campaigns? It's just that right now I notice there seems to be a predominance of human civilizations ruled by amphibian men and suchlike - might there be some civilizations which outright cull other races, while others treat them as second-class citizens - fit to work, but never to have any real power?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 27, 2013, 09:50:36 am

Everything will be in the raws, eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 27, 2013, 02:39:08 pm

Well, not quite everything - Toady has mentioned that there are a few things that don't take well to raw-ification. Spheres are one thing he mentioned I recall, but his stance on putting them into raw form has softened.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 27, 2013, 05:54:20 pm

Oh well obviously he can't put "everything", there's things that might be prohibitive or outright impossible, but most things will be there, eventually. Things like attitudes and social behavior like the past question certainly will be there, some day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 27, 2013, 06:05:09 pm

Obviously "What tags can we use to modify the raws, and what do they do?" won't be in the raws.  :P
More seriously, I don't think quality, wear, and skill modifiers/levels will ever be in the raws, but sometimes I wish they were (for those people who make "More Realizm!!1!" mods).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 27, 2013, 08:31:24 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 27, 2013, 05:54:20 pm

Oh well obviously he can't put "everything", there's things that might be prohibitive or outright impossible, but most things will be there, eventually. Things like attitudes and social behavior like the past question certainly will be there, some day.

Heck, some of the current Ethics Tokens (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Ethics) could be used to address things like that. TORTURE_AS_EXAMPLE and SLAVERY, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if the first implementation of second-hand citizenry is a RACISM token or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on April 27, 2013, 08:51:41 pm

Do you plan to allow blunt attacks to apply a shearing force in certain situations, such as hitting flesh at an angle or just simply hitting hard enough/with a small enough contact area?

Is scamps neutered?

What is your opinion on the casual social patterns and structures of forumites across the board? Any insightful observations you could relay to us?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on April 27, 2013, 09:46:28 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on April 27, 2013, 08:51:41 pm

Is scamps neutered?

Yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on April 28, 2013, 05:38:24 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 27, 2013, 02:39:08 pm

Well, not quite everything - Toady has mentioned that there are a few things that don't take well to raw-ification. Spheres are one thing he mentioned I recall, but his stance on putting them into raw form has softened.

Oh no, why spheres :( I always wanted to generate a world where PI is 3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on April 28, 2013, 08:06:28 am

are there any plans to output errors for creature_mat:creature:creature token material where the creature token material doesn't exist?  As is, it defaults to the first creature token material and doesn't output any error.

I know first hand while I was trying to figure out why my chitin materials were being outputted as animal skins (all with no errorlog.txt messages)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 28, 2013, 08:52:49 am

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 28, 2013, 09:51:58 am

Quote from: Aerval on April 28, 2013, 05:38:24 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 27, 2013, 02:39:08 pm

Well, not quite everything - Toady has mentioned that there are a few things that don't take well to raw-ification. Spheres are one thing he mentioned I recall, but his stance on putting them into raw form has softened.

Oh no, why spheres :( I always wanted to generate a world where PI is 3

Wrong kind of spheres.  :P Anyway, while I didn't make it clear, I meant things that could conceivably go into the raws that weren't likely to enter them. Another I recalled are the biomes, for instance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 28, 2013, 11:48:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 28, 2013, 08:52:49 am

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

Toady, are you annoyed by all these unrelated questions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on April 28, 2013, 01:26:32 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 28, 2013, 11:48:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 28, 2013, 08:52:49 am

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

Toady, are you annoyed by all these unrelated questions?

Toady, Boxers or Briefs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on April 28, 2013, 02:05:22 pm

Quote from: irdsm on April 28, 2013, 01:26:32 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 28, 2013, 11:48:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 28, 2013, 08:52:49 am

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

Toady, are you annoyed by all these unrelated questions?

Toady, Boxers or Briefs?

"Well right now we only have thongs in the game, he he he."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on April 28, 2013, 03:45:26 pm

People have talked about this in the last few pages, but I don't think it's been put in green yet, so...
In games like SimCity, you can set the simulation speed to slow, medium, fast, very fast, and so on. How feasible would a similar system for Fortress Mode be? Maybe the slowest speed could the same as adventure mode, while the fastest speed would be the same time scale we currently have (72x).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on April 28, 2013, 03:58:54 pm

Uh... dude? i think that question will be answered with "why might you want to do that?"
besides, its called saving and restart the world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 28, 2013, 04:04:59 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 28, 2013, 03:45:26 pm

People have talked about this in the last few pages, but I don't think it's been put in green yet, so...
In games like SimCity, you can set the simulation speed to slow, medium, fast, very fast, and so on. How feasible would a similar system for Fortress Mode be? Maybe the slowest speed could the same as adventure mode, while the fastest speed would be the same time scale we currently have (72x).

Well, the main slowdown is pathing and unit movement. Unfortunately, those can't be sped up to 72x real speed, so dwarves just eat only once a month (or however often it is) and they only sleep a couple times a year for a few weeks each.

Basically, DF runs as fast as it can already. It can't go any faster. If we slow everything down, then nothing will get done because it'll take two days real-time for a dwarf to get from one end of the dining room table to the other.

Not that I don't like the idea. In fact, in ten years when computers are 100 times faster (that is, 6 or so cycles of moore's law), then it will be totally possible to do just that and we can have an in-game controller.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 28, 2013, 06:44:31 pm

In far future releases, can there be dreams about past lives when the world is more developed? Like the Scions in the Fireborn games or the book "Years of Rice and Salt?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 28, 2013, 06:49:27 pm

That's waaaaaaaaay out there, and the answer is probably "maybe, yeah, but we're not thinking about that at the moment".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on April 28, 2013, 07:05:02 pm

btw (answering the social questions on this page), toady did do a live interview to a college campus... can't find it right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 28, 2013, 07:56:03 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on April 28, 2013, 11:48:21 am

Quote from: DG on April 28, 2013, 08:52:49 am

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

Toady, are you annoyed by all these unrelated questions?

Quote from: thistleknot on April 28, 2013, 07:05:02 pm

btw (answering the social questions on this page), toady did do a live interview to a college campus... can't find it right now.

Quote from: Trif on April 28, 2013, 08:08:32 am

If you want to see Toady's speech, you can see the recorded stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/ccp/b/396300023. Skip to 5:21:30.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 29, 2013, 04:48:09 am

Toady, can you speak a little about Scamp's diet ? Does he like dry cat food ?

It's just another unrelated question, but...it's about Scamps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 29, 2013, 11:00:18 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 29, 2013, 04:48:09 am

Toady, can you speak a little about Scamp's diet ? Does he like dry cat food ?

It's just another unrelated question, but...it's about Scamps.

I think Scamps is a pretty cool cat, he burrows into box-springs and doesn't afraid of anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 29, 2013, 11:51:50 am

I would be terrified that he'd lay between the springs and one of the support bars of the bed and end up getting squished when you sat on it. Cat's don't often have that much forethought, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 29, 2013, 03:24:48 pm

Scamps lives on a pure and wholesome diet of Electronic Arts employee meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 29, 2013, 04:04:10 pm

Buagh... that must taste bad, specially if is executive meat. That is rotten even before the butcher.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on April 29, 2013, 07:02:28 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 28, 2013, 04:04:59 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 28, 2013, 03:45:26 pm

People have talked about this in the last few pages, but I don't think it's been put in green yet, so...
In games like SimCity, you can set the simulation speed to slow, medium, fast, very fast, and so on. How feasible would a similar system for Fortress Mode be? Maybe the slowest speed could the same as adventure mode, while the fastest speed would be the same time scale we currently have (72x).

Well, the main slowdown is pathing and unit movement. Unfortunately, those can't be sped up to 72x real speed, so dwarves just eat only once a month (or however often it is) and they only sleep a couple times a year for a few weeks each.

Basically, DF runs as fast as it can already. It can't go any faster. If we slow everything down, then nothing will get done because it'll take two days real-time for a dwarf to get from one end of the dining room table to the other.

Not that I don't like the idea. In fact, in ten years when computers are 100 times faster (that is, 6 or so cycles of moore's law), then it will be totally possible to do just that and we can have an in-game controller.

72x speed means the same speed we have now. 1x speed means the same time scale as adventure mode. Dwarves would be going at the same speed in 1x mode as they are right now.
This might clear a few things up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Time
There was a discussion a couple pages back about the problems the current time scale causes. It makes interaction between Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode a lot more problematic, for one. Also, it means it takes a dwarf several weeks to walk over to the other side of the map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 29, 2013, 10:21:49 pm

With the new jump mechanics, will we start to see jumping elephants? Or jumping carp?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 29, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

Silly, elephants can't jump.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on April 29, 2013, 10:37:30 pm

Quote from: Japa on April 29, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

Silly, elephants can't jump.

Not in real life, they can't

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on April 29, 2013, 10:40:38 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 29, 2013, 04:04:10 pm

Buagh... that must taste bad, specially if is executive meat. That is rotten even before the butcher.

You think that's bad, try Apple copyright lawyer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 01:27:18 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 29, 2013, 07:02:28 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 28, 2013, 04:04:59 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 28, 2013, 03:45:26 pm

People have talked about this in the last few pages, but I don't think it's been put in green yet, so...
In games like SimCity, you can set the simulation speed to slow, medium, fast, very fast, and so on. How feasible would a similar system for Fortress Mode be? Maybe the slowest speed could the same as adventure mode, while the fastest speed would be the same time scale we currently have (72x).

Well, the main slowdown is pathing and unit movement. Unfortunately, those can't be sped up to 72x real speed, so dwarves just eat only once a month (or however often it is) and they only sleep a couple times a year for a few weeks each.

Basically, DF runs as fast as it can already. It can't go any faster. If we slow everything down, then nothing will get done because it'll take two days real-time for a dwarf to get from one end of the dining room table to the other.

Not that I don't like the idea. In fact, in ten years when computers are 100 times faster (that is, 6 or so cycles of moore's law), then it will be totally possible to do just that and we can have an in-game controller.

72x speed means the same speed we have now. 1x speed means the same time scale as adventure mode. Dwarves would be going at the same speed in 1x mode as they are right now.
This might clear a few things up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Time
There was a discussion a couple pages back about the problems the current time scale causes. It makes interaction between Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode a lot more problematic, for one. Also, it means it takes a dwarf several weeks to walk over to the other side of the map.

I understand that. But if the dwarves' actions were made to take as long as the do in Adventure mode, then everything needs to be changed to the adventure mode speed- including, for instance, water flows and other processor-intensive things. If all of these things are made to occurr 72x more frequently than they do now, where is the extra processing power going to come from?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 30, 2013, 02:26:40 am

Haven't you heard of the new 200GHz single core processor out on the market?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on April 30, 2013, 02:57:40 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 01:27:18 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on April 29, 2013, 07:02:28 pm

72x speed means the same speed we have now. 1x speed means the same time scale as adventure mode. Dwarves would be going at the same speed in 1x mode as they are right now.
This might clear a few things up: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Time
There was a discussion a couple pages back about the problems the current time scale causes. It makes interaction between Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode a lot more problematic, for one. Also, it means it takes a dwarf several weeks to walk over to the other side of the map.

I understand that. But if the dwarves' actions were made to take as long as the do in Adventure mode, then everything needs to be changed to the adventure mode speed- including, for instance, water flows and other processor-intensive things. If all of these things are made to occurr 72x more frequently than they do now, where is the extra processing power going to come from?

Well, but I think the idea that people were talking about a couple pages back was that the game time would just be 72x slower, so you would still get ticks at the same rate, which would mean things don't need to occur 72 times more frequently in real time, so you wouldn't need a much faster processor. It would require recalculating a bunch of things, such as the liquid flow speed that you mentioned -- although it might be that that's another thing that currently makes more sense at the adventure mode speed than at the dwarf fortress mode speed -- but those are just things Toady would program the numbers in for ahead of time.

Actually running the game such that a tick occurs 72 times as often is another question, and that is actually quite interesting. You would avoid many of the problems with the game getting boring, or various events such as trade caravans and invasions happening way too infrequently in real time to be interesting (whether you agree with such assessments or not). You wouldn't need to abstract things either, such as the pathing. You would still have the issue that things would be hard to follow, but that might not be too bad, it's hard to say ahead of time. Of course, the problem there is, as you mentioned, limitations in the available hardware (especially if you did still want to show every tick on the screen). But by the time something like this would be implemented, we'd probably be many years further down the line, so I think it's a very real possibility to take into account.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on April 30, 2013, 06:27:57 am

also, the water flow mechanisms right now are severely flawed and obviously need a rework at some point. any argument based on their current state is invalid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 30, 2013, 07:09:28 am

Processing time and requirements would be the same. What we are contemplating is a change in the phase of gameplay. So the adventure and fortress mode time is "seamlessly" integrated (as in the year in fortress mode not going by so fast).

The main issue there is that if for example, right now build X thing takes a week, (I don't know how much is that in real life time, I think is about a minute?), by changing the thing to adventure time (no pun intended) the same building would take like an hour in real life time or something along those lines. Then we could have dwarfs that take breaks while building, or things built by several dwarves and things like that, it would be, like pointed out a few pages ago, a slower game in all senses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 30, 2013, 09:13:27 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 30, 2013, 07:09:28 am

Processing time and requirements would be the same. What we are contemplating is a change in the phase of gameplay. So the adventure and fortress mode time is "seamlessly" integrated (as in the year in fortress mode not going by so fast).

The main issue there is that if for example, right now build X thing takes a week, (I don't know how much is that in real life time, I think is about a minute?), by changing the thing to adventure time (no pun intended) the same building would take like an hour in real life time or something along those lines. Then we could have dwarfs that take breaks while building, or things built by several dwarves and things like that, it would be, like pointed out a few pages ago, a slower game in all senses.

There is one very stupid assumption in this: That build/action times would not be rebalanced.

It is conciveable, that "big actions" like workshop setup could have half a day - 5 minutes realtime from untrained dwarf and much faster for trained.

There is nothing that says that, i.e., caravans/migrants/ambushes can not happen more often than quaterly.

What if in one month has equivalent event density as one year.

As far as breaks or other things go, they could be much more reasonable - i.e. every 10 days is special day when dwarves take breaks and handle personal stuff. Dwarves would take breaks during evenings, sleep at night and eat during noon. Basically, understandable schedulle instead of semi-random stuff right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 30, 2013, 11:08:43 am

I'd definitely support breaks that were twice as often and half as long. The burnt system brands they don't come often, but can be truly dangerous when you have something that one dwarf urgently needs to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 30, 2013, 11:11:44 am

Hey, hey, I was just saying what it meant towards processor use.

Of course rebalance on the game mechanics would be needed, I didn't bother mention it because its pretty darn obvious.

As yourself said it would allow them to have some kind of normal cycle (basically what I tried to say). And in this hypothetical dwarf fortress I could foresee a building taking more than a few minutes in real time, specially a important/big one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 11:24:06 am

Well, that's certainly an interesting discussion, but think about that- what now happens in a 2-hour session of dwarf fortress would then take 144 hours of solid playing. That sounds remarkably unrewarding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 30, 2013, 11:32:45 am

Yeah, that's a down side, unless you trim the year so is shorter or something. Also, if the game is re-balanced then those 2 hours session could see almost all you see in a current 2 hours session. Of course all this is highly hypothetical.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 30, 2013, 11:35:32 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 11:24:06 am

Well, that's certainly an interesting discussion, but think about that- what now happens in a 2-hour session of dwarf fortress would then take 144 hours of solid playing. That sounds remarkably unrewarding.

Aye.  Not to mention that as adventurer mode gets more features it'll slowly produce fortress-like narratives with groups, issuing orders, constructing things, etc. all at 1x time that some people want.  Why bother making fortress mode the same?  No getting away from the fact that this whole discussion seems to be comparing plump helmets to cave wheat, and trying to force cave wheat to be more like plump helmets when every dwarf knows that cave wheat beer has its own distinctive flavour that is totally worth the cave wheat only growing for half the year.  Aye.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on April 30, 2013, 12:41:46 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 11:24:06 am

Well, that's certainly an interesting discussion, but think about that- what now happens in a 2-hour session of dwarf fortress would then take 144 hours of solid playing. That sounds remarkably unrewarding.

If doing stuff still takes the same amount of ticks then a 2-hour session would accomplish the same amount of stuff as a 2-hour session, but the in-game calendar will have progressed less. (So you will have the same amount of progress, but just be starting Fall instead of starting year 2.) A tick is a tick. If it takes 2400 ticks to walk across a room, it will still take 2400 ticks to cross the room. But instead of taking two days, it will take one day. And if the fps is 100 then it will take 24 seconds in real time regardless.

If you half the amount of in-game time that passes per tick, then you'd complete a year's work in half a year. Since ticks were unchanged this will still take the same amount of real time, provided the frame rate is the same. Now the only real problem here ends up being that seasons last longer and therefore you can have more seasonal problems. (Winters would be longer, so water will be frozen for a bigger span of time. Caravans would be spaced further apart, but so will sieges. You will be able to accumulate twice as much trade goods, which is good at the start and not great after a while.)

I mean this is what I think of when slowing down time. Not decreasing the amount of work... just making the calendar slower.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 30, 2013, 02:43:23 pm

In my personal opinion, changing the dwarf time rate to the adventurer time rate doesn't look feasible. Now, any tasks could be rebalanced to the new time frame as the releases roll out, but that's not the problem I have with that suggestion. Rather, my problem is that it works against the eventual point of Fortress mode. It's the mode that should be able to change the world at large, the mode that is supposed to allow you to become a kingdom and wage wars. It pretty much has to allow years to pass in a comfortable time. It doesn't have to be the current time rate, but the adventurer time rate almost certainly isn't it. This doesn't preclude jumping between modes (and thus time scales), though, in my mind.

I'm also against shortening the year by any number of days, but for a more egoistical reason - shortening the year in a way sends the message that "this is the canonical length of the year, don't mess with it". I however, would eventually like to see the options of both raw-ified and procedural calendars as part of raw-ified and procedural cosmology - months based on one out of multiple existing moons, days not officially part of a month... while you could do some parts of that even with a fixed number of days in a year, it would be rather less flexible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 30, 2013, 06:29:44 pm

Speaking of which, will we ever see days declared holidays? Like the dwarves celebrating on the anniversary of the founding, or of the day the fort defeated its first megabeast?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 30, 2013, 06:45:51 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 30, 2013, 06:29:44 pm

Speaking of which, will we ever see days declared holidays? Like the dwarves celebrating on the anniversary of the founding, or of the day the fort defeated its first megabeast?

I doubt it, given how little concern dwarves have for the day and night cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 30, 2013, 07:03:58 pm

I'm sure Toady will have something about it, even just a little blurb in the announcements. "In honor of today's victory, Mayor Bomrek Cogthami declares this day, 19th of Granite, Tableflogged Day."

And 1 year later: "Today is Tableflogged Day."

Surely, though, there'd at least be ones established because of worldgen events.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 01, 2013, 12:24:57 am

Quote from: zwei on April 30, 2013, 09:13:27 am

There is one very stupid assumption in this: That build/action times would not be rebalanced.

It is conciveable, that "big actions" like workshop setup could have half a day - 5 minutes realtime from untrained dwarf and much faster for trained.

There is nothing that says that, i.e., caravans/migrants/ambushes can not happen more often than quaterly.

What if in one month has equivalent event density as one year.

As far as breaks or other things go, they could be much more reasonable - i.e. every 10 days is special day when dwarves take breaks and handle personal stuff. Dwarves would take breaks during evenings, sleep at night and eat during noon. Basically, understandable schedulle instead of semi-random stuff right now.

Well, there is some sense in this of course, but I think there's limits to how far you could take this. At some point, the density of events taking place in the world might just become too high for comfort. If you have a siege every week, for example -- which would still be less often than a current yearly caravan -- that seems a bit much. How about in times of peace?

Overall, I still like the idea of getting adventure mode time in fortress mode, although I am also unconvinced that it would work out. It'd be a nice thing to see attempted, though. Or perhaps some middle ground could be attempted, like Knight Otu said, where fortress mode is slowed down so that it's at least closer to the adventure mode time scale, so that the problems with the discrepancy are at least smaller, quantitatively, and more features are added to make the game still be full enough to be enjoyable, without quite slowing it down all the way.

Quote from: hermes on April 30, 2013, 11:35:32 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on April 30, 2013, 11:24:06 am

Well, that's certainly an interesting discussion, but think about that- what now happens in a 2-hour session of dwarf fortress would then take 144 hours of solid playing. That sounds remarkably unrewarding.

Aye.  Not to mention that as adventurer mode gets more features it'll slowly produce fortress-like narratives with groups, issuing orders, constructing things, etc. all at 1x time that some people want.  Why bother making fortress mode the same?  No getting away from the fact that this whole discussion seems to be comparing plump helmets to cave wheat, and trying to force cave wheat to be more like plump helmets when every dwarf knows that cave wheat beer has its own distinctive flavour that is totally worth the cave wheat only growing for half the year.  Aye.

Well, the point is that adventure mode might at some point allow for (almost) all things you see in fortress mode, but it still won't quite be the same as fortress mode and probably will always be quite different, even. So you'd still be covering new ground by setting fortress mode to adventure mode time scales. However, I think totally getting rid of the current fortress mode time scale would probably be a bad idea, especially given what Knight Otu also said,

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 30, 2013, 02:43:23 pm

[...] my problem is that it works against the eventual point of Fortress mode. It's the mode that should be able to change the world at large, the mode that is supposed to allow you to become a kingdom and wage wars. It pretty much has to allow years to pass in a comfortable time.

So perhaps it could be an option to turn on or off, or even a separate mode entirely, Slow Fortress mode or whatever. Again, as an experiment, if nothing else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sappho on May 01, 2013, 04:56:31 am

Quick but important question, guys. I'm sure it's been discussed plenty already but I just need a brief answer as quickly as I can manage: when do we expect the next version to be released?

I ask because a while back I spent a great deal of time setting up a world and writing a story and began construction of a tower, all of which was leading up to an amazing adventurer succession game I had been planning for ages. Then real life got in the way and I haven't played DF in a good long while. Now I have some time and the desire to finish this project, but if I spend a week or so finally finishing this and then start the succession game, will the new version come out so soon that all the effort will have been for nothing? I'm sure with all the massive changes in the next version, all current saves will no longer be compatible.

Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 01, 2013, 05:05:49 am

Quote from: Sappho on May 01, 2013, 04:56:31 am

Quick but important question, guys. I'm sure it's been discussed plenty already but I just need a brief answer as quickly as I can manage: when do we expect the next version to be released?

I ask because a while back I spent a great deal of time setting up a world and writing a story and began construction of a tower, all of which was leading up to an amazing adventurer succession game I had been planning for ages. Then real life got in the way and I haven't played DF in a good long while. Now I have some time and the desire to finish this project, but if I spend a week or so finally finishing this and then start the succession game, will the new version come out so soon that all the effort will have been for nothing? I'm sure with all the massive changes in the next version, all current saves will no longer be compatible.

Thanks!

Shouldn't take more than two months now. (still hoping for a May release, but so I hoped in April...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

Sappho: go ahead and continue with whatever you are working on, he he he.

Thanks to mastahcheese, Putnam, Mr S, MrWiggles, Knight Otu, Footkerchief, Trif, Valtam, Maxmurder, Areyar, Cruxador, monk12 and MrWillsauce for helping out with questions this time.  If you don't see an answer here, check around the area you posted and you'll probably find it addressed somewhere.  I also answered some questions about pulping and attacks in these earlier posts:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4158881#msg4158881
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4163492#msg4163492
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4166221#msg4166221

Quote from: MrWillsauce

Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?

I think Putnam mentioned that it generates some of these things, although I'm not 100% sure that happens for retired people or if it happens upon migration only.  If you unretire such an adventurer, the latent information would just hang around, I think, but it doesn't look at it.

Quote from: Wastedlabor

What's the format for passing these arguments to the variation?

Will there be any way to use a match as conditional? Example: to not try to add a tail if there's "TAIL" in the base creature.

To pass them, you send them into the variation when you apply it, like

[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION:STUFF:300]

where the variation might look like

[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:!ARG1:A:B!ARG2C]

and it would be interpreted as

[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:STUFF:A:B300C]

You can add very simple conditions.  For example

[CV_NEW_CTAG:1:ADD_SPEAK:CAN_SPEAK]

makes it do [CV_NEW_TAG:CAN_SPEAK] when !ARG1 is equal to ADD_SPEAK.

But it is a very simple format, and I haven't updated anything beyond this (you can't search for matches, etc.).  As usual, the spirits of dead programmers are calling out for an actual scripting language or something, but it hasn't occurred.

Quote from: fractalman

Will world-generation errors be added back in as an available world-generation parameter?

Will there be an option to EXPLICITLY enable the reality-warping power of duped raws if/when you get around to stopping the issues with duped raws?

Since the errors are often from broken multi-step processes, it's not always that simple.  I try to focus on fixing them.  I haven't made any plans regarding raw duplication errors.

Quote from: tahujdt

Will we be able to use whole trees as defenses? That is, will we be able to use a giant oak as a wall or a bridge?

Will there be stumps left behind after we cut down trees? I imagine that stumps would be kind of like boulders, blocking caravans.

Will trees have varying hardness, affecting chopping time?

A large tree functions as a wall, so that sort of thing will happen by default.

Not sure about the stumps.  Stumps are cool though.

Mining time doesn't depend on much (soil vs. rock), so I'm not sure I'll be getting into much with wood chopping either.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Will the tree size directly affect the amount of resources obtainable from that tree? Ie. a large branching oak will provide way more wood than something more similar to trees currently in the game.

It should, yeah.

Quote from: TheDorf

Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.

I haven't gotten into it, if I remember.  I don't think the list of necessary changes is that long, since we haven't done much with lighting at all...  so when you say "a campfire or anything"...  is there anything else?  Just fires you set or something?  There's the issue of enemy vision, which is completely different now.

Quote

Quote from: Spish

With the combination of DF2012 animal training and active history, will our civilization be able to capture, tame, and use exotic beasties once we, the player, have provided them with the knowledge to do so?

And if the answer is yes, will they be able to use our retired fortress as an outpost for collecting exotic beasties they otherwise would not have access to?

Quote from: Ozfer

Since sites are becoming more dynamic, along with the NPCs, will site naming ever be changed to make more sense within context of the events and people that happened there?  Along that line, will sites ever be renamed by NPCs?  If goblins capture a city, would its name be converted to goblin-language?  It would be cool if the "Glade of Prancing" was renamed to "The Glade of Fear" after a Dragon settled there.

Active history doesn't automatically turn everything on, and I haven't changed these mechanics.

Quote

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Will sliding under enemies be a combat reaction?

Quote from: Xanmyral

Can we power-slide chop at enemies legs?

There's nothing like that at this point.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Trees. Are we going to be able to carve them out as a miner would carve out stone, or would we still be limited to felling them?

I'm not sure yet.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady have you gave any more thought into creatures being made out of Sand, Water, or Air but who aren't weak or fragile?

Nope, I haven't thought about that any more than before.

Quote from: Chronas

But suppose the main structure of a limb (in a man's case, the bone) is ruined beyond all integrity so that the limb is hanging by a few muscle threads, would a sufficiently damaged limb be easier to sever by blade or even by 'pinching'?

Also, will 'colliding with an obstacle' still burst a creature apart to its component limbs, or will it also use the new system and become a gooey, unbutcherable mess -ruining many an efficient butcher's tower?

The damage system hasn't changed for how each attack works (so severing for example is the same as before), just the naming, death-condition and raising mechanics associated to the names, pretty much.

Quote from: arkhometha

will we be able to modify the raws for trees so to make them more realistic and how close to reality (in both of height and width) the new trees are?

The raws can be modified, though I think the thread discussed whether the new trees are realistic are not.  In reality, I think they should be much taller on average, but then again, the mountains should also be thousands of tiles tall by the metric I've been using, and tall trees make large single-tile creatures look goofy no matter what, so it's a mess.  People should be able to change things to something they are more or less happy with, anyway.

Quote from: DG

Toady, regarding elves. Do you and Threetoe envisage that they will have physical characteristics adapted to an arboreal live-style beyond what normal humans have? Random examples of what I mean: claws to grab onto bark, ball and socket wrist joints like a gibbon, prehensile tails, whatever. Or in your minds are their adaptions to living in trees entirely the engineered or magical structures they have in the trees (like ladders, houses, sentient vines that reach down to lift them up when required, whatever)? From what I can tell their only current physical advantage over humans for living in trees is their lighter weight. Do you imagine that will change?

It's possible that there could be further physical changes, but we have so many animal people that there isn't a lot of pressure to animalify anything.

Quote from: mastahcheese

In terms of the usability of mangled bodies, does ressurection follow a different rule than raising? Or is a mangled corpse beyond being ressurected as well?

For resurrection, I think the thing should just need to actually be able to survive following its old rules, since those are the rules that it will be subject to, though I'm not sure if I ever got that far.  Having a mangled head or something kills you, so those creatures shouldn't be resurrectable, once everything's okay.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Besides pulping, are we going to be able to do anything to prevent corpses in sarcophagi from raising with the regional effects?

I haven't changed anything else about it.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

If there is a brain in each hydra head, which one controls the body?

As Footkerchief mentioned, having just one head is sufficient, and it doesn't matter which one.  Perhaps there's some sort of invisible bureaucratic organ that handles the multiple inputs.  It doesn't treat the heads as being different critters, and there's some weirdness that comes from that.  The most I've done is add some tags in the code of places I noticed, but I haven't tried to address it yet.  Things like ettins should definitely have multiple souls at some point, or complicated souls that are dualized in some way, so that arguments can ensue.  I'm not sure about hydras.  Some depictions hiss and snap between heads, some don't (by design or omission, I don't know).

Quote from: Putnam

Can we have attack raws now pretty please?

[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:<incoming time>:<recover time>]

3:3 is a standard punch and 4:4 is a standard kick at this point, and those numbers are modified by the adjective you apply in play.

[ATTACK_FLAG_INDEPENDENT_MULTIATTACK] <- hydra head
[ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK] <- kick

That might be it?  Seems a little depressing for the number of times you needed to ask.  Maybe we'll think of something else.

Quote from: monk12

You mentioned the lower extreme of combat states being horseplay- does this mean rough-housing is in for children/animals?

Do accidents occur, particularly with mismatched opponents (two kittens playfighting isn't so bad, a gorilla and a kitten moreso)

I added the state and rules because I thought I'd need it and I wanted to understand how it would fit in the future, but I haven't done anything cool.  I still have to put accidents back in -- I disabled them when I did the move/combat split, and I'm not sure how they will return.

Quote

Quote from: Fieari

What are all the severity scales?  For instance, you mention "Lethal without Quarter"... does that imply you have a "Lethal but Quarter Will Be Given" level?  At what point would a foe realize that you've escalated from Lethal but Quarter to Lethal Without Quarter?  (I assume the player will know when your enemy has escalated when they shout "NO MERCY!" at you)

Quote from: Demonic Gophers

You mentioned that combat state can be adjusted in the arena now.  How many combat states are there?  If someone punches you, how much of an escalation is it to hit them with, say, a training sword?  Or the skull of a dragon you killed?

On a loosely related note, if someone attacks you with a sword and you fight back empty-handed, do you have a chance of lowering the combat state, or alternatively, scaring your attacker with this show of confidence?

Currently the levels are: horseplay, training, brawl, non-lethal, lethal and no quarter.  If a person is in a lethal conflict they are in the mindset that quarter will probably be given to them and so that yielding is an option they might attempt successfully.  They'll take any opportunity to kill their opponent and don't alter their attack choices, but they won't attack a yielded opponent (I don't remember if they attack unconcious opponents or just deprioritize them).  The only way a yielded lethal conflict opponent realizes that you are shifting up to no quarter is if you initiate an attack on them.  If they manage to block or dodge the attack, they'll jump up to no quarter and won't try to yield again, and they will ignore your attempts to yield.  That last part might be up for argument, since it should depend on some factors, but that's how it works right now.  Moreover, anybody in the conflict will shift up to no quarter.  Due to technical constraints, that part isn't based on vision or anything -- there'd be a huge fragmentation of conflicts if it had to check everybody in relation to everybody else, but hopefully at some point I'll be able to introduce an element of confusion and uncertainty to the AI there.

The distinction between brawl and non-lethal is currently conceptualized as say, the difference between a "fun" bar-fight and a fight where people are coming just short of killing each other (perhaps some level of street crime, say).  If you pounded somebody's face until they were unconscious or broke their joint, the participants in a "brawl" might be very unhappy with how far you took things.  Perhaps the lines there could be guided by civ ethics, though.  There's room to move.  I haven't accounted at all yet for things like contests, where rules could get arbitrarily obscure.

I haven't put the "play attack" stuff back in, so escalation there aren't handled, and I haven't handled training weapons yet, and I'm not sure I will yet outside of dwarf mode.  Other items will be considered a lethal escalation, and we'll have to work in escalations over time.  It depends on how the later bar brawl furniture and stuff ends up working...  it might be tough getting a balance there, since the escalation of breaking a chair over somebody really depends on the chair.

They don't understand not using a weapon in terms of a show of confidence, and if they are attacking you with a sword, presumably they have a reason to kill you at that point.  There will definitely be some adjustments after we have some time to mess around with this.

Quote from: tyrannus007

Are you planning to make throwing less overpowered?

I'd like it to be normal, but I don't have a schedule for it.  Was it Footkerchief that brought up ranged combat updates in general?  That seems like a likely time.

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

If the combat state is at the brawl level, will an NPC surrender to another NPC if the player just stands back and doesn't get involved?

Can the player be not involved in a ongoing fight/brawl in a town that they visit, or is one side likely to view the player as an enemy?

Yeah, yielding doesn't require you to be the adversary, but aside from ceasing hostilities, NPCs don't really know how to handle anything after that.

It's actually hard right now to get sucked into the conflict -- you have to really jump in and participate to be viewed as a combatant.  The trickier part will be to get them to broaden their view, rather than narrow it, as things currently stand.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)

I'm not very good with video stuff, and it would be better to include audio instead of using the in-game format, I think.  The Kitsap newspaper people found something that worked all right, but I don't remember what it was now.

Quote from: eux0r

Toady, what are your thoughts on procedurally developing knowledge ingame? (example/specification uncoloured below)
the stuff you mentioned in the df talk footkerchief brought up mentions people developing fighting techniques using experience. do you think something along the lines of "in some random fight, alice randomly grabs bobs right arm with her left - alice randomly attacks bobs right side with her right - since bob cant defend this side the blow lands to great effect -  alice now uses the technique *grab arm and attack same side* as a specific martial technique and passes it down to her students" is feasible? this is just a fighting example since thats what the df talk was about there, but there are surely other possibilities for procedural generation of knowledge.
obviously this would result in worlds with longer history to be richer, with diversified cultures and short-history-worlds to lack such depth, so i dont know how much that works in your intentions(maybe you want short-history-worlds to have just as much depth).

I think it would be difficult to force everything to be built from scratch, since it's not just about longer histories being richer, but about bluntly obvious things just being missing from some worlds, which might cheapen the simulation.  It really depends on the year 1 starting point: what you take as obvious or innate, and what you take as discoverable knowledge or whatever, and then for the discoverable knowledge, what the conditions are and how restrictive they are.  We've only considered safe cases so far, I think -- things like martial arts/weapon styles which are more refinements of things you can already do in a basic way, and without which the worlds would still work.  The current animal training system is also safe like this -- the needed domestics are free and the exotics are learned.  Going beyond that would take some care and I haven't thought about it much, but to make worlds more interesting, it's all fair to consider and to try stretching a bit.

Quote from: Button

Will the combat improvements in this update include allowing flying domestic animals to fight in three dimensions/dodge upwards even when they aren't right next to a wall?

There might be some residual 2D stuff, but a lot has changed.  I haven't tested this case specifically.

Quote from: Novel

How will you handle telling us what's happened when reclaiming a fort? Will we have to rely on engravings, the moods and history's of the dwarfs, etc? I was espousing the idea of setting it to procedurally generated music :P. Would, once taverns get into the picture, reminiscing there-in and other opportunities we set up act as ways of learning the history we've missed? Will outstanding monsters and bandit's remain a problem?

You mean a fort that died in world gen?  I haven't added additional information, and who knows what'll be in there?  For your own forts I haven't really changed much yet.  When I get to the resettlement/expansion stuff (which is still somehow on the table for this release), we'll see if it isn't just established civs moving around.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will patrols loaded in the area the player is in respond to crimes occurring there at the time? Such as if the player is involved in a nice, noisy brawl with some NPC criminals or something, guards will come to break it up?

I haven't moved into petty crimes yet in terms of guard interaction, but since I'm just adding new guards, we'll see what happens.  I absolutely want to avoid justice system type stuff for this release, since it has been long enough, but if they just yell something goofy that leads to an escalation/de-escalation choice that might be fine.  I'm more concerned with violent uprisings at this point, and that sort of thing.

Quote from: Areyar

Will it eventually be possible to leave the Fortress and see it evolve/cope in hisory mode?

I think we've talked before about the obstacles to restarting world gen (if that's what you mean by history mode).  The new retired forts in the next release will be like other sites now in many ways, but that's still a limited role.  If you mean regular old legends mode, you'll see events pop up there as we add them in slowly.

Quote from: Andreus

In future, will there be some provision in the raws for the way a civilization treats members of other races who fall under its sway in the course of its military campaigns? It's just that right now I notice there seems to be a predominance of human civilizations ruled by amphibian men and suchlike - might there be some civilizations which outright cull other races, while others treat them as second-class citizens - fit to work, but never to have any real power?

Some of the entity ethics cover the extremes already, and it matters a bit.  Expansions of that system should be natural as I actually add stuff.

Quote from: iceball3

Do you plan to allow blunt attacks to apply a shearing force in certain situations, such as hitting flesh at an angle or just simply hitting hard enough/with a small enough contact area?

What is your opinion on the casual social patterns and structures of forumites across the board? Any insightful observations you could relay to us?

I don't have specific plans for that situation.  Contact area matters already, but I'm not sure when the force types would transition since I don't really know their exact definitions or any of the equations.

Regarding the second topic, I think most people participate in it more than I do, so I don't think I have any special insight.  I also see a skewed sample since the moderator reports call me to the troubled places I need to go.

Quote from: DG

Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?

I taught for several years in different contexts, and it wasn't really a problem.  This latest art panel was daunting not because of the public aspect, but because the content was foreign to me, pretty much.

Quote from: Inarius

Toady, can you speak a little about Scamp's diet ? Does he like dry cat food ?

He loves his dry food, but he prefers warm turkey when he can get it.  He also likes milk-infused coffee products that at times end up around him.  Other than that, he only drinks bottled water (or whatever you call water in those larger plastic things with handles), or tap water from really pure sources (unlike my apartment, but my parents' well water is fine).

Quote from: mastahcheese

With the new jump mechanics, will we start to see jumping elephants? Or jumping carp?

I haven't taught critters what to do with jumping yet, but when we get to that, I imagine there'll be edge cases and not-so-edge cases where things go horribly wrong and reality will need to be questioned.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Speaking of which, will we ever see days declared holidays? Like the dwarves celebrating on the anniversary of the founding, or of the day the fort defeated its first megabeast?

I remember them being in the Power Goals in some form, and I'll be happy when we finally get them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 01, 2013, 06:40:14 am

Well that's interesting. Thanks for the replies!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 01, 2013, 08:41:05 am

Thanks for the answers Toady.  As usual, just as many thought provoking questions as answers from the FotF Reply.  This makes me happy.

Also, it sounds like the May release hopefuls may be disappointed.  Hope you don't have big plans for Labor Day (US rules schedule).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 01, 2013, 09:09:07 am

Thanks again Toady, especially for the tokens. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 01, 2013, 09:59:03 am

Yes, thank you Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 01, 2013, 12:45:07 pm

TYVM for the attack raws! Those recovery timescales are interesting, time to start calculating mod things...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 01, 2013, 12:48:46 pm

[ATTACK_CROSSBOW:2:700]

That's pretty close  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on May 01, 2013, 02:12:37 pm

Quote from: Mr S on May 01, 2013, 12:48:46 pm

[ATTACK_CROSSBOW:2:99999999999999*stab*]

That's pretty close  :P

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 01, 2013, 06:43:37 pm

Thanks Toady! And Scamps sounds like he has an awesome diet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 01, 2013, 07:02:37 pm

Ohoho, those creature variations...

Also, the attack raws are brilliantly simple. I love it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 01, 2013, 07:43:33 pm

The info on escalation was pretty exciting, thanks.

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2013, 07:02:37 pm

Ohoho, those creature variations...

I didn't really understand that part... does this allow mods to alter part of a creature without overwriting the whole raw entry?  Something else?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 01, 2013, 07:57:03 pm

You could already do that. This is a meta-variation--variations on variations!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 01, 2013, 08:19:11 pm

Yo dawg, I heard you like variations, so I put variations for your variations so you can vary while you vary.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 01, 2013, 08:35:57 pm

Well, when you like variations and attention to detail within variations as much as we do, it's mandatory.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 01, 2013, 09:14:30 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2013, 07:57:03 pm

You could already do that. This is a meta-variation--variations on variations!

Now I've just gotta figure out how to make Raw Explorer handle them...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 01, 2013, 09:42:30 pm

Do you ever think on lame titles for movies like: Honey, I Procedurally Created the Kids! as easter eggs hidden somewhere in the game, or just for fun?

What kind of bed do you have? You need the best rest possible.

Are you eating healthier? I remember the New York Times interview where you described typical day of developing and I remember it included a lot of sweets. I remember at least a comment on that page of some one worried about your health in the long run, see, we need you to stay alive for as many centuries as possible, as some people (me included) consider you a treasure for mankind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bralbaard on May 02, 2013, 12:07:55 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 01, 2013, 09:42:30 pm

Do you ever think on lame titles for movies like: Honey, I Procedurally Created the Kids! as easter eggs hidden somewhere in the game, or just for fun?

Well, in real life kids are mostly generated procedurally, starting from a random seed..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 02, 2013, 02:47:19 am

Well played, sir.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: casserol on May 02, 2013, 04:07:21 am

Indeed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 02, 2013, 07:45:03 am

Quote

Well, in real life kids are mostly generated procedurally, starting from a random seed..

ah ah ah, very good !
But, I hope for you (or your husband, or your wife) that it won't be "totally" random. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 02, 2013, 07:59:36 am

In cryptography, it is noted that, in a finite state system, a seed will come from a finite number, be it very large, of possible seed values.  The question is whether it is random enough.

I wish I had a relatable joke for this.  But, since I don't: !!MAGMA!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 02, 2013, 08:10:17 am

More likely if is fast enough ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thursday Postal on May 02, 2013, 10:08:21 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

I'm not sure about hydras.  Some depictions hiss and snap between heads, some don't (by design or omission, I don't know).

This might be kind of relevant. I was reading something about the mental capabilies of animals, and according to a study snakes lack a centralized awareness:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It seems that a snake does not have a central representation of a mouse but relies solely on transduced information. The snake exploits three different sensory systems in relation to prey, like a mouse. To strike the mouse, the snake uses its visual system (or thermal sensors). When struck, the mouse normally does not die immediately, but runs away for some distance. To locate the mouse, once the prey has been struck, the snake uses its sense of smell. The search behavior is exclusively wired to this modality. Even if the mouse happens to die right in front of the eyes of the snake, it will still follow the smell trace of the mouse in order to find it. This unimodality is particularly evident in snakes like boas and pythons, where the prey often is held fast in the coils of the snake's body, when it e.g. hangs from a branch. Despite the fact that the snake must have ample proprioceptory information about the location of the prey it holds, it searches stochastically for it, all around, only with the help of the olfactory sense organs (Sjolander, 1993, p. 3).

    Finally, after the mouse has been located, the snake must find its head in order to swallow it. This could obviously be done with the aid of smell or sight, but in snakes this process uses only tactile information. Thus the snake uses three separate modalities to catch and eat a mouse (Dennett, 1995b, p. 691).

So in this case, a hydra would probably be more mentally advanced (because of magic? or just because of how complex they are) than a snake but it seems there's somewhat of a precedent of 'separated awareness' in some reptiles. They all work together in a snake, so maybe it's just a bit more complex in hydras (several sets of sensory awareness instead of one).

As for Ettins, I doubt this would come up in gameplay in any way at all, but split brain studies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain (where, for medical reasons, the bit connecting the two halves of the brain is split) causes some interesting things to happen.

Of course, this is probably too biological and not magic enough for a fantasy game, I just wanted to share my thoughts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 02, 2013, 10:11:08 am

Nothing is too biological for DF. Keep in mind that internal organs are modelled, and Dwarves have bigger livers than other races.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 02, 2013, 10:27:17 am

That's interesting, and as Japa says, dwarf fortress has an ample base of biology that is deterministic to how the game is played and the outcomes of interactions (mostly violent ones).

It also has magic, it suits all tastes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheDorf on May 02, 2013, 10:34:22 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

Quote from: TheDorf

Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.

I haven't gotten into it, if I remember.  I don't think the list of necessary changes is that long, since we haven't done much with lighting at all...  so when you say "a campfire or anything"...  is there anything else?  Just fires you set or something?  There's the issue of enemy vision, which is completely different now.

Alright, thanks. At the moment, I'm talking about campfires (Assuming camps would get campfires if you updated vision at night), and torches later on when (if?) they get added. Seeing as you don't seem to have any plans for updating lighting this release, may I ask when you think updated lighting could make it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 11:31:06 am

Hey, Toady, you haven't posted the link to your FoTF reply in your devlog yet.

Apparantly something wrong with my computer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 02, 2013, 11:38:31 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 11:31:06 am

Hey, Toady, you haven't posted the link to your FoTF reply in your devlog yet.

He did post it earlier today.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 11:58:10 am

Quote from: Trif on May 02, 2013, 11:38:31 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 11:31:06 am

Hey, Toady, you haven't posted the link to your FoTF reply in your devlog yet.

He did post it earlier today.

hmm... Every time I check, it's not showing up, maybe something wrong with my computer, I'll go un-color it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 02, 2013, 11:59:16 am

How do I donate money?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 12:04:32 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 02, 2013, 11:59:16 am

How do I donate money?

You can go to This Page (http://www.bay12games.com/support.html).
Just scroll down to find the support  button

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on May 02, 2013, 12:26:49 pm

Quote from: Thursday Postal on May 02, 2013, 10:08:21 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

I'm not sure about hydras.  Some depictions hiss and snap between heads, some don't (by design or omission, I don't know).

This might be kind of relevant. I was reading something about the mental capabilies of animals, and according to a study snakes lack a centralized awareness:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It seems that a snake does not have a central representation of a mouse but relies solely on transduced information. The snake exploits three different sensory systems in relation to prey, like a mouse. To strike the mouse, the snake uses its visual system (or thermal sensors). When struck, the mouse normally does not die immediately, but runs away for some distance. To locate the mouse, once the prey has been struck, the snake uses its sense of smell. The search behavior is exclusively wired to this modality. Even if the mouse happens to die right in front of the eyes of the snake, it will still follow the smell trace of the mouse in order to find it. This unimodality is particularly evident in snakes like boas and pythons, where the prey often is held fast in the coils of the snake's body, when it e.g. hangs from a branch. Despite the fact that the snake must have ample proprioceptory information about the location of the prey it holds, it searches stochastically for it, all around, only with the help of the olfactory sense organs (Sjolander, 1993, p. 3).

    Finally, after the mouse has been located, the snake must find its head in order to swallow it. This could obviously be done with the aid of smell or sight, but in snakes this process uses only tactile information. Thus the snake uses three separate modalities to catch and eat a mouse (Dennett, 1995b, p. 691).

So in this case, a hydra would probably be more mentally advanced (because of magic? or just because of how complex they are) than a snake but it seems there's somewhat of a precedent of 'separated awareness' in some reptiles. They all work together in a snake, so maybe it's just a bit more complex in hydras (several sets of sensory awareness instead of one).

As for Ettins, I doubt this would come up in gameplay in any way at all, but split brain studies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain (where, for medical reasons, the bit connecting the two halves of the brain is split) causes some interesting things to happen.

Of course, this is probably too biological and not magic enough for a fantasy game, I just wanted to share my thoughts.

I saw a two-headed lizard on TV. It was a gila monster, I think. Apparently the two heads are separate and mostly control different sides of the body, so it is difficult to move.

They named the two heads "Zack" and "Wheezy". I thought I had that show out of my head, too...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 02, 2013, 01:59:11 pm

Well since a hydra is bigger one can asume that the brains have also more volume. From personal experience i can say that bigger dogs often (especially the ones for herd-protection which are bread for self sufficency) are "more" intelligent then say a "Yorkshire Terrier". So more volume and surface in a brain/in brains can translate into more intelligence. Looking at Ravens and Parrots it also does not need much brain for semi-intelligent and social behavior. 

On the other hands many dinosaurs had brains the size of a walnut - so its all open to speculation. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 02, 2013, 02:09:26 pm

Well, they had their many million years quota to destroy the planet and did nothing. Now we are doing it in less than a million years, that proves that proportional size of the brain and the body accounts for more belligerency. :P

On a serious note, I would think that an animal with that many brains would have coordination issues unless one of the heads take control of the body and the others just tag along and control only from their necks up, kind of a the leader of the gang and it's comic relief minions.

Or maybe it's a single entity/mind, in that case each head it's just yet another limb of the individual, perhaps carrying the advantage that it can lose it's head X amount of times with no problem. Or it could also be that this unique personality is distributed (evenly or unevenly) among the heads, and as you cut them the creature loses intelligence/reflexes/ability/coherency or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 02, 2013, 02:14:10 pm

Having more autonomy to each hydra head would probably be good for the simple reason that it's something interesting that sets the hydra apart from a giant millipede.

Exactly how to make hydra heads act disjointedly is an open question, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 02, 2013, 03:25:01 pm

Well a gigant millipede would be dead if you slice it's unique head, or at least it will be blind and, errhh deaf (do they have hearing?) and it wouldn't be able to "sniff for you" (don't know how to call the olfactory impaired).

I don't see the hydra not having each head working independently from up to a certain degree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 02, 2013, 05:18:16 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 02, 2013, 03:25:01 pm

Well a gigant millipede would be dead if you slice it's unique head, or at least it will be blind and, errhh deaf (do they have hearing?) and it wouldn't be able to "sniff for you" (don't know how to call the olfactory impaired).

I don't see the hydra not having each head working independently from up to a certain degree.

Anosmic is if they cannot smell.

Millipedes may or may not hear depending on your definition. Specifically they can sense the vibrations of sound.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 02, 2013, 06:53:48 pm

there are a few videos of two headed snakes on youtube, could be a good reference. the heads seem to get along just fine, from what ive seen so far.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 02, 2013, 07:17:23 pm

Arthropods may not make a good example because their nervous system and various senses have some key differences. For instance, some insects like mantises' and cockroaches' bodies can persist without their head for some timeframe, functioning off of nerve ganglia in the abdomen and thorax. Starvation, lack of sensory input, infection, and loss of fluids are their biggest threats. But for a hydra, with seven heads starvation and sensory input won't be an issue if you lost only one of them. Blood loss may be an issue, as would infection, but hypothetically if their immune system could prevent massive invasion of bacteria through the wound, and the arteries in the neck clotted or had valves along their length which closed under certain conditions (related to rapid blood loss, possibly nerves detecting a sharp decrease in blood pressure?), the wound could scab over and heal and the hydra could survive relatively unaffected, assuming also that each head were able to direct movement of the limbs in some manner. Vertebrates also have minor nerve ganglia along their spinal cord, so sub-conscious processes could hypothetically be controlled by these without input form any of the heads.

Rather than a system resembling the split-brain issue in humans and similar animals, hydra may have a system where each brain subconsciously communicated with the others along the nerve columns in the neck what each of them independently conceived of doing. Consciously, it may have a single unified conscience, experiencing the inputs from each head as it's senses and a source of emotional urges. A decision to move may be made by the central head, or even by a ganglion at the base of the necks which averages nerve inputs (or controls them outright) to be directed to the muscles beyond it, like the sympathetic navigation of large flocks of birds; one of them decides to move, the others nearby may follow it, followed by yet more, but the flock only gets anywhere as a sort of hivemind, where the overall average of all the indepedent motions of the birds equates to a direction of travel at the present time.

The heads of the hydra, although not independently controlling the motion of the body, may independently decide their own motions in relation to it, which lets them assault prey (or adventurers) independently and rapidly. I don't see why the animal would spontaneously argue with itself externally, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on May 02, 2013, 07:41:35 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 02, 2013, 07:17:23 pm

\I don't see why the animal would spontaneously argue with itself externally, though.

It wouldn't, but, comic relief takes precedence in most situations over, say, an attempt to simulate fantasy biology.

Which is why Dwarf Fortress Forever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 02, 2013, 08:01:22 pm

Quote from: Heph on May 02, 2013, 01:59:11 pm

On the other hands many dinosaurs had brains the size of a walnut - so its all open to speculation.

Did you know the Stegosaurus had a second brain in it's ***? This supposedly is where it's long term memory was located...
Of course, this may be a fabrication by TV Land, as I got the information from the character of Walter Bishop from Fringe. The long term memory thing is more likely fabricated than the other part, but still plausible.

I like to think that a typical Hydra (the kind that regrows it's heads) has a system similar to something from a more future work. From Schlock Mercenary, we have Retro-Exocephaloderm Nannies, a fancy word for "Robots that back your brain up in your skin". Let's say a hydra has an organic way of doing the same thing, either into the skin or an extra brain in it's ***. It's unable to do any thinking with it's skin, but all it's memories, personality, recent decisions, recent smells sights and sounds, etc. are in it's skin. So when it loses it's brain(s), it "restores it's [hard drive and RAM] from [backup], [while manufacturing a new identical motherboard]". It's automatic systems are able to do this, even when it has no brains left, so while the hydra is completely headless, it's unable to act in any way (As seen on Disney's Hercules movie), but it will soon regrow it's heads and they'll immediately start taking action. Including getting it's heart pumping again, as that (and likely other internal organ(s)) is likely to shut down after a brief period of no control. Which is why preventing the head from regrowing long enough will permanently kill a hydra.
Now, the way I see it, a hydra has multiple heads, therefor brains. It only has one hide. It has to back-up all the brains in this one skin, and so it either has to make certain areas different, which means that most of the brains restored from backup will be severely corrupted and inoperable; it has to overwrite backups from one brain with another over and over in a cycle, which will leave most brains un-backed up; or it will have to create a combined backup, with conflicting memories and duplicate sensory inputs. I believe the third takes place. When a head regrows, it will then be very disoriented by the various sensory inputs being restored from back-up, and the more heads sending sensory information to back up the more disoriented the new head(s) will be. They eventually sort those out, and once fully restored from backup they only use their own senses (no need for all eyes to send information to all heads, etc., and same with sound and taste/smell, though touch would be shared, and all heads would respond to a piercing by a sword). It almost immediately starts having it's own memories, but having multiple memories time stamped with the same time would be a bit confusing, and it would start subconsiously weeding out memories that seem similar from similar times, eventually arriving at it's own non-conflicting set of memories; The older the hydra, and the more heads it has/had the longer this process will take. Once it's senses are straightened out and it's memories pruned (if all the heads with a certain memory are destroyed (like eating a poisonous fruit), and all the new heads prune out that memory by chance, it's likely permanently lost (so it doesn't know the fruit's toxic anymore)), the new head will no longer be so disoriented. It's own new memories will start being backed up as well as the other heads' memories.
The fact that each head will have it's own set of old memories and new memories will probably mean that each will develop different personalities, and the overall case of multiple personality syndrome will only get worse as time wears on and heads regrow. This means a newly hatched hydra is probably the sanest, most intelligent hydra you will ever be able to find. This also leads into my theory of HOW A HYDRA BODY IS CONTROLLED, the relevant point of my rant to the discussion.

As each head has a different personality, as a result of their conflicting memories, and each is likely to be lost at any time (it's possible that hydra heads actually age and die quicker than the body, and rot and fall off periodically), it's necessary for each to have an equal chance at controlling the whole body past it's own neck. The only way for one to control the body is basically to "outwill" the others, and to become the dominant head. It will remember how to do it, as it's memories are backed up, but when a head becomes dominant, it's like "Remembering to ride a bike after five or six years", and not every head will be as good at coordinating the body as the others.
Since every head will remember controlling the body at some point or another, each head will want to control it. So they will constantly try to outwill the dominant head, or eliminate it. You've heard that the heads of a hydra will snap at each other, and fight with each other? Yeah, that's one head trying to sever the dominant head so it can take control of the body. Of course, once a head that's not controlled the body for a long time gets control, the body itself will seem a little disoriented as the new personality gets used to it. But control won't last for long, as another head will outwill it or sever it soon, which also explains why a creature with such powerful limbs walks so slow and never runs: it can't make up it's mind where to go for long and it can't remember how to walk for very long at a time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 09:44:50 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

Well, that would certainly end the debate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 02, 2013, 09:52:49 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 09:44:50 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

Well, that would certainly end the debate.

I'm not sure if it proves or disproves my organic dermic back-up hydra theory. (The wall of text a few posts up)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 02, 2013, 10:46:14 pm

Quote from: flabort on May 02, 2013, 09:52:49 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 09:44:50 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

Well, that would certainly end the debate.

I'm not sure if it proves or disproves my organic dermic back-up hydra theory. (The wall of text a few posts up)

Perhaps it backs up to the "invisible organ"? Of course, the organ would be used for [memory] and not [CPU] but it still has a purpose relating.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gestahl on May 02, 2013, 11:06:26 pm

Quote

I imagine there'll be edge cases and not-so-edge cases where things go horribly wrong and reality will need to be questioned.

That's one of the best things about DF :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 02, 2013, 11:09:36 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 02, 2013, 10:46:14 pm

Quote from: flabort on May 02, 2013, 09:52:49 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 02, 2013, 09:44:50 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

Well, that would certainly end the debate.

I'm not sure if it proves or disproves my organic dermic back-up hydra theory. (The wall of text a few posts up)

Perhaps it backs up to the "invisible organ"? Of course, the organ would be used for [memory] and not [CPU] but it still has a purpose relating.

That's about what I thought. I think.
I wonder, how many folk are going to bother reading through all that mostly-off-topic text?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 03, 2013, 01:31:41 am

Me. I actually quite enjoyed it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 03, 2013, 02:07:17 am

Me too. Quite imaginative and interesting, actually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 03, 2013, 04:54:00 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2013, 07:57:03 pm

You could already do that. This is a meta-variation--variations on variations!

Hehe, thanks but I still don't really get it!  Could you give an example?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on May 03, 2013, 04:59:26 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

Some of the entity ethics cover the extremes already, and it matters a bit.  Expansions of that system should be natural as I actually add stuff.

I was thinking somewhat from a modder's perspective, since I'd like the granularity to make, for example, a civilization that is inherently xenophobic but merciful, so generally exiles members of other species it ends up conquering, and would certainly never accept the rulership of a member of another species, but might allow a member of another species who had earned their respect to stay. Is that sort of thing going to be possible?

On a related note, will there eventually be societies within the same species which hold differing values? Perhaps the stereotypcial "dark elves" or cannibalistic slaver dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 07:37:13 am

As in chaos dwarves? I'm taking that for granted! Eventually we should have pretty different civilizations on the same species. Well, that's the plan if I read Toady good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on May 03, 2013, 08:40:12 am

I mean, I realise it's already easy enough to mod in an entity that's precisely the same race as another entity but has different cultural values. I'm just wondering if, in the future, we'll see human, dwarven or elven civilizations that are noticably different from each other (architecture, customs, culture, etc.) without resorting to that. Right now human civilizations almost never go to war with each other, and we know that's (unfortunately) not particularly reflective of reality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 09:17:51 am

Oh you mean, something like X race/civilization spawn, naturally on world creation or something like that two different civilizations. It would be interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 03, 2013, 09:53:01 am

Quote from: Andreus on May 03, 2013, 04:59:26 am

On a related note, will there eventually be societies within the same species which hold differing values? Perhaps the stereotypcial "dark elves" or cannibalistic slaver dwarves.

Yes, that should happen eventually. Technically, it is even supported by the game already (since 2008), it just isn't happening yet.

Quote

No matter how it turns out, we'll still have the new position raws, but I thought I'd mess around with this a bit. I'll also be lifting ethics up into an entity instance rather than entity raw definition set of variables, so that they can vary between civs and change during play. Not sure how much I'll actually do with that now though. I'm planning to get the necessary dwarf mode changes in after I handle the raw loading to avoid getting bogged down in world gen again.

It's also something that Toady has talked about, notably when he said that he wouldn't make his goblins to be a Mongol equivalent, because humans should be able to be that equivalent one day.

Quote

I know a few people were dismissive of our decision and called it a cop out, but we thought about these situations (including the Mongols) and rejected them.  Goblins that herd meat animals are insufficiently scary to us.  Goblins that die exclusively violent deaths in great numbers in a potentially vegetationless wasteland are better, and we want to explore a wider variety of possibilities than humans allow -- humans can be Mongols, because the Mongols were human, and we hope to support some human variety eventually./quote]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thursday Postal on May 03, 2013, 11:12:02 am

Quote from: tahujdt on May 02, 2013, 12:26:49 pm

I saw a two-headed lizard on TV. It was a gila monster, I think. Apparently the two heads are separate and mostly control different sides of the body, so it is difficult to move.

They named the two heads "Zack" and "Wheezy". I thought I had that show out of my head, too...

That's true! I forgot all about conjoined twin reptiles, which seem to be fairly common as far as conjoined twins go. There's a lot of examples of turtles, snakes, lizards, etc like that.

Maybe a hydra's brain develops where all the necks meet, and the heads just have simplistic brain-stem type brains for reflexes and stuff. I feel like the "bureaucratic organ" could be there, seeing as it'd be the largest mass of neurons, bigger than any of the individual brains.

Of course it's hard describing a creature in evolutionary terms when the creator gods of a DF world could create whatever they like in whatever way they please.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 03, 2013, 12:05:49 pm

Remember that unlike a two headed snake a Hydra was born/created to have multiple heads.

It is quite possible that Hydras possess a hive mind so to speak that exchange information with each other while still retaining a unique personality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 12:48:51 pm

I think that it would be interesting if at early age the heads had this fight over control, where the stronger would impose over the others regarding the control of the legs and tail, the rest of the heads controlling only it's own necks.

Or maybe this is default to the center head, and in the case of losing that head the next most strong take it's place as the body coordinator.

Other instance would be something like Neonivek says, I see it like different personalities in each head of the same entity that is the hydra, and all or any of the heads control the locomotion and parasympathetic functions, that's it, the hydra has a several case of central nerve system redundancy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 03, 2013, 01:35:36 pm

Maybe they're all identical, redundant copies of the same mind, which is why losing a head doesn't disable it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:42:00 pm

I've sent Toady the following question a couple times, but haven't received an answer.

Quote

Are there plans to improve the interface\system for placement of buildings (furniture, constructions, etc) in a near-future release?

Primarily I’m interested in information about anything that reduces the number of repetitive actions one must take in building a structure using a large number of constructions or when placing sets of furniture in 100+ bedrooms. It’d be awesome to be able to ‘paint’ with a chosen type (Selected: Larch Tables, quality = any, distance = any, quantity available = 30) instead of going b, t, selecting a location, selecting a specific object, over and over. This can get time-consuming (on the order of hours of work) when doing tasks like making a large block wall or placing floors in a room with a complicated, non-square shape.

I don't know if the man is too busy improving the game to answer, or has chosen not to reply because he disliked the question or the way I asked it, but I'm really only concerned with finding an answer; has anyone seen such an answer in this thread or another thread or devblog in recent memory?

I put a lot of time into playing and promoting DF so I'm disappointed at how conspicuously he's avoided discussing this matter after I've politely asked several times over the past 6 months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ChuckWeiss on May 03, 2013, 01:46:06 pm

Quote from: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:42:00 pm

I put a lot of time into playing and promoting DF so I'm disappointed at how conspicuously he's avoided discussing this matter after I've politely asked several times over the past 6 months.

He hasn't been working on anything that even remotely changes how building works, and this release arc doesn't have any plans to touch upon those things. Go read the questions he answered this time around really closely. Did he answer any questions that weren't related to the content of the upcoming release? No. He didn't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:58:10 pm

Quote from: ChuckWeiss on May 03, 2013, 01:46:06 pm

Quote from: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:42:00 pm

I put a lot of time into playing and promoting DF so I'm disappointed at how conspicuously he's avoided discussing this matter after I've politely asked several times over the past 6 months.

He hasn't been working on anything that even remotely changes how building works, and this release arc doesn't have any plans to touch upon those things. Go read the questions he answered this time around really closely. Did he answer any questions that weren't related to the content of the upcoming release? No. He didn't.

I can ask a question, even if it doesn't seem to relate to other questions that have been answered in recent memory. Do you disagree? Or are you being snide and impolite because that's just how you roll?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 03, 2013, 02:10:53 pm

Quote from: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:58:10 pm

Quote from: ChuckWeiss on May 03, 2013, 01:46:06 pm

Quote from: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:42:00 pm

I put a lot of time into playing and promoting DF so I'm disappointed at how conspicuously he's avoided discussing this matter after I've politely asked several times over the past 6 months.

He hasn't been working on anything that even remotely changes how building works, and this release arc doesn't have any plans to touch upon those things. Go read the questions he answered this time around really closely. Did he answer any questions that weren't related to the content of the upcoming release? No. He didn't.

I can ask a question, even if it doesn't seem to relate to other questions that have been answered in recent memory. Do you disagree? Or are you being snide and impolite because that's just how you roll?

No accusations please. This thread is about the current development of DF, and the plan for now is to move world-gen features into actual play. UI improvements weren't mentioned in the devlog (or past questions), so your suggestion definitely won't be in a near-future release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 02:59:21 pm

UI improvements, for the time being are not a priority, that will come out latter if at all. UI changes are subject more to gameplay changes than anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 03:52:12 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 02:59:21 pm

UI improvements, for the time being are not a priority, that will come out latter if at all. UI changes are subject more to gameplay changes than anything.

Fair enough, thanks for giving a more polite response. I know Toady works in large blocks and doesn't like to get side-tracked from finishing an important milestone, and feature creep can destroy a sprint really easily. I'm certainly not impatient, so even if the change takes another year or two, that's just fine, I've played this game for quite a few years already. I just got worried that the man wouldn't even acknowledge the question for a long period of time despite answering plenty of other questions of varying relevance, and I don't know him personally so it's anyone's guess what the silence could mean. I simply keep repeating the question until I get an answer, which is my right, and nothing that justifies random crumbs showing up to give me shit for it.

I've made 20-30 mature fortresses and nowadays I find that my enjoyment tapers off when I get to the point of wanting to build a large structure of some kind; the menu is really inefficient for placing constructions and it's been difficult for me to stick with a fort long-term as a result. That makes me sad because I feel like I'm losing a battle with my own willpower to play what is definitely my favorite game. I'm looking forward to some small UI efficiency improvements for that reason. Not to say that the other things being worked on aren't important--understand that my question has just gone unanswered for ages and that fact was making me feel disengaged from the development process.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 03, 2013, 04:10:21 pm

As for not answering your question, most probably it got bogged down in the hundreds of mails he gets every week. Here's a more direct way of asking him questions, on this thread. Make a question and put it in color green, wait a few days/weeks and he eventually answer it if it's not obvious or he has answered the same question before, in which case people here will put quotes about that. You can read a few pages back from this one to see how it works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Button on May 03, 2013, 04:42:22 pm

I've been messing around with fertility today and have a few questions.

Are there any plans for raw-ing gestation/incubation/child spacing intervals? At the moment if I understand correctly - given the presence of an appropriate male - civilized females can give birth again as soon as their children grow from Baby to Child; domestic viviparous animals have a litter every year; and domestic oviparous animals have bugs with un-fertilizable clutches such that I don't even know what the intent is there. I want elephants to give birth less often than dogs, and I want to be able to breed giant insects without significantly lengthening their lifespans.

Will we ever be able to designate which CASTEs can pair up with each other in monogamous species? What about the ability to designate which castes in which combinations produce other castes? E.g., let's say I have castes named after colors; will there ever be a way I can designate that a Red can only mate with a Blue or a Yellow, and that the Red&Blue combination will produce a Purple, and the Red&Yellow combination will produce an Orange?

What about defining castes as life phases, a la insect and amphibian life cycles, with creatures moving through very different physical stages as they mature?

Are there any plans for allowing the adoption of orphaned infants?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tacyn on May 03, 2013, 05:24:48 pm

Quote from: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 01:42:00 pm

I've sent Toady the following question a couple times, but haven't received an answer.

Quote

Are there plans to improve the interface\system for placement of buildings (furniture, constructions, etc) in a near-future release?

Primarily I’m interested in information about anything that reduces the number of repetitive actions one must take in building a structure using a large number of constructions or when placing sets of furniture in 100+ bedrooms. It’d be awesome to be able to ‘paint’ with a chosen type (Selected: Larch Tables, quality = any, distance = any, quantity available = 30) instead of going b, t, selecting a location, selecting a specific object, over and over. This can get time-consuming (on the order of hours of work) when doing tasks like making a large block wall or placing floors in a room with a complicated, non-square shape.

I don't know if the man is too busy improving the game to answer, or has chosen not to reply because he disliked the question or the way I asked it, but I'm really only concerned with finding an answer; has anyone seen such an answer in this thread or another thread or devblog in recent memory?

I put a lot of time into playing and promoting DF so I'm disappointed at how conspicuously he's avoided discussing this matter after I've politely asked several times over the past 6 months.

Have you tried falconne's plugins in http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0) or Quickfort?
Sounds pretty much like what you are asking for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 03, 2013, 07:07:30 pm

Quote from: Button on May 03, 2013, 04:42:22 pm

I've been messing around with fertility today and have a few questions.

Are there any plans for raw-ing gestation/incubation/child spacing intervals?[/color] At the moment if I understand correctly - given the presence of an appropriate male - civilized females can give birth again as soon as their children grow from Baby to Child; domestic viviparous animals have a litter every year; and domestic oviparous animals have bugs with un-fertilizable clutches such that I don't even know what the intent is there. I want elephants to give birth less often than dogs, and I want to be able to breed giant insects without significantly lengthening their lifespans.

Will we ever be able to designate which CASTEs can pair up with each other in monogamous species? What about the ability to designate which castes in which combinations produce other castes?[/color] E.g., let's say I have castes named after colors; will there ever be a way I can designate that a Red can only mate with a Blue or a Yellow, and that the Red&Blue combination will produce a Purple, and the Red&Yellow combination will produce an Orange?

What about defining castes as life phases, a la insect and amphibian life cycles, with creatures moving through very different physical stages as they mature?[/color]

Are there any plans for allowing the adoption of orphaned infants?[/color]

It's worth noting that this thread is for questions about current development- namely, things that are going to be in the next release. That said, these are the kinds of question that would be appropriate for DF talk (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_talk.html) (forum thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=44597.0),) and much more likely to be answered there.

Also, I don't have a quote but I'm pretty sure the last one is "yes, no timeline." And you can fake life cycles using interactions (though that has the downside of completely healing the target.)



@Noble Digger, UI improvements are one of those things that lots of people ask for, and Toady knows lots of people want, but he's extremely reluctant to spend time on it since the time spent improving the UI is time spent not adding content, and there's a significant probability that he'd just have to do it over again when a new content release renders it obsolete.

Or, to more directly address your specific question, no, there are not any near-future plans for an interface overhaul, whether in general or in regards to building/constructions. As LordBaal mentioned, it probably won't change until the next time he changes the way that aspect of the game works, or if he makes changes to another part of the game that would transfer over (for example, off the top of my head the earliest he might touch this would be Adventure Mode constructions, which were on the old list of near-term goals, though that list is itself obsolete.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Button on May 03, 2013, 07:18:28 pm

Oh, sorry about wrong thread :) Carry on

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 03, 2013, 11:04:15 pm

Toady, who was that oversized dwarf on stage with you in iceland?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 11:12:34 pm

Quote

Have you tried falconne's plugins in http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0) or Quickfort?
Sounds pretty much like what you are asking for.

Wow. This is pretty spot on what I need. I've never heard anyone mention this feature in falconne:

Quote

Moves the last used material to the top of the material list
Allows you to assign certain materials for "auto-selected" in future construction
Enables rectangular selection for placing constructions, the way designations are done

Thank you so much :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 03, 2013, 11:15:15 pm

that's not quickfort, that's falconne

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Noble Digger on May 03, 2013, 11:25:52 pm

Quote

@Noble Digger, UI improvements are one of those things that lots of people ask for, and Toady knows lots of people want, but he's extremely reluctant to spend time on it since the time spent improving the UI is time spent not adding content, and there's a significant probability that he'd just have to do it over again when a new content release renders it obsolete.

Or, to more directly address your specific question, no, there are not any near-future plans for an interface overhaul, whether in general or in regards to building/constructions. As LordBaal mentioned, it probably won't change until the next time he changes the way that aspect of the game works, or if he makes changes to another part of the game that would transfer over (for example, off the top of my head the earliest he might touch this would be Adventure Mode constructions, which were on the old list of near-term goals, though that list is itself obsolete.)

Fair enough, to be sure. When I first got the idea to request this feature of Toady, it was because I had recently seen certain similar improvements made, such as the ability to designate on multiple Z-levels at the same time, and the ability to paint forbid designations and dumping designations. The way I imagined the overhaul of the construction material selection menu, for example, has longevity and doesn't seem too sensitive to any impending changes: basically just a change in the sorting logic. However, Tacyn pointed out a great solution to this problem that I can use without bugging toady, and I want to thank the both of you for your informative and useful replies. If it works the way it seems like it will, I can shake the rust off a couple of my favorite forts and work on projects this inefficiency caused to take the life out of me. :]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on May 04, 2013, 04:47:52 am

Does the new combat system make multi-target melee combat situations, such as sieges often are, considerably more dangerous for the faction with fewer soldiers? For short, will sieges be harder now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ray Digrus on May 04, 2013, 12:34:40 pm

May the 'different levels of resolution' (those that take part in calculating armies' movement) be useful for calculating the whole world's events since the fortress mode seems to be similar with the highest level of resolution?
Thanks for fix, Putnam.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 04, 2013, 12:35:16 pm

highest level of resolution

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on May 05, 2013, 05:12:24 am

Oh, here's another mod-related question. In future, will we have more criteria for position prerequisites? Right now, we only have succession by heir and succession by position - in the future, will we be able to have things like "X number of kills required" or "X level of mastery in skill?" Are we going to see more stratified caste structures in the future, with nobility keeping their spot at the top simply because they're nobility?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 05, 2013, 08:07:44 am

Quote from: Andreus on May 05, 2013, 05:12:24 am

Oh, here's another mod-related question. In future, will we have more criteria for position prerequisites? Right now, we only have succession by heir and succession by position - in the future, will we be able to have things like "X number of kills required" or "X level of mastery in skill?" Are we going to see more stratified caste structures in the future, with nobility keeping their spot at the top simply because they're nobility?

Entity positions will become more fleshed out as the game progresses, including requirements. The existing position raw options mostly come from the preexisting positions that were in the game before. This quote is about responsibilities, but the same principles apply:

Quote

Quote

What are the options for the RESPONSIBILITY tokens? Can we create positions that have specific labors assigned to them? For example, a Miner's Guildmaster who has room requirements and only the Mining skill allowed as a labor?

I just added them in as I needed them to handle existing mechanics, but the list will keep growing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 11:31:02 am

Oh great Toad, do you plan (I'm guessing you are) to rawitfy the UI text, or employ another mechanic that would allow us to make translations to another languages?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 06, 2013, 11:46:52 am

You know, generally anything to do with the UI has been put on indefinite hold, but frankly it's a little embarrassing how little international support DF offers. It'd be nice, and a great way to increase the audience of potential donators.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 06, 2013, 12:07:34 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 11:31:02 am

Oh great Toad, do you plan (I'm guessing you are) to rawitfy the UI text, or employ another mechanic that would allow us to make translations to another languages?

Yes, translations are planned as part of the presentation arc. No timeline, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 06, 2013, 12:33:07 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on May 06, 2013, 11:46:52 am

You know, generally anything to do with the UI has been put on indefinite hold, but frankly it's a little embarrassing how little international support DF offers. It'd be nice, and a great way to increase the audience of potential donators.

yes, it would help increase the amount of donations.
no, its not embarrassing to not care about translations as long as there is an english version. english means there is international support, we live in the 21st century. usually, translations are inferior to the original anyways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 12:46:16 pm

That's mostly the motivation behind my question. I would like to translate it to Spanish (I have the time) and experience translating games, all free for all of course. I know it would help a lot to take a hold in Latin America (and Spain maybe) to make the game more accessible to those that don't have English skills. You won't believe how many times I have seen a good game rejected by somebody that would love to play it simply because the language.

Even if we have to make a ton of corrective work after each release until Toady rawify the UI, I would love to make this game accessible to even more people. It's the only way I feel I can contribute right now, since I can't donate thanks to a strict control over foreigner currency exchange in my country (Venezuela).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 06, 2013, 01:56:19 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 12:46:16 pm

That's mostly the motivation behind my question. I would like to translate it to Spanish (I have the time) and experience translating games, all free for all of course. I know it would help a lot to take a hold in Latin America (and Spain maybe) to make the game more accessible to those that don't have English skills. You won't believe how many times I have seen a good game rejected by somebody that would love to play it simply because the language.

Even if we have to make a ton of corrective work after each release until Toady rawify the UI, I would love to make this game accessible to even more people. It's the only way I feel I can contribute right now, since I can't donate thanks to a strict control over foreigner currency exchange in my country (Venezuela).

Here you go. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108721.msg4175521#msg4175521)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 06, 2013, 02:01:33 pm

you can always just translate everything you see in the game and make a post about it. if toady sees it he might do something. no one should expect toady to go out of his way to comply to any demands without anything backing them up.
apart from that, i highly doubt anyone who cant even speak a little english, while possessing an internet connection, would actually become an active player of this game.

uh, putnam actually ninjad me with a solution, while im just saying i dont think its necessary. ill post anyways...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 06, 2013, 03:53:28 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 06, 2013, 02:01:33 pm

you can always just translate everything you see in the game and make a post about it. if toady sees it he might do something. no one should expect toady to go out of his way to comply to any demands without anything backing them up.
apart from that, i highly doubt anyone who cant even speak a little english, while possessing an internet connection, would actually become an active player of this game.

uh, putnam actually ninjad me with a solution, while im just saying i dont think its necessary. ill post anyways...

As Trif said, better translation support is planned. Obviously Toady won't go and translate everything himself. It's quite likely he won't add in fan translations if he has no way to judge their quality. But what he can do is externalize the strings and basic grammar the game uses, allow more grammatical cases and so on in the raws, and allow fans to translate them and distribute them via DFFD. It's quite a project, and won't happen anytime soon, but there is a demand for it. While I would not use a German version, other Germans, or other non-native English speakers, aren't fluent enough in English to play a game of this complexity in English. The German indiegameforum has a thread that's dedicated to getting the Multilangual Dwarf Fortress suggestion to a higher number, for example.

Insolor's utility looks like a good start for unofficial patches, sure. But of course it's not perfect since it's just the text (and in some cases, translation length is fixed, which isn't likely to work well with most languages; not sure in which instances it's used, but even if its in contexts where abbreviations or padding are appropriate, it depends on how well the word can be abbreviated), and not the grammar used to build sentences from fragments.

Quote

Core54, TRANSLATION SUPPORT, (Future): Announcements and other interface text needs to come out of the game and be placed in an editable format to support any potential translators, though current font implementations restrict this process at the moment if non-ASCII characters are to be involved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 03:58:09 pm

Knight Otu, those are exactly my points! I wouldn't probably play a Spanish version but I know some of my friends would.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 06, 2013, 05:01:12 pm

Well, it's the same for French (i could spend a lot of time on it if it was only possible). But the main issue, for me, is the problem of conjugation, tense, and grammar. English is sooooo simple compared to spain, or french, or anything elaborated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 06, 2013, 06:32:49 pm

When the stuff in the notes gets finished, is that usually the point of release?

Are we going to have fist fights breaking out when people bump into each other? That has a very high potential for abuse.

If we settle near a city or human settlement, might we see the remains of logging camps and the like?

Are we going to have guard patrols getting lost or dying off in the sewers (without player intervention), so we can come across their remains later? This sometimes happens in RPGs...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 06, 2013, 06:34:47 pm

Toady, where/how did you learn to play guitar?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on May 07, 2013, 08:01:33 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 06, 2013, 01:56:19 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 12:46:16 pm

That's mostly the motivation behind my question. I would like to translate it to Spanish (I have the time) and experience translating games, all free for all of course. I know it would help a lot to take a hold in Latin America (and Spain maybe) to make the game more accessible to those that don't have English skills. You won't believe how many times I have seen a good game rejected by somebody that would love to play it simply because the language.

Even if we have to make a ton of corrective work after each release until Toady rawify the UI, I would love to make this game accessible to even more people. It's the only way I feel I can contribute right now, since I can't donate thanks to a strict control over foreigner currency exchange in my country (Venezuela).

Here you go. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108721.msg4175521#msg4175521)

The problem with that utility is that, although it allows to change the vocabulary, you can't affect the grammar (I can traslate sword
as espada and steel as acero, but it will read as acero espada instead of espada de acero.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on May 07, 2013, 08:30:18 am

Yes well that's a practically insurmountable problem given that DF procedurally generates a lot of in game text based on English grammar patterns.  It's conceivable those patterns could be defined in a grammar rules file, but that seems like an awful lot of work.

On topic... latest dev post looks pretty cool.  Moving citizens is gonna add a whole lot to the atmosphere of adventurer mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 07, 2013, 08:53:12 am

Quote from: Broken on May 07, 2013, 08:01:33 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 06, 2013, 01:56:19 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 06, 2013, 12:46:16 pm

That's mostly the motivation behind my question. I would like to translate it to Spanish (I have the time) and experience translating games, all free for all of course. I know it would help a lot to take a hold in Latin America (and Spain maybe) to make the game more accessible to those that don't have English skills. You won't believe how many times I have seen a good game rejected by somebody that would love to play it simply because the language.

Even if we have to make a ton of corrective work after each release until Toady rawify the UI, I would love to make this game accessible to even more people. It's the only way I feel I can contribute right now, since I can't donate thanks to a strict control over foreigner currency exchange in my country (Venezuela).

Here you go. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108721.msg4175521#msg4175521)

The problem with that utility is that, although it allows to change the vocabulary, you can't affect the grammar (I can traslate sword
as espada and steel as acero, but it will read as acero espada instead of espada de acero.)

It breaks even wirth something as simple as plural, for example, Czech:

One kitten - Jedno kotě.
Two kittens - Dvě koťata.
..
Five kittens - Pět Koťat.

Basically, there are two forms of plural.

In my opinion, translations are not worth it - things like tutorials for people who are not native english speakers in their own language would be much better spent time, and can be done by community.

In fact, why not put it to wiki and make it big collaborative project?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 07, 2013, 09:11:52 am

I'm starting to feel the same, translations, at least at this point, are worthless until(if) the UI is sufficiently rawitfied, specially grammar rules.

Something that would help a lot is to have the wiki translated on several languages, this will not only serve as guide, but as a side effect people will learn English while playing and reading the guide.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on May 07, 2013, 11:40:46 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 07, 2013, 09:11:52 am

the UI is sufficiently rawitfied

If this is a portmanteau of "rawified" and "WTF", I'm loving it.  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 07, 2013, 12:19:28 pm

Wtf not then. Yeah, it is... hehehe... You know what I meant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on May 02, 2013, 09:24:29 pm

Are we going to see the prepared

Quote from: Toady One

invisible bureaucratic organ

upon the butchering of a hydra corpse?

No.  It was a joke (and it wouldn't be very invisible if you could see it).

Quote from: TheDorf on May 02, 2013, 10:34:22 am

At the moment, I'm talking about campfires (Assuming camps would get campfires if you updated vision at night), and torches later on when (if?) they get added. Seeing as you don't seem to have any plans for updating lighting this release, may I ask when you think updated lighting could make it?

It's on the development page, which is the closest thing DF has to a feature schedule.  Maybe in the next couple years.

Quote

Lighting

    Proper environmental lighting
    Construction and use of torches
    Candles/lamps/lanterns

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 06, 2013, 06:34:47 pm

Toady, where/how did you learn to play guitar?

Lots of info in these search results about how he learned. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtjjEOwjAMRa-CWFj-gCktcAoW9ihNLFoUmspJQJVyeFzUyX7P_0u2_mMnx74eKtV9LYklzewUH9H6ZXefWHUva-AKOqJDiwuIQCfQGdRAJxro2oH0oqkWdNNWGuLXuPieA2fW_qpK_2KXTZzCspko2fhRlDwntxkl4cD_31bFVtyg8lnGbOUHGsU-kA..)

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 06, 2013, 06:32:49 pm

When the stuff in the notes gets finished, is that usually the point of release?

There's a lengthy release checklist that always occurs before release.  Sometimes there's also misc cleanup that isn't part of the notes per se.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 06, 2013, 06:32:49 pm

Are we going to have fist fights breaking out when people bump into each other? That has a very high potential for abuse.

Nope.  Bumping into each other outside of combat would be a new mechanic, and it hasn't been mentioned.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 06, 2013, 06:32:49 pm

If we settle near a city or human settlement, might we see the remains of logging camps and the like?

Nope.  Non-town sites are on the dev page, but they weren't a focus of this release.

Quote from: LordBaal on May 01, 2013, 09:42:30 pm

Do you ever think on lame titles for movies like: Honey, I Procedurally Created the Kids! as easter eggs hidden somewhere in the game, or just for fun?

When asking questions, please remember that it takes Toady time to answer them.  Maybe describe what makes this question interesting to you?

Quote from: LordBaal on May 01, 2013, 09:42:30 pm

What kind of bed do you have? You need the best rest possible.

Are you eating healthier? I remember the New York Times interview where you described typical day of developing and I remember it included a lot of sweets. I remember at least a comment on that page of some one worried about your health in the long run, see, we need you to stay alive for as many centuries as possible, as some people (me included) consider you a treasure for mankind.

Please try to stay on the topic of development.  These questions are kind of intrusive and irrelevant.  We aren't paparazzi.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 07, 2013, 04:32:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

...
Please try to stay on the topic of development.  These questions are kind of intrusive and irrelevant.  We aren't paparazzi.

So... me hiding out in Toady's closet with a camera right now is... inappropriate? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 07, 2013, 10:11:32 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on May 07, 2013, 04:32:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

...
Please try to stay on the topic of development.  These questions are kind of intrusive and irrelevant.  We aren't paparazzi.

So... me hiding out in Toady's closet with a camera right now is... inappropriate?

Only if you post about it in FotF, apparently.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 07, 2013, 10:29:18 pm

Quote from: flabort on May 07, 2013, 10:11:32 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on May 07, 2013, 04:32:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

...
Please try to stay on the topic of development.  These questions are kind of intrusive and irrelevant.  We aren't paparazzi.

So... me hiding out in Toady's closet with a camera right now is... inappropriate?

Only if you post about it in FotF, apparently.  :P

Now you're gettin' it!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 08, 2013, 07:35:26 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 07, 2013, 09:11:52 am

I'm starting to feel the same, translations, at least at this point, are worthless until(if) the UI is sufficiently rawitfied, specially grammar rules.

Something that would help a lot is to have the wiki translated on several languages, this will not only serve as guide, but as a side effect people will learn English while playing and reading the guide.

It's supposedly already in Russian, but not much else.
(I'd be happy to help make a Polish translation of the wiki, tho)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on May 08, 2013, 07:45:08 am

I like the etnocentricity when you say that non-English speakers would use a translated guide to learn English and not the opposite.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 08, 2013, 08:42:08 am

Is not ethnocentric, I'm not even a natural English speaker. It's logic.

How can someone that for example, speak Spanish, somehow, learn more Spanish by reading a guide in Spanish with a few words in English?

Unless you are referring to some one that speaks Spanish, reading the Polish guide to play in English, in which case she/he might learn Polish in the process.

As for the English speaking reading guides in another languages? Why for? The guides (wiki) and the game itself is already on their language.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on May 08, 2013, 09:46:08 am

Will occupier patrols follow specific routes on patrol or will they wander around town randomly?

Will civvies in an occupied town run from/avoid occuping soldiers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on May 08, 2013, 11:55:53 am

Will companions have a means of being retained upon retiring? To be honest, i ask mainly because i wish to retain a lich guard at some point. That also brings me to what happens when a usually inimical entity retires on a site, wthat killing a duck wont bring the entire civ on your head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 08, 2013, 04:05:24 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on May 08, 2013, 09:46:08 am

Will occupier patrols follow specific routes on patrol or will they wander around town randomly?

Will civvies in an occupied town run from/avoid occuping soldiers?

Toady said about the first one that they're going from their strongpoint to the extremes of the occupied territory, and then back. That might be a path. Maybe they don't have a linear assigned route for each soldier (e.g. Bolug Flarepants goes every morning from the town hall to the well and returns at the afternoon) but seemingly they wont stray too much through unoccupied territory, or not even step on it at all. As far as I remember, now sites wont be solely governed by a single entity.

As for the civils, it's safe to assume that they'll stay out of bounds from the patrols, at least while the player is not messing around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 08, 2013, 05:59:59 pm

Quote from: Novel on May 08, 2013, 11:55:53 am

Will companions have a means of being retained upon retiring? To be honest, i ask mainly because i wish to retain a lich guard at some point. That also brings me to what happens when a usually inimical entity retires on a site, wthat killing a duck wont bring the entire civ on your head.

I'm not sure I understand the second question.  It's already planned (not for this version, AFAIK) that killing animals during play won't result in the same kind of retribution as attacking a person, and the same rules would apply in world gen.  Does that answer it?

Yes, it's planned that your organization will generally survive after retirement, at least until they're hunted down: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html)

Quote from: DF Talk 16

Rainseeker:   So does that mean that I could create a new adventurer and go to the town where the old adventurer retired and meet him and possibly recruit him to my party?
Toady:   Yeah, you can actually do that right now.
Rainseeker:   Oh wow, I didn't realize that.
Toady:   Yeah. It's funny, you can fight them and cause all kinds of trouble having a Old West shootout with your old adventurers in the town and so on. So we've already kind of gotten started on that, so I think those two things I mentioned would help make the retired ... Right now they're like this weird window dressing, though, it's like ... they go there, they don't really fit in and the only way they fit in is that they do join the town that they retire in, so starting trouble with them starts trouble with everybody and so on, but having their own group would be interesting.

Now if your adventurer were to actually die then the nice part about the sites that you create is that they still exist and the entities that you create actually still exist. So, if you created, say, a group of bandits and you were going and taking things from towns and so on, and people disliked you and hunted you down and killed you - which is actually in the list of the dev goals for that, so it's not just something I'm saying - you'd then have that group of people, and once we get succession in, which is very soon - we're probably going to do succession before we finish the caravan arc because it's ... well it is actually part of the caravan arc, I think it's release 5 right now - but once we have succession then the group that you've created, named, and everything, and you've told them all to wear little blue hats or something - assuming you can secure those things and actually help your people wear stuff, you'd probably have to hand them out manually at first, like 'Here's your hat, here's your hat. Now put it on, put it on here' and they're like 'Okay!' - so that group would persist; whatever position you'd created for yourself, probably just like 'I'm the leader of the bandits' or whatever, because you have these entity positions right, with names and so on, like when you're fighting bandits yourself it's like 'Here's the ringleader; here's the boss' or whatever, it just gives them silly names, you'd be able to do the same thing and you'd have your little group with the leadership position, and when the leadership position is vacated, when you meet your untimely demise, then the leadership position would be filled; when we get to release 5, or whenever we do succession, which is going to be release 5 or sooner, right. So you have that, and then you've got this group that persists forever, or as long as it has a breathing member, or someone willing to resurrect it after everyone's gone. Then you'd leave that behind and that would be one of the first real feelings that you've created something rather than destroyed something, because right now you can kill all the beasts in the world and then the world has changed in that way; that's a way of leaving a mark, but it's a negative mark.


Rainseeker:   So would you be able to set goals for your organization, or similar?
Toady:   Well, the way that we have it set up on the dev page - and we haven't thought about this too much - is that you'd be able to assign little tasks for people and so on that they could do in your absence, but we haven't thought about, you know ... what is, and I don't even know if ... there's nothing really that says, that's anywhere, like what the overarching goal of your organization is. It's like the aggregate version of the personality rewrite, because the personality rewrite involves not just coming up with facets of the personality that are more interesting than the current ones, that allow you to tell better stories, but also new categories entirely of things, like what are the dreams of this dwarf, what are the dwarf's lifelong goals and that kind of thing. Then in adventure mode you don't quite have the same thing because you're playing, whereas your dwarves will have those things independent of your existence, but when you make an organization there's ... the two ways to think about it are, does my organization ... is the game going to try to guess what you're doing? It's like 'Well, they've killed their seventeenth person so obviously this is an organization bent on randomly killing people', or is it something that ... what will probably end up happening because the computer can never really be smart enough to tell, is that you just say what you're about, and if you completely violate the principles of what you're about then it'll probably start trying to come up with something on its own, it'd be like 'Well, you're supposed to be wandering around and helping the sick, but you keep killing them' and eventually it would decide that you're actually some kind of weird euthanasia organization or something. But that's all kind of wishful thinking; not the content that I just mentioned but just the ability that it would be able to do anything like that, but it's ...
Rainseeker:   'Hey man, I'm just preventing an epidemic, okay?'
Toady:   It's true, it's going to be dangerous when there are plagues, you'll have some difficult decisions to make. But that is the general idea of what kind of legacy you can leave behind, and that you'd be able to have an organization that made some kind of sense ... I mean at first you'd probably just be selecting from a list of ... like when you form the organization there are other people around because you don't just form it in your head, right? So you'd probably take your three or four adventuring companions that you'd picked up and say 'Alright, let's go rob wagons together!' and they're like 'Yay!' or some of them leave or one of them tries to kill you or something, but once they all agree that you are now an organization that goes and robs wagons together, which at first would probably just be as simple as selecting, you know, 'bandit' as your option or whatever ... Because that sort of organization already exists, right, you can just declare that 'I want to be a type of organization that already exists', it already understands how they work and so when the adventure is over either by retirement or death it would understand what to do with those guys, and then they'd fit right in; you'd get quests to kill yourself or whatever. Right now you can get a quest to kill yourself but only through the animosity between civilizations; if your adventurer is a notable killer of another civilization then retires back in a friendly town, and then you start at the aggrieved civilization you can get a quest to kill your adventurer, but they're still just window dressing over there. So that's that form of legacy, and then there's the familial legacy you can have, when we get to the relationship stuff you'll be able to leave behind little playable childrens and things. I suppose your spouse might be playable too, I wonder ... if you get killed it'd be fun to go on a vengeance quest or something as the aggrieved widow or widower.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 08, 2013, 06:19:07 pm

Wait...
Does that mean..?

I am making an adventurer party. Thirteen dwarves, a human necro and a human child.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 08, 2013, 07:51:10 pm

Man, screw that. I would mod in wizards and hobbits just because.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 08, 2013, 08:32:44 pm

Whenever we get to that, we're going to be having SO MUCH FUN!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 08, 2013, 08:34:21 pm

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when the FUN starts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on May 08, 2013, 10:32:23 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 08, 2013, 08:34:21 pm

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when the FUN starts.

Because he is the FUN.

In Gandalf's case, the !!FUN!!.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 09, 2013, 12:23:11 am

I shall found a band of democratic insurgents, fighting for ideas ahead of their time!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 09, 2013, 01:07:11 am

Quote from: tahujdt on May 08, 2013, 10:32:23 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 08, 2013, 08:34:21 pm

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when the FUN starts.

Because he is the FUN.

In Gandalf's case, the !!FUN!!.

Which is actually true, when you read what people have to say about Gandalf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on May 09, 2013, 07:40:20 am

if a dwarf of a retired fortress (lets say, an adamantine clad soldier) migrates to a new one, will he carry his equipment? In case he doen't, will his armor stay home or will it just dissappear?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 09, 2013, 08:09:33 am

Quote from: Broken on May 09, 2013, 07:40:20 am

if a dwarf of a retired fortress (lets say, an adamantine clad soldier) migrates to a new one, will he carry his equipment? In case he doen't, will his armor stay home or will it just dissappear?

Dwarfs from abandoned fortresses carry their equipment already, the same should apply to retired fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 09, 2013, 10:58:20 am

Quote from: Broken on May 09, 2013, 07:40:20 am

if a dwarf of a retired fortress (lets say, an adamantine clad soldier) migrates to a new one, will he carry his equipment? In case he doen't, will his armor stay home or will it just dissappear?

I once made an adventurer retire in a mountainhome while carrying a bag of wild strawberries, but when he migrated to my fort, he didn't have it, nor his weapons, but I imagine that his clothes whould probably be the same, and this whole thing will likely be fixed when Toady releases the new version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 09, 2013, 12:10:38 pm

Well, he had to eat something right? And perhaps that meager bag wasn't enough so he traded his weapons for more food.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 09, 2013, 06:43:28 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 09, 2013, 12:10:38 pm

Well, he had to eat something right? And perhaps that meager bag wasn't enough so he traded his weapons for more food.

That bag had over 80 strawberries in it! It was so heavy I had to drop it to fight!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 10, 2013, 12:07:04 pm

In the future, will there be vampires that are less lethal about bloodlust and civs more accepting of vampires? Like a vampire civ where, after a couple has enough children to ensure replacement level fertility, they are then changed themselves

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 10, 2013, 12:27:02 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 10, 2013, 12:07:04 pm

In the future, will there be vampires that are less lethal about bloodlust and civs more accepting of vampires? Like a vampire civ where, after a couple has enough children to ensure replacement level fertility, they are then changed themselves

Well, that sounds pretty elaborate, but as with everything in the future tense and not related with the current release, the answer might be "yes, no timeline". It could work better with the intended and already commented Character Agenda, where both righteous and villainous critters might adjust their schedules to do stuff that promotes their bidding, and also use some help from adventurers and fortress denizens, wether if they ask for it or not. So having a vampire ruler that harvests people instead of bloodletting them in a mindless fashion shouldn't be that far fetched. Maybe Toady has something related to that in his new roadmap, but yeah, that's a basic goal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 10, 2013, 01:53:52 pm

Quote from: Valtam on May 10, 2013, 12:27:02 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 10, 2013, 12:07:04 pm

In the future, will there be vampires that are less lethal about bloodlust and civs more accepting of vampires? Like a vampire civ where, after a couple has enough children to ensure replacement level fertility, they are then changed themselves

Well, that sounds pretty elaborate, but as with everything in the future tense and not related with the current release, the answer might be "yes, no timeline". It could work better with the intended and already commented Character Agenda, where both righteous and villainous critters might adjust their schedules to do stuff that promotes their bidding, and also use some help from adventurers and fortress denizens, wether if they ask for it or not. So having a vampire ruler that harvests people instead of bloodletting them in a mindless fashion shouldn't be that far fetched. Maybe Toady has something related to that in his new roadmap, but yeah, that's a basic goal.

Thank you. I just love to speculate. and its nice to hear form everyone. :3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 10, 2013, 08:49:54 pm

On top of that, I remember (but have no quotes handy) that Toady had wanted to have a bunch of different kinds of vampires such that they would be different from world to world, but that got cut due to time constraints. So in general, more diverse vampires/werewolves/night creatures in general is a goal, but no real timeline on it right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 10, 2013, 09:34:54 pm

Toady told Giant Bomb that the next release will be "some months in the future". So we have a new ETA for the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 10, 2013, 09:54:27 pm

When did he?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 10, 2013, 10:34:03 pm

Near the end. 11:50 or something. It was the last question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 10, 2013, 10:48:29 pm

I think it would make more sense to have a civ where the vampires are the leadership, ala Sylvania from Warhammer lore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fractalman on May 10, 2013, 11:47:36 pm

Actually, vampiric leaders are not unheard of.  They're more common in worlds with a longer world gen duration; vampires that grab a throne tend to keep it. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on May 11, 2013, 03:04:38 am

Vampires are fine the way they are (apart from being attacked by their own troops upon being ousted, even if it was incredibly obvious). What I really want to see is werebeasts that blend in.

Speaking of vampires; what is up with Fortress Mode automatically (and irreversibly) labeling vampire blood-drinkers as vampires? Unintentional? Either way, it takes a lot of fun out of succession fortress vampire conspiracies when you can't covertly infect a select few members of the population without immediately giving them away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 11, 2013, 09:18:23 am

But add a tad of political scheming and intrigue between themselves, in a no undead society that accept and know their leaders are vampires would be interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on May 11, 2013, 09:50:13 am

Speaking of Vampires! When you retire in a location, if you make sure you are inaccessible to the fort will you remain so (in the same location) when you reclaim? Otherwise I'm imagining a a year and a half's worth of bloodletting in the time skip as the Adventure Mode Vampire Tax, not to say that couldn't be justified  :P.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 11, 2013, 03:33:19 pm

Quote from: Novel on May 11, 2013, 09:50:13 am

Speaking of Vampires! When you retire in a location, if you make sure you are inaccessible to the fort will you remain so (in the same location) when you reclaim? Otherwise I'm imagining a a year and a half's worth of bloodletting in the time skip as the Adventure Mode Vampire Tax, not to say that couldn't be justified  :P.

In all likelihood, vampire feeding will not be one of the things tracked during actual play for the next version (for that matter, I don't think food use has been mentioned for the next version).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: toboo123 on May 14, 2013, 02:25:09 pm

Now that trees are multi-tiled and have more of a sense of scale, will other things be getting a sense of scale as well? Massive mountains, or multi-tiled creatures, If so how would multi tiled creatures work? Would they all be square, or would certain creatures be rectangular or different shapes? would they all be flat or would they encompass multiple vertices tiles? How would a giant creature compensate for tiny fortress entrances?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 14, 2013, 02:43:11 pm

Yes, no timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on May 14, 2013, 03:41:08 pm

Gravity already affects falling and throwing, and now with jumping it becomes even more important.  Will the size of a world ever affect the amount of planetary mass, and thereby the gravitational pull so that it may vary from our usual 9.8m/s²?  Could world composition also affect mass (i.e. Earth-like molten iron core vs. some other metal) and therefore gravity?

Will curvature of the planet ever be taken into account in calculations for things like throwing trajectory or line of sight for high altitudes?  Could this also be dependent on the world (planet) size?  Will worlds ever be non-flat (i.e. wrap around like Civilization), and if so, would it be theoretically possible (if the dwarves could survive the heat and the HFS) to dig a magma-safe tunnel into the center of the planet, and eventually come out the other side?  Will gravity ever lessen as you dig closer to the center?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 14, 2013, 04:35:40 pm

as a tiny sidenote, will backpacks be added to arena mode?

(thank you for the show that I put the wrong color at first)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on May 14, 2013, 04:39:46 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 14, 2013, 04:35:40 pm

as a tiny sidenote, will backpacks be added to arena mode?

Or quivers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 14, 2013, 06:38:37 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 14, 2013, 03:41:08 pm

Gravity already affects falling and throwing, and now with jumping it becomes even more important.  Will the size of a world ever affect the amount of planetary mass, and thereby the gravitational pull so that it may vary from our usual 9.8m/s²?  Could world composition also affect mass (i.e. Earth-like molten iron core vs. some other metal) and therefore gravity?

Will curvature of the planet ever be taken into account in calculations for things like throwing trajectory or line of sight for high altitudes?  Could this also be dependent on the world (planet) size?  Will worlds ever be non-flat (i.e. wrap around like Civilization), and if so, would it be theoretically possible (if the dwarves could survive the heat and the HFS) to dig a magma-safe tunnel into the center of the planet, and eventually come out the other side?  Will gravity ever lessen as you dig closer to the center?

 :D Has there ever been a game that has had questions like this asked of the developers?

To be somewhat helpful, Toady did chat about worlds with weird shapes other than spherical in a DF Talk (can't remember which one), and the most likely place you're going to see deviations from the norm is probably in different dimensions (if/when that's implemented) which he's also talked about before but not in much detail. It's basically "Sounds cool and would be interesting, but I haven't thought about it much and there's no time line for it."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 14, 2013, 07:19:45 pm

The world is currently generated to be about the size of a small country. It would not do to make gravity proportional to a planet that small.

It's also a fantasy world generator, so should allow for the world to be flat.

But being able to see long distances from mountains or on flat plains would be a nice feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 14, 2013, 07:28:18 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 14, 2013, 03:41:08 pm

Gravity already affects falling and throwing, and now with jumping it becomes even more important.  Will the size of a world ever affect the amount of planetary mass, and thereby the gravitational pull so that it may vary from our usual 9.8m/s²?  Could world composition also affect mass (i.e. Earth-like molten iron core vs. some other metal) and therefore gravity?

Will curvature of the planet ever be taken into account in calculations for things like throwing trajectory or line of sight for high altitudes?  Could this also be dependent on the world (planet) size?  Will worlds ever be non-flat (i.e. wrap around like Civilization), and if so, would it be theoretically possible (if the dwarves could survive the heat and the HFS) to dig a magma-safe tunnel into the center of the planet, and eventually come out the other side?  Will gravity ever lessen as you dig closer to the center?

There was a bit of discussion on the DF Talks #5 and #8.

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: DF Talk #8

Capntastic:   What is the cosmology of the dwarven world; is it heliocentric?
Toady:   So right now there is a sun that sets on one side and rises on the other side; I think it determines that at random, although those words depend on the sun and magnetism, so maybe that's meaningless, and there's also a moon. But we don't really have anything decided for those. What will probably end up happening further along is that you'll have the creation tale, there are several civilizations with different sets of gods, so I'm not really sure who's going to be right, or if's all going to be different sides of the same multi-sided coin, the same polyhedron or whatever, but it's probably going to be one of those things that's easily randomized and so it will be randomly decided what the deal is there. And that could also, with a little bit of work, have to do with the shape of the ... not just what is orbiting what, if anything's orbiting anything, rather than being dragged along in chariots and stuff, but also what the shape of the world is; how the edges work. Right now the edges just have this invisible barrier, but migrant groups and certain foreign materials can come in off the edges depending on the version you're playing; it's just not really well defined right now, what the world is. But it would be easy to make a torus or a cylinder, or to fudge a sphere with the proper edge behaviour, like something going off the top edge and then coming half way over on the other top edge. I don't remember if you actually get a sphere from that or some kind of weird projected space, but it's close enough. So we'll probably mess around with that later on ... the myth stuff might come sooner rather than later, just because I really want to mess around with that stuff, it's a lot of fun to do.

Quote from: DF Talk #8 again

Capntastic:   So with regards to gravity, will different worlds have different levels of gravity?
Toady:   Yeah ... The general question is the physical laws of the world being based on parameters, right? I haven't thought about that much and it's the kind of thing where it seems like you could just change the constants, assuming that they work like that. Part of the problem with the projectiles is how you've got these quantized tiles and right now they think of it that way too, but if the projectiles actually stored their location in a much more refined fashion and were just displayed by tiles and hit things by tiles but actually had their own arcs that they were travelling along, then doing things like having a flight trajectory that is something like a parabola - like you'd want - wouldn't be so bad. You'd have trouble maybe in that there's a couple of issues then for AI and when you're in adventure mode how you target, because even if you've got a parabola and you can target any square that you can get a parabola to hit by theoretically raising the angle of your crossbow or whatever, that's not so bad, especially with my math background. I've solved this problem before, I remember doing it in Armok I, and you could actually accurately hit something shooting on a parabola. So you could hit things along parabolas in that game and it would come up with the parabola, and generally there were two solutions for each equation and it would choose the one with the lowest angle so that you'd shoot straight at the rabbit instead of shooting way up in the air and having it fly and then come down on the rabbit or whatever. So there are little issues like that but you just want to make sure that once you nail it to the tiles that you don't lose your solution and get all confused. But I think it's not that difficult a problem and that people and siege engines and everything else could be flying properly and it's really not that much of a processor problem either, just because projectiles aren't that frequent. If you do something weird like stick five thousand logs on a drawbridge and then lift it up to shoot your logs everywhere ... these are kind of player created problems, but I'm sure that might slow things down a little bit then. I think once you've got a model that has more refined numbers where it's keeping things at a few decimal places then doing things like messing with the physical laws is way easier because changing the gravitational constant doesn't suddenly knock you over ten tiles to screw everything up or just get ignored because it gets rounded off. That would be something that I think would be a low hanging fruit and that point so it would be fun to do. Does it come across in the game? Not quite so much as if you were playing a first person shooter or something that had really good graphics, where the gravity can come across; if you were playing on the moon you'd notice how things were. Since there's no actual frame of reference in Dwarf Fortress - like grid size is a question, how big is a grid, how far is it from here to here? - it becomes less obvious when the physical constants have changed. But at the same time if something falls and hits you on your head harder because you have more gravity that would probably come across, at least relative to your other play experiences. Then you could have some cases where there's just no gravity at all, which would be kind of fun, just things flying off and ...
Rainseeker:   You'd be losing dwarves left and right, into outer space ...
Toady:   Yeah, those silly combat things where someone flies and hits and tree and blow apart, the parts would just kind of fly off, fly off into space. It'd be fun, I think.
Rainseeker:   You'd be having people bashing their heads on the ceilings too when they jump over each other in narrow hallways.
Toady:   The nice thing about - just considering physics again in general - the nice thing about using actual equations, getting to that point ... having discrete tiles makes that hard sometimes ... but getting to the point where you're using realistic equations or semi-realistic equations like with the combat stuff with all the new parameters that are in there ... the nice thing about having it that way is being able to change the laws and you could even consider things like local changes of the laws, like a particular area of the fort because of some weird artifact you've got or something is zero gravity, and if you go in there then things start to fly and float around and stuff, and that could lead to some really cool sights in the world; places where things just don't behave quite like you'd expect. That would all be a lot of fun, and because we've been modelling things it's more accessible; it's something that can be done, which is cool.

I think they also talked about gravity altering artifacts at some point.

It seems like the general idea is to make laws of physics randomizable, probably moddable. That would most likely result in gravity changing as you dig deeper, as well as curvature being important on dwarf planets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 14, 2013, 07:46:53 pm

Quote from: Trif on May 14, 2013, 07:28:18 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 14, 2013, 03:41:08 pm

Gravity already affects falling and throwing, and now with jumping it becomes even more important.  Will the size of a world ever affect the amount of planetary mass, and thereby the gravitational pull so that it may vary from our usual 9.8m/s²?  Could world composition also affect mass (i.e. Earth-like molten iron core vs. some other metal) and therefore gravity?

Will curvature of the planet ever be taken into account in calculations for things like throwing trajectory or line of sight for high altitudes?  Could this also be dependent on the world (planet) size?  Will worlds ever be non-flat (i.e. wrap around like Civilization), and if so, would it be theoretically possible (if the dwarves could survive the heat and the HFS) to dig a magma-safe tunnel into the center of the planet, and eventually come out the other side?  Will gravity ever lessen as you dig closer to the center?

There was a bit of discussion on the DF Talks #5 and #8.

Spoiler: quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: DF Talk #8

Capntastic:   What is the cosmology of the dwarven world; is it heliocentric?
Toady:   So right now there is a sun that sets on one side and rises on the other side; I think it determines that at random, although those words depend on the sun and magnetism, so maybe that's meaningless, and there's also a moon. But we don't really have anything decided for those. What will probably end up happening further along is that you'll have the creation tale, there are several civilizations with different sets of gods, so I'm not really sure who's going to be right, or if's all going to be different sides of the same multi-sided coin, the same polyhedron or whatever, but it's probably going to be one of those things that's easily randomized and so it will be randomly decided what the deal is there. And that could also, with a little bit of work, have to do with the shape of the ... not just what is orbiting what, if anything's orbiting anything, rather than being dragged along in chariots and stuff, but also what the shape of the world is; how the edges work. Right now the edges just have this invisible barrier, but migrant groups and certain foreign materials can come in off the edges depending on the version you're playing; it's just not really well defined right now, what the world is. But it would be easy to make a torus or a cylinder, or to fudge a sphere with the proper edge behaviour, like something going off the top edge and then coming half way over on the other top edge. I don't remember if you actually get a sphere from that or some kind of weird projected space, but it's close enough. So we'll probably mess around with that later on ... the myth stuff might come sooner rather than later, just because I really want to mess around with that stuff, it's a lot of fun to do.

Quote from: DF Talk #8 again

Capntastic:   So with regards to gravity, will different worlds have different levels of gravity?
Toady:   Yeah ... The general question is the physical laws of the world being based on parameters, right? I haven't thought about that much and it's the kind of thing where it seems like you could just change the constants, assuming that they work like that. Part of the problem with the projectiles is how you've got these quantized tiles and right now they think of it that way too, but if the projectiles actually stored their location in a much more refined fashion and were just displayed by tiles and hit things by tiles but actually had their own arcs that they were travelling along, then doing things like having a flight trajectory that is something like a parabola - like you'd want - wouldn't be so bad. You'd have trouble maybe in that there's a couple of issues then for AI and when you're in adventure mode how you target, because even if you've got a parabola and you can target any square that you can get a parabola to hit by theoretically raising the angle of your crossbow or whatever, that's not so bad, especially with my math background. I've solved this problem before, I remember doing it in Armok I, and you could actually accurately hit something shooting on a parabola. So you could hit things along parabolas in that game and it would come up with the parabola, and generally there were two solutions for each equation and it would choose the one with the lowest angle so that you'd shoot straight at the rabbit instead of shooting way up in the air and having it fly and then come down on the rabbit or whatever. So there are little issues like that but you just want to make sure that once you nail it to the tiles that you don't lose your solution and get all confused. But I think it's not that difficult a problem and that people and siege engines and everything else could be flying properly and it's really not that much of a processor problem either, just because projectiles aren't that frequent. If you do something weird like stick five thousand logs on a drawbridge and then lift it up to shoot your logs everywhere ... these are kind of player created problems, but I'm sure that might slow things down a little bit then. I think once you've got a model that has more refined numbers where it's keeping things at a few decimal places then doing things like messing with the physical laws is way easier because changing the gravitational constant doesn't suddenly knock you over ten tiles to screw everything up or just get ignored because it gets rounded off. That would be something that I think would be a low hanging fruit and that point so it would be fun to do. Does it come across in the game? Not quite so much as if you were playing a first person shooter or something that had really good graphics, where the gravity can come across; if you were playing on the moon you'd notice how things were. Since there's no actual frame of reference in Dwarf Fortress - like grid size is a question, how big is a grid, how far is it from here to here? - it becomes less obvious when the physical constants have changed. But at the same time if something falls and hits you on your head harder because you have more gravity that would probably come across, at least relative to your other play experiences. Then you could have some cases where there's just no gravity at all, which would be kind of fun, just things flying off and ...
Rainseeker:   You'd be losing dwarves left and right, into outer space ...
Toady:   Yeah, those silly combat things where someone flies and hits and tree and blow apart, the parts would just kind of fly off, fly off into space. It'd be fun, I think.
Rainseeker:   You'd be having people bashing their heads on the ceilings too when they jump over each other in narrow hallways.
Toady:   The nice thing about - just considering physics again in general - the nice thing about using actual equations, getting to that point ... having discrete tiles makes that hard sometimes ... but getting to the point where you're using realistic equations or semi-realistic equations like with the combat stuff with all the new parameters that are in there ... the nice thing about having it that way is being able to change the laws and you could even consider things like local changes of the laws, like a particular area of the fort because of some weird artifact you've got or something is zero gravity, and if you go in there then things start to fly and float around and stuff, and that could lead to some really cool sights in the world; places where things just don't behave quite like you'd expect. That would all be a lot of fun, and because we've been modelling things it's more accessible; it's something that can be done, which is cool.

I think they also talked about gravity altering artifacts at some point.

It seems like the general idea is to make laws of physics randomizable, probably moddable. That would most likely result in gravity changing as you dig deeper, as well as curvature being important on dwarf planets.

Holy shit that sounds awesome

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 14, 2013, 08:10:50 pm

Quote from: toboo123 on May 14, 2013, 02:25:09 pm

Now that trees are multi-tiled and have more of a sense of scale, will other things be getting a sense of scale as well? Massive mountains, or multi-tiled creatures, If so how would multi tiled creatures work? Would they all be square, or would certain creatures be rectangular or different shapes? would they all be flat or would they encompass multiple vertices tiles? How would a giant creature compensate for tiny fortress entrances?

Massive mountains are fair game, but multi-tile creatures may never make it in (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html):

Quote from: DF Talk

Rainseeker:   Right. Well, I have a technical question here; 'How exactly long, wide and tall is a tile in Dwarf Fortress? Are they cubes?'; this is from Lonewolf.
Toady:   What the traditional answer is [is] that they're not so big that a dwarf doesn't have to crawl under another dwarf to get through a corridor but at the same time they're big enough to hold a thousand dragons as long as nine hundred and ninety nine of them are lying down. On the other hand it's a serious question because so much would ride on giving an answer; that's why I haven't so far. Because the second that you give an answer the game becomes constricted and you need things to make more sense; suddenly everything needs to make sense. I'm not ready to do that; I think there's something to be said for it - something to be said for nailing that down - but it would really kind of invite things like multi-tile creatures and stuff that I'm just not ready to do. There are some good things about multi-tile creatures; I think they'd be kind of cool. But path finding would need to be changed heavily, and there'd be other issues with them. Would they be too easy to kill for example by hiding off somewhere that they can't get to and shooting at them or whatever; so they'd need to be smart enough to avoid situations like that which might be difficult. So that's kind of one of the main problems - the large creatures - why I haven't established a number yet.

[...]

Capntastic:   Will you be able to climb things in the future, like climb a dragon and punch its brain?
Toady:   There's the issue with ... It's a question of multi-tile creatures partially - which is a difficult problem - but just the fact that there's the wrestling, and even without multi-tile creatures you've got things like groundhogs that can currently jump up and bite your eyes. That's one of the problems I'm having when I was doing my groundhog tests: twenty versus a guy with a knife, who wins? If the groundhog problem is solved, which it needs to be solved - not for this release most likely but at some point - then that means that that same thing will happen to you when you're fighting a giant creature. I think it would be cool to jump up on things, beyond just Shadow of the Colossus it's a common thing in Ray Harryhausen stuff and so on. So with the large creatures I think it'd be really cool to jump up on them and climb them and swing from them and so on. It wouldn't be as dramatic visually of course as Shadow of the Colossus but it certainly would be a lot of fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on May 14, 2013, 10:20:00 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 14, 2013, 08:10:50 pm

Massive mountains are fair game, but multi-tile creatures may never make it in
 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html)

Well, not with that attitude  :(

But seriously, from the quotes you gave us it seems there's still a lot of hope. Granted, it won't happen anytime soon... maybe if Toady get's around doing a complete pathfinding overhaul. I am willing to bet Toady is crazy enough to muscle a feature like that in the game, even if it takes years and makes him half mad in the process. Remember Z levels? Was it not a major change similar in scope?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 14, 2013, 10:30:07 pm

What version number is the upcoming release likely to be? THe current is 0.34.11, is the next like 35 or 36?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on May 14, 2013, 11:18:38 pm

Quote from: Trif on May 14, 2013, 07:28:18 pm

There was a bit of discussion on the DF Talks #5 and #8.

I think they also talked about gravity altering artifacts at some point.

It seems like the general idea is to make laws of physics randomizable, probably moddable. That would most likely result in gravity changing as you dig deeper, as well as curvature being important on dwarf planets.

Thanks!  Have tried to listen to as many past DF Talks as possible since I started playing at the beginning of February (started listening at the most recent one and have gone backwards from there), but haven't gotten that far back yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 15, 2013, 12:03:17 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 14, 2013, 10:30:07 pm

What version number is the upcoming release likely to be? THe current is 0.34.11, is the next like 35 or 36?

Prolly going to be 38.
Or so they say.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 15, 2013, 12:16:05 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 15, 2013, 12:03:17 am

Prolly going to be 38.
Or so they say.

Thank you :3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 15, 2013, 01:25:45 am

Sorry for so many post, but in the future with random civ factors, can there be more than a few non-eurocentric features such as sachems or other things?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 15, 2013, 03:41:26 am

On the subject of multi-tile creatures, there is quite a bit of variability in how bad the pathfinding becomes depending upon how general you would like "multi-tile" and "paths" to be.  If your multi-tile creatures are all cubes, then it isn't so bad.  These problems and more all come up with boats and seige-engines and moving fortress components, which we know are planned features, so the idea that those concepts might be applied to creatures isn't so far-fetched. 

The AI issue is somewhat less certain, though there are already situations now where no path exists between two creatures and the AI doesn't know what to do about it, so perhaps it isn't as large an issue as it seems. 

Regardless, it is all a very very long way off. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 15, 2013, 04:21:35 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 15, 2013, 01:25:45 am

Sorry for so many post, but in the future with random civ factors, can there be more than a few non-eurocentric features such as sachems or other things?

You can already mod your raws so that the human leaders are called this way, because I haven't found anything else that jumps to my mind when thinking about sachems. Not to diss native cultures of any kind, but remember that Dwarf Fortress is, at its still developing heart, a generic fantasy generator. I think that, as soon as spheres for biomes, civilizations and magic (to a lesser extent) get some flesh on their layout, then we might see some random stuff as feathered snakes soaring above jungle canopies, magic carpets or people that eat their dead relatives as a cultural custom and a way of burial, none of that being quite euro.

Toady has said in a few FotF regarding this release that non-humans will steadily get further away from their stereotyped cultural trappings, shaping some of their own. Some day, as the example was laid, we'll have something akin to mongol raiders, in the form of human raiders, so that could be an answer of sorts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 15, 2013, 10:00:12 am

It was my understanding that while the fantasy races (dwarves, elves, goblins etc...) will become more alien compared to human cultures, they would also tend to have less variability and humans will become the entity that has clear distinctions and high variability between civilizations.
e.i; three dwarf civilizations will more than likely all be nearly identical except some variations in law and tradition and religious practices, but three human civilizations might share little in common with one-another besides being designed to suit human physiology and needs.

These variable civilization concepts won't be showing up any time soon I'd wager. Toady will want to make sure the basics for all possibilities for civilizations are covered before giving the RNG the go-ahead to toss them in a blender.

And yeah we'll also be seeing the same with magic and sphere-related biomes at some point, but again Toady can't flesh them out until they're functioning and have the potential for high degrees of variation on a basic level, and there are tons of other neat things to look forward to that might come before them. I can't freaking wait for them, though. Interactions are already so much fun to play with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 15, 2013, 10:05:16 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on May 14, 2013, 10:30:07 pm

What version number is the upcoming release likely to be? THe current is 0.34.11, is the next like 35 or 36?

We could also try to guesstimate it based on which parts of the dev page Toady could green/purple out after the release. Likely to be horribly inexact, of course.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

From Adventurer Role: Hero//Villains:
Tracking information from hunting needs to apply to following these groups: I guess that could be greened out. (1)
Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play: Purple. It's started, but no way complete. (1.5)
Succession and succession struggles: Purple. (2)
Villain groups can include degenerates harassing people in towns: We've got those. Green (3)
Better opening explanation of the surrounding situation in your home town: In. Presumably can be greened (4)
Megabeast reproduction can be greened as well, I should note - it's already in the game. Maybe purpled if there's more to be done.

From Adventurer Role: Hero//Your followers:
Being able to take along aggrieved people for a time if you are seeking justice for them: Purpled, I guess. We'll get to incite rebellions, I think that counts. (4.5)
Expansion of personality system to support more value-judgment-based properties such as bravery vs. cowardice/apathy/recklessness: Purple, maybe. Depends on how far Toady got with the personality rewrite so far. (5)
Better morale failures: Green I guess? (6)

From Adventurer Role: Hero//Capturing people alive and interrogations:
Non-lethal fights, AI understanding the difference and the possible escalation to actual combat: Green, certainly. (7)
Sneaking mechanics: In, with its two sub-points (9)

From Adventurer Role: Hero//Combat flow:
Reaction moments and controllable counter-strikes/movement chances: Green. (10)

From Adventurer Role: Hero//Mounts:
Combat move/speed split: Green (11)
Movement speeds, turning and inertia: Green (12)

From Adventurer Role: Thief//Bounties and being hunted:
You should leave tracking information and it should keep track of the last many people you have talked to: Purple. You can be tracked (12.5)
Entity warriors and other adventurers should follow your tracking information: Purple as above (13)

From Adventurer Role: Treasure Hunter//Adventure sites:
Existing town-style sites should be updated as possible (dwarf fortresses, etc.): Green, definitely (14)

From Adventurer Role: Treasure Hunter//Movement:
Ability to climb in adv mode: Green (15)
Ability to jump in adv mode: Green (16)

From Basic Adventure Mode Skills//Hunting/tracking animals:
Everybody leaving trails of information that can be tracked with the appropriate skill: That one's green. The rest of the stuff I'm not so sure. (17)

From Basic Adventure Mode Skills//Growing crops:
Ability to harvest plants: Green, I'm pretty sure. (18)

While we're here, I guess "Eggs, chickens and associated objects" should be green as well, since we've got those things.

What can we make of that? I we assume that each bullet point is worth 1/4 for the version number (remember, it's no longer the static one core, +1 to version number), we're landing at 38 1/2 or thereabouts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 15, 2013, 02:17:45 pm

Apparently this is the place to post questions I'm curious about. 

I did a little searching and noticed that some plans for the future are to have NPCs that give detailed directions and to have animals that leave tracks, for the purposes of hunting.  This is GREAT and I believe that it definitely adds realism but I was wondering just how far I could expect these features to go.  Specifically, I was wondering if there are plans to ever get rid of that quest compass in the upper left corner completely.  So, paraphrased, I guess here's my question:

Do you intend, at some point, to completely phase out that upper-left quest pointer and replace it with more realistic ways to find quest targets, as in signposts, discernible landmarks, NPCs that give detailed directions, NPCs that leave tracks, and a compass as an inventory item?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 15, 2013, 02:24:33 pm

Quote from: Hamsmagoo on May 15, 2013, 02:17:45 pm

Apparently this is the place to post questions I'm curious about. 

I did a little searching and noticed that some plans for the future are to have NPCs that give detailed directions and to have animals that leave tracks, for the purposes of hunting.  This is GREAT and I believe that it definitely adds realism but I was wondering just how far I could expect these features to go.  Specifically, I was wondering if there are plans to ever get rid of that quest compass in the upper left corner completely.  So, paraphrased, I guess here's my question:

Do you intend, at some point, to completely phase out that upper-left quest pointer and replace it with more realistic ways to find quest targets, as in signposts, discernible landmarks, NPCs that give detailed directions, NPCs that leave tracks, and a compass as an inventory item?

One of THE things coming in this update is that NPCs no longer know exact positions of lairs, so there's that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 15, 2013, 02:43:30 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 15, 2013, 02:24:33 pm

Quote from: Hamsmagoo on May 15, 2013, 02:17:45 pm

Apparently this is the place to post questions I'm curious about. 

I did a little searching and noticed that some plans for the future are to have NPCs that give detailed directions and to have animals that leave tracks, for the purposes of hunting.  This is GREAT and I believe that it definitely adds realism but I was wondering just how far I could expect these features to go.  Specifically, I was wondering if there are plans to ever get rid of that quest compass in the upper left corner completely.  So, paraphrased, I guess here's my question:

Do you intend, at some point, to completely phase out that upper-left quest pointer and replace it with more realistic ways to find quest targets, as in signposts, discernible landmarks, NPCs that give detailed directions, NPCs that leave tracks, and a compass as an inventory item?

One of THE things coming in this update is that NPCs no longer know exact positions of lairs, so there's that.

 :D Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.  Sorry I missed it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 15, 2013, 04:06:00 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 03, 2013, 11:04:15 pm

Toady, who was that oversized dwarf on stage with you in iceland?

Judging from the description of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ78m-Kq1dM) and from this article (http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/The-Professor-And-His-Pixel-Prince), he's Goddur, an Icelandic graphic designer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 16, 2013, 07:53:01 am

And if Goddur hasn't been added to the list of Dwarven names, it needs to be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 16, 2013, 08:48:30 am

Quote from: Mr S on May 16, 2013, 07:53:01 am

And if Goddur hasn't been added to the list of Dwarven names, it needs to be.

Can't you do that yourself in the raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 16, 2013, 09:01:39 am

Of course!  But it'd be nice to see it made official  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Porpoisepower on May 16, 2013, 10:19:30 am

Will the raws ever bee converted to XML?  Just Curious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 16, 2013, 10:28:26 am

Quote from: Porpoisepower on May 16, 2013, 10:19:30 am

Will the raws ever bee converted to XML?  Just Curious.

If the raw format ever changes substantially, it will probably be to something that's more like a scripting language, which isn't XML's strong suit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 11:05:57 am

I'm not a modder but from what I've seen and heard, a lot of the raws would benefit from being a combination of XML and XSLT, because XSLT is a prebuilt and more flexible way to reuse data to allow for things like creature body plans and variations on the same creature. But that kind of thing would require Toady to be knowledgeable in XSLT, which he isn't, as far as we know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 16, 2013, 11:11:01 am

Frankly, I see neither benefit from nor need for a change to XML. All it seems to me to do is cause the raws to be less readable and be slightly larger in file size, and require a good-sized rewrite of the parser. Not familiar with XSLT, I'd need to read up on that first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 11:27:07 am

XSLT is an XML based language for transforming XML.

The raws would be more readable, because all fields would have a name, but the file-size would surely be bigger.

It would require a big rewrite, that's true. The problems that it would solve are already solved in a DF specific way. It's a better solution, IMO, but not worth the cost of switching.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 16, 2013, 11:42:27 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 15, 2013, 04:06:00 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 03, 2013, 11:04:15 pm

Toady, who was that oversized dwarf on stage with you in iceland?

Judging from the description of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ78m-Kq1dM) and from this article (http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/The-Professor-And-His-Pixel-Prince), he's Goddur, an Icelandic graphic designer.

Oh my god, I just watched that video finally, and he has the most amazing accent ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dbuhos on May 16, 2013, 11:49:43 am

Will breath attacks/gaseous stuff disrupt the viewing field of creatures ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 16, 2013, 11:51:12 am

Quote from: Dbuhos on May 16, 2013, 11:49:43 am

Will breath attacks/gaseous stuff disrupt the viewing field of creatures ?

Greened it for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DireWolf64 on May 16, 2013, 12:38:09 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 16, 2013, 11:42:27 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 15, 2013, 04:06:00 pm

Quote from: Japa on May 03, 2013, 11:04:15 pm

Toady, who was that oversized dwarf on stage with you in iceland?

Judging from the description of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ78m-Kq1dM) and from this article (http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/The-Professor-And-His-Pixel-Prince), he's Goddur, an Icelandic graphic designer.

Oh my god, I just watched that video finally, and he has the most amazing accent ever.

You really think so? that is just the blunt, sharp (and kinda boring way) us icelanders speak english

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Porpoisepower on May 16, 2013, 01:02:54 pm

Quote from: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 11:27:07 am

XSLT is an XML based language for transforming XML.

The raws would be more readable, because all fields would have a name, but the file-size would surely be bigger.

It would require a big rewrite, that's true. The problems that it would solve are already solved in a DF specific way. It's a better solution, IMO, but not worth the cost of switching.

I don't know if it would be that big of a re-write, it's not like Toady would be required to write his own XML parser. I do think that xml validation, can be helpful, especially to modders. 

Depending on the XML parser used it may be more efficient than whatever it is that Toady is parsing files  with currently.  (And that will likely be an unnoticeable difference during world gen etc...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 16, 2013, 07:15:19 pm

im pretty sure the tarn brothers and many other people, me included, deem more content and bugfixing more important than work on something that doesnt really need work, so i think there wont be any xml stuff in the "near" future. for the far future, toady will probably cook up something else for the raws which is tailored to the game and modding and stuff and therefore superior to a solution that is not custom made. so my conclusion: probably no xml ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 16, 2013, 07:37:13 pm

With the latest work, exactly how much is left on the to-do list? With creatures having their vision fogged, will this affect their behaviour when invading sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 16, 2013, 07:42:53 pm

This next release shall be beautiful...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 08:47:36 pm

Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 16, 2013, 09:31:30 pm

Quote from: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 08:47:36 pm

Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?

If not for this release, then I would guess that since creatures will now by default be as blind as the player is, it will open up the possibility of legitimate species or caste-specific night vision and fog-vision. I'd suspect bogeymen, night trolls and cavern beasts to be the first candidates for things like this.
It's going to be awesome either way, and be more balanced for players in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 17, 2013, 12:03:06 am

Vampires have "blood vision" next version, so that seems likelyish.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 17, 2013, 02:49:29 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 16, 2013, 09:31:30 pm

Quote from: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 08:47:36 pm

Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?

If not for this release, then I would guess that since creatures will now by default be as blind as the player is, it will open up the possibility of legitimate species or caste-specific night vision and fog-vision. I'd suspect bogeymen, night trolls and cavern beasts to be the first candidates for things like this.
It's going to be awesome either way, and be more balanced for players in adventure mode.

I was thinking more of owls. Creatures with magic vision are nice, but realistic normal creatures are more important in this, IMO.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on May 17, 2013, 04:55:44 am

Quote from: King Mir on May 17, 2013, 02:49:29 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 16, 2013, 09:31:30 pm

Quote from: King Mir on May 16, 2013, 08:47:36 pm

Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?

If not for this release, then I would guess that since creatures will now by default be as blind as the player is, it will open up the possibility of legitimate species or caste-specific night vision and fog-vision. I'd suspect bogeymen, night trolls and cavern beasts to be the first candidates for things like this.
It's going to be awesome either way, and be more balanced for players in adventure mode.

I was thinking more of owls. Creatures with magic vision are nice, but realistic normal creatures are more important in this, IMO.

Cats should have pretty strong night vision too. It'd be perfect if night vision was a raw-controllable number that you could use to specify how many tiles a creature can see at night

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 17, 2013, 07:37:31 am

I am so delighted to see that it was only 6 days between "Time to get re-aquainted with the stealth and vision arc code" to "well, that went well, let's move on to tracking, shall we?"

I'm not frothing at the bit for the next release, only a healthy amount of anticipation.  The joy for me in this is watching development moving along at a satisfying pace, and having the privelidge to share that process with the creators.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 17, 2013, 07:52:36 am

I find it funny how the development is moving so fast and yet the 1.0 is planned for 2038 or so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 08:28:22 am

Will the vision arcs and night/dark impairment and all that apply to Fortress Mode? Will this mean that we are also getting light sources for this release (maybe in some crude form at least)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 17, 2013, 09:05:48 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 08:28:22 am

Will the vision arcs and night/dark impairment and all that apply to Fortress Mode? Will this mean that we are also getting light sources for this release (maybe in some crude form at least)?

Can't comment on vision arcs, but day/night cycles and light sources in Fortress Mode would be a big deal and we'd have heard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 11:16:58 am

What I mean, is that if fog or other conditions impair your vision, maybe Toady also includes some kind of artificial "light" sources, as in carrying a torch would help seeing in the night/fog. At least on adventurer mode.

An hypothetical example:
Vision on regular sunny day: 20 tiles
Vision on regular night :10 tiles
Vision on regular night carrying a lit torch: 15 tiles

Or maybe for the next release? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 17, 2013, 11:28:33 am

On creatures with multiple heads and vision:
An artist I watch has a critter (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9889606/) where each head has its own personality and outlook on the world (decent description on that page).  While likely out of scope for DF (hydras having one mind per brain rather than one mind total), I was wondering if it would be possible to specify in the RAWs different levels of vision on each head (e.g. one head can see in the dark, the others can't) and how the vision system would handle that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on May 17, 2013, 11:51:36 am

Quote from: Draco18s on May 17, 2013, 11:28:33 am

On creatures with multiple heads and vision:
An artist I watch has a critter (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9889606/) where each head has its own personality and outlook on the world (decent description on that page).  While likely out of scope for DF (hydras having one mind per brain rather than one mind total), I was wondering if it would be possible to specify in the RAWs different levels of vision on each head (e.g. one head can see in the dark, the others can't) and how the vision system would handle that.

For that matter, which heads would keep watch?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 02:56:18 pm

All of them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 17, 2013, 04:16:54 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 02:56:18 pm

All of them?

They all have to sleep some of the time. But maybe not at the same time. And dragons have been known to sleep with one eye open.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 04:32:57 pm

Hey just like me!

On all the fog thing, my whole torchlight and that digress make me think, would we be able to see things like torches, bone fires, candles and all that even from beyond our vision field, if such field is limited? I mean, if you are in a forest and all is dark you might not be able to see that bear 20 meters away, but you could still see that bright camp fire two kilometers away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 17, 2013, 04:38:17 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 04:32:57 pm

Hey just like me!

On all the fog thing, my whole torchlight and that digress make me think, would we be able to see things like torches, bone fires, candles and all that even from beyond our vision field, if such field is limited? I mean, if you are in a forest and all is dark you might not be able to see that bear 20 meters away, but you could still see that bright camp fire two kilometers away.

Problem is, as Toady alluded to in this thread, currently only the adventurer starts campfires, and they are the only man made light source. Giving the adventurer the ability to see their own fires from a distance doesn't add much. When other lighting is added, such an effect would be more important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on May 17, 2013, 05:03:29 pm

The question has been asked, though, if we're getting lighting added to the game at the same time we're getting improved vision realism.

It does, also, allow you to leave a trail of bread crumbs. Which is nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 17, 2013, 05:32:35 pm

You mean !!bread crumbs!!.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 17, 2013, 06:46:09 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 11:16:58 am

What I mean, is that if fog or other conditions impair your vision, maybe Toady also includes some kind of artificial "light" sources, as in carrying a torch would help seeing in the night/fog. At least on adventurer mode.

An hypothetical example:
Vision on regular sunny day: 20 tiles
Vision on regular night :10 tiles
Vision on regular night carrying a lit torch: 15 tiles

Or maybe for the next release? :P

The lighting arc was planned to be last, but at this rate it may well come up next. It may be a requirement for the army stuff.... or even for getting taverns working properly.

So dwarves and light. I know lighting isn't in the game yet, but when it does go in, how screwed will we be if we lack a source of light to use while digging? Do you intend dwarves to have a kind of "darkvision" which allows them to see in darkness out to a reasonable distance, or will they have similar trouble in darkness?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on May 17, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

To the best of my recollection, in D&D, dwarves (and elves) have infravision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 17, 2013, 08:11:18 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 17, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

To the best of my recollection, in D&D, dwarves (and elves) have infravision.

What did they have in Lord of the Rings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 08:27:25 pm

Oh... just saying, it would make sense for them to have better night vision, be it infrared capacity, bigger iris for more light intake or whatever one can come up with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 17, 2013, 08:50:59 pm

Maybe cave adaption won't be exclusively negative in future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 17, 2013, 08:52:52 pm

Quote from: DG on May 17, 2013, 08:50:59 pm

Maybe cave adaption won't be exclusively negative in future.

That actually sounds pretty neat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 17, 2013, 08:59:28 pm

Infrared-vision does not help underground. You would see other beings (maybe) but wouldnt see walls or objects. Left out in a cave or tunnel the walls, ground ,your objects etc. would quickly go to a equalized temperature. Its like a snow-white Pony in the snow.

Nightvision in tech works normaly by amplyfing signal (and noise by either lengthening exposure or combining charges) which doesnt work if you have no source for a signal which generates enough contrast. That or you keep a IR source near by, say a couple of IR-LEDs, those light bounces of an object/being and sets of your photocells.

Echolocation is a bit better i think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on May 17, 2013, 10:17:11 pm

Quote from: Heph on May 17, 2013, 08:59:28 pm

Infrared-vision does not help underground. You would see other beings (maybe) but wouldnt see walls or objects. Left out in a cave or tunnel the walls, ground ,your objects etc. would quickly go to a equalized temperature. Its like a snow-white Pony in the snow.

If it gets implemented, we'll just have to build more constructions and items out of nether-cap :-)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 17, 2013, 10:56:05 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 17, 2013, 08:11:18 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 17, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

To the best of my recollection, in D&D, dwarves (and elves) have infravision.

What did they have in Lord of the Rings?

Shit vision.

In the Hobbit, the dwarves actually end up figuring out that Bilbo has better low-light vision. And Elves of course are even better yet. Though in Lord of the Rings and partially implied in the Hobbit, dwarves have a natural sense when in mines/caves which helped Gimli find his way around a cave in Helm's Deep. (Which sounds more or less like what dwarves already do. Granted Gimli wasn't much help in Moria... which like Battlefailed and Failcannon is really big and filled with multiple paths to everywhere and nowhere which ultimately break the dwarves' natural pathing algorithm.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 18, 2013, 01:31:55 am

"Shhh... my cave sense is tingling!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 18, 2013, 08:09:24 am

That's a crundle without a valid path to us. Run!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will dwarves ever be able to non-panic when something doesn't have a path to it?[

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 11:17:43 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

Quote from: EmeraldWind on May 17, 2013, 10:56:05 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 17, 2013, 08:11:18 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on May 17, 2013, 08:09:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 17, 2013, 07:30:09 pm

One would think that Dwarves, being underground beings mostly, would have a far better vision than your ordinary human. However they still should require certain levels of light to do certain things.

To the best of my recollection, in D&D, dwarves (and elves) have infravision.

What did they have in Lord of the Rings?

Shit vision.

In the Hobbit, the dwarves actually end up figuring out that Bilbo has better low-light vision. And Elves of course are even better yet. Though in Lord of the Rings and partially implied in the Hobbit, dwarves have a natural sense when in mines/caves which helped Gimli find his way around a cave in Helm's Deep. (Which sounds more or less like what dwarves already do. Granted Gimli wasn't much help in Moria... which like Battlefailed and Failcannon is really big and filled with multiple paths to everywhere and nowhere which ultimately break the dwarves' natural pathing algorithm.)

Quote from: Heph on May 17, 2013, 08:59:28 pm

Infrared-vision does not help underground. You would see other beings (maybe) but wouldnt see walls or objects. Left out in a cave or tunnel the walls, ground ,your objects etc. would quickly go to a equalized temperature. Its like a snow-white Pony in the snow.

Nightvision in tech works normaly by amplyfing signal (and noise by either lengthening exposure or combining charges) which doesnt work if you have no source for a signal which generates enough contrast. That or you keep a IR source near by, say a couple of IR-LEDs, those light bounces of an object/being and sets of your photocells.

Echolocation is a bit better i think.

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 18, 2013, 01:31:55 am

"Shhh... my cave sense is tingling!"

So for the most part, dwarves may have a poor ability to work underground without a light source.

Following to both Toady and players:
Lighting. So dwarven embark wagon arrives at a location, they have no source of light. They have embarked on a tropical savannaha, so there are few or no trees. Obviously, dwarves can dig out an area open to the sky and have no problem with lighting, but what are the limits with working? Do you think dwarves will get better vision underground over time as they become cave adapted, so initially they would be forced to stay close to the surface, but later on they would be able to work better underground? Would exposure to the Sun rapidly wipe out their underground bonuses, or would they become light-adapted over time? Would dwarves living underground for very long periods of time (i.e. years on end) have any other effects from cave adaptation besides being able to work normally in light-less conditions, and vomiting out in the Sun? If arrays of mirrors to reflect sunlight underground are possible and built, will this cause dwarves illuminated by such mirrors to vomit?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on May 18, 2013, 11:58:54 am

Toady's talked about lighting etc. in DF Talks, but they're not going in this release. I think it's another one of those "we'll get around to it one of these days, but it isn't on the current planning board."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 18, 2013, 02:59:03 pm

Yeah, I asked mostly about now that you have vision arcs and ranges what are the chances of having some item or something else affecting the limits and ranges of your vision, not proper lighting.

Oh, on the other hand, will helmets and such affect the arc of sight?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 18, 2013, 03:04:52 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 18, 2013, 02:59:03 pm

Yeah, I asked mostly about now that you have vision arcs and ranges what are the chances of having some item or something else affecting the limits and ranges of your vision, not proper lighting.

Oh, on the other hand, will helmets and such affect the arc of sight?

There must be greeen!

I'd imagine that if vision range under poor lighting conditions is ever changeable in the raws, we'd be able to make interactions or syndromes that change it to make items or powers that affect it. Night-eye potions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 09:10:50 pm

New devlog update. I know we probably won't get another FotF reply before the release, but:

Do clouds do anything besides cosmetic effect?

Has there actually been a change with the way liquid water (not water as a contaminant) boils when it gets hot enough?

Is the Arena going to have anything other than placeholder rock for material? For example, make the walls and floors out of smooth obsidian?

Is foggy weather going to appear in fortress mode in the coming release?

Have you made changes to vision underground, and if so how will that work without lighting being in the game?


Next up: Site and tree finalisations and release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 18, 2013, 09:21:43 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 09:10:50 pm

New devlog update. I know we probably won't get another FotF reply before the release, but:

No, the release is still at least a few months away. Toady generally does FotF at the end of the month.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 18, 2013, 09:34:04 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 09:10:50 pm

New devlog update. I know we probably won't get another FotF reply before the release, but:

I think we can expect at least one more FotF update.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 09:10:50 pm

Do clouds do anything besides cosmetic effect?

In the current release's Adventure Mode, cloudy weather restricts the sight radius (and darkens the palette, I think).

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 18, 2013, 09:10:50 pm

Is the Arena going to have anything other than placeholder rock for material? For example, make the walls and floors out of smooth obsidian?

The devlog mentioned "grass, dirt or sand".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 19, 2013, 09:02:12 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 18, 2013, 09:34:04 pm

The devlog mentioned "grass, dirt or sand".

Saw that. I meant are these things going to be made out of some "placeholder" material like rock (what rock?), grass, dirt, or sand, or will there be an option to use things in the raws? i.e. use limestone for rock, use bubble grass for grass, use fire clay for dirt, and use white sand for sand?

Example: Modded fire grass is really hot, you can specify the arena grass to be fire grass, and see whether it actually sets things on fire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on May 19, 2013, 11:32:59 am

IF the new stealth rules in adventurer mode also apply to fortress mode, did anyone else note that we now have a good reason to mow the front lawn? Crossing a bare drawbridge or empty paved courtyard outside while being observed would be the hardest feat. Forts that like to have grass, shrubs, and trees everywhere would be a security risk. MAYBE anyone next to a wall gets a boost to stealth, even if it normally wouldn't make sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 19, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Well, if vision arcs also take effect in fortress mode, our watch animals might not even be looking the right direction at any given time. Still, getting through a hallway full of dogs would be more difficult because you can't just rely on legendary ambusher skill to make you utterly invisible even as you climb over the top of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 19, 2013, 01:15:15 pm

Will combat ever include things like deliberately slamming someone's face into the ground, as opposed to that happening by chance when they are thrown?

I hope one day we can play this game as some awesome combination of masked luchadore and kung-fu master. Then I could make a Wuxia/lucha themed story thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 19, 2013, 01:40:05 pm

"Ever" is such a long time... but it seems to be planned.

Quote

Bloat141, WRESTLING MOVES AND MORE INTERFACE, (Future): Lifts, impalements, smashing into terrain, disarms, throat-slitting, etc. Much more wrestling. Make graspers and the most common moves appear at the top of the interface list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on May 19, 2013, 03:02:15 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 19, 2013, 11:48:22 am

Well, if vision arcs also take effect in fortress mode, our watch animals might not even be looking the right direction at any given time. Still, getting through a hallway full of dogs would be more difficult because you can't just rely on legendary ambusher skill to make you utterly invisible even as you climb over the top of them.

This brings up an interesting point.  Dogs and many other animals rely more on smell and hearing for detection than they do on sight.  Will senses other than sight eventually be taken into consideration in determining whether a sneaking being is revealed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 19, 2013, 03:33:36 pm

Yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on May 19, 2013, 07:30:27 pm

The long-ago-posted sneaking vids had a hearing interface (little yellow blotches/question marks popping up around where you heard someone walking).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on May 19, 2013, 08:02:03 pm

Quote from: Sunday on May 19, 2013, 07:30:27 pm

The long-ago-posted sneaking vids had a hearing interface (little yellow blotches/question marks popping up around where you heard someone walking).

And Vampires had a 'bio sense' that worked through walls 'n stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 19, 2013, 08:12:30 pm

Quote from: Sunday on May 19, 2013, 07:30:27 pm

The long-ago-posted sneaking vids had a hearing interface (little yellow blotches/question marks popping up around where you heard someone walking).

Though, have we heard whether certain species (dogs, cats, elves maybe?) are better at hearing than others?

How does vampiric bloodsense interact with fortress mode sneaking- will a dwarf vampire always be aware of enemies trying to sneak up on him?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aquathug on May 20, 2013, 07:43:27 am

Give dwarves with a high kill count better social skills so they make more friends.

That way more people get pissed off when they die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pisskop on May 20, 2013, 08:33:37 am

I want to see intra-species conflict, or co-operation.  Dwarves in worldgen sometimes declare on civs at the same time, but usually only to kick the dog when its down, not help one another.

I would also like to see the diplomat play a larger role.  Say in setting migrant numbers or something.  Telling him not to encourage immigration would be cool.  Or conversely to try to encourage it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 20, 2013, 08:38:19 am

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 18, 2013, 08:09:24 am

That's a crundle without a valid path to us. Run!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will dwarves ever be able to non-panic when something doesn't have a path to it?

I'm going with "No" on this one, in general, because it is very difficult to determine, at a glance, whether something has absolutely no way of getting to you.  From an immersion standpoint, it just wuldn't make sense to see dwarves actively considering another creature's pathfinding algorithm results in play.

In specific, it may make sense for dwarves to not consider enemies as a threat under certain circumstances.  The classic example is goblin invaders scaring away your ballista operators who are on the fortress side of a fortification, with a locked door, accessible only via a drawbridge inside the fortress, through a trap corridor, that paths through a barracks,........

There may be a time where if a dwarf can see, in their own line of sight, that they are in no danger, that they may not react.  That's not likely to be in the next release.

Toady has stated that there are threat assessment and threat escalation mechanics in the next release.  So some effects that would be considered a partial solution to these issues MAY be in the next release.  I say "may be in" because there will be changes; however, a player may or may not consider it a fix to their favorite/reviled Dorfy behavior.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 20, 2013, 08:53:35 am

A "quick" solution would be to make siege engines operators not to scare if they see enemies trough a fortification, make them scare only if they see them in a "obstacle free" line. However is unknown how many work would actually be involved in such thing, hence the "quick". Implementing a propers "strap a pair" system may even end up being easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: toboo123 on May 20, 2013, 12:53:44 pm

With the new combat system in, how much will it effect how competent each creature is in combat, will it only make creatures with extra limbs or heads more powerful, or will it change creatures across the board. I ask this because I've been making a sort of VS. mode to be played in arena where you buy units and pit them against each other and I want to know how much I'm gonna need to change things to update it when the new release comes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 20, 2013, 01:09:29 pm

It is kind of ridiculous for them to get scared of creatures smaller than themselves which are standing at the bottom of a hole, and thus obviously have no way to reach them. Seeing a crundle through a stairwell, several dozen feet below, and flipping out gets a little ridiculous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pisskop on May 20, 2013, 01:19:44 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 20, 2013, 01:09:29 pm

It is kind of ridiculous for them to get scared of creatures smaller than themselves which are standing at the bottom of a hole, and thus obviously have no way to reach them. Seeing a crundle through a stairwell, several dozen feet below, and flipping out gets a little ridiculous.

Could they be 'conditioned' to not being afraid, somewhat similar to 'doesn't care about anything anymore'?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 20, 2013, 03:16:38 pm

"Well, I was headed down to the butcher's shop with that bear when I saw- gulp- a wild fox! It must have been only a hundred yards away! Naturally I dropped what I was doing and fled for the hills. So, basically, I'm sorry about the mauling."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aquathug on May 20, 2013, 03:25:39 pm

There have been countless times when my haulers would run away from a goblin's finger or eyelid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 20, 2013, 04:07:25 pm

Or a goddamn crippled raccoon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dame de la Licorne on May 21, 2013, 06:04:50 am

Hi all,

First off, I haven't had time to play DF in almost a year, but I've been keeping up with the devlogs and this thread, and the new update looks awesome!

Second, some context.  I typically like to play generation forts, of the type "you are the last of your civ..." and so I have a couple of questions related to that.  While I fully anticipate either "this hasn't changed" or "no timeline"-type answers, I thought I'd ask anyway since they seem somewhat related to the births/marriages/deaths part of the current development cycle.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

So the questions:
1) Have you (or are you still thinking about or planning to change this release) the seemingly artificial age limit for dwarf marriages in fort mode?  I ask because up through the 0.31 releases, dwarves in fort mode would only get married if they were less than ten years apart (yes, I did a lot of embarking starting with the initial 3D releases to test this once I identified the problem), but marriages generated during world-gen would have spouses with 20-30 year age differences.  I haven't played the 0.34 releases other than to familiarize myself with the new minecart systems when they first came out, so I don't know if it is still the case in that release.  But I do spend far two much time save-scumming during the first few seasons to get the right mix of ages and genders for all of the dwarves to pair off (again, I like generation forts with no new immigrants).  While this is probably a minor nuisance (if that) for most players, it will probably become a far bigger concern depending on the start scenarios (yes, I know those aren't planned for the near-term future, but at some point they will be implemented and Toady will have to think about things like this eventually). 

2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis.  Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?

And now I'm going to sit back and see if Footkerchief's sentient search engine can point me to the answers to those questions.   :P

Yours,
-Dame de la Licorne

Edit: Fixed typos and clarity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 21, 2013, 07:37:35 am

Quote

2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis.  Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?

And if this "second chance" happened while the first is still alive...then a cheated wife taking her adamantine spear to confront her husband and his new dwarfriend could be !!FUN!!, indeed :p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pisskop on May 21, 2013, 07:42:33 am

Datost Channelhammers the Liquid Thunder of Quaking cancels seeking infant babyshield: gone Lizzy Borden.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 21, 2013, 08:18:27 am

Quote from: Inarius on May 21, 2013, 07:37:35 am

Quote

2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis.  Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?

And if this "second chance" happened while the first is still alive...then a cheated wife taking her adamantine spear to confront her husband and his new dwarfriend could be !!FUN!!, indeed :p

And now for some statistics:
Adultery occurs in about 30% to 60% of the population* (in the real world).
Adultery in monogamous birds is at about 15%.

*Cheating on a spouse at some point in any given married individual's entire life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 21, 2013, 10:09:51 am

Birds don't live as long as people do, nor do they have complex social structures. It'd be more fair to compare humans to other primates, though I don't have those numbers on my desk right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 21, 2013, 06:33:48 pm

The species of birds that are monogamous (mainly parrots) live about 50-60 years.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 21, 2013, 07:15:06 pm

Modern statistics may also be colored by the availability of contraceptives, which eliminate a major consequence of adultery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 21, 2013, 07:47:02 pm

Are we going to see some performance upgrades with the coming release, or as the coming release is updated in short order?

It sounds like the game is going to be tracking a lot more now.

Now that creatures leave tracks and we will not have trampled grass, will grass grow in mountain regions?

Latest devlog mentions that tracks disappear when spatter vanishes.
Is there a way to clear spatter and contaminents up now in fortress mode (i.e. clean command in "designate")?
Do tracks get handled as contaminants?
What kind of graphics are used for tracks and broken grass?

Quote from: Dame de la Licorne on May 21, 2013, 06:04:50 am

Hi all,

First off, I haven't had time to play DF in almost a year, but I've been keeping up with the devlogs and this thread, and the new update looks awesome!

Second, some context.  I typically like to play generation forts, of the type "you are the last of your civ..." and so I have a couple of questions related to that.  While I fully anticipate either "this hasn't changed" or "no timeline"-type answers, I thought I'd ask anyway since they seem somewhat related to the births/marriages/deaths part of the current development cycle.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

So the questions:
1) Have you (or are you still thinking about or planning to change this release) the seemingly artificial age limit for dwarf marriages in fort mode?  I ask because up through the 0.31 releases, dwarves in fort mode would only get married if they were less than ten years apart (yes, I did a lot of embarking starting with the initial 3D releases to test this once I identified the problem), but marriages generated during world-gen would have spouses with 20-30 year age differences.  I haven't played the 0.34 releases other than to familiarize myself with the new minecart systems when they first came out, so I don't know if it is still the case in that release.  But I do spend far two much time save-scumming during the first few seasons to get the right mix of ages and genders for all of the dwarves to pair off (again, I like generation forts with no new immigrants).  While this is probably a minor nuisance (if that) for most players, it will probably become a far bigger concern depending on the start scenarios (yes, I know those aren't planned for the near-term future, but at some point they will be implemented and Toady will have to think about things like this eventually). 

2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis.  Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?

And now I'm going to sit back and see if Footkerchief's sentient search engine can point me to the answers to those questions.   :P

Yours,
-Dame de la Licorne

Edit: Fixed typos and clarity.

Are we going to see a general update on relationships in the near future (i.e. as the current release gets worked on after release) and how they occur, for example in entity or creature raws?

Case study: Dwarves remarry in certain circumstances. Massive revival (or massive intelligent undead) incident occurs, bringing dwarves back to life. What happens in that situation to dwarves who have remarried after being widowed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 21, 2013, 08:18:25 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 21, 2013, 07:47:02 pm

Are we going to see a general update on relationships in the near future (i.e. as the current release gets worked on after release) and how they occur, for example in entity or creature raws?

Case study: Dwarves remarry in certain circumstances. Massive revival (or massive intelligent undead) incident occurs, bringing dwarves back to life. What happens in that situation to dwarves who have remarried after being widowed?

We're definitely going to see updates on relationships and personality, but it may not come for a while yet.

And of course a dwarf that remarries prior to their previous spouse being raised form the dead will be beaten to death by their ex-spouse. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 22, 2013, 12:50:25 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 21, 2013, 06:33:48 pm

The species of birds that are monogamous (mainly parrots) live about 50-60 years.

Well, monogamy is actually not that rare among birds, there's many species other than parrots. Mind you, I can't give a lot of examples, nor do I know how long those ones typically live, so your point might still be valid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 22, 2013, 01:26:30 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on May 21, 2013, 10:09:51 am

Birds don't live as long as people do, nor do they have complex social structures. It'd be more fair to compare humans to other primates, though I don't have those numbers on my desk right now.

As far as primates go studies have actually shown that the amount of adultery in a species is linked to the size of the testes. Gorillas for example have (iirc) the smallest testes relative to their size, since they have a secure harem to mate with and the chance of being able to sneak in and mate with a foreign group is relatively low. Chimpanzee on the other hand have really large testes relative to their size and other primates, and adultery is common in their societies. The reason is obviously that the more sperm they can inject into as many females as possible the greater the chance that the female will bear their child. Whereas the gorilla is relatively safe with carrying a smaller load since there's not much of a risk that anyone but him would mate with any in his harem.

Finally, humans have testes that are somewhere in these extremes in size and one can as such draw the conclusion that adultery is relatively common in humans but not completely widespread. If Dwarves were to follow this pattern we thus only need to measure the size of their testes compared to their size to be able to come up with a hypothesis about how common adultery is in dwarf society ^^


(I'm retelling this from something I read a few years back, but I'm fairly sure I remember it correctly :P )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on May 22, 2013, 03:54:48 am

I don't want to know any more about how you spend your leisure time  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 22, 2013, 07:53:36 am

UristMcJealous bashes Urist Mcbigtestes in the lower body with her bronze hammer, shattering the balls !
The bronze hammer has lodged firmly in the wound !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 22, 2013, 08:21:15 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on May 22, 2013, 01:26:30 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on May 21, 2013, 10:09:51 am

Birds don't live as long as people do, nor do they have complex social structures. It'd be more fair to compare humans to other primates, though I don't have those numbers on my desk right now.

As far as primates go studies have actually shown that the amount of adultery in a species is linked to the size of the testes. Gorillas for example have (iirc) the smallest testes relative to their size, since they have a secure harem to mate with and the chance of being able to sneak in and mate with a foreign group is relatively low. Chimpanzee on the other hand have really large testes relative to their size and other primates, and adultery is common in their societies. The reason is obviously that the more sperm they can inject into as many females as possible the greater the chance that the female will bear their child. Whereas the gorilla is relatively safe with carrying a smaller load since there's not much of a risk that anyone but him would mate with any in his harem.

Finally, humans have testes that are somewhere in these extremes in size and one can as such draw the conclusion that adultery is relatively common in humans but not completely widespread. If Dwarves were to follow this pattern we thus only need to measure the size of their testes compared to their size to be able to come up with a hypothesis about how common adultery is in dwarf society ^^


(I'm retelling this from something I read a few years back, but I'm fairly sure I remember it correctly :P )

I remember from an anthropology class in college that the gorilla penis is all of 2 inches long.  Poor guys.
But I hadn't heard that particular research before.

Anyway, my only point was that adultery rates should be largely consistent with what we see elsewhere, and it has zip to do with social laws that we--as a sentient society--have created.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 22, 2013, 09:11:16 am

It's a interesting one, the case of study above. However I think that in the case of a ex-spouse rising from the dead the least of the worries of the surviving one would be the jealousy it's resurrected loved one might feel for it's current spouse. It would be at least a lot less than the urges of it's undead ex-partner of eating its brains.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 22, 2013, 02:32:45 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 22, 2013, 09:11:16 am

It's a interesting one, the case of study above. However I think that in the case of a ex-spouse rising from the dead the least of the worries of the surviving one would be the jealousy it's resurrected loved one might feel for it's current spouse. It would be at least a lot less than the urges of it's undead ex-partner of eating its brains.

Ironic to say "above" given it's the first post of the page.

OT:
How much can the fog visibility be reduced? Up to the extremely dense, only being able to see 1 tile? Can one go completely blind in the fog?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 22, 2013, 08:30:36 pm

Quote from: Inarius on May 22, 2013, 07:53:36 am

UristMcJealous bashes Urist Mcbigtestes in the lower body with her bronze hammer, shattering the balls !
The bronze hammer has lodged firmly in the wound !

I totally want to put this in my sig.

Personally, I think that adultery should be left out of dwarf fortress, I don't feel that it would add anything meaningful to the game, and would only give people a reason to dislike it from the outside, the same reason that Toady has stated he won't put in urine and feces to the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 22, 2013, 08:37:47 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 22, 2013, 08:30:36 pm

Personally, I think that adultery should be left out of dwarf fortress, I don't feel that it would add anything meaningful to the game, and would only give people a reason to dislike it from the outside, the same reason that Toady has stated he won't put in urine and feces to the game.

What about two dwarves falling asleep in the same bed? Actually, speaking of sleeping...
Will we ever see dwarves sleeping on the job by choice, in replacement of 'lol numbers say sleep now'? Because we all need to sleep most when we're working!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 22, 2013, 08:42:55 pm

Well culture surely superimposed some constraints on human society. There are some societies where having multiple wives (f.e. if Islam influenced) or just plain swapping and swinging is the Norm or atleast not frowned upon. 

 Bonobos as an primates also tend to solve social tension with Sex and like to "have fun" with each other.

Also adultery, Wifestealing etc makes good and mayor plot-hooks. take the Nibelung saga or even stuff from the Bible etc. 

---

Will Smoke, Steam, mist, evil clouds etc. also block line of sight?

Will clothing help with hiding? A red robe on a glacier wont be the best camouflage.

Have weather and climate an influence on tracks? Like rain washing away tracks or conversely tracks in try but not particularly sandy areas staying longer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 22, 2013, 09:03:07 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 22, 2013, 08:30:36 pm

Quote from: Inarius on May 22, 2013, 07:53:36 am

UristMcJealous bashes Urist Mcbigtestes in the lower body with her bronze hammer, shattering the balls !
The bronze hammer has lodged firmly in the wound !

I totally want to put this in my sig.

Personally, I think that adultery should be left out of dwarf fortress, I don't feel that it would add anything meaningful to the game, and would only give people a reason to dislike it from the outside, the same reason that Toady has stated he won't put in urine and feces to the game.

I must disagree strongly. For one thing, Dwarf Fortress has far better reasons to be disliked than a common dramatic element. Incredibly detailed gore, for instance. If you aren't mature enough to enjoy the drama of personal relationships, then you certainly wouldn't be able to hand the terror and savagry of combat.

And let's not forget, Dwarf Fortress' denizens already maim and kill each other for such things as cutting down trees. It's absurd to completely remove a much better reason for interpersonal conflict simply because it's offensive (indeed, mildly offensive, all things considered).

It's like suggesting that Counter-Strike remove the presence of knives, because they're potentially deadly if you stab someone with them. The guns are fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 22, 2013, 09:12:01 pm

Knives and guns are both weapons.

The most blood and gore can get a game is an M rating, but push relations too far and you get an AO. Not that indie games must bend to the likes of ESERB, but people in general are more uncomfortable with sex than violence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 22, 2013, 09:44:33 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 22, 2013, 09:12:01 pm

Knives and guns are both weapons.

The most blood and gore can get a game is an M rating, but push relations too far and you get an AO. Not that indie games must bend to the likes of ESERB, but people in general are more uncomfortable with sex than violence.

Sad but true.

That said, I'm still super in favor of adultery (in game, not in general) as a great (and historically accurate) motivation for people to kill each other. It's harder to have all the crazy royal love triangles leading to massive pointless bloody conflicts without some adultery to spice it up (e.g Lancelot vs King Arthur)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 22, 2013, 10:37:25 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 22, 2013, 09:44:33 pm

That said, I'm still super in favor of adultery (in game, not in general) as a great (and historically accurate) motivation for people to kill each other. It's harder to have all the crazy royal love triangles leading to massive pointless bloody conflicts without some adultery to spice it up (e.g Lancelot vs King Arthur)

Psh, love triangles.  Come back when it's a pentagon, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 22, 2013, 10:42:03 pm

I couldn't come up with any bigger love polyhedrons off the top of my head! Or any other love triangles, honestly, but my brain assures me that this is a True History Fact despite not having any citations for this knowledge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 22, 2013, 10:48:58 pm

Get some Houses and Clans in there, and you get Love Dodecahedrons. Especially once you get the night trolls involved...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 23, 2013, 12:01:51 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 22, 2013, 10:48:58 pm

Get some Houses and Clans in there, and you get Love Dodecahedrons. Especially once you get the night trolls involved...

DF is complex enough without adding in three other quadrants of romance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 23, 2013, 12:15:57 am

Quote from: Bronze Dog on May 23, 2013, 12:01:51 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 22, 2013, 10:48:58 pm

Get some Houses and Clans in there, and you get Love Dodecahedrons. Especially once you get the night trolls involved...

DF is complex enough without adding in three other quadrants of romance.

Is that even romance anymore? I think that once it starts to involve clubs and claws that's where you draw the line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 23, 2013, 03:13:31 am

That's not romance, but Toady already mentioned he intends to involve family feuds and other such intra- and inter-family politics at some point. I'm going to bet adultery will be a thing eventually, when there's nothing better to do or to add another thing for adventurers and overseers to handle, but you know Toady will handle the adultery itself in a PG-rated manner. Even if the things that become of said lecherous curs is more R-rated. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on May 23, 2013, 03:50:27 am

By the way, does anyone know if grazing animals will be fixed in the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 23, 2013, 05:08:30 am

A loves B, B loves C, C loves D, D loves E......Z' loves A''....

looks like a lot Moon Patrol, here :)

I don't see why adultery couldn't be in the game.

Not detailled sex (it would be quite ...gruesome), but love already exists in the game with mariage and making children.
Just an abstract love. (X is in love with Y). I don't see why this would be AO.


And a dwarf could have bad thoughts when seeing a loved one with another people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 07:15:47 am

Well "adultery" in the game doesn't have to be strictly sex related. I mean, we could have adultery and left the whole sex part out, just like now we have baby making/spawning without the sex too. That way we could have excellent drama and history hooks without fear of offending people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 23, 2013, 09:06:09 am

We could do that, but I think straying away from something relatively innocent such as sex (I only say relatively because there are variants of sex, adultery being but one of them, that can be seen as less innocent) for such reasons would be a shame. But then, I'm the type of player who wishes urine and feces would be added too, as well as discrimination, racism, sexism, and all that politically incorrect stuff. I guess I like realism in my fantasy worlds. Perhaps one of these days, I should try a mod or something, despite my preference of sticking to vanilla.

Anyway, I can understand leaving out racism and such things, but I still hope sex can be slightly less abstracted in the future, although of course it still doesn't need to be graphic at all. Just simulate it slightly more realistically -- you don't need to get descriptions of it akin to the combat descriptions that are currently in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 10:03:47 am

Well as sex, as the act itself is out of the game (and I think it will stay that way), adultery could be handled simply by pairing a entity already married with another one by series of factors like proximity, likes, attractiveness (on the eye of the beholder of course) or whatever, and then applying a probability of actually being unfaithful, and then yet another probability of getting caught.

I too would like to have urine and feces added, or at least a general liquid and solid "waste" or trash at least, that way we would need to make plumbing and the opportunity of manure and yet another whole industry opens up too, but meh, DF is just as awesome as it is, and there are a ton of more important things that do are going to be implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 23, 2013, 10:10:55 am

I believe that those wastes have been added already, technically.  I forget the exact name, but there's materials in the game already with names like "brown filth" and "yellow filth."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 23, 2013, 10:36:55 am

And, more disturbing, the "unknown substance"

As for prejudice, it's planned I believe, and it's already simulated to an extent by having races go to war over differing cultural values.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 10:44:38 am

I dream of making public baths for dwarves and have the finest sinks and bathtubs for the most useful nobles. <.<

In all seriousness, having plumbing and some workshops requiring running water could make an interesting turn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 23, 2013, 10:47:00 am

You can already make plumbing. There are pumps and you can dig tunnels to use as pipes.

EDIT: Just thought of something. If necromancers can get noticed for not aging, shouldn't it take longer for people to notice if the Necromancer was already elderly to begin with? People who live a long time but also look old probably wouldn't attract as much attention.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on May 23, 2013, 11:29:32 am

There's three things that I really think people need to keep in mind when it comes to any kind of self-censoring in Dwarf Fortress:

1: Liberal Crime Squad. And the subgames, just consider I'm Voting For Myself, if nothing else. Anything DF does won't be breaking new ground by a long shot.

2: Dwarf Fortress will never be a mass market game. Eliminating features because someone might be offended is not a reasonable response.

3: MOMA calls Dwarf Fortress a piece of modern art. Who are we to argue? And since when has art of any era shied away from the coarser, more vital parts of life?

Dwarf Fortress has no reason to be limited by the small-minded blue-nosed Thomas Bowdlers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bowdlerise) of the world.

Incidentally, don't look for the Subgames.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 23, 2013, 12:07:08 pm

Agreed completely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on May 23, 2013, 12:11:09 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 07:15:47 am

without fear of offending people.

Considering nature of this game and what already is in, I can only laugh histerically at this sentence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 12:23:54 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 23, 2013, 10:47:00 am

You can already make plumbing. There are pumps and you can dig tunnels to use as pipes.

Yeah, but that's more like aqueducts that proper plumbing with pipes.

As for my phrase that make you laugh so hard .auditor, perhaps I chose poorly my words, I should have say "with Toady being comfortable". Since, in the end he's the one that have spoken against introducing feces and urine in  the game out of, among other reasons, making people feel uncomfortable and/or offended.

As for violence goes, we have many, MANY games on the market with "higher" levels of explicit gore than Dwarf Fortress, all within a varying degree of rates from teen to mature by the powers that be (and that I couldn't care less for their non-asked opinions).

But how many games do we have where your characters take a dump and then you can proceed to do a series of stuff with the turd?

Even considering the art status of Dwarf Fortress (something I can't deny, as I think is a masterwork even in it's current alpha state), we can't simply toss aside that for one, it's still a game, and two, ultimately the game (and we) are subject to what Toady thinks is okay and appropriate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 23, 2013, 12:49:17 pm

An aqueduct is plumbing on a grand scale. DF has proper plumbing with pipes alright, they're just large, sewer-sized pipes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 23, 2013, 01:14:13 pm

I tend to think in simpler terms: Toady will add what he thinks will be fun. Or !!FUN!!

I can understand the architects who want another aspect of fortress design to work with. I can understand the people who want romantic interaction between creatures. If Toady decides against adding those things, I hope that somewhere down the line, modders will be able to insert those things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dame de la Licorne on May 23, 2013, 01:15:18 pm

Hello all,

While reading the interesting adultery/cheating discussion that my second question apparently spawned, I realized that you all were taking it in a completely different direction than I had intended.  Then again, knowing the community, somehow I'm not at all surprised.  However, I intended the question to relate to the possibility that (some?) bereaved dwarves would eventually gain another lover/spouse (not the possibility that they would do so while their spouse/lover was still alive...).

And incidentally, with the recent devlogs which seem to indicate that ToadyOne is going through the pre-release finalizations, and given his recent predilection (at least for the last few big feature releases) for releasing the big ones on holidays, I anticipate a July 4th release (Independence Day for those of us in the USA).   :P

-Dame de la Licorne

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 23, 2013, 02:47:58 pm

If we get adultry, do we get incest?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 23, 2013, 03:08:59 pm

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 23, 2013, 02:47:58 pm

If we get adultry, do we get incest?

I cannot reply to this in any method that won't get strange looks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 23, 2013, 03:21:38 pm

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 23, 2013, 02:47:58 pm

If we get adultry, do we get incest?

This may already be in. Can first cousins get married?

It can go in, as a method for succession in entity raws. There is a very high chance of that happening sometime. There are some far, far more disturbing things with relationships that already happen.

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 23, 2013, 12:49:17 pm

An aqueduct is plumbing on a grand scale. DF has proper plumbing with pipes alright, they're just large, sewer-sized pipes.

Dig out an intake for water from a brook, stream, river, or aquifer, and then dig a 1-tile downward stairwell. Dig branches off the pipe to where you need. Flood pipe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 03:28:56 pm

As far as the plumbing goes, I was thinking more along the lines of pipes being able to be placed/designated inside the walls/floors and bring small, not drowning-inducing quantities of water from one point to another in order to your dwarves use things like proper fountains, fancy bathrooms and other things. Maybe a water clock furniture that needs to be placed on a tile with and adjacent water pipe running or something like that.

Or am I going too far with the reality emulation? Do they had pipes on buildings in the 1500's? I know Romans did have pipes

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 23, 2013, 03:33:40 pm

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 23, 2013, 02:47:58 pm

If we get adultry, do we get incest?

I think Toady mentioned that there was a bug regarding inbred Kings being replaced by thier inbred heirs.

As for the whole adultery thing, if it is put in, I would at least like for there to be an ethic that can control it, so that for people like me that are very against it, we can set it to off. At least for Dwarves, we could always use more excuses to hate Goblins.

If/When adultery is put in the game, will it be controlled by an ethic option?
This would also allow for even more reasons for different races to hate each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 03:38:57 pm

Yes, yes, let the hate flow through you! ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on May 23, 2013, 03:43:12 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 03:38:57 pm

Yes, yes, let the hate flow through you! ;)

I'm going to sig this now, thank you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on May 23, 2013, 03:49:15 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on May 23, 2013, 03:33:40 pm

If/When adultery is put in the game, will it be controlled by an ethic option?

Almost everything will be raw controlled, eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 23, 2013, 05:01:05 pm

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 23, 2013, 02:47:58 pm

If we get adultry, do we get incest?

We actually already get some degree of intra-family romance. I found someone in adventure mode who said "such and such is my son. He is also my cousin." I couldn't get them to reveal who the hell they married, however.

Toady, will we be able to track ourselves in adventure mode? As in backtrack to find that place in the woods where we fought those bandits and forgot to pick up our backback and put it back on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 23, 2013, 05:34:37 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 03:28:56 pm

As far as the plumbing goes, I was thinking more along the lines of pipes being able to be placed/designated inside the walls/floors and bring small, not drowning-inducing quantities of water from one point to another in order to your dwarves use things like proper fountains, fancy bathrooms and other things. Maybe a water clock furniture that needs to be placed on a tile with and adjacent water pipe running or something like that.

Or am I going too far with the reality emulation? Do they had pipes on buildings in the 1500's? I know Romans did have pipes

Pipes have been around for a long time. Yes, the Romans had pipes, and the ballista was a Roman weapon. I think we can be pretty liberal with the cutoff time for additions. That's going to be the case with moving fortress parts.

Pipes will almost certainly be used for bathrooms, sinks, pools, fountains, submersible gates, and hydraulics, which would exist in more sophisticated fortresses. You'd have to embed them in walls somehow though - relatively easy on the surface when you can just dig up a trench, install pipes, and then fill it up again, but a harder underground.

The good thing about having the huge 1-tile wide pipes we have now is dwarves can walk through them when reasonably drained. These pipes are great places to hide rooms or storage chambers, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nicolo on May 23, 2013, 08:52:54 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 23, 2013, 10:03:47 am

Well as sex, as the act itself is out of the game (and I think it will stay that way), adultery could be handled simply by pairing a entity already married with another one by series of factors like proximity, likes, attractiveness (on the eye of the beholder of course) or whatever, and then applying a probability of actually being unfaithful, and then yet another probability of getting caught.

I'm all for adultery because the idea of watching dwarfs in fortress get into disputes that are resolved by the hammerdwarf is what dwarf fortress is all about.  Also lots of epic conflict in literature, starting with the Iliad onwards. In general there's not enough internal conflict among dwarves for my liking.

A good opener for the fabled 'Army Mode' would be say a travelling merchant running off with the noble consort and the noble mandating the return of their wife/husband until you roll out with a troupe and retrieve them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 24, 2013, 06:02:00 am

Hi all, I haven't been around the forums for ages, so forgive me if I'm asking stuff that's been already asked.

I had a sort of daydream last night about playing DF in adventure mode, but instead of heading out of town on a quest, I bought a house in town and became the local hunter. I would go out into the woods each day, track some wildlife, shoot one or two, then bring it back to town.  Then I would sell the carcass to the butcher, and spend the money on replacement equipment, food and drink for myself, and socks of course. Occasionally I would go to the town tavern for a drink, and I got into a relationship with a girl there and we fell in love and were married.  She moved into my home and we had children. I became a respected member of the community and was eventually elected mayor, where I enacted a few laws, raised a small levy on trade and sat in judgement over some minor crimes.

So the question is, how much of the above is possible in the upcoming release of the game, and will it all eventually be possible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 24, 2013, 06:12:08 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 24, 2013, 06:02:00 am

I had a sort of daydream last night about playing DF in adventure mode, but instead of heading out of town on a quest, I bought a house in town and became the local hunter. I would go out into the woods each day, track some wildlife, shoot one or two, then bring it back to town.  Then I would sell the carcass to the butcher, and spend the money on replacement equipment, food and drink for myself, and socks of course.

This will be possible in the next release, except for owning property.

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 24, 2013, 06:02:00 am

Occasionally I would go to the town tavern for a drink, and I got into a relationship with a girl there and we fell in love and were married.  She moved into my home and we had children. I became a respected member of the community and was eventually elected mayor, where I enacted a few laws, raised a small levy on trade and sat in judgement over some minor crimes.

Retired adventurers can get married, but not while you're playing (yet). All of this is planned for the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 07:07:45 am

The goal is that eventually you'll be able to do all that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 24, 2013, 10:21:23 am

Quote from: Trif on May 24, 2013, 06:12:08 am

This will be possible in the next release, except for owning property.

That's very awesome! I love the idea of playing as an ordinary townsperson in a town on the fringe of a war, and coming back from hunting one day to find it occupied by gobbos...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hamiltonz on May 24, 2013, 10:44:45 am

On Plumbing:
I like the idea of treating large pipes in much the same way as axles.  Junctions could be more complicated than placing gears but that is fine.  It would be great for liquids and dwarves to use the same passageways.  There would need to be a 'solid wall with a pipe' section, much like the impassible square of the screw pump.  It is currently possible to form obsidian in a square containing an axle and the axle continues to work just fine.  This 'solid wall with a pipe' would also need a sister 'solid floor with drain' for completeness.

Indoor Plumbing:
Toilets and sinks could be treated the same way as levers, in that the ends get linked and the in between stuff just sort of happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 11:31:01 am

I was thinking more of pipes like in the way mine tracks or even smoothing or engraving works right now, you designate the construction and some dwarf comes along with the pipes and embed them to the wall or the floor.

As for things like toilets and such working as mechanisms, I have to confess I never liked the way mechanics (levers and doors) works right now, with the ethereal or wifi connection between them,  are we ever going to be required to connect mechanisms on a more realistic way, kind of like axles works to connect machines?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on May 24, 2013, 12:43:50 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 11:31:01 am

... I have to confess I never liked the way mechanics (levers and doors) works right now, with the ethereal or wifi connection between them,  are we ever going to be required to connect mechanisms on a more realistic way, kind of like axles works to connect machines?

...or have some kind of scaffolding to ease the connection of (spike) traps? Connecting 30+ retracting spikes is a tedious job now, it could be made easier if we could designate a "scaffolding" underneath the spikes that we connect to the lever. The number of mechanism required should remain the same for balancing reason, but the number of connections that we have to issue manually would decrease. By a lot. Does it make sense?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 12:51:17 pm

Kind of like how a waterwheel would automatically power one (or series) of pumps build right beside it? It make sense, so long the required quantity of mechanisms depends on how many traps are together. But this should be an option, in case you just want to link the "third mechanism from left to right" or "only the first and the last" cases, in which the current system is perfect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on May 24, 2013, 01:19:28 pm

Hmmm, yes kind of like that. Just to clarify:

Since you cannot build 2 constructions on a tile, one way to implement it is to have the option to build either the traps that we have now(spike/weapon, etc), or build a scaffold that uses two mechanism/tile to build, connect to a lever/repeater and drive the traps. - When the scaffold is built you can assign weapons to it that get distributed automatically on the available tiles with the usual limits of 10 weapon/tile. The dwarfs would still need a lot of time to do the work, the amount of mechanism and weapons would remain the same, but it could be designated so much faster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 24, 2013, 01:33:46 pm

Quote from: fricy on May 24, 2013, 12:43:50 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 11:31:01 am

... I have to confess I never liked the way mechanics (levers and doors) works right now, with the ethereal or wifi connection between them,  are we ever going to be required to connect mechanisms on a more realistic way, kind of like axles works to connect machines?

...or have some kind of scaffolding to ease the connection of (spike) traps? Connecting 30+ retracting spikes is a tedious job now, it could be made easier if we could designate a "scaffolding" underneath the spikes that we connect to the lever. The number of mechanism required should remain the same for balancing reason, but the number of connections that we have to issue manually would decrease. By a lot. Does it make sense?

Quote from: fricy on May 24, 2013, 01:19:28 pm

Hmmm, yes kind of like that. Just to clarify:

Since you cannot build 2 constructions on a tile, one way to implement it is to have the option to build either the traps that we have now(spike/weapon, etc), or build a scaffold that uses two mechanism/tile to build, connect to a lever/repeater and drive the traps. - When the scaffold is built you can assign weapons to it that get distributed automatically on the available tiles with the usual limits of 10 weapon/tile. The dwarfs would still need a lot of time to do the work, the amount of mechanism and weapons would remain the same, but it could be designated so much faster.

Friendly reminder: suggestions go in the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0).  We'd all like feedback on our feature requests, but that's not what this thread is for.

The current trap system is slated to be completely replaced:

Quote from: dev page

Improved Mechanics
    Better traps
        Stone traps should require the stone be placed above the tile that is targeted
        Stones should be able to roll (perhaps if they are started from or land on a ramp tile)
        Weapon traps should be multi-tile and require a spring or other potential energy source -- automatic resetting should require some explicit establishment of a feasible mechanism
    Large pipe sections -- walk on them or crawl inside them, allow passage for fluids
    Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)
    Waterproof axles through some mechanism
    Rock grinders? Fans? We'll do some other machines around this time -- whichever feasible ones are the most entertaining for dwarves and treasure hunters

Quote from: DF Talk

Rainseeker:   Yeah, because, right now the way I defend against a siege is I ignore it, pretty much; [1b]I put up a bunch of traps and they all die, then they run away.
Toady:   Yeah, right now they're ridiculous. Just kind of a meat grinder simulator. Any time you've got people taking a core game mechanic and treating it like it's sort of an optional challenge - are you going to build traps or not, because then sieges matter, or they don't - that's something that needs to be fixed. It's always been the plan to fix that and there's a million different ways to do that that are all going to be coming up. After this big release we're going to work on making sieges better and a lot of the things you guys said are in the works, and more beside that. So there's the notion of nerfing traps because obviously they're a little overpowered right now, and how we'd do that ... probably just make more mechanisms necessary, more map tiles necessary, so you can't just make a trap, you'd actually have to create a trap from some more pieces. I don't know if there might be templates to make that an easier process but certainly just having a weapon trap existing in a square without having to put something in a wall or put something in a floor is kind of strange, and having a stone-fall trap exist in a square out in the middle of a room with no ceiling ... what does that even mean? Is it shooting up from the ground and then landing on top of them? It's kind of weird. So just changing that would be helpful [...]

[...]

Toady:   I think it's too easy in terms of attacks ... I'm not sure if attacks used to be any easier because traps have always been a spoiler for attacks and I think the main thing that's going to help there - and where I think that should be made more difficult - is in the difficulty of making traps, but not just the difficulty of making traps, but the fun of making traps. When traps are multi-tile, which is the main thing that's going to happen here, and you'll be able to think about and do many more horrible things ... they won't just be a little button that people step on and then die, but they'd be a button that people step on and then something is put into motion and then somebody dies, but then maybe it has to be reset every time or something, unless you've got a whole infrastructure invested to make it reset itself. But that should be something that you have to do, then it would be up to your own creativity in terms of defending your fortress, and we'll have to reevalute the difficulty level at that point. But if traps are larger, multi-tile, things, then they'd also be easier for people to stop once they've fallen for the first time because they could do things like dig through them or otherwise mess them up. There's the whole traditional notion of being able to disarm traps, and if siegers did that that would be quite a trouble, and it wouldn't even involve digging.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on May 24, 2013, 01:43:36 pm

Thx for that info Footkerchief, and sorry about spamming the wrong thread...
I heard some kind of nerf is coming to the traps, but didn't know the details. This is only a quick and dirty way to make our lives easier until a rewrite comes. I'll try my luck in the suggestion forum, maybe it's a low hanging fruit. Maybe not, The Great Toad will know. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 01:52:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 24, 2013, 11:31:01 am

I was thinking more of pipes like in the way mine tracks or even smoothing or engraving works right now, you designate the construction and some dwarf comes along with the pipes and embed them to the wall or the floor.

As for things like toilets and such working as mechanisms, I have to confess I never liked the way mechanics (levers and doors) works right now, with the ethereal or wifi connection between them,  are we ever going to be required to connect mechanisms on a more realistic way, kind of like axles works to connect machines? I mean the case of levers and doors/foodgates/traps/cages... where a wifi connection is made between them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on May 24, 2013, 04:30:30 pm

That quote from Toady makes me realize that stone-fall traps are already better simulated by a pressure plate below a trapdoor with a rock on it.  For the damage that kind of thing can do, the difficulty in set-up seems appropriate.  To me it seems like the game is going to evolve towards a state where there aren't really dedicated "traps" items, but rather just clever arrangements of dangerous goodies designed by the player.  If you have pressure plates and lever-controls, you can already do the job.  Some sort of mechanic where a cage landing on top of a creature has a chance to trap the creature in the cage would fill the "cage trap" role, and being able to link some kind of launcher like a ballista to a pressure plate would work for weapon traps.  Not sure if that's what Toady has in mind, but it sounds potentially along those lines. 

I would enjoy such a system.  Sieges being totally non-threatening is something that would be nice to resolve. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 10terrapin01 on May 24, 2013, 06:30:22 pm

I was wondering with combat divided up will we be able to mod ourselves to move fast enough to flash step?  If we are really fast, can we run up to someone, cut them to bits and re-sheath our sword before they even notice?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 24, 2013, 10:03:56 pm

Quote from: 10terrapin01 on May 24, 2013, 06:30:22 pm

I was wondering with combat divided up will we be able to mod ourselves to move fast enough to flash step?  If we are really fast, can we run up to someone, cut them to bits and re-sheath our sword before they even notice?

It sounds to me that we will definitely be able to define our movement speed and (in some manner) combat speed in the raws, so we'll probably be able to use a short-term interaction to do that. However, movement speed and combat speed aren't going to be the same now, so although you could run up to them extremely fast, take a swing and run back out of range again if you buffed your movement speed, you wouldn't necessarily be able to attack any faster than they would, so killing them might take the same amount of time as it would if you hadn't buffed your movement speed. You'd just be able to GTFO-of-there without needing to worry about them being able to chase you down.

Actually, maybe you wouldn't even be able to run back out of range before they struck you, because their movements also wouldn't occlude their ability to attack you anymore so even if they're standing still compared to you zooming around like a rocket they might be able to smack you the instant you're in range... Which I guess kind of sucks, but it's still better than them being able to outrun you and out-smack you at the same time, or being unable to perform both a move action and an attack at the same time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 24, 2013, 11:09:37 pm

If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?

When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 25, 2013, 12:32:07 am

Quote from: 10terrapin01 on May 24, 2013, 06:30:22 pm

I was wondering with combat divided up will we be able to mod ourselves to move fast enough to flash step?  If we are really fast, can we run up to someone, cut them to bits and re-sheath our sword before they even notice?

This is possible in the current version and will be fixed next version.

Technically, it'll still be possible next version, but in a different way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 25, 2013, 01:03:32 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 24, 2013, 10:03:56 pm

Quote from: 10terrapin01 on May 24, 2013, 06:30:22 pm

I was wondering with combat divided up will we be able to mod ourselves to move fast enough to flash step?  If we are really fast, can we run up to someone, cut them to bits and re-sheath our sword before they even notice?

It sounds to me that we will definitely be able to define our movement speed and (in some manner) combat speed in the raws, so we'll probably be able to use a short-term interaction to do that. However, movement speed and combat speed aren't going to be the same now, so although you could run up to them extremely fast, take a swing and run back out of range again if you buffed your movement speed, you wouldn't necessarily be able to attack any faster than they would, so killing them might take the same amount of time as it would if you hadn't buffed your movement speed. You'd just be able to GTFO-of-there without needing to worry about them being able to chase you down.

Actually, maybe you wouldn't even be able to run back out of range before they struck you, because their movements also wouldn't occlude their ability to attack you anymore so even if they're standing still compared to you zooming around like a rocket they might be able to smack you the instant you're in range... Which I guess kind of sucks, but it's still better than them being able to outrun you and out-smack you at the same time, or being unable to perform both a move action and an attack at the same time.

Well i guess you could even mod a potion/secret that does speed you up considerably or the opposite to throw upon your enemies. As it stands right now your movement-speed also factors into the equation so if you move at lightning speed punching somebody (unblockable with a weapon atm.) you could punch them to pieces (like DC flash (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OyPYa7SEI) without the unfortunate implacations)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nicolo on May 25, 2013, 01:47:50 pm

Hi Toady,

You've mentioned deep dwarves being different biologically then hill dwarves in the past; does this mean that dwarves will have a special 'cave adaptation' tag, the current cave adaptation tag will be expanded on, single creature entries can designate different properties depending on which biome the creature is located, or single entity entries will be able to assign different creatures according to different biomes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 25, 2013, 01:58:09 pm

Quote from: Nicolo on May 25, 2013, 01:47:50 pm

Hi Toady,

You've mentioned deep dwarves being different biologically then hill dwarves in the past; does this mean that dwarves will have a special 'cave adaptation' tag, the current cave adaptation tag will be expanded on, single creature entries can designate different properties depending on which biome the creature is located, or single entity entries will be able to assign different creatures according to different biomes?

Greened so it can be answered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 26, 2013, 01:23:55 am

Toady, how hard do you think it is to implement the fourth thing the in eternal suggestion voting (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php) (Full graphics support (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41266.0)) and how high is it in your priority list?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on May 26, 2013, 03:49:14 am

personally, im not really interested in the graphics support stuff (i will always play in ascii), with one exception: multi-z-level view (http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/~mayday/files/DF/surface.jpg).
i think this one thing would make multi-tile entities much more enjoyable (trees, creatures, vehicles, ...).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on May 26, 2013, 09:38:10 am

Quote from: eux0r on May 26, 2013, 03:49:14 am

personally, im not really interested in the graphics support stuff (i will always play in ascii), with one exception: multi-z-level view (http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/~mayday/files/DF/surface.jpg).
i think this one thing would make multi-tile entities much more enjoyable (trees, creatures, vehicles, ...).

I think even ASCII-like tilesets could benefit from "Full Graphics Support". In fact, if you think about how you would actually display lower elevations when you limit yourself to CP437, you're running into trouble pretty fast even if you'd add partial transparency. You still only have punctuation for floors, and between a 9 pixel period at 100% opacity and a 11 pixel comma at 70% opacity, there isn't much difference.
I experimented with some mockups a while back, and using decreasing opacity or overlaying with another color (blue, like in the mayday mockup, or grey or whatever) only really works well with solid ground like Phoebus/Ironhand/Mayday or Jolly Bastion and my own tileset use (though the current version of CLA with variable ground tiles having various shades already struggles with one layer in some situations).

An alternative would be to use the tiles #176-178 for decreasing elevation, but if you do limit yourself to CP 437 this leaves you with only 3 extra layers, 6 if you'd include brightness 1 and 0 for each (though I think at that point it becomes too difficult to distinguish). Or you use numbers from 1-9 to denote lower elevations, but I don't think this would look good.
My point is, it might be enough to use only CP437, but it would definitely be a limiting factor.

I wouldn't consider "Full Graphics Support" to mean "useful only for the most elaborate and diverse graphic sets", but rather "removing hardcoded limits".
With FGS realized, I would still use symbols from CP437 for most cases. It's just really important for the small subset of cases where the current implementation is very limiting (for example, bins, the cursor, up/down-stairs and creature status effects all using 'X').

This might be a bit too far away from "current development" and it might be a bit suggest-y, but it's sort of related:
Will we see the grid that limits embark zones (one tile in the middle map on the embark screen I mean) be removed at some point? That is, will we be able to embark in between/on two "embark grids"? And will the grid (of any resolution) be less apparent in the world?


EDIT: forgot some questions
Considering the multitile tree rewrite and that we've had new grass for a while now, will we see changes to shrubs or bushes in future versions as well? As in, will some of them cover multiple tiles or change in other ways?
Have any changes been made to worldgen regarding deforesting? I'm thinking of Humans deforesting in the surrounding areas to build their towns and make space for their fields.
Will we be able to use graphic sheets for plants like we can with creatures at some point?

EDIT2:removed question that has already been answered. Thanks Trif.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 26, 2013, 09:44:59 am

I will always play with ASCII graphics. But, Z level viewing seems really interesting.

I'm not against a better UI, too. I'm used to this one, but I think a simpler one could attract more players without lowering the quality(ies) of the game.
On the other hand, if that requires too much work, I would prefer that Toady work on something more useful/interesting. (such as priority number 2 & 9, speeding the game, or even N°7, abstract the complete interface to let other players do the work for him).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 26, 2013, 09:53:29 am

Quote from: CLA on May 26, 2013, 09:38:10 am

With climbing in adventure mode now, and creatures in the world being able to climb in a future version as well, will we see the return of more crass cliff faces?

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Quietust

Back in the old 2D versions, the "cliff face" was covered with a layer of "damaged" stone which couldn't be smoothed but could be dug away more quickly.
Will damaged stone be easier to climb? And if so, might the landscape generation be adjusted to create these again?

The whole idea of cliff faces and canyons is still waiting.  Climbing was the major obstacle to putting those back in the game, but we're still rampy right now.  I agree that most future cliff faces should use the damaged picture and be easier to climb.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 26, 2013, 01:54:26 pm

Quote from: eux0r on May 26, 2013, 03:49:14 am

personally, im not really interested in the graphics support stuff (i will always play in ascii), with one exception: multi-z-level view (http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/~mayday/files/DF/surface.jpg).
i think this one thing would make multi-tile entities much more enjoyable (trees, creatures, vehicles, ...).

Sure, but more than 800 people are. And FGS doesn't mean an advantage or change only to tilesets, you know, it would cause changes in ASCII too. Not to mention it's probably way easier to implement than multi-tile entities, so it could go in in a bugfix in between yearly releases.

Anyway, sorry for the off-topic.

Quote from: Inarius on May 26, 2013, 09:44:59 am

On the other hand, if that requires too much work, I would prefer that Toady work on something more useful/interesting. (such as priority number 2 & 9, speeding the game, or even N°7, abstract the complete interface to let other players do the work for him).

Speeding up the game (aka multithreading) is a considerable rewrite and Toady already said he is not entirely familiar how to do it, so it's less likely to happen and more hard (and will take more time) to implement. FGS in the other hand, as CLA said, is just a question of removing hardcoded limits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on May 26, 2013, 08:28:33 pm

What happens regarding the new combat and yielding during fortress mode sieges? First, do the invaders yield? If so, do they then retreat? What about the dwarves -- do they yield? If so, is it a military-only yielding, or fortress-wide?

Or are invasions/ambushes no-quarter?

Sorry if I missed this in a past WoT --- if he's already answered, I'll un-green it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 26, 2013, 09:48:15 pm

Apart from anything, adding graphics to what is a gruesome and violent game might bring some unwanted attention from the do-gooders out there.

For the moment, the only thing that can render the image of a 50-ballista minecart cannon being unleashed on two dozen goblins is a human imagination, and they are (currently) free from censorship.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 12:54:15 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 26, 2013, 09:48:15 pm

Apart from anything, adding graphics to what is a gruesome and violent game might bring some unwanted attention from the do-gooders out there.

Graphics meaning generally unchanging 2-dimensional tiles for things that (in this case) aren't creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 02:00:33 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 26, 2013, 09:48:15 pm

Apart from anything, adding graphics to what is a gruesome and violent game might bring some unwanted attention from the do-gooders out there.

For the moment, the only thing that can render the image of a 50-ballista minecart cannon being unleashed on two dozen goblins is a human imagination, and they are (currently) free from censorship.

You didn't read the FGS thread. If it's implemented, it will be as gory as it is now, it will not turn into GTA4: DF edition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 27, 2013, 02:02:16 am

In latest news, ADOM got full graphics support: http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2013/05/adom-120-prerelease-14-now-available.html

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 26, 2013, 09:48:15 pm

Apart from anything, adding graphics to what is a gruesome and violent game might bring some unwanted attention from the do-gooders out there.

Which would be awesome advertizement.

Or do you think it would hurt current playerbase and make them quit? Are there publishers that can drop this game and cut Creator off revenue? ERSP rating sticker that would hurt his sales?

Remember that moralilty trolls go for big names and sex, not smallname violence.

Quote from: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 12:54:15 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 26, 2013, 09:48:15 pm

Apart from anything, adding graphics to what is a gruesome and violent game might bring some unwanted attention from the do-gooders out there.

Graphics meaning generally unchanging 2-dimensional tiles for things that (in this case) aren't creatures.

Bigno.

Main goal should be to get rid of tile reuse - many tiles are simply too overused.

Seccond 256 character set/spritesheet would be incredibly helpfull. For example you can pick characters from this set: http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/charsets/fullset.htm

‡ - metal door
ю - amulet
Ξ - bin
ж - cave wheat
д - coffer

... they all look usefull for something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 02:10:10 am

Quote from: zwei on May 27, 2013, 02:02:16 am

Main goal should be to get rid of tile reuse - many tiles are simply too overused.

Seccond 256 character set/spritesheet would be incredibly helpfull. For example you can pick characters from this set: http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/charsets/fullset.htm

‡ - metal door
ю - amulet
Ξ - bin
ж - cave wheat
д - coffer

... they all look usefull for something.

You could even reuse them and leave as it, with FGS in DF you could leave the heavy lifting for the community to make.

EDIT:
Not to mention FGS becomes more important by the minute, with the addition of tracks and more elements in game. We could have unique tracks for every "size" of creature, making tracking way more intuitive. And that would be only the beginning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 27, 2013, 02:32:01 am

I don't want for DF to be graphic. Because whatever could be done, it would always be ugly. Whereas as it is now, I can still imagine what could it be. It's a sort of art, yes, and I think it's part of why it is now in a museum. Abstraction can be beautiful, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 02:39:13 am

Quote from: Inarius on May 27, 2013, 02:32:01 am

I don't want for DF to be graphic. Because whatever could be done, it would always be ugly. Whereas as it is now, I can still imagine what could it be. It's a sort of art, yes, and I think it's part of why it is now in a museum. Abstraction can be beautiful, too.

And you also didn't read it. FGS doesn't mean it will turn the game into a sprite based game, nor that it will use tilesets by default. It will continue with ASCII. You will just be able to assign more symbols to objects, preventing overusing symbols. And see multiple z-levels if that gets done, and possible more options.
How that is going to hurt your abstraction?

EDIT:
Besides, things would probably continue as they are. Modders would gain more options and everybody who loves the game the way it is could still have it, and people who would like less overusing of symbols could have it. It would make the game more flexible, it would not turn it into a isometric game with sprites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2013, 03:09:41 am

Quote from: zwei on May 27, 2013, 02:02:16 am

Main goal should be to get rid of tile reuse - many tiles are simply too overused.

Seccond 256 character set/spritesheet would be incredibly helpfull. For example you can pick characters from this set: http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/charsets/fullset.htm

‡ - metal door
ю - amulet
Ξ - bin
ж - cave wheat
д - coffer

... they all look usefull for something.

I for one would love the idea of actually having ϕ to denote my modded Phyrexians. It would be so awesome...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 03:21:50 am

you mean phirexians :3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2013, 03:37:52 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 03:21:50 am

you mean phirexians :3

I get your point, but Wizard Of The Coast got it first. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Phyrexia)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 03:41:42 am

I had no point, I just had to throw my pun to the wall and see if it sticks

i don't think it did

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 27, 2013, 04:27:39 am

Quote

How that is going to hurt your abstraction?

Sorry, i didn't understood well, it like this. I suppose then I support this :)
Thank you.
(-English is not my main language, not at all.- Yes, i have an excuse !)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2013, 05:32:17 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 03:41:42 am

I had no point, I just had to throw my pun to the wall and see if it sticks

i don't think it did

Please, leaf the baa-d puns to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on May 27, 2013, 05:42:51 am

Puns, hell. I thought for a second you said pyrexians; I was all excited for kitchenware golems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2013, 06:13:02 am

Quote from: smirk on May 27, 2013, 05:42:51 am

Puns, hell. I thought for a second you said pyrexians; I was all excited for kitchenware golems.

If they're not led by these, (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9oq9c23md1qi04ano1_1280.jpg) I'm not interested.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fifty points if you can tell which two are female. Good luck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 27, 2013, 07:47:54 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2013, 06:13:02 am

If they're not led by these, (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9oq9c23md1qi04ano1_1280.jpg) I'm not interested.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fifty points if you can tell which two are female. Good luck.

You didn't disqualify those of us who follow MtG... :evil: Φ is available, though I guess ϕ would be clearer.

Anyway, yes, an increase in the available tiles is sorely needed, something that Toady has said as well. I just wouldn't expect it any time soon, sadly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 27, 2013, 07:50:37 am

Quote from: zwei on May 27, 2013, 02:02:16 am

Main goal should be to get rid of tile reuse - many tiles are simply too overused.

Seccond 256 character set/spritesheet would be incredibly helpfull. For example you can pick characters from this set: http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/charsets/fullset.htm

‡ - metal door
ю - amulet
Ξ - bin
ж - cave wheat
д - coffer

... they all look usefull for something.

Having full unicode support would be even better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 27, 2013, 08:02:47 am

Relevant quote from DF Talk 10:

Quote from: Toady One

There's no more tricks in the bags, no more little characters in the bag. And so then you hit that point where you're like 'do you just go over to a tileset at that point? Do you experiment with Unicode stuff? If you add just a new IBM codepage r256 grid characters or whatever ...' If we add another grid of characters that look promising and just stick with that, that's kind of counterproductive in a way, because once you jump up beyond 256 you're free to move about the country at that point and go up to 65'000 or millions or whatever the rewrite entails. At the same time there's something to be said for the ASCII mode of the game, which I like because I can develop it quickly and I don't have to ... Zach and I drawing is not the same as other people drawing ... or maybe the problem is it's the same as other people drawing who aren't artists. And we can't use other people's tilesets without worrying about legal business, and more so not just legal business but ongoing development; if we've got a tileset then are there release delays when we wait for new pictures, or if a person drawing a tileset bails do we try and find somebody that can draw in the same style as they do, or does it become some kind of hellish hybrid of different art styles. It's difficult when we don't have an employee that we can employ for several years, or a person who will stick with the project. People stick with the project, like Baughn's been helping us for quite a long time, but what happens? If Baughn leaves, I do have some trouble with linux and mac support and so on, and other people can help with that, and I'm not sure graphics is the same way where someone can just step in and do the exact same thing, although artists are talented and there's probably someone who can do that, but I don't know if I can count on that or not. Then there's the legal question, I don't know how to do that properly; I have to make sure I can find someone I can trust who isn't going to lift a glyph from Nintendo without me noticing. So there're a lot of questions, it's not completely ruled out, but there're a lot of questions. The other method would be just to add another 256 characters if I don't just go with some Unicode font or something. And in a sense there's a charm at least with the vanilla, of adding just another 256 characters, because it's an extension that's required, but it still sticks within the same kind of poetic form. But there's going to be like seven people that agree with that assessment and a whole crapload of people that are like 'what the hell are you thinking?' So we're kind of there in a sense ... not super pressing at least, not anymore pressing than adding graphics to the game always was with running out of characters to display the information. But it's certainly already hit that wall in several places, and it's only filling it out more as time goes on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 08:25:03 am

Thanks for the quote, Knight Otu. That DF Talk is from some time ago, isn't?
Anyway, if Toady implemented unlimited character support for objects, Toady could still let things sharing symbols exactly as it currently is or just use new symbols for different things, it doesn't need to mean a full time artist doing things.

Anyway, isn't Baughn like vanished? Isn't that the reason that we don't have a  TTF bug fix?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 27, 2013, 08:31:49 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 08:25:03 am

Thanks for the quote, Knight Otu. That DF Talk is from some time ago, isn't?

Yeah, October 2010.

Baughn has actually been online in March according to his profile, even if his last post was in October 2012. I'm guessing he's either busy with work or waiting for the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 27, 2013, 08:57:19 am

Hmm... I know I just made this suggestion in the Suggestions thread, but how about horizontal and vertical flip attributes? Maybe even add a 90-degree rotation attribute (which only works if the tileset passes a square check)? You could even make the flips random for some naturally-occurring tiles such as grass and trees.

If that was implemented, there would be a lot more spaces opened up in the r256 image, especially since a lot of space is taken up by wall tiles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 27, 2013, 09:14:17 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on May 27, 2013, 08:57:19 am

Hmm... I know I just made this suggestion in the Suggestions thread, but how about horizontal and vertical flip attributes? Maybe even add a 90-degree rotation attribute (which only works if the tileset passes a square check)? You could even make the flips random for some naturally-occurring tiles such as grass and trees.

If that was implemented, there would be a lot more spaces opened up in the r256 image, especially since a lot of space is taken up by wall tiles.

If we go further, some tiles could be procedurally generated or altered.

All it could take is one-pixel displacement to create fresh look.

Also, I think that some aspects of gui should be completelly divorced from ASCII/Tiles (i.e. minimap)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 27, 2013, 09:45:21 am

Quote from: zwei on May 27, 2013, 09:14:17 am

If we go further, some tiles could be procedurally generated or altered.

All it could take is one-pixel displacement to create fresh look.

Also, I think that some aspects of gui should be completelly divorced from ASCII/Tiles (i.e. minimap)

The problem with that is that people who use certain tilesets won't be able to style those tiles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 27, 2013, 10:08:59 am

And why not a view "from the ground and from the inside" in aventure mode or in fortress (like in Dungeon keeper) ? But only in ASCII, with giant H moving around when you are playing with hamsters.
THAT would be fun :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 27, 2013, 04:22:48 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 02:00:33 am

You didn't read the FGS thread. If it's implemented, it will be as gory as it is now, it will not turn into GTA4: DF edition.

If you're going to chastise me for not being up to speed on your pet project, you probably ought to link to it. And assuming that every mention of the word 'graphics' automatically means what you want it to mean is pretty narrow sighted.

I used to play with tilesets, and isoviewer etc. After a while, they just get in the way.

IMHO, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 27, 2013, 04:27:37 pm

"His pet project" is the meaning of "Full Graphic Support" as understood by the entire community...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 05:49:06 pm

Quote from: Inarius on May 27, 2013, 04:27:39 am

Quote

How that is going to hurt your abstraction?

Sorry, i didn't understood well, it like this. I suppose then I support this :)
Thank you.
(-English is not my main language, not at all.- Yes, i have an excuse !)

No problem, mate. English is not my first language too, so I understand. I'm sorry if at any moment I was rude.

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 27, 2013, 04:22:48 pm

If you're going to chastise me for not being up to speed on your pet project, you probably ought to link to it.

And yet again you didn't read or pay attention, isn't? Look at my original post, I actually posted a link there that defines Full Graphics Support. Why wouldn't I do it?

Quote from: arkhometha on May 26, 2013, 01:23:55 am

Toady, how hard do you think it is to implement the fourth thing the in eternal suggestion voting (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php) (Full graphics support (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=41266.0)) and how high is it in your priority list?

I edited in this post so it becomes more, you know, evident. Be sure not to miss this time, please. Also, as Putnam pointed, this isn't my definition. It is some features defined in a post by Mayday and generally understood as that by the community. I posted the link with the word to avoid confusion. If I would pick some favorites to be implemented first it would be: -A separate symbol for every possible object/creature. -simultaneous view of a few z-levels.

Quote

And assuming that every mention of the word 'graphics' automatically means what you want it to mean is pretty narrow sighted.

The definition of full graphics support was in the link. It would avoid this confusion if it was read. If you want a good definition of graphics, here it is:
3. (computing) The pictorial representation and manipulation of data; the process by which a computer displays data.
Meaning: ASCII, Unicode, tilesets, pixels and polygons, anything could be displayed as graphics.

Quote

I used to play with tilesets, and isoviewer etc. After a while, they just get in the way.

I'm glad you found something of your preference. However, I must point out, as previous posts discussing FGS make clear, and seeing as your post imply you still didn't understand despite previous posts discussing the subject, FGS is not about tilesets, isoviewer or Third-Person cover-based shooters. Here, have an enlightening quote:

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 27, 2013, 07:50:37 am

Quote from: zwei on May 27, 2013, 02:02:16 am

Main goal should be to get rid of tile reuse - many tiles are simply too overused.

Seccond 256 character set/spritesheet would be incredibly helpfull. For example you can pick characters from this set: http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/charsets/fullset.htm

‡ - metal door
ю - amulet
Ξ - bin
ж - cave wheat
д - coffer

... they all look usefull for something.

Having full unicode support would be even better.

See, they are discussing more (just a few posts back!) ASCII, Unicode support, and you know, more possibilities for representing things in DF out of the hardcoded limit. Knight Ortu was even a dear and found an old DF talk post from 2010 where Toady said he wanted to do it, because symbols are becoming too overused.

I can understand reading "graphics" them jumping the gun, I totally can, it is an understandable error. That's why I implied you didn't read my post. That's why I said that "You didn't read the FGS thread" that was linked together with the post. So you could read it and resolve any confusion you had.
I'm sorry my question brought confusion, DF community. Next time, I will try to make things people might miss while reading through a post, or posts, like links and definitions, more clear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 27, 2013, 06:22:34 pm

Well, did any Eastern European computers from the 80s support two different r256 charsets - One for Latin characters, and another for Cyrillic/Eastern European characters?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 27, 2013, 06:24:36 pm

Coming on a little strong there, arkhometha. Yes, they missed a link, and perhaps some other posts, and were unaware of apparently around here generally understood terminology, but you missed a chance to take the high ground and be kind about it, then. Anyway, it's understandable, I suppose.

On topic: FGS as understood like that sounds good to me, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 06:41:47 pm

Quote from: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 27, 2013, 06:24:36 pm

Coming on a little strong there, arkhometha. Yes, they missed a link, and were unaware of apparently around here generally understood terminology, but you missed a chance to take the high ground and be kind about it, then.

On topic: FGS as understood like that sounds good to me, too.

There isn't a problem missing a link. I wasn't trying to be rude the first time around. The problem is missing a link and complaining about the missing link when I clearly tell the person to read the link the first time they miss the link. Or when they miss the entire conversation that explains the concept he missed two times already. I can only make myself more clear if I enlarge letters, since the person clearly doesn't follow requests or instructions.
I don't want to take a moral high ground. I don't want to preach or make people feel bad. I want people to read before jumping and taking conclusions without even know what they are discussing.
I don't like taking any moral grounds, but you are right in one thing. I was rude. So I apologize in advance for being rude, SmileyMan. I'm not going to edit my post as this is going to render this apology useless.

Quote from: PigtailLlama on May 27, 2013, 06:22:34 pm

Well, did any Eastern European computers from the 80s support two different r256 charsets - One for Latin characters, and another for Cyrillic/Eastern European characters?

Hmm I don't know, but where are you coming from, PigtailLlama?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Whatsifsowhatsit on May 27, 2013, 06:53:37 pm

Yeah, I understand the issue. I attempted to fix my post later on, but my internet messed up :P there was indeed a bit more of a misunderstanding (or whatever you want to call it) than I first stated.

By "take the moral high ground" I did not mean anything resembling preaching, just kind of remaining calm and friendly even when the other person might not be. Which I think is a good thing to do. But anyway, this last post more than made up for it, if you ask me. Cheers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 28, 2013, 07:06:13 am

Yup, even I thought for a moment that full graphic support meant to go to something Age of Empires like at least, I even thought of something like minecraft graphics interface... I however stopped to read the post better and understood afterwards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 28, 2013, 09:42:17 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 27, 2013, 06:41:47 pm

So I apologize in advance for being rude, SmileyMan. I'm not going to edit my post as this is going to render this apology useless.

No problem.  Having read back, I've realised that I was replying in general to a discussion about graphics further up the thread, but you took it as me replying to your specific question about the FGS support.

My fault for not quoting the posts I was commenting on.

As self-imposed punishment, I'll go back and lurk for a year or two...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 28, 2013, 10:34:49 pm

nah, your post there is fine enough

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 28, 2013, 11:03:47 pm

Some people seem to use vampires in Fortress Mode as super soldiers or immortal bookkeepers. locking them away on an inaccessible room. You could even do a vampire only fortress, not needing food and booze for the trade of super soldiers that are somewhat inefficient/more slow. What are your thoughts on that and do you plan to fix that "exploit" (if this could be called one)? Is it somewhat high on your to-do list to make vampires starve if they don't drink blood? They already drink blood, maybe it's easy to make them die if they don't do it.

Nothing against this strategy, but making vampires drinking blood regularly could make Adventure mode vampire characters more challenging and it would fix some weirdness in the fortress mode with them. A vampire only fortress could still be done, with current vampires drinking the blood of immigrants or the player could herd them like cattle to create food for the vampires. That could be fixed, if you think it needs fixing, by making dwarfs suspect people that don't age and that are super fast and strong in combat, much like happens in world gen, or by making immigrant waves less likely/sparse if well, the liaison see something wrong with all the dwarfs disappearing or if the liaison and it's soldiers are sucked dry by the vampires. Also, if the vampires needs blood more often than immigrants come, some would starve until the next wave.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 28, 2013, 11:06:31 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on May 28, 2013, 11:03:47 pm

Some people seem to use vampires in Fortress Mode as Super Soldiers or infinite bookkeepers locked away on an inaccessible room. What are your thoughts on that and do you plan to fix that "exploit" (if this could be called one)?

It is actually quite reminiscent of the real world.
"You. You are different. You will work dangerous/menial jobs while I sit back and wait."

...Toady, please change it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 28, 2013, 11:47:07 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 28, 2013, 11:06:31 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on May 28, 2013, 11:03:47 pm

Some people seem to use vampires in Fortress Mode as Super Soldiers or infinite bookkeepers locked away on an inaccessible room. What are your thoughts on that and do you plan to fix that "exploit" (if this could be called one)?

It is actually quite reminiscent of the real world.
"You. You are different. You will work dangerous/menial jobs while I sit back and wait."

...Toady, please change it.

Eh, I think people are more about exploiting the game mechanics. You could get a bunch of vampires in a fort and wall them off training and only release them to do combat. Nothing against it, people can play the game the way they like it, but the way it is it's kinda strange and vampires should need to drink blood regularly otherwise they should die. That would make for interesting adventure mode mechanics too and make vampires less weird. And it seems it's simple enough to correct quickly. I updated the post to reflect it. Maybe there is other simple fixes with vampires Toady could do while work in this, if it is high enough in his priority list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 01:03:41 am

But if vampires need blood to survive, how can you have insane vampires locked away in a cave, who are then unleashed upon a town to sate their maddening hunger, built up for centuries, by a clueless adventurer?

Honestly, I wouldn't call it an exploit that needs to be fixed. It can work story-wise in several ways, and it takes a lot of effort to identify a vampire, then make sure they're sealed away with everything they need so you don't have to dig them back out and get your best dwarves murdered while you install a lever.

It's like when that one guy complained about how "cheap" players will exploit to avoid sappers by building their fort inside a cube surrounded by magma, so goblins would need an indestructible digging megabeast. If someone manages to build a magma cube fort, then they deserve invincibility from invaders. They're still vulnerable to a minor incident escalating into a tantrum spiral.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 29, 2013, 03:14:58 am

I think an easy and logical fix for the vampire "exploit" if you'd call it that is to have a vampire go berserk after a sufficient amount of time without blood has passed. One could perhaps even go so far as to have the vampire grow stronger in certain attributes to make a blood-starved vamp all the more dangerious and make it more of a gamble to lock it up and release on your foes, as you'd then run the risk of pretty much facing a mega-beast if and when it has annihilated your enemies ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 29, 2013, 04:05:23 am

It's essentially planned that eventually a lack of feeding has an adverse effect on the vampire, and since vampires are generated randomly, the adverse effects could range from dying to going crazed, entering some sort of hibernation, or maybe even transforming into a form better suited for hunting prey.

Quote

Quote

Will vamps have withdrawal symptoms from not getting theyr bloody fix? Stuff like raging, aging rapidly, loosing strength etc.?

It seems like something should happen, but since they won't always be able to hunt during play (mostly they won't, being off in the world some place), it's not important to do that until we get them activated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 29, 2013, 07:42:54 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 28, 2013, 11:47:07 pm

Eh, I think people are more about exploiting the game mechanics. You could get a bunch of vampires in a fort and wall them off training and only release them to do combat. Nothing against it, people can play the game the way they like it, but the way it is it's kinda strange and vampires should need to drink blood regularly otherwise they should die.

"And we dedicate this young virgin, as horrible as her fate might be, to the prosperity of our kingdom.  Into the hatch you go."
*Shoves innocent victim to their bloodless demise*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 29, 2013, 07:47:52 am

Why not have both strands in the game as different syndromes? Vampires and Vampyres, maybe?

Then you can shove your suspect in a box for a year.  Open it, and you have either a) starved your vampire to death, and saved the fortress, or b) forced your vampyre into a bloodrage, unleashing untold slaughter on your dorfs.

Especially if the above procedure was the only way to tell the difference...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 29, 2013, 08:00:45 am

Let me handle this one.

"Sounds reasonable.  No timeline."

In all seriousness, since Toady has said that in the future everything is chrome many, many things will be procedurally generated, the above example is highly likely.  And, without dredging Legends mode, or looking into raws, it may be very difficult to tell what type of cursed, blood thirsty creature of darkness has passed itself innocently into your gates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 08:43:45 am

I think that making them "weaker" or "devolve" into something else rather than making them stronger or outright killing them is the more sensible solution.

By weaker or devolve I don't mean necessarily physically weaker. A vampire that lacks feeding for a long time can perhaps become extremely sensitive to sunlight, or become too paranoid or crazy, or become a savage beast by losing it's mind, even physically change into something akin to an animal (like the vampires of the Priest or in Soul Reaver), or a rooting body (basically a zombie with fangs) or anything you can think off.

On the other hand it would be cool to have vampires become either less or more dependent on feeding as time goes by, this could make either extremely resilient vampires as they get older or the other way around, where vampires have a hard time getting too much old because their ever increasing need of blood will weed out most of them to become feral creatures (perhaps more easily killed?), and only a smart and skillful minority could manage to survive (or surdead?) in the long run. On both cases to keep getting older the securing of continuous feeding could be needed, either by terrorizing villages and killing competition (a solitary life) or forming groups, clans, kingdoms, civilizations or whatever to watch each other backs and ensure control over large amounts of population to feed upon.

Vampire fortress are not exploits, they are simply not challenging enough yet. In all modern "folklore" we see that vampires, as much evolved they are, still need to feed upon humans. Take day breakers for example, in that movie the vampire population got out of hand so bad that they ended up ruling the world, but need to have human farms a la matrix to harvest blood for everyone and even then food is scarce.

The issue with vampires is that they are apex predators, and as such their numbers must be necessarily smaller that the number of their prey in order to keep them all "alive" (or happy, or whatever). For them to from up groups, bands, fortress, civilizations, they need some strict behavior code (so they don't multiply beyond their sustainability or kill each other) and they need a food supply. In the case of "sophisticated" vampire societies they could even reign over a no vampire civilization, eating from them without actually diminishing their numbers.

A perfect example of what we could look for in this case is the one of Sylvania from Warhammer 40k, there vampires are more or less scarce, their armies are mainly composed of zombies and skeletons raised when needed, mercenaries and even human citizens of their lands. They don't outright exterminate the humans, they just keep them under their power and feed upon them on necessity. In fact humans under their reign are marginally happy, since they don't collect much on the sense of taxes (beyond the occasional peasant for dinner), provide plenty of security for them (few dare to enter a zombie/vampire/skeleton/werewolve infested land to plunder) and basically mind their own business.

On the other side right now DF lacks (for the time being) something that would definitely keep vampires in check in every universe. Vampire hunters. From Simon Belmont to Van Helsing, they all have been the ultimate terror to vampires. It remain to be seen, once is implemented, how guilds, groups, religious sects and orders would affect the world, but I have no doubt there wont be a lack of vampire hunters (that would also hunt other assorted monsters). That could be the crucial element of balance to keep vampires in check.

By having one of such guilds on your civilization or laying around in a neighboring one, you could expect regular visits if there is anything suspicious, random trials a la Spanish Inquisition (but they you can' expect ok?) or perhaps you can even call them for help with your liaison once you suspect something funny is happening in your fort. But this could go the other way around too, if you intend to make a vampire fortress then they could be added to the list of sieges or even "excommunicate" you from your civ if they fail to clean the fortress either by action or inaction form your side, basically making everyone and their grandmother you enemy.

Thoughts anyone? (Beyond what a bunch of text)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 29, 2013, 09:17:26 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 08:43:45 am

On the other side right now DF lacks (for the time being) something that would definitely keep vampires in check in every universe. Vampire hunters. From Simon Belmont to Van Helsing, they all have been the ultimate terror to vampires. It remain to be seen, once is implemented, how guilds, groups, religious sects and orders would affect the world, but I have no doubt there wont be a lack of vampire hunters (that would also hunt other assorted monsters). That could be the crucial element of balance to keep vampires in check.

I'm not sure it needs the job so much as a way to kill vampires - e.g. give them an Achilles' Heel.  The classic one is the stake to the heart. I'm not an expert on the game mechanics, but I think poison-like things are in already, so "heart injury from wooden weapon triggers rapid spreading poison effect" would be cool, and would mean that fighting vampires with crossbows and wooden bolts would be a potential outfit for an adventure mode Van Helsing. Needs targetting as well, which I think isn't there yet for aimed weapons, but perhaps a wooden shortsword could suffice.

The converse would be that vampires could not be permakilled unless the heart was completely destroyed (poisoned as above, burned or pulped)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 09:21:25 am

I think targeted combat is coming with this release. I'm not sure because I don't pay too much attention to combat features per se.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 29, 2013, 09:22:59 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 29, 2013, 09:17:26 am

I'm not sure it needs the job so much as a way to kill vampires - e.g. give them an Achilles' Heel.  The classic one is the stake to the heart.

Ironically, a wooden steak to the heart will kill just about anyone permanently. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 29, 2013, 09:27:47 am

Come to think of it, so do silver bullets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 29, 2013, 09:32:20 am

Quote from: Draco18s on May 29, 2013, 09:22:59 am

Ironically, a wooden steak to the heart will kill just about anyone permanently. :P

I would like it very much if vampires could somehow survive a non-wooden staking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 09:57:59 am

Dwarf Fortress being Dwarf Fortress some vampires might require to be staked with a dragons right hand middle finger bone to be killed. Of course this means you need to kill a dragon first. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 29, 2013, 10:39:15 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 29, 2013, 09:32:20 am

I would like it very much if vampires could somehow survive a non-wooden staking.

Oh sure, nothing wrong with that.

Just make sure not to go on a witch hunt. ;)
(If he dies from the staking: well, god rest his soul.  If he doesn't, he was a vampire: murder-stab him some more).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 02:03:01 pm

I like the idea of some eternal bureaucrat, sealed away for their crimes to toil in accounting for eternity, doing the books long after the fortress has crumbled around them and the mortals all perished. At the end of the tantrum spiral which leaves the settlement nothing but a maze of drying bones, they calmly and simply begin adding everyone to the "deceased" file, before spending the next several decades updating the fortress wealth every time an object weathers away.

There might even be repentant vampires, who consign themselves to such a fate. I just don't want the possibility axed altogether. It's currently fairly tricky to both find the vampire and get the setup right, so I wouldn't say it's an exploit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 02:46:19 pm

But once you got your dirty hands on one is fairly easy to have a all vampire fortress with no consequences all together. I think that to keep it FUN!, as you renounce to food and booze responsibilities you should also acquire new ones.

As for eternal accountants (God helps us all), I think that, given the nature of dwarf fortress each one could possibly edit a line in a raw here and there to make it tailored to our tastes. Or maybe we finally get to make barrels of miscellaneous liquids and you can entomb your bean counter with barrel upon barrel of the most exquisite dwarf blood. ;)

In all seriousness, I think vampires would remain essentially immortal in the game forever, I don't think anyone here want a "mortal" vampire. However long periods of not drinking blood should indeed affect them, and in the case of dwarf fortress that (along with some vampire hunters guilds and such) could make a vampire fortress (or try to avoid becoming one) extra FUN!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on May 29, 2013, 03:04:41 pm

Perhaps they don't so much die as simply go into a "sleep" state when they're low on blood, remaining motionless for ever increasingly long stretches of time... until something warm and drinkable happens by, and then they lash out in hunger.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 03:11:27 pm

If everyone in the fort is a vampire, doesn't it crumble? I'm pretty sure once the last mortal dwarf gets converted/drained, the game ends. Vampires also remain in the fort upon abandon/reclaim, I'm pretty sure, but become hostile.

There are many stories where vampires don't need blood, but it is extremely compelling to them. Perhaps an all vampire fort would be shunned by the Mountainhome, and the dwarves become unable to venture outside at all for fear of the sun, retreating into the caverns for eternity. And then the fort would fall if something had to be done outside, like a digging project, or killing a Necromancer who keeps sending minions down into the tunnels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on May 29, 2013, 03:46:28 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 08:43:45 am

A perfect example of what we could look for in this case is the one of Sylvania from Warhammer 40k,

I'm sorry, I realize it's minor, and you mean Warhammer Fantasy, not Warhammer 40k. =P

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 03:11:27 pm

There are many stories where vampires don't need blood, but it is extremely compelling to them. Perhaps an all vampire fort would be shunned by the Mountainhome, and the dwarves become unable to venture outside at all for fear of the sun, retreating into the caverns for eternity. And then the fort would fall if something had to be done outside, like a digging project, or killing a Necromancer who keeps sending minions down into the tunnels.

I thought Vampires, even in Fortress Mode, weren't at odds with undead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 04:06:48 pm

I'm talking about in the future, when Necromancers will be able to direct their minions better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 29, 2013, 06:16:18 pm

Currently I'm fairly certain an all-vampire fortress won't crumble simply from everyone alive being a vampire. They might, however, suffer a great tantrum spiral when the vampires begin feasting on the non-vampires and subsequently lose their ever-loving minds.

They're also fun for adventurers to romp into, as Darkerdark discovered visiting my old fortress (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119384.msg4119444#msg4119444). :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 07:09:53 pm

I used the word exploit rather loosely back there, that's why I put quote marks on it and put on the doubt it could be called one.
I know it's not necessarily an exploit, but it's not intended to work that way either, as Knight Otu quote explains. Should a vampire really go years without blood? decades?  Without consequence? Is it right, lore-wise? (medieval lore wise, I know DF is fantasy but it has it's standards)
But LordBaal is right, they should be immortal. But they die if certain conditions are met and drinking blood is a necessity, not a luxury, something should happen.
Hibernation, as Knight Out pointed out, is a good compromise, though I don't know how close it is to "reality". Maybe it could be stages: going berserk, going mad, hibernating. Or maybe it will depend on the curse, as he himself suggested. It would make sense. I will check what medieval lore says about vampires.
I'm not against people playing the way they want, I don't want Toady to end danger rooms or develop a way to prevent players from doing magma cubes to avoid diggers when they come. People play DF as they want, with mods, without mods, etc. The thing is, I wanted to know Toady's opinion on it and if he plans to do something about, like, if vampires will endless live without drinking blood and without this bringing any consequences in future updates.
Do you know of any lore, HugoLuman, where vampires can endless live without blood without having any consequences whatsoever?

I don't know, vampires are defined for being blood-suckers. It's in their nature, and it should have consequences, IMHO.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 07:31:06 pm

Vampires are defined for being bloodsuckers, and that's about it. Lore varies wildly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 07:45:19 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 07:31:06 pm

Vampires are defined for being bloodsuckers, and that's about it. Lore varies wildly.

You are correct, but what happens when the vampire doesn't do the thing that defines him? That it's his food? Nothing?

EDIT:
That's the strange thing, and it should be fairly easy to fix it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:00:55 pm

It varies wildly. Sometimes they don't need it but feel strongly compelled to drink it, sometimes they die without it. I was thinking, for eternal bureaucrats and pump-operators, it would be no averse effects to themselves but they would pounce on the first mortal they had a chance to kill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on May 29, 2013, 08:01:15 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 03:11:27 pm

If everyone in the fort is a vampire, doesn't it crumble? I'm pretty sure once the last mortal dwarf gets converted/drained, the game ends. Vampires also remain in the fort upon abandon/reclaim, I'm pretty sure, but become hostile.
...

Nope, from actual experience, you just get to play a 100% vampire fort. Future migrant waves tend to not last past the first sleep, because the entire fort will dogpile them in their room. That is, unless you isolate and convert the migrants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 08:21:50 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:00:55 pm

It varies wildly. Sometimes they don't need it but feel strongly compelled to drink it, sometimes they die without it. I was thinking, for eternal bureaucrats and pump-operators, it would be no averse effects to themselves but they would pounce on the first mortal they had a chance to kill.

Blood is the life force of humans and vampires. While drinking and eating is humans sustenance, drinking blood is the vampire only mean of sustaining itself. Since they are dead, it's usually considered they don't produce their own life force, blood. In Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs the authors define vampire as “a revenant, reanimated corpse, or phantom of the recently deceased, which maintains its former, living appearance when it comes out of the grave at night to drink the blood of humans.”¹ and they continue by stating "These creatures must suck blood from humans or mammals for sustenance"². The Oxford English Dictionary is the first known lexicon with an entry for vampire in 1734 defining it as “a ghost who leaves his grave at night and sucks the blood from the living.” They are defined by sucking blood yet nothing should happen when they don't do it for a long time? Sometimes player fortress take up to 30 years in game! Or should they only become more slow for not getting their sustenance, their life-force, for years? Doesn't make sense to me.
I don't believe they should be able to live (or un-live) centuries or millenia without their sustenance, their life force, while being without blood for a year should probably make them hibernate, insane among other things.


¹Carl Lindahl et al, Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs and Customs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 424
²Idem, ibidem.

Also, another question, does anyone knows of a vampire in DF who doesn't live in a city? Never heard of one in vanilla games.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:40:40 pm

Don't cite sources on myths, DF doesn't follow the rules of any particular setting or universe and a single book is hardly definitive of the immense variety of medieval folklore. Toady's not trying to do a strict recreation of Romanian folklore or anything, he's trying to create a fantasy world generator, influenced not just by mythology but by fantasy conventions and tropes.

Vampires will eventually have variable traits, semi-random. Judging by the common depections of vampires in fantasy, effects of blood starvation could vary between each world/curse lineage:
-Become less human in appearance
-Become weaker
-Become stronger but more desperate
-Nothing, except they'll drain the first living person they get their hands on
-Revert to corpse
-Crumble
-Revert to human (though this one is rare)
-and more

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 29, 2013, 08:43:23 pm

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:47:04 pm

Like I said, it's not going to be constrained by the strict definition of any particular convention or setting, the only constant thing will eventually be consuming blood/life force. You can have the tragic vampire driven to murder by their hunger and survival instinct, or the evil vampire who doesn't need blood to survive but loves nothing better than to drink it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BradUffner on May 29, 2013, 10:06:38 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 29, 2013, 08:43:23 pm

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

You forgot the Sparkly end of the scale.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 10:15:45 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on May 29, 2013, 10:06:38 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 29, 2013, 08:43:23 pm

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

You forgot the Sparkly end of the scale.  ;)

I don't think Toady's going to touch on that, except via RNG insanity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 29, 2013, 10:16:39 pm

Quote from: BradUffner on May 29, 2013, 10:06:38 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 29, 2013, 08:43:23 pm

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

You forgot the Sparkly end of the scale.  ;)

IIRC, The Dresden Files allows for all vampire types.  There were four, if I recall correctly.
Ah yes, four (http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Vampire_Courts).
Red: Blood Vampires (Gothic)
White: Emotional Vampires
Black: Undead Vampires (Bram Stoker)
Jade: Asian Vampires (only alluded to in the series)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 10:18:17 pm

There are potentially way more than just 4 kinds. As I said, DF doesn't have to follow the constraints or specific definitions of other settings, and other settings are not definitive of things outside themselves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 10:23:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:40:40 pm

Don't cite sources on myths, DF doesn't follow the rules of any particular setting or universe

As a matter of fact, it does. Weaponry and technology is meant to go until our XIV century. Fantasy in DF usually follows western fantasy, and it follows our mythology, since vampires is a myth definition of our world and we use it in DF, it is comparable. Not to mention I cited sources on the thing that defines vampires, blood sucking. You can't pretend DF doesn't follow rules of any particular setting or universe, because it does, and it borrows heavily from our world and our myths.

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and a single book is hardly definitive of the immense variety of medieval folklore. Toady's not trying to do a strict recreation of Romanian folklore or anything, he's trying to create a fantasy world generator, influenced not just by mythology but by fantasy conventions and tropes.

This statement contradicts with your previous statement. It doesn't follow rules of any particular setting or universe but it borrows from our fantasy conventions and tropes? Nevermind that, as I said before, I was defining vampires with two books from reputable sources. I can't really put in here every source of folklore attempted and I'm certain if vampires here where like the ones from Twilight we sure would get people complaining here that "vampires aren't like that" because, as almost all other life, vampires are defined by certain parameters.

Quote

Vampires will eventually have variable traits, semi-random. Judging by the common depections of vampires in fantasy, effects of blood starvation could vary between each world/curse lineage:
-Become less human in appearance
-Become weaker
-Become stronger but more desperate
-Nothing, except they'll drain the first living person they get their hands on
-Revert to corpse
-Crumble
-Revert to human (though this one is rare)
-and more

A vampire can't turn back into a human. It's dead, by it's definition. It can turn into a corpse or crumble. But as random as they can get, if something doesn't get it's sustenance for some time, it will perish. Unless what is sustaining it is magic, like zombies, though if you cut the source of the magic, the zombie would probably crumble, or could crumble.

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 08:47:04 pm

Like I said, it's not going to be constrained by the strict definition of any particular convention or setting, the only constant thing will eventually be consuming blood/life force. You can have the tragic vampire driven to murder by their hunger and survival instinct, or the evil vampire who doesn't need blood to survive but loves nothing better than to drink it.

It will be constrained, yes, by some constants. As you agreed before

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 07:31:06 pm

Vampires are defined for being bloodsuckers, and that's about it. Lore varies wildly.

Not only being a bloodsucker, but being an undead. Vampires are, thoroughly the lore, undead bloodsuckers. If it's alive and it sucks blood, it's not a vampire. And if its dead and it doesn't need to suck blood, it is not a vampire. So no, you can't have a vampire who doesn't need blood to survive. It wouldn't be one because it escapes the definition of vampire.

In resume, while you can argue that DF doesn't strictly follow the rules of our world and that it alters our mythology, it use it's characters, like vampires. And it defines them, by our definition, the need to suck blood and it being undead. It can have powers as random as you like, but it needs blood for sustenance, and if something doesn't get what sustains it... If a vampire doesn't need to suck blood it isn't a vampire. Vampires in DF need to suck blood, only the adverse effects of they not doing it are not implement yet. Toady recognized it.

EDIT:
To close the case, DF itself say that a vampire is a creature "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood." If the part of not getting the blood is ignored, sure a consequence, a dire one, should happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 10:36:04 pm

Someone help me out here.  ::)

It doesn't follow the conventions of any particular setting, it follows, in general, the conventions of the fantasy genre. There are western fantasy stories that include all these kinds of vampires. Many stories allow Vampires to revert to human somehow. Drinking blood does not mean they need it to survive, it means they drink it. Additionally, there are many vampires that don't suck blood, but instead feed on things like life-force or emotions, or other abstracts. The archtype of the vampire is something seemingly human that parasitises something vital to the lives of real humans. Fitting that general bill does not require recreating the vampires of one specific other setting.

DF intends to allow for variability, so demanding strict Stoker loyalty isn't going to work. In the future, between different save files, Dragons might have wings or acid blood or ice breath, or they might not due to being semi-random.

Real world technology in DF has a cut off date of 1400, but that doesn't mean it slavishly follows real life, down to making England in every game. DF has many things not found in the real world or specifically in any real world mythology, it just has many things based on the concepts. In 1400 there was no magma technology, and there still is none today. The definition of a vampire, in some cases, varied between villages in real life. There is no race of Minotaurs in Greek mythology, there was only one, likewise for the Hydra, and in DF they aren't born from the mating of a woman and a bull.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 10:54:57 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 10:36:04 pm

It doesn't follow the conventions of any particular setting, it follows, in general, the conventions of the fantasy genre. There are western fantasy stories that include all these kinds of vampires. Many stories allow Vampires to revert to human somehow. Drinking blood does not mean they need it to survive, it means they drink it.

This goes against your definition of a vampire, the general definition of vampire that is carried with the word and DF definition of a vampire that is the same as the classic one, a creature "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood".

Quote

Additionally, there are many vampires that don't suck blood, but instead feed on things like life-force or emotions, or other abstracts.

And what's this life-force? Blood. DF states that vampires need blood. You are talking about succubus or incubus? Because they are not vampires, you know. Look on a dictionary the definition of a vampire. DF uses our word, it uses our definition. It varies, but what defines it is there. That's why I cited those sources. Otherwise it would make a word for the creature and set the definition.

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The archtype of the vampire is something seemingly human that parasitises something vital to the lives of real humans. Fitting that general bill does not require recreating the vampires of one specific other setting.

Nope, I provided you the definition of a vampire, one that yourself said. They are bloodsuckers. They parasite on blood, not emotions or anything else. They don't need to be classic vampires, I never said that, I said they need blood to survive or they should die or enter deep hibernation, only waking if someone gives them blood.

Quote

DF intends to allow for variability, so demanding strict Stoker loyalty isn't going to work. In the future, between different save files, Dragons might have wings or acid blood or ice breath, or they might not due to being semi-random.

I never cited Stoker, I cited western medieval lore. Common western medieval lore. I't not saying vampires need to be classic vampires, but to be considered vampires they need to follow what defines them, needing blood to survive.
Yet all dragons in DF need to be:

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A gigantic reptilian creature.  It is magical and can breath fire.  These monsters can live for thousands of years.

Things have definitions.

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Real world technology in DF has a cut off date of 1400, but that doesn't mean it slavishly follows real life, down to making England in every game.

I know. That's why I cited our XIV century technology, I didn't cite a country or continent. I meant humanity XIV century, sorry for the confusion.

Quote

DF has many things not found in the real world or specifically in any real world mythology, it just has many things based on the concepts. In 1400 there was no magma technology, and there still is none today.

Care to cite something that doesn't exist in our world or any of our mythology or fantasy stories? Seriously, I can't think in anything. Besides monster/giant sponges, but that's just "monstrifying" things.
And magma isn't part of the XIV century technology barrier, it's part of dwarf fantasy lore. It isn't really comparable.

Quote

The definition of a vampire, in some cases, varied between villages in real life. There is no race of Minotaurs in Greek mythology, there was only one, likewise for the Hydra, and in DF they aren't born from the mating of a woman and a bull.

I know, as vampires in DF are cursed by the gods and a variety of werecreatures can happen. And as not every vampire is killed by the sun, they all have different powers, I know, but they all suck blood. Better, vampire feed on the life essence of other creatures. In DF case, blood. And they need it to sustain themselves, they are not auto-sufficient. They are cursed to prowl the night in search of blood to sustain themselves.

It's like saying to me a zombie can be alive. Zombies are dead, or rather, undead by definition. Vampires need life force to be live (or unlive).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on May 29, 2013, 11:01:00 pm

I think everyone needs to chill a bit, no need to get worked up on either side.



Yes, DF does follow typical mythology classifications and conventions, but no that doesn't mean that's all there will be and that it will all the time. Yes there will be vampires that seek blood, but no that doesn't mean that will be the only kind of monstrosity that may fall under the purview of vampire, it will certainly be the most of it, but not the all of it I wager. Yes there will be vampires that will die without blood, but no that doesn't mean that's the end all be all for all of them. I believe the ultimate goal here is to allow all kinds, or at least the chance for such, even some of the weirder bits. Its what we know and love about dwarf fortress, no? The chance that, at the push of a button we're generating an entire new world and mythology with some trappings familiar and some strange, all wrapped together in a masterful work of craftdwarfship. Just because one thing is black, and one thing is white, doesn't mean they both can't co-exist, grey can happen. False dichotomies are not your friend, not even an acquaintance. Just because something isn't in the fantasy books of ye-olden days doesn't mean it won't be in the game, just as well as said books also being in the game and each having a chance of being wonderfully blended or played straight.

The point is to make stories, have fun, kill some stuff while laughing at absurdities and marveling at the depth, what's the point if that isn't it? I couldn't care less if it was restricted to only vampires that were written about before, or something entirely different, long as I have fun, long as people have fun with it that's all that matters. Hell, they'll probably be choices of "no magic" "high magic" "conventional myths" and "everything put into a blender and set to puree." And I'll play and love the hell out of all of those choices, as each has stories I want to see told.

I want to see a Van Hellsing fighting vampires that crave blood to survive, I want to see a dwarf fighting were-elephants that is that setting's werewolves, I want to see a setting where undead are the norm and living the rarity, I want to see a Flork, which could be a sentient plant person, fight a Geoff, which could be a plant person set to burst on fire and spread a curse or something, as absurd as it could be. I want to see something played straight and messed all up. Both have merit, one isn't better than the other.



That's the only two bits I'm throwing into this argument, I shall not make anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 11:10:15 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on May 29, 2013, 11:01:00 pm

I think everyone needs to chill a bit, no need to get worked up on either side.

And I think we are having a civil discussion. I didn't see LugoMan worked up nor did I become worked up. If you are talking about the underlines, sorry, it was for emphasis!

Quote

Yes, DF does follow typical mythology classifications and conventions, but no that doesn't mean that's all there will be and that it will all the time. Yes there will be vampires that seek blood, but no that doesn't mean that will be the only kind of monstrosity that may fall under the purview of vampire, it will certainly be the most of it, but not the all of it I wager. Yes there will be vampires that will die without blood, but no that doesn't mean that's the end all be all for all of them. I believe the ultimate goal here is to allow all kinds, or at least the chance for such, even some of the weirder bits. Its what we know and love about dwarf fortress, no? The chance that, at the push of a button we're generating an entire new world and mythology with some trappings familiar and some strange, all wrapped together in a masterful work of craftdwarfship. Just because one thing is black, and one thing is white, doesn't mean they both can't co-exist, grey can happen. False dichotomies are not your friend, not even an acquaintance. Just because something isn't in the fantasy books of ye-olden days doesn't mean it won't be in the game, just as well as said books also being in the game and each having a chance of being wonderfully blended or played straight.

I'm not saying mythology or fantasy need to be fixed, they can be generated randomly. I'm not saying because it doesn't exist in our mythology it can't happen, I'm talking about definitions. Can a creature be classified as a werecreature without turning into another creature? No. If it doesn't turn into another creature, it isn't a werecreature. If a vampire doesn't need blood to survive, it isn't a vampire.

Quote

The point is to make stories, have fun, kill some stuff while laughing at absurdities and marveling at the depth, what's the point if that isn't it? I couldn't care less if it was restricted to only vampires that were written about before, or something entirely different, long as I have fun, long as people have fun with it that's all that matters. Hell, they'll probably be choices of "no magic" "high magic" "conventional myths" and "everything put into a blender and set to puree." And I'll play and love the hell out of all of those choices, as each has stories I want to see told.

I want to see a Van Hellsing fighting vampires that crave blood to survive, I want to see a dwarf fighting were-elephants that is that setting's werewolves, I want to see a setting where undead are the norm and living the rarity, I want to see a Flork, which could be a sentient plant person, fight a Geoff, which could be a plant person set to burst on fire and spread a curse or something, as absurd as it could be. I want to see something played straight and messed all up. Both have merit, one isn't better than the other.



That's the only two bits I'm throwing into this argument, I shall not make anymore.

This bit I answered in this and other posts. I'm not talking about transforming vampires in classic vampires. I never said that. It's not a question of merit on one being better than the other. We can always mod vampires to not need blood, though we can't mod vampires to have an adverse effect for not getting blood. I'm saying vampires aren't vampire if they don't need blood to survive. They could breath fire or sparkle for all I care, but they need to drink blood otherwise they can't be classified as vampires. DF follows definitions, that's it. Vampires are creatures "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood." They need blood, and that's the only thing I asked Toady: Do you plan to implement vampires suffering for not getting blood? What's your take on them not getting it in the current version and having no adverse effects?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 11:17:05 pm

Ninja'd

@Xan Thank you! That is exactly what I'm trying to say!

Quote

Care to cite something that doesn't exist in our world or any of our mythology or fantasy stories? Seriously, I can't think in anything. Besides monster/giant sponges, but that's just "monstrifying" things.
And magma isn't part of the XIV century technology barrier, it's part of dwarf fantasy lore. It isn't really comparable.

Bronze Colossi, for one. Randomly generated titans and megabeasts may sometimes resemble something else but oftentimes they are something completely unique and bizarre. Ditto for other entirely generated creatures. Green devourers, molemarians, voracious cave crawlers, beak dogs, and many other creatures might resemble something out of a Monstrous manual but they aren't actual standard-issue DnD creatures.

I know you didn't cite Stoker, I was just using that as a hyperbole to illustrate the point of confining procedural generation to reconstructing a very specific portrayal of the subject. Sorry.

Before you go any further on the subject of blood for survival being THE defining thing, please read  (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurVampiresAreDifferent)these. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VegetarianVampire) All the way through. There is always some consequence for not drinking blood, but it is not always fatal, and is sometimes a slap on the wrist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 29, 2013, 11:32:46 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 11:17:05 pm

Ninja'd

@Xan Thank you! That is exactly what I'm trying to say!
Bronze Colossi, for one. Randomly generated titans and megabeasts may sometimes resemble something else but oftentimes they are something completely unique and bizarre. Ditto for other entirely generated creatures. Green devourers, molemarians, voracious cave crawlers, beak dogs, and many other creatures might resemble something out of a Monstrous manual but they aren't actual standard-issue DnD creatures.

Bronze Colossi is a "A gigantic magic statue made of bronze and bent on mayhem" moving statues are not unheard of in fantasy. And procedural monsters are just mix-match of RL of fantasy parts. They don't compare, and they don't have anything unique in them, just the final result. They can't be compared because they are generated randomly, while our fantasy does nothing of the sort. I'm talking more about things that can be classified, one completely random creature will most probably never find parallel in our world besides it's individual parts.

Quote

I know you didn't cite Stoker, I was just using that as a hyperbole to illustrate the point of confining procedural generation to reconstructing a very specific portrayal of the subject. Sorry.
Before you go any further on the subject of blood for survival being THE defining thing, please read  (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurVampiresAreDifferent)these. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VegetarianVampire) All the way through. There is always some consequence for not drinking blood, but it is not always fatal, and is sometimes a slap on the wrist.

I'm not speaking against procedural generation, but there are things that can't be made procedural. A werebeast need to turn into another creature to be considered one. You can't change them without changing what it is.
About the links:
Okay, if we broad the definition: Vampires need a life-force other than their own to thrive. One of your sources say tomatoes. As absurd as that is, they still need it. If they don't get it, they suffer something. Often dire, as it happens with creatures that need things to sustain themselves. While I can understand getting just weak for nothing feed over a time, they will suffer dire consequences over time. It's their life force they are not getting. Their sustenance, what keeps them afloat. They are not magical.

But DF vampires don't fall on vampires that need life force other than blood. They are vampires that are "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood." Sorry for repeating this, but it's whole point. If they are walled off and don't search for blood, and they don't suffer adversities for not searching for blood, what's the point of the curse? What remains is an undead super-creature. Not a vampire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 29, 2013, 11:43:43 pm

Just as dragons are concrete right now, vampires in their current form are a placeholder for semi-random generation. And, from the vampire's point of view, being locked away to do books for eternity, unable to sate their hunger, must be pretty crappy. If you're lucky enough to have a world with vampires that don't wither/die/go insane without blood, then they're still likely to break out and maul someone at the first opportunity. Maybe, if you're super-lucky, you find in the same world a conscientious vampire who accepts the task, hoping it will take their mind off blood, but like an unexplained upright adamantine weapon, it would be a rare boon. And they'd still probably pull someone in if they got too close to whatever gap you forgot to seal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:10:47 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 29, 2013, 11:43:43 pm

Just as dragons are concrete right now, vampires in their current form are a placeholder for semi-random generation. And, from the vampire's point of view, being locked away to do books for eternity, unable to sate their hunger, must be pretty crappy. If you're lucky enough to have a world with vampires that don't wither/die/go insane without blood, then they're still likely to break out and maul someone at the first opportunity. Maybe, if you're super-lucky, you find in the same world a conscientious vampire who accepts the task, hoping it will take their mind off blood, but like an unexplained upright adamantine weapon, it would be a rare boon. And they'd still probably pull someone in if they got too close to whatever gap you forgot to seal.

As random as they can get, they will always need life force of others to sustain themselves. And if being locked away without your life force is so daunting, they should go mad. The only reason they would not perish/hibernate if they don't get their life force for prolonged periods of times is if they are sustained by magic, IMHO, but that's defined by Toady, so I hope he answers it in my question.

You can still keep an endless bookkeeper, but you would need to feed it whatever it needs to sustain itself. And I think that's a fairly simple thing to do (though not so much now, as Toady quote said vampires need to hunt in the world gen before he activates consequences for not feeding).

And thank you for the nice discussion, HugoLuman!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 12:10:57 am

arkhothema: I'm with Hugo here. It's eventually planned that procedurally generated stuff could be completely and utterly off the wall in terms of normal fantasy. The fact that vampires are currently procedurally generated, even if they only have one permutation at this point, shows that yes, they are most certainly planned to have more differences later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:17:20 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 12:10:57 am

arkhothema: I'm with Hugo here. It's eventually planned that procedurally generated stuff could be completely and utterly off the wall in terms of normal fantasy. The fact that vampires are currently procedurally generated, even if they only have one permutation at this point, shows that yes, they are most certainly planned to have more differences later.

So, eventually, there will be vampires that will not have to feed? Or vampires that will not suffer any consequences of not acquiring sustenance aka feeding for prolonged periods of time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on May 30, 2013, 12:18:17 am

Touching on another point, hopefully you eventually won't be able to have a creature entirely sealed away spending their time accoutning for you. Unless maybe you have dwarves yelling through the steel prison door "We just bought twenty sun berries from the elves! Two full finely crafted oak bins of rope weed fibre! One male grizzly bear in a finely made pine cage!"

Muffled reply through the door, ""Check! Check! Check!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:24:48 am

Quote from: DG on May 30, 2013, 12:18:17 am

Touching on another point, hopefully you eventually won't be able to have a creature entirely sealed away spending their time accoutning for you. Unless maybe you have dwarves yelling through the steel prison door "We just bought twenty sun berries from the elves! Two full finely crafted oak bins of rope weed fibre! One male grizzly bear in a finely made pine cage!"

Muffled reply through the door, ""Check! Check! Check!"

Would the ones that observe the item need to have a good observation skill to not report it wrongly, though?

I mean in quality terms, I doubt someone could confuse a cage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 30, 2013, 12:36:35 am

Oh gods, that would be a headache.

Vampires are often calculating masterminds, so it might also be disturbing that one should be content locked away, with all the official documents...

I could just imagine one biding his time on the hope that eventually the fortress would fall, he'd get out, and then feast on all the recently deceased.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 30, 2013, 12:38:38 am

ooh, maybe they can plot to take over the world that way X3

like some book or anime villan X3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on May 30, 2013, 12:44:25 am

Vampires are also traditionally OCD with a compulsion to count everything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 30, 2013, 01:28:01 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2013, 12:44:25 am

Vampires are also traditionally OCD with a compulsion to count everything.

One +copper short sword+, hahaha!
Two +copper short sword+, hahaha!
THREE +copper short sword+, hahaha!

DINGDINGDING

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on May 30, 2013, 02:38:05 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 30, 2013, 12:36:35 am

Oh gods, that would be a headache.

Vampires are often calculating masterminds, so it might also be disturbing that one should be content locked away, with all the official documents...

I could just imagine one biding his time on the hope that eventually the fortress would fall, he'd get out, and then feast on all the recently deceased.

I can see it. Two Vampires, one accountant, the other manager. Locked up in bureaucratic combat for eternity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:31:34 am

Do you plan to (re)implement rivers flooding when you build a dam in it? In the foreseeable future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on May 30, 2013, 04:56:13 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:31:34 am

Do you plan to (re)implement rivers flooding when you build a dam in it? In the foreseeable future?

It was always a plan to re-implement, I doubt he's changed that. It won't be foreseeable future, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheBricktop on May 30, 2013, 06:36:13 am

What about "civilised" vampires? The ones that want to blend in the community? I myself seen quite often them fiercely defending my fortresses, becoming the heroes of dwarfkind, (apart from occasionaly turning my dorfs into raisins) . Maybe there should be a way to allow them to drink only extracted blood, or blood of cats or something like that. Of course there will be outlawed vampires that doesnt comply but only as part of the vampire community.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 30, 2013, 07:16:57 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:17:20 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 12:10:57 am

arkhothema: I'm with Hugo here. It's eventually planned that procedurally generated stuff could be completely and utterly off the wall in terms of normal fantasy. The fact that vampires are currently procedurally generated, even if they only have one permutation at this point, shows that yes, they are most certainly planned to have more differences later.

So, eventually, there will be vampires that will not have to feed? Or vampires that will not suffer any consequences of not acquiring sustenance aka feeding for prolonged periods of time?

Quote from: DF Talk #14

Rainseeker:   I guess you could have several different archetypes of vampires, too?
Toady:   Yeah, well, vampires are ... along with zombie uprisings, the properties of a vampire are probably one of the most debated night creature type things; whether you do this or this or this or this or this or this or this. So we're just starting with ... the benefit of having randomly generated vampires is that we just have to think of the properties that people generally think of as fair game for vampires, and then turn them on or off and ... I mean, the crucial things generally seem to be some overall notion that they're predatory on people but not necessarily killing them when they feed, and also the conversation, and I'm not sure if everything else is fair game; not every vampire gets destroyed by the sun but that would certainly be a popular thing to add, and not every vampire can transform into a wolf or a bat or a gas or whatever, but that's also certainly a fair property ... and not every vampire requires a special method to kill it permanently, like driving a stake through its heart or chopping off its head, but that's also a fair property to place on them. Those are the kinds of thing we're thinking of exploring quickly ... and there's also the thing that a vampire is not an insane ravening monster all the time necessarily, and they can blend into society; that's another typical thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 07:22:52 am

Quote from: Keldane on May 29, 2013, 03:46:28 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 29, 2013, 08:43:45 am

A perfect example of what we could look for in this case is the one of Sylvania from Warhammer 40k,

I'm sorry, I realize it's minor, and you mean Warhammer Fantasy, not Warhammer 40k. =P

Oh don't worry, thanks for pointing it out! A common mistake I make all the time, I call the Eldar Elves and the other way arround too.:D


Arkhometha and HugoLuman (that by some weird reason I imagine is or looks exactly like Huge Jackman in Wolverine), you two need to chill down.

Hugo, I get the Arkhometha position that not drinking blood for very long times of periods should mean the "end" of the vampire (not his/her death, but his/her "end", it's a bit tricky). Having a vampire fortress should have it's own challenges and perks, instead of being basically the same but having extra tough dwarves that don't eat, drink and don't die of old age, because even when technically is not a exploit if sure do feels like one.

However Arkhometha , I also get what Hugo means, DF uses a lot procedural creation, once that is also applied to vampires we can end up with wildly variations including things that may or may not comply with western folklore and lore, things from they going back to humans up to having not effect at all. I don't fell quite comfortable with those options for the same reasons than you. They are supposed to be death so they should revert to corpses, zombies with fangs or anything but a living human/dwarf/elven, and having no consequences what so ever is even more ridiculous and unbalancing game play wise. But as I mentioned on my past Wall-O-Text™, other things can counter balance this and also it remain to be seen which proprieties the great Toad have in mind for the procedural vampires.

I have no doubt that by now Toady attention has caught all this blood draining debate, so we better ask him question about it to bury the hatchet (or stake if you will).

Oh great Toady, we come to you as your humble and happy serfs. Would you in your infinite wisdom, clarify to us, which kind of dreadful kind proprieties you intend to unleash upon your enemies with your procedural vampires?

There, done. Now let's wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 30, 2013, 08:53:09 am

Quote from: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 07:22:52 am

Oh great Toady, we come to you as your humble and happy serfs. Would you in your infinite wisdom, clarify to us, which kind of dreadful kind proprieties you intend to unleash upon your enemies with your procedural vampires?

What do you want to know that wasn't covered in the post above yours?  Also, why are you asking questions in such a weird way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 09:01:03 am

I can't answer your questions unless you put them in... let me thing... blue, but I'll pass it this time. :P

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think we all know that vampires will be procedurally generated and will have a wild array of characteristics to take from. What we don't specifically is what kind of characteristics or attributes would be. Flying? Drinking or consuming something else other than blood as complement or exclusively (Souls? Feelings? Urine? Booze?)? Becoming wild zombies if not feed? Being allergic to garlic?.... Well that, I would like to know what Toady has in mind, at least for a starter, or if he doesn't have anything in mind just yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on May 30, 2013, 10:36:14 am

Quote from: TheBricktop on May 30, 2013, 06:36:13 am

What about "civilised" vampires? The ones that want to blend in the community? I myself seen quite often them fiercely defending my fortresses, becoming the heroes of dwarfkind, (apart from occasionaly turning my dorfs into raisins) . Maybe there should be a way to allow them to drink only extracted blood, or blood of cats or something like that. Of course there will be outlawed vampires that doesnt comply but only as part of the vampire community.

i have a different beef than arkhometha, but hold it with a similar stubborn certainty that i am right. i think vampires are defined as bloodsuckers, and as creatures of evil. a non-evil vampire is a crappy vampire. vampires may even be nice people and be trying really hard, but their condition and powers are unvariably a curse. so while i don't care that a vampire can survive indefinitely without blood if he is locked under a mountain, i don't think drinking blood of a goat, or blood extracted non-lethaly, should do anything for them. drinking blood isn't feeding, it is a ritual, it is the act of committing evil that drives them and not the peculiar configuration of their digestive system.

so you can have your nice do-gooder vampire trying to live in harmony in dwarven society, joining the militia and doing heroic deeds for the fortress, and trying really hard not to hurt anybody, even fooling himself into thinking that he can satisfy his cravings on goblin prisoner blood. The cravings don't go away and the blood has no taste, maybe the blood of dwarven criminals... But going too long without wetting his fangs on the blood of innocents drives the vampire crazy, and one day the local tanner walks home from work to find his wife and children suck dry, their skin like wrinkled paper, their last screams of terror frozen on the expression of their faces, and hunched over his wife's corpse... the hero of the fortress.
The tanner runs out, shouting for the guards. The vampire, shocked by his own actions and released from the cravings that drove them, doesn't give chase, and offers no resistance to the arresting officers. Later that day, the vampire is released. He finds out the overseer has executed the tanner for having murdered his own wife and children.
On his own chambers, the vampire finds a young dwarven maiden, gagged and chained to the wall...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 30, 2013, 11:09:23 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 30, 2013, 10:36:14 am

...a non-evil vampire is a crappy vampire. vampires may even be nice people and be trying really hard, but their condition and powers are unvariably a curse. so while i don't care that a vampire can survive indefinitely without blood if he is locked under a mountain, i don't think drinking blood of a goat, or blood extracted non-lethaly, should do anything for them. drinking blood isn't feeding, it is a ritual, it is the act of committing evil that drives them and not the peculiar configuration of their digestive system....

I humbly submit that you go and watch (the British version of) Being Human for a non-evil (ok, ex-evil) vampire that can not suck and yet not suck...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 30, 2013, 11:36:52 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 30, 2013, 11:09:23 am

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 30, 2013, 10:36:14 am

...a non-evil vampire is a crappy vampire. vampires may even be nice people and be trying really hard, but their condition and powers are unvariably a curse. so while i don't care that a vampire can survive indefinitely without blood if he is locked under a mountain, i don't think drinking blood of a goat, or blood extracted non-lethaly, should do anything for them. drinking blood isn't feeding, it is a ritual, it is the act of committing evil that drives them and not the peculiar configuration of their digestive system....

I humbly submit that you go and watch (the British version of) Being Human for a non-evil (ok, ex-evil) vampire that can not suck and yet not suck...

Also...one of the books from Discword.  Carpe Jugulum, I think.

Also relevant here is Shadowrun's vampires which feed on essence which is less quantifiable by science than simply "blood."  It's not a materialistic feeding, but rather a magical draining of another being's lifeforce (aka soul).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 30, 2013, 11:57:21 am

Well Askot, that is one possibility of vampires. But just one possibility. As many stories require just the blood, and not ritual, it will not be the only possibility.

I've just always liked the "sealed evil in a can" kind of vampire, the ones that get locked in a catacomb or sarcophagus by those too fearful to destroy it, only to get released by some ignorant person centuries later (who gets drained by the ravenous undead).

Another common take on vampires is having one original vampire, who turns several other people into obedient thrall vampires, and the thralls revert when their master is destroyed. I guess sometimes strong-willed ones go off to start their own brainwashed armies. In fact, where return to humanity is possible, it's often accomplished by destroying the vampire that infected the one in question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 12:17:14 pm

The original vampire! That's something too. Generally the ones that go off to start their own empires are either strong willed like you said, or the original vampire turn them into vampires but doesn't take away it's personality/thinking/reasoning for personal reasons. The second one usually comes back and literally bite them on the rear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 30, 2013, 12:29:54 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on May 30, 2013, 10:36:14 am

...snip...
Later that day, the vampire is released. He finds out the overseer has executed the tanner for having murdered his own wife and children.

On his own chambers, the vampire finds a young dwarven maiden, gagged and chained to the wall...

Finally, we will have a use for the Legendary Cheesemakers that wander into our fortress!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 30, 2013, 12:31:45 pm

(Ninja'd)

There's also the method of transmission. Currently, it's by drinking vampire blood, a common method. However, there's also the more common method of fatal draining always turning the victim, or even just one bite (that would cause a vampsplosion, though, which in all likelihood of the RNG would be very devastating.) Currently, the original vampire becomes so from a divine curse.

Other methods I've seen include dying in a certain way/place, being cursed for comitting any kind of cannibalism (another with potential for vampsplosion, and also often used for werebeasts), resurrection gone wrong, and practicing evil magic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:45:25 pm

Quote from: Trif on May 30, 2013, 07:16:57 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 12:17:20 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 12:10:57 am

arkhothema: I'm with Hugo here. It's eventually planned that procedurally generated stuff could be completely and utterly off the wall in terms of normal fantasy. The fact that vampires are currently procedurally generated, even if they only have one permutation at this point, shows that yes, they are most certainly planned to have more differences later.

So, eventually, there will be vampires that will not have to feed? Or vampires that will not suffer any consequences of not acquiring sustenance aka feeding for prolonged periods of time?

Quote from: DF Talk #14

Rainseeker:   I guess you could have several different archetypes of vampires, too?
Toady:   Yeah, well, vampires are ... along with zombie uprisings, the properties of a vampire are probably one of the most debated night creature type things; whether you do this or this or this or this or this or this or this. So we're just starting with ... the benefit of having randomly generated vampires is that we just have to think of the properties that people generally think of as fair game for vampires, and then turn them on or off and ... I mean, the crucial things generally seem to be some overall notion that they're predatory on people but not necessarily killing them when they feed, and also the conversation, and I'm not sure if everything else is fair game; not every vampire gets destroyed by the sun but that would certainly be a popular thing to add, and not every vampire can transform into a wolf or a bat or a gas or whatever, but that's also certainly a fair property ... and not every vampire requires a special method to kill it permanently, like driving a stake through its heart or chopping off its head, but that's also a fair property to place on them. Those are the kinds of thing we're thinking of exploring quickly ... and there's also the thing that a vampire is not an insane ravening monster all the time necessarily, and they can blend into society; that's another typical thing.

Thanks for digging up that quote Trif!

However, it is about vampires powers, that should be really cool once they are super randomized, not their feeding capabilities being changed or the possibility of a vampire who doesn't need life force to exist.

Quote from: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 07:22:52 am

[
Oh don't worry, thanks for pointing it out! A common mistake I make all the time, I call the Eldar Elves and the other way arround too.:D


Arkhometha and HugoLuman (that by some weird reason I imagine is or looks exactly like Huge Jackman in Wolverine), you two need to chill down.

Hugo, I get the Arkhometha position that not drinking blood for very long times of periods should mean the "end" of the vampire (not his/her death, but his/her "end", it's a bit tricky). Having a vampire fortress should have it's own challenges and perks, instead of being basically the same but having extra tough dwarves that don't eat, drink and don't die of old age, because even when technically is not a exploit if sure do feels like one.

However Arkhometha , I also get what Hugo means, DF uses a lot procedural creation, once that is also applied to vampires we can end up with wildly variations including things that may or may not comply with western folklore and lore, things from they going back to humans up to having not effect at all. I don't fell quite comfortable with those options for the same reasons than you. They are supposed to be death so they should revert to corpses, zombies with fangs or anything but a living human/dwarf/elven, and having no consequences what so ever is even more ridiculous and unbalancing game play wise. But as I mentioned on my past Wall-O-Text™, other things can counter balance this and also it remain to be seen which proprieties the great Toad have in mind for the procedural vampires.

I have no doubt that by now Toady attention has caught all this blood draining debate, so we better ask him question about it to bury the hatchet (or stake if you will).

Oh great Toady, we come to you as your humble and happy serfs. Would you in your infinite wisdom, clarify to us, which kind of dreadful kind proprieties you intend to unleash upon your enemies with your procedural vampires?

There, done. Now let's wait.

The thing is, LordBaal, they can be as random with their powers as Toady want. It's okay. But they can't have their necessity of feeding and needing life force of others cut from them. It's the very own thing that defines them. Imagine a werecreature that doesn't turn into another creature. It's the same thing as a vampire that doesn't need to feed on life force: It's not what we are calling it. A vampire who doesn't need to feed is just an undead.
Being feeding a vital and a necessity for vampires, I do believe some form of grave consequence should happen when that doesn't happen for long periods of time. And that's the difference between HugoLuman and me: He believes you can call a creature a vampire even if it doesn't need life-force to sustain itself, I don't. He believes that a vampire who needs life force can have minor side effects, even if not feeding for a long time, as a consequence of not feeding, I don't. Though they could have minor side effects at start, after one season they should suffer badly from not getting their life force.

And Askot does indeed put a good question. Vampirism is a curse, it would be weird to see "good vampires". But I don't mind it, as long as they need to suck life force.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 01:05:00 pm

Well as a curse, the subject might try to redeem him/her self by pleasing the God? Maybe if is the God of Life and Hugs the vampire could try to be good, but if is the God of War and Death... well you see where I'm going with this.

Or maybe the vampire does exactly the opposite to redeem itself, just in spite of the curse put upon him. Or maybe he doesn't care for anything and exploit it's own powers to his benefit or that of other simply because. But yes I agree, vampires by definition should be evil creatures, be it ravaging savage animals or scheming and sophisticated.

As for the feeding. I know that by most definitions if not all vampires need life force, be it blood or something more ethereal like the soul, vital energy or feelings of a person. I too consider that a defining trait on a vampire. Then we have vampires that drink the color red out of things leaving them intact.... >.>

However given the nature of Dwarf Fortress (and that's why I asked Toady about specifics to round up this debate), if Toady chooses to we could have vampires that simply suffer from blood thirst but really don't needed to survive, being basically thinking zombies that don't root and might have some extra powers.

My position to have negative consequences on a vampire that don't feed upon whatever the Dice God decides (once that is implemented) goes beyond the folkloric fidelity and is more focused on gameplay balance. You should be able to yes, allow or seek out to have a vampire only fortress that yes, would have combat advantages but it should not come with it's own disadvantages or at least extra share of challenge.

Such challenges could be anything really, given a procedurally generation process we could have vampires that don't need to drink blood but just to regenerate and heal injuries in one world (a interesting option and a compromise between your and Hugo position) and have vampires that will burst into flames if don't drink blood at least once every year. However all this is highly speculative, hence, again, why I asked Toady about specific possibilities.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 01:27:36 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 01:05:00 pm

However given the nature of Dwarf Fortress (and that's why I asked Toady about specifics to round up this debate), if Toady chooses to we could have vampires that simply suffer from blood thirst but really don't needed to survive, being basically thinking zombies that don't root and might have some extra powers.

Yup, it would be an undead with a blood lust. If Toady chooses it, wouldn't make sense, as it would escape the definition of the word vampire.

Quote

My position to have negative consequences on a vampire that don't feed upon whatever the Dice God decides (once that is implemented) goes beyond the folkloric fidelity and is more focused on gameplay balance. You should be able to yes, allow or seek out to have a vampire only fortress that yes, would have combat advantages but it should not come with it's own disadvantages or at least extra share of challenge.

I don't believe Toady or DF are worried with balance, to be honest. I think that's the last thing he cares too... I mean we have Minotaurs that a wardog can kill and we have creatures with syndromes so deadly and made of adamantine that it's just ridiculous. Also, it was never about folkloric fidelity or balance, but what defines a creature.

Quote

Such challenges could be anything really, given a procedurally generation process we could have vampires that don't need to drink blood but just to regenerate and heal injuries in one world (a interesting option and a compromise between your and Hugo position) and have vampires that will burst into flames if don't drink blood at least once every year. However all this is highly speculative, hence, again, why I asked Toady about specific possibilities.

Eh, they would still need something to give them sustaining. See, creatures in DF sustain themselves, or they should do it. We had that bug a long time ago that meant all kobolds didn't eat and they went extinct in world generation. Of course we have creatures like Bronze Colossi that are sustained by magic, but it's not the case of cursed creatures. A werebeast and a vampire are cursed, and the vampires curse is needing to feed on other's life force.

Now, I know people will give me the whole "it's Toady game he can make a vampire who doesn't need blood" and it is right, however, it would be wrongly be called so.  You see, if we had a Bronze Colossi made out of Iron, and it was called Bronze Colossi in game, would it be rightly called so? Similarly, if we had an undead creature that drinks blood but it doesn't really need it for sustenance, would it be a vampire?

I know it seems I'm being stubborn, and sorry for insisting in this point, but using a word carries that definition with it, so if we call a creature a toad in game, we will expect it to the have the things that define a toad. If the creature is called a vampire or a rakshasa, there are different meaning and standards coming with it. It could die in the sun or not, it could transform in a bat or breath fire, but if it doesn't need to other's life force... If nothing, DFTalk #20 shows Toady is willing to commit to standards defined in myths:

Quote

Threetoe:   Okay, so the next question is from Onebedterrin, he asks, 'Will there ever be any colossus other than bronze such as a stone, adamantine, or bone colossus.' He mentions we already have titans made out of different materials ... so yeah, the stone colossus, or the bronze colossus, what's the thought?
Toady:   Well, the bronze colossus of course is a Jason and the Argonauts ... from Talos coming in and lifting up ships and shaking them and so on ... this is the reality ...
Threetoe:   Yeah they've been there from the beginning ...
Toady:   It's the reality we grew up with, all the Ray Harryhausen stuff. I think all of our megabeasts have appeared in a Ray Harryhausen movie somewhere, except the randomized megabeasts but every other one has been in either The Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts or one of the Sinbad movies. It's just how we roll here at Bay 12 Games. I don't think there's going to be therefore, another kind of colossus add as a raw stock creature and the randomized creatures that we currently have. You can have, as you said, a Titan made completely out of stone or something. They don't work very well right now, especially the ones made out of snow or whatever, they just die, but that would probably be how they come about. We already have the smaller magma man type things and so on and again, I think we're probably going to be moving in the direction where material creatures of different sizes are just things that randomly occur and hopefully it doesn't get too mushy or gobbledygooky but that's how it's going to happen.

Anyway, even if Toady answer to yours and my question saying "yes, they need to feed" vampire only fortress and undead accountants should still be possible, be it via modding or you would just need to feed your vampire regularly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2013, 02:00:57 pm

Well imagine a vampire that needs to drink blood only to regenerate injuries. Of course it could have the usual thirst and would drink blood at every chance, but if deprived of it, he/she wont outright perish or withe away, but instead keep going as usual but can't recover from injures.

That kind of vampire would be ideal for Hugo (whom I still imagine is secretly Huge Jackman) administrative tasks. Such vampire, after being imprisoned for a long time would outright assault and drink dry any unsuspecting fool unlucky enough to let him out, regardless of being caught or discovered as a vampire.

I'm guessing something along this lines would be among the possibilities once they get to be procedurally generated.

I would rather them to either whiter away, not dying but becoming really really weak, never actually dying but losing all their powers and/or becoming becoming something easy to kill. Or also becoming either feral creatures like monstrous wolves (or gross creatures) or fanged zombies/skeletons. Also I would like them to have a point of no return, where even if they drink blood they keep the way they are now.

PD: By pure chances I'm listening to a song called Vampiro (vampire in spanish).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 30, 2013, 03:23:09 pm

I just think vampires who aren't harmed much by blood starvation should be a possibility, and certainly a rare one, when they do get handed over to the RNG, seeing as there are many stories where they can get by without it. Losing the strengths/powers of vampirism seems like a good non-lethal consequence. Your eternal pump operator might lose their super strength and speed due to lack of blood, bringing them down to the level of a mortal, and still burn from silver/sunligh/holiness, but this wouldn't affect their role as a pump operator unless it was a holy pump.

In general, I do like vampires as evil monsters (nice vampires are a tad overdone these days), but I wouldn't want their possibility removed. They should be rare, but still possible, like a forgotten beast whose only syndrome effect is removing pain (and that has consequences, too).

Basically, vampires don't always need to feed on people to survive, but they always want to feed, even the rare conscientious ones (who only resist the urge, not subdue it). The desire and ability to feed, being reshaped into something whose nature it is to hunt and parasitize, (which most often leads to the conscious intent to feed), is constant throughout all depictions of vampires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on May 30, 2013, 04:17:14 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 30, 2013, 01:28:01 am

Quote from: Japa on May 30, 2013, 12:44:25 am

Vampires are also traditionally OCD with a compulsion to count everything.

One +copper short sword+, hahaha!
Two +copper short sword+, hahaha!
THREE +copper short sword+, hahaha!

DINGDINGDING

This is exactly how I've imagined every single vampire in all of my forts. Regardless of job. The vampire marksdwarf going to the ammo stockpile? "One +steel bolt+, Two +steel bolts+, ah, ah, ah" The *shudder* vampire doctor I got once: "One cave spider silk stitch, TWO cave spider silk stitches, THREE..." etc.

Irrelevant vampire crap below. The entire multi-page discussion belongs elsewhere.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The cool thing about vampires in fiction is that they can be anything the author wants them to be. They have evolved over the centuries from one author's vision to the next, always similar but almost never identical. Even the things people think of as 'required' to be a vampire are fluid. So I really don't have any complaints about how they are portrayed in DF, it honestly makes them more disturbing that they apparently don't need to drink blood, they just really like to. The fact they can lie in wait, sealed in a little room forever, until some foolish adventurer/megabeast/whatever breaks down the door.... they are genuinely more frightening because of it.

And I genuinely hate every single discussion ever that even hints at an implication that Toady should change his vision to fit what some other author wrote. It is an affront to the creative process and an insult to the man as an artist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 30, 2013, 04:20:08 pm

Quote

And I genuinely hate every single discussion ever that even hints at an implication that Toady should change his vision to fit what some other author wrote. It is an affront to the creative process and an insult to the man as an artist

Actually... He should. Toady should change vampires so that his vision fits what some author wrote.

But I am cheating when I say that because Vampires (and Werewolves) are eventually going to be part of a generation system. So him using ideas other authors have had as part of the generation system (for example: Do Vampires look perfectly human, inhuman monsters, or shape shift between their inhumanity and humanity?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:22:35 pm

More accurately, DF is a fantasy world simulator, so mostly it needs the ability to generate any given definition of "vampire" out there. Which is something that's already planned, so I'm not sure what the hubub is about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on May 30, 2013, 04:23:53 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:22:35 pm

More accurately, DF is a fantasy world simulator, so mostly it needs the ability to generate any given definition of "vampire" out there. Which is something that's already planned, so I'm not sure what the hubub is about.

Well there are probably some things that need to be smoothed over.

The Vampire stuck in a wall trick is kind of silly...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:29:21 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on May 30, 2013, 04:17:14 pm

And I genuinely hate every single discussion ever that even hints at an implication that Toady should change his vision to fit what some other author wrote. It is an affront to the creative process and an insult to the man as an artist.
And as a matter of fact, the whole discussion started because I asked what Toady he thought about the current state of vampirism in DF, not because someone tried to make Toady change his vision.

Nobody said that, though. I only pointed out vampires don't really need blood, and their description (and meaning that comes with the word vampire) in DF states they are cursed to need it (or corresponding life-force). So I don't get where are you getting this from.

Quote

Even the things people think of as 'required' to be a vampire are fluid.

Yeah, they need to sustain themselves on some form of life force, though, and they don't produce it.

Quote

So I really don't have any complaints about how they are portrayed in DF, it honestly makes them more disturbing that they apparently don't need to drink blood, they just really like to.

So they are just undead that lust for blood. Can't be classified as a vampire, then. Names should change and it's curse is useless, since they don't really need the thing that they are cursed to prowl the night in search of. I take you didn't really read the discussion, so I will not drag this on.

Quote from: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:22:35 pm

More accurately, DF is a fantasy world simulator, so mostly it needs the ability to generate any given definition of "vampire" out there. Which is something that's already planned, so I'm not sure what the hubub is about.

Not necessarily. We only have one type of Bronze colossi and Toady said it isn't going to implement Iron Colossi. So we are not necessarily getting all types of all things.

Quote

Threetoe:   Okay, so the next question is from Onebedterrin, he asks, 'Will there ever be any colossus other than bronze such as a stone, adamantine, or bone colossus.' He mentions we already have titans made out of different materials ... so yeah, the stone colossus, or the bronze colossus, what's the thought?
Toady:   Well, the bronze colossus of course is a Jason and the Argonauts ... from Talos coming in and lifting up ships and shaking them and so on ... this is the reality ...
Threetoe:   Yeah they've been there from the beginning ...
Toady:   It's the reality we grew up with, all the Ray Harryhausen stuff. I think all of our megabeasts have appeared in a Ray Harryhausen movie somewhere, except the randomized megabeasts but every other one has been in either The Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts or one of the Sinbad movies. It's just how we roll here at Bay 12 Games. I don't think there's going to be therefore, another kind of colossus add as a raw stock creature and the randomized creatures that we currently have. You can have, as you said, a Titan made completely out of stone or something. They don't work very well right now, especially the ones made out of snow or whatever, they just die, but that would probably be how they come about. We already have the smaller magma man type things and so on and again, I think we're probably going to be moving in the direction where material creatures of different sizes are just things that randomly occur and hopefully it doesn't get too mushy or gobbledygooky but that's how it's going to happen.

You can have giants of other materials but they will not be called Adamantine Colossi. There is a chance vampires don't deviate from a pattern. If that's good or bad, I don't have an opinion on it.
The hubub was about the necessity of life force to vampires and the currently unimplemented consequences of not getting it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:42:31 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:29:21 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on May 30, 2013, 04:17:14 pm

And I genuinely hate every single discussion ever that even hints at an implication that Toady should change his vision to fit what some other author wrote. It is an affront to the creative process and an insult to the man as an artist.

Nobody said that, though. I only pointed out vampires don't really need blood, and their description (and meaning that comes with he word vampire) in DF states they are cursed to need it. So I don't get where are you getting this from.

Quote from: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:22:35 pm

More accurately, DF is a fantasy world simulator, so mostly it needs the ability to generate any given definition of "vampire" out there. Which is something that's already planned, so I'm not sure what the hubub is about.

Not necessarily. We only have one type of Bronze colossi and Toady said it isn't going to implement Iron Colossi. So we are not necessarily getting all types of all things.

Quote

Threetoe:   Okay, so the next question is from Onebedterrin, he asks, 'Will there ever be any colossus other than bronze such as a stone, adamantine, or bone colossus.' He mentions we already have titans made out of different materials ... so yeah, the stone colossus, or the bronze colossus, what's the thought?
Toady:   Well, the bronze colossus of course is a Jason and the Argonauts ... from Talos coming in and lifting up ships and shaking them and so on ... this is the reality ...
Threetoe:   Yeah they've been there from the beginning ...
Toady:   It's the reality we grew up with, all the Ray Harryhausen stuff. I think all of our megabeasts have appeared in a Ray Harryhausen movie somewhere, except the randomized megabeasts but every other one has been in either The Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts or one of the Sinbad movies. It's just how we roll here at Bay 12 Games. I don't think there's going to be therefore, another kind of colossus add as a raw stock creature and the randomized creatures that we currently have. You can have, as you said, a Titan made completely out of stone or something. They don't work very well right now, especially the ones made out of snow or whatever, they just die, but that would probably be how they come about. We already have the smaller magma man type things and so on and again, I think we're probably going to be moving in the direction where material creatures of different sizes are just things that randomly occur and hopefully it doesn't get too mushy or gobbledygooky but that's how it's going to happen.

You can have giants of other materials but they will not be called Adamantine Colossi. There is a chance vampires don't deviate from a pattern. If that's good or bad, I don't have an opinion on it.
The hubub was about the necessity of life force to vampires and the currently unimplemented consequences of not getting it.

Right, but that quote is more about how Bronze Colossi shouldn't be their own thing, they should just be part of the whole randomized Titan thing, in much the same way Werewolves started out as a specific creature and have now branched out into multiple were-curses. Vampires are specifically highly variable in terms of powers, weaknesses, and motivations across media, and they'll be the same in DF (we'll see how internally consistent they are from world to world.)

I'd talk more about how "necessity of life force" isn't even common to all vampires, but that was covered fairly exhaustively in the last FotF thread, and frankly I don't care since Toady's already said what he's going to do with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:49:54 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 04:42:31 pm

I'd talk more about how "necessity of life force" isn't even common to all vampires, but that was covered fairly exhaustively in the last FotF thread, and frankly I don't care since Toady's already said what he's going to do with it.

I have to ask you then, what defines and classify a creature as a vampire if he doesn't need life force?
Also, can you find this Toady quote?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 30, 2013, 04:50:21 pm

and everyone who does not want vampires to be different, wouldn't that just give you an excuse to play the game as an evil one to hunt them down by not living up to the standards? XD

Its not like you have to have them in your game or prevent others form trying stuff X3
different strokes for different folks. now lets get on with green questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 30, 2013, 04:52:44 pm

Ninja'd 3x: What defines a vampire is a monster with a drive to parasitize.

As I keep saying, consequences are planned, but among the many possibilities there will likely be the chance of minor consequences. Going only by the current (subject to change) description of vampires, they are "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood," not "cursed to drink blood to survive." They want it, but won't necesarily die without it.

Several stories of western fantasy/horror involve vampires going for prolonged periods of time without blood and not dying or changing appearance drastically, so it hardly violates accepted conventions of vampire.

Toady won't be making every creature semi-random, but he explicitly stated that he will turn vampires over to the RNG.

Ninja'd:And yes, this has been exhaustively argued. Time to move on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 04:57:18 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 30, 2013, 04:52:44 pm

Ninja'd 3x: What defines a vampire is a monster with a drive to parasitize.

So all nobles are vampires, then? As all parasites, because they all need to to parasite something.

Quote

As I keep saying, consequences are planned, but among the many possibilities there will likely be the chance of minor consequences. Going only by the current (subject to change) description of vampires, they are "cursed to prowl the night in search of blood," not "cursed to drink blood to survive." They want it, but won't necesarily die without it.

Let me understand this. You are cursed by a god to go get blood or life-force. A Player makes a vampire stop getting blood forever. Consequence A: Nothing, curse nullified. Consequence B: Minor consequence for evading the curse. EDIT: I misread a lot of that. Yeah, there will be various consequences, sure, but a minor one would happen just in the beginning. I don't see as a punishment from a god for evading a curse for eternity being a weaker or ugly vampire. IMHO, at least, that's just a slap to the wrist of someone who offended a god. Going mad from the need to get blood is more like something that seems reasonable.


EDIT:
I'm sorry, I will stop and wait for Toady's answer. I just don't get how A) a god's curse, bestowed as the wrath of said god, can be effectively nullified without any consequence (you can argue it's daunting live craving for blood but don't getting it, but I don't see any vampires suffer from it), B) how a creature can evade the major drawback of the curse and be lightly punished/not have a reaction of the curse and C) how can a creature that doesn't fit any definition of the word vampire, that is, an undead that needs the life force of others, be classified as a vampire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 05:16:30 pm

This word of Toad (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2329044;topicseen#msg2329044) has some good vampire-related things, though the rest of the thread has even more (and additional WoTs)

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Cruxador

    Can there be multiple different types of vampires with different sets of randomly generated traits in the same world?Like for example, a set of vampires that sparkle in the sun and enslave the minds of pubescent children, and one that burns in the sun and has greatly boosted speed, as opposed to just one or the other. Assuming that's a yes, how frequently do you anticipate new vampire types will be made, and how many in general do you intend to have in a given world or city?
    My mind is aflame with randomly generated Camarilla/sabbat politics and wars of the night in DF, though of course such things won't actually be possible until we get group politics in general.

It makes a number of vampire and werebeast curses at the beginning.  Ideally, they'd be able to make a purely unique curse each time, but what we've got is equivalent if none of the curses are repeated.  How often curses happen should probably end up being a parameter, since there isn't really a wrong answer and it's a flavor determiner more than anything.  We might end up getting to individual territoriality this time around, just to keep villages from being depopulated too often, but yeah, real group politics will have to wait.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Sysice

    Will sunlight always be a bad thing for vampires?

Right now it doesn't take things far from the classic models, so yeah.  The most would be a variety that doesn't care.  Anything more exotic has to wait until we can avoid the gray-goo effect of complete randomization through more careful exposition than we've got now.  Sticking with archetypes makes that a little less necessary.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Fieari

    Toady, many of your forumites are repeatedly linking the Wikipedia Vampire Traits list.  Are you actually intending to try to implement all these traits, or is this merely wishful/hopeful thinking on the part of your fans?

    Another question...

    Werecreatures first appear by being cursed for defiling a temple.  How will vampires appear?  There are many ways suggested by stories...

I don't think it's feasible to do everything there now.  Just doing some things is okay.  We haven't settled on the method for the first vampire (just using profaning for the moment).  Saying there was an improper or screwed up burial is the easiest way, but it would be better to inflict it upon somebody who has been bad.  There aren't really any criminals aside from bandits now, unless you count the mass executions, which could be a good way to go if they happen often enough.  Or we could use some new criminal stuff if it is going in for stalkers anyway.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Heph

    Will vamps have withdrawal symptoms from not getting theyr bloody fix? Stuff like raging, aging rapidly, loosing strength etc.?

It seems like something should happen, but since they won't always be able to hunt during play (mostly they won't, being off in the world some place), it's not important to do that until we get them activated.

You can see, it isn't one quote, but it's many quotes like these and others in other places that lead me to my beliefs. A lot of the variability is waiting on different ways for vampires to be generated, it seems. Just as far as the "curse of god" goes, it seems pretty terrible to constantly and eternally hunger for forbidden bodily fluids, even if you suffer no other adverse effects.

tl;dr It has been discussed a lot, but the overall situation isn't going to change in the next release (as it's waiting on other things/more appropriate timing,) so expanded discussion might be better suited to another thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 30, 2013, 05:19:12 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 30, 2013, 05:16:30 pm

This word of Toad (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2329044;topicseen#msg2329044) has some good vampire-related things, though the rest of the thread has even more (and additional WoTs)

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Cruxador

    Can there be multiple different types of vampires with different sets of randomly generated traits in the same world?Like for example, a set of vampires that sparkle in the sun and enslave the minds of pubescent children, and one that burns in the sun and has greatly boosted speed, as opposed to just one or the other. Assuming that's a yes, how frequently do you anticipate new vampire types will be made, and how many in general do you intend to have in a given world or city?
    My mind is aflame with randomly generated Camarilla/sabbat politics and wars of the night in DF, though of course such things won't actually be possible until we get group politics in general.

It makes a number of vampire and werebeast curses at the beginning.  Ideally, they'd be able to make a purely unique curse each time, but what we've got is equivalent if none of the curses are repeated.  How often curses happen should probably end up being a parameter, since there isn't really a wrong answer and it's a flavor determiner more than anything.  We might end up getting to individual territoriality this time around, just to keep villages from being depopulated too often, but yeah, real group politics will have to wait.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Sysice

    Will sunlight always be a bad thing for vampires?

Right now it doesn't take things far from the classic models, so yeah.  The most would be a variety that doesn't care.  Anything more exotic has to wait until we can avoid the gray-goo effect of complete randomization through more careful exposition than we've got now.  Sticking with archetypes makes that a little less necessary.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Fieari

    Toady, many of your forumites are repeatedly linking the Wikipedia Vampire Traits list.  Are you actually intending to try to implement all these traits, or is this merely wishful/hopeful thinking on the part of your fans?

    Another question...

    Werecreatures first appear by being cursed for defiling a temple.  How will vampires appear?  There are many ways suggested by stories...

I don't think it's feasible to do everything there now.  Just doing some things is okay.  We haven't settled on the method for the first vampire (just using profaning for the moment).  Saying there was an improper or screwed up burial is the easiest way, but it would be better to inflict it upon somebody who has been bad.  There aren't really any criminals aside from bandits now, unless you count the mass executions, which could be a good way to go if they happen often enough.  Or we could use some new criminal stuff if it is going in for stalkers anyway.

Quote from: ToadyOne

Quote from: Heph

    Will vamps have withdrawal symptoms from not getting theyr bloody fix? Stuff like raging, aging rapidly, loosing strength etc.?

It seems like something should happen, but since they won't always be able to hunt during play (mostly they won't, being off in the world some place), it's not important to do that until we get them activated.

tl;dr It has been discussed a lot, but the overall situation isn't going to change in the next release (as it's waiting on other things/more appropriate timing,) so expanded discussion might be better suited to another thread.

Thanks for the quotes!

Quote

You can see, it isn't one quote, but it's many quotes like these and others in other places that lead me to my beliefs. A lot of the variability is waiting on different ways for vampires to be generated, it seems. Just as far as the "curse of god" goes, it seems pretty terrible to constantly and eternally hunger for forbidden bodily fluids, even if you suffer no other adverse effects.

Going mad it is, then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 06:05:39 pm

arkhometha: imma be blunt: Toady seems to be planning to have a shitload of variability. Every single vampire feature in fiction may show up as a possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Draco18s on May 30, 2013, 09:42:40 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 30, 2013, 06:05:39 pm

arkhometha: imma be blunt: Toady seems to be planning to have a shitload of variability. Every single vampire feature in fiction may show up as a possibility.

Don't forget mix-and-match.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on May 30, 2013, 11:49:34 pm

Unless I missed it, Vampires are not currently being developed.  Please take your argument elsewhere.

As to current development, I am glad to hear that the list shrank by 20% last month.  I hope this month is closer to 33%.  Or 50%.

Toady, as you go back through stuff, how are you choosing which thing to work on next?  Is it more stack like, or a queue, or some weird round robin thing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 31, 2013, 02:07:58 am

Quote from: Rockphed on May 30, 2013, 11:49:34 pm

Unless I missed it, Vampires are not currently being developed.  Please take your argument elsewhere.
...

Indeed, it'll get revamped when Toady gets to it, and until then these questions are better suited for the the DFtalk. Think we've sucked the topic dry for now regardless so no need to keep beating each other bloody over it ;)

Have you done any work on Kobolds yet and what ish do you have planned for them in short? Can't remember seeing any mention of them these last few months so someone please enlighten me if I've simply missed it ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Thanks to mastahcheese, Knight Otu, monk12, Putnam, Trif, Footkerchief, Valtam, DG, King Mir, DarkDXZ, Eric Blank, FearfulJesuit, Mr S, My Name is Immaterial, LordBaal, HugoLuman and Cruxador for helping to answer questions.  As usual, if your question wasn't answered it may have been addressed by one of these forum-goers shortly after you posted it.  I also removed a few out-of-place suggestion clumps.

Quote from: TheDorf

Quote from: Toady One

I haven't gotten into it, if I remember.  I don't think the list of necessary changes is that long, since we haven't done much with lighting at all...  so when you say "a campfire or anything"...  is there anything else?  Just fires you set or something?  There's the issue of enemy vision, which is completely different now.

Alright, thanks. At the moment, I'm talking about campfires (Assuming camps would get campfires if you updated vision at night), and torches later on when (if?) they get added. Seeing as you don't seem to have any plans for updating lighting this release, may I ask when you think updated lighting could make it?

I have no timeline for things beyond this release.  Making things like campfires and other fires visible outside the light radius would be reasonable but I haven't done it yet.  I don't recall if there's a note in this release for it.

Quote from: Andreus

Quote from: Toady One

Some of the entity ethics cover the extremes already, and it matters a bit.  Expansions of that system should be natural as I actually add stuff.

I was thinking somewhat from a modder's perspective, since I'd like the granularity to make, for example, a civilization that is inherently xenophobic but merciful, so generally exiles members of other species it ends up conquering, and would certainly never accept the rulership of a member of another species, but might allow a member of another species who had earned their respect to stay. Is that sort of thing going to be possible?

Ideally every decision will be controlled by personal and civilization level ethics, etc., that fit, but that's more or less infinitely expandable.  It's hard to say how far things will go, but a lot of our stories and notes require more information than we have now anyway.

Quote from: dwarfhoplite

Does the new combat system make multi-target melee combat situations, such as sieges often are, considerably more dangerous for the faction with fewer soldiers? For short, will sieges be harder now?

Yes, significantly so.  Passive defenses aren't as effective as active defense, and active defense can be overloaded by multiple incoming attacks.

Quote from: Ray Digrus

May the 'different levels of resolution' (those that take part in calculating armies' movement) be useful for calculating the whole world's events since the fortress mode seems to be similar with the highest level of resolution?

It comes up everywhere, but it can't be done often in practice -- the finer detailed maps need to be generated, and there can't be too many of them in memory at a time.  The farther things are away from you, the more they wing it and are corrected a bit later.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are we going to have guard patrols getting lost or dying off in the sewers (without player intervention), so we can come across their remains later? This sometimes happens in RPGs...

There are notes to the effect of tracking some little unfortunate stories from world gen, and the bodies from in-play army deaths etc., but there aren't any army battles off away on the map in-play yet.  But yeah, it could end up around the same time as larger battlefields are produced.

Quote from: Maxmurder

Will occupier patrols follow specific routes on patrol or will they wander around town randomly?

Will civvies in an occupied town run from/avoid occuping soldiers?

I don't have specific routes at this point, but they are going from place to place so they won't zip around like bumblebees or whatever.

Refugees are still on the table, but post-occupation citizens are going to live with the presence of soldiers and whatever that means (currently, that they can continue to be at work and go the well, etc.).  There are some unfriendly troubles left on the table for them as well, too, though.

Quote from: Spish

Speaking of vampires; what is up with Fortress Mode automatically (and irreversibly) labeling vampire blood-drinkers as vampires? Unintentional? Either way, it takes a lot of fun out of succession fortress vampire conspiracies when you can't covertly infect a select few members of the population without immediately giving them away.

I think it is because the "vampire" status is hidden by the alternative identity held by vampire migrants, and your own citizens don't have alternative identities.  What it should actually do seems like it would really depend on the specifics of how the drinking occurred, and so it is hard to address.

Quote

Quote from: Zavvnao

as a tiny sidenote, will backpacks be added to arena mode?

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

quivers

I haven't done this.

Quote

Quote from: Dbuhos

Will breath attacks/gaseous stuff disrupt the viewing field of creatures ?

Quote from: Heph

Will Smoke, Steam, mist, evil clouds etc. also block line of sight?

The way the gas flows are set up, it's difficulty to check tiles for them quickly, so they don't matter.  It might be possible with some sort of additional flag that's updated tile-wise as smoke etc. moves around, and if that's not too hard/slow to update reliably it'd work.  But I haven't tried yet.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With creatures having their vision fogged, will this affect their behaviour when invading sites?

I'm not sure if the fog comes up in fortress mode...  it depends on if it was tied to time of day at all.  Invaders have always had extra overall path goal information to make them functional, but they might not be able to spot opponents from the maximum distance now.

Quote from: King Mir

Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?

There's a note for it, and it could very well end up happening.  I just need to stick a number in the raws.

Quote

Quote from: LordBaal

Will the vision arcs and night/dark impairment and all that apply to Fortress Mode? Will this mean that we are also getting light sources for this release (maybe in some crude form at least)?

Quote from: Footkerchief

Can't comment on vision arcs, but day/night cycles and light sources in Fortress Mode would be a big deal and we'd have heard.

Quote from: LordBaal

Oh, on the other hand, will helmets and such affect the arc of sight?

Vision arcs are a bit speed intensive to get calculated (at least if you show them and want to improve on what dot product gives you), so they aren't in fort mode yet.  Getting it basically right is fine with dot product, so they might end up around if it ends up being good game-wise for the fort.  It might not matter much though, and might make invaders goofier.

Helmets don't matter at this point.

Quote from: monk12

How does vampiric bloodsense interact with fortress mode sneaking- will a dwarf vampire always be aware of enemies trying to sneak up on him?

It should, yeah, though it doesn't identify critters so they'll be cheating if it gets too far inside their AI where the target type is known.

Quote from: Draco18s

On creatures with multiple heads and vision:
An artist I watch has a critter where each head has its own personality and outlook on the world (decent description on that page).  While likely out of scope for DF (hydras having one mind per brain rather than one mind total), I was wondering if it would be possible to specify in the RAWs different levels of vision on each head (e.g. one head can see in the dark, the others can't) and how the vision system would handle that.

I haven't set up information like that, but there are about a zillion marker in the code where it says //******ETTIN where I need to check when I decide to tackle different head personalities etc.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Has there actually been a change with the way liquid water (not water as a contaminant) boils when it gets hot enough?

Is the Arena going to have anything other than placeholder rock for material? For example, make the walls and floors out of smooth obsidian?  are these things going to be made out of some "placeholder" material like rock (what rock?), grass, dirt, or sand, or will there be an option to use things in the raws? i.e. use limestone for rock, use bubble grass for grass, use fire clay for dirt, and use white sand for sand?

Is foggy weather going to appear in fortress mode in the coming release?

Have you made changes to vision underground, and if so how will that work without lighting being in the game?

I haven't changed water.  You can't set specific materials at this point.  There's no visible fog in fortress mode, and I'm not sure that it happens at all.  It just uses the light/vision radius underground, the same as everywhere else, and light is set low.

Quote from: toboo123

With the new combat system in, how much will it effect how competent each creature is in combat, will it only make creatures with extra limbs or heads more powerful, or will it change creatures across the board. I ask this because I've been making a sort of VS. mode to be played in arena where you buy units and pit them against each other and I want to know how much I'm gonna need to change things to update it when the new release comes out.

Everything is going to be quite a bit different, and I'm not sure how the balance of power will change or who the next weird super creature will be.

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Quote from: Dame de la Licorne

1) Have you (or are you still thinking about or planning to change this release) the seemingly artificial age limit for dwarf marriages in fort mode?  I ask because up through the 0.31 releases, dwarves in fort mode would only get married if they were less than ten years apart (yes, I did a lot of embarking starting with the initial 3D releases to test this once I identified the problem), but marriages generated during world-gen would have spouses with 20-30 year age differences.

2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis.  Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?

Quote from: mastahcheese

If/When adultery is put in the game, will it be controlled by an ethic option?

I'm not sure why the marriages would be using different rules.  The dwarf ones probably use some ancienter code.  I can't remember why the age difference restriction is there.

I just haven't done anything with dwarven or other love lives at all.  I'm not sure how it'll end up.  It can clearly be made much more interesting.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are we going to see some performance upgrades with the coming release, or as the coming release is updated in short order?

Do tracks get handled as contaminants?

What kind of graphics are used for tracks and broken grass?

Performance upgrades are sporadic but they have happened.  I don't have a particular schedule.

Tracks are their own thing.  They go into the "spoor" event.

It doesn't show tracks until you ask it to, and then it shows black/yellow/green symbols with a dark green background to indicate prints, item impressions, broken vegetation, etc.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

How much can the fog visibility be reduced? Up to the extremely dense, only being able to see 1 tile? Can one go completely blind in the fog?

It's the same as it has always been...  two or three tiles?  It interacts with all the other factors.

Quote from: Heph

Will clothing help with hiding? A red robe on a glacier wont be the best camouflage.

Have weather and climate an influence on tracks? Like rain washing away tracks or conversely tracks in try but not particularly sandy areas staying longer?

Clothing doesn't matter yet, but I'm pretty sure there's a note/powergoal/whatever that addresses it.  Not for this time.  Weather can erase tracks, yeah.  There's a technical limit to how long things can stay if you travel away, but that's the only way they'd be removed in the desert.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, will we be able to track ourselves in adventure mode? As in backtrack to find that place in the woods where we fought those bandits and forgot to pick up our backback and put it back on?

Yeah, you can find your own tracks.  They display in a different color (it assumes you can identify them, for ease of use), but it doesn't crowd them into your main trail list so you'd have to keep an eye out.

Quote from: King Mir

If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?

When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?

Yeah, right now they get that information.  Eventually we'll have cause to be more picky about it, but we're more worried about people standing idiotically while you attack them.  I don't recall if the event is generated on the initiation or the strike.  That'll also determine how ranged attacks work.  It's probably on the strike.  This would give them extra information about the shooter since the incident doesn't yet have missing knowledge, but we'll get to fixing that at some point.

Quote from: Nicolo

You've mentioned deep dwarves being different biologically then hill dwarves in the past; does this mean that dwarves will have a special 'cave adaptation' tag, the current cave adaptation tag will be expanded on, single creature entries can designate different properties depending on which biome the creature is located, or single entity entries will be able to assign different creatures according to different biomes?

I'm not sure yet.

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Quote from: arkhometha

Toady, how hard do you think it is to implement the fourth thing the in eternal suggestion voting (Full graphics support) and how high is it in your priority list?

Quote from: CLA

Will we be able to use graphic sheets for plants like we can with creatures at some point?

As far as I know, implementing things like item or map tiles won't work without multiple texture atlases, or something, and I don't know how to do that in the new graphics code.

Quote from: CLA

Will we see the grid that limits embark zones (one tile in the middle map on the embark screen I mean) be removed at some point? That is, will we be able to embark in between/on two "embark grids"? And will the grid (of any resolution) be less apparent in the world?

Considering the multitile tree rewrite and that we've had new grass for a while now, will we see changes to shrubs or bushes in future versions as well? As in, will some of them cover multiple tiles or change in other ways?
Have any changes been made to worldgen regarding deforesting? I'm thinking of Humans deforesting in the surrounding areas to build their towns and make space for their fields.

I'd like to allow embarks to straddle world tile lines.  I haven't jumped into it since there will probably be ugly bugs that come out of doing it without care (from old fort mode code that assumes sites to be in one square).  Ideally, the grid would disappear as much as it has in adventure mode travel -- and then beyond that by getting rid of the griddy artifacts that plague things like rivers.

Yeah, I suspect we'll get multitle shrubs sometime, and perhaps the distinction between a small tree and a large bush won't mean much after a while.

I haven't changed wg deforestation.

Quote from: Sunday

What happens regarding the new combat and yielding during fortress mode sieges? First, do the invaders yield? If so, do they then retreat? What about the dwarves -- do they yield? If so, is it a military-only yielding, or fortress-wide?

Or are invasions/ambushes no-quarter?

It's all no-quarter right now, because we haven't added anything to deal with prisoners.  That doesn't mean people can't run though.

Quote from: Rockphed

Toady, as you go back through stuff, how are you choosing which thing to work on next?  Is it more stack like, or a queue, or some weird round robin thing?

There's no particular system.  I try to go for things that I'm motivated to work on and that don't rely on other remaining items, just to get through it as fast as possible.

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

Have you done any work on Kobolds yet and what ish do you have planned for them in short?

Nah, they are the largest yawning void left, probably.  Playing Kobold Quest is my only suggestion.  There may be other notes elsewhere, but I'm not sure where the twists and turns will bring us.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 31, 2013, 03:33:15 am

Joyous news!

Hopefully I won't lose any more backpacks full of grand treasure in the future :P

Another question: Will mega and semi-mega beasts, and wild animal historical figures (like that giant leopard that ate somebody's rabid 5 years ago and claimed a lair) breed during play now? I know during worldgen they will often enough have children, as you can see them in legends mode, but I was interested to see if that could continue to occur now that births and deaths of entity populations are being tracked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 31, 2013, 06:36:02 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 31, 2013, 03:33:15 am

Joyous news!

Hopefully I won't lose any more backpacks full of grand treasure in the future :P

Another question: Will mega and semi-mega beasts, and wild animal historical figures (like that giant leopard that ate somebody's rabid 5 years ago and claimed a lair) breed during play now? I know during worldgen they will often enough have children, as you can see them in legends mode, but I was interested to see if that could continue to occur now that births and deaths of entity populations are being tracked.

In addition to this, will any offspring of historical figures follow in their predecessor's footsteps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 31, 2013, 07:45:34 am

I am an enemy of the Dwarves of the Paisley Thong.  For I have eaten a Stray Puppy (Tame) belonging to some random Lye Maker, as did my father, and his father before him.

Also, thanks for the replies Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 31, 2013, 09:28:34 am

Thanks a lot for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 31, 2013, 02:48:25 pm

I hope that, in the future, we shall be able to track down crocodiles that maul our master armorsmiths and exact revenge in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 31, 2013, 06:38:57 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 31, 2013, 02:48:25 pm

I hope that, in the future, we shall be able to track down crocodiles that maul our master armorsmiths and exact revenge in adventure mode.

Hear, hear!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 31, 2013, 09:02:20 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 31, 2013, 06:38:57 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 31, 2013, 02:48:25 pm

I hope that, in the future, we shall be able to track down crocodiles that maul our master armorsmiths and exact revenge in adventure mode.

Hear, hear!

I'm hoping that'll be something we can do once we can send raiding parties out. Nuts to the goblins, I want to go all Moby Dick on the wildlife! There's potential there for hunters and beastmasters and the like, too.


Cheers for Toady answers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on May 31, 2013, 09:47:06 pm

Is dwarves leaving your fortress on the dev horizon? It makes sense for them to decide to either pack up and go, or to tantrum spiral (maybe based on if they're married/have children, dedication to their job, personality traits)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 01, 2013, 12:11:39 am

Quote from: arkhometha on May 31, 2013, 09:47:06 pm

Is dwarves leaving your fortress on the dev horizon? It makes sense for them to decide to either pack up and go, or to tantrum spiral (maybe based on if they're married/have children, dedication to their job, personality traits)

ToadyOne has spoken about that from time to time. From either their own agency, or starting a new Fort from your own. Its tied to various future DF features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 01, 2013, 05:10:05 pm

It would be cool if unhappy dwarves left sometimes, instead of staying around to cause trouble. Perhaps they could get a very bad thought of "prevented from leaving lately."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 01, 2013, 05:37:43 pm

Sad to hear about some of the unique graphics concerns for certain screens, but I wasn't too concerned about that. However, it seems Toady skipped my line about adding horizontal and vertical flip and rotation attributes to tiles to reduce space used by tiles that are basically duplicates. :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 01, 2013, 06:11:12 pm

Thanks for the answers!

We're still waiting for the June report, but it looks like there's not much to do... besides fixing trees, kobold caves (or has that been put off?), and whatever else there is.......

Interesting to see there's a lot of stuff "I'm not sure whether dwarves do that, its in the old code". Has Dwarf Fortress become a swamp even for the programmer to quest about in?  8) 8) 8) 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 01, 2013, 07:06:49 pm

If the "20% of the list" number is to set the trend, then the game is due to come out in late September...

This is consistent with his latest estimate of "some months in the future" at the beginning of the month. It is not consistent with 2 months, working 14 hours a day, which he also said as an estimate around the same time.

EDIT: Actually, if Toady did 20% of the remaining work, estimated at 2 months of 14 hour days, in 30 days, that works out to 5.5 hours a day or 39 hours a week this month. Which is exactly how much time you'd expect Toady to put into a full time job. So that's consistent with a late September release too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 01, 2013, 08:26:47 pm

Except that programming doesn't really work that way? He's gone through 20% of his list, but it's highly doubtful each item on the list takes the same amount of time to cross off. The next item on his list might stall him for a full week, or he might rip through half the list in that same amount of time if it's all closely related and easily finished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 01, 2013, 08:50:15 pm

Yeah it's a rough data point. But it's a data point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 01, 2013, 09:01:55 pm

Exactly as Monk12 has said.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 01, 2013, 10:54:49 pm

With the addition of jumping, will invaders now be able to leap over a 1 z-level walls? Can they climb on rough walls?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on June 01, 2013, 11:11:41 pm

If so, all the more reason to make a roof.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 01, 2013, 11:47:52 pm

Right now, combat physics don't seem to account for some things. For example, it doesn't seem that the skull round shape mitigates the effects of impacts it suffers as it happens IRL. As a consequence, we have strange things like dwarfs breaking each other skulls with punchs and a lot of skull breaking in general. The same thing can somewhat be applied to arrows vs armor, they don't seem to account the armor shape in impact. Since we had a combat overhaul, does this theorized unintended deficiency (bug? I don't know a better word for it) stills stands, it's somewhat better or it's completely removed? If it's not and I'm right about this, do you plan to do something about it in the future?


Simple example, not mine, of someone breaking a skull after being thrown by the thumb.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/cRBSWYo.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 02, 2013, 01:20:13 am

Quote from: Witty on June 01, 2013, 10:54:49 pm

With the addition of jumping, will invaders now be able to leap over a 1 z-level walls? Can they climb on rough walls?

Not in the next version; Toady hasn't and won't be doing the climbing pathing for AI. It'll probably come up in the future.

Quote from: arkhometha on June 01, 2013, 11:47:52 pm

Right now, combat physics don't seem to account for some things. For example, it doesn't seem that the skull round shape mitigates the effects of impacts it suffers as it happens IRL. As a consequence, we have strange things like dwarfs breaking each other skulls with punchs and a lot of skull breaking in general. The same thing can somewhat be applied to arrows vs armor, they don't seem to account the armor shape in impact. Since we had a combat overhaul, does this theorized unintended deficiency (bug? I don't know a better word for it) stills stands, it's somewhat better or it's completely removed? If it's not and I'm right about this, do you plan to do something about it in the future?


Simple example, not mine, of someone breaking a skull after being thrown by the thumb.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/cRBSWYo.png)

He's acknowledged this problem before and said he'll deal with it in the future, but he hasn't stated that he's reworked how impacts affect tissues, made shape of a body part or impacting object affect that or anything of the sort for this release, so it's probably going to have to wait until he actually decides to go into the combat arc directly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 02, 2013, 02:27:19 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on June 02, 2013, 01:20:13 am

Quote from: Witty on June 01, 2013, 10:54:49 pm

With the addition of jumping, will invaders now be able to leap over a 1 z-level walls? Can they climb on rough walls?

Not in the next version; Toady hasn't and won't be doing the climbing pathing for AI. It'll probably come up in the future.

Quote from: arkhometha on June 01, 2013, 11:47:52 pm

Right now, combat physics don't seem to account for some things. For example, it doesn't seem that the skull round shape mitigates the effects of impacts it suffers as it happens IRL. As a consequence, we have strange things like dwarfs breaking each other skulls with punchs and a lot of skull breaking in general. The same thing can somewhat be applied to arrows vs armor, they don't seem to account the armor shape in impact. Since we had a combat overhaul, does this theorized unintended deficiency (bug? I don't know a better word for it) stills stands, it's somewhat better or it's completely removed? If it's not and I'm right about this, do you plan to do something about it in the future?


Simple example, not mine, of someone breaking a skull after being thrown by the thumb.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/cRBSWYo.png)

He's acknowledged this problem before and said he'll deal with it in the future, but he hasn't stated that he's reworked how impacts affect tissues, made shape of a body part or impacting object affect that or anything of the sort for this release, so it's probably going to have to wait until he actually decides to go into the combat arc directly.

Thanks for the info, Eric Blank!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 02, 2013, 06:33:57 am

There seem to be a number of things sitting around waiting for a pathfinding rewrite.  Most notably flyer/swimmer pathfinding being sort of crazy, but with the upcoming new release there is climbing and jumping, and on the horizon there is potential digging and construction.  Gonna be one hell of a rewrite once it comes, which by the sounds of things will most likely be along with "improved sieges", since that's the one item that simply doesn't work at all until the pathfinding is working (at least not as it's been described). 

Though when that might be is completely unknown :)

It's going to be interesting to see how all that eventually works it's way to fort mode.  I can imagine strange bugs with dwarves scaling cavern walls and swimming through underground lakes to fetch wads of silk on the cave floor and all kinds of craziness.  What's going to be hard is representing these abilities without having them used all the time.  Maybe someone would scramble over a wall if faced with an imminent threat, but it's much less likely for anyone but some kind of parkour gymnastics ninja to do so while carrying a baby and a load of lumber.  There are many strange cases that need considering.  Stuff to look forward to though. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 02, 2013, 10:27:10 am

Quote from: arkhometha on June 01, 2013, 11:47:52 pm

Right now, combat physics don't seem to account for some things. For example, it doesn't seem that the skull round shape mitigates the effects of impacts it suffers as it happens IRL. As a consequence, we have strange things like dwarfs breaking each other skulls with punchs and a lot of skull breaking in general. The same thing can somewhat be applied to arrows vs armor, they don't seem to account the armor shape in impact. Since we had a combat overhaul, does this theorized unintended deficiency (bug? I don't know a better word for it) stills stands, it's somewhat better or it's completely removed? If it's not and I'm right about this, do you plan to do something about it in the future?


Simple example, not mine, of someone breaking a skull after being thrown by the thumb.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/cRBSWYo.png)

From the most recent DF Talk (21):

Quote

[01:25:51] Z: "Are you planning to make skulls and brains a little more tough? Every fight seems to end with the skull being jammed through the brain."

T: "Well, hopefully this is already fixed for the next release. I didn't add...I didn't go quite the direction, I guess I wanted to end up going there, by adding more geometric information to the parts and stuff to kind of explain what the part looks like. There just wasn't enough time but I made them larger. I mean, I don't remember, they were kind of a ridiculous size. So the largeness for now I think helps enough.
 And if we wanna get them back to a, I don't know, appropriate size and geometry and hardness, and all that, it might get tweaked later on. But I've been pretty happy with the results of sitting there and sort of boxing someone in the head over and over and not just having their skull collapse after a few hits. It takes quite a bit more in the next release."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 02, 2013, 12:49:09 pm

Quote from: DG on June 02, 2013, 10:27:10 am

From the most recent DF Talk (21):

Quote

[01:25:51] Z: "Are you planning to make skulls and brains a little more tough? Every fight seems to end with the skull being jammed through the brain."

T: "Well, hopefully this is already fixed for the next release. I didn't add...I didn't go quite the direction, I guess I wanted to end up going there, by adding more geometric information to the parts and stuff to kind of explain what the part looks like. There just wasn't enough time but I made them larger. I mean, I don't remember, they were kind of a ridiculous size. So the largeness for now I think helps enough.
 And if we wanna get them back to a, I don't know, appropriate size and geometry and hardness, and all that, it might get tweaked later on. But I've been pretty happy with the results of sitting there and sort of boxing someone in the head over and over and not just having their skull collapse after a few hits. It takes quite a bit more in the next release."

Oh, I didn't hear the latest DF Talk, so that makes my question redundant. Sorry. Thanks a lot for the quote, DG!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Muffindog on June 02, 2013, 02:54:06 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on June 02, 2013, 12:49:09 pm

Quote from: DG on June 02, 2013, 10:27:10 am

From the most recent DF Talk (21):

Quote

[01:25:51] Z: "Are you planning to make skulls and brains a little more tough? Every fight seems to end with the skull being jammed through the brain."

T: "Well, hopefully this is already fixed for the next release. I didn't add...I didn't go quite the direction, I guess I wanted to end up going there, by adding more geometric information to the parts and stuff to kind of explain what the part looks like. There just wasn't enough time but I made them larger. I mean, I don't remember, they were kind of a ridiculous size. So the largeness for now I think helps enough.
 And if we wanna get them back to a, I don't know, appropriate size and geometry and hardness, and all that, it might get tweaked later on. But I've been pretty happy with the results of sitting there and sort of boxing someone in the head over and over and not just having their skull collapse after a few hits. It takes quite a bit more in the next release."

Oh, I didn't hear the latest DF Talk, so that makes my question redundant. Sorry. Thanks a lot for the quote, DG!

Do check it out when you can. A lot of interesting topics get covered and a lot is said about the new combat overhaul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 02, 2013, 05:29:57 pm

Toady, you mentioned a long time ago (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg27311#msg27311):

Quote from: Toady One

I'm not opposed to setting cage traps in trees although I think most anything to do with trees is premature until I handle multi-tile trees.  Elves might be the first to set traps up there.

Now that you handled multi-tile trees, can we place traps up in trees and do elfs do it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 02, 2013, 05:59:05 pm

About the skull thing, has densities been implemented into the game? Sounds like a dwarf's head doesn't need to be bigger, but more denser (both figuratively and literally). Not dense enough that a falling boulder would bounce some poor dwarf's head without leaving a dent, of course...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 02, 2013, 06:29:02 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on June 02, 2013, 05:59:05 pm

About the skull thing, has densities been implemented into the game? Sounds like a dwarf's head doesn't need to be bigger, but more denser (both figuratively and literally). Not dense enough that a falling boulder would bounce some poor dwarf's head without leaving a dent, of course...

Density has been around for a long time. I think you're referring to thickness, though, or bulk/young's modulus, all of which are pretty much in the game. Lead is hella dense, but if your skull were made of it, it could be crushed pretty easily.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 02, 2013, 08:30:05 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on June 02, 2013, 05:29:57 pm

Toady, you mentioned a long time ago (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg27311#msg27311):

Quote from: Toady One

I'm not opposed to setting cage traps in trees although I think most anything to do with trees is premature until I handle multi-tile trees.  Elves might be the first to set traps up there.

Now that you handled multi-tile trees, can we place traps up in trees and do elfs do it?

The following quotes in the spoiler from the latest  talk don't address your question specifically but they give the impression that nothing new has been done with traps and that any changes are likely to wait for a more specific mechanics release.  When that goes in traps as they are now will probably be replaced with more component pieces that require something more from the player, whether that be more thought and planning or resources or time and space, I don't know.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

"Do you have any future plans for liquid pressure? Will more powerful pumps ever make pump stacks obsolete and will volcanoes ever erupt?""

T: "Don't have specific plans for liquid pressure. I mean we're always open to people's ideas about that. We're not sort of engineering or mechanically minded people so as much as anything we rely on the community to come up with ideas that kind of fit within our sort of fourteen hundredths plus dwarfiness time frame. And you know if there's ways besides the Archimedean screw or whatever that people have for pump ideas, and we can kind of think of how to make that work CPU wise with the liquid model, we're all for whatever is feasible there.
 For a volcano...I mean, it would be sad to have volcanoes and not to have them erupt." *laughs*

Quote

"Are conveyer belt buildings anywhere in the plans?""

T: "I don't specifically recall. We already have those mine cart rollers, so that's practically a conveyer belt already. And just anything that's feasible. We have a list of machines and devices and parts of devices that people have come up with that they think fits within the time frame. There's a big arc for that actually. Working on that stuff. So if people come up with different feasible ideas for conveyer belts we don't have anything against it. I mean, it's not gonna be like modern or anything, but whatever fits we're willing to put it in. It's dwarfy enough."

Quote

"Are magmatic pistons ever going to be implemented? It would be fun to move z-levels around once you get enough resources.""

T: "Well...So we did promise moving fortress pieces. We don't really know what that's going to involve. If that involves taking a rope and hauling things around a shaft like an elevator. If that involves, you know, magma driven mechanized mech fortresses with particle projection cannons or whatever that shoot magma at people. Who knows what people will come up with once we put in the mechanics,
 Fluid, messing with fluids is always annoying. Because fluids take so much processing time and so on. So I'm not sure what exactly's going to come out of it. As I said earlier with mechanisms and machines, we don't really have a feel for that stuff so people just come up with their specs and ideas and when we get to the moving fortresses, if people have stuff for us to look at, we're gonna consider everything and there's gonna be a whole lot of stuff going in at that time. All kinds of bits and pieces.
 We're gonna try and think about making things as, sort of, into their little constituent elements as much as possible so that people can realize all kinds of different machines and not just go by some script that we wrote for them. So yeah, just keep throwing ideas at us on that stuff and when we get to it we're going to do some interesting things hopefully."

And this quote relates to things like caltrops now being lower hanging fruit from a development point of view because they can be adapted from the spatter system.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(C = Capntastic, R = Rainseeker, T = Toady)

Quote

C: "So...Is there eventually going to be like, in the near future, like throwing caltrops down or making little traps or tying wire across a room and tripping people or making people step on things like broken glass or whatever. Is that gonna be, it seems like all that stuff could be kind of feasible at this point."

T: "It is. It is more feasible now. We have, ever since we added the trees having all...I don't even remember what they're called in the raws now. They're called like "plant growths" or something like that. But the trees have leaves and I used all the different kind of samaras or whatever the flying keys are called or whatever, I don't remember anymore. There's the kind of thing that I had some retention of the names and words when I was just copying down lists of plant parts and so on.
 But there're lots of new things in the game. Flowers and leaves and so on and fruit and that kind of thing. Finally can have a fruit fight in Dwarf Fortress. Although I imagine that thrown things are still a little more lethal than they should be. *laughs*"

R: "Urist McDwarf killed by apple."

[31:01] T: "Yes. Our apples definitely will be a killer. So what that led to though, especially during fall, when all of the leaves fall off the trees, is that it led to these...Couple things it led to. Item clouds which are kind of like, they are stored like a breath attack or a mist. But they're cloud of small items and then, when they land on the ground, they turn into an item spatter. So we can start thinking about...At least it's another way to think about a lot of small objects like broken glass or lots of little caltrops or coins for that matter. But also lots of other stuff.
 And there's information lost as usual which isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to not wanting to track the specific information of every little object when it comes down to that level. And yeah, stuff like that becomes more feasible because the feet interact with spatter of all kinds and so you could definitely see some of that stuff happening. Of course I have no idea when, but it's all on the table now. With the new storage system makes interesting things possible.
 I think you can already mod in item cloud breath or whatever, if you want to breath...If you want to make a modded creature breath little daggers at people, you could add a little dagger like the carving knives or whatever, from the tool raws you can have them breath forks at people or something."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kyphis on June 02, 2013, 09:05:03 pm

With the new climbing being implimented, what are the odds of seeing/constructing fences that block most animals, but only cost extra movement (take longer) for things with climbing or sentience? It would be interesting to see Adventure mode towns be able to have livestock pens and fences around their crops.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on June 03, 2013, 11:16:23 am

You said in the Bay12 report that bandits won't be hanging out around wells this release. Should this be taken to mean that the previously mentioned feature of bandits harassing townsfolk and getting in fistfights with the player is out for this release? If so, is there any way for the player to get into a nonlethal fistfight without angering the town's populace?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 04, 2013, 04:06:07 am

Quote from: tfaal on June 03, 2013, 11:16:23 am

You said in the Bay12 report that bandits won't be hanging out around wells this release. Should this be taken to mean that the previously mentioned feature of bandits harassing townsfolk and getting in fistfights with the player is out for this release? If so, is there any way for the player to get into a nonlethal fistfight without angering the town's populace?

That's not how I'm reading the report - he said they're on hold (presumably in fixing or expanding), not that they're gone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on June 04, 2013, 04:47:40 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 04, 2013, 04:06:07 am

That's not how I'm reading the report - he said they're on hold (presumably in fixing or expanding), not that they're gone.

My impression of the report for June (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126707.0) was that bandits harassing townspeople are on hold because: A - they are using up valuable dev time and B - there's nothing your adventurer can do with them (e.g. interrogate them, drag them to the sheriff) once they yield. Adding more ways to deal with yielding ruffians seems to have been ruled out for the coming release.

Quote from: June report

interrogations and temporary prisoners (features I'm not willing to add for the release at this late juncture)

Whether bandits will still show up in towns in some way in the release is apparently an open issue.

Quote from: June report

We'll see how that turns out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 04, 2013, 07:13:46 am

I dunno, think you're reading too much into that, possibly?  Toady just said loitering at the well was out for the moment, nothing more.  Bandits showing up and harassing people has been on the table for a long time.  I got the impression this feature trimming (how wonderfully rare it is!) just applied to post-ultra violence behavior.    ...   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on June 04, 2013, 08:50:56 am

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 04, 2013, 09:34:03 am

I think during play the deep dwarf and hill dwarf sites and populations were supposed to be abstracted so they don't take up as much resources. We'll probably see direct interaction with them in the future, but as long as it remains abstracted on the whole we can probably safely have many times more hill and deep dwarves than we can dwarves in our fortress. I figured it's like the population of the countryside living around a land-owning lord's castle which has a fraction of the staff but most of the defenses. He did say the mountainhomes will be "fortress" sites like the site type we create as players, and that they will provide the link between the surface and the cavern settlements. Also said something about using hill and deep dwarf populations in the army arc in the future, so maybe we'll get to send them out lead by a squad of fortress dwarves to defend or raid settlements.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 04, 2013, 09:38:57 am

Quote from: Owlbread on June 04, 2013, 08:50:56 am

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

One of the main points of separating population into fortress pop vs hill/deep dwarves was to not have to have them in the fortress area while still allowing for amassing large armies for off-site battles during the army arc. Thus it's doubtful we'll have all that many hill/deep dwarves visiting our fortress at a time, since the strain on the computer would just be too much, but there'll definitely be a lot more of them around than the total fortress pop.

/ninjaed, but oh well ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 04, 2013, 06:53:38 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on June 04, 2013, 04:47:40 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 04, 2013, 04:06:07 am

That's not how I'm reading the report - he said they're on hold (presumably in fixing or expanding), not that they're gone.

My impression of the report for June (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126707.0) was that bandits harassing townspeople are on hold because: A - they are using up valuable dev time and B - there's nothing your adventurer can do with them (e.g. interrogate them, drag them to the sheriff) once they yield. Adding more ways to deal with yielding ruffians seems to have been ruled out for the coming release.

Quote from: June report

interrogations and temporary prisoners (features I'm not willing to add for the release at this late juncture)

Whether bandits will still show up in towns in some way in the release is apparently an open issue.

Quote from: June report

We'll see how that turns out.

My thoughts on this was that earlier he mentioned fixing a bit where bandits were harassing themselves. Perhaps he got rid of locations where you might expect to find bandits (example: Hang-outs, wells). Bandits might still appear around town in random locations, but they won't hang out at specific locations yet. And the point about taking temporary prisoners is probably if you wanted to locate bandits on purpose, instead of having to hope you bump into them at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 04, 2013, 07:08:37 pm

Will we ever be able to dispose of Goblin prisoners other than killing them? If so, how? Hostage exchange and ransom makes sense for the other races, but I don't know if Goblins care enough about their own to pay to rescue them. Maybe exchange one of their valuable leaders for a number of previously kidnapped children?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 04, 2013, 07:39:33 pm

 Toady, how will the issue of "fortress time" be dealt with? Since taverns are apparently on the horizon, won't the time discrepancy lead to adventurers spending several months at your fort just drinking a beer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 04, 2013, 07:47:47 pm

Yes it will, and presumably it'll be the same oddness that leads Caravans to spend several months at a fortress and much less time elsewhere. Though it's more likely adventurers won't spend as much time as the caravan, since they'll probably roll in, eat/drink/sleep, and maybe start a fight or play a game before leaving, none of which needs direct player supervision (unlike meeting the Caravan liason.) I wouldn't be surprised if a satisfying tavern experience could be accomplished in an in-game week or two, which isn't too outlandish as far as the rest of the world goes.

Or to answer your question more directly, I don't think it'll be "dealt with," it'll just exist. It's a weird time bubble, but since it should affect their cashflow at the same rate I don't know as it will have an appreciable in-game effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on June 04, 2013, 09:20:58 pm

So taverns and their time thing will be "no more weird than half the game's time stuff already is."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 04, 2013, 09:28:04 pm

Yeah. We discussed this last month if I recall correctly, and concluded that... Well, I don't think there was much of a conclusion, but it seems that our choices are deal with it, or brainwash Toady into actually DOING all that work (which could take a long-ass time, I suppose) and setting the time tables straight so that fortress mode time is as slow and detailed as Adventure mode time. And then we'd have to deal with the consequences of time running that much more slowly, such as a single in-game year taking gods-knows-how-long, even if unpaused the entire time, depending on how slow your computer is. The good news is that a lot more could happen in said year so technically the pace doesn't necessarily need to slow down, but the bad news is that things that take years to happen might not occur before Toady makes some change that results in having to regen all our worlds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on June 04, 2013, 11:32:28 pm

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 05, 2013, 12:05:35 am

Quote from: Keldane on June 04, 2013, 11:32:28 pm

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

Yeah, but one of those last things have a chance of being non-issue when caravans are determined as a part of the setting instead of being randomly generated. In fact, once caravans are moving around you might be able get visits from all nearby civs, rather than just one caravan per species. That might make things even wonkier though.

Heck you might even get multiple caravans from one civ if you live close enough to more than one site in the civ. Like having a hamlet and a city trade stuff to you separately.

Right now though in my current fort I have troubles with caravans showing up too often. They overlap each other and then get stuck in my hallways. So I can only imagine what would happen if we could get more caravans than what we get now.

But as for the other growing up and such that would still be a major problem.

I'm still interested in seeing what kind of changes that caravans moving around independently will bring about, but I imagine that won't be in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 05, 2013, 12:22:14 am

Quote from: Keldane on June 04, 2013, 11:32:28 pm

If Fortress Mode time is slowed to match Adventure Mode, I will be saddened by feeling the need to forgo new Fort mode features in favor of continuing to play the game with years passing at an appreciable rate. I feel it would be likely that I wouldn't update the game anymore, because Adventure Mode just isn't remotely as interesting to me, and time-related things (the next caravan, children and animals growing up, etc) generally already feel like they take far too long.

Hopefully you haven't entirely closed your mind to Adventure Mode because of how it's currently implemented. The next update will be a taste of it's potential but still far from the final vision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 05, 2013, 02:30:11 am

Quote from: Owlbread on June 04, 2013, 08:50:56 am

Toady, I was listening to your latest talk and was very interested in the bit about Deep Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. Can you clarify whether the Mountainhomes (capitals of the empire/kingdom) will be Deep sites? Just how deep are these "Deep Sites"? Also, how much control would we eventually have over them? Can I draft them into specialist regiments? Would there be a limit to the number of Hill Dwarves one can have, less than the Fortress Dwarves for instance?

I was just thinking about how great it would be to have irregular squads of drunken Hill Dwarves roaming around the surface area of my fortress, fighting sasquatches and raiders and warning my soldiers of incoming attack. I wonder how the Deep Dwarves would fit into that, though. Maybe if they were superior in their ability to see in the dark, they could be effective defenders/explorers in the caverns.

He's talked about this stuff at considerable length in the past. Mountainhomes cross both levels, with access to the surface and the underground. They're at least on the first cavern level, there might be some on subsequent ones (as far as I can recall, Toady hasn't specified that) in some cases. Our control over them would be more or less the same as hill dwarves, they're functionally the same thing except underground rather than topside. We don't know what their cave adaptations will be like, although he's mentioned he wants to do something he doesn't really know what yet (as of last mention). Their regiments wouldn't really be "specialist" but you could make armies out of them anyway. You will have vastly more hill dwarves than fortress dwarves, that's sort of the point of them: Allow you as the player to control realistically large numbers when you get involved in the army arc. There probably won't be any limit besides some very large cap imposed due to technical constraints (it's not possible to designate a variable that can grow to a number of unlimited size) that won't be reached in normal play.

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 04, 2013, 07:08:37 pm

Will we ever be able to dispose of Goblin prisoners other than killing them? Hostage exchange and ransom makes sense for the other races, but I don't know if Goblins care enough about their own to pay to rescue them. Maybe exchange one of their valuable leaders for a number of previously kidnapped children?

The answer to this is almost certainly "yes, but no timeline".

Quote from: Witty on June 04, 2013, 07:39:33 pm

Toady, how will the issue of "fortress time" be dealt with? Since taverns are apparently on the horizon, won't the time discrepancy lead to adventurers spending several months at your fort just drinking a beer?

That's not a bigger problem than any of the other inconsistencies caused by the time difference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on June 05, 2013, 02:31:14 am

Quote from: DG on June 05, 2013, 12:22:14 am

Hopefully you haven't entirely closed your mind to Adventure Mode because of how it's currently implemented. The next update will be a taste of it's potential but still far from the final vision.

It isn't based on how it's currently implemented, but rather on the fact that I'd rather have control over a group of dwarves indirectly than a single dwarf directly. Simply a matter of preferred modes.

Quote from: EmeraldWind on June 05, 2013, 12:05:35 am

Yeah, but one of those last things have a chance of being non-issue when caravans are determined as a part of the setting instead of being randomly generated. In fact, once caravans are moving around you might be able get visits from all nearby civs, rather than just one caravan per species. That might make things even wonkier though.

Heck you might even get multiple caravans from one civ if you live close enough to more than one site in the civ. Like having a hamlet and a city trade stuff to you separately.

I'll admit that caravans could become less of an issue if and when that change comes about. For now, though, they can be frustratingly infrequent when I'm relying on them for anything, and unless a change to frequency comes before the discussed deceleration (or at the same time), I only see that getting worse.

Regardless, I'm still heavily in favor of Fort Mode time staying as it is. Just my personal opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: malvado on June 05, 2013, 05:29:34 am

A Few Questions about Weapons and Combat

1 : Right Now weapons can get their own names after being used, but is it feasible that if a weapon is used for solely (or mostly ) killing one sort of creature (like Kobolds / Goblins ) it would start to become famous and even inspire fear on the enemies its being used?

2 : Have named Weapons (Not artifacts ) some sort of Bonus compared to Normal versions of the weapons and if not, is this something that is going to change in some way or other?

3 : How about elemental damage from Weapons ( That Flaming sword or Ice cold dagger ) , is it going to be implemented and how would it work? Perhaps some of the "magical" items could have an light area as well? It would certainly be hard to be stealthy wielding an Flaming Sword.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 05, 2013, 06:15:49 am

Quote from: malvado on June 05, 2013, 05:29:34 am

A Few Questions about Weapons and Combat

1 : Right Now weapons can get their own names after being used, but is it feasible that if a weapon is used for solely (or mostly ) killing one sort of creature (like Kobolds / Goblins ) it would start to become famous and even inspire fear on the enemies its being used?

2 : Have named Weapons (Not artifacts ) some sort of Bonus compared to Normal versions of the weapons and if not, is this something that is going to change in some way or other?

3 : How about elemental damage from Weapons ( That Flaming sword or Ice cold dagger ) , is it going to be implemented and how would it work? Perhaps some of the "magical" items could have an light area as well? It would certainly be hard to be stealthy wielding an Flaming Sword.

1: Nope, not yet anyway famous weapons are iirc. planed thought
2: No Bonus so far. Artefacts make just 3 instead of 2 attack rolls. Named Weapons should still have 2 Rolls.
 
3: That wouldnt be necesserly elemental and you can have cold weapons already by turning Nethercap into a trainingweapon or shield. I am not sure but fireimp-bone could also be fixed temperature to since the imp has "HOMEOTHERM:10095". Atleast impbones it make a very Firesafe material since theyr melting-point is at 15000.

A bigger variety should come in as soon as toady creates and expands more of the artefact-effects which can have but are not limited to Elemental effects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on June 05, 2013, 09:51:13 am

Remind me, where is document that lists all the changes so far from last release?

I suppose it is finally time to get a little hyped about new release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on June 05, 2013, 10:36:56 am

Quote from: zwei on June 05, 2013, 09:51:13 am

Remind me, where is document that lists all the changes so far from last release?

I suppose it is finally time to get a little hyped about new release.

Here you go

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on June 05, 2013, 01:32:26 pm

Quote from: CLA on June 05, 2013, 10:36:56 am

Quote from: zwei on June 05, 2013, 09:51:13 am

Remind me, where is document that lists all the changes so far from last release?

I suppose it is finally time to get a little hyped about new release.

Here you go

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg

Thank you!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 05, 2013, 01:36:17 pm

Quote from: malvado on June 05, 2013, 05:29:34 am

3 : How about elemental damage from Weapons ( That Flaming sword or Ice cold dagger ) , is it going to be implemented and how would it work? Perhaps some of the "magical" items could have an light area as well? It would certainly be hard to be stealthy wielding an Flaming Sword.
[/color]

Toady has talked about flaming weapons in one of the Fortress Talks, and the basic problem that he hasn't decided is how to make them rare enough.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on June 05, 2013, 01:50:46 pm

Quote from: King Mir on June 05, 2013, 01:36:17 pm

Quote from: malvado on June 05, 2013, 05:29:34 am

3 : How about elemental damage from Weapons ( That Flaming sword or Ice cold dagger ) , is it going to be implemented and how would it work? Perhaps some of the "magical" items could have an light area as well? It would certainly be hard to be stealthy wielding an Flaming Sword.
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Toady has talked about flaming weapons in one of the Fortress Talks, and the basic problem that he hasn't decided is how to make them rare enough.

Spoiler: An Actual Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Perhaps the circus tent weapons would be good flaming weapons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:05:49 pm

Quote

how to make them rare enough.

How many FB are made of flame ?
If weapons are randomized the same way (or with the same dispersion) than forgotten beasts, I think they won't be so many in the world...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 05, 2013, 03:20:43 pm

Quote from: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:05:49 pm

Quote

how to make them rare enough.

How many FB are made of flame ?
If weapons are randomized the same way (or with the same dispersion) than forgotten beasts, I think they won't be so many in the world...

"This is the vomit greatsword "The Burning of Cats". All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It menaces with spikes of miasma. It emits an aura of peace and niceness."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:39:12 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on June 05, 2013, 03:20:43 pm

Quote from: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:05:49 pm

Quote

how to make them rare enough.

How many FB are made of flame ?
If weapons are randomized the same way (or with the same dispersion) than forgotten beasts, I think they won't be so many in the world...

"This is the vomit greatsword "The Burning of Cats". All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It menaces with spikes of miasma. It emits an aura of peace and niceness."

Exactly !
Why should "magic" always mean "overpowered" ? Snow blob and gigantic quadruped made of sand have proved it could be otherwise, sometimes...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 05, 2013, 04:45:03 pm

Quote from: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:05:49 pm

Quote

how to make them rare enough.

How many FB are made of flame ?
If weapons are randomized the same way (or with the same dispersion) than forgotten beasts, I think they won't be so many in the world...

The original discussion was in the context of dwarven made magical objects/artifacts. Cause in the end you want dwarves using them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on June 05, 2013, 07:06:00 pm

Quote from: King Mir on June 05, 2013, 04:45:03 pm

Quote from: Inarius on June 05, 2013, 03:05:49 pm

Quote

how to make them rare enough.

How many FB are made of flame ?
If weapons are randomized the same way (or with the same dispersion) than forgotten beasts, I think they won't be so many in the world...

The original discussion was in the context of dwarven made magical objects/artifacts. Cause in the end you want dwarves using them.

Or leaving them in the middle of the front yard for your adventurers to find.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 06, 2013, 12:35:24 am

From today's log:

Quote from: Multitile Log

The upside to this revision is that whatever job priority system we come up with is almost touching the ground as far as low-hanging fruit go, so it'll definitely be one of the post-release features we work on with the bug fixes and other upgrades.

...

What does Toady mean by "job priority system"?  Po...possibly an in-game job manager like Therapist?  I don't see how this would be connected to the revision he was talking about, so I'm simultaneously extremely confused and excited.  Help, anyone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 06, 2013, 12:40:43 am

Quote from: hermes on June 06, 2013, 12:35:24 am

From today's log:

Quote from: Multitile Log

The upside to this revision is that whatever job priority system we come up with is almost touching the ground as far as low-hanging fruit go, so it'll definitely be one of the post-release features we work on with the bug fixes and other upgrades.

What does Toady mean by "job priority system"?  Po...possibly an in-game job manager like Therapist?  I don't see how this would be connected to the revision he was talking about, so I'm simultaneously extremely confused and excited.  Help, anyone?

I think he's refering to the order in which dwarves consider a job to be a "priority" For example, whether a dwarf should go mine out one tile of sand and go back to bed, or actually try to get some work done, and then get his food, drink, sleep, and break all out of the way all at one time, before going back to work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on June 06, 2013, 12:42:17 am

More like telling your broker to report at the depo at once insted of hauling things around. Or your doctors ACTUALLY working in the hospital, and doing low priority work in their free time.
Cool stuff, this a release will be awesome if Toady can handle the performance. I' a bit afraid of the FPS implications of a persistent world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 06, 2013, 12:48:55 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on June 06, 2013, 12:40:43 am

I think he's refering to the order in which dwarves consider a job to be a "priority" For example, whether a dwarf should go mine out one tile of sand and go back to bed, or actually try to get some work done, and then get his food, drink, sleep, and break all out of the way all at one time, before going back to work.

Quote from: fricy on June 06, 2013, 12:42:17 am

More like telling your broker to report at the depo at once insted of hauling stuff. Or your doctors ACTUALLY working in the hospital, and hauling stuff in their free time.
Cool stuff, this a release will be awesome if Toady can handle the performance. I' a bit afraid of the FPS implications of a persistent world.

Ah, thanks guys.  That sounds more like it  :)
Makes more sense as I guess it might tie in with all that stuff they talked about in DF Talk on conversations and timing and whatnot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 06, 2013, 08:10:57 am

I'm surprised that neither of the replies mentioned:  Pull the F-ing LEVER!!!!!!1!!oooooooone!1!2

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 06, 2013, 10:59:58 am

Quote from: Mr S on June 06, 2013, 08:10:57 am

I'm surprised that neither of the replies mentioned:  Pull the F-ing LEVER!!!!!!1!!oooooooone!1!2

Yes, this should be the highest priority.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on June 06, 2013, 03:07:53 pm

If I am reading the implications of the dev log correctly, are we looking at a replacement of the omniscient dwarven hivemind with something that tracks jobs based on knowledge? If so I fear we will be stuck with a broken fortress mode for quite a long time after the release as the new systems are inplemented/bugtested.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kobold6 on June 06, 2013, 05:29:38 pm

Have you considered using OpenMP to easily add threading to DF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on June 06, 2013, 06:06:44 pm

Quote from: Kobold6 on June 06, 2013, 05:29:38 pm

Have you considered using OpenMP to easily add threading to DF?

I think the game already uses at least a little bit of OMP to multi thread, when I run DF and look at my CPU usage, four of my eight cores are being used in about equal amounts. It -is- possible that my system is simply bouncing computations between them so fast I don't notice a drop in the lines, but I think it's at least running some basic loops in parallel.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Telgin on June 06, 2013, 06:29:36 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on June 06, 2013, 06:06:44 pm

Quote from: Kobold6 on June 06, 2013, 05:29:38 pm

Have you considered using OpenMP to easily add threading to DF?

I think the game already uses at least a little bit of OMP to multi thread, when I run DF and look at my CPU usage, four of my eight cores are being used in about equal amounts. It -is- possible that my system is simply bouncing computations between them so fast I don't notice a drop in the lines, but I think it's at least running some basic loops in parallel.

It's because the OS is scheduling it on different cores as you mention.  None of the game's main logic is run in parallel (though the graphics are handled by a separate thread, but this has negligible performance impact).

Quote from: Kobold6 on June 06, 2013, 05:29:38 pm

Have you considered using OpenMP to easily add threading to DF?

Toady has stated that he doesn't know of any way to get it to work faster in a parallel manner yet.  Parallelizing it will be something that happens a long time from now, if ever.  OpenMP is a good help for parallelization, but I can state from personal experience that it's still not simple at all, even with OpenMP.  Or any other threading library of your choice.  Race conditions are hard enough to debug when you're building an application up from the ground with threading in mind...

Quote from: darkflagrance on June 06, 2013, 03:07:53 pm

If I am reading the implications of the dev log correctly, are we looking at a replacement of the omniscient dwarven hivemind with something that tracks jobs based on knowledge? If so I fear we will be stuck with a broken fortress mode for quite a long time after the release as the new systems are inplemented/bugtested.

My impression was that he was going to implement a better and/or customizable priority scheme shortly after the release.  Nothing quite so deep and game changing as making dwarves select jobs based on personal knowledge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 06, 2013, 07:02:23 pm

Yes, the primary difficulty with multithreading isn't implementing the threading itself, it's keeping those threads from interfering with one another in terrible and unexpected ways.  If you build software with threading in mind from the start, it can be done pretty cleanly, but at this point in DF's development it's likely more trouble than it is worth.  The amount of effort that would go into multithreading DF would almost certainly be better spent simply optimizing algorithms in stead. 

Multithreading is a frequent suggestion on the forums, and this is almost always the response it gets.  I would suggest starting another topic if one would like to explore the idea and it's possible implications further. 

---

More on-topic, I'm curious to hear the next few devlog entries.  I can only imagine the kinds of bugs that are showing up in fortress mode right now.  The way the new combat mechanics work for a fortress guard should be interesting - I expect that it will be much less wise to send a single legendary dwarf out to greet invaders in this coming version.  I would also like to know if brawling (in stead of just one-sided tantruming) is now something that can happen in an unhappy fort.  Dwarves have had listed grudges for a long time, and it would be fun to see that come up in play. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 06, 2013, 07:16:41 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on June 06, 2013, 07:02:23 pm

More on-topic, I'm curious to hear the next few devlog entries.  I can only imagine the kinds of bugs that are showing up in fortress mode right now.  The way the new combat mechanics work for a fortress guard should be interesting - I expect that it will be much less wise to send a single legendary dwarf out to greet invaders in this coming version.

Well, since dwarfs don't follow combat formations and just run like rabid dogs towards the enemy, I think it will mean a dwarf squads will just be a mess, two or three dying before everyone getting there, then I can only imagine the AI problems, as three goblins attack a single dwarf and ignore the other dwarfs attacking them and so forth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 06, 2013, 09:51:08 pm

Quote from: Kobold6 on June 06, 2013, 05:29:38 pm

Have you considered using OpenMP to easily add threading to DF?

This has come up many times in the Suggestions forum. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB4CyyRogCULakw4vIuh-_OKsf62meD72re-dCejdq0a-DHEqUQ0qA263AlqhnN8p7A04w_R5VFpii5BxH88CFYoKHJBTuUDEhMtWw..)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 06, 2013, 09:55:06 pm

Personally, I think the whole omniscient thing is the only way Fort mode could work. If your designations had to go through the manager or someone, who then had to go physically tell the miners to dig there, and then they could misinterpret the order (aside from the unintentional way they already do), it would be frustratingly unplayable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Waparius on June 07, 2013, 01:29:51 am

Quote

Personally, I think the whole omniscient thing is the only way Fort mode could work. If your designations had to go through the manager or someone, who then had to go physically tell the miners to dig there, and then they could misinterpret the order (aside from the unintentional way they already do), it would be frustratingly unplayable.

If you got expanded bureaucracy, guildmasters, work gangs with overseers and the like it would add a nice layer of fun to a mature fortress, especially if it only became a problem as your population went up. I for one would like to see larger forts become unwieldy, corrupt messes with the odd secret vampire lair.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 07, 2013, 01:33:31 am

Quote from: Waparius on June 07, 2013, 01:29:51 am

Quote

Personally, I think the whole omniscient thing is the only way Fort mode could work. If your designations had to go through the manager or someone, who then had to go physically tell the miners to dig there, and then they could misinterpret the order (aside from the unintentional way they already do), it would be frustratingly unplayable.

If you got expanded bureaucracy, guildmasters, work gangs with overseers and the like it would add a nice layer of fun to a mature fortress, especially if it only became a problem as your population went up. I for one would like to see larger forts become unwieldy, corrupt messes with the odd secret vampire lair.

Problem is, they're already pretty much like that, without intentionally added fuddling.

Losing wouldn't be fun anymore if you eventually lose control of your fort with no way to avoid it, due to sheer amount of bureaucratic bundling forced upon you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 07, 2013, 01:42:23 am

Quote from: Waparius on June 07, 2013, 01:29:51 am

Quote

Personally, I think the whole omniscient thing is the only way Fort mode could work. If your designations had to go through the manager or someone, who then had to go physically tell the miners to dig there, and then they could misinterpret the order (aside from the unintentional way they already do), it would be frustratingly unplayable.

If you got expanded bureaucracy, guildmasters, work gangs with overseers and the like it would add a nice layer of fun to a mature fortress, especially if it only became a problem as your population went up. I for one would like to see larger forts become unwieldy, corrupt messes with the odd secret vampire lair.

while more late game challenges would be nice, bureaucracy is not what I'd look for. Already large forts are very hard to manage without Dwarf Therapist. The problems stem from the fact that Toady doesn't often run tests long enough to encounter large forts, so those features get neglected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 07, 2013, 01:51:08 am

Quote

The problems stem from the fact that Toady doesn't often run tests long enough to encounter large forts, so those features get neglected.

Can't we send him a already made fortress, so that he can make his own idea of this matter ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 07, 2013, 02:03:27 am

Large forts tend to collapse from tantrum spirals or diseases, anyway. Bureaucracy =/= fun, except for a rare few situations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 07, 2013, 02:39:58 am

I wouldn't say large forts are neglected, so much as Toady hasn't come up with a solution to the problem of large fort management yet.  In the latest DFTalk he mentioned that there are two approaches - in one approach the dwarves are able to do more for themselves (some sort of system that auto-assigns labors or something) (dfhack has an autolabor plugin that tries to do this), and the other is better micro-management tools for the player (like dwarftherapist etc.).  I believe the feeling expressed in DFTalk by Toady was that both solutions to the problem have merit, but he's leaning toward the former. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 07, 2013, 04:03:36 am

And so, large forts don't need to be made purposefully more unwieldly or harder to manage. Fake difficulty does not suit DF well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 07, 2013, 04:26:30 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on June 06, 2013, 03:07:53 pm

If I am reading the implications of the dev log correctly, are we looking at a replacement of the omniscient dwarven hivemind with something that tracks jobs based on knowledge? If so I fear we will be stuck with a broken fortress mode for quite a long time after the release as the new systems are inplemented/bugtested.

I do not see where you're getting that implication. The only knowledge thing in the devlog is that dwarves no longer knew how to do things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 07, 2013, 06:45:52 am

I still think that reaching a point in which your fortress starts true civilian activity and you only have to mark it's space (build houses here, workshops here, market here every Tuesday and so on would be really fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 07, 2013, 06:52:23 am

I never goes to more than 80 dwarves. Beyond that, Dwarven Darwin does his job.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 07, 2013, 07:02:15 am

Quote from: Caldfir on June 07, 2013, 02:39:58 am

I wouldn't say large forts are neglected, so much as Toady hasn't come up with a solution to the problem of large fort management yet.  In the latest DFTalk he mentioned that there are two approaches - in one approach the dwarves are able to do more for themselves (some sort of system that auto-assigns labors or something) (dfhack has an autolabor plugin that tries to do this), and the other is better micro-management tools for the player (like dwarftherapist etc.).  I believe the feeling expressed in DFTalk by Toady was that both solutions to the problem have merit, but he's leaning toward the former.

I would say the reason he hasn't come up with a solution has to do with the same problem of not play testing the late game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on June 07, 2013, 08:21:53 am

I think both approaches would fit well in the game. You can have your dwarves take care of themselves, while simultaneously excessively micromanaging the magma-spewing robot megaproject you're working on.

Perhaps a Dwarf Therapist-style interface with an "auto-labor" setting for individual dwarves/jobs/workshops? For example, set crafting to auto, and any dwarf who is set to auto will have the ability to make crafts at an auto-set workshop, if they choose to do so (dependent on individual preferences).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 07, 2013, 08:44:10 am

In that approach you could have the best of both worlds. Perhaps craft inclined dwarves would make crafts on their free time or as an occupation, filling your deposits in time. But if the need arises you could still order X amount of crafts from X dwarfs or from "professional" craft dwarfs only, something you can already make.

But honestly, in this regard I think that a better manager would suffice. Better as in being able to tell him to "maintain booze stockpile at this levels" or "always have X logs in the deposit". Then the manager would either send the jobs, and if the jobs are not available (i.e. no trees left in the map), then the manager could even make suggestions on the trade agreement screen. If we go a tad further down the road, we could even let the manager auto manage the entire trade agreement if you choose to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: azraeldestiny on June 07, 2013, 08:44:42 am

In my view I would work even more playability of the game (for the player to have many more hours of play). I put a list of things from my point of view could greatly enhance the game (the only problem is that some of these things give programmers a lot of work):

-Foreign Trade: had thought that the creation of a profession separate from the broker to take care of forwarding go out shopping and to send them to the Allies (elves, humans, dwarves) and according to the level of that dwarf had success or not trade or be attacked by other enemies (the level represents the percentage of success for the dwarfs llegen traded and safe to the fortress after his long journey)

-Fix the problem diplomats. (Each year comes to my strength the human diplomat to talk but not do anything but suck up to my dwarf duchy)

I would have thought that diplomats could put the following:
1st. Dealing with them reinforcements in sieges (the same as a lot of goblins come to haunt, it would be quite nice to the other races help defend your fortress if you have friends with them)
2nd. Foreign trade with them (to trade with them creating a merchant that animal go outside you can assign)
3rd. Power also create ourselves a diplomat to be sent to the cities of the other races to parley with them.
4th. Diplomats also send them to declare war (eg the elves) or solve a war.

-Slavery. Also had thought that they could give the goblins once caught the option of using them as servants or slaves. For them:
1st. Having a dwarf slave to be responsible (like the animal trainer) to "tame" the goblins
2nd. The goblins domesticated tasks assigned to the dwarves (for example if I have a dwarf miner goblin dwarf will be assigned to that which is devoted to snack on while the dwarf has places to lounge)
3rd. This will facilitate the happiness of the dwarves since the work they would do the slaves and they be devoted to more important things like combing his beard

-New settlements. Also at certain level could create an option (after working much strength) the option to expand into other territory map mundi.
For example, that at a certain level of your strength displays a message that offers the opportunity to bring another strength and power dwarfs send your own strength to strength for so can conquer the entire map.

-Conquest. Power attack the territories of the other races (as catapults and ballistae honestly do not see utility to defend) and conquer and esclavisarlos or send reinforcements to fight some enemies

-Functions of nobility. Send more functions to the nobles because I have "a duchy" and all you do is spend the day sitting in his giant room.

Other options:
LAN multiplayer system:

Player host = host the player creates a map on your computer and server will do for customers
Player client = the players player clients connect to the host and choose a point where you want to settle

After that the players allocate their dwarves and play and besiege each other or work together (dwarves are sent to help, fight together against attacks goblins etc)

It also could give the option to choose elves or humans (the problem with this is I guess these races will have another function of evolution therefore their strengths will be in trees, or on the outside and give a lot of work to programmers)

--------------------------

These are things I from my point of view it would add to the game.

Currently I am satisfied with the game that truly is a strategy game endless and I have 233 dwarves in my fortress and not even 10% explored inside the mountain.

By the way anyone knows how to make an alliance with goblins? is that they are sending me 100 enemies and I have filled prisons and they keep the heavy attack xD.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 07, 2013, 11:12:19 am

Quote from: azraeldestiny on June 07, 2013, 08:44:42 am

snip

Welcome to the forums! Suggestions should generally go in the suggestion forums (albeit that some talk usually is still accepted here as long as it relates to current development ish, which is what this theread is meant for). Both slavery and any kind of multiplayer are both really controversial subjects here though, and have both been brought up a lot previously.

There is also only one programmer, might be good to know ^^

As for your end question, there's currently no way to have lasting peace with the goblins, other than modding or possibly using some bugs that I'm unsure if still around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 07, 2013, 11:14:20 am

Ninja'd.

Also, gameplay discussion for the current release does not belong here. Ask about goblins and stuff in the pertaining place (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=11.0), and alliances with goblins might only be avaliable right now via modding (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=13.0). If you're interested about the next release, color your questions with (lime) green.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: azraeldestiny on June 07, 2013, 12:42:04 pm

forgive my lack of tact, I thought that here was the section to discuss things that can comment for future game updates (bug, ideas and things to improve the project) I have no questions regarding future updates to it next update will bring many things. I just started (as many others have here) things I would add if programmer or game designer (ideas).

Anyway thanks for telling me as forum handle me and that I be part of a new user, I'm Spanish and I'm pretty lost looking for information on how to move forward in the game xD. Honestly with this game I'm learning quite English.

Sorry for the inconvenience and the section below standards seeketh not to make more mistakes in the forum :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 07, 2013, 01:27:30 pm

Quote from: azraeldestiny on June 07, 2013, 12:42:04 pm

Sorry for the inconvenience and the section below standards seeketh not to make more mistakes in the forum :)

Don't worry, it might be a bit daunting at the beginning but as soon as you lose a few forts you'll learn a whole slew of tricks. There's a lot more in the current game than surviving goblin sieges, hope you discover a lot of goals for your current genned world, because we mere mortals don't have enough hours a day to play all the Dwarf Fortress we need.

As for the suggestions, they're somewhat foreseeable for the next releases, so we'll see dynamic caravans, inns and, why not, more political and social figures besides diplomats. Now that populations rely more on historical figures and their offspring, we'll maybe see some changes related to warfare.

Slavery, as said above, is a touchy topic, but it depends largely on the civilization ethics.
As for the new settlements, we're getting the hill and deep sites in the next release and they'll play that function to an extent, although we wont have them linked to our own fortress yet. Their role will extend to give us enough dwarfpower to beat foreign lands into messy, drunken submission.

Nobles are also getting more and more relevance as time comes by. Multiplayer, however, is a current no-no, but that doesn't mean we're unable to have a meaningful game experience.

Time to have varying degrees of FUN.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 05:24:56 pm

Toady do you picture the incarnate gods (Dragons, Titans, and some such) eventually being legitimate gods in their own right or just fakes that people latch onto?

Assuming of course you have a set idea for that at the moment

While I have my own idea of what they are, I am curious as to yours.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 07, 2013, 05:29:09 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 05:24:56 pm

Toady do you picture the incarnate gods (Dragons, Titans, and some such) eventually being legitimate gods in their own right or just fakes that people latch onto?

Assuming of course you have a set idea for that at the moment

While I have my own idea of what they are, I am curious as to yours.

I'm almost sure these pose as gods or are worshiped as so, they are not really incarnate gods. Demi-gods adventurers are more related to gods than titans, I think.

I think the only meddling gods do now are curses.

I could be wrong, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 07, 2013, 05:41:39 pm

I think he's referring to some kind of system where worshipping something gives it power and may eventually turn it into a real god, something like empowering its spirit with that of his worshippers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 07, 2013, 05:42:33 pm

What exactly will be the nature of Hill/Deep dwarves? Is it just a title for dwarves living in a certain area, or will there be a sort of subspecies system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 07, 2013, 05:57:20 pm

Quote from: arkhometha on June 07, 2013, 05:29:09 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 05:24:56 pm

Toady do you picture the incarnate gods (Dragons, Titans, and some such) eventually being legitimate gods in their own right or just fakes that people latch onto?

Assuming of course you have a set idea for that at the moment

While I have my own idea of what they are, I am curious as to yours.

I'm almost sure these pose as gods or are worshiped as so, they are not really incarnate gods. Demi-gods adventurers are more related to gods than titans, I think.

I think the only meddling gods do now are curses.

I could be wrong, though.

Although they do get "worshippers" of their own during history, so maybe they are considered gods in their own right? 

I can imagine a civilization that bases their religion off the great beasts and titans it has encountered, though how they would interact with giant flesh-devouring snails or huge murderous metal statues in any meaningful way might come into question, though one might say the same about the religions with more aloof deities - if you have a god of war, shouldn't you always win all wars? If not, are your gods turning against you?  Is it any different if the god-snail destroys a town? 

From the fact that people already "worship" the megabeasts (though not in any meaningful way), I would guess there is some eventual plan for religion to have this type of setup as a possibility, though it likely isn't any time soon.  There's a lot of question about how active the gods will eventually be, or if they are to really exist as physical entities at all in DF, so presumably when the pantheons get looked at this sort of thing might come up as well as a natural extension of the end of the spectrum where gods are not only real, but actual physical entities you can meet out in the world. 

Quote from: Witty on June 07, 2013, 05:42:33 pm

What exactly will be the nature of Hill/Deep dwarves? Is it just a title for dwarves living in a certain area, or will there be a sort of subspecies system?

The way they have been described is just a categorization based upon what sort of sites they inhabit.  While the deep dwarves will likely be more cave adapted, there probably won't be any biological differences (none have as yet been mentioned).  It is likely that the two populations might end up with differing "genes" due to lack of mixing of the groups during worldgen, so surface dwarves and deep dwarves would end up with two different sets of traits, but this would be an emergent feature, and it is not known as yet if this will happen.  It is also likely that hill dwarves will frequently have different professions from deep dwarves, due to different jobs being available at the two kinds of site. 

There is currently no known system for forcing one caste to one site and another to a different site, and multi-race forts don't work at all right now, so I'm pretty confident in saying that they will all have similar traits, though if I'm wrong the Toad will correct me. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on June 07, 2013, 07:10:23 pm

Will syndrome be able to directly cause insanity?

I've been researching hat-making. From what I've read, mercury poisoning is just the tip of the iceberg.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 07:37:05 pm

Quote

Although they do get "worshippers" of their own during history, so maybe they are considered gods in their own right?

Well with Greek Mythology, quite a few monsters were gods such as Typhon or a few of the Cyclops (In fact the one Ulysses meets is either a demigod or a outright god).

It is why I like to call the Titans the Incarnate Gods (as in gods who's natural form is a earthly physical one) since by all means they are gods being the avatars of locations and their homes being temples and shrines dedicated to them built by unknown hands.

But if the game will recognize such divinity or not is another question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 07, 2013, 09:43:27 pm

Which of course depends a great deal on what "divinity" entails in DF. I... don't recall a quote on that subject, would probably make good DF Talk material.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 10:44:59 pm

Quote from: monk12 on June 07, 2013, 09:43:27 pm

Which of course depends a great deal on what "divinity" entails in DF. I... don't recall a quote on that subject, would probably make good DF Talk material.

"On Today's Dwarf Fortress Talk, We listen to Neonivek"

 :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 08, 2013, 12:14:47 am

I think it was that, depending on the world, they'd range from existing only as a cultural concept to actually throwing thunderbolts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 08, 2013, 04:10:53 am

Quote from: Witty on June 07, 2013, 05:42:33 pm

What exactly will be the nature of Hill/Deep dwarves? Is it just a title for dwarves living in a certain area, or will there be a sort of subspecies system?

Hill dwarves have been referred to as "fallen", but probably more in jest than anything else. They're likely to simply have a different culture from fortress dwarves, if that. Deep dwarves are a different story, though - they may end up different from fortress dwarves:

Quote from: Toady One

Yeah, yeah, at least in that way ... I think there will be places for your dwarves to also have direct impact, but when it comes to military stuff, and certain trade things, you're going to have to act through intermediate sites just because of the sheer numbers behind it. The deep sites are ... they act in a similar fashion for underground business, but they're also ... we haven't really planned that exactly how strange they're going to be, but they supplement your food, that kind of thing, if you don't want to farm, you can trade with them.
...
But I'm sure that the deep dwarves will become more exotic if anything to distinguish them from the hill dwarves, because right now they're quite similar in economy, in the sense they're kind of food-drunky type of things. Because we could make them into ... If they became just like forts and were all about mining and crafting ... you would become mediocre in all things, except for like your ability to charge tolls to people that want to go outside, something that would be kind of stupid as a sole function. So we're thinking that the deep sites could kind of be a farm league for mediocre craftsman and then you could get some better ones from there and you would be like the majors in terms of what's going on in your fortress. But we'll have to see how it plays out. I'm sure we'll come up with some good things once we've got the deep sites and hill dwarf sites actually linked to your fortress, so they're not linked right now. So right now they're pretty blah-blah sites with their plump helmet fields and little delved out living arrangements and so on, they're kind of like a village, right now, those deeper sites.

Quote from: Just Some Guy on June 07, 2013, 07:10:23 pm

Will syndrome be able to directly cause insanity?

I've been researching hat-making. From what I've read, mercury poisoning is just the tip of the iceberg.

Probably some day. As usual with questions about future future developments, the answer is likely to be a variation on "Sounds reasonable, but no timeline."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 08, 2013, 01:13:02 pm

Quote from: Sizik on June 07, 2013, 08:21:53 am

I think both approaches would fit well in the game. You can have your dwarves take care of themselves, while simultaneously excessively micromanaging the magma-spewing robot megaproject you're working on.

Perhaps a Dwarf Therapist-style interface with an "auto-labor" setting for individual dwarves/jobs/workshops? For example, set crafting to auto, and any dwarf who is set to auto will have the ability to make crafts at an auto-set workshop, if they choose to do so (dependent on individual preferences).

groups would be very nice here. The Autolabor and task-asignment for stuff like Farming can very well go with Autolabor while, like already mentioned certain (magma spewing) projects would profit from some micro. Tie that to a competent "Manager" noble and we even have a viable arc for that mechanic. ... Anyone up to turn that into a suggestion?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on June 09, 2013, 08:56:29 am

With all the tweaks you had to do to make dwarves in dwarf mode operate properly with the movement/combat/vision changes, is there something even slightly different in their overall behavior?

Does the creature's agility still defines it's overall movement in dwarf mode? How do they differentiate from one another in terms of speed? Are they always "running", or do their speed alternate deppending of what they're doing?

Do people and animals "charge" differently in combat in dwarf mode now? Any major changes in the combat AI?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on June 09, 2013, 09:55:25 am

Quote from: Neonivek on June 07, 2013, 05:24:56 pm

Toady do you picture the incarnate gods (Dragons, Titans, and some such) eventually being legitimate gods in their own right or just fakes that people latch onto?

Assuming of course you have a set idea for that at the moment

While I have my own idea of what they are, I am curious as to yours.

Why wouldn't they be "legitimate"? Greek titans are only separated from the Greek gods by genealogy. They still had the same kind of power over the world as the gods did, sometimes more profoundly - they just ignored humanity in general. Most of the monsters that remotely resemble megabeasts can be looked at the same way. Step outside Mediterranean-originated mythology, and the concept of what a god is varies vastly throughout the world's cultures. So I think that's the idea he was going for here.

That aside, from a mechanical, coding standpoint:
What currently defines the Gods is the 'spheres' system. The set of tags that determine what each God is the 'god of'. These tags also determine that an individual can be worshiped. Megabeasts, Semi-megabeasts, Titans, and all such other deeper evils all have sphere tags, so they get worshiped. Since Toady has indicated in the past that the Gods will be more meddlesome in the world eventually, one can logically follow that the sphere tags will also be what determines the 'divine powers' each god has - that way a God of Oceans, Fishing, and Marriage will have different powers than a God of Fortresses, War, and Metalcrafting. And if the Meagabeasts and company continue to have the tags at that point, it follows that logically, they too will have god-like powers because of it. At that point, since they would have the powers of a god, who's to tell them that they are not one? Or at least close enough to worship. Seems legit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on June 09, 2013, 11:56:06 am

Will Dwarf, Elf (and Goblin? Probably not kobold..) sites have shops selling equipment? Will small vendors only sell clothing and armour wearable by the small races, and medium vendors to the medium races; or will dwarves sell medium sized things, humans small things, and so on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on June 09, 2013, 12:35:20 pm

I'm not certain if this has been referenced before so:

With the addition of retiring fortresses, can we now expect creatures not to scatter when leaving fortress mode in this way? If an adventurer visits a retired fortress, can he expect to find goblin prisoners in the dungeons, dragons in the treasure room and livestock in their pens? Or would he find the hostile creatures scattered randomly around the fortress, and all the pets dead, as it currently happens when one abandons a fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on June 09, 2013, 12:55:20 pm

I would like something in between:

"Occupation" (which consist of enabled/disabled labors, noble positions and military squad assigment,marked with priority)

Overseer would declare his own custom occupations and number of spots required and dwarves would try to fill them in. They would try to stick with their job, only leaving it if some occupation is not taken up by anybody (or if higher priority occupation is one man short, or if they have not had any labors related to thier occupation and there is any other spot free, or if occupation for which they are highly qualified had empty slot)

That way, I can declare that my fort will need 4 butchers/tanners, 2 leatherworkers and 3 cooks/millers and spots would get filled in intelligently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 09, 2013, 02:03:14 pm

Will we be able to choose between retire fortress and abandon them?

I mean, out of siege times and all. Like one spring I decide I want to abandon instead of retiring the fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 10, 2013, 07:53:22 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 08, 2013, 04:10:53 am

Quote from: Just Some Guy on June 07, 2013, 07:10:23 pm

Will syndrome be able to directly cause insanity?

I've been researching hat-making. From what I've read, mercury poisoning is just the tip of the iceberg.

Probably some day. As usual with questions about future future developments, the answer is likely to be a variation on "Sounds reasonable, but no timeline."

I would add that the current insanity is just a placeholder and will probably become a syndrome at some point in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 10, 2013, 08:38:49 am

Dwarf Fortress, the only game where mere, simple and humble placeholders mind rape inside out "full features" of other games.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 10, 2013, 09:40:33 am

Well, it's more like most of the dwarven mind and soul is a placeholder that is constantly being upgraded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on June 10, 2013, 12:02:25 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on June 10, 2013, 09:40:33 am

Well, it's more like most of the dwarven mind and soul is a placeholder

Ohhh, sigged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 10, 2013, 01:07:41 pm

With the bug-fixing to deal with dwarves idling out for specific jobs, are we going to be able to get dwarves to clean up areas better now?

Do you think we will be seeing kobold sites and improved caves in the coming release, or is this going to go straight for download when the bugs and trees are sorted out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 10, 2013, 02:09:58 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 10, 2013, 01:07:41 pm

With the bug-fixing to deal with dwarves idling out for specific jobs, are we going to be able to get dwarves to clean up areas better now?

Do you think we will be seeing kobold sites and improved caves in the coming release, or is this going to go straight for download when the bugs and trees are sorted out?

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

Have you done any work on Kobolds yet and what ish do you have planned for them in short?

Nah, they are the largest yawning void left, probably.  Playing Kobold Quest is my only suggestion.  There may be other notes elsewhere, but I'm not sure where the twists and turns will bring us.

I'd say this points towards it definitely being planned to go in bar unforeseen complications :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 10, 2013, 02:48:21 pm

I'd wager that for this next release kobolds will still be hanging out in caves in the manner they have for some time, but it'll happen. Someday...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 10, 2013, 02:52:28 pm

Toady has stated that he wants to get back to kobold caves before the release, and since he still has to go back to site work anyway, chances are good for them. Not a guarantee, but the chances are there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 10, 2013, 05:05:33 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 10, 2013, 01:07:41 pm

With the bug-fixing to deal with dwarves idling out for specific jobs, are we going to be able to get dwarves to clean up areas better now?

That would require the job priority rewrite, which is not planned for this release, but may make it in one of the bug fix releases, in much the same way as mine-carts did last year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 10, 2013, 08:56:59 pm

Just how many of the newly implemented features will actually be usable in fort mode? I.E will a hammerer now utilize non-lethal combat on their victim? How will woodcutters cut multi-tile trees? How will roots be handled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 10, 2013, 09:05:25 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 10, 2013, 08:56:59 pm

Just how many of the newly implemented features will actually be usable in fort mode? I.E will a hammerer now utilize non-lethal combat on their victim? How will woodcutters cut multi-tile trees? How will roots be handled?

The last two devlogs have been about exactly this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 10, 2013, 09:09:13 pm

Also I'm pretty sure somebody already asked the hammerer one, and the answer was something like "no, that shit's supposed to be lethal." Too lazy to find a quote OR do a better imitation of Toady's voice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 10, 2013, 09:30:29 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 10, 2013, 08:56:59 pm

Just how many of the newly implemented features will actually be usable in fort mode? I.E will a hammerer now utilize non-lethal combat on their victim? How will woodcutters cut multi-tile trees? How will roots be handled?

There have been a few question about cutting trees and tree roots put to the Toad since the multitile trees were added, and the response has mostly been "I don't know yet" with a healthy dose of "I will try to make it be the way it happens in real life".  There will probably be something in the devlog when that gets handled.  There are also questions about what young trees look like, what the underground "trees" are going to look like, and how trees will grow during play (or if trees will grow during play at all this release, or just be a finite resource on the map).  I'm eager to see more about trees. 

I'm pretty sure the hammerer is supposed to be a sadistic psycho:

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:05 am

Quote from: darklord92

Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?

There might be incidental changes when the head is changed, but the use of a hammer is still lethal, and it is not their role to hold back.

You can always just take his hammer away (or just not fill the position), but something about having an angry hammer-wielding nutcase wandering your fort just feels right to me.  The state of "training" is one of the new non-lethal combat levels, so that sort of counts, but I'm pretty sure apart from that combat levels are switched off in fort mode:

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: Sunday

What happens regarding the new combat and yielding during fortress mode sieges? First, do the invaders yield? If so, do they then retreat? What about the dwarves -- do they yield? If so, is it a military-only yielding, or fortress-wide?

Or are invasions/ambushes no-quarter?

It's all no-quarter right now, because we haven't added anything to deal with prisoners.  That doesn't mean people can't run though.

There might be stuff with brawls though.  No word on anything like that though so we'll have to wait and see. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 10, 2013, 09:47:03 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on June 10, 2013, 09:30:29 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 10, 2013, 08:56:59 pm

Just how many of the newly implemented features will actually be usable in fort mode? I.E will a hammerer now utilize non-lethal combat on their victim? How will woodcutters cut multi-tile trees? How will roots be handled?

There have been a few question about cutting trees and tree roots put to the Toad since the multitile trees were added, and the response has mostly been "I don't know yet" with a healthy dose of "I will try to make it be the way it happens in real life".  There will probably be something in the devlog when that gets handled.  There are also questions about what young trees look like, what the underground "trees" are going to look like, and how trees will grow during play (or if trees will grow during play at all this release, or just be a finite resource on the map).  I'm eager to see more about trees. 

I'm pretty sure the hammerer is supposed to be a sadistic psycho:

Ah, my bad. I actually meant the fortress guards and their non-lethal beatings. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 10, 2013, 10:08:33 pm

No worries - this is the place to ask this stuff.  Just be prepared for people to answer the HELL out of your question!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 10, 2013, 11:56:39 pm

Wouldn't tantrums be non-lethal, ideally?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on June 11, 2013, 12:38:34 am

Quote from: King Mir on June 10, 2013, 11:56:39 pm

Wouldn't tantrums be non-lethal, ideally?

I dunno, I kind of like the mental image that my dwarves are all potentially murderous psychopaths who are always a bad day away from from losing it and going on a rampage, kept in check only by a REALLY nice dining room.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 11, 2013, 12:46:50 am

Well sure, the tantruming dwarf would make wild and powerful attacks. But that's par for the course for a dwarf, and not an excuse to kill one. Unless it can't be helped of course.

Also, tantrum spirals are planned to be nerfed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 11, 2013, 12:56:48 am

So does this mean that fishing is a low priority job now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 11, 2013, 02:39:28 am

Quote from: monk12 on June 10, 2013, 09:09:13 pm

Also I'm pretty sure somebody already asked the hammerer one, and the answer was something like "no, that shit's supposed to be lethal." Too lazy to find a quote OR do a better imitation of Toady's voice.

This, and just to emphasize I'd just like to add my crayon reward (since it's completely awesome!) ^^

(http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn201/Mikael_Hultman/6e5bff12-e0e8-4c2e-bcbd-afdffcb5ca34_zpse693ed1b.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 11, 2013, 03:19:22 am

Oh wow.  I'd always imagined they hammered the chest.  Are the dwarves at the bottom cheering or pleading for clemency?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 11, 2013, 03:22:31 am

Quote from: hermes on June 11, 2013, 03:19:22 am

Oh wow.  I'd always imagined they hammered the chest.  Are the dwarves at the bottom cheering or pleading for clemency?

My guess would be cheering ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 11, 2013, 03:47:04 am

Quote from: hermes on June 11, 2013, 03:19:22 am

Oh wow.  I'd always imagined they hammered the chest.  Are the dwarves at the bottom cheering or pleading for clemency?

A mix of both, I'd say, seeing as immediately after the fort will descend into a tantrum spiral.

Say, if hammering is supposed to be lethal, that makes all nobles draconian prissy dictators who order the most skilled and valuable craftsdwarves killed for failing to produce 100 adamantine condoms.

Are less draconian punishments planned for failed production orders, or will Dwarven nobles always be Vlad the Impaler? Since we're getting non-lethal combat in this release, it sounds like flogging is not too far around the corner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on June 11, 2013, 09:22:02 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 11, 2013, 03:47:04 am

Quote from: hermes on June 11, 2013, 03:19:22 am

Oh wow.  I'd always imagined they hammered the chest.  Are the dwarves at the bottom cheering or pleading for clemency?

A mix of both, I'd say, seeing as immediately after the fort will descend into a tantrum spiral.

Say, if hammering is supposed to be lethal, that makes all nobles draconian prissy dictators who order the most skilled and valuable craftsdwarves killed for failing to produce 100 adamantine condoms.

Are less draconian punishments planned for failed production orders, or will Dwarven nobles always be Vlad the Impaler? Since we're getting non-lethal combat in this release, it sounds like flogging is not too far around the corner.

Right now for production orders the game prefers to had out jail time, but if there is no open prison space they default to hammer time. SO they aren't exactly nuts but things can escalate quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 11, 2013, 09:24:28 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 11, 2013, 03:22:31 am

My guess would be cheering ^^

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 11, 2013, 03:47:04 am

A mix of both, I'd say, seeing as immediately after the fort will descend into a tantrum spiral.

See, I thought, like me, the dwarf would be incredulous at the manner of the hammering.

(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3SAlAZPghfw/UbcyDApGH9I/AAAAAAAAEBU/16KXCsoKXIQ/s800/ForTheLoveOfArmok.png)
For the love of Armok, not the head!  Not again!

Sorry, end of off-topic for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on June 11, 2013, 11:59:19 am

I don't know...the hammerer always ends up hitting random spots. I kinda figured they played pinata with the prisoner.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 11, 2013, 12:09:39 pm

As it seems the dwarf being punished is usually doing something at the time of his beating, it always looks like a hilariously lethal Benny Hill skit to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 11, 2013, 12:21:36 pm

It never ceases to amaze me how often Benny Hill is brought up on Bay12.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 12:50:29 pm

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 11, 2013, 01:24:19 pm

IMHO I like the way it can ebb and flow between two or three ages.  That sort of mimics revivals of certain knowledges/cultures, dark times due to war or pestilence, etc.  I do, however, lookforward to procedurally generated possibilities as well. 

I look forward to the day when I may embark my ninth fortress in a lineage, destined to shape the world for the good of Dwarf, to be told that we are now at the dawning of The Third Age of Dingoes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 11, 2013, 01:26:46 pm

I once had a world that had over 12 ages in it's history. It consisted of the age of myth, the age of legends, the age of heros, and then continually switching between ages of dwarves and ages of goblins, as their wars kept swaying back and forth. It was amazing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 11, 2013, 01:41:55 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 12:50:29 pm

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Yes, it's going to change as soon as the world population is made able to do more stuff after world generation. Currently there's no way to see something as The Age of Humans in a progressing game, because they don't reproduce or claim territory, and they're often the first to die of old age. Maybe we'll have procedurally generated names for ages as we already have for wars and conflicts, but I think Toady hasn't been there yet because we're largely unable to see all the possible outcomes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 11, 2013, 01:56:38 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 12:50:29 pm

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

I think this is a question about worldgen ages, and not what happens during play (since that's obviously a total mess with underground critters getting released or whatever). 

I would certainly not say it "always" ends up cycling back and forth between ages.  Almost none of the worlds I play with end up in that state - they usually progress to the age of twilight eventually and just stay there.  Savagery and the number of starting civilizations have a lot to do with this, also there is a degree of luck in getting any necromancers, since I've had several worlds where there simply aren't any gods of death. 

This very much is already part of random generation of your world - you just happen to be using starting conditions that tend toward that state.  It is eventually planned to have some better control over the overall "story" of your world, such as a coming apocalypse or some kind of cycle of rejuvenation for the world, but most of that is quite far off. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 11, 2013, 02:06:08 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 12:50:29 pm

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Necromancers, vampires, and werebeasts do not contribute to age naming. What you're seeing there is (semi)megabeast reproduction. Yes, I've just tested this. 5 megabeasts, no semis, and no night trolls (they may or may not influence age names). The world was in the Golden Age by year 90, with a necromancer tower as well as living werebeasts and vampires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 11, 2013, 06:20:16 pm

Now that the DFhack team seems to have fixed the size bug, are you going to be implementing any of these player-made fixes in the actual releases?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 11, 2013, 07:07:28 pm

The fix is very hackish, but it does point to what the bug could be. For those who don't know, the fix is to set all creatures' birth_time (that is, the time of year that they were born) to a multiple of 10 or -1. Why this fixes it is unknown, as far as I know (I only wrote the script that does the fixing, not the finding of the fix itself), but it could help Toady figure out what the issue is.

Implementing the fix itself wouldn't be advisable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 10:40:41 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on June 11, 2013, 01:56:38 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007 on June 11, 2013, 12:50:29 pm

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

I think this is a question about worldgen ages, and not what happens during play (since that's obviously a total mess with underground critters getting released or whatever). 

I would certainly not say it "always" ends up cycling back and forth between ages.  Almost none of the worlds I play with end up in that state - they usually progress to the age of twilight eventually and just stay there.  Savagery and the number of starting civilizations have a lot to do with this, also there is a degree of luck in getting any necromancers, since I've had several worlds where there simply aren't any gods of death. 

This very much is already part of random generation of your world - you just happen to be using starting conditions that tend toward that state.  It is eventually planned to have some better control over the overall "story" of your world, such as a coming apocalypse or some kind of cycle of rejuvenation for the world, but most of that is quite far off.

It seems to happen for me when I use the default settings. When I create a large world, it stays in Age of Myth for millenia.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on June 12, 2013, 07:56:30 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on June 11, 2013, 09:22:02 am

A mix of both, I'd say, seeing as immediately after the fort will descend into a tantrum spiral.

I had an amusing image of a meek little mayor having a chat with the sherrif "I don't like to complain, but I have asked him time and time again for a microcline throne, and he just ignores me".

Two days later he crawls away from the smoking wreckage of the fortress: "Well, that escalated quickly!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 12, 2013, 09:03:47 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 11, 2013, 06:20:16 pm

Now that the DFhack team seems to have fixed the size bug, are you going to be implementing any of these player-made fixes in the actual releases?

Links are always helpful in these cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on June 12, 2013, 03:04:20 pm

Will siegers yield in fort mode, and if so, what can we do with them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 12, 2013, 03:27:05 pm

Quote from: Just Some Guy on June 12, 2013, 03:04:20 pm

Will siegers yield in fort mode, and if so, what can we do with them?

Toady answered that question in the last reply:

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: Sunday

What happens regarding the new combat and yielding during fortress mode sieges? First, do the invaders yield? If so, do they then retreat? What about the dwarves -- do they yield? If so, is it a military-only yielding, or fortress-wide?

Or are invasions/ambushes no-quarter?

It's all no-quarter right now, because we haven't added anything to deal with prisoners.  That doesn't mean people can't run though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 12, 2013, 03:27:59 pm

The WoT so far is that seiges are no-quarter (no surrendering, fight to the death) still in this release.

Ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 12, 2013, 03:55:13 pm

What's the word on adding a font size option to init.txt? Because DF likes to make fonts that are meant to be smaller than 10 pixels smaller than 5 pixels, which makes them quite unreadable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on June 12, 2013, 04:16:42 pm

Does scrolling the mouse wheel help?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 12, 2013, 05:04:07 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on June 12, 2013, 09:03:47 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 11, 2013, 06:20:16 pm

Now that the DFhack team seems to have fixed the size bug, are you going to be implementing any of these player-made fixes in the actual releases?

Links are always helpful in these cases.

forum thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126558.0)
mantis report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)

I would like to point out that Toady is not an unreasonable person - in the past, bugs that have been diagnosed this specifically have been fixed promptly.  The reason this bug has been around as long as it has is because the root cause hadn't been figured out until recently - it showed up in stead as a wide range of minor annoyances that seemed mostly unrelated.  The better the community does at tracking down exactly what is causing a problem, the easier it becomes for it to be officially fixed. 

I understand that this thread is probably the best way to draw attention to things like this, but it feels like all too often they fall outside the mandate of this thread.  Things like this should probably be mentioned to one of the mantis bug tracker managers as being of importance (which I am pretty sure happens anyway?) but it is not probably something this thread should generally be used for. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 12, 2013, 05:10:05 pm

Quote from: Trif on June 12, 2013, 04:16:42 pm

Does scrolling the mouse wheel help?

Kinda, if you don't mind inconsistent grid sizes. It's either really small text at normal tile size, or blurred tiles at 2x size while the font is at the intended size.

It'd be fantastic if I can get both my text and graphics to stay within an 8x8 grid - Seems like DF halves font sizes, meaning that a font that is 16x16 at 8pt will be 8x8 (4pt?) in DF. I'm trying to mess with a font in FontForge so that it's double the standard size at 8pt.

EDIT: I'm messing with a font's OS/2 metric information via FontForge, as DF is using that to determine font size and width. But how it's using it is just really, really weird; from what I can tell, if the font uses proportional kerning, it ignores most of the data and uses the Win and Typo ascent and descent offsets. However, if you try using Monotype, it gets a bit wonkier and uses the HHead ascent and descent data to determine horizontal spacing.

...Or something like that? It needs more exploration by someone who's got more experience both in fonts and programming. In the end it's just a pain to make a small-sized font work right with it...

EDIT2: I have more info. From what I can tell, it seems that font rendering size mostly relies on the OS/2 font ascent data, preferably reading the Win data and HHead data (which is meant for Macs). Font descent appears to be automatic when set to 0, but setting it to anything else uses that number. As for line gap data, it is ignored by DF for the most part.

Also, the horizontal line clipping is caused by a character that is used at the beginning of some lines (ex. the worldgen options in the starting menu). So that's more of a bug in the strings department, and not the font/graphics department.

From what I can tell, this occurs through fonts that use an OpenType structure. I've not tried a font that uses a TrueType structure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 14, 2013, 12:10:37 pm

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on June 14, 2013, 12:34:23 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 14, 2013, 12:10:37 pm

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

He is wrapping stuff. So yeah, no more features, just bug fixing and checking if things are behaving properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 14, 2013, 12:49:21 pm

"Just bug fixes" is selling the remaining work rather short, I'd say. There's at least some site work (most likely including kobold caves), plant/tree work, and some other stuff I don't recall offhand to be done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 14, 2013, 02:20:55 pm

That's right.  Toady is still working the multi-tile trees that sprout daggers and shed drops of blood rather than leaves at harvest moon, as well as the cult that prunes those arboreal gods to glory and the site claims they foster.  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.  :-\

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 14, 2013, 02:35:16 pm

Quote from: Mr S on June 14, 2013, 02:20:55 pm

That's right.  Toady is still working the multi-tile trees that sprout daggers and shed drops of blood rather than leaves at harvest moon, as well as the cult that prunes those arboreal gods to glory and the site claims they foster.  Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.  :-\

Sounds like elves

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 14, 2013, 03:06:01 pm

Holy cow, you're right!

When the release drops, we shall have to see if there are trees that are only used in Forest Retreats.  If so, mod to shed "Elf Blood" contaminant in place of leaves.  Or "Blood of Ancestors" and other cultural nuances.

Nimeb likes Ancient One trees for their ancestral ash coating.  Whenever possible he prefers to drink Minotaur Shrub Berry wine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 14, 2013, 06:11:13 pm

With the new multi-tile trees, are we going to have proper forest fires now? Can you furnish us with any screenshots?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 14, 2013, 06:37:51 pm

How were forest fires improper?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 14, 2013, 06:41:40 pm

Trees don't set fire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 14, 2013, 07:29:22 pm

Ah, I can see it now!

You, a deprived peasant armed with nothing but your wits, set fire to the woods around a bandit camp to slay them. Just watch which way the wind blows...

The strategy would be realistic and viable, and come with the downsides of unpredictable fire killing you as well, and of course destroying things from the bandits which you may have wanted to recover.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 14, 2013, 08:26:38 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 14, 2013, 06:41:40 pm

Trees don't set fire.

They generally don't in real life either. If the foliage burns, it's pretty accurate. Designate the bark as "blackened" and you're good to go. Maybe make one explode due to boiling sap every once in a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 14, 2013, 08:43:55 pm

True it takes a lot of heat to actually combust a tree (anyone who has tried to start a fire with fresh wood from a tree would know this).

It isn't uncommon for grasslands to burn down and the trees to be burnt but mostly in tact.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 14, 2013, 09:27:09 pm

Some trees even need a proper forrest fire once in a while to propagate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on June 14, 2013, 09:40:20 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 14, 2013, 08:26:38 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 14, 2013, 06:41:40 pm

Trees don't set fire.

They generally don't in real life either. If the foliage burns, it's pretty accurate. Designate the bark as "blackened" and you're good to go. Maybe make one explode due to boiling sap every once in a while.

I shudder to think of the weaponization possibilities of exploding trees...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 14, 2013, 09:42:16 pm

Quote from: Heph on June 14, 2013, 09:27:09 pm

Some trees even need a proper forrest fire once in a while to propagate.

I really doubt there's any chance at all for that sort of thing to be in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:14:51 pm

Quote from: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Don't go anywhere near them, and DO NOT CRUSH THE LEAVES. You will suffocate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Edmus on June 14, 2013, 11:29:56 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:14:51 pm

Quote from: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Don't go anywhere near them, and DO NOT CRUSH THE LEAVES. You will suffocate.

But how will I catch the Koalas?!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:49:59 pm

Quote from: Edmus on June 14, 2013, 11:29:56 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:14:51 pm

Quote from: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Don't go anywhere near them, and DO NOT CRUSH THE LEAVES. You will suffocate.

But how will I catch the Koalas?!

They catch you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 15, 2013, 12:20:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:49:59 pm

Quote from: Edmus on June 14, 2013, 11:29:56 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:14:51 pm

Quote from: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Don't go anywhere near them, and DO NOT CRUSH THE LEAVES. You will suffocate.

But how will I catch the Koalas?!

They catch you.

You think thats a joke. Its not.

Look at the thing go! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La0LgRmdTcY&ytsession=D1rAvZinfwgmSVt5ZlvMy0wqpWWxI9t-F606pP-s-SKc8cKU8JvEKURTQh25JcI1s-G4AhC1YpC0OK2brKkJYZojgqa3oT9U93-8SBJ7jdLfVCWxjVzBXtrQ1yHvqXWRPxdehpzayXJ4pnJ5AnD8SrwSys7rApIuk-f2cn3zSPgFpyLgbP67ipLbYLga7PpF1hEsQXx21qXqP-r5sRQZjL5DIXLnm5zf5j448A2Q7gigyylMga7DkYUEMMaeQeQf-gwTqG0AWkXg8GJpsqsN-Jp46DNvXOinVxT8iJaABJVgSwbbn6e9j7GSwAN-5s7zyCSQh7mts3XoTvOm7lsi2xn_TuSBFbmFaQrrhobaeRxxAEZCDyo7H5bE_TaPFSvQJNmxnj92Q8jatrj-cTJbCfFjWRU6ZrVkdPdR9BDaX994KhHYBh4EqKH7klhINl4I9LZ95otSvVU6HbOr6TZg_jcLNmfsa7OFVTU739M201GfcmwObau69uaZ3OqVRAppGCAShzhML-lFApOjU7O30LjjfqZ8wnA2FKV4hInaOcFqCg-G381kUSG9o-lBelTWYIJqEab2vdGWicB_72F_I-27S8MBc1wFxIDI3URCsbQ)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Swonnrr on June 15, 2013, 12:27:15 am

Trees in fire may not totally burn, but trees submerged by magma does.
But since trees are considered as walls, i see well tree burning in the same time as wall/floor/etc burning and destruction, wich is planned, but not in this release as far as i know.

Now we need goblins to learn to use fire, and sieges will become REALLY ugly.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 15, 2013, 12:32:26 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 15, 2013, 12:20:25 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:49:59 pm

Quote from: Edmus on June 14, 2013, 11:29:56 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 14, 2013, 11:14:51 pm

Quote from: Waparius on June 14, 2013, 09:54:19 pm

I shudder to think of what will happen if/when Toady puts in eucalyptus trees.

Don't go anywhere near them, and DO NOT CRUSH THE LEAVES. You will suffocate.

But how will I catch the Koalas?!

They catch you.

You think thats a joke. Its not.

I wasn't joking.

Quote from: Swonnrr on June 15, 2013, 12:27:15 am

Trees in fire may not totally burn, but trees submerged by magma does.
But since trees are considered as walls, i see well tree burning in the same time as wall/floor/etc burning and destruction, wich is planned, but not in this release as far as i know.

Now we need goblins to learn to use fire, and sieges will become REALLY ugly.  :P

Goblin marksmen setting fire to arrows... ouch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 15, 2013, 12:50:19 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 14, 2013, 07:29:22 pm

Ah, I can see it now!

You, a deprived peasant armed with nothing but your wits, set fire to the woods around a bandit camp to slay them. Just watch which way the wind blows...

The strategy would be realistic and viable, and come with the downsides of unpredictable fire killing you as well, and of course destroying things from the bandits which you may have wanted to recover.

I don't mind proper wild fires as long as bandits (or anything else) are sensible enough to move away from flames. Otherwise it's as cheesy as throwing a quarry full of stones from invisibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 15, 2013, 12:56:46 am

And with the way the fire would spread up the tree, it would hit the start of the branches first, and would then fall off while the rest is still burning.
That would be awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 15, 2013, 06:13:30 am

Bay12 Information Assimilation Procedure holds true.
1. Horror
2. Surprise
3. Weaponization

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 15, 2013, 06:17:12 am

I'd say tis more like:
1 surprise
2 glee
3 weaponization

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 15, 2013, 07:27:21 am

Item 3 also has the frequent, but not guaranteed, subpart: Profit!

See:  Mermaid Farms
See also: Mermaid bone bolts (Weaponization AND Profit!!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 15, 2013, 08:00:20 am

There's no list to it; it's just that the first thought a dwarf fortress player has when encountering a new feature is "How do I use it to kill things?".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 15, 2013, 01:13:21 pm

Quote from: DG on June 15, 2013, 12:50:19 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 14, 2013, 07:29:22 pm

Ah, I can see it now!

You, a deprived peasant armed with nothing but your wits, set fire to the woods around a bandit camp to slay them. Just watch which way the wind blows...

The strategy would be realistic and viable, and come with the downsides of unpredictable fire killing you as well, and of course destroying things from the bandits which you may have wanted to recover.

I don't mind proper wild fires as long as bandits (or anything else) are sensible enough to move away from flames. Otherwise it's as cheesy as throwing a quarry full of stones from invisibility.

They'd move away from the flames of course, but in the dry areas bandit camps are often found in, the fire may be too fast for them. And of course the cost of the strategy, the fire may be too fast for you as well. It's not cheesy if you stand a good chance of getting burned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 15, 2013, 01:52:29 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 15, 2013, 01:13:21 pm

Quote from: DG on June 15, 2013, 12:50:19 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 14, 2013, 07:29:22 pm

Ah, I can see it now!

You, a deprived peasant armed with nothing but your wits, set fire to the woods around a bandit camp to slay them. Just watch which way the wind blows...

The strategy would be realistic and viable, and come with the downsides of unpredictable fire killing you as well, and of course destroying things from the bandits which you may have wanted to recover.

I don't mind proper wild fires as long as bandits (or anything else) are sensible enough to move away from flames. Otherwise it's as cheesy as throwing a quarry full of stones from invisibility.

They'd move away from the flames of course, but in the dry areas bandit camps are often found in, the fire may be too fast for them. And of course the cost of the strategy, the fire may be too fast for you as well. It's not cheesy if you stand a good chance of getting burned.

I see what you did there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 15, 2013, 02:37:20 pm

I don't see what I did there  :-[

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McDagger on June 15, 2013, 04:51:14 pm

In regards to the world generated artifacts and the new treasure hunter 'class' in adventure mode and the army system coming in the next version, will we be able to send out crusaders in hope of recovering said artifacts for the glory of the fortress á la indiana jones in a future update?

Will these artifacts be like the ones already createable during moods or will they have a significant purpose, like the biblical Grail?

Quote from: Sizik on June 15, 2013, 06:57:51 pm

The items on the Development page (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) are what Toady plans to implement in the future. They are not what's to be expected for the next release.

Ah, yes, I knew that but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I meant in the future when treasure hunting and generated artifacts do make it, if we would be able to send out parties for that purpose. The 'next version' part of the comment was only meant for the addition of armies in the next update. I realise this is probably too early for even Toady to tell but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on June 15, 2013, 06:57:51 pm

The items on the Development page (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) are what Toady plans to implement in the future. They are not what's to be expected for the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 15, 2013, 09:47:04 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 15, 2013, 02:37:20 pm

I don't see what I did there  :-[

Spoiler: Explaining lame pun (click to show/hide)

Getting Burned as a phrase meaning your plan backfired, and also in the literal "you are on fire" sense of the word burn.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 15, 2013, 09:58:45 pm

Its okay, Monk12. I got it after re-reading it five or so times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 16, 2013, 03:09:56 am

Oh *facepalm*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on June 16, 2013, 07:47:00 am

Quote from: monk12 on June 15, 2013, 09:47:04 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 15, 2013, 02:37:20 pm

I don't see what I did there  :-[

Spoiler: Explaining lame pun (click to show/hide)

Getting Burned as a phrase meaning your plan backfired, and also in the literal "you are on fire" sense of the word burn.

"Backfired?"



. . . I see what you did there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 16, 2013, 10:59:46 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 14, 2013, 06:41:40 pm

Trees don't set fire.

Actually, if you have dragonfire on the 0.34.11 trees from above, they will catch on fire. I have seen this happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Armeleon on June 16, 2013, 11:32:39 pm

I have a question for future updates.  Will you ever consider implementing a Dwarf Unit Timeline, as talked about  here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98580.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98580.0)?  Is such a thing feasible as the game stands, and would it be difficult (ie time-consuming) to implement?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 16, 2013, 11:39:12 pm

Quote from: Armeleon on June 16, 2013, 11:32:39 pm

I have a question for future updates.  Will you ever consider implementing a Dwarf Unit Timeline, as talked about  here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98580.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=98580.0)?  Is such a thing feasible as the game stands, and would it be difficult (ie time-consuming) to implement?

I have lime greened that (questions usually are like that). I think this is a fair question to ask, we already have tracking of world history and we should probably be able to "get the history of this dwarf" or "get the history of this creature" in fortress mode, or even "get what we know about this megabeast". I don't know if there are any incredibly serious barriers, or if Toady is especially opposed to it.

This may be something that could be implemented for next release, if you're able to query people in adventure mode about their history or about a town, you can probably have that unit history thing implemented. If unit history gets implemented, please let's not have a wall of "Sankis Gattenbomrek engraved a masterpiece in Boatmuredered" unless we choose to - I'm fine with "In 1055 Sankis Gattenbomreck engraved 150 masterpieces in Konagusan".

(Edit: You know that last bit is going to happen now)

 8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on June 17, 2013, 02:38:43 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 16, 2013, 11:39:12 pm

This may be something that could be implemented for next release, if you're able to query people in adventure mode about their history or about a town, you can probably have that unit history thing implemented. If unit history gets implemented, please let's not have a wall of "Sankis Gattenbomrek engraved a masterpiece in Boatmuredered" unless we choose to - I'm fine with "In 1055 Sankis Gattenbomreck engraved 150 masterpieces in Konagusan".

I think formatting some (most?) information in DF is imperative for something like the presentation arc or whatever anyway. A lot of DF's info are borderline useless walls of text in the current implementation and would benefit greatly from some kind of different formatting (charts, tables, ASCII-icons, graphs, maybe even some complex visualization - think about how you could display wounds or the inventory with an ASCII mannequin). Even some combination rules as you mention in your post would already help (say instead of his right first toe is broken, his right second toe is broken, etc; just have "his right first, second and etc... toe are broken", or even "his entire right foot is broken").

So yeah. I guess we can expect the usual "I guess that's reasonable, though no timeline as usual".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 17, 2013, 01:43:24 pm

While this may be a bit presumptuous, what are your plans for after the usual post bug fixing ? What should we expect will be next on the dev list?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 17, 2013, 01:52:35 pm

How often is the development page updated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 17, 2013, 02:16:14 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 17, 2013, 01:43:24 pm

While this may be a bit presumptuous, what are your plans for after the usual post bug fixing ? What should we expect will be next on the dev list?

I can't find a quote to back me up right now, but I recall something about Thief Role/Taverns and Inns. Of course, the final decision likely won't come until the end of the bugfix cycle.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 17, 2013, 01:52:35 pm

How often is the development page updated?

With each release. Toady mentioned that in the latest DF Talk. That means that you'll rarely see the 'Done, Next Release' color. I'm pretty sure the same applies to the Features and Screenshots pages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 17, 2013, 03:29:45 pm

One have to keep in mind that this alternate reality simulator is a monumental task to be done. It's both deeply boring over the long time and incommensurately exciting to watch over it's development at the same time (I'm talking developing-wise for the spectators).

However, from the dev page it'self:

Quote

It has also proven too time-consuming to maintain all of the notes in a presentable form, so we're sticking with incomplete lists for the foreseeable future. This page doesn't represent everything we'd like to do. It just has some of the things we're thinking about doing sooner rather than later. We'll be adding to it as specific roadmaps are drawn up and we are closer to using them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 18, 2013, 06:10:22 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 17, 2013, 02:16:14 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 17, 2013, 01:52:35 pm

How often is the development page updated?

With each release. Toady mentioned that in the latest DF Talk. That means that you'll rarely see the 'Done, Next Release' color. I'm pretty sure the same applies to the Features and Screenshots pages.

Transcript from DF Talk 21:

Quote

[59:45] Threetoe: "Yeah. Ok, so the next question comes from Vincent. He asks "The Dwarf Fortress Consolidated Development page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) says that it's outdated. When was this done and in what way is it outdated? Are the arcs still current and is the new page being kept up tp date?""

Toady: "So I guess it was a long time ago. Several years ago now, that the Consolidated Development page was created. We moved over from the core, req, bloat arc system over to just having a more kind of partial recent development type of page. It's not...It's outdated in the sense that, I mean we have a bug tracker now. The reqs of the old development page were...A lot of those were just bugs. So it's not like we've changed our direction at all, it's just that that particular system was becoming cumbersome and unwieldy, and was annoying to...Like every little thing, having to keep track of it and so on. So all of the arcs, as far as I remember them, it's all still the idea of what we want to do. So there's really nothing we've dropped as far as I remember.
 And I don't keep the new page up to date on a kind of daily or weekly basis or anything like that. It mostly gets updated on releases. So that means it can go for a year at a time without being changed but it does get updated at releases."

Threetoe: "Yeah, just different ways of organizing, I think is...It's not really out of date or anything, it's like all that stuff is still there."

Toady: "Yeah, I mean, pretty much the...Part of it is just a motivational thing. Changing the way we organize the notes just keeps things fresh and keeps us moving forward."

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 17, 2013, 02:16:14 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 17, 2013, 01:43:24 pm

While this may be a bit presumptuous, what are your plans for after the usual post bug fixing ? What should we expect will be next on the dev list?

I can't find a quote to back me up right now, but I recall something about Thief Role/Taverns and Inns. Of course, the final decision likely won't come until the end of the bugfix cycle.

Transcript from DF Talk 21:

Quote

[01:37:19] Threetoe: "Ok, the next question's from Meg and they ask, "Will we be getting bug fixes to polish the already existing parts of Dwarf Fortress, like the AI, in the next version? And if so, to what extent?""

Toady: "So after this release...So when you ask about the next version, not really. I mean there's a big kind of AI guts rewrite that's actually happened in Fortress Mode regarding their prioritization and so on and how they think about things that's gonna make things like job priorities more of a low hanging fruit in the future. But when it comes to actual bug fixing, that's not what these large releases are intended to accomplish.
 What happens right after the large release is a series of smaller releases. Sometimes, you know, a couple in a week. And many many many of them that will address old bugs, new bugs, clean up portions of the interface, address minor annoyances and add in features to the game that are just meant to be more helpful to people playing. Especially things like Fortress Mode which we've been neglecting a bit with our focus on Adventure Mode in the big releases. Fortress Mode sees a lot of changes in these smaller releases as well. So if you're waiting for things like that don't pin all your hopes on the next version, but that should be the time when you get excited about Fortress Mode and fixes, and bug fixes, polishing and that kind if thing. So you should be excited about the next release cos it means it'll be the beginning of the process that you want."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on June 18, 2013, 08:58:58 am

Do you have any methods for bug testing other than yourself/others playing the game and reporting any wonkiness?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 18, 2013, 11:45:43 am

With the inclusion of climbing, will this also mean including tools to assist with climbing, such as grappling hooks and stakes to nail down and tie rope to them? Will wells become access points to caves and caverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 18, 2013, 03:13:08 pm

Quote from: Sizik on June 18, 2013, 08:58:58 am

Do you have any methods for bug testing other than yourself/others playing the game and reporting any wonkiness?

He's got a buncha debug tools, AFAIK.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 18, 2013, 03:18:26 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 18, 2013, 03:13:08 pm

Quote from: Sizik on June 18, 2013, 08:58:58 am

Do you have any methods for bug testing other than yourself/others playing the game and reporting any wonkiness?

He's got a buncha debug tools, AFAIK.

Toady, would you consider releasing these debug tools to the public to help in general bug detection?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 18, 2013, 03:37:18 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 18, 2013, 03:18:26 pm

Toady, would you consider releasing these debug tools to the public to help in general bug detection?

Unlikely. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2764517#msg2764517)

Quote

Quote

Will you leave the magic debug button in as an init option?

Nah, I don't want to have to support it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 20, 2013, 07:27:49 am

Quote from: Devlog

I fixed their (sometimes magma) leaky rooftops

Anyone have any idea what this means?  All I can figure is that sometimes goblins are going to have magma be... above them?  I can imagine this happening as a corner case, but not frequently enough for it to actually be encountered in basic testing. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on June 20, 2013, 08:31:33 am

Latest dev log sheds vague light on it -- sometimes their structures go that deep...  and weren't getting tops on them when they twisted.  Bad news for everybody involved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2013, 08:36:59 am

Unless you hate goblins... I crave the day we will be able to invade a goblin site and crumble the tower into a gory mess of debris, lava and charred bodies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 20, 2013, 11:58:18 am

Well now that's service. 

Goblin sites just started sounding a lot more interesting!  Up until now I had been picturing them as only skimming the surface of the caverns for some reason, but if they go down that far then... well, fun!  Broken architecture letting magma flow in and make the place unexplorable does sound like a problem, though I could see flooded sections of the goblin underground making sense (since presumably goblin safety practices are pretty poor). 

This reminds me of the old 40d magma pipes that were a different shape on each z-level, so you had to be extra careful about how you dug into them. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on June 20, 2013, 12:45:27 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on June 20, 2013, 11:58:18 am

This reminds me of the old 40d magma pipes that were a different shape on each z-level, so you had to be extra careful about how you dug into them.

That reminds me of the first time I attempted to create magma forges. It's a good thing my miner was pretty agile and had an escape route. And that I dug the tunnels beneath the forges first. Then, before the lava finished flowing, the goblins came, and made my experience playing with lava seem so much safer by comparison.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:36:21 pm

Wait, are goblin sites getting direct access to the HFS? "Places down below"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2013, 01:38:23 pm

For the looks of them yes, at least some of them. I'm guessing not all of them but the most important/ancient/central or starting locations ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:40:38 pm

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of adamantine seals or finding special fortresses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on June 20, 2013, 01:51:35 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:40:38 pm

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of adamantine seals or finding special fortresses?

Oh my Armok, first carp, and now he's adding metallic sealions?!

Sorry. I couldn't resist the horrible pun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 20, 2013, 02:12:13 pm

Hell is somewhat of a extra dimensional location in the not so distant future. So I guess it is possible for Goblins to penetrate hell but not provide an ample gateway out. It does leave gaping plot holes but then again Toady loves Plot holes!

Though to my knowledge you can get lava before the hell layer.

Hmm though

Yo Toady, right now Demon escape is pretty much extrapolated. In the future what will be the more intricate ways demons will escape to darken the doorway of Midgard?

written badly for your pleasure... I think...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 20, 2013, 02:19:23 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:40:38 pm

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of adamantine seals or finding special fortresses?

Well, since goblins apparently originated from hell, maybe these breaches in the underworld lead to a more goblin dominated, "civilized" area. Or civilized enough where another demon can't just fly up and flee easily.

I always assumed demon fortresses were actually dwarf forts that dug a bit too deep.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 20, 2013, 02:24:02 pm

Ninja'd by Witty

Well, goblin sites reaching all the way to hell could mean 3 things:

1) Due to magical generating algorithms, they just construct down through magma and SMR as if it were normal stone.

2) Some of their sites reach down into an already present demon fortress

3) They dig in through adamantine veins, giving their troops adamantine weapons yet not leading to the destruction of their settlement through demonic invaders, negating any advantage dwarves might have in taking the risk to mine adamantine.

I'm hoping it's just #2

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on June 20, 2013, 02:26:47 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:36:21 pm

Wait, are goblin sites getting direct access to the HFS? "Places down below"?

I don't see how Toady remark could mean goblin settlements reaching HSF. I bet he meant "below places where magma appears". Not neccesairly magma sea. Arent ya all jumping to conclusions...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 20, 2013, 02:28:22 pm

Well, maybe a little. It could mean HFS but not necessarily. We're just discussing the possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 20, 2013, 02:33:33 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on June 20, 2013, 02:26:47 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 20, 2013, 01:36:21 pm

Wait, are goblin sites getting direct access to the HFS? "Places down below"?

I don't see how Toady remark could mean goblin settlements reaching HSF. I bet he meant "below places where magma appears". Not necessarily magma sea. Aren't ya all jumping to conclusions...

Well, he did kinda hint at it in the latest dev log

Quote from: Toady

In any case, I've manually walked a character from the top of the tallest towers down to... well, wherever they go

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 20, 2013, 02:34:37 pm

Heck, when he said he "handled their possible connections to things down below," I figured he was deliberately making sure they don't breach HFS. I bet that, at most, they connect to the Curious Structures, and aren't those full of undead? Undead that murder all living things, including goblins?

Whether the Demon Sites make breaches, well, that will have to wait for some brave adventurer to find out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2013, 02:41:31 pm

Now perhaps clowns aren't just evil in a can but more malevolent entities that have more griping over the world via Goblin towers, utilizing them and it's occupants as base of operations and minions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 20, 2013, 02:43:17 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 20, 2013, 02:12:13 pm

Hell is somewhat of a extra dimensional location in the not so distant future. So I guess it is possible for Goblins to penetrate hell but not provide an ample gateway out. It does leave gaping plot holes but then again Toady loves Plot holes!

Though to my knowledge you can get lava before the hell layer.

Hmm though

Yo Toady, right now Demon escape is pretty much extrapolated. In the future what will be the more intricate ways demons will escape to darken the doorway of Midgard?

written badly for your pleasure... I think...

Toady kind of hinted that the demon sites that monk12 mentioned in his last post may at least be the first step in that regard. DF Talk 19 has a bit about that.

Quote

Rainseeker:   An option is to have them stay at the dwarven site and establish a larger apocalyptic staging ground for ...
Toady:   Yeah. The hole is still there. It's something that we're having to come to terms with, with our current demons and goblins as well. In the currently released version, in world gen the demon 'escapes from the underworld'. That has certain implications, right, about existing holes and stuff. So we're messing around with that, trying to come up with some different solutions that meter the flow, so having the demon in control of a portal, for instance. In a lot of Threetoe's stories the goblins are from the underworld, so I think we're going to relate that to it, to make it have more of a goblinesque feel for the current portal that the demon's controlling, so it doesn't just pour through with demons. We already have these giant spires down in the underworld that were filled with demons, but perhaps they'll be filled with goblins, they're, kind of, bastions from the demons or something like that. We're just playing around with different stuff, we'll see what happens.
Rainseeker:   You could have, like, the old impermanent portal that opens up once every hundred years, lets critters through and then closes again, and you have that problem on the world every hundred years or so.
Toady:   Yeah. We need to find a solution that recover from the depredations of the player. It's, like, if you manage to call of them they need to come back. Of course it can just wing it and open another one, or something, if it really needs to, or you can have the peace that you've fought for and get bored to death and get to your mundane quests, right? You'd be moving pastries around until the next portal opens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on June 20, 2013, 04:26:13 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 20, 2013, 02:41:31 pm

Now perhaps clowns aren't just evil in a can but more malevolent entities that have more griping over the world via Goblin towers, utilizing them and it's occupants as base of operations and minions.

They were always supposed to be, since 40d Goblin civs would have a Demon (the type that was just called "Demon", ie the fireball-throwing "boss" Demon that you would get 1 of along with the 30-40 of another type when you breached the old adamantine chambers) as their civ leader. It could even show up in sieges if you kicked their asses enough that they felt like they had to send it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 20, 2013, 08:33:03 pm

Where do the languages and proper names, not nick-names, come from?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 20, 2013, 08:34:19 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 20, 2013, 08:33:03 pm

Where do the languages and proper names, not nick-names, come from?

Those are randomly generated with some manual tweaking to avoid cusses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 21, 2013, 03:16:31 am

Actually he just removed most of the nasty curse words.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:20:54 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on June 21, 2013, 03:16:31 am

Actually he just removed most of the nasty curse words.

Yeah Toady just one day opened his eyes and went "Wow, I used to be such an immature twat" and went over and removed a much of stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 21, 2013, 03:29:32 am

Quote from: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:20:54 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on June 21, 2013, 03:16:31 am

Actually he just removed most of the nasty curse words.

Yeah Toady just one day opened his eyes and went "Wow, I used to be such an immature twat" and went over and removed a much of stuff.

Don't go putting words in his mouth. Based on things he's actually said, I've inferred that it was mostly just because he didn't like that people were hearing about goblins with dirty names as part of their introduction to DF. However, unless he outright says that was the case, you certainly shouldn't go telling people it was for some inane reason like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:36:41 am

Quote from: Cruxador on June 21, 2013, 03:29:32 am

Quote from: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:20:54 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on June 21, 2013, 03:16:31 am

Actually he just removed most of the nasty curse words.

Yeah Toady just one day opened his eyes and went "Wow, I used to be such an immature twat" and went over and removed a much of stuff.

Don't go putting words in his mouth. Based on things he's actually said, I've inferred that it was mostly just because he didn't like that people were hearing about goblins with dirty names as part of their introduction to DF. However, unless he outright says that was the case, you certainly shouldn't go telling people it was for some inane reason like that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ohh I am talking about a whole mess of stuff... but we can just ask Toady directly

Hey Toady, did you one day wake up and went "Wow, I used to be such an immature twat"?

Hmmm I am probably abusing this system. I may take this question down simply because it is taking advantage of the system.

Mind you the incident I am referring to was definitely not that one.

Meh, I am not going to gamble on Toady getting the joke if even the sensible people on this site aren't getting the joke.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 21, 2013, 03:40:27 am

Yeah, that post makes you look a bit... bad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:43:20 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 21, 2013, 03:40:27 am

Yeah, that post makes you look a bit... bad.

It is an interesting story though and it involves when the Titan rewrites were being created.

Where Toady looked at all the previous materials he added to the game (Uhhh... too vulgar to mention them) and he removed a bunch just because it he didn't find them compatible with the game the way it currently is.

I actually consider it Toady sort of seeing the Toady of the past and just not finding himself that funny anymore.

Add a heaping helping Hyperbole and you get the fake quote.

I'll leave what I wrote up to see if people take it the right or wrong way. My general luck tells me I should edit what I wrote to be less offensive, but whatever.

Edit edition: Ehh if Hugo, being more sensible, doesn't get the joke... I think the chance that Toady will is pretty nil, so I put it in spoilers to be overlooked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 21, 2013, 03:58:48 am

I mean I get it's supposed to be a joke, but it comes off as a little antagonistic and escalatory. Sarcasm sometimes doesn't translate well to the written word, unfortunately.

I know there were Titans who went around naked, but that really just seems more in line with a mythic feel than immaturity. I always felt the untoward words were there for completeness sake, but the goblin's preference for them (or did they just not have them disabled like the other races?) could be telling.

Still, it was kind of funny when the RNG threw out "Failuremountain, the God-forsaken Horse-Anus of Failure" for a fort name.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 03:59:46 am

No... I am referring to Titans made of... Bodily fluids.

Those Toady removed before they even made it into the game.

I guess I shouldn't tell jokes while suffering sleep deprivation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 21, 2013, 04:23:50 am

I anyone's curious about the why's of the removed words:

Quote

Quote from: Fieari

Was there a specific motivation for removing the "rude" words from the language files?  Just tone of how you want the goblins to sound, or was there pressure from some source, or did you need to cut down on language size?

I got sick of having to exclude them almost everywhere (the latest being the books).  Having them anywhere they didn't belong made the game seem stupid, and it was starting to seem like they didn't really belong anywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2013, 04:50:34 am

I do not get it, whats so shocking about a vomit/blood titan?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 21, 2013, 04:59:14 am

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2013, 04:50:34 am

I do not get it, whats so shocking about a vomit/blood titan?

It wasn't vomit/blood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 21, 2013, 05:39:06 am

And from how Toady talks about them in DF Talk 3, they were never in the game to begin with, even pre-release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 21, 2013, 07:19:27 am

We should be less coy with these types of discussions or we run the risk of giving the wrong impression (or the desired impression depending on the commentators agenda). People will naturally attempt to fill in the blanks when rumour or innuendo is present. Saying categorically what it wasn't, but then not elaborating on what it was, obviously invites the person to infer from what is left. From the context below above, this hypothetical person is invited to assume that it must then have been semen, urine, feces, menstrual flow or smegma in the game once upon a time if it wasn't vomit or blood. And from Neon's poor attempt at a joke they are invited to believe that these things were once in the game and only removed because Toady had some sort of maturity epiphany.

As far as I know, semen, urine, feces, menstrual flow and smegma (and any other bodily fluid or excretion that you might believe requires censorship) have never been in the game. If they were in the game it's not the sign of an immature twat directing the game's development. Context is the key. If they were in the game but unavailable to the random titan materials would show no more than a design decision, not that the materials themselves or the decision to include them was innately juvenile.

I know we have differently coloured squiggles of yellows and browns to indicate filth as a catch all. And we've had the white squiggles that were associated with the tentacle demons of old that seem to have been a nod to hentai monsters. None were specifically labeled. If we're talking about something else let's be clear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 21, 2013, 10:40:41 am

I for one, welcome our new crap titans overlords.... ;P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 02:16:17 pm

Quote

this hypothetical person is invited to assume that it must then have been semen, urine, feces, menstrual flow or smegma in the game once upon a time if it wasn't vomit or blood

Actually that is exactly what it was.

Quote

As far as I know, semen, urine, feces, menstrual flow and smegma (and any other bodily fluid or excretion that you might believe requires censorship) have never been in the game

>_>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2013, 02:23:56 pm

Why should they be banned?
Just asking

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 21, 2013, 02:28:35 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 21, 2013, 02:23:56 pm

Why should they be banned?
Just asking

Because, as I understand, Toady doesn't want DF to become attributed as "that game where you can chuck crap about" or "that game with the semen monster". Understandable, but DF already has some pretty "touchy" additions like miscarriages and such. I guess a line must be drawn at some point, I personally wouldn't really want to face the wrath of a giant blob of crap.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 02:30:45 pm

Well to put it the way Toady said it.

He took them out because Titans made of that didn't make sense. A... whatever... Titan was just silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 21, 2013, 03:40:15 pm

I think that, for the benefit of DF, by default should not include some things yes, but it shouldn't exclude them from implementation either. And I'm talking about all the touchy things, feces, urine, slavery, rape, sex, drug abuse, prostitution and whatever makes you shiver (surprisingly, representation of senseless death and killing are accepted in our society even being something far worst).

I know is a rather hypocritical call, similar to Total War approach, where they don't include violent (as in realistic) effects to the battles in oder to have certain rating but then after a while they release the money-grab DLC with them anyway. This way they get to stay on the desired rating to boost sales (because somehow teens killing humans is okay as long as they don't see the blood, as if shooting someone is okay as long your close your eyes) and then please (and get revenue from) the older, bloodthirsty fans.

Of course not that Toady should care about stupid artificial and meaningless ratings that exist only to "comfort" the "worried" parents of today. But is understandable he want to keep the game image clean in order to attract a broader audience.

In the end he's making the game and it all comes down, as always, at what he's personally comfortable working with and what he thinks is better for the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 21, 2013, 05:52:16 pm

This thread is not really a great place to debate controversial topics, especially ones that have already been beaten to death in Suggestions (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB6Cyxg0yJoFNSZ7eBdD9-cV48PtMyHoqJMOukir2apEfhzxcSZUmDW6lh1UHef0dmGpLmxiK6BQF1uChP-4EbxQNFxBKB_kPizS).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 21, 2013, 06:12:13 pm

I would like to apologize for how I caused this whole discussion, and mostly derailed the thread.
I would now like to encourage everyone to pay attention to the actual point of this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 06:28:49 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on June 21, 2013, 06:12:13 pm

I would like to apologize for how I caused this whole discussion, and mostly derailed the thread.
I would now like to encourage everyone to pay attention to the actual point of this thread.

This is future of the fort and this conversation has been going on for 2 pages.

Nothing really happened. In fact there was 2 hours between what LordBaal said and when Lord Footkerchief said and the conversation was barely moving at all.

So there really is no need to apologize. The Future of the Fortress is about the development of Dwarf Fortress and two pages (or 24+ posts of awkard conversation that ends on its own is barely worth caring about.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 21, 2013, 09:52:15 pm

I care.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 09:56:14 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 21, 2013, 09:52:15 pm

I care.

You do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 21, 2013, 10:20:04 pm

It actually amazes me how this thread maintains a constant conversation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 21, 2013, 10:29:38 pm

Damn, I was about to post a joke...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 21, 2013, 10:37:47 pm

Quote from: King Mir on June 21, 2013, 10:20:04 pm

It actually amazes me how this thread maintains a constant conversation.

And one that stays relatively on topic.
The topic itself, however, is everchanging.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on June 22, 2013, 12:34:36 am

Quote from: Neonivek on June 21, 2013, 09:56:14 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on June 21, 2013, 09:52:15 pm

I care.

You do?

Deeply.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 22, 2013, 03:08:20 am

My reaction to the latest devlog:

Oh COME ON. Part of Dwarf Fortress is exploring a goblin tower with staircases going up and down into solid rock, doors into empty space, magma floods, and rooms in hell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on June 22, 2013, 06:18:04 am

Toady, regarding climbing, the devlog states that constructed walls are climbable whilst smooth walls aren't. By "smooth" do you mean naturally smoothed rock or walls constructed out of blocks? If it is the former, will there be any way to make constructed walls impossible to climb? Also, can one grab on to and climb wall grates?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 22, 2013, 06:56:00 am

The last mention was that block walls are as climbable as rough walls. This may change before the release, but the answer below was after Toady moved on from climbing, so it should be up to date. No mention of grates yet, I believe.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: DG

Please clarify this, Toady. By smooth walls do you only mean natural walls that have been smoothed by an engraver (the impression I'm getting) or also walls constructed of blocks instead of rough stone/logs/bars?

I haven't distinguished the constructions yet, but I'm for making block walls much harder to climb, both from a game and realism perspective.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 22, 2013, 09:52:18 am

Umm maybe a solution would be making walls with some floors over them like a "T" or a upside down "L" where the floor on top serves as roof for the assaulting units.

Unless they a re mounting giant spiders, in which case you are pretty much f**ked up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 22, 2013, 10:48:11 am

Those overhangs you're talking about, machicolations, would indeed be handy.  They will also be superfluous in the next version, as Toady has stated that he will not modify invader pathfinding to take advantage of climbing.  Climbing will be a largely Adventure mode thing this time around, with only edge case, incidental effect on Dwarf mode.

That said, I tend to build these into my walls, as well as moats, in the current and previous versions for RP purposes.  Can't wait till we get the option to add "murder holes" to the floor above our gatehouse and use them to harass beseiging forces.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on June 22, 2013, 11:47:44 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 22, 2013, 06:56:00 am

The last mention was that block walls are as climbable as rough walls. This may change before the release, but the answer below was after Toady moved on from climbing, so it should be up to date. No mention of grates yet, I believe.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: DG

Please clarify this, Toady. By smooth walls do you only mean natural walls that have been smoothed by an engraver (the impression I'm getting) or also walls constructed of blocks instead of rough stone/logs/bars?

I haven't distinguished the constructions yet, but I'm for making block walls much harder to climb, both from a game and realism perspective.

Ah, so he did. I did not see this, thanks. Although I do wonder just what Toady means by "making block walls much harder to climb." Does this mean that climbing them requires a high climbing skill, so that if you don't have the required skill you won't be able to attempt to climb them at all, or that anyone can attempt to climb them, but unskilled people are more likely to fall off/fail?

Quote from: LordBaal on June 22, 2013, 09:52:18 am

Umm maybe a solution would be making walls with some floors over them like a "T" or a upside down "L" where the floor on top serves as roof for the assaulting units.

Unless they a re mounting spiders giant, in which case you are pretty much f**ked up.

Thanks, but I was asking this with adventurers in mind. I think it would be pretty fun to make fortresses specially designed for adventurers to explore, and climbing opens up plenty of new challenges for the unfortunate adventurer. I really hope that Toady is going to add ropes/ladders for climbing purposes in the near future though, I'm certain that they'll be a great addition to adventurer fortresses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 23, 2013, 09:52:40 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on June 22, 2013, 11:47:44 am

Ah, so he did. I did not see this, thanks. Although I do wonder just what Toady means by "making block walls much harder to climb." Does this mean that climbing them requires a high climbing skill, so that if you don't have the required skill you won't be able to attempt to climb them at all, or that anyone can attempt to climb them, but unskilled people are more likely to fall off/fail?

Well, obviously we don't know yet, but my guess would be the latter, some kind of skill penalty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 23, 2013, 11:13:48 am

With the addition of multi-tile tress, can we expect to see diffrent sizes and branching patterns depending on their species?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 23, 2013, 11:49:58 am

The tree raws will have an unknown variety amount of growth parameters of some kind, which should give different tree species different shapes and sizes. Tons of (hopefully) related quotes in the spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

Quote from: arkhometha

will we be able to modify the raws for trees so to make them more realistic and how close to reality (in both of height and width) the new trees are?

The raws can be modified, though I think the thread discussed whether the new trees are realistic are not.  In reality, I think they should be much taller on average, but then again, the mountains should also be thousands of tiles tall by the metric I've been using, and tall trees make large single-tile creatures look goofy no matter what, so it's a mess.  People should be able to change things to something they are more or less happy with, anyway.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: Auning

How moddable will the following be: tree shape, size, quantity of fruit bearing
Will all trees have different defined varieties of leaves/petals/etc? For example, pine trees will have pine needles, oak trees will have oak leaves, palm trees will have palm fronds.
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
With the implementation of the other new sites, will this in turn allow for more variety with human sites, since the code has been expanded upon?
Will trees legitimately spread through methods such as seeds in fruit, or will they still just spawn?

As for the first few lines, yeah, all pretty good there.  Haven't done anything with sap.  I haven't expanded human sites, but yeah, the potential increases as I add non-human sites, but not really modding wise for this time.  I haven't gone down into actual seeding yet.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

We're getting fruits and flowers, so will we have seeding patterns too?
With the addition of fruits and flowers on trees, will animals such as elephants be able to browse trees?
Will roots be able to damage structures within your fortress?
Are all trees going to use the new multi-tile code?
Some real life trees, such as Baobabs, store large quantities of water inside their trunks. Will some large trees be filled with replenishing water?

No specific reproduction information at this point.  Not doing tree browsing yet.  The vast majority of trees don't do the massive taproot thing, so I'm not sure if any interesting things will happen with roots, but if you are playing like a hill dwarf and mucking about in the soil, you might run into trouble with roots, especially if you are shallow.  All trees but saplings will use multitile code.  I think trees at higher elevations should end up properly stunted, but might still get 2 tiles tall to distinguish them from saplings.  Don't have special plans for the odd cases, aside from things like basic saguaro shapes and things like that.

Quote from: Talvieno

Will tree roots be multi-tile, and if so, will they remain and decay after the tree is chopped down?

They are, and they'll still be there.  I don't know if they'll decay in any particular way at this point.  That doesn't mean they can't be cleared.

Quote from: stolide

Do all trees grow the same way?

Nope.  There are various parameters in the raws.

Quote

Quote from: CLA

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

Quote from: smirk

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

The growth parameters are all in there.

Quote from: eux0r

are the proportions of the trees weve seen so far already the desired picture or are tile dimensions yet to be applied for the trees to be what you want them to be?

It'll depend on the kind of tree more than what you saw there.

Quote from: stolide

Will a given species of tree grow exactly the same in all conditions?

Will the recent volume of rain have any impact on plant growth?

Are we going to see vines at some point? It would be cool to have a climbable plant that grows onto surfaces, like walls and cliff faces. Such a plant could be used like ladders by the elves...

Altitude might have an impact, but I haven't gotten around to a lot of variation within one species.  I like vines, but we aren't there yet.

Quote from: Talvieno

Is there a possibility that some fruits will rot on the trees, without falling until after they've rotted, or possibly just rotting away? If fruits rot on the trees, how long will it take for them to rot?

Will unharvested fruits attract vermin such as flies?

Will bees make different types of honey now, now that we have flowers?

It can go either way, though things tend to be more uniform depending on where you set your parameters for a given species of tree.  I don't think there'll be flies for the stuff that falls on the ground, since there'll probably be too much of it.  It would need to be reasonably rare to keep things under control.

I haven't changed anything with bees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 23, 2013, 03:31:36 pm

Say, there's another power vampires sometimes get: wall-crawling.

Hmm, ladders would be an interesting thing for fort construction, as they save space and block the passage of larger creatures, but disabled dwarves would have a great deal of trouble, as would heavy haulers...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 23, 2013, 04:05:42 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 23, 2013, 03:31:36 pm

Say, there's another power vampires sometimes get: wall-crawling.

Hmm, ladders would be an interesting thing for fort construction, as they save space and block the passage of larger creatures, but disabled dwarves would have a great deal of trouble, as would heavy haulers...

To expand on this, imagine the countermeasures you would have to make with siege ladders - Both vertically and horizontally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 23, 2013, 09:01:45 pm

Murder holes, burning oil, or maybe a simple pole to push the ladder.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on June 23, 2013, 10:45:58 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 23, 2013, 09:01:45 pm

Murder holes, burning oil, or maybe a simple pole to push the ladder.

Raising bridge on the top of the wall that extends two or three tiles out. At the flip of a lever, your wall changes shape - and that's ignoring the "Atom smash anything on the top section" potential.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 24, 2013, 03:16:57 am

Or hidden trapdoors beneath the where ladders would be placed, to be opened when they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 24, 2013, 04:05:59 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on June 23, 2013, 04:05:42 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 23, 2013, 03:31:36 pm

Say, there's another power vampires sometimes get: wall-crawling.

Hmm, ladders would be an interesting thing for fort construction, as they save space and block the passage of larger creatures, but disabled dwarves would have a great deal of trouble, as would heavy haulers...

To expand on this, imagine the countermeasures you would have to make with siege ladders - Both vertically and horizontally.

Just seal off the entire guardtower from the outside. To keep things off the ceiling, have an operating minecart track.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on June 24, 2013, 11:45:46 am

I just love reading all the imaginative ideas people come up with on this forum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 24, 2013, 11:53:52 am

Quote from: Bronze Dog on June 24, 2013, 11:45:46 am

I just love reading all the imaginative ideas people come up with on this forum.

Indeed. Surprised nobody remembered how universal !!MAGMA!! is though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 24, 2013, 12:38:58 pm

Wait a minute, you mean you don't ALREADY use double curtain walls filled with !!MAGMA!!??

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 24, 2013, 12:48:13 pm

Clearly, the best defense in to require each goblin soldier to individually go through a gauntlet of boss battles to get into the fort. Might be a bit tricky, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 24, 2013, 12:56:57 pm

And, like any self respecting video game nemesis, you must continually incentivise the assaulting party(ies) to continue their assault, keep the story on the rails (actual rail shooter levels optional) and be sure to provide curiously overpowered bonuses at the end of each carefully planned chapter of your ingress progression.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 24, 2013, 05:31:11 pm

And, just when they feel victory is assured, drop a treasure chest full of magma on their heads.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 24, 2013, 06:48:28 pm

I fucking love this forum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on June 24, 2013, 11:14:29 pm

new dev long, that exploration makes me squirm in anticipation. darn it toady


How are you so awesome, and are goblin sites reachable from within the caverns, for example if i entered a cave or a goblin side and made it down to the first layer, would i be able to travel to another goblin site if i explored for long enough?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 24, 2013, 11:48:30 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on June 24, 2013, 11:14:29 pm

new dev long, that exploration makes me squirm in anticipation. darn it toady


How are you so awesome, and are goblin sites reachable from within the caverns, for example if i entered a cave or a goblin side and made it down to the first layer, would i be able to travel to another goblin site if i explored for long enough?

I'm fairly certain that would be the case.
Not only gobbos, but deep dwarves sites are prolly to be the case as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on June 25, 2013, 01:20:13 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on June 24, 2013, 11:48:30 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on June 24, 2013, 11:14:29 pm

new dev long, that exploration makes me squirm in anticipation. darn it toady


How are you so awesome, and are goblin sites reachable from within the caverns, for example if i entered a cave or a goblin side and made it down to the first layer, would i be able to travel to another goblin site if i explored for long enough?

I'm fairly certain that would be the case.
Not only gobbos, but deep dwarves sites are prolly to be the case as well.

I don't think so, at least for deep dwarves. I remember reading somewhere¹ that the deep dwarves sites will be more or less "horizontal" and very ample, and not the deep, vertical, carved "tower-holes" that fortresses are. They'll probably look more like underground human villages or towns, with a cluster of little carved out quarters and large mushroom fields all in the same z-level.  In fact, I'm not even sure if world gen dwarf fortresses will reach the first cavern layers, but I guess we can now assume this will be likely knowing that goblin fortresses will be generated that way.

¹Citation Needed. Sorry, I'm too tired and too lazy to look for one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 25, 2013, 04:34:18 am

Toady mentioned entering the first natural cavern layer (and back into a different part of the goblin site) in the dev log, so goblins are reachable this way. Dwarven deep sites are indicated to be in the caverns in DF Talk #20 ("And then there's the deep dwarf sites down in the caverns which will have their vast plump helmet fields, that kind of thing ... and some industry.") and the dev log from last November (" Deep sites claim areas much larger than forts (the size of human towns in the current version -- up to 17x17 embark tiles), and a lot of this will probably be devoted to farms in the cavern layers, but I'm hoping for something reasonably different from a human village underground.").

There's also this quote from this thread:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

Right now I've got forts going from the surface down to the magma and deep sites up in the first layer.  Currently the thinking is to reserve the secret stuff for the forts (not just player ones, but that special category of site), which are also better armed for dealing with deeper troubles from layers two and three.  It'll be fine to make deep sites more interesting over time, but I also don't want to smear things too much, especially since they aren't reclaimable -- this makes keeping the most interesting stuff in forts more important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on June 25, 2013, 06:03:21 am

PRAISE THE TOAD!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 25, 2013, 07:09:03 am

ALL PRAISE TO HIM!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 25, 2013, 07:38:47 am

Waterways - are you referring to water storage and plumbing in goblin towers, or normal lakes in the caverns, or are there now rivers in the caverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on June 25, 2013, 10:10:56 am

I'd love to see underground rivers back, but I think Toady made it pretty clear in the devlog that he was maneuvering around standard cavern pools.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on June 25, 2013, 11:57:06 am

All glory to the hypnotoad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 25, 2013, 03:57:07 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on June 25, 2013, 10:10:56 am

I'd love to see underground rivers back, but I think Toady made it pretty clear in the devlog that he was maneuvering around standard cavern pools.

Which makes me ask another question - Does this mean that the weird generation of cavern layers has been resolved, as now you will find large hollow areas instead of the usual tiny, yet very tall passageways wrapping around chunks of rock?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 25, 2013, 04:03:24 pm

It's not a bug, it's your world settings. There's "Cavern Passage Density Min/Max" and "Cavern Openness Min/Max". You can adjust for desired cave shape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 25, 2013, 08:57:56 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

I don't think that bigger trees translate into less trees. As I remember the 09/23/2012 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_slope_01.png) update Toady shown us a handful of screenshots with a few examples of forests, and maybe some of them occupy more space but those shown as "heavily forested" still count as a lot. I haven't had troubles with elven diplomats and tree-chopping limits in the current release, maybe I'm missing something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Saraias on June 26, 2013, 12:37:47 am

I cannot recall: Has Toady mentioned whether deep sites and hill sites are intrinsically linked to mountain sites? The point of my question is whether it would be possible to tweak raws such that civilizations of ant-men colonize deep sites, and hamster men hill sites, or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 26, 2013, 01:47:47 am

Quote from: Saraias on June 26, 2013, 12:37:47 am

I cannot recall: Has Toady mentioned whether deep sites and hill sites are intrinsically linked to mountain sites? The point of my question is whether it would be possible to tweak raws such that civilizations of ant-men colonize deep sites, and hamster men hill sites, or whatever.

I'm pretty sure he has talked about modding possibilities either not at all or very close to it. It's worth greening if you want the answer sooner rather than waiting to see when it's released.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 26, 2013, 01:49:41 am

Quote from: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

I think they would still hate your guts if you just looked at a tree the wrong way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 26, 2013, 07:21:45 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on June 26, 2013, 01:49:41 am

Quote from: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

I think they would still hate EAT your guts if you just looked at a tree the wrong way.

FTFY  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on June 26, 2013, 09:12:48 pm

Quote from: Mr S on June 26, 2013, 07:21:45 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on June 26, 2013, 01:49:41 am

Quote from: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

I think they would still hate EAT your guts if you just looked at a tree the wrong way.

FTFY  ;)

I stand corrected, well played.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 26, 2013, 09:14:35 pm

Quote from: Valtam on June 25, 2013, 08:57:56 pm

Quote from: Witty on June 25, 2013, 08:28:30 pm

Will elven diplomats now readjust their tree cutting limit with the addition of bigger trees? 

I don't think that bigger trees translate into less trees. As I remember the 09/23/2012 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_slope_01.png) update Toady shown us a handful of screenshots with a few examples of forests, and maybe some of them occupy more space but those shown as "heavily forested" still count as a lot. I haven't had troubles with elven diplomats and tree-chopping limits in the current release, maybe I'm missing something.

Elven diplomats don't show up currently.

[edit]

But you can mod them to show up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 27, 2013, 03:01:33 am

They also make short jokes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on June 27, 2013, 07:13:37 am

If companions leave adventurer's party due to breach of agreement or other reasons will they set off to their hometown and can they be tracked down? If they stumble on a night creature's lair can they be attacked by it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 27, 2013, 09:55:17 am

If they leave my party they throughly deserve to be mauled by some night creature I say.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on June 27, 2013, 02:02:37 pm

Rephrase:

If companions leave adventurer's party due to breach of agreement or other reasons will they set off to their hometown and can they be tracked down and murdered?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 27, 2013, 02:29:38 pm

Ahh personal vendetta. Much more satisfactory. I dearly hope so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on June 27, 2013, 02:41:28 pm

Since you do leave tracks I cant see why your companions would not do the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 27, 2013, 03:57:19 pm

As for destination I couldn't know. I hope it's not always the town. Imagine in a future some companions having their own goals, like turning on you to steal your stuff and go to another town to sell them, spend the money and wait for another unsuspected adventurer recruiting people, rinse and repeat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on June 27, 2013, 04:13:20 pm

Quote from: Jiharo on June 27, 2013, 07:13:37 am

If companions leave adventurer's party due to breach of agreement or other reasons will they set off to their hometown and can they be tracked down? If they stumble on a night creature's lair can they be attacked by it?

Quote from: laularukyrumo on June 27, 2013, 02:02:37 pm

Rephrase:

If companions leave adventurer's party due to breach of agreement or other reasons will they set off to their hometown and can they be tracked down and murdered?

It's not clear from the devlogs if that will be possible.  If a single person leaving your party is tracked as an "army" (like the player and their companions are) then they should move slowly over the world maps and it ought to be possible to track them down.  It seems more likely that they will just teleport back to town (or wherever they came from), but it just depends how it's been handled, so we need an answer from the Toad on that. 

As for them meeting a grisly fate not perpetrated by the player, that is almost certainly a 'no'.  It's known that megabeasts/night creatures/whatever else have not been moved over to the new mechanics, and that they don't have their worldgen activities extended to regular play.  There has also been no mention of armies interacting with critters at all during play yet.  Naturally that's all almost certain to go in eventually, and it wouldn't require a huge rewrite to make happen, but the current goals seem to be to finish up with everything that has been roughed-in so far, and then go for a release. 

I would speculate that a lot of relatively low-hanging stuff like this (things that happen in worldgen but can't happen during play yet, and off-screen fighting etc.) could be the next set of features Toady decides to implement after this release, purely because it is relatively straightforward to head in that direction now that the world is no longer stagnant post-worldgen.  Then again, there are a pile of other interesting things from every possible direction development might take. 

---

On a seperate note, I'm looking forward to the devlog mentioning elf-tree-related bugs.  I would put money on trees piercing the underworld within the week.  All the good features in DF accidentally pierce the underworld at one point or another. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on June 27, 2013, 04:27:48 pm

Quote from: Caldfir on June 27, 2013, 04:13:20 pm

...

Oh, thanks.
 

Quote from: 08/11/2012

  Lots of critters moving on the map now as proper groups rather than ambush chances, leaving a mess of signs that you can find. The night creatures and nocturnal natural predators come out when it gets dark and wander around their dens, and you can follow them back.

Yeah, night creatures are probably only leaving the tracks and maybe meeting with the adventurer's party itself for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 27, 2013, 04:38:54 pm

I'd expect companions who abandon you to walk home, not teleport, by similar mechanics to how suiters move to the town their partner is in, which is in the upcoming release. They'll probably be safe from boogie men, bandits, and wildlife though, unlike your adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on June 27, 2013, 09:44:38 pm

How viable is hunting and tracking animals right now?

Are caravan guards drawn from the pool of historical figures? For instance, can one of your retired adventurers return to a fortress as a guard?

Will adventurers start in their respective sites: Humans in towns and hamlets, dwarves in fortresses, and elves in forest retreats?

Will there be shops in the non-human sites?

Will you be doing kobold and other minor civ-sites?

Can drunks initiate bar fights?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on June 28, 2013, 03:39:45 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on June 09, 2013, 12:35:20 pm

With the addition of retiring fortresses, can we now expect creatures not to scatter when leaving fortress mode in this way? If an adventurer visits a retired fortress, can he expect to find goblin prisoners in the dungeons, dragons in the treasure room and livestock in their pens? Or would he find the hostile creatures scattered randomly around the fortress, and all the pets dead, as it currently happens when one abandons a fortress?

To elaborate further on this question; will dwarves isolated in a part of the fortress remain in that part once the fortress is retired? For example, will a werebeast/vampire/regular dwarf that is completely walled off from the rest of the fortress remain in its prison once the fortress is retired, or will it somehow end up roaming freely around the fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 28, 2013, 04:02:03 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on June 28, 2013, 03:39:45 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on June 09, 2013, 12:35:20 pm

With the addition of retiring fortresses, can we now expect creatures not to scatter when leaving fortress mode in this way? If an adventurer visits a retired fortress, can he expect to find goblin prisoners in the dungeons, dragons in the treasure room and livestock in their pens? Or would he find the hostile creatures scattered randomly around the fortress, and all the pets dead, as it currently happens when one abandons a fortress?

To elaborate further on this question; will dwarves isolated in a part of the fortress remain in that part once the fortress is retired? For example, will a werebeast/vampire/regular dwarf that is completely walled off from the rest of the fortress remain in its prison once the fortress is retired, or will it somehow end up roaming freely around the fortress?

Same question for any beasts. If you build a sort of maze within a fortress, with FB locked behind drawbridges and/or an item somewhere, will it still be in the same place once the fortress is retired ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 28, 2013, 04:42:07 am

Goblin sites - check
Elf sites - in progress
Dwarf sites - to be finished
Kobolds - to be started.

Now that the trees are going to be dealt with, I hope we can carve out the interiors of trees for storage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 28, 2013, 11:15:19 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 28, 2013, 04:42:07 am

Goblin sites - check
Elf sites - in progress
Dwarf sites - to be finished
Kobolds - to be started.

Now that the trees are going to be dealt with, I hope we can carve out the interiors of trees for storage.

We will be able to do a quantum dump/dropsite inside a 3x3 trunk withouth worrying about a collapse, that's for sure.

Quote from: My Name is Inmaterial

How viable is hunting and tracking animals right now?

It is pretty much advisable, one of the main features of the tracking system is the footprint imaging, which doesn't only renders animal feet but also pars of them that move at ground level, like snake bodies and even heads.

Quote from: My Name is Inmaterial

Will adventurers start in their respective sites: Humans in towns and hamlets, dwarves in fortresses, and elves in forest retreats?

Now that such sites are physical I don't see any restraint to be that way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 28, 2013, 03:39:07 pm

In the next release (or any plans for the future), will bandits ambushing the player in the wilderness still try to kill you, or will it be a lethal-with-quarter or non-lethal brawl with the intent to simply rob you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Imiknorris on June 28, 2013, 04:21:51 pm

Are there any plans for more interaction/syndrome triggers, such as severe injury?

I can only imagine the fun that would result from werecritters turning into their beast forms when they've been subjected to a good beatdown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on June 28, 2013, 07:17:25 pm

Please let the answer be "yes, and soon."

Werebeasts are a JOKE right now, because you can find their lair and there's only a tiny chance they'll be in beast form--and if they are, you can camp a screen or two over and just wait for them to transform back, and it's trivial to slaughter them in humanized form.

The fact that interaction/syndrome trigger additions can be used to create even more delicious Fun outside of just werebeasts is icing on this wonderous cake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 28, 2013, 08:23:53 pm

Yes... you're beating the crap out of a scrawny elf, but he pulls himself to his feet, turns around... and he has adorable beady gecko eyes!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tyrannus007 on June 29, 2013, 08:10:28 am

Whenever you attack a vampire, everyone else decides to attack it too. Villagers all charge it with their carving knives, and they usually overpower it pretty quickly. What did they need me for? It would make more sense for them to run away, and for vampires to be buffed heavily. Maybe arm them with weapons other than carving knives.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on June 29, 2013, 08:12:44 am

Quote from: tyrannus007 on June 29, 2013, 08:10:28 am

Whenever you attack a vampire, everyone else decides to attack it too. Villagers all charge it with their carving knives, and they usually overpower it pretty quickly. What did they need me for? It would make more sense for them to run away, and for vampires to be buffed heavily. Maybe arm them with weapons other than carving knives.

I think the problem is the way how the villagers react. In a dwarf mode, civilians will run madly away from any hostile beigns - I think it should be similary in the Adventure Mode. What reason a random fish dissector has to fight if there's heroes and soldiers for that job?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 29, 2013, 08:32:00 am

I'm guessing something like that happens in the new version. I don't think civilians will be willing to escalate fighting above brawl and will run away unless you corner them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 29, 2013, 08:48:23 am

Quote from: laularukyrumo on June 28, 2013, 07:17:25 pm

Please let the answer be "yes, and soon."

Werebeasts are a JOKE right now, because you can find their lair and there's only a tiny chance they'll be in beast form--and if they are, you can camp a screen or two over and just wait for them to transform back, and it's trivial to slaughter them in humanized form.

The fact that interaction/syndrome trigger additions can be used to create even more delicious Fun outside of just werebeasts is icing on this wonderous cake.

Unfortunately, the answer will be, 90%, "Yes, but there's no timeline." Of course it's hard to predict when Toady'll next delve into interactions. Perhaps the potentially upcoming Thief role work could result in some night creature work (Thief role -> punishments -> stalker night creatures resulting from those punishments and other deaths). Or when Toady gets to megabeast antics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on June 29, 2013, 11:20:10 am

Quote from: Toady One

I've stopped trees from breaking apart roadways and sewers...

Realistically, if the tree is younger than the road or sewer it might necessitate maintenance to get rid of the tree before it grows into the road/sewer or else redirect the road/sewer around the newly grown tree. I've been places where the sidewalks are broken up every ten to twenty feet by trees that were planted too close back when, and I wouldn't expect Dwarf Fortress to artificially eliminate that sort of phenomenon. It's a lesser matter whether, when the tree is older than the roadway/sewer, to build a roadway/sewer around the tree or to remove the tree (although I will say that it could be really cool to have things obviously built around trees in some cases, but that's probably less practical from an in-game perspective and certainly introduces tons of problems from a programming perspective [avoiding cutting off other things with the road suddenly moving to one side into them, etc.]).

No, I don't know where the question was in all that. Here, let's try this: What sort of technique is used to avoid trees splitting roads and sewers, and is it purely a programming/abstraction solution to avoid them getting together or are there in-game realism considerations as to what to do about trees growing into existing things and/or about trees in the way where a thing should be built?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on June 29, 2013, 11:46:31 am

It'd be a nice touch if tree roots end up digging into soil tiles or something, but I doubt Toady's done anything like that. I suspect the new trees start right on top of the soil instead of in it.

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 29, 2013, 08:48:23 am

Perhaps the potentially upcoming Thief role work could result in some night creature work (Thief role -> punishments -> stalker night creatures resulting from those punishments and other deaths).

I've been planning on playing adventure mode as a kobold thief/trader/explorer for the next release. I'll try stealing from temples and such to see if I can get cursed and in what fashions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on June 29, 2013, 01:41:43 pm

When do you plan on having sites converting from one template to another? After all, watching your beautiful fortress be corrupted by goblin's and worse, their puppeteers the elves, as you try and fail to retrieve the precious artifacts you foolishly retired there sounds good to me (as does districts and ghettos of other races).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on June 29, 2013, 10:33:29 pm

Gah, I just realized something. Pardon if it's been answered already.
Will underground trees still grow after you pierce the caverns? Will underground trees still be single tile trees or multitiled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on June 30, 2013, 07:48:33 am

Quote from: flabort on June 29, 2013, 10:33:29 pm

Will underground trees still be single tile trees or multitiled?

They will be multi-tiled. Although considering cavern dimensions, I guess they might just be 2 z-levels high and have a 1 tile wide trunk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on June 30, 2013, 09:09:05 am

Oh, dear. And what of the saplings that grow up in the soil layers after you've breached the caverns? Those generally don't have room to get 2z high, so what would they do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 30, 2013, 10:45:17 am

Quote from: flabort on June 30, 2013, 09:09:05 am

Oh, dear. And what of the saplings that grow up in the soil layers after you've breached the caverns? Those generally don't have room to get 2z high, so what would they do?

Saplings without room to grow will stay saplings. We don't know enough about the parameters to know whether horizontal growth will be possible without vertical growth, though, so depending on things, you might still get shroom stumps growing in your soil rooms (personally, I hope it can be modded in without being the default for most trees, but we'll see).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on June 30, 2013, 12:01:14 pm

So, if we're going to be making tree farms in the next release, they're going to have to be channeled out, rather than just dug out.
That's going to make things a bit tougher for us novices.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 30, 2013, 04:39:27 pm

Here's something I have a feeling few would think about...

Will tree size and age impact the quality of wood, meaning that big old trees will produce better and stronger wood for furniture and structures?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on June 30, 2013, 06:01:14 pm

Pretty sure wood doesn't even have quality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 30, 2013, 07:20:16 pm

Yeah that's surely a suggestion-question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 30, 2013, 08:06:10 pm

I mean, wood doesn't have quality, but there are differences between different trees. It's material based, not age. This would require a system where a growing tree progresses through several materials (or set variations on a template material.) Which... I guess isn't impossible, but there's been zero mention of anything like that, and that's the kind of thing that would get talked about since it would have deep implications for modders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Thanks to MrWiggles, Eric Blank, DG, Mopsy, hermes, monk12, Cruxador, Heph, Telgin, Caldfir, Footkerchief, Knight Otu, Manveru Taurënér, King Mir, Putnam, Valtam, CLA, DarkDXZ, SmileyMan, HugoLuman and anybody I missed for answering questions.  With such a large number of people helping out, you can imagine that a lot of the questions asked have already been addressed.  This almost always happen within a few posts of the question, so if your question isn't below, it has probably already been answered and you can find the spot in your post history.

Quote

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will mega and semi-mega beasts, and wild animal historical figures (like that giant leopard that ate somebody's rabid 5 years ago and claimed a lair) breed during play now? I know during worldgen they will often enough have children, as you can see them in legends mode, but I was interested to see if that could continue to occur now that births and deaths of entity populations are being tracked.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

In addition to this, will any offspring of historical figures follow in their predecessor's footsteps?

Nope, their world gen activities haven't been moved over yet.  The predators will patrol around their lairs, tracking and attacking the player, but that's it.

Aside from succession, the historical figures don't care about their parents.

Quote from: Kyphis

With the new climbing being implimented, what are the odds of seeing/constructing fences that block most animals, but only cost extra movement (take longer) for things with climbing or sentience?

Same as any other reasonable feature, I suppose.  I haven't added anything like that for next time.

Quote

Quote from: tfaal

You said in the Bay12 report that bandits won't be hanging out around wells this release. Should this be taken to mean that the previously mentioned feature of bandits harassing townsfolk and getting in fistfights with the player is out for this release? If so, is there any way for the player to get into a nonlethal fistfight without angering the town's populace?

Quote from: Eric Blank

In the next release (or any plans for the future), will bandits ambushing the player in the wilderness still try to kill you, or will it be a lethal-with-quarter or non-lethal brawl with the intent to simply rob you?

Regarding wells, I said they were "on hold for the moment".  Something will have to give somewhere.  It was taking a lot of time, and without the auxiliary features, the value-per-hour just isn't there on the dev time.  Ambushes in the woods are more or less identical, at least when it comes to harassing/robbing the player.  There's going to be non-lethal combat in the new version, but I'm really not sure now what the overall bandit picture is going to be.  I've set it down entirely while I work through the site issues, and I'll be back to it before the release is up.

Quote from: Neonivek

Toady do you picture the incarnate gods (Dragons, Titans, and some such) eventually being legitimate gods in their own right or just fakes that people latch onto?

Assuming of course you have a set idea for that at the moment
...
with Greek Mythology, quite a few monsters were gods such as Typhon or a few of the Cyclops (In fact the one Ulysses meets is either a demigod or a outright god).

It is why I like to call the Titans the Incarnate Gods (as in gods who's natural form is a earthly physical one) since by all means they are gods being the avatars of locations and their homes being temples and shrines dedicated to them built by unknown hands.

But if the game will recognize such divinity or not is another question.

The current worship of attacking beasts starts at the lowest level and is meant to reflect superstitious behavior resulting from the ever-present threat and trauma.  Over time and with the help of subsequent attacks and the indoctrination of children of the affected historical figures, a cult worshipping the megabeast can be formed.  There's nothing divine in this process as it stands.

The titans and their relation to the world etc. is something that will probably be thrown into a world metaphysics generator grinder before we do anything more with it.  They are certainly candidates for divinity of some form, whatever that'll mean.  At that point, whether or not there are worshippers and whether or not their object of worship hears their prayers (etc.) might be more detailed.

Quote from: Witty

What exactly will be the nature of Hill/Deep dwarves? Is it just a title for dwarves living in a certain area, or will there be a sort of subspecies system?

There are options -- we have entity populations that can determine/restrict a creature caste's traits, and we have the cave adaptation system that might relate to how that is realized.  This hasn't been done.  I expect that there won't be pre-defined subspecies that are created separately.  I'd prefer that it all come from the initial population.  The "evolution" time scale is a little weird there, since world gens don't run all that long, but maybe dwarves are set up to morph to their cave-form rather quickly, or perhaps its the underworld radiation.  Overall, I think the idea is that you could tell a deep dwarf by appearance, and that the perceived difference between hill and fortress dwarves is more cultural.

Quote from: Ribs

With all the tweaks you had to do to make dwarves in dwarf mode operate properly with the movement/combat/vision changes, is there something even slightly different in their overall behavior?

Does the creature's agility still defines it's overall movement in dwarf mode? How do they differentiate from one another in terms of speed? Are they always "running", or do their speed alternate deppending of what they're doing?

Do people and animals "charge" differently in combat in dwarf mode now? Any major changes in the combat AI?

I'm assuming the answer to the first question is yes, but there isn't a lot of sit-down-and-play time.  I'm not sure what you mean by overall behavior.  There are specific behavioral differences (combat especially), and I'm not sure what the aggregate means.  I haven't noticed anything unrelated to the things I've changed, but probably, yeah.

It was always strength and agility that determined movement speed, and that is still the case (although I think there might be a tag for that now).  I don't remember if it's only for the faster gaits now though.  There isn't much of a reason why walking critters should move different speeds, and it doesn't have to be that way now.  It no longer has anything to do with job speed.  The dwarves walk -- running would make them tired.

Yeah, I think it's still an outstanding item somewhere, but critters will definitely change their speed in combat.  The combat mechanics are entirely different, but that's probably not the kind of AI you meant -- there haven't been changes to how they prioritize or think intelligently about stuff.  They are still stupid.

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Quote from: Buttery_Mess

Will Dwarf, Elf (and Goblin? Probably not kobold..) sites have shops selling equipment? Will small vendors only sell clothing and armour wearable by the small races, and medium vendors to the medium races; or will dwarves sell medium sized things, humans small things, and so on?

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Will there be shops in the non-human sites?

Yeah, there'll be such places for the dwarves and elves.  The dwarf one might be a little weird -- I have to handle their forts in such a way that they are reclaimable and playable by people, but we haven't brought the economy back to fort mode.  So you'll probably buy stuff at a depot.

There's a lot of multi-race sites, especially the human towns.  The objects sold should at the minimum reflect that, and ideally reflect their market.  That's not something I've handled yet, but we'll see what happens.

Quote

Quote from: Pie Maker

With the addition of retiring fortresses, can we now expect creatures not to scatter when leaving fortress mode in this way? If an adventurer visits a retired fortress, can he expect to find goblin prisoners in the dungeons, dragons in the treasure room and livestock in their pens? Or would he find the hostile creatures scattered randomly around the fortress, and all the pets dead, as it currently happens when one abandons a fortress?
...
To elaborate further on this question; will dwarves isolated in a part of the fortress remain in that part once the fortress is retired? For example, will a werebeast/vampire/regular dwarf that is completely walled off from the rest of the fortress remain in its prison once the fortress is retired, or will it somehow end up roaming freely around the fortress?

Quote from: Inarius

Same question for any beasts. If you build a sort of maze within a fortress, with FB locked behind drawbridges and/or an item somewhere, will it still be in the same place once the fortress is retired ?

Retirement doesn't do the same stuff as abandoning, so the behavior is completely different.  However, it does "advance" time, so things aren't frozen in their exact positions.  I wouldn't expect the exact geometric relationships of all your critters to be maintained, especially if it has no way to tell what you intended, or if the things it uses go against your intentions (like room assignments a dwarf isn't supposed to use).  It isn't a settled matter, though, and I'm going to try to handle some of the easier cases.  The map connectivity should theoretically be useful, though relying on that could lead to some stupid decisions.

Quote from: arkhometha

Will we be able to choose between retire fortress and abandon them?

I mean, out of siege times and all. Like one spring I decide I want to abandon instead of retiring the fortress.

Yeah, the old button is still available.  I don't know that that'll ever be taken away, since the player can judge for themselves whether they think a fortress is viable.  There could be some start scenario where remnants of the fort are left behind or something, rather than having everybody ship out.  I'm not sure.

Quote from: mastahcheese

So does this mean that fishing is a low priority job now?

Yeah, it has always been part of the "idle behavior" group, along with hunting and some others.  That can be made more flexible after this release now.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Are less draconian punishments planned for failed production orders, or will Dwarven nobles always be Vlad the Impaler? Since we're getting non-lethal combat in this release, it sounds like flogging is not too far around the corner.

There was something somewhere about beard shaving.  That seems less-than-lethal.

Quote from: tyrannus007

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Knight Otu brought up that it was due to megabeast reproduction, and it isn't really something that is supposed to happen -- having any age that only lasts a few years isn't really an age at all, but an event within an actual age or a period of transition (or part of an otherwise uncharacterizable chaotic period).  The game should name things after it has some time to reflect, really, even if that means you don't get to see the age transitions during world gen.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Quote from: Witty

While this may be a bit presumptuous, what are your plans for after the usual post bug fixing ? What should we expect will be next on the dev list?

I really don't know.  Knight Otu mentioned the thief role and taverns and inns (both modes) as things we've floated in the past to do after we do the bug fixing, and those are still on the table.  Handling some management/job prioritization stuff in fort mode is there to be done.  Handling start scenarioey stuff and hill/deep dwarves as they relate to the fort opens a lot of doors.  Hard to say though.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the new multi-tile trees, are we going to have proper forest fires now? Can you furnish us with any screenshots?

It's one of the remaining items to address for trees (so, very soon!).  Long ago, the trees actually burned, and now as I understand it, they no longer burn.  Screenshots may occur during testing.  I'm not sure how much the game is going to be able to judge the heat of the flames and so on -- it could be that grass fires only spread up to leaves if the tree has leaves near the ground, and the trunks only burn down in the presence of magma/dragons/etc., or something, but I'm not quite sure how it'll work until I go over the old code and update and fix it.

Quote from: PigtailLlama

With the inclusion of climbing, will this also mean including tools to assist with climbing, such as grappling hooks and stakes to nail down and tie rope to them? Will wells become access points to caves and caverns?

Nah, we had originally wanted to get to some of that, but it has all been pushed along, I think.  Do you mean wells in human towns?  I don't remember what they do now if there's a shallow layer.  Generally the layers are too far down.  Or do you mean a well you make in your fort?  We'll need climbing AI for that, which is either going to be non-existent or very shallow for this release.

Quote from: Neonivek

Yo Toady, right now Demon escape is pretty much extrapolated. In the future what will be the more intricate ways demons will escape to darken the doorway of Midgard?

It goes into a bit more this time.

Quote from: Jiharo

If companions leave adventurer's party due to breach of agreement or other reasons will they set off to their hometown and can they be tracked down? If they stumble on a night creature's lair can they be attacked by it?

It's not done, but I'm expecting for this release that they'll travel back to their home town in a trackable fashion, without being attacked (since it doesn't handle any army-to-army interaction that doesn't involve you yet).

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

How viable is hunting and tracking animals right now?

Are caravan guards drawn from the pool of historical figures? For instance, can one of your retired adventurers return to a fortress as a guard?

Will adventurers start in their respective sites: Humans in towns and hamlets, dwarves in fortresses, and elves in forest retreats?

Will you be doing kobold and other minor civ-sites?

Can drunks initiate bar fights?

I haven't done the placement of regular wilderness animal tracks during travel mode, which'll be a key part of hunting.  You can track famous predators and things you stumble upon in the local view at this point.

Caravans are still a-historical.  Once they are moving on the map, the guards'll either be historical or entity population critters, with the game preferring to use a historical whenever possible (as it currently does with patrollers etc.).

Yeah, people should start in their own sites.

Kobolds are not minor, he he he!  We're still hopping to get to them.  The underground layer civs and above-ground animal peoples are still completely neglected.

I haven't done anything with taverns.  If it ends up like dragslay, there'll be various shenanigans, including bar fights and cheating at games, without requiring you to be the initial actor.

Quote from: Cobbler89

What sort of technique is used to avoid trees splitting roads and sewers, and is it purely a programming/abstraction solution to avoid them getting together or are there in-game realism considerations as to what to do about trees growing into existing things and/or about trees in the way where a thing should be built?

I wasn't clear in the dev log -- the issue there was one of basic clearing to get the roads placed at all.  The tree growing algorithm now I thiiink won't go through constructed tiles in play when it tries to form a branch or widen a trunk, but we could consider addressing that kind of thing at some point (it would be a straightforward check).

Quote from: Novel Scoops

When do you plan on having sites converting from one template to another?

There's an outstanding item on the list now to make long-term goblin occupations start to mix some goblin elements into the human town, post world-gen, and whether I get to it or not, having all of the new sites now makes it a lot easier to think about handling that sort of thing, both before and after world-gen is over.  Other than the may-be-delayed item, I don't have a timeline, of course.

Quote from: flabort

Will underground trees still grow after you pierce the caverns? Will underground trees still be single tile trees or multitiled?

The underground mushrooms and trees will be multi-tile, and they'll be treated like other trees with respect to growth (that is, it's one of the remaining items to get it to work, and I expect it'll work out since the tree growth function was written with growth-during-play in mind).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 30, 2013, 11:22:37 pm

Thanks Toady!

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: Neonivek

Yo Toady, right now Demon escape is pretty much extrapolated. In the future what will be the more intricate ways demons will escape to darken the doorway of Midgard?

It goes into a bit more this time.

Man I am just burning to go check out those Demon Sites now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 30, 2013, 11:49:14 pm

In the late spring of 135, Urist betrayed the Planks of Order and summoned the Demon lord Dagon through dark magics.

In the late spring of 135, Dagon tricked the Planks of Order into believing that he was the God of wisdom.

In the late spring of 135, Dagon ordered the execution of the king and his descendants on the grounds of blasphemy. The order was carried out successfully.

In the late spring of 135, Urist was promoted to the rank of High Priest of the Wise Chasms, worshipers of Dagon.

Anyway, with the new system of event tracking, what can I expect if I just start punching local domestic horses? Will the other local barn animals still descend upon me, or will some farmer tell me to quit it lest I incur the wrath of the local guards?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 01, 2013, 12:23:46 am

Quote from: Witty on June 30, 2013, 11:49:14 pm

Anyway, with the new system of event tracking, what can I expect if I just start punching local domestic horses? Will the other local barn animals still descend upon me, or will some farmer tell me to quit it lest I incur the wrath of the local guards?

This has already been answered, I think. If the horse doesn't thrust your skull against your brain, maybe the farmer (if there's one) might go at you and lease a few punches of his own. Hive-minding is less expected in this release, but I think it will be handled in a way similar to how you're framed after a murder: if there's a witness and he goes through an offloaded zone, the game will assume that the "news got spread" and everyone will hate your adventurer, as usual.

Maybe animals will still be lethal if punched, after all they don't perceive threats the same way sentient creatures do.

---

Thank you Toady, I think we're all barely holding our breath until the new release, which doesn't seem to be as near as we all tried to predict.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 01, 2013, 12:34:58 am

Myself included!  I have no business predicting release dates.  There are always little nuggets I forget about or underestimate in the notes.  That dwarf AI update at the beginning of last month was one item out of 800, and it took more than a week, but surrounding that I've been cruising through about 5 or 10 a day.  So you never know.  All I can say is that I feel good about the pace for the last few months (aside from that one AI bump).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 01, 2013, 02:20:10 am

Hooray!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 01, 2013, 02:30:04 am

Quote

There's nothing divine in this process as it stands

I am going to assume you mean "As it stands in my mind"

Since yeah currently there is nothing divine about Megabeasts or the worship of them... I was more or less asking if there could be a Dragon who was also a real god as far as the game is concerned.

Anyhow thanks for answering our questions Toady.

---

Also I am glad Toady didn't answer that REALLY bad joke question I made >_< that was embarrassing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ragnarock on July 01, 2013, 06:30:04 am

What influence will kidnapping and interrogating have in the nearest future? (about 6 months from now) will it be included? Are we going to be able to change history doing this stuff?

I can't wait for the update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 01, 2013, 10:28:38 am

Quote from: Ragnarock on July 01, 2013, 06:30:04 am

What influence will kidnapping and interrogating have in the nearest future? (about 6 months from now) will it be included? Are we going to be able to change history doing this stuff?

I can't wait for the update.

I was going to answer "Yes, you definitely can interrogate and hogtie people now!", but the actual affair is a bit more sobering right now:

Quote from: Toady One in DF Talk #21

Part of the hero role is going to be exploring you being able to sort of interrogate captured people and so on. We didn't get to that part. It was on the table for this time, but we moved toward the active world for deaths, succession, and army stuff instead, and so we'll just have to do that some other time.

However, listening to the whole thing now is a must.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The13thRonin on July 01, 2013, 10:44:26 am

When are you planning on nerfing the trade value of cooked meals Toady? It's way too tempting to 'cheat' by selling cooked meals to caravans right now and get insane amounts of wealth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on July 01, 2013, 10:52:09 am

All glory to the hypnotoad!

Quote

The current worship of attacking beasts starts at the lowest level and is meant to reflect superstitious behavior resulting from the ever-present threat and trauma.  Over time and with the help of subsequent attacks and the indoctrination of children of the affected historical figures, a cult worshipping the megabeast can be formed.  There's nothing divine in this process as it stands.

The titans and their relation to the world etc. is something that will probably be thrown into a world metaphysics generator grinder before we do anything more with it.  They are certainly candidates for divinity of some form, whatever that'll mean.  At that point, whether or not there are worshippers and whether or not their object of worship hears their prayers (etc.) might be more detailed.

I like this touch. I had a D&D setting where a isolated island culture erected an idol to one of the local sea monsters. I'm looking forward to more procedurally generated variety in religion as well, and imagine some adventurers will have !!fun!! dealing with titans who wind up with some form of divine power on top of being, well, titans.

Quote

There's a lot of multi-race sites, especially the human towns.  The objects sold should at the minimum reflect that, and ideally reflect their market.  That's not something I've handled yet, but we'll see what happens.

Good thing for my kobold thief/trader idea. Hopefully he'll be able to find some kobold-sized clothing made with the best crafthumanship, and then I can start making plans to convince distant nations that all my countrybolds wear dapper clothing. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on July 01, 2013, 12:09:57 pm

Quote from: The13thRonin on July 01, 2013, 10:44:26 am

When are you planning on nerfing the trade value of cooked meals Toady? It's way too tempting to 'cheat' by selling cooked meals to caravans right now and get insane amounts of wealth.

There are a number of things where the trade value is just strange - notably cooked meals, trap components, and metal ammunition.  There's also an element of caravans not charging you anything extra for bringing heavy stuff, and "rarity" doesn't seem to figure in to the equation anywhere.  I doubt that's going to be fixed for this release, and really any guesses farther into the future than that are unreliable. 

There are, however, a number of caravan-related development goals, and it would be reasonable to expect this sort of thing to get handled then, or possibly whenever there's some kind of economy coming back to fortress mode.  Specific changes to food prices might also be prudent whenever fort-mode taverns happen. 

Oh man I just imagined restaurants and street-vendors selling you meals.  Meals nobody can afford!  hehehe

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 01, 2013, 01:23:22 pm

I always assumed trap components were sophisticated designs made of a large amount of metal. In fact, I imagine 100 pounds of any metal would be fairly valuable, no matter what shape it's in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eggman360 on July 01, 2013, 01:41:37 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: flabort

Will underground trees still grow after you pierce the caverns? Will underground trees still be single tile trees or multitiled?

The underground mushrooms and trees will be multi-tile, and they'll be treated like other trees with respect to growth (that is, it's one of the remaining items to get it to work, and I expect it'll work out since the tree growth function was written with growth-during-play in mind).

If an underground multi-tile tree is cut down, with one of its leaf tiles (or even branches)
touching a side or the cavern roof, will this stop a timber/cave-in situation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: arkhometha on July 01, 2013, 03:30:02 pm

Thank you very much for the answers Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on July 01, 2013, 03:47:21 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on July 01, 2013, 01:23:22 pm

I always assumed trap components were sophisticated designs made of a large amount of metal. In fact, I imagine 100 pounds of any metal would be fairly valuable, no matter what shape it's in.

The problem is that a large spiked ball made out of wood is still absurdly valuable. A no-quality spiked ball can easily be worth more than a high-quality wooden throne. Which just seems bad.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on July 01, 2013, 03:58:00 pm

Quote from: laularukyrumo on July 01, 2013, 03:47:21 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on July 01, 2013, 01:23:22 pm

I always assumed trap components were sophisticated designs made of a large amount of metal. In fact, I imagine 100 pounds of any metal would be fairly valuable, no matter what shape it's in.

The problem is that a large spiked ball made out of wood is still absurdly valuable. A no-quality spiked ball can easily be worth more than a high-quality wooden throne. Which just seems bad.

You can change it in the raws. But yeah, it'd be nice to see it in vanilla.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 02, 2013, 05:58:16 am

Quote

The problem is that a large spiked ball made out of wood is still absurdly valuable.

It would be. A Polished wooden ball of wooden spikes of that size?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 02, 2013, 07:19:11 am

Relative practicalities should exert influence on value. If you are not going to use the giant spiked wooden ball as a death trap then its value to you is closer to negligible than it is to invaluable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on July 02, 2013, 11:37:33 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Knight Otu brought up that it was due to megabeast reproduction, and it isn't really something that is supposed to happen -- having any age that only lasts a few years isn't really an age at all, but an event within an actual age or a period of transition (or part of an otherwise uncharacterizable chaotic period).  The game should name things after it has some time to reflect, really, even if that means you don't get to see the age transitions during world gen.

When you get to this, will the way history itself works be fleshed out a bit more? There should be more palpable differences between ages then Megabeast count, even with their machination's added. A sense of historical rise and fall, technological advances within and up to the constraint's, changes in thought, new opportunity's, hell geology, etc. Lengthier history's would be excellent, but I'm uncertain as to how it would work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 11:58:21 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on July 02, 2013, 11:37:33 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Right now, due to necromancers and so on, the world keeps going from Age of Myth to Age of Legends and back, so you often get something like the 8th Age of Myth. Do you ever plan on changing up the Ages, or adding more of them?

Knight Otu brought up that it was due to megabeast reproduction, and it isn't really something that is supposed to happen -- having any age that only lasts a few years isn't really an age at all, but an event within an actual age or a period of transition (or part of an otherwise uncharacterizable chaotic period).  The game should name things after it has some time to reflect, really, even if that means you don't get to see the age transitions during world gen.

When you get to this, will the way history itself works be fleshed out a bit more? There should be more palpable differences between ages then Megabeast count, even with their machination's added. A sense of historical rise and fall, technological advances within and up to the constraint's, changes in thought, new opportunity's, hell geology, etc. Lengthier history's would be excellent, but I'm uncertain as to how it would work.

Actually already in game, to an extent. You can have Golden Ages (when civs are at peace and prospering,) Twilight Ages (civs are at peace, but crumbling or in retreat, Tolkien style,) and the Age of Civilization (when civs have colonized most of the world.) You tend to see them in long world-gens or pocket worlds, when megabeasts are mostly dead and let the peasants do their thing.

Other things like Ages based on tech advancement, changes in thought, etc, will have to wait for those things to actually happen in the game, and there's no timeline on any of that (well, HFS-related things might have changed, but we won't know what or how much until the release comes out.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: vadia on July 02, 2013, 07:38:04 pm

how soon until Toady calls the game beta?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 07:52:45 pm

Quote from: vadia on July 02, 2013, 07:38:04 pm

how soon until Toady calls the game beta?

20 years was last estimate. Well, I don't remember whether it was 20 years until all the features are in (traditional start of beta,) or 20 years until done, but certainly not anytime in the near-to-moderate future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: paldin on July 02, 2013, 08:29:53 pm

I can't speak for economy in the fort (since I got to playing after it had been phased out), but economy in real life can be easy to track. Will the macroeconomic system be based on differences in supply and demand (and influenced by your fort's trade success?) to include difference prices to different traders, or will the prices of goods in-game simply be re-evaluated? I like the idea of finding optimal solutions in games, but not when those solutions are exploitable and unintentional.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 02, 2013, 09:44:52 pm

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 07:52:45 pm

Quote from: vadia on July 02, 2013, 07:38:04 pm

how soon until Toady calls the game beta?

20 years was last estimate. Well, I don't remember whether it was 20 years until all the features are in (traditional start of beta,) or 20 years until done, but certainly not anytime in the near-to-moderate future.

The 20 years estimate stems from the fact that development on Dwarf Fortress started in 2002, and is currently at version 0.34, a little over a third of the way done in 2012. So to get to version 1.0 would take another 20 years. You can look forward to 1.0 in 2032!

But it does speak to the fact that Toady does have a vision of what the complete game would be like. He has even mentioned that some features that would not be considered until after version 1.0.
 
EDIT:More accurately, If you extrapolate from the release of 0.31, the version 1.0 should be in 2027. For 0.34, its 2031. Not that their is any precision to these guesses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 02, 2013, 09:56:22 pm

Toady, you mentioned directly after the last FotF that you had a list of 800 notes, and were working through them at 5 to 10 a day. Where did that 800 figure come from, and what is the figure now of what's been done? You say you're bad at deadline prediction, but 800 data points will probably give us a clearer, if still rough, picture.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on July 02, 2013, 09:58:47 pm

Thank ye, o Great Toady One!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 02, 2013, 10:10:28 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on July 02, 2013, 09:56:22 pm

Toady, you mentioned directly after the last FotF that you had a list of 800 notes, and were working through them at 5 to 10 a day. Where did that 800 figure come from, and what is the figure now of what's been done? You say you're bad at deadline prediction, but 800 data points will probably give us a clearer, if still rough, picture.

800 things that need fixing; the timescale of each is a known unknown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 02, 2013, 10:20:30 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on July 02, 2013, 09:56:22 pm

Toady, you mentioned directly after the last FotF that you had a list of 800 notes, and were working through them at 5 to 10 a day. Where did that 800 figure come from, and what is the figure now of what's been done? You say you're bad at deadline prediction, but 800 data points will probably give us a clearer, if still rough, picture.

Yeah, I wish Toady gave more information like this about what he plans for every major release. The only way to get better at deadline prediction is practice, and a good way to do that is to periodically make a guess at it, learning from the inaccuracy of previous guesses. More importantly, despite the bad rep of missing a date on a published schedule, I would prefer to have a tentative date, than the little information that Toady gives us. That date could come indirectly from a list of what remains to be completed for the release, instead of Toady making the guess of a release date himself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 02, 2013, 10:22:55 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 02, 2013, 10:10:28 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on July 02, 2013, 09:56:22 pm

Toady, you mentioned directly after the last FotF that you had a list of 800 notes, and were working through them at 5 to 10 a day. Where did that 800 figure come from, and what is the figure now of what's been done? You say you're bad at deadline prediction, but 800 data points will probably give us a clearer, if still rough, picture.

800 things that need fixing; the timescale of each is a known unknown.

Sure, but if he had a monthly update of how many things need fixing, we'd have a way to estimate the average time for each, and to extrapolate the release date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet." Not to mention the list itself probably contains spoilers of various descriptions, making it unsuitable for public release. And if I were in Toady's shoes, I know I'd rather be badgered about "show us the list" posts than "why aren't you done yet, this list looks easy!" type comments.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 03, 2013, 12:49:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet." Not to mention the list itself probably contains spoilers of various descriptions, making it unsuitable for public release. And if I were in Toady's shoes, I know I'd rather be badgered about "show us the list" posts than "why aren't you done yet, this list looks easy!" type comments.

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet."

There is no perfect measure, but that doesn't mean there's no good in an imperfect measure. There's inaccuracy in every measurement ever.

To reiterate, I'd prefer a tentative date that is way underestimated, than no date at all. For example, I'm happy Toady announced in December that he envisioned the release being in march, even though that didn't happen. It's not like Toady got a bunch of hate mail at the end of march for not releasing. There were some people saying that they don't want to start a new game, because they felt release was coming soon, but that seemed to happen even right after Toady announced that he took a month to do 20% of what remains for the release. Though I do think having a tentative date would decrease the amount of people doing that prematurely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on July 03, 2013, 12:50:58 am

Just let it go already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 03, 2013, 01:04:06 am

Quote from: King Mir on July 03, 2013, 12:49:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet." Not to mention the list itself probably contains spoilers of various descriptions, making it unsuitable for public release. And if I were in Toady's shoes, I know I'd rather be badgered about "show us the list" posts than "why aren't you done yet, this list looks easy!" type comments.

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet."

There is no perfect measure, but that doesn't mean there's no good in an imperfect measure. There's inaccuracy in every measurement ever.

To reiterate, I'd prefer a tentative date that is way underestimated, than no date at all. For example, I'm happy Toady announced in December that he envisioned the release being in march, even though that didn't happen. It's not like Toady got a bunch of hate mail at the end of march for not releasing. There were some people saying that they don't want to start a new game, because they felt release was coming soon, but that seemed to happen even right after Toady announced that he took a month to do 20% of what remains for the release. Though I do think having a tentative date would decrease the amount of people doing that prematurely.

September 16, 2013 at 2:35:40 A.M Pacific Standard Time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 03, 2013, 01:50:49 am

Quote from: Putnam on July 03, 2013, 01:04:06 am

Quote from: King Mir on July 03, 2013, 12:49:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet." Not to mention the list itself probably contains spoilers of various descriptions, making it unsuitable for public release. And if I were in Toady's shoes, I know I'd rather be badgered about "show us the list" posts than "why aren't you done yet, this list looks easy!" type comments.

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet."

There is no perfect measure, but that doesn't mean there's no good in an imperfect measure. There's inaccuracy in every measurement ever.

To reiterate, I'd prefer a tentative date that is way underestimated, than no date at all. For example, I'm happy Toady announced in December that he envisioned the release being in march, even though that didn't happen. It's not like Toady got a bunch of hate mail at the end of march for not releasing. There were some people saying that they don't want to start a new game, because they felt release was coming soon, but that seemed to happen even right after Toady announced that he took a month to do 20% of what remains for the release. Though I do think having a tentative date would decrease the amount of people doing that prematurely.

September 16, 2013 at 2:35:40 A.M Pacific Standard Time.

Annnnnnnndddddd... pacified.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spinning Welshman on July 03, 2013, 01:51:52 am

Quote from: Putnam on July 03, 2013, 01:04:06 am

Quote from: King Mir on July 03, 2013, 12:49:18 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Judging from the blog, its just bug fixes before release? Or are you just on an extermination spree? If not, whats left?

I'd prefer not to get pinned to a countdown of a specific list, since that hasn't worked out well in the past.  There's still a lot left to do.  Dwarf sites are a good chunk of it, and I still have to resolve refugees.  And all sorts of other things.

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet." Not to mention the list itself probably contains spoilers of various descriptions, making it unsuitable for public release. And if I were in Toady's shoes, I know I'd rather be badgered about "show us the list" posts than "why aren't you done yet, this list looks easy!" type comments.

Quote from: monk12 on July 02, 2013, 10:53:20 pm

Emphasis mine, of course. Also that post you mention ALSO said that one of the items unexpectedly took him a week, and the others were being done at the 5-10/day rate, which is why the list itself is not a perfect measure of "is it done yet."

There is no perfect measure, but that doesn't mean there's no good in an imperfect measure. There's inaccuracy in every measurement ever.

To reiterate, I'd prefer a tentative date that is way underestimated, than no date at all. For example, I'm happy Toady announced in December that he envisioned the release being in march, even though that didn't happen. It's not like Toady got a bunch of hate mail at the end of march for not releasing. There were some people saying that they don't want to start a new game, because they felt release was coming soon, but that seemed to happen even right after Toady announced that he took a month to do 20% of what remains for the release. Though I do think having a tentative date would decrease the amount of people doing that prematurely.

September 16, 2013 at 2:35:40 A.M Pacific Standard Time.

Joke though it is, that would be brilliant. My birthday. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: aadeon on July 03, 2013, 03:37:13 am

Will/does brain damage ever cause behavioral changes, or is anything touching the brain instant death? I'm thinking concussions causing TBI or even cases like Phineas Gage could change mental attributes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on July 03, 2013, 04:08:38 am

Like what ? Dwarves suddenly speaking with an elfic accent ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 03, 2013, 04:35:23 am

The kinestetic sense flies off in an arc!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 03, 2013, 05:06:33 am

IIRC, this is a PBNT*

*Planned-but-no-timeline.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 03, 2013, 07:46:59 am

There are a couple of threads around discussing a creature, dwarf or otherwise, surviving a "dented brain".  The dented gray matter doesn't currently seem to have any ill effect.  As it stands, the brain is the "thought center" but isn't "functional".  So basically, as long as it's still there and not spewing a pressurized fountain of blood, you're fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 04, 2013, 07:14:49 am

Are we going to get refugees in fortress mode in the coming release? For example "some refugees from Headshoots have arrived"? If so will the bug that slows down fortress migration when the units count gets large (between 2000-3000 total units, including dead units) be fixed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 04, 2013, 08:48:10 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 04, 2013, 07:14:49 am

Are we going to get refugees in fortress mode in the coming release? For example "some refugees from Headshoots have arrived"? If so will the bug that slows down fortress migration when the units count gets large (between 2000-3000 total units, including dead units) be fixed?

One doesn't require the other. And any questions regarding bugs has the guarantee answered, "Yea, we'll get to that bug eventually."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 04, 2013, 09:29:26 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 04, 2013, 07:14:49 am

Are we going to get refugees in fortress mode in the coming release? For example "some refugees from Headshoots have arrived"? If so will the bug that slows down fortress migration when the units count gets large (between 2000-3000 total units, including dead units) be fixed?

I would assume that refugee situations are more likely with the appearance and functional development of hillocks and deep sites. Emphasis given to the functional part, Toady has said that the next release will not see a working relationship between our fortresses and the attached sites, at least not beyond these appearing thanks to the fort. So, not in the next release, at least.

Also, there have been godly comments about working on multiracial fortresses while doing taverns and inns; how exactly is this going to happen, and how relationships between dwarven civilizations and other sentient races will change at that point, is pretty much unknown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on July 05, 2013, 07:53:07 pm

[This may have already been asked/answered, so I apologize]

We know that goblins will now occupy human sites, and can be driven off with your help, but do goblins occupy other sapient sites? Do other races have a similar ability to occupy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on July 05, 2013, 08:36:58 pm

Quote from: Witty on July 05, 2013, 07:53:07 pm

We know that goblins will now occupy human sites, and can be driven off with your help, but do goblins occupy other sapient sites? Do other races have a similar ability to occupy?

It was answered, and yes, they will occupy other sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 07, 2013, 02:53:49 am

This is more of a question for modders than Toady. Vermin can be treated as items, IIRC. Bee breath is now viable?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 07, 2013, 03:48:27 am

Kind of, probably, but I wouldn't count on it working well. I believe vermin reactions are still sort of bugged, and I would expect vermin breaths to be similarly bugged. And as Toady mentioned, item breaths are still temperature only, and don't do item-based damage (I was hoping for manticores and other critters to become possible, but that'll have to wait).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 07, 2013, 03:57:34 am

Yes, bee-breath, sort of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on July 07, 2013, 05:29:38 am

Now (July 7th development update) that plant growths, including leaves, are in as items, is adding fodder feeding to grazers imminent or still Planned-But-No-Timeline?

Since leaves would make sense as animal fodder, and at least I can't think of what else leaves would be used for. Maybe ash, at most.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 07, 2013, 05:34:13 am

Quote from: Snaake on July 07, 2013, 05:29:38 am

Now (July 7th development update) that plant growths, including leaves, are in as items, is adding fodder feeding to grazers imminent or still Planned-But-No-Timeline?

Since leaves would make sense as animal fodder, and at least I can't think of what else leaves would be used for. Maybe ash, at most.

Those things aren't related, on a technical level. The objects from the breath clouds are similar to Splatter , then actual objects. They can't be gathered or turn into other food. So when tree Breath Clouds falling Leaves, these leaves Splatter on the ground, and grow like dirt, or blood, like any other splatter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomsod on July 07, 2013, 07:17:20 am

How long (in years/releases) do you think it will take till we see some sort of player-controlled magic system? Not necessarily spellcasting, it could be runes, alchemy, artifact magic (I suppose this one is most likely?) or something else. How deep, convoluted and random will it be?
Sorry for yet another "wen will u maek this plz" question, but I found myself dreaming about magic in DF more and more often in the past months. I could say I can hardly wait, but it's not like I have any choice. Eh, maybe I'll learn assembly and mod something magical in, who knows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 07, 2013, 07:38:56 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 07, 2013, 05:34:13 am

Quote from: Snaake on July 07, 2013, 05:29:38 am

Now (July 7th development update) that plant growths, including leaves, are in as items, is adding fodder feeding to grazers imminent or still Planned-But-No-Timeline?

Since leaves would make sense as animal fodder, and at least I can't think of what else leaves would be used for. Maybe ash, at most.

Those things aren't related, on a technical level. The objects from the breath clouds are similar to Splatter , then actual objects. They can't be gathered or turn into other food. So when tree Breath Clouds falling Leaves, these leaves Splatter on the ground, and grow like dirt, or blood, like any other splatter.

Perhaps they could decompose at some future point... Soil? But yes, it looks like its just for show right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 07, 2013, 08:06:06 am

Are we going to have designs for all the other underground trees, such as the tunnel tubes and blood thorns? Those don't seem to grow like normal mushrooms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 07, 2013, 08:07:14 am

Quote from: Tomsod on July 07, 2013, 07:17:20 am

How long (in years/releases) do you think it will take till we see some sort of player-controlled magic system? Not necessarily spellcasting, it could be runes, alchemy, artifact magic or something else. How deep, convoluted and random will it be?
Sorry for yet another "wen will u maek this plz" question, but I found myself dreaming about magic in DF more and more often in the past months. I could say I can hardly wait, but it's not like I have any choice. Eh, maybe I'll learn assembler and mod something magical in, who knows.

A "proper" magic system has always been said to be a post version 1 release. So, 15-20 years?
Beyond that, ToadyOne has spoken about other planes of existence, and magical items or magical like items.

Its also not written in Assembly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomsod on July 07, 2013, 08:49:37 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 07, 2013, 08:07:14 am

A "proper" magic system has always been said to be a post version 1 release. So, 15-20 years?
Beyond that, ToadyOne has spoken about other planes of existence, and magical items or magical like items.

Its also not written in Assembly.

Well, that's disappointing. Guess I can forget about teleporting spines for a time being. But we may at least hope for magical artifacts, right?
And about modding, as I understood you can only do so much with the raws, and to implement more than fireballs & ice breath one'll have to reverse-engineer the program itself, and that has something to do with assembler as I vaguely surmise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 07, 2013, 09:52:25 am

Quote from: Tomsod on July 07, 2013, 07:17:20 am

How long (in years/releases) do you think it will take till we see some sort of player-controlled magic system? Not necessarily spellcasting, it could be runes, alchemy, artifact magic (I suppose this one is most likely?) or something else. How deep, convoluted and random will it be?
Sorry for yet another "wen will u maek this plz" question, but I found myself dreaming about magic in DF more and more often in the past months. I could say I can hardly wait, but it's not like I have any choice. Eh, maybe I'll learn assembly and mod something magical in, who knows.

"As always, no timeline."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 07, 2013, 09:58:33 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on July 07, 2013, 05:34:13 am

Quote from: Snaake on July 07, 2013, 05:29:38 am

Now (July 7th development update) that plant growths, including leaves, are in as items, is adding fodder feeding to grazers imminent or still Planned-But-No-Timeline?

Since leaves would make sense as animal fodder, and at least I can't think of what else leaves would be used for. Maybe ash, at most.

Those things aren't related, on a technical level. The objects from the breath clouds are similar to Splatter , then actual objects. They can't be gathered or turn into other food. So when tree Breath Clouds falling Leaves, these leaves Splatter on the ground, and grow like dirt, or blood, like any other splatter.

IIrc the trees dont "breath" itemclouds but still release them. Having itemclouds for breath-attacks just a random idea someone posted toady took up (Yay Thanks! You are awesome toady!). I hope itemclouds get to the point where they get more itemy though. Being able to pick up shards, leaves or being sandblasted sounds glorious to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 07, 2013, 10:10:54 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 07, 2013, 08:06:06 am

Are we going to have designs for all the other underground trees, such as the tunnel tubes and blood thorns? Those don't seem to grow like normal mushrooms.

It would be rather odd if we didn't. Blood thorns at least I think should be able to use relatively normal tree growth parameters. Tunnel tubes might need something else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maxmurder on July 07, 2013, 12:43:02 pm

Do fallen leaves/fruit deteriorate over time in dwarf mode or will we need to have a seasonal leaf cleanup crew to keep courtyards clean?

Will fallen leaves be flammable? If so will they burn as if they were items or more like how grass currently burns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 07, 2013, 01:13:27 pm

Quote from: Maxmurder on July 07, 2013, 12:43:02 pm

Do fallen leaves/fruit deteriorate over time in dwarf mode or will we need to have a seasonal leaf cleanup crew to keep courtyards clean?

Will fallen leaves be flammable? If so will they burn as if they were items or more like how grass currently burns?

Fallen leaves vanish in spring, so they exist for autumn and winter. Presumably similar time spans exist for other (perishable?) item spatter.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Chthonic

How long does leaf-clutter last on the ground?  I'm a little OCD about fortress cleanliness and contaminants (the cleaning bug drives me crazy right now)--will dwarves get rakes?

I'm not sure I'll ever have rakes for dwarves...  tending to the cleanliness of the outdoors seems very out of character.  The leaf litter clears up in spring after it falls through autumn and sits in winter right now.

We don't know quite how fire and the new trees and their products work yet. Toady will probably start with that in the next few days, and the item spatter should be tested with that as well. We'll probably hear about it then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scruffy on July 07, 2013, 02:17:06 pm

The falling fruit strikes Urist McNewton in the head, bruising the muscle, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain.
Urist McNewton cancels: Sleep under the tree
Urist McNewton has been shot and killed

Remember kids. Trees are the foul spawns of everything evil and elven and must be slaughtered with axes before they get a chance to strike back!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on July 07, 2013, 05:41:27 pm

Few questions regarding squads and families:

Will squads now feature a maximum soldier requirement, or at least rebalance the training priority so that dwarves in individual training will end their job when a more important one arises (i.e. Urist McSwordsdwarf given sheriff duty needs to arrest and detain a criminal but prefers to train instead)?

Will dwarf genealogies eventually feature godmothers and godfathers if a dwarven baby's family is dead? Will dwarven babies be left to other civilian family members if the mother is in military duty?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 07, 2013, 08:21:53 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on July 07, 2013, 05:41:27 pm

Few questions regarding squads and families:

Will squads now feature a maximum soldier requirement, or at least rebalance the training priority so that dwarves in individual training will end their job when a more important one arises (i.e. Urist McSwordsdwarf given sheriff duty needs to arrest and detain a criminal but prefers to train instead)?

Will dwarf genealogies eventually feature godmothers and godfathers if a dwarven baby's family is dead? Will dwarven babies be left to other civilian family members if the mother is in military duty?

What do you mean with a maximum soldier requirement? More than 1 soldier in a squad? I think military is pretty solid right now, and while job priorities have been reworked for this release, I think military dwarves wont leave their posts unless there's someone to relief them (something that you can set with the minimum active soldiers, at a schedule's submenu). That being, I think Hammerers and Captains of the Guard are the only noble positions that enforce their rule even when in duty, something a sheriff might not be capable to do while being drafted. I might be wrong.

As for family ties, yes, those are cultural aspects that Toady will touch as soon as he gets again on succession stuff. While in this release we got truly beefy changes to the system, as we'll see historical figures getting married, having offsprings and moving together. I hope to be able to see different kinship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship) relationships, and each applied to a different race or even multiple ones in a single race, as it will be expected for humans, given that Toady and Threetoe are both history buffs. That could be the subject of a suggestion thread, if it's not already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 08, 2013, 04:45:45 am

So I heard you have new raws.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 08, 2013, 06:55:07 am

Quote from: Putnam on July 08, 2013, 04:45:45 am

So I heard you have new raws.

That is the greatest question ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 08, 2013, 07:20:25 am

Quote from: Scruffy on July 07, 2013, 02:17:06 pm

The falling fruit strikes Urist McNewton in the head, bruising the muscle, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain.
Urist McNewton cancels: Sleep under the tree
Urist McNewton has invented the gravity

There, fixed for you.


Now, I would like a little help for a non native English speaker. Whenever you people talk about breath (in the last couple of pages on this thread), what exactly do you mean? At first I understood you where talking about vermin breathing and maybe drowning or something but then you talked about trees breathing fruits or leaves and I got lost, I thought the right word was "sprout" or simply "give", or else what the heck where you talking about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 08, 2013, 07:35:21 am

Like dragon breath. A creature breathing out something as an attack. In this case they were talking about bees coming out when the creature exhales instead of fire like a dragon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hetairos on July 08, 2013, 08:08:25 am

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Long ago, the trees actually burned, and now as I understand it, they no longer burn.

Actually, they can still burn, but the only situation I've seen that happen in was a direct dragonfire hit. Maybe submerging in magma could work too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 08, 2013, 09:15:11 am

Quote from: DG on July 08, 2013, 07:35:21 am

Like dragon breath. A creature breathing out something as an attack. In this case they were talking about bees coming out when the creature exhales instead of fire like a dragon.

Thanks, now is crystal clear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 08, 2013, 11:13:51 am

I can now imagine a glass monster breathing clouds of razor-sharp glass dust that flays skin and shreds lungs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on July 08, 2013, 11:14:43 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on July 08, 2013, 11:13:51 am

I can now imagine a glass monster breathing clouds of razor-sharp glass dust that flays skin and shreds lungs.

I was just thinking that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on July 08, 2013, 12:06:30 pm

Speaking of bee breath... http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=070813

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 08, 2013, 12:58:09 pm

I still think you are Huge Jackman, just for the record...

That would make some wonderfully ¡FUN! enemies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 08, 2013, 06:09:26 pm

Would you be able to provide us with the raw details once you've finalised elf retreats before the release? It would help modders get their stuff sorted out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 09, 2013, 12:53:34 am

Quote from: LordBaal on July 08, 2013, 12:58:09 pm

I still think you are Huge Jackman, just for the record...

That would make some wonderfully ¡FUN! enemies.

Hugh.  Sounds like Hue or Hew.

At any rate, having forgotten beasts that did things other than die pathetically or make your military's arms rot off would be awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on July 09, 2013, 08:51:05 am

WHY are we getting spammed with kitchen adds?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 09, 2013, 09:19:59 am

Don't know, maybe a update on how the kitchen works on DF is coming and we have to be prepared with new fancy kitchenware?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on July 09, 2013, 10:24:29 am

You mean dwarfs can now make more than just biscuits, stew, and roast out of anything edible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 09, 2013, 11:03:22 am

Not until the tavern releases, most likely.

You guys have reported the spam already, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 09, 2013, 01:47:21 pm

I haven't seen such heresy around here much. I'm always vigilant to report spam however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 09, 2013, 02:05:07 pm

Now that combat has had a few changes and pulping is in, are weapons that deal mostly or entirely blunt damage, such as hammers, maces, ranged weapons, and ammunition in flight going to be more effective?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 09, 2013, 03:28:46 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 09, 2013, 02:05:07 pm

Now that combat has had a few changes and pulping is in, are weapons that deal mostly or entirely blunt damage, such as hammers, maces, ranged weapons, and ammunition in flight going to be more effective?

For what I have understood, the only changes concerning combat are an active defense/passive defense -thing, a new way to handle speed and multiple attacks and a vision arcs and moving during combat. DFTalk #21 stuff, you know. Like you're going to get negative modifiers when you are fighting against a large mobs because of passive defense isn't as effective as parrying, but I think that effects of the weapons haven't changed. Blunt weapons are still bone-breakers and pain-makers and crossbows are still machine guns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Adrian on July 09, 2013, 03:35:22 pm

How do you decide the order of the arcs to work on?
Do you have everything planned out, or do you just start on whatever suits your fancy at that moment?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 09, 2013, 04:24:12 pm

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jeremy66 on July 10, 2013, 09:10:47 am

Really excited for this next release! Seeing as unarmed combat will be a large part of nonlethal combat, and perhaps even lethal combat, when might we see gauntlets and boots affecting unarmed strikes with their respective limbs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 10, 2013, 10:14:25 am

Quote from: Jeremy66 on July 10, 2013, 09:10:47 am

Really excited for this next release! Seeing as unarmed combat will be a large part of nonlethal combat, and perhaps even lethal combat, when might we see gauntlets and boots affecting unarmed strikes with their respective limbs?

Presumably that'll happen when Toady gets to the combat "arc" proper, which could be a while. It could happen sooner if there's a compelling reason for it or if it somehow becomes a low-hanging fruit. Either way, there's no timeline for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 10, 2013, 12:40:37 pm

What do you have in mind to work for the next release? I mean, after the obvious bug fixing and relatively "small" introduction of new features cycle. Or what do you think it will be the next logical step after this release with the world becoming dynamic and all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 10, 2013, 01:10:46 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 09, 2013, 04:24:12 pm

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

1. Print this page.

2. Pin to wall.

3. Throw darts.

Any item within one foot of where the dart lands is possible, but not guaranteed, for the next release cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on July 10, 2013, 01:16:38 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on July 10, 2013, 12:40:37 pm

What do you have in mind to work for the next release? I mean, after the obvious bug fixing and relatively "small" introduction of new features cycle. Or what do you think it will be the next logical step after this release with the world becoming dynamic and all?

Apparently in-fort taverns are on the near horizon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 10, 2013, 01:53:52 pm

Yeah, those seem to be on the near horizon, as in a successive "short" development period. I'm wondering about the "next big" thing, that of course if Toady has thought off something yet, or have a preference for something, or if he's waiting to see where the post release bug fixing and development leads him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 10, 2013, 02:09:45 pm

Witty's answer is pretty much as good as it gets. We won't know until the end of the end of the bugfix cycle, when Toady'll decide on it.

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: Witty

While this may be a bit presumptuous, what are your plans for after the usual post bug fixing ? What should we expect will be next on the dev list?

I really don't know.  Knight Otu mentioned the thief role and taverns and inns (both modes) as things we've floated in the past to do after we do the bug fixing, and those are still on the table.  Handling some management/job prioritization stuff in fort mode is there to be done.  Handling start scenarioey stuff and hill/deep dwarves as they relate to the fort opens a lot of doors.  Hard to say though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dante on July 11, 2013, 12:49:17 am

Quote from: devlog

new tree/vegey data entry which'll be ongoing up to the release

Is this the kind of thing which could reasonably be e.g. outsourced to the modding forum for players to do? Assuming it's sufficiently time-consuming to be worth the bother.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 11, 2013, 12:52:02 am

Quote from: Dante on July 11, 2013, 12:49:17 am

Quote from: devlog

new tree/vegey data entry which'll be ongoing up to the release

Is this the kind of thing which could reasonably be e.g. outsourced to the modding forum for players to do? Assuming it's sufficiently time-consuming to be worth the bother.

i would like if you do that because then we would get new raws

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on July 11, 2013, 02:48:22 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

The elf caravan rolled in with .... some grown oak items that won't make them angry if you try to resell them later.

FUCKING. FINALLY.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 11, 2013, 03:49:49 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

with some of their largest trees 30 tiles across now.

Well, that's big. But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 11, 2013, 03:52:07 am

Quote from: Cruxador on July 11, 2013, 03:49:49 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

with some of their largest trees 30 tiles across now.

Well, that's big. But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

I'm assuming something like a baobab tree.

(http://www.baobab.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/baobab-fruit-antioxidant-baomix-pulp-leaves-coffee-bio-cafe-biologique-organic-agoji-david-hervy-bio.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on July 11, 2013, 04:04:35 am

That tree is ridiculous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 11, 2013, 04:34:05 am

Quote from: Cruxador on July 11, 2013, 03:49:49 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

with some of their largest trees 30 tiles across now.

Well, that's big. But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

Unless I'm seriously misremembering something, DF adventure mode has a scaling ceiling.  You wouldn't notice it unless you try to play as a flying adventurer, but the invisible upper limit of play changes depending on where you are, so that if you fly along the top you sometimes have to fly downwards to be able to continue.  So elven sites having 100+ extra z levels on top wouldn't be impossible within the current system, although it would likely be annoying to climb a tree that tall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on July 11, 2013, 05:29:14 am

Imagine building a fortress in an area with trees that high, though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 11, 2013, 05:45:03 am

Quote from: mendonca on July 11, 2013, 04:04:35 am

That tree is ridiculous.

Heh, that is crazy, never seen that before.  Coconuts and mangoes and grown oak items?  I never know why but it's these small things I love about DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on July 11, 2013, 06:18:03 am

Quote from: Cruxador on July 11, 2013, 03:49:49 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

with some of their largest trees 30 tiles across now.

Well, that's big. But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

Well, they are elves, they can just magically grow silly trees and forget about logic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on July 11, 2013, 06:37:08 am

Baobab is also poisonous if I remember correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 06:42:24 am

Perhaps he's not talking about the main trunk but the.. what's the word... canopy or something, you know, the tree could be something like 20 levels high but on level 17 the branches are 30 tiles wide.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 11, 2013, 07:31:51 am

Toady can we have some screenshots of the eleven retreats?

Ok now we have grown stuff which is kinda cool. Will that include weapons?
 Furthermore will these weapons be better then weapons carved out of wood?

The only thing i miss in the vegetation update is the ability to plant (maybe in combination with pots) trees but i can wait for that a bit longer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 09:07:30 am

How I missed that! Finally, now that we have an option to give wooden items to the elves that do not offend them, slapping their faces with items made chopped wood will be even more gratifying, rewarding and fulfilling. Especially if said items are weapons in the hands of a soldier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 11, 2013, 09:36:21 am

Now that elves produce nuts and fruit from trees, can dwarves also harvest these items?

If the largest elf retreat trees are 30 tiles across, how high do these trees grow?

Will we now be able to trade clear or crystal glass with the elves, if the wood components used are the grown ones?

Do elves use wagons now? You say "the caravan rolled in" in the devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 11, 2013, 10:02:03 am

Quote from: Heph on July 11, 2013, 07:31:51 am

Ok now we have grown stuff which is kinda cool. Will that include weapons?
 Furthermore will these weapons be better then weapons carved out of wood?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 11, 2013, 09:36:21 am

Now that elves produce nuts and fruit from trees, can dwarves also harvest these items?

It would be pretty weird and non-Dwarf Fortress if we weren't able to harvest fruits, or even then, be able to mod our own proudly dwarven mug-and-silver-warhammer trees.

Quote from: Word of Toad, 9/28/2012

Moving on to defining various things that grow from the plants -- flowers, fruit, and leaves, mainly, but the raws should be fairly generic here. There are just "growths" from the plants, with various timing, development and item type variables, and if you're modding you should be able to call them whatever you like or have a tree that grows bronze swords or whatever. We should have apples or some kind of edible fruit soon... we have choices for fruit trees to add now I suppose.

I assume edible fruits could be one of those alternatives of fast food when you're running low on resources or just beginning your fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 11, 2013, 10:04:15 am

Quote from: laularukyrumo on July 11, 2013, 02:48:22 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

The elf caravan rolled in with .... some grown oak items that won't make them angry if you try to resell them later.

FUCKING. FINALLY.

Why don't the "grown oak items" make the elves angry? Are they an elf-specific item type, like a "humane" way to make wood products (and if so, will judicious modding let players make "grown wood items?") Or do the elves distinguish between wood-for-crafts and wood-that's-people? Something else entirely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 10:19:54 am

I bet is a simple tag on the material the items are made off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on July 11, 2013, 11:14:19 am

Will the new super-massive trees be limited to elf sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 11, 2013, 11:19:39 am

Quote from: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 10:19:54 am

I bet is a simple tag on the material the items are made off.

Such an tag could be nice for other things too (given toady creates a framework for it) like say denoting dwarven steel or fancy things like halal/koscher food. It could even be extended to civ level stuff which could lead to preferences and prejudice based on the origin of an object.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 11, 2013, 12:19:22 pm

Quote from: Witty on July 11, 2013, 11:14:19 am

Will the new super-massive trees be limited to elf sites?

No. I think he said that these are replacing the old trees. At the very least they will be in caves, so I think he did...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 11, 2013, 12:28:19 pm

I think he's asking whether elf trees are substantially larger than their counterparts in other sites, which is a potential feature that was floated a while back. I think this might have been answered as "yes," but I'm not sure and don't have a quote one way or the other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 12:32:48 pm

Exactly, gigantic threes like those would probably be found on few, if none places outside elf sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 11, 2013, 12:38:09 pm

That makes sense, but considering that all the new trees will be multi-tile they can all be called huge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on July 11, 2013, 01:14:04 pm

Also remember that the z-axis is fucked to begin with. Toady has mentioned that, logically, mountains should be thousands of z-levels, but they aren't. Suspension of disbelief exists in this game as it is, and a lot of that is processor-related. We already know that adding additional 'empty' z-levels above ground level contributes SIGNIFICANTLY to lag.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 11, 2013, 01:28:33 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 11, 2013, 12:52:02 am

Quote from: Dante on July 11, 2013, 12:49:17 am

Quote from: devlog

new tree/vegey data entry which'll be ongoing up to the release

[color=]Is this the kind of thing which could reasonably be e.g. outsourced to the modding forum for players to do?[/color] Assuming it's sufficiently time-consuming to be worth the bother.

[color=]i would like if you do that because then we would get new raws[/color]

This is highly unlikely to happen.  For one, it probably won't take a huge amount of time for the first draft anyway.  Secondly, for the initial release, the data submitted to Toady would have to be validated and tested by Toady anyway before inclusion to see how it fits with his mechanics.  Neither of those make this a good choice leading up to the initial multi tile trees release.

That said, raw edits that have been proved out by the community, once a new mechanic has been released to the wild and broadly understood, have been used in the past.  The most useful contribution will be Tree !!SCIENCE!! (and I'm sure there will be much !!SCIENCE!! to be done with new trees) to make refining the process in subsequent bug fix cycles a low hanging fruit, no pun intended.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King_of_the_weasels on July 11, 2013, 01:47:47 pm

In the new release note you mentioned coconuts, mangoes, and chestnuts.

What made you decide to use real world fruits/nuts for this release, while previously,  most if not all (non-tree) plants have been made up?

I assume it has something to do with using real world trees in previous versions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 11, 2013, 02:13:31 pm

Quote from: King_of_the_weasels on July 11, 2013, 01:47:47 pm

In the new release note you mentioned coconuts, mangoes, and chestnuts.

What made you decide to use real world fruits/nuts for this release, while previously,  most if not all (non-tree) plants have been made up?

I assume it has something to do with using real world trees in previous versions.

Well, he mentioned those particular fruits because their trees are the ones that are already in the game. But Toady has mentioned that he'll use real-world trees for now, presumably to avoid the "what the hell is that supposed to be" factor - plants don't get in-game descriptions yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 11, 2013, 02:27:50 pm

And then one day there well be randomly-genned trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 11, 2013, 02:50:18 pm

"what the hell is that supposed to be" factor...
Only Dwarf Fotress has this kind of greatness other games can't even dream about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 11, 2013, 03:08:06 pm

Followed almost immediately by "Can Urist McTestSubject eat it, and survive?"

Also, how are we going to know how to process them?  An experimentation workshop?  If we experiment repeatedly, will we find multiple uses for something, sometimes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on July 11, 2013, 03:24:29 pm

We have cacao so urists dog could go blind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 11, 2013, 03:26:28 pm

Once plants that can do things on their own are in, I'd hate to see the plants in the SPHERE:FILTH regions...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 11, 2013, 04:24:38 pm

Quote from: monk12 on July 11, 2013, 10:04:15 am

Quote from: laularukyrumo on July 11, 2013, 02:48:22 am

Quote from: Dev Log, 7/10/13

The elf caravan rolled in with .... some grown oak items that won't make them angry if you try to resell them later.

FUCKING. FINALLY.

Why don't the "grown oak items" make the elves angry? Are they an elf-specific item type, like a "humane" way to make wood products (and if so, will judicious modding let players make "grown wood items?") Or do the elves distinguish between wood-for-crafts and wood-that's-people? Something else entirely?

There's lots of lore behind this. Elves grow their wooden items out of trees with druid magic in a way that doesn't harm the trees themselves, versus dwarves, who just kinda kill them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 11, 2013, 04:38:27 pm

But see, that lore is assumed, as it has never been expressed in game ever. I'd like confirmation of "yes this is fancy pants druid magic" even if said druid magic doesn't occur during play yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 11, 2013, 05:09:41 pm

I'd say the use of the word "grown" should confirm that enough, but (realtalk) if you want a bit more, that's fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 11, 2013, 07:19:47 pm

The real question is, do civilizations remember their crafts now, or do elves just make special wooden stuff with a special token?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 12, 2013, 01:05:32 am

Also, is it possible through modding to make our own grown wooden items?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: laularukyrumo on July 12, 2013, 03:28:57 am

I'm fairly certain you've always been able to do this--the specific tag that offends elves is [IMPLIES_PLANT_KILL], so if you just removed that from the wood materials in plant_standard, elves would no longer get butthurt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on July 12, 2013, 06:17:03 am

Quote

also some grown oak items that won't make them angry if you try to resell them later.

To make sure: can we now sell any wooden item made by elves safely to elves? I hope it is framework stub, not some hack only for elves and only for "grown" items.

Will be some info in-game about what race made this particular item? It would be in info screen I guess... "It is exceptionally made blah blah. Produced by Humans in 208 in Daggervalley." But marking it somehow on trade screen would be more convenient (character for race next to name of item? Filtering option?).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 12, 2013, 06:47:30 am

Woah, a filtering option on the trade screen is a must. We should be able to filter things by size (in the case of clothes), value, weight, how made it, materials and so on. This way you can always offer the elves the highest wooden items made of trees exterminated with extreme prejudge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 12, 2013, 07:32:05 am

Quote from: laularukyrumo on July 12, 2013, 03:28:57 am

I'm fairly certain you've always been able to do this--the specific tag that offends elves is [IMPLIES_PLANT_KILL], so if you just removed that from the wood materials in plant_standard, elves would no longer get butthurt.

Oddly enough, there's no such tag yet. That functionality is inherent in the WOOD tag.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 12, 2013, 07:47:33 am

The [IMPLIES_PLANT_KILL] tag is on things further on in the production chain that can ONLY be made from tree products, such as soap.  Soap requires lye, which requires ash, which requires dead tree.

Ergo, Elves are stinky, no soap using, patchouli smelling hippies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 12, 2013, 07:58:42 am

Quote from: Mr S on July 12, 2013, 07:47:33 am

The [IMPLIES_PLANT_KILL] tag is on things further on in the production chain that can ONLY be made from tree products, such as soap.  Soap requires lye, which requires ash, which requires dead tree.

Ergo, Elves are stinky, no soap using, patchouli smelling hippies.

You might be thinking of [IMPLIES_ANIMAL_KILL], which is found in the soap template. There's no corresponding tag in the plant soap template. Not sure how the game determines that plant soap is bad for plants, though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on July 12, 2013, 08:01:16 am

I stand corrected.  Thank you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: locustgate on July 12, 2013, 09:15:05 am

Not sure if this should go here but does anyone know around when the next version will be released, I've been in hiatus of DF. Last I heard it was going to be March 2013.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 12, 2013, 09:25:50 am

Ohhh you made the forbidden question! Beware! You'll now are doomed to an eternity of torment in HFS, where your only companions will be smelly hippies elves! DOOMED I SAID!!!

Or in other words, it will be released when is done. And when is that? When is done. It could be a few months from now, I seem to believe that Toady is actually working a lot faster based on his updates and how long his taking to finish the new features. But as always in this game, there's not time line. You can't hurry art.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 12, 2013, 01:16:06 pm

Quote from: locustgate on July 12, 2013, 09:15:05 am

Not sure if this should go here but does anyone know around when the next version will be released, I've been in hiatus of DF. Last I heard it was going to be March 2013.

Nobody knows for sure. My best guess would be some time around Halloween.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 12, 2013, 02:16:54 pm

Will there ever be lightning in this game? If so, how will it be handled? As a material, or more like fire?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 12, 2013, 02:46:34 pm

Hey H. Jackman, do you mean lighting like a lighting strike or lighting as in light sources? The first I don't know. The second one indeed is planed. No time line as usual but I think we are getting there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 12, 2013, 02:48:42 pm

lightning, of course. I know about illumination already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 12, 2013, 03:00:54 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on July 12, 2013, 02:16:54 pm

Will there ever be lightning in this game? If so, how will it be handled? As a material, or more like fire?

Check out the Weather Arc. I know that this specific framework is not used anymore, but still if it is on Toady's notes, then it might happen along with these phenomena. I think it's the same when he is asked about volcanoes, Toady wouldn't have developed those without something in mind.

Quote from: Dwarf Fortress Consolidated Development

TERRAIN/WEATHER/SWIMMING/FLYING/BOATS: Boats of some kind might go in early to make different regions more accessible, but you won't be able to be a pirate or an undersea civ for quite a while. Rivers freeze with daily temperatures instead of seasonal temperatures. Realize river and ocean squares when you visit them (forcing town layouts to adapt). Realize interesting canyons and so on in such areas. Track hurricanes and other major storm/disasters, in-game and during world gen. Thunderstorms with lightning strikes (with corresponding lighting effects) and hail. Levels of rainfall. Eating snow, making snowballs and picking up hail during and after hail storms. Tornados with wind flows that push items, projectiles and creatures. Proper eclipse modeling. Tides, deep oceans and pearl-diving, etc. More intricate interplay between cliff faces, inner rivers and outer rivers, using Z coord and waterfalls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 12, 2013, 04:25:43 pm

Technically, the release is well overdue. If it were dragged out longer, it will be reaching the "release timescale we don't want to hit". Personally, I'd rather have an incomplete, buggy release hit in the next week or two. I'd expect the release to come out after Dwarf sites, Kobold sites can be set aside for a subsequent release in the week or month following the big release.

Its actually getting very hard to get the release very bug-free without player input.

Edit: I'm mostly talking about DF2010, which was very buggy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 12, 2013, 04:31:12 pm

Well I wouldn't say that, the last major release went quite smoothly. I imagine if we got a release now it'd be more like... uh, whichever release that was with the unkillable zombies. That one had a whole host of bugs that made the game nigh-unplayable, and even after a couple weeks of quick patching all the fancy new features were still broken as hell. It was a dark time, and I'd rather not go through it again, myself. Better to wait and get a version where all the blatant bugs are squashed, if only to avoid redundancy in reporting bugs Toady is well aware of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 12, 2013, 10:58:34 pm

Will elves bring "grown" logs? If you process these logs (crafts, or decorations on other materials etc) will elves still recognise them as "grown"? I suspect that's not coverered and if so what's your guess on it eventually?

Oh, and I almost forgot. Rah, elves. Burn the trees and stuff. Umm...Hippies, yeah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 13, 2013, 05:15:07 am

If we become friendly enough with the elves, will we ever be able to make trade agreements with them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 13, 2013, 07:08:13 am

Quote from: DG on July 12, 2013, 10:58:34 pm

Will elves bring "grown" logs? If you process these logs (crafts, or decorations on other materials etc) will elves still recognise them as "grown"? I suspect that's not coverered and if so what's your guess on it eventually?

i suppose one could argue that elves wouldn't be able to distinguish crafts carved out of ethically harvested grown wood from crafts made of mutilated trees, while naturally grown swords and chairs would be immediately identifiable. unless magic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 13, 2013, 07:22:19 am

That would be my hope. There should be less telepathy and more scope for treachery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 13, 2013, 12:31:11 pm

No if the trick is pulled by using a material tag, or entirely new materials, like: pine wood AND grown pine wood. That programing wise.

Lore wise, it remains to see if the wood is actually different, as for example anyone (or dwarves and disgusting hippies at least) can differentiate between those kind of woods. Maybe grown wood as something intrinsically different or distinctive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on July 13, 2013, 12:40:04 pm

i imagine the finishing would be immediately distinctive, and items grown into a shape shouldn't need nails and carpentry joints to hold them together

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on July 13, 2013, 05:13:31 pm

i don't see why grown items couldn't have hardness or edges not usual for wooden material. i think it would be the easiest way to balance out elven invasion.
i hope that grown wood has different raws then wood now so that it can be modded differently while not changing dwarf made wood stuff, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on July 13, 2013, 06:31:46 pm

Are there any future plans, decisions, or thought given in regarding of embassies, both of other nations in your fortress as well as your fortress in other nations?

Will there be any adjustments to preforming attacks when in our "projectile" state (IE jumping, falling, riding in minecarts?), such as velocity bonus modifier in doing so? Such like preforming a jump-kick or dropkick, or a drive by swording for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 13, 2013, 09:51:03 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on July 13, 2013, 06:31:46 pm

Will there be any adjustments to preforming attacks when in our "projectile" state (IE jumping, falling, riding in minecarts?), such as velocity bonus modifier in doing so? Such like preforming a jump-kick or dropkick, or a drive by swording for example.

Velocity, to my understanding already affects combat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 14, 2013, 02:38:52 am

Do you have any timescale for reintroducing dwarven economy, and what sort of changes (from 40d economy) it will have? Will the immigrant nobles return?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: firons2 on July 14, 2013, 04:37:17 am

Hey Toady what is your standing on adding more creatures to the game? Any plans for that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 14, 2013, 04:45:12 am

Quote from: firons2 on July 14, 2013, 04:37:17 am

Hey Toady what is your standing on adding more creatures to the game? Any plans for that?

No.

We have plenty

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 14, 2013, 04:46:42 am

Quote from: firons2 on July 14, 2013, 04:37:17 am

Hey Toady what is your standing on adding more creatures to the game? Any plans for that?

He's in favor of doing another Drive, like the Animal Drive done a few x-masses ago, but I think that was for plants. I also believe that he'd want to flesh out most of the creatures added in the last drive before adding lots of creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on July 14, 2013, 05:21:20 am

I remember reading somewhere that currently a crocodile is basically a cow with shorter legs, which makes cows the superior fighters... yeah, fleshing out needs to happen before adding even more stuff. Seems like the kind of work the commmunity could do, though.


What kind of work will you outsource to the community, and what stuff will you absoutely do yourself?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 14, 2013, 05:36:32 am

Crocodiles also have eggs, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 14, 2013, 05:57:43 am

Quote from: iceball3 on July 13, 2013, 06:31:46 pm

Are there any future plans, decisions, or thought given in regarding of embassies, both of other nations in your fortress as well as your fortress in other nations?

There are a good number of diplomacy-related items on dev-single (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html). Embassies and ambassadors are not mentioned directly, but they should crop up naturally during some diplomacy development.

Quote from: iceball3 on July 13, 2013, 06:31:46 pm

Will there be any adjustments to preforming attacks when in our "projectile" state (IE jumping, falling, riding in minecarts?), such as velocity bonus modifier in doing so? Such like preforming a jump-kick or dropkick, or a drive by swording for example.

Velocity will affect combat, but I don't know you'll be able to attack during a jump/fall. From the dev-log:

Quote

I finally finished the basic simultaneous attack option today and spent some time double-stabbing rib cages in the arena with shiny blue daggers, that kind of thing. Charging works the same way now, using a move action and an attack action, but you won't have to run directly into somebody any more to get a momentum bonus if you have a velocity pointing in more or less the right direction. You can set the move with the attack or press a move once you've got an attack in your list. You can still just bump into people if you want to avoid the menus.

From DF Talk #21:

Quote

You can also set up mounts in the arena now, ‘cause I have, thats another thing about the move/combat speed split stuff, it counts your current momentum in the attack, as long as your momentum - your velocity vector or whatever, is pointing toward the guy and the guy is either not moving or not moving away faster from you so that there is actual motion toward the other person. And if a person is running at you, you actually get the same bonus. So as long as there's relative motion, that's at least ninety degrees. So it could be perpendicular motion, or motion toward the person, then you get a bonus to your swing speed that's in line with how fast you're moving, so, and it also takes into account the speed of anything you're riding.

Quote from: Matoro on July 14, 2013, 02:38:52 am

Do you have any timescale for reintroducing dwarven economy, and what sort of changes (from 40d economy) it will have? Will the immigrant nobles return?

There's never a timeline for anything not worked on actively. The economy may return soonishly if Toady continues on to Taverns/Inns for the post-bugfix period.
It depends on what you mean by immigrant nobles, I guess. Just nobles immigrating to your fortress, rather than being elevated from your dwarves? Seems plausible enough. Specific nobles from the old versions? The Fortress Subgroups dev goal on the development page should cover most of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 14, 2013, 07:06:33 am

Quote from: Helgoland on July 14, 2013, 05:21:20 am

I remember reading somewhere that currently a crocodile is basically a cow with shorter legs, which makes cows the superior fighters... yeah, fleshing out needs to happen before adding even more stuff. Seems like the kind of work the commmunity could do, though.


What kind of work will you outsource to the community, and what stuff will you absoutely do yourself?

I get the impression this is the kind of thing Toady would accept, like the wood data a while back.  Provided the data was sourced and referenced, then perhaps it would be viable to merge with the standard raws.  But with animals it's also a question of specific behavior which needs hardcoding, like with bees.  I don't know what state the animal raws are in now, or if they could be improved using existing tags.  If they could be though, I doubt a decent suggestion thread would go unnoticed.

Actually, wasn't there a project to rawify every animal under the sun a while back?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 14, 2013, 10:18:22 am

Excellent, just dwarf sites and maybe kobold sites left. I would not mind having the release done, and then have kobold sites out in a sub-version or something like that.

With dwarf nobles being updated as in the devlog, does that mean we will be able to appoint a general from the king now, or a general will migrate with the king to your fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on July 14, 2013, 02:46:37 pm

 

Quote

I started today fixing a crash with deep sites and resolving various issues with elevating a baron from your dwarves (it needed to be updated after all of the changes with dwarven nobility from other sites, since dwarven nobility are now civilization-level positions with multiple associated profiles, and that has various ramifications for appointments, etc.).

Interesting

 Do you guys plan on making dwarven nobility a little more closed over time, where they'll work more like a caste, or will they always be a little more open. Meaning, will they ever keep certain positions more likely to be given to relatives of noble families? Will a noble's relative that is not going to inherit any titles like, say, a Duke's third son or daughter, start their own family branches and retain their and their descendent's rank as nobles over time retaining some of the perks of being part of nobility?   

 Another thing. I asked before if refusing to become a barony and retaining independence would lead to your fortress branching of into a separate civilization, and you more or less confirmed that something like this will happen. Are there any mechanics in the game for the next release that will support this option? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 14, 2013, 03:26:19 pm

Quote from: Ribs on July 14, 2013, 02:46:37 pm

Another thing. I asked before if refusing to become a barony and retaining independence would lead to your fortress branching of into a separate civilization, and you more or less confirmed that something like this will happen. Are there any mechanics in the game for the next release that will support this option? 

Since Toady hasn't talked about it, it's a pretty safe guess that declining barony will work the same as previously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 14, 2013, 03:36:06 pm

Quote from: Ribs on July 14, 2013, 02:46:37 pm

Do you guys plan on making dwarven nobility a little more closed over time, where they'll work more like a caste, or will they always be a little more open. Meaning, will they ever keep certain positions more likely to be given to relatives of noble families? Will a noble's relative that is not going to inherit any titles like, say, a Duke's third son or daughter, start their own family branches and retain their and their descendent's rank as nobles over time retaining some of the perks of being part of nobility?   

Nobility stands as it is, right now, because a lot of the systems haven't been laid on the ground yet, but seemingly it's going to change. You might have noticed that there's a slim chance of having nobility lineages amongst parents and their sons, when is not broken by calamity or an urge of necromancy (which requests the noble to leave their official position in worldgen); uncles and other extended relatives are just nominal, they don't have any relevance yet. As with nobles opening new entities during play, it might go hand-to-hand with our chance as adventurers to start our own entities, itself a planned feature.

In short, Yes-But-No-Timeline.

Quote from: Ribs on July 14, 2013, 02:46:37 pm

Another thing. I asked before if refusing to become a barony and retaining independence would lead to your fortress branching of into a separate civilization, and you more or less confirmed that something like this will happen. Are there any mechanics in the game for the next release that will support this option? 

Ninja'd and well summarized by Cruxador.

Being that Toady hasn't spoke a word about more meaningful ways to affect the world outside the embark in the next release, I highly doubt such a feature could make the cut, aside from being another source of enemies (which are always welcome) and perhaps a strafe to avoid loyalty cascades, but nothing else. Even with fortress retirement as an option the lifespan of those emerging civilizations seems to be pretty short and desperate.

EDIT: Also, a question.
Now that forest fires became a real deal, are unlimited adventurer's campfires still avaliable? If they're not, are we getting firemaking as some sort of reaction, or maybe using Advance Interaction with some free-lying resources to do that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on July 15, 2013, 03:45:34 pm

Quote from: Valtam on July 14, 2013, 03:36:06 pm

Nobility stands as it is, right now, because a lot of the systems haven't been laid on the ground yet, but seemingly it's going to change. You might have noticed that there's a slim chance of having nobility lineages amongst parents and their sons, when is not broken by calamity or an urge of necromancy (which requests the noble to leave their official position in worldgen); uncles and other extended relatives are just nominal, they don't have any relevance yet. As with nobles opening new entities during play, it might go hand-to-hand with our chance as adventurers to start our own entities, itself a planned feature.

In short, Yes-But-No-Timeline.

Well, my question there really is about asking Toady about  his intentions towards the future of nobility and how it will ultimately look like. More specifically, what will the "extended relatives"(as you called them) position in dwarven society ultimately be, when nobility gets more fleshed out in the future. I know it's not something that will change much in the next release, so I guess my question is a bit misplaced in this thread. But if Toady has an idea of how dwarven nobility will ultimetaly be like in his conception of the game, maybe he'll have something to say about it. I kind of suspect that he doesn't, but asking never hurt anybody...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 19, 2013, 09:40:04 am

Quote

07/19/2013 Toady One Hill dwarves are up and running with their little gardens and the other tidbits that needed doing. This also means that human plots in villages have gardens as well now, finally, instead of that furrowed waste that has surrounded them forever. Now for a protracted stay underground with our thoroughly cave-adapted buddies in the deep mountain halls without direct exits up outside. They have little living areas set up already, but I want to differentiate them a bit from the fort layouts, and of course there's the main feature of underground travel to do.

So pumped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on July 19, 2013, 10:16:36 am

Will we be able to make gardens in fort mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 19, 2013, 12:26:12 pm

Think its called farmplots...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 19, 2013, 01:24:19 pm

Underground travel? Sounds good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 19, 2013, 02:50:13 pm

Are we going to have underground roads connecting deep sites? What about underground tombs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on July 19, 2013, 03:01:06 pm

Underground railroads? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 19, 2013, 03:54:07 pm

Now I want railroads beyond just minecarts...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rumrusher on July 19, 2013, 06:37:13 pm

 will there ever been more work on the emotional factor clothes have? Will we have dwarves that don't mind wearing little to no clothes mingle with those who wrap themselves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on July 20, 2013, 03:21:38 am

Quote from: LordBaal on July 12, 2013, 09:25:50 am

Ohhh you made the forbidden question! Beware! You'll now are doomed to an eternity of torment in HFS, where your only companions will be smelly hippies elves! DOOMED I SAID!!!

Or in other words, it will be released when is done. And when is that? When is done. It could be a few months from now, I seem to believe that Toady is actually working a lot faster based on his updates and how long his taking to finish the new features. But as always in this game, there's not time line. You can't hurry art.

I was looking for a planned release date for the next version because there have been none for over a year now, until I saw this. This was priceless, awesome :D. I don't mind waiting too much but it would be nice to know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on July 20, 2013, 11:09:28 am

I'm eager for the next version, but with something as complex as DF with emergent interactions from every little thing, it's not easy to estimate when everything is going to work the way you like. So, yeah, our patience is appreciated and it'll pay off eventually. Meanwhile, we can drool over the big dev plans and ponder our next !!SCIENCE!! experiments for the upcoming features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on July 20, 2013, 04:45:55 pm

Given that Toady makes fair progress every 4 or so days (that's the average time between blog posts, from what I'm seeing), so I'm fairly positive that the release should come out mid-late August (or early September).

Just my 0.02€ and a rough, but at this point realistic guesstimate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on July 20, 2013, 06:10:53 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on July 20, 2013, 04:45:55 pm

Given that Toady makes fair progress every 4 or so days (that's the average time between blog posts, from what I'm seeing), so I'm fairly positive that the release should come out mid-late August (or early September).

Just my 0.02€ and a rough, but at this point realistic guesstimate.

What are you assuming he has left?  I think he only has finishing dwarf sites and kobold sites left, and I was going with October at the earliest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on July 20, 2013, 06:15:11 pm

And wood cutting. I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 20, 2013, 07:52:51 pm

Do not forget overall cleanup.

DF2013: grades, jobs, sleep schedules. All will be torn apart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 21, 2013, 01:12:33 am

Quote from: Rumrusher on July 19, 2013, 06:37:13 pm

will there ever been more work on the emotional factor clothes have? Will we have dwarves that don't mind wearing little to no clothes mingle with those who wrap themselves?

Cultural norms for clothing (and appropriate reactions to people violating those norms) are already planned for Adventure. Presumably nudity taboos will be revisited at that time. Don't expect super strong reactions in fort mode ever though. I don't imagine Toady wants a bit of nudity to doom a fort in any normal situation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 21, 2013, 08:31:38 am

Quote from: Valtam on July 20, 2013, 07:52:51 pm

Do not forget overall cleanup.

DF2013: grades, jobs, sleep schedules. All will be torn apart.

There's probably also still some jump/climb cleanup, some succession cleanup, the decision whether to work on town bandits, and I think there's something I'm forgetting, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on July 21, 2013, 09:37:25 am

Quote from: Cruxador on July 21, 2013, 01:12:33 am

Cultural norms for clothing (and appropriate reactions to people violating those norms) are already planned for Adventure. Presumably nudity taboos will be revisited at that time. Don't expect super strong reactions in fort mode ever though. I don't imagine Toady wants a bit of nudity to doom a fort in any normal situation.

Happiness benefits based on preferences?

Toady, I guess this has been asked before, but: What are your views on a more varied dwarven sex life? Straight dwarves, gay dwarves, cheating dwarves, love triangles with all the stories attached to them... that stuff?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 21, 2013, 09:56:00 am

I think this is the latest about sexual preferences (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg1088744#msg1088744)

Quote

Quote from: G-Flex

That's actually a good question. A friend of mine recently asked me "Is Dwarf Fortress heteronormative?" jokingly, but I seriously do wonder that.

Heterosexual marriage, children and all that went in fairly quickly to establish world gen with simple, ongoing histories, and so you'd be able to continue on your possibly isolated fortresses as well.  We've even got a marriage sphere, since gods of marriage are very common.  These days it might look like a political stake driven into the ground, but that's simply not the case.  As for where it goes from here, it's sort of a choice of which realities you want to model, which you want to idealize, which you want to omit, and how they are all prioritized -- I've added lots of physical characteristics now, without racism, and that more or less points toward adding sexual orientations and having them all merge in naturally in every society.

Love triangles and cheating are such common tropes and story "generators" that I find it hard to imagine that it won't happen. Either way, he did mention in this thread, partially in reference to adultery - "I just haven't done anything with dwarven or other love lives at all.  I'm not sure how it'll end up.  It can clearly be made much more interesting."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hlavaczech on July 21, 2013, 10:31:09 am

Toady, one question about the interdependency between Adventure and Fort Mode:
Quote DFTalk:

"But now it's an agreement is formed, where there's some understanding that underlies every single thing about companionship in the game now about why they're with you, and kind of how long they're going to be with you, and then they can use that information to decide whether or not you're actually furthering this common goal..."

Will this "contract", underlying every single thing about companionship, have some effect on Fort mode?
a) ...with respect to starting 7 dwarves, or 6 dwarves versus Expedition Leader
b) ...with respect to immigrants?
c) ...as discussed before with respect to potential emmigration?
Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 21, 2013, 11:57:23 am

Now that the world's factions have goals and active members who work to achieve them, are there plans to eventually be able to play as factions other than dwarf/human/goblin/elf settlers from a standpoint other than being an adventurer member? Certainly you could, for example, start an adventurer and create a cult, and then work through the cult as its high priest, but is it eventually going to be possible to play a cult, or whatever, from a standpoint more like dwarf mode, where there is no clear one character in the cult who is the standpoint of everything, and you have a more omniscient but distant position?

Do objects, like artifacts or books, get "inherited" from entity to entity as sites are conquered or things are pillaged, or do they always sort of belong to whoever made them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 21, 2013, 12:11:02 pm

Quote from: hlavaczech on July 21, 2013, 10:31:09 am

Will this "contract", underlying every single thing about companionship, have some effect on Fort mode?

That is adventurer mode only. It may have some effect on Fortress starting scenarios, but that's in the future.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on July 21, 2013, 11:57:23 am

Now that the world's factions have goals and active members who work to achieve them, are there plans to eventually be able to play as factions other than dwarf/human/goblin/elf settlers from a standpoint other than being an adventurer member? Certainly you could, for example, start an adventurer and create a cult, and then work through the cult as its high priest, but is it eventually going to be possible to play a cult, or whatever, from a standpoint more like dwarf mode, where there is no clear one character in the cult who is the standpoint of everything, and you have a more omniscient but distant position?

The keyword is eventually.  :P The dev-single page mentions playing a wizard tower and as a divinity (or maybe religion, but context seems to point to divinity). You'll also be eventually be able to lead a kingdom or nation, sending out armies, whether as an extension of Fortress mode or as its own mode (or both). The future ability to be a merchant may turn towards this as well, becoming a trading entity of some sort.

Quote

CONTROL A WIZARD ENTITY: Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes. Related to Bloat134, Bloat147, PowerGoal58 and PowerGoal60.
DEITY: Have religions in the game correspond to forces or deities and let you play one and do whatever you like, possibly restricted by your defining characteristics and geography. Related to Bloat344, Bloat376, Bloat377, Bloat382, PowerGoal64, PowerGoal75, PowerGoal82, PowerGoal86, PowerGoal90, PowerGoal105, PowerGoal109, PowerGoal113, PowerGoal118, PowerGoal122, PowerGoal125, PowerGoal135, PowerGoal139, PowerGoal141 and PowerGoal146.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 07:44:28 am

I know the next release will mostly focus on adventure mode. but are there plans for a stockpile copy/paste function and prioritization of jobs for fortress mode in the foreseeable future?

Oh...and it would be awesome to be able to resize stockpiles, activity zones and burrows (decreasing area in the case of burrows), so we don't have to delete and redo every time.

Thanks for the great work so far, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 23, 2013, 07:48:00 am

Quote from: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 07:44:28 am

I know the next release will mostly focus on adventure mode. but are there plans for a stockpile copy/paste function and prioritization of jobs for fortress mode in the foreseeable future?

Job priorization overhaul will probably come after the main release. Much like hauling update came after main release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on July 23, 2013, 08:15:45 am

Quote from: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 07:44:28 am

Oh...and it would be awesome to be able to resize stockpiles, activity zones and burrows (decreasing area in the case of burrows), so we don't have to delete and redo every time.

Actually in the case of Burrows you can both add additional tiles and remove from them, you don't need to make a new burrow every single time you wish to change their area at all.

As with stockpiles and activity zones, you can subtract from them, but sadly not add-to. You can't add to those tough.

Copy-paste for stockpiles would be useful, but you can use the custom settings to create multiple stockpiles accepting stuff you want in a row. But anyway, once you get the basics of stockpiles and kind of know what is that you're going to need near your workshops and industries, I find designing the appropriate stockpiles is a very swift process, and you rarely need to re-designate those too often (well, if you have a plan, that is).

Now, some things about stockpiles are indeed a pain. I.e. I would take the ability to apply a custom filter to longass-submenus over a copy/paste or resize feature every day. Good luck scrolling for the appropriate entry if you want a stockpile to only accept a certain kind of meat/skin/body-parts/bones/animal cages or what have you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on July 23, 2013, 10:56:06 am

@Banderus Copy-pasting stockpiles is possible with dfhack.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 11:03:52 am

thanks for the quick answers guys!

Quote from: Bandreus on July 23, 2013, 08:15:45 am

Actually in the case of Burrows you can both add additional tiles and remove from them, you don't need to make a new burrow every single time you wish to change their area at all.

where exactly would I find the option to remove tiles then? don't see that anywhere  :(

Quote from: Bandreus on July 23, 2013, 08:15:45 am

Copy-paste for stockpiles would be useful, but you can use the custom settings to create multiple stockpiles accepting stuff you want in a row.

thanks, I didn't know about that before. but it would still be good to have the option to increase the size of an already existing stockpile. otherwise you possibly have to alter several piles if you decide to store something else.

Quote from: Bandreus on July 23, 2013, 08:15:45 am

Now, some things about stockpiles are indeed a pain. I.e. I would take the ability to apply a custom filter to longass-submenus over a copy/paste or resize feature every day. Good luck scrolling for the appropriate entry if you want a stockpile to only accept a certain kind of meat/skin/body-parts/bones/animal cages or what have you.

totally agree there! this should imo also be extended to the trade depot/trading screen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on July 23, 2013, 11:13:21 am

Quote from: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 11:03:52 am

where exactly would I find the option to remove tiles then? don't see that anywhere  :(

Enter Define burrow mode and you can switch to erase mode with (r).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 01:05:36 pm

Quote from: fricy on July 23, 2013, 11:13:21 am

Quote from: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 11:03:52 am

where exactly would I find the option to remove tiles then? don't see that anywhere  :(

Enter Define burrow mode and you can switch to erase mode with (r).

sweet thx :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on July 24, 2013, 02:39:58 am

Quote from: Bandreus on July 23, 2013, 08:15:45 am

Quote from: Afghani84 on July 23, 2013, 07:44:28 am

Oh...and it would be awesome to be able to resize stockpiles, activity zones and burrows (decreasing area in the case of burrows), so we don't have to delete and redo every time.

Actually in the case of Burrows you can both add additional tiles and remove from them, you don't need to make a new burrow every single time you wish to change their area at all.

As with stockpiles and activity zones, you can subtract from them, but sadly not add-to. You can't add to those tough.

Copy-paste for stockpiles would be useful, but you can use the custom settings to create multiple stockpiles accepting stuff you want in a row. But anyway, once you get the basics of stockpiles and kind of know what is that you're going to need near your workshops and industries, I find designing the appropriate stockpiles is a very swift process, and you rarely need to re-designate those too often (well, if you have a plan, that is).

Now, some things about stockpiles are indeed a pain. I.e. I would take the ability to apply a custom filter to longass-submenus over a copy/paste or resize feature every day. Good luck scrolling for the appropriate entry if you want a stockpile to only accept a certain kind of meat/skin/body-parts/bones/animal cages or what have you.

Issue is mostly repetition.

While setting up individual stockpile is not so dramatic, most of them are done exactly same way in every fort you set up. Food stockpile being most noticeable.

You want several versions of it: cooked food, brewed drinks and seeds are easy, but cooking supplies, brewing supplies, milling supplies, farmer-workshop supplies ... they pretty much require small consultation of wiki, and never change.

Doing this in each fort is tiresome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on July 25, 2013, 03:25:04 am

Quote from: Mushroom on a log

I also expect there will be travel allowed "off-road", out into the layers accessible from the fort, since the distances are too long to force local-view travel from point to point. I'm still ambivalent about that though, since part of the fun of exploring underground is seeing the giant mushrooms and so on as they come up, so there could still end up being a kind of middle ground in terms of where you are allowed to move in the travel view, depending on which obstacles you face and so on.

Underground travel sounds really cool.  The map use was totally unexpected so am very excited for this.  That middle ground also seems like a good idea.  If the distances are pretty large, it might be nice to be dropped out of map travel to see highlights on the way.  I'd definitely prefer the atmosphere of having to scramble round 'shrooms or walk carefully past an old underground fort or something - now and then - rather than sprinting from A to B.

Anyone know if some kind of rudimentary fruit/mushroom/crop harvesting will be possible in new adventurer mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 25, 2013, 03:51:19 am

Quote from: hermes on July 25, 2013, 03:25:04 am

Anyone know if some kind of rudimentary fruit/mushroom/crop harvesting will be possible in new adventurer mode?

Nope, Toady hasn't said anything about it. I guess when he starts working on adventurer crafting system, we'll get that too.

In meantime we can use AdvFort to harvest our own shrubs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 25, 2013, 04:31:41 am

Quote from: hermes on July 25, 2013, 03:25:04 am

Anyone know if some kind of rudimentary fruit/mushroom/crop harvesting will be possible in new adventurer mode?

Yes, there will be some ability to pick fruit, flowers, and so presumably also shrubs.

Quote from: Toady One, on 10/09/2012

We have falling leaves again, you can see them fall in little downward moving flows and land on the ground. This involves "item clouds" and "item spatter", which should continue to come up in various places over time. You can pick flowers and leaves and there are falling fruits and nuts. It's nice to have acorns and chestnuts in the game, though I don't have roasting handled. All of the fallen material can be picked up. You can also pick fruit directly from trees if they are hanging low enough (you'll be able to climb before long). I think we've got enough vegetation information to start in on elf sites themselves now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on July 25, 2013, 10:56:23 am

Would it be possible to show large trees on the travel map?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 25, 2013, 11:37:50 am

Outside the very largest trees, such as those in the elf sites, that doesn't seem feasible to me. A tile in the zoomed-in city maps is what, 16x16, when realized at the lowest level? In theory, that fits over twenty of the 3x3 trees we've seen first. The 30x30(?) tree Toady mentioned would and should be visible as a 2x2 square on the city travel map (and should block travel), but would likely just use the plant tile on the regional travel map. The cut-off for being visible on the city map should be 10x10, I guess, at which point it wouldn't yet block travel... Unless you mean something like the interface that shows nearby buildings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Puzzlemaker on July 25, 2013, 01:46:39 pm

How "alive" will a retired fortress be?  If you set up orders, burrows, patrols, etc, will the dwarves continue to obey them if you visit in adventurer mode?  If you retire then un-retire(?) a fortress, how much will be saved?

Reason I am asking is, how cool would it be to make a fortress, then visit there as a citizen from an enemy civ?

Or, even better, what about using the embark anywhere tool to start a fortress on top of an already existing fortress?  How would the game handle that?  Would it crash?

What if the civ you are part of is at war with the already-existing fortress's civ?  Could you have a "seige" if you did that?

So many possibilities...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on July 25, 2013, 02:18:23 pm

As it stands now, starting on top of a town of another civ that you may or may not be at war with doesn't give you the siege tag, so I would guess that doing so in the future still won't. The residents seem to be mostly-hostile, though. Especially the non-historical figures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 25, 2013, 02:20:56 pm

So traveling through the caverns won't take a RL hours anymore?

YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 25, 2013, 02:50:39 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on July 25, 2013, 02:20:56 pm

So traveling through the caverns won't take a RL hours anymore?

YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I hope it applies just to the underground road network, and not just skipping the caverns altogether. Sure, it's a faster way to travel around, but that shouldn't mean it's also safer.
At least we can now land on a huge mushroom and not resort to DFHack to fly our behinds from it's glitchy canopy. Also, climbing. Caverns and climbing. I think I'm going to spend RL hours in the caverns now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on July 26, 2013, 09:45:51 am

Yes, the ability to travel through tunnels is a welcome addition.  I would probably agree with Toady's sentiment that the caverns themselves oughtn't be fast-travelable, since they are somewhat intended to be an "adventure" (at least as I understand it).  This does go a long way toward making dwarven civilizations much more Moria-like, with winding tunnels through the mountain, and large systems of dangerous caves beneath. 

Gonna be fun I think (both kinds). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on July 26, 2013, 12:15:36 pm

The only thing is, mountain tunnels will be extremely long. Far longer than would usually be interesting to walk through in real time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 26, 2013, 12:27:45 pm

Umm I see fast travel going on in well established routes and roads connecting forts, deep sites and what not, meanwhile not in caverns as people has pointed out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 26, 2013, 08:37:40 pm

Frankly I don't see why there wouldn't be fast travel options- after all, above-ground civs like elves and humans build routes between their settlements, so why wouldn't underground ones? It would probably be restricted- you could only fast-travel through the designated paths- and you might encounter minor trouble on the way, but to my mind a blanket moratorium on underground fast-travel routes seems undwarflike.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tomsod on July 27, 2013, 10:50:23 am

How will the upcoming change in sneaking affect goblin/kobold thieves' behavior in dwarf mode? And other NPC sneakers for that matter? Like, will they be smart enough to actively avoid your dwarves' field of view and so on or will the new mechanic only affect the PC?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I do hope no one asked this before. My internet is a little too slow to use the search function at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 27, 2013, 01:38:50 pm

I doubt there's any AI changes, but vision arcs might be in in fort mode. I hope there is nothing that compromises the effectiveness of guard dogs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 27, 2013, 03:20:27 pm

Toady said that he hasn't added vision arcs to fort mode since they ate so much FPS.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on July 28, 2013, 06:33:16 am

Does the upcoming release feature any new item sinks for the fortress mode? I mean features that create demand for resources, like food consumption or clothes becoming cracked?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 28, 2013, 12:19:22 pm

Quote from: dwarfhoplite on July 28, 2013, 06:33:16 am

Does the upcoming release feature any new item sinks for the fortress mode? I mean features that create demand for resources, like food consumption or clothes becoming cracked?

No. Rather, we get more item sources with the tree changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on July 28, 2013, 04:34:52 pm

This may seem like a strange thing to look forward too, but I like looking at the background of the bay12 site with the random map, and I can't wait to see the new maps when the update is released.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 28, 2013, 04:36:18 pm

The new maps, AFAIK, will mostly have new omegas to represent deep sites, probably more widely spread out paragraph symbols and... mysterious gray blocks!

btw I'm pretty excited about the new hidden fun stuff

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on July 28, 2013, 04:45:53 pm

Will we get new vampires, werebeasts, necromancers, and burial grounds in the world as time goes by in fortress mode in the new update?

Sorry, it has been so long now I have forgotten the answer to this.

I think that there should be cities built out in the open caverns, as well as much larger underground features such as large lakes or rivers. By cities, I don't just mean deep sites, I mean constructed houses in the caverns.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on July 28, 2013, 04:48:59 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on July 28, 2013, 04:45:53 pm

Will we get new vampires, werebeasts, necromancers, and burial grounds in the world as time goes by in fortress mode in the new update?

I asked that earlier, sadly, not this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 28, 2013, 08:22:33 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 28, 2013, 04:36:18 pm

The new maps, AFAIK, will mostly have new omegas to represent deep sites, probably more widely spread out paragraph symbols and... mysterious gray blocks!

btw I'm pretty excited about the new hidden fun stuff

Those mysterious gray blocks haunt my dreams. My first half dozen adventurers will likely meet their end in a mad rush to explore them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on July 29, 2013, 01:55:24 am

Quote from: monk12 on July 28, 2013, 08:22:33 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 28, 2013, 04:36:18 pm

The new maps, AFAIK, will mostly have new omegas to represent deep sites, probably more widely spread out paragraph symbols and... mysterious gray blocks!

btw I'm pretty excited about the new hidden fun stuff

Those mysterious gray blocks haunt my dreams. My first half dozen adventurers will likely meet their end in a mad rush to explore them.

Wait, what? Where are those new maps you're talking about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 29, 2013, 02:13:51 am

New maps meaning world maps.

The gray blocks are new HFS. We don't know what's in them, as it should be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on July 29, 2013, 04:34:36 am

Now that burning trees have been implemented, will wooden constructions share a similar fate?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on July 29, 2013, 04:47:39 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on July 29, 2013, 04:34:36 am

Now that burning trees have been implemented, will wooden constructions share a similar fate?

Totally unrelated. ToadyOne hasn't spoke about any of the constructions being changed for this release.


And also its reimplemented.


EDIT: I drop the negative.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 29, 2013, 05:42:00 am

Is no that unrelated. In fact I think is a good one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on July 29, 2013, 09:04:40 am

Now that human sites (and others) have gardens, will adventurers be able to pick plants from the gardens to feed themselves? If so, will this create any feelings of hostility?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 29, 2013, 10:43:59 am

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on July 29, 2013, 09:04:40 am

Now that human sites (and others) have gardens, will adventurers be able to pick plants from the gardens to feed themselves? If so, will this create any feelings of hostility?

Yes, adventurers are legitimately able to pick flowers, fruits and plants, and I think there is as much risk of getting heat from doing it as there's risk from grabbing soil and throwing it again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on July 29, 2013, 02:29:02 pm

"Quit throwing my dirt, damnit! You're scaring the worms!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: irdsm on July 30, 2013, 09:34:34 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on July 29, 2013, 02:29:02 pm

"Quit throwing my dirt, damnit! You're shattering my child's skull!"

Fixed that for ya

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on July 30, 2013, 09:35:20 pm

I lol'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on August 01, 2013, 04:34:12 am

Thanks to Valtam, Caldfir, monk12, King Mir, Putnam, MrWiggles, mastahcheese, Knight Otu, Matoro, Witty, LordBaal, Aseaheru, Mr S, hermes, Cruxador and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions.  I think it's the nature of the long-running release to have more and more of the questions be answerable as time goes on -- if your question isn't below, it was most likely addressed by somebody above.  There were more questions answered by other people than I answer myself, so don't forget to look!

Quote from: Eggman360

If an underground multi-tile tree is cut down, with one of its leaf tiles (or even branches)
touching a side or the cavern roof, will this stop a timber/cave-in situation?

I still haven't done it yet, but I think it'll force the whole tree down in too many rather than too few situations.  Trees are adjacent to other trees in a bunch of ways, and they need to go down in those cases since we don't have a nice way to do 45 degree angle trees and so on.  So I expect that even if you build a weird support system of constructed walls around a tree, designating it for chopping will still cause it to become not present (although it might not end up in a line on the ground).  We'll see.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are we going to have designs for all the other underground trees, such as the tunnel tubes and blood thorns? Those don't seem to grow like normal mushrooms.

They use the standard tree parameters -- those are capable of producing (somewhat half-assed) saguaros, so we have some latitude.

Quote from: Maxmurder

Will fallen leaves be flammable? If so will they burn as if they were items or more like how grass currently burns?

They have some temperature trigger information, but I think it just wipes them away like some of the other residue with similar triggers.  I don't have things like piles of leaves burning, though we'll probably get there in time.

Quote

Quote from: Putnam

So I heard you have new raws.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Would you be able to provide us with the raw details once you've finalised elf retreats before the release? It would help modders get their stuff sorted out.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For trunk, branches, etc. just numbers to control things, no units, still subject to tweaking.  I'm still formalizing the exact root and cap params from my hard-coded test values, and that'll continue as I add more new critters.


[TRUNK_RATE:10]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_DENSITY:2]
[BRANCH_DENSITY:10]
[MAX_TRUNK_HEIGHT:5]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_RADIUS:1]
[BRANCH_RADIUS:2]
[TRUNK_BRANCHING:2]
[MAX_TRUNK_DIAMETER:3]
[TRUNK_WIDTH_RATE:200]


I don't remember if the twig density stuff is still hard-coded, but if it is, it'll be out by release time.


[STANDARD_TILE_NAMES] <-- there are tags like TRUNK_NAME, ROOT_NAME etc. if you don't want "mango trunk", "mango roots" etc.


Mango leaves/flowers/fruit (no seeds yet):


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango leaf:mango leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:ALL:1]
[GROWTH:FLOWERS]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:60000:119999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:4:0:1:60000:119999:2]
[GROWTH:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000] <-- this and the flower entry will probably be decreased when it matters more
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:120000:200000]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF_NO_CLOUD]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:'%':7:4:0:1:120000:200000:3]
   Format here is character on branch, item character, 3 for color, season timing, print priority (higher better).


To do autumn leaves, you use several growth prints.  This info carries over to picked/fallen items.  Here's a maple leaf:


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:maple leaf:maple leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:0:300000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:0:209999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:6:0:1:210000:239999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:1:240000:269999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:0:270000:300000:1]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF]


Notably, I'm still missing size information for the items.

Meadowsweet buds/flowers used in grass file:


[GROWTH:BUD]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet bud:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:140000:149999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:7:2:0:0:NONE]
[GROWTH:FLOWER]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:150000:250000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:7:0:1:150000:250000]


For item breath, where you'd normally put the breath weapon type after the material, you put.


UNDIRECTED_ITEM_CLOUD:<item type>:<subtype>
TRAILING_ITEM_FLOW:<item type>:<subtype>


The new type/subtype pair for plant growths is PLANT_GROWTH:<growth token>, with whatever material you want (generally the right one from the plant).

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that combat has had a few changes and pulping is in, are weapons that deal mostly or entirely blunt damage, such as hammers, maces, ranged weapons, and ammunition in flight going to be more effective?

Pulping might help with that a bit, but skulls are more powerful now, not less.  I don't remember offhand what happened with blunt weapons though, if anything.  I know you can kick people to death, but it's not fast like a sword.

Quote from: Adrian

How do you decide the order of the arcs to work on?
Do you have everything planned out, or do you just start on whatever suits your fancy at that moment?

It's fruitless to plan it out at this point.  There are too many interconnections, and it never ends up working out these days, so we try not to predict.  Also, it's faster to work on something I'm motivated about, and that motivation can change, so it's not a bad thing when the plans change, mostly.  I do try to do the things that go before other things when I can.

Quote from: Cruxador

But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

For the 30 tile wide trees, I was talking about the crown, not the trunk, if that's the issue.  They are still limited in size by the sky, and to save time I haven't changed that.  Other trees are more okay the way they are -- maple trees, for example, can be roughly equal in height and width, and mine are currently too tall compared to their width, if anything.  I would prefer to get the heights up in general, though, if practical, and some of the elf ones are definitely on the short side.

Quote from: Heph

Toady can we have some screenshots of the eleven retreats?

Tree cross section screenshots always look lousy.  I can never find one I'm happy with.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Now that elves produce nuts and fruit from trees, can dwarves also harvest these items?

Will we now be able to trade clear or crystal glass with the elves, if the wood components used are the grown ones?

Do elves use wagons now? You say "the caravan rolled in" in the devlog.

I haven't set up a new type of gathering for it.  Something might happen, but I'll probably require little constructions or something so they can reach.  Adventurers can reach up to pick things from under trees, but that doesn't seem right for fort mode.

They still assume the same things of you since they can't verify the wooden component used.

The elves don't use wagons.

Quote

Quote from: Heph

Ok now we have grown stuff which is kinda cool. Will that include weapons?
Furthermore will these weapons be better then weapons carved out of wood?

Quote from: monk12

Why don't the "grown oak items" make the elves angry? Are they an elf-specific item type, like a "humane" way to make wood products (and if so, will judicious modding let players make "grown wood items?") Or do the elves distinguish between wood-for-crafts and wood-that's-people? Something else entirely?

Quote from: HugoLuman

The real question is, do civilizations remember their crafts now, or do elves just make special wooden stuff with a special token?

Quote from: Japa

Also, is it possible through modding to make our own grown wooden items?

Quote from: reality.auditor

To make sure: can we now sell any wooden item made by elves safely to elves? I hope it is framework stub, not some hack only for elves and only for "grown" items.

Will be some info in-game about what race made this particular item?

Quote from: DG

Will elves bring "grown" logs? If you process these logs (crafts, or decorations on other materials etc) will elves still recognise them as "grown"? I suspect that's not coverered and if so what's your guess on it eventually?

Weapons and logs, yeah, I'm pretty sure.  The grown items don't make elves angry because it is what elves do, shaping the items on the branch, and the only source of the items are the elves.  You can sell them back.  I haven't done anything with interactions or reactions, and I'm not sure when that'll happen.  Perhaps when it's a material property or when I need the interaction.  If you take a grown log and make something out of it, the elves will be angry -- perhaps they'll be able to tell later, but it isn't a material property yet so it can't carry over (and so they can't tell and don't trust you, in whatever temporary lore-space we are working in.  You are judged by the carvy marks).

Quote from: Japa

If we become friendly enough with the elves, will we ever be able to make trade agreements with them?

Yeah, I think that's a reasonably aspiration.  Once we have real trade agreements that are of actual interest to your fort it'll probably go in, with some specific goods/services of interest to either party.

Quote from: iceball3

Are there any future plans, decisions, or thought given in regarding of embassies, both of other nations in your fortress as well as your fortress in other nations?

We're just at the point of considering people hanging out in taverns and inns, so I think there's more of a chance of a diplomatic incidents before we get to any kind of formalized permanent diplomacy.  I haven't really thought about the latter.

Quote

Quote from: Dante

Is this the kind of thing which could reasonably be e.g. outsourced to the modding forum for players to do?

Quote from: Helgoland

What kind of work will you outsource to the community, and what stuff will you absoutely do yourself?

The tree density/color stuff is the existing example.  I'll probably be changing the plant growth format a bit to handle certain plants that come up, so I don't think it'd work at this early stage.  Somebody was talking about animal combat raws, and that's similar.  I'm not sure how I actually want to solve the existing problems.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With dwarf nobles being updated as in the devlog, does that mean we will be able to appoint a general from the king now, or a general will migrate with the king to your fortress?

Nah, that stuff isn't relevant at all yet, so I haven't looked at it.

Quote from: Ribs

Do you guys plan on making dwarven nobility a little more closed over time, where they'll work more like a caste, or will they always be a little more open. Meaning, will they ever keep certain positions more likely to be given to relatives of noble families? Will a noble's relative that is not going to inherit any titles like, say, a Duke's third son or daughter, start their own family branches and retain their and their descendent's rank as nobles over time retaining some of the perks of being part of nobility?   

I'm not sure how it'll end up.  If people ever start thinking about their family members, and they should, it'll probably end up that way without some outside moderating pressure on the numbers.  I guess that outside pressure on the numbers would be qualification or fame or whatever.  Hard to say what the equations'll be.

Quote from: Valtam

Now that forest fires became a real deal, are unlimited adventurer's campfires still avaliable? If they're not, are we getting firemaking as some sort of reaction, or maybe using Advance Interaction with some free-lying resources to do that?

I haven't done it yet.  The fire stuff is still there and still strange.

Quote

Quote from: Japa

Will we be able to make gardens in fort mode?

Quote from: Aseaheru

Think its called farmplots...

There's the issue of planting, and the issue of gathering plant growths vs. whole plants.  One of those optional items I'd like to get done.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are we going to have underground roads connecting deep sites? What about underground tombs?

The underground tunnels mostly just run through the first layer with quite a bit of carving/bridging, and those can run right through plump helmet fields near the connections down to deep dwarf living areas etc.  I haven't handled the dead.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

Do objects, like artifacts or books, get "inherited" from entity to entity as sites are conquered or things are pillaged, or do they always sort of belong to whoever made them?

There's no looting at this point, so stuff just stays in place.

Quote from: Puzzlemaker

How "alive" will a retired fortress be?  If you set up orders, burrows, patrols, etc, will the dwarves continue to obey them if you visit in adventurer mode?  If you retire then un-retire(?) a fortress, how much will be saved?

Reason I am asking is, how cool would it be to make a fortress, then visit there as a citizen from an enemy civ?

Or, even better, what about using the embark anywhere tool to start a fortress on top of an already existing fortress?  How would the game handle that?  Would it crash?

What if the civ you are part of is at war with the already-existing fortress's civ?  Could you have a "seige" if you did that?

They don't understand much about fortress stuff in adventure mode.  They should remember where they live, but they won't follow orders.  It wouldn't make sense anyway, mostly, with the time difference.  I'm trying to save as much as possible with un-retire, but I'm not sure what I'll get away with.  It's not a resolved issue.

If you visit from an enemy civ, you'll get the enemy soldier treatment -- which is still a little up in the air, due to all the AI changes, but they'll know you aren't good news.

I have no idea how the game will react to the bad embark.

Do they go to war?  I'm not sure that ever happens.  There's no code for that siege in any case, if I remember.

Quote from: Pie Maker

Now that burning trees have been implemented, will wooden constructions share a similar fate?

Nope.  It didn't end up being directly related, though it might end up that way later on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sackhead on August 01, 2013, 05:36:04 am

thanks for the answers

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfOfTheLand on August 01, 2013, 05:47:35 am

Toady, as if this isn't asked enough, what's the ETA on the next release?

Anyone that knows can answer however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on August 01, 2013, 06:29:39 am

Quote from: DwarfOfTheLand on August 01, 2013, 05:47:35 am

Toady, as if this isn't asked enough, what's the ETA on the next release?

Anyone that knows can answer however.

The reply is that it will be release when it will be done. It's impossible to know how long some things take to be fixed, sometimes it goes very fast, sometimes a single problem is very long because of all the interconnections.


Edit : By the way, if you want to talk to Toady, use the green color, please. It's simplier for him, and for us.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfOfTheLand on August 01, 2013, 07:00:21 am

Quote

The reply is that it will be release when it will be done. It's impossible to know how long some things take to be fixed, sometimes it goes very fast, sometimes a single problem is very long because of all the interconnections.


Edit : By the way, if you want to talk to Toady, use the green color, please. It's simplier for him, and for us.

Ah, okay. I never really talk to the developers, anyway. This is really the first time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 01, 2013, 07:04:09 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on August 01, 2013, 07:19:31 am

Quote from: DwarfOfTheLand on August 01, 2013, 07:00:21 am

Quote

The reply is that it will be release when it will be done. It's impossible to know how long some things take to be fixed, sometimes it goes very fast, sometimes a single problem is very long because of all the interconnections.


Edit : By the way, if you want to talk to Toady, use the green color, please. It's simplier for him, and for us.

Ah, okay. I never really talk to the developers, anyway. This is really the first time.

No problem ! There is also someone who told it to me the first time I asked. Of course everybody want to know the release date...but I think Toady would like to know it, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 01, 2013, 08:26:23 am

And even him doesn't know yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 01, 2013, 08:41:28 am

And so DF2013 continues to be the most delayed Dwarf Fortress version to date.
Wonder if we'll get it this year or should be start talking about DF2014?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Puzzlemaker on August 01, 2013, 10:03:39 am

Ah, nice.  I wasn't talking about an official "siege", I was basically asking if the enemy Civ's dwarves would be hostile to you.

It would be really cool to be able to make a fortress, set up traps and all sorts of stuff, then embark as an enemy civ on top of it.  It would be a neat way to have a community fortress, one guys makes a fort and the other guy has to get to the keep inside of it in a certain in-game time limit, or something like that.  Maybe even passing the save back and forth, switching fortresses each time.  Would be pretty cool IMHO.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on August 01, 2013, 10:40:03 am

Quote from: Puzzlemaker on August 01, 2013, 10:03:39 am

Ah, nice.  I wasn't talking about an official "siege", I was basically asking if the enemy Civ's dwarves would be hostile to you.

It would be really cool to be able to make a fortress, set up traps and all sorts of stuff, then embark as an enemy civ on top of it.  It would be a neat way to have a community fortress, one guys makes a fort and the other guy has to get to the keep inside of it in a certain in-game time limit, or something like that.  Maybe even passing the save back and forth, switching fortresses each time.  Would be pretty cool IMHO.

If we're going pie-in-the-sky dreams, it'd be really cool as a real time versus mode.

That aside, I remember an idea I thought of a long time ago that's probably going to be more workable:

Fortress player places an artifact in a secure location in his fortress, sets up traps, lever puzzles, and such to protect it. He then abandons/retires fortress and hands the save to an adventurer player. Adventurer player attempts to retrieve the artifact and escape in one piece.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 01, 2013, 11:12:01 am

I think that would be plausible on, let's start calling it that, DF 2014.

Everyone knows that dwarves fear the number 13, henceforth we will not see a 2013 release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 01, 2013, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 01, 2013, 08:41:28 am

And so DF2013 continues to be the most delayed Dwarf Fortress version to date.
Wonder if we'll get it this year or should be start talking about DF2014?

According to my 40d folder's release notes (pretty sure that was the last 40d version, wiki suggests it to be so)

Quote

Release notes for 0.28.181.40d (September 6, 2008)

The subsequent version was the April 1st DF2010 release. Wait period of 572 days.

Latest current version of DF was released on June 4 2012, aka 423 days since last release. Thus, we have 149 days before this becomes the longest interversion period of DF history. That means Toady has to release before December 28th to come in below that threshold.

All I want for Christmas is a new version of DF!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 01, 2013, 12:28:50 pm

Given the number of new features and their intrinsic complexity I wouldn't count on it. However that's only a mere observation from a non really informed point of view.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McVoyager on August 01, 2013, 02:53:41 pm

How intricate do you want Adventure mode to get? Would we ever get access to Fortress Mode job skills like carpentry or masonry, be able to sell our gear in a town, then buy the equipment to open up our own shop and live a normal life as a single citizen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 01, 2013, 03:04:18 pm

Quote from: Urist McVoyager on August 01, 2013, 02:53:41 pm

How intricate do you want Adventure mode to get? Would we ever get access to Fortress Mode job skills like carpentry or masonry, be able to sell our gear in a town, then buy the equipment to open up our own shop and live a normal life as a single citizen?

Adventure mode will eventually have all the jobs that Dwarf mode has (potentially with more tools required). That is an explicit development goal. Similarly, yes, you should one day be able to be a simple merchant - quite possibly right from the start, without the need to sell your starting equipment or whatever. See this page  (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) and this page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) for a lot of the future plans that Tarn and Zach have for the game. In short, they want the game in all modes to be very intricate.

Quote

ADVENTURER SKILLS ARC: It's nice to have all those jobs and professions sitting around in the dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to do these things, especially those skills related to survival in the wilderness. Eventually you'll be able to place constructions, create a home and have your own site on the map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 01, 2013, 10:54:03 pm

Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on August 02, 2013, 04:35:50 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 01, 2013, 08:41:28 am

And so DF2013 continues to be the most delayed Dwarf Fortress version to date.
Wonder if we'll get it this year or should be start talking about DF2014?

Well, he still needs to finalize dwarven sites (which likely is quite some stuff still), then go back to a few postponed issues (i.e. felling the new trees, etc.), and then the big bag of optional stuff.

I don't care if the X in DF201X is going to be a 3 or 4, all I care is for the next release to be awesome. And Toady always delivers  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfOfTheLand on August 02, 2013, 04:58:04 am

Will we be able to take on the role of one of our citizens from Fort Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DwarfOfTheLand on August 02, 2013, 05:00:59 am

Also, yes, I do think that it'd rule if we could have a Civilization # type battle, only ASCII and Dwarf Fortress-like.

Since in (d)esignations, we already can click to set something to be placed/done, what if we could click to place units in "Versus Mode"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on August 02, 2013, 06:06:25 am

Tree-fruits and nuts gathering:
" Haven't set up a new type of gathering for it.  Something might happen, but I'll probably require little constructions or something so they can reach.  Adventurers can reach up to pick things from under trees, but that doesn't seem right for fort mode. "

So are you suggesting fortressmode fruitpickers in future might need to carry ladder tools around which they then depoly/construct as upwardstairs ?  
(this would only work for single Zlevel high fruit though as I imagine it)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Socharis on August 03, 2013, 12:01:47 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 01, 2013, 03:04:18 pm

Adventure mode will eventually have all the jobs that Dwarf mode has (potentially with more tools required).

Does this imply that adventurers will be subject to strange moods, if they craft enough?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 03, 2013, 12:23:14 am

Quote from: DwarfOfTheLand on August 02, 2013, 05:00:59 am

Also, yes, I do think that it'd rule if we could have a Civilization # type battle, only ASCII and Dwarf Fortress-like.

Since in (d)esignations, we already can click to set something to be placed/done, what if we could click to place units in "Versus Mode"?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tryrar on August 03, 2013, 03:01:26 am

If you play a fort long enough, would a deep site spawn and become associated with your fort, and if so, would a tunnel likewise spawn connecting the sites, or have you not gotten far with how deep/hill sites interact with player forts/forts that are reclaimed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 03, 2013, 04:18:23 am

Quote from: Socharis on August 03, 2013, 12:01:47 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 01, 2013, 03:04:18 pm

Adventure mode will eventually have all the jobs that Dwarf mode has (potentially with more tools required).

Does this imply that adventurers will be subject to strange moods, if they craft enough?

Probably not strange moods as such, but supernatural compulsions[/quote] seem to be fair game at some point.

 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1413312;topicseen#msg1413312)

Quote

Quote from: isitanos

Speaking of mood, could we have fey/fell moods for the player, where he feels compelled to realize a feat, with a potentially great benefit but also a great penalty if he fails? To avoid a sudden unexpected possession to ruin a game, it should probably be rather easy to foresee, for example if they only have a chance of happening if you push the above mood mechanic to extremes, or you make a visit to an out-of-the-ordinary place such as a god's altar, or engage dialog with a powerful demon.

I wouldn't want to randomly saddle people with too much of a burden, particularly on a single character in adventure mode, but I don't have a problem with a magical obligation at times when it makes sense, since those are fairly common and should be fun.  No idea when that sort of thing would happen, since it's all so far away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 03, 2013, 12:22:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on August 01, 2013, 04:34:12 am

Quote from: Cruxador

But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

For the 30 tile wide trees, I was talking about the crown, not the trunk, if that's the issue.  They are still limited in size by the sky, and to save time I haven't changed that.  Other trees are more okay the way they are -- maple trees, for example, can be roughly equal in height and width, and mine are currently too tall compared to their width, if anything.  I would prefer to get the heights up in general, though, if practical, and some of the elf ones are definitely on the short side.

Yeah, I did think you meant trunk. Didn't even occur to me that you'd mean crown, perhaps because we don't really have large-crowned trees here, only conifers. I'd actually quite like to see very tall trees like old redwoods and some elf-tree depictions. Are redwoods planned to be in/special? If so what's going on there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 04, 2013, 08:05:41 am

Quote from: Toady One

Now that the livestock aren't getting weapons any more...

Highly trained livestock! Of course, now they're hanging out with the bears lighting campfires...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on August 04, 2013, 08:12:23 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

...there is a climbing skill now, and things like constructed block walls are harder to climb than constructed rough walls...

Please, please tell me- Does this mean invaders who potentially have the climbing skill can and will be scaling our otherwise impenetrable walls?
I am more excited about this possibility than just about everything else so far.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 04, 2013, 08:23:56 am

Quote from: Man In Zero G on August 04, 2013, 08:12:23 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

...there is a climbing skill now, and things like constructed block walls are harder to climb than constructed rough walls...

Please, please tell me- Does this mean invaders who potentially have the climbing skill can and will be scaling our otherwise impenetrable walls?
I am more excited about this possibility than just about everything else so far.

No, not yet, but Toady wants it to happen, too.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: LoSboccacc

so are we getting climbing invaders?

It's not likely to happen for this release, although I'm enthusiastic about having that kind of churning overrun feeling happen to you eventually.  There's a chance some part of it'll happen automatically when I look back at climbing AI before the release, but it's a coin toss.

Since then, Toady hasn't mentioned adding climbing AI for invaders. Unless he wants to keep it secret, it isn't likely to happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 04, 2013, 10:23:11 am

Will we be getting generated fotress screenshots, or will those be a surprise?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bloax on August 04, 2013, 11:26:57 am

Is the Adventure mode questlog going to be made slightly more useful?
There's already a key (m) that's supposed to show information, but instead of something minorly useful like a log of the quest giver's words, it only shows the name and race of the target.

A log of the questgiver's words would at least provide you with a description of your target, because something like "Kill Atir Ragthroat | dwarf" doesn't provide you with information of what Atir really is.
Is he a werewolf? Is he a vampire? Or something else due to mods? Who knows, certainly not you if you forgot it! Which is very likely with a lot of quests.. And this is where a quest log should come in, after all.

but alas, all the quest log says to you only to kill Atir Ragthroat, a dwarf.
The problem comes in when you forget that Atir Ragthroat is a master vampire due to you playing with a mod that can do that, and that master vampires are actually very lethal.
Now, if only you had logged that little detail in your quest log, you'd know exactly who's who. But currently you don't, and that's a bit silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 04, 2013, 12:02:36 pm

How easy will it be to climb log walls made from wood, or walls made from metal bars? If walls made from metal bars are like a sheet of metal, would it be possible to climb them (in-game) at all, or would they act as smooth rock walls?

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 04, 2013, 08:23:56 am

Quote from: Man In Zero G on August 04, 2013, 08:12:23 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

...there is a climbing skill now, and things like constructed block walls are harder to climb than constructed rough walls...

Please, please tell me- Does this mean invaders who potentially have the climbing skill can and will be scaling our otherwise impenetrable walls?
I am more excited about this possibility than just about everything else so far.

No, not yet, but Toady wants it to happen, too.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: LoSboccacc

so are we getting climbing invaders?

It's not likely to happen for this release, although I'm enthusiastic about having that kind of churning overrun feeling happen to you eventually.  There's a chance some part of it'll happen automatically when I look back at climbing AI before the release, but it's a coin toss.

Since then, Toady hasn't mentioned adding climbing AI for invaders. Unless he wants to keep it secret, it isn't likely to happen.

Climbing A.I. may be implemented in DFhack, as with Digging A.I..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on August 04, 2013, 03:19:01 pm

Will modders be able to specify plans for a tree's shape and appearance in the RAWs?

for example, will we be able to specify that a tree has almost no leaves, or that its branches only form above a certain height, and to a certain length?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 04, 2013, 03:29:35 pm

Quote from: Baffler on August 04, 2013, 03:19:01 pm

Will modders be able to specify plans for a tree's shape and appearance in the RAWs?

for example, will we be able to specify that a tree has almost no leaves, or that its branches only form above a certain height, and to a certain length?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4454200#msg4454200

To be exact:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on August 01, 2013, 04:34:12 am

For trunk, branches, etc. just numbers to control things, no units, still subject to tweaking.  I'm still formalizing the exact root and cap params from my hard-coded test values, and that'll continue as I add more new critters.


[TRUNK_RATE:10]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_DENSITY:2]
[BRANCH_DENSITY:10]
[MAX_TRUNK_HEIGHT:5]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_RADIUS:1]
[BRANCH_RADIUS:2]
[TRUNK_BRANCHING:2]
[MAX_TRUNK_DIAMETER:3]
[TRUNK_WIDTH_RATE:200]


I don't remember if the twig density stuff is still hard-coded, but if it is, it'll be out by release time.


[STANDARD_TILE_NAMES] <-- there are tags like TRUNK_NAME, ROOT_NAME etc. if you don't want "mango trunk", "mango roots" etc.


Mango leaves/flowers/fruit (no seeds yet):


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango leaf:mango leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:ALL:1]
[GROWTH:FLOWERS]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:60000:119999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:4:0:1:60000:119999:2]
[GROWTH:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000] <-- this and the flower entry will probably be decreased when it matters more
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:120000:200000]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF_NO_CLOUD]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:'%':7:4:0:1:120000:200000:3]
   Format here is character on branch, item character, 3 for color, season timing, print priority (higher better).


To do autumn leaves, you use several growth prints.  This info carries over to picked/fallen items.  Here's a maple leaf:


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:maple leaf:maple leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:0:300000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:0:209999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:6:0:1:210000:239999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:1:240000:269999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:0:270000:300000:1]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF]


Notably, I'm still missing size information for the items.

Meadowsweet buds/flowers used in grass file:


[GROWTH:BUD]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet bud:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:140000:149999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:7:2:0:0:NONE]
[GROWTH:FLOWER]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:150000:250000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:7:0:1:150000:250000]


For item breath, where you'd normally put the breath weapon type after the material, you put.


UNDIRECTED_ITEM_CLOUD:<item type>:<subtype>
TRAILING_ITEM_FLOW:<item type>:<subtype>


The new type/subtype pair for plant growths is PLANT_GROWTH:<growth token>, with whatever material you want (generally the right one from the plant).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on August 05, 2013, 10:54:31 am

OK, so it's not coming yet, but I'm having so many happy daydreams about climbing invaders...

Making the only entrance to your buttoned fortress a tall barely-climbable block wall, with scores of arrow slits opposite.....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pirate Bob on August 05, 2013, 03:31:29 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on August 05, 2013, 10:54:31 am

OK, so it's not coming yet, but I'm having so many happy daydreams about climbing invaders...

Making the only entrance to your buttoned fortress a tall barely-climbable block wall, with scores of arrow slits opposite.....

That's an interesting point - adding climbing skill for invaders might actually make it easier to defend a fortress, as you could just pull up a drawbridge etc. to block your main entrance, leaving the poor gobbos trying to climb a sheer wall.  If the wall was tall enough, you might not even need to bother with the archers...

Maybe Toady has already thought of this sort of thing, and is waiting to add climbing at the same time he adds digging and some kind of AI to make "intelligent" decisions about the best way for invaders to assault a fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on August 05, 2013, 03:53:49 pm

If only they could blow up walls with dead pigs...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on August 05, 2013, 03:54:41 pm

Now that combat has been updated, can you give us any details (or equations/code) on how weapon-target interactions work?  Preferably also with some notion of how the numbers in the raws affect things.

You also mentioned that skulls are harder now than before versus blunt objects, does that apply to other things, like armor or other body parts?  Does this mean blunt weapons are now less effective than they previously were?
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 05, 2013, 05:18:26 pm

Quote from: theqmann on August 05, 2013, 03:54:41 pm

weapon-target interactions work?
 

???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on August 05, 2013, 05:36:26 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 05, 2013, 05:18:26 pm

Quote from: theqmann on August 05, 2013, 03:54:41 pm

weapon-target interactions work?
 

???

Like when a dwarf swings a bronze axe at another dwarf with a iron mail shirt, what happens?  How do the weapon & armor raws affect whether the defender gets limbs removed, or bones broken, or no damage at all?  Does it multiply the dwarf's strength times the weapon weight vs the armor material shear fracture strength times some constant?  What about against a bronze breastplate, or leather cloak, or silk cap (or 3 caps for that matter, since many items can have multiple copies worn simultaneously)?

People have done arena testing, but there's a lot of variability to that, with relatively few conclusions drawn (those being armor material levels (copper < iron < steel) and some weapon generalities (blunt is better for breaking bones, slicing better for chopping off limbs))

edited: typos

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on August 05, 2013, 05:48:35 pm

Iirc there shouldnt be much change except for some sturdier skulls. The most changes regard the pacing of making making it quicker and more versatile with reaction-moments.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: pedrousz on August 06, 2013, 07:54:29 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 04, 2013, 08:23:56 am

Quote from: Man In Zero G on August 04, 2013, 08:12:23 am

Quote from: ToadyOne

...there is a climbing skill now, and things like constructed block walls are harder to climb than constructed rough walls...

Please, please tell me- Does this mean invaders who potentially have the climbing skill can and will be scaling our otherwise impenetrable walls?
I am more excited about this possibility than just about everything else so far.

No, not yet, but Toady wants it to happen, too.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: LoSboccacc

so are we getting climbing invaders?

It's not likely to happen for this release, although I'm enthusiastic about having that kind of churning overrun feeling happen to you eventually.  There's a chance some part of it'll happen automatically when I look back at climbing AI before the release, but it's a coin toss.

Since then, Toady hasn't mentioned adding climbing AI for invaders. Unless he wants to keep it secret, it isn't likely to happen.

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama

With the inclusion of climbing, will this also mean including tools to assist with climbing, such as grappling hooks and stakes to nail down and tie rope to them? Will wells become access points to caves and caverns?

Nah, we had originally wanted to get to some of that, but it has all been pushed along, I think.  Do you mean wells in human towns?  I don't remember what they do now if there's a shallow layer.  Generally the layers are too far down.  Or do you mean a well you make in your fort?  We'll need climbing AI for that, which is either going to be non-existent or very shallow for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 06, 2013, 08:10:53 am

Maybe climbing invaders could be a post release update?   But it would be nice for dwarves to have some immunity whilst shooting from treetops, at least for a while.   :)

Unrelated question, anyone know if bandits will attack forts at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 06, 2013, 09:21:45 am

Thanks, pedrousz. I forgot that one. :)

Quote from: hermes on August 06, 2013, 08:10:53 am

Unrelated question, anyone know if bandits will attack forts at all?

Hm, I kind of doubt it's going to happen yet, but I don't recall if its been mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 06, 2013, 09:30:34 am

OK, thanks Knight Otu, and thanks for answering my previous questions too.  (from ages ago but I forgot to acknowledge your replies, sorry!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 06, 2013, 09:37:54 am

No problem. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on August 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

In the interest of doing silly things with RAWS what is the criteria that livestock are not given weapons?r

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 12:23:59 pm

Quote from: nighzmarquls on August 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

In the interest of doing silly things with RAWS what is the criteria that livestock are not given weapons?r

Livestock were being given weapons because other creatures were; now they aren't because they're livestock.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on August 07, 2013, 01:04:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 12:23:59 pm

Quote from: nighzmarquls on August 07, 2013, 12:22:53 pm

In the interest of doing silly things with RAWS what is the criteria that livestock are not given weapons?r

Livestock were being given weapons because other creatures were; now they aren't because they're livestock.

But what DECIDES they are not livestock?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 01:06:41 pm

Being citizens, I'm guessing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on August 07, 2013, 03:58:01 pm

When you program Dwarf Fortress, are you more concerned with making the code more comprehensible or with optimizing it? With such a huge game, I would imagine that using optimization techniques such as utilizing bitwise operators would make the game run a lot faster, but then again with the sheer size and complexity of the code it would also probably help to use a more memory intensive but easier to read style.

I hope my question makes sense, I'm not a programmer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 05:50:12 pm

Comprehensibility, almost surely. C++ compilers are really, really good at optimizing in that way nowadays.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on August 07, 2013, 06:43:55 pm

But with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, I would assume that every little bit (sorry) of optimization would add up to speed the game up considerably.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AutomataKittay on August 07, 2013, 06:50:56 pm

Quote from: MrWillsauce on August 07, 2013, 06:43:55 pm

But with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, I would assume that every little bit (sorry) of optimization would add up to speed the game up considerably.

Bitwise operation's relatively minor optimization move, and is pretty readable if you use the right constant to represent things. However, it doesn't works for everything. And well, really, algothirm matters far more with modern compilers ( which is very good at optimizing code itself but not the structure ).

Heck, with how much stuff's in the game, better optimization here and there aren't likely to do much, redesign and rewriting would probably do far better, but it'd take a few years just to do at this rate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McDepravity on August 07, 2013, 07:21:43 pm

Climbing invaders would be best thing in the release if we get it. We would finally be forced into putting some thoughts into defense design instead of relying on same old setups that worked back in 40d, and it would make me actually play the game again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on August 07, 2013, 07:53:04 pm

Bitwise operations were just an example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on August 07, 2013, 08:06:49 pm

It's simply good programming practice to think about comprehensibility always, and optimize when it's known to matter. Also, often with a little extra work, you can create a clean, comprehensible interface that's as fast as it can be.

I expect most optimization in dwarf fortress is effectively indexing a larger data set. That's not too hard to make comprehensible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on August 07, 2013, 09:39:35 pm

Are there an plans to include a specific "wield" key in adventure mode? Not that [p]utting and [r]emoving weapons correctly is that difficult, but it'd sometimes be nice if the act of wielding something felt more explicit ("wield sword in right hand" vs. "remove sword from backpack and thus wield in right hand").

Will it be possible to take control of living fortresses that the player didn't initially create, or is it limited to what the player has started and retired?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 09:56:18 pm

The first is kinda suggestiony, the second has been mentioned as being planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on August 07, 2013, 11:45:20 pm

I don't think Toady has said that the player will be able to control active generated mountainhomes; all I know is that he said that the player will be able to reclaim the ruins of fortresses that fell during world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 07, 2013, 11:48:42 pm

Oh, yeah, didn't really see the "living" there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on August 08, 2013, 12:54:57 am

No, I'm pretty sure reclaim applies to worldgen active forts too; it's just like reclaiming a retired fort, and that was mentioned in the dev log in the same sentence last time it was mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 08, 2013, 02:17:14 pm

Quote from: lue on August 07, 2013, 09:39:35 pm

Are there an plans to include a specific "wield" key in adventure mode? Not that [p]utting and [r]emoving weapons correctly is that difficult, but it'd sometimes be nice if the act of wielding something felt more explicit ("wield sword in right hand" vs. "remove sword from backpack and thus wield in right hand").

I think there are plans for being able to put away your weapon and take it back out again if things get tense for this release.  I do not know if there is a specific key for wielding or how it will work.  I do not have the time right now to hunt down the answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on August 08, 2013, 03:38:52 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on August 08, 2013, 02:17:14 pm

Quote from: lue on August 07, 2013, 09:39:35 pm

Are there an plans to include a specific "wield" key in adventure mode? Not that [p]utting and [r]emoving weapons correctly is that difficult, but it'd sometimes be nice if the act of wielding something felt more explicit ("wield sword in right hand" vs. "remove sword from backpack and thus wield in right hand").

I think there are plans for being able to put away your weapon and take it back out again if things get tense for this release.  I do not know if there is a specific key for wielding or how it will work.  I do not have the time right now to hunt down the answer.

There will be a specific key for quickly strapping your weapons. There won't be specific items for it like scabbards or sashes this time around:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

I haven't done the items yet.  For now I've just added a fast "strap" option that lets you put your items away and take them out with one keypress.  Later it'll be tied to objects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on August 08, 2013, 10:55:43 pm

I was actually thinking of something like making [w] be a combined [w]ear/[w]ield (with perhaps a second screen if the item you want to wear/wield, e.g. high boots or axes, can be worn/held by multiple body parts), but this strapping option sounds cool too. I've completely forgotten that weapons have scabbards and such in real life :P .

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on August 09, 2013, 01:42:43 am

I'm going to interpret the slow pace of devlogs lately as the quiet before a release because it makes me happy to think that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on August 09, 2013, 02:34:09 am

Are there going to be flavors for food like spicy, sweet, etc. with preferences for specific flavors?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 09, 2013, 04:43:35 am

Quote from: Dazenith on August 09, 2013, 02:34:09 am

Are there going to be flavors for food like spicy, sweet, etc. with preferences for specific flavors?

probably at some point in the future, but probably not with the next release: an overhaul of the farming and food system is planned, however nothing going in that direction has been mentioned as being worked on with the exception of the addition of some new things like fruit, which dont differ from plump helmets very much, concerning consumption, for the time being. once work on this gets done, realism will, as always, be the main guideline with deviations only when the gameplay profits from them.

please use 'limegreen' and not just 'green'. always read the first post of a thread before replying, that should be common courtesy. (not just you, im not trying to be mean, it just bothers me a lot)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on August 09, 2013, 05:07:35 am

Quote from: eux0r on August 09, 2013, 04:43:35 am

Quote from: Dazenith on August 09, 2013, 02:34:09 am

Are there going to be flavors for food like spicy, sweet, etc. with preferences for specific flavors?

probably at some point in the future, but probably not with the next release: an overhaul of the farming and food system is planned, however nothing going in that direction has been mentioned as being worked on with the exception of the addition of some new things like fruit, which dont differ from plump helmets very much, concerning consumption, for the time being. once work on this gets done, realism will, as always, be the main guideline with deviations only when the gameplay profits from them.

please use 'limegreen' and not just 'green'. always read the first post of a thread before replying, that should be common courtesy. (not just you, im not trying to be mean, it just bothers me a lot)

Thanks for the reply. I did actually read the first post a while back. The part that stuck with me was:

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

making questions green

Sorry, I'll use limegreen in future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on August 09, 2013, 02:36:49 pm

While reading an entry on Dwarf Fortress somewhere I came across a section stating that Dwarven civilizations are planned to be relatively similar compared to human civilizations. I'm guessing elves could go either way, what with them being depicted as forest-dwellers in some literature and masterful city-builders in others.

Now that we're getting closer to some mingling between cultures with the taverns and inns, how do you plan on making different civilizations of the same race unique?

I know we already have religions to some extent and the idea of different architecture has been mentioned for the final game, but I'm wondering if there will be any hint of a person's origin from their description (other than the part where it is explicitly stated) or gear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on August 09, 2013, 02:47:53 pm

there's skin and hair colour now, and i think facial features too. these are inherited among historical figure lineages, and picked from a subset of civ specific features for the generated populations

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 09, 2013, 02:53:44 pm

Darn this game never ceases to amaze me. Even with things I already new.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 09, 2013, 10:20:22 pm

Quote from: Dazenith on August 09, 2013, 02:34:09 am

Are there going to be flavors for food like spicy, sweet, etc. with preferences for specific flavors?

I actually already asked this (although that was probably a couple months ago) And I think he said that he didn't really like that idea quite as much as just specific preferences like it is now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 10, 2013, 06:43:26 am

It was less "didn't really like" and more "didn't quite know how to do it."

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:14:08 am

Quote from: mastahcheese

...

On a completley unrelated note:
My wife was wondering, Will various foods in the game have viewable flavors? Such as if certain food is sweet or spicy, and if dwarves would prefer different flavors, as opposed to/in addition to specific foods. Also, would they have allergies to particular foods? Or at least disliking a particular food, which would cause a minor bad thought?

...
Trying to come up with general taste categories for things like bananas seems like a nightmare, or at least something that I couldn't do at all myself.  I'm technically for having that sort of information, but have no idea how to do it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on August 10, 2013, 10:04:52 am

Someone remind me.... if we run a long fort (say 50 years), we have dwarves growing up and having families in the outside world. However, will they also learn some skills?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 10, 2013, 12:29:27 pm

Good question. I don't recall Toady mentioning that. It would make sense that the newly grown-up get some skills in that they get professions as necessary, but since a good portion of worldgen events aren't yet moved into actual play history continuation, it also wouldn't surprise me to hear that a certain number of historical figures will simply be peasants...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on August 11, 2013, 06:35:15 pm

Will tunnels ever reach player controlled fortresses? and if so how will they affect fortress layout if they are built after retiring a fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on August 12, 2013, 08:01:55 am

I don't think tunnels will be created post world gen this release. But they should be present in reclaimed world gen forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AbelFive on August 12, 2013, 09:22:59 pm

Yeah, okay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on August 12, 2013, 09:31:23 pm

I'll give you the same answer as that always gets:

It will come out when it comes out. Play the game while you wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 12, 2013, 09:44:49 pm

Quote from: AbelFive on August 12, 2013, 09:22:59 pm

So... when is the next release actually going to come out? It's been over a year now.

I'm gonna say... few minuets after its uploaded. Very very briefly before there a dev update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on August 13, 2013, 06:47:59 pm

Not sure if this is the right place, but was just on the IRC channels, and talked in dwarffortress on freenode.  We think there should be a sticky on the forums for IRC channels (dfhack that's on freenode, #dwarffortress that's on freenode and elsewhere)

Some people wants answers immediately, and seeing a place to jump on an IRC and post a question, would help tremendously for the game IMO (and others).

I could see why this would discourage forum posts, but... forum is like the new snail mail... maybe people can be asked to post the question first for future users, but still, an IRC thread would be tremendously helpful.  Especially if you have 1-3 hours of freetime that are stuck waiting for response.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 13, 2013, 08:15:35 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on August 13, 2013, 06:47:59 pm

Not sure if this is the right place, but was just on the IRC channels, and talked in dwarffortress on freenode.  We think there should be a sticky on the forums for IRC channels (dfhack that's on freenode, #dwarffortress that's on freenode and elsewhere)

Some people wants answers immediately, and seeing a place to jump on an IRC and post a question, would help tremendously for the game IMO (and others).

I could see why this would discourage forum posts, but... forum is like the new snail mail... maybe people can be asked to post the question first for future users, but still, an IRC thread would be tremendously helpful.  Especially if you have 1-3 hours of freetime that are stuck waiting for response.

There was, and ToadyOne removed it, as he didn't like being associated, however indirectly, with the IRC Channel with its its drama, and decorum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on August 13, 2013, 09:01:42 pm

fair enough.

Albeit the better part of my dislikes the decision, I see the wisdom.  Seems like toady wants a dedicated educated patient user base that is willing to use the forum vs quick answers and possibly quicker insults via irc

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 14, 2013, 01:13:19 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on August 12, 2013, 09:31:23 pm

I'll give you the same answer as that always gets:

It will come out when it comes out. Play the game while you wait.

I've heard that one too many times.
My high school starts in two weeks, damnit. And there isn't much for one like me to do (ie. in Adv. Mode).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on August 14, 2013, 07:45:09 am

With all the new opportunities for adventure in caverns, tunnels and dwarf/goblin sites, the practicalities of going below have become more important. Are you going to increase the adventurer's sight radius in (some of the) underground areas beyond the three tiles it is in 0.34.X?

Will NPCs (dwarves, for example) in the new version be handing out quests whose targets reside in the deep underground? Will there be bandit camps and lairs in the caverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deinos on August 14, 2013, 03:12:12 pm

Are we still on for the five or so levels of combat in adventure mode? I am SERIOUSLY hoping that horseplay and training fights can be in adventure mode, as a welcome counterpoint to the tooth-losing grimdarkery of regular DF adventure mode. Will there be a way to mod them in, at the very least? I love the idea of challenging NPCs to training duels, or even challenging retired PCs. I would dearly love for those modes of combat to remain in the update plan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pancakes on August 14, 2013, 04:45:26 pm

In adventurer mode, will wounds heal after waiting/sleeping for 8~ hours still, or will we be forced/able to visit a doctor for proper treatment?
Currently, the only way to heal certain injuries is to be bitten by a were-beast and wait to transform, and that is a bit too... strange, in my opinion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on August 14, 2013, 05:00:27 pm

About doctor, I think this has been discussed in a former DF talk or a future of the fortress reply. The reply is that "it will be done, but not yet".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 14, 2013, 07:57:26 pm

Quote from: devlog

some of the bandits will naturally arise as displaced village leaders that wouldn't mind getting back in place

Does this mean that the possibility for peaceful run-ins with bandits will make it in the next release? As in, if you just run into a dispossessed leader bandit, he might not automatically be hostile and instead offer you a quest (presumably to kill the incumbent leader/usurper of his old village)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on August 14, 2013, 08:16:34 pm

Sounds like an opportunity for a gang of Merry Men. Archers all :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 15, 2013, 01:28:32 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on August 14, 2013, 08:16:34 pm

Sounds like an opportunity for a gang of Merry Men. Archers all :D

Well, we will finally be able to give archers new arrows when they run out.  Not that I can remember the last time I had an archer run out of arrows before getting mowed down in an ambush.

And speaking of ambushes, with the new equipping allies system our allies will be more likely to survive an ambush, yes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 15, 2013, 09:58:06 am

Is climbing going to be tiring in the first implementation? If so, will the weight you are carrying be taken into consideration?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on August 15, 2013, 10:37:26 am

New version is sounding more badass with every update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on August 15, 2013, 03:31:55 pm

Quote from: DG on August 15, 2013, 09:58:06 am

Is climbing going to be tiring in the first implementation? If so, will the weight you are carrying be taken into consideration?

 Speaking of activities making you tired, how tiring is running going to be? Realistically, while people in good physical condition can "run" for several hours, it's very hard to sprint at full velocity for a long time. Are we going to see creatures passing out from exaustion from running? It would add a whole new dimention to persuing a target when you have the possibility of beating him in endurance instead of only speed.

Another running question:
 One interesting aspect of including "natural" abilities such as climbing and swimming as skills is that they can attach themselves to other core abilities, like strengh and endurance. It makes sense to increase strengh, stamina, etc by training your climbing or swimming skill, although as far as I can tell that doesn't happen right now with non-fighting skills. Is there a reason why running isn't getting the same treatment? It would make sense to have your endurance enhanced as you train your running "skill".  Although I could see how running is something that is much more attached to more general abilities such as strengh and agility rather than a specific skill...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 15, 2013, 03:38:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on August 15, 2013, 10:37:26 am

New version is sounding more badass with every update.

And by the looks of it, it's VERY close at this point, given the length of the last update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 15, 2013, 09:03:16 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 15, 2013, 03:38:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on August 15, 2013, 10:37:26 am

New version is sounding more badass with every update.

And by the looks of it, it's VERY close at this point, given the length of the last update.

Yeah, probably just a couple months left!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 16, 2013, 06:07:54 am

Quote from: Cruxador on August 15, 2013, 09:03:16 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 15, 2013, 03:38:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on August 15, 2013, 10:37:26 am

New version is sounding more badass with every update.

And by the looks of it, it's VERY close at this point, given the length of the last update.

Yeah, probably just a couple months left!

You're making me sad by saying this...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on August 16, 2013, 06:10:39 am

Dark, your avatar terrifies me. It is legit scary.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 16, 2013, 03:26:27 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on August 16, 2013, 06:10:39 am

Dark, your avatar terrifies me. It is legit scary.

Which one?
I have plenty in rotation. (all of which I try to keep in the same "Obama Hope" aesthetic)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on August 16, 2013, 05:59:32 pm

Adventure mode bandits and night creatures and so forth are going to follow actual patrol routes now instead of teleporting to your location to ambush you, right? Are these patrol routes through the wilderness realized all the way down into the gameplay view? Will we be able to sit hidden among the leaves and watch a shadow crone or a goblin squadron make its way through the underbrush, without ever noticing us up there? Have the old travel mode ambushes been replaced by the game pulling you out of fast travel whenever your character observes something interesting (tracks, creatures, etc.) in the surroundings?

It sounds like the local feuds and raids will be great. They provide more playable content for the release, in a way that also helps connect the player with the dynamics of the world. Being able to implement the feature with only a small amount of extra groundwork makes it even better. I'm looking forward to strolling down the main street of some desert town, righting wrongs for A Fistful of Dwarfbucks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 16, 2013, 07:08:53 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on August 16, 2013, 05:59:32 pm

It sounds like the local feuds and raids will be great. They provide more playable content for the release, in a way that also helps connect the player with the dynamics of the world. Being able to implement the feature with only a small amount of extra groundwork makes it even better. I'm looking forward to strolling down the main street of some desert town, righting wrongs for A Fistful of Dwarfbucks.

I believe you mean A Fistful of Pigtail-Socks

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on August 17, 2013, 12:07:33 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 16, 2013, 03:26:27 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on August 16, 2013, 06:10:39 am

Dark, your avatar terrifies me. It is legit scary.

Which one?
I have plenty in rotation. (all of which I try to keep in the same "Obama Hope" aesthetic)

When I saw his post, yours was the long-necked-engineer guy. Currently it's a pony.
Both work. Both frighten me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on August 17, 2013, 12:28:44 am

Quote from: flabort on August 17, 2013, 12:07:33 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 16, 2013, 03:26:27 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on August 16, 2013, 06:10:39 am

Dark, your avatar terrifies me. It is legit scary.

Which one?
I have plenty in rotation. (all of which I try to keep in the same "Obama Hope" aesthetic)

When I saw his post, yours was the long-necked-engineer guy. Currently it's a pony.
Both work. Both frighten me.

At the time it was dark-blue/light-blue-mane pony. I don't know/care for the names.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on August 17, 2013, 04:31:35 am

Feel the power of propaganda ponies/Engineers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on August 17, 2013, 01:18:23 pm

Thou shalt not turn this thread into a pony thread! Go back to the shadow from whence ye came!

Sorry. Anyway, will refugees and bandits be able to settle in caves the way kobolds currently do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 17, 2013, 01:23:04 pm

Are the goblins' trolls an exception, or will more exotic pets occur in all site maps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 18, 2013, 01:40:39 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 17, 2013, 01:23:04 pm

Are the goblins' trolls an exception, or will more exotic pets occur in all site maps?

Aren't trolls more of stupid slaves than pets?  They do have "can_learn" after all.  Then again, I would like to know if we will see the various trained animals in elf and human sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 18, 2013, 06:45:09 am

Quote from: Rockphed on August 18, 2013, 01:40:39 am

Aren't trolls more of stupid slaves than pets?  They do have "can_learn" after all.

Realistically, yeah, but as far as the game is concerned right now, they're pets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 18, 2013, 01:06:45 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on August 17, 2013, 01:23:04 pm

Are the goblins' trolls an exception, or will more exotic pets occur in all site maps?

They're not that exotic. How do you define exotic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on August 18, 2013, 01:08:53 pm

Lacking COMMON_DOMESTIC, since those are the only ones appearing right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 20, 2013, 10:18:51 pm

Pumped about the devlogs. Looks like things are really coming along quite nicely.

And the Bay12 team is getting recognized!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 20, 2013, 11:01:14 pm

In the not so distant future: "Oh my god! Tarn! Zack! It really is you! Can you sign my socks!?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 20, 2013, 11:01:54 pm

Quote from: DG on August 20, 2013, 11:01:14 pm

In the not so distant future: "Oh my god! Tarn! Zack! It really is you! Can you sign my socks!?"

"Sign my cloaks!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on August 20, 2013, 11:24:09 pm

Sign my studded leather thong?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 21, 2013, 02:06:44 am

While I like bandits and bogeymen, I think that this release is going to actually feel like adventure mode works.  Like we can actually have adventures that don't devolve into kill quests.  We can help a bickering village defeat their rivals.  We can liberate towns from goblin oppression.  We can go into the goblin tower and kill the demon running the show.  We might even be able to chase the demons back into whatever pit they rose out of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Adrian on August 21, 2013, 02:32:06 am

Will the bickering between villages be noticeable at all in Dwarf Mode?
Like refugees from occupied towns or something?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 21, 2013, 08:29:41 am

Quote from: Adrian on August 21, 2013, 02:32:06 am

Will the bickering between villages be noticeable at all in Dwarf Mode?
Like refugees from occupied towns or something?

Most likely, not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AJC on August 21, 2013, 03:50:39 pm

Quote from: Ribs on August 15, 2013, 03:31:55 pm

Another running question:
 One interesting aspect of including "natural" abilities such as climbing and swimming as skills is that they can attach themselves to other core abilities, like strengh and endurance. It makes sense to increase strengh, stamina, etc by training your climbing or swimming skill, although as far as I can tell that doesn't happen right now with non-fighting skills. Is there a reason why running isn't getting the same treatment? It would make sense to have your endurance enhanced as you train your running "skill".  Although I could see how running is something that is much more attached to more general abilities such as strengh and agility rather than a specific skill...

the last time something like that was done we got the infamous super carps and other big fishys of 40d that could tear apart dwarfs with ease i doubt we'll get stat increases that linked to actions like that anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on August 21, 2013, 03:59:12 pm

Fish had automatic legendary swimming skill, and thus automatic Hulk strength.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 21, 2013, 06:02:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on August 21, 2013, 03:59:12 pm

Fish had automatic legendary swimming skill, and thus automatic Hulk strength.

Rather, they gained swimming skill, which increases strength along with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: AJC on August 21, 2013, 10:19:49 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 21, 2013, 06:02:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on August 21, 2013, 03:59:12 pm

Fish had automatic legendary swimming skill, and thus automatic Hulk strength.

Rather, they gained swimming skill, which increases strength along with it.

also not helping matters was the fact carp bites then had 6 to 3 times the power as a unarmed dwarf punch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on August 22, 2013, 12:33:10 am

Really, swimming shouldn't be an applicable skill for aquatic creatures, any more than walking/running is for land creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 22, 2013, 01:46:55 am

Quote from: AJC on August 21, 2013, 10:19:49 pm

Quote from: Putnam on August 21, 2013, 06:02:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on August 21, 2013, 03:59:12 pm

Fish had automatic legendary swimming skill, and thus automatic Hulk strength.

Rather, they gained swimming skill, which increases strength along with it.

also not helping matters was the fact carp bites then had 6 to 3 times the power as a unarmed dwarf punch.

Due to their gigantic strength stats which is due to their swimming skill gains...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on August 22, 2013, 02:59:31 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 22, 2013, 01:46:55 am

...

Due to their gigantic strength stats which is due to their swimming skill gains...

I never made that link, but now that I know that, I can feel today is going to be a good day.

Ha!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on August 22, 2013, 10:23:45 am

Quote from: AJC on August 21, 2013, 03:50:39 pm

Quote from: Ribs on August 15, 2013, 03:31:55 pm

Another running question:
 One interesting aspect of including "natural" abilities such as climbing and swimming as skills is that they can attach themselves to other core abilities, like strengh and endurance. It makes sense to increase strengh, stamina, etc by training your climbing or swimming skill, although as far as I can tell that doesn't happen right now with non-fighting skills. Is there a reason why running isn't getting the same treatment? It would make sense to have your endurance enhanced as you train your running "skill".  Although I could see how running is something that is much more attached to more general abilities such as strengh and agility rather than a specific skill...

the last time something like that was done we got the infamous super carps and other big fishys of 40d that could tear apart dwarfs with ease i doubt we'll get stat increases that linked to actions like that anymore.

Yeah, stat increases in earlier versions used to be very imbalanced and unreasonable, with weird things like dwarves with legendary social/managerial skills somehow becoming super strong and things like that. At least in terms of combat skills, I think we have a much more reasonable system now. Even when I get my adventurer to become a +5 legendary wrestler he's still a long way to go in order to maximise his strengh/agility in the current version. So I don't think it's so crazy to get stat increases linked to actions as long as the relationship between them is reasonably balanced. Fish could even have a fixed swimming skill, which would make sense.

And while I'll agree that there is a strong case for considering "running" as a natural skill and therefore not needed to be included in the skill list, I think the act of running could be linked to the development of certain stats. I don't remember if Toady ever said that he would ever link non-fighting skills with stat increase anymore, but it's not very unlikely considering the way they tend to reintroduce old ideas that they had to put aside for lack of time to develop them properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on August 22, 2013, 10:47:05 am

As memory serves, all skills raise at least one attribute.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on August 22, 2013, 06:16:54 pm

It's a little silly, but:

The description for Dralthas indicates that they feed on the tops of tower-cap mushrooms. Now that tower-caps are large multi-tile objects, but the Draltha's are still single-tile creatures (like everything else), will the description for Dralthas change?

I suppose this taps into the greater question of how far the abstraction of large/small creatures goes, but I'm just honestly curious about the answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 22, 2013, 06:36:31 pm

Or maybe they now will only eat the top of the tower caps, as (perhaps?) now that's possible? They could eat the ones right above them I guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on August 22, 2013, 09:00:58 pm

It's the same problem as giraffes, so likely any solution will wait for multi-tile animals to solve both the same way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 22, 2013, 11:45:07 pm

Maybe they eat the top of tower caps that haven't grown too tall yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 23, 2013, 12:37:01 am

Quote from: DG on August 22, 2013, 11:45:07 pm

Maybe they eat the top of tower caps that haven't grown too tall yet?

From an ecological standpoint, that would make sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on August 23, 2013, 03:03:31 am

I had imagined they'd stand/sit on their hind legs with the trunk of their body reaching up into the mushroom's gills. Kinda like how giant sloths are sometimes depicted reaching up into trees.

Will we eventually be able to learn or teach skills or secrets to/from NPCs via talking to them? Such as learning a secret orally from someone who knows it, and then passing it on to a student?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 23, 2013, 06:42:56 am

I imagine it something like this:
D = Dralthas
I = Tower-cap trunk
T =Tower-cap top.

Seen from the side:

Code: [Select]

T
ID
The vertically, diagonal top of the towercap is within reach of the Draltha, so maybe they will eat this way until multi tiled creatures (besides the wagon) are a reality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on August 23, 2013, 11:34:27 am

Quote from: LordBaal on August 23, 2013, 06:42:56 am

I imagine it something like this:
D = Dralthas
I = Tower-cap trunk
T =Tower-cap top.

Seen from the side:

Code: [Select]

T
ID
The vertically, diagonal top of the towercap is within reach of the Draltha, so maybe they will eat this way until multi tiled creatures (besides the wagon) are a reality.

There's also this confinguration:
        D
__________
        |
I mean the tops will be solid right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on August 23, 2013, 11:51:02 am

What, they stand on top, eat it, then fall down? That seems silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 23, 2013, 12:30:09 pm

Wolverine is right, eating from the top would be silly, what the heck would a draltha be doing over a tower-cap?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on August 23, 2013, 12:32:03 pm

Maybe browsing won't destroy the tile, just change it to "stripped".

Alternatively, give the browsing ability a "reach" of several tiles and just say that the neck sticks out of the actual tile region, but on average, most of the Draltha is in the square with the D.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on August 23, 2013, 12:45:58 pm

Some long neck ability could be made to work, but I think it's unlikely that Toady would put the time into it for this release. Multi-tile creatures are the better but harder solution, and Toady's always been one to prefer those.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pie Maker on August 24, 2013, 05:10:32 am

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, so
Considering that we are going to see several changes and fixes to combat in next version, are overpowered bolts and arrows also going to be fixed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on August 24, 2013, 05:15:59 am

Quote from: Pie Maker on August 24, 2013, 05:10:32 am

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, so
Considering that we are going to see several changes and fixes to combat in next version, are overpowered bolts and arrows also going to be fixed?

those are linked to multi-material items and i dont remember anything being done on that. any other fix would only be temporary and toady is probably rather postponing the issue until it fixes itself once he gets to m-m items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on August 24, 2013, 05:48:45 pm

you guys no that most creatures don't actually eat, right? just adventurers and dwarfmode dwarves.
there's no real logistical problem here unless that ever gets changed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on August 24, 2013, 05:52:48 pm

Quote from: greenwatering on August 24, 2013, 05:48:45 pm

you guys no that most creatures don't actually eat, right? just adventurers and dwarfmode dwarves.
there's no real logistical problem here unless that ever gets changed.

And grazers. But other than that...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 24, 2013, 06:09:49 pm

Quote from: Pie Maker on August 24, 2013, 05:10:32 am

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, so
Considering that we are going to see several changes and fixes to combat in next version, are overpowered bolts and arrows also going to be fixed?

He hasn't talked about changing bolts or weapons in general. So, no intentional fixes have been made or probably major changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: greenwatering on August 25, 2013, 09:48:40 pm

Quote from: flabort on August 24, 2013, 05:52:48 pm

Quote from: greenwatering on August 24, 2013, 05:48:45 pm

you guys no that most creatures don't actually eat, right? just adventurers and dwarfmode dwarves.
there's no real logistical problem here unless that ever gets changed.

And grazers. But other than that...

yeah, so dralthas are grazers. they don't eat tower caps at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on August 26, 2013, 06:46:18 am

But.. but...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on August 26, 2013, 05:57:50 pm

Man, I can't wait for this to come out.

Will you be able to bribe people for various reasons this release?
If not, what would it likely be included with on your plans?

I'm guessing it'd be around the tavern stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on August 26, 2013, 06:21:32 pm

starting situations

!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on August 27, 2013, 02:43:50 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 26, 2013, 06:21:32 pm

starting situations

!!!

Just for adventure, though. It's only a slight elaboration on the current "be part of a civ or be an outsider" thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on August 27, 2013, 05:00:49 am

Quote from: Toady One

You can also start as a crony for one of the town lords if you want

Can you retire your fort and then start an adventurer who is a crony of your forts leader?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on August 27, 2013, 06:39:14 am

Quote from: DG on August 27, 2013, 05:00:49 am

Quote from: Toady One

You can also start as a crony for one of the town lords if you want

Can you retire your fort and then start an adventurer who is a crony of your forts leader?

Quote from: Toady One

Adjacent human/gob sites now squabble between themselves and each other in world gen

This seems to indicate that only human and goblin sites will be involved in local power struggles. Perhaps Toady doesn't find petty squabbling culturally appropriate for dwarves and elves. My understanding that goblin occupations were only for human sites turned out to be incorrect, though, so I might be wrong about this too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on August 27, 2013, 07:53:31 am

Quote from: Cruxador on August 27, 2013, 02:43:50 am

Quote from: Putnam on August 26, 2013, 06:21:32 pm

starting situations

!!!

Just for adventure, though. It's only a slight elaboration on the current "be part of a civ or be an outsider" thing.

But what an elaboration!  This new release is going to kick an unbelievable amount of butt.  This is such a cool feature in itself, I cannot think of any other game that allows  this kind of freedom in starting... Skyrim appropriately modded may allow something similar?  But not really to the same degree nor with the infinite variety of outcomes.  (Or, in my case, the singular outcome of adventurer death by boar).

The next release is huge and I can only imagine the effort required to tie all the ends together as Toady is doing now.  Whilst adding new features.  I think I might start donating for this release now to spread payments out over a few months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on August 27, 2013, 02:22:44 pm

Will companions now be able to find you if you lost them? Some change on their AI?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on August 27, 2013, 04:00:08 pm

Ooh, good question, especially given the new tracking information. I don't think he's addressed it yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on August 27, 2013, 04:46:18 pm

Quote from: monk12 on August 27, 2013, 04:00:08 pm

Ooh, good question, especially given the new tracking information. I don't think he's addressed it yet.

Generals return to their responsibilities after being chased out of their camp. Maybe something similar happens with all entities? They try to return to where they're supposed to be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 27, 2013, 08:50:43 pm

I dont think ToadyOne has spoken about the AI being able to use the tracking information.

I think that would mean moving forward on the Justice Arc, which he's paused on to get this release closer to, actual release.

So, mostly likely they can't.  I wouldnt be surprised that generals /just/ know where their encampments is. They dont 'track' their way back or 'find' their way back. I wouldnt be surprise when the AI can use tracking information, or more reliant on it, that AI  Agents can get lost. Including generals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on August 31, 2013, 04:38:05 pm

The AI will use tracking information. From the Bay 12 report of August 2012 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=114174.0):

Quote from: Toady One

Yep, next up is tracking information and having goblins use it to hunt you down.  Once you've got some ways to evade them, we'll move back to getting these new features tied into the overall arc of the hero role, from hearing rumors of war to some villain exposition, since before any release is possible it'll be important to understand what is going on and where you can go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on August 31, 2013, 07:59:51 pm

Quote from: Trif on August 31, 2013, 04:38:05 pm

The AI will use tracking information. From the Bay 12 report of August 2012 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=114174.0):

Quote from: Toady One

Yep, next up is tracking information and having goblins use it to hunt you down.  Once you've got some ways to evade them, we'll move back to getting these new features tied into the overall arc of the hero role, from hearing rumors of war to some villain exposition, since before any release is possible it'll be important to understand what is going on and where you can go.

And he stopped moving forward with the Hero Role and Justice Arc.  The Gobbos are the only one that does invasions at this point too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on September 01, 2013, 04:05:01 am

Was hoping to have the next fotf reply up around now, but it'll be a few days late.  I should still have the B12 report up in bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 01, 2013, 05:51:56 am

Mid-November?
Jesus damn Christ.

And I thought that waiting for Team Fortress 2 or Terraria updates took long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on September 01, 2013, 07:18:23 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 01, 2013, 05:51:56 am

Mid-November?
Jesus damn Christ.

And I thought that waiting for Team Fortress 2 or Terraria updates took long.

It's hard to say this and not sound like a fanboi, especially considering my signature, but I don't think you have a strong understanding of exactly how tightly tied together all this stuff is.  Toady probably spends half of his coding time (or more) simply making sure what he adds doesn't blatantly break anything else.

When he works on A, he has to work on B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, R, W, and Z in order to prevent problems.  When he works on B due to working on A, he has to do the same thing.

DF isn't a simple game, it's a world emulator.  What Toady is doing is probably fairly close to early AI system design in complexity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 01, 2013, 10:55:59 am

I know, but damn.
I've been regularly following the thing since, what, November 2012?

Anyway, I know that it is complex, and I can see why the updates take so long.
But still, by that point Toady probably surpassed everyone's guesstimates (from one point or the other).

Also, mid-November, IIRC, is not even the actual date of release (but rather the point at which Toady expects to be finished with the notes for this update).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on September 01, 2013, 12:25:09 pm

I think I started following DF sometime around 2008, maybe earlier. It demands a lot of dedication from both players and creator, but it gives a lot in return. I'm quite happy to be watching the process and see the players apply their twisted imaginations and !!SCIENCE!! to every new feature as they come.

I don't think I'd want to mess with the formula so far. If this was Toady's day job, where he's paid to be creative, he'd probably be able to devote more time and get updates out quicker and with more polish, but on the negative side, predetermined deadlines and executive meddling could have the opposite effect, leaving us with buggy rush jobs. Er, buggier than what we've already got, and probably in much less entertaining ways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on September 01, 2013, 12:27:11 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on September 01, 2013, 12:25:09 pm

If this was Toady's day job

Isn't it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 01, 2013, 02:19:19 pm

As long as there are people who pay him enough to help him doing his job without having to think to anything else, that's fine.

I find this comforting that he is able to give us a deadline. He never did it before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on September 01, 2013, 02:35:50 pm

Do you have a job other than working on this for us? Does that mean your income is or isn't totally reliant on our donations?
(I'd better donate...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on September 01, 2013, 02:36:35 pm

Quote from: flabort on September 01, 2013, 02:35:50 pm

Do you have a job other than working on this for us? Does that mean your income is or isn't totally reliant on our donations?
(I'd better donate...)

No, he works on DF full-time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on September 01, 2013, 02:49:52 pm

Shoot, I really do need to see if I can at least buy him at least one more lunch, then.
Having a little trouble locating my card, though. Suggestions where to look?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2013, 02:54:10 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 01, 2013, 10:55:59 am

I know, but damn.
I've been regularly following the thing since, what, November 2012?

Anyway, I know that it is complex, and I can see why the updates take so long.
But still, by that point Toady probably surpassed everyone's guesstimates (from one point or the other).

Also, mid-November, IIRC, is not even the actual date of release (but rather the point at which Toady expects to be finished with the notes for this update).

I must say that's really ridiculous. November? Seriously?

As it is now, are we going to have backwards compatibility for bringing over old saves of Dwarf Fortress, or is that going to be completely broken?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 01, 2013, 02:56:36 pm

It's broken.

Also, what do you mean ridiculous?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quarterblue on September 01, 2013, 03:13:18 pm

Ridiculously optimistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 01, 2013, 03:16:04 pm

Quote from: Toady One on September 01, 2013, 04:05:01 am

Was hoping to have the next fotf reply up around now, but it'll be a few days late.  I should still have the B12 report up in bit.

You Betrayed us Toady You betrayed us!!!

TOADY ONE!!! *Shakes fist into the heavens*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 01, 2013, 05:10:43 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 01, 2013, 02:54:10 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 01, 2013, 10:55:59 am

I know, but damn.
I've been regularly following the thing since, what, November 2012?

Anyway, I know that it is complex, and I can see why the updates take so long.
But still, by that point Toady probably surpassed everyone's guesstimates (from one point or the other).

Also, mid-November, IIRC, is not even the actual date of release (but rather the point at which Toady expects to be finished with the notes for this update).

I must say that's really ridiculous. November? Seriously?

As it is now, are we going to have backwards compatibility for bringing over old saves of Dwarf Fortress, or is that going to be completely broken?

As far as I know Toady has never bothered with backward compatibility for the major releases (?). Besides, would you really want to wait another month or more just to use an old and probably buggy save when you can just regen? ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thomar on September 01, 2013, 09:10:45 pm

What happens if the player loses a fight by being knocked unconscious before he can yield? Will the attacker beat the player until his skull caves in? Will the player wake up in an alleyway later in the day with bruises and a splitting headache?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 01, 2013, 09:31:59 pm

Quote from: monk12 on August 01, 2013, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on August 01, 2013, 08:41:28 am

And so DF2013 continues to be the most delayed Dwarf Fortress version to date.
Wonder if we'll get it this year or should be start talking about DF2014?

According to my 40d folder's release notes (pretty sure that was the last 40d version, wiki suggests it to be so)

Quote

Release notes for 0.28.181.40d (September 6, 2008)

The subsequent version was the April 1st DF2010 release. Wait period of 572 days.

Latest current version of DF was released on June 4 2012, aka 423 days since last release. Thus, we have 149 days before this becomes the longest interversion period of DF history. That means Toady has to release before December 28th to come in below that threshold.

All I want for Christmas is a new version of DF!

Oooh, not too far off. Especially if there's a ton of nasty game-breaking bugs at the end of his current notes.

Quote from: Inarius on September 01, 2013, 02:19:19 pm

As long as there are people who pay him enough to help him doing his job without having to think to anything else, that's fine.

I find this comforting that he is able to give us a deadline. He never did it before.

Deadline is probably too strong of a word; more like a "guesstimate" with the understanding that when we get to that point he'll know exactly what must be done before a release (as opposed to "work through the notes and see where we stand" like we've been doing.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 01, 2013, 10:41:37 pm

Quote from: Thomar on September 01, 2013, 09:10:45 pm

What happens if the player loses a fight by being knocked unconscious before he can yield? Will the attacker beat the player until his skull caves in? Will the player wake up in an alleyway later in the day with bruises and a splitting headache?

You'll want to color that lime green if you want Toady to answer that. It makes it stand out so Toady will notice it. And it is an interesting question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 02, 2013, 12:06:04 am

Worst case scenario, we'll be having a DF2014 instead.
I PROBABLY can wait, but school's starting and I genuinely hoped to play this release before that. :(

Now I'm kinda sad, but it's not like I can do anything with that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Atomic Chicken on September 02, 2013, 02:49:57 am

How will fluid motion affect climbing? For instance, if you attempt to climb up a wall while a stream of water is falling on you, are you likely to be pushed off?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 02, 2013, 03:04:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 02, 2013, 12:06:04 am

Now I'm kinda sad, but it's not like I can do anything with that.

Turn your sadness into money and buy Toady a sandwich. By donating, I guess.

I suppose I should finally donate after all these years. As soon as I have a bank account, I guess...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 02, 2013, 04:41:15 am

Don't delay. Donating to Toady makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 02, 2013, 04:44:46 am

Quote from: DG on September 02, 2013, 04:41:15 am

Don't delay. Donating to Toady makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Unless you are a woman that is a bold faced LIE!

Mind you I have a feeling no one will understand my logic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 02, 2013, 07:29:09 am

It also enlarger your member by X more inches! But wait, there's more. Donate now, and you'll get an extra inch, but remember, you have to call before this commercial is over. Go now, the phones are waiting!

(sorry, couldn't resist).

I myself haven't donated because my situation is... complicated... If it where upon me I would donate a hole week of my salary, every year, from here to eternity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 02, 2013, 12:15:00 pm

I just don't have any electronic funds to transfer :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on September 02, 2013, 12:17:25 pm

There's always donating by mail. Which... is what I'm gonna hafta do after 3 failed attempts to try electronically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 02, 2013, 01:12:48 pm

Aww c'mon you just made Wolverine Immortal and Days of Future Past, sure you have a few millions lying around don't you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 02, 2013, 08:10:20 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 02, 2013, 04:44:46 am

Quote from: DG on September 02, 2013, 04:41:15 am

Don't delay. Donating to Toady makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Unless you are a woman that is a bold faced LIE!

Mind you I have a feeling no one will understand my logic.

Women are the fair sex, Men are the opposite sex? Still need to correct for homosexuals and etc

Quote from: flabort on September 02, 2013, 12:17:25 pm

There's always donating by mail. Which... is what I'm gonna hafta do after 3 failed attempts to try electronically.

Honestly, I prefer to donate by mail just because it rubs me the wrong way if a portion of my donation goes to not-the-Toad

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on September 02, 2013, 08:30:26 pm

Quote from: monk12 on September 02, 2013, 08:10:20 pm

Quote from: flabort on September 02, 2013, 12:17:25 pm

There's always donating by mail. Which... is what I'm gonna hafta do after 3 failed attempts to try electronically.

Honestly, I prefer to donate by mail just because it rubs me the wrong way if a portion of my donation goes to not-the-Toad

Don't you still have to pay about a quarter on the envelope and stamps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 02, 2013, 08:41:41 pm

Quote from: O11O1 on September 02, 2013, 08:30:26 pm

Quote from: monk12 on September 02, 2013, 08:10:20 pm

Quote from: flabort on September 02, 2013, 12:17:25 pm

There's always donating by mail. Which... is what I'm gonna hafta do after 3 failed attempts to try electronically.

Honestly, I prefer to donate by mail just because it rubs me the wrong way if a portion of my donation goes to not-the-Toad

Don't you still have to pay about a quarter on the envelope and stamps?

AFAIK Paypal takes thirty cents plus 3% of the donation amount, so it's already a significantly larger chunk than the post office is taking, and it scales. Convenience is all well and good, but I'm willing to wait for my check crawl across the continent if it sends Toady an extra sandwich's worth of change.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 03, 2013, 01:59:36 am

Considering I'm european, is sending euros by mail a solution ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on September 03, 2013, 06:41:28 am

Quote from: Inarius on September 03, 2013, 01:59:36 am

Considering I'm european, is sending euros by mail a solution ?

Bear in mind he may have to pay a commission to convert it, and there is the risk that Postman Plod will pocket the cash.

Send gold instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 03, 2013, 07:20:38 am

I would suggest always sending check instead of cash in the mail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 03, 2013, 08:13:24 am

He can keep the euros, if someday he visits Europe :)

I'll see how can I do this, but I would really help, for the next release I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ggobs on September 03, 2013, 07:03:51 pm

Toady,

In the next release, will units be able to climb--assuming they have some climbing skill--out of water when there's no ramps? Will it depend on level of water?

edit found an answer:

"I'm well into climbing now. A critter can grab hold of various surfaces, including branches above them, most walls to their side and ledges below them."

Dev Log 10/14/2012

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Darchitect on September 03, 2013, 09:02:37 pm

Just got into adventure mode for the first time this weekend. Really loving it. Couple questions:

Will the adventure mode interface get an update? Like seeing more than 5 items when we look at a tile? Or being able to 'G'et multiple items from the floor? If so, how would that work in regards to movement time?

Also, will we ever be able to eat and drink from the fast travel map?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 03, 2013, 10:05:56 pm

Quote from: Darchitect on September 03, 2013, 09:02:37 pm

Just got into adventure mode for the first time this weekend. Really loving it. Couple questions:

Will the adventure mode interface get an update? Like seeing more than 5 items when we look at a tile? Or being able to 'G'et multiple items from the floor? If so, how would that work in regards to movement time?

Also, will we ever be able to eat and drink from the fast travel map?

About the interface question: not anytime soon, or at least not until we get a reason to have more items in display. As for the grabbing, you can always macro your way from there.

Auto-feed sounds pretty irregular to me, I find it logical to make a stop in order to eat and drink; maybe that's not the intended way, even if you carry a handful of waterskins and 90 horseshoe crab prepared brains, but feels better than being able to cross the map without breaking a sweat. Maybe it might happen as soon as we become able to travel in a caravan, given that your rations could be eaten on the go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Thanks to Knight Otu, Putnam, Heph, pedrousz, AutomataKittay, King Mir, Rockphed, Ribs, eux0r, MrWillsauce, mastahcheese, Inarius, MrWiggles, Cruxador, Mopsy, Manveru Taurënér, Valtam and anybody I missed for helping out this time!  As usual, if you don't find your question below, it was very likely addressed right after you asked it by one of the aforementioned forumgoers.  Sorry for the delay.  Things have been reasonably hectic, and'll probably only really quiet down after this Friday.

Quote

Quote from: DwarfOfTheLand

Will we be able to take on the role of one of our citizens from Fort Mode?

Quote from: lue

Will it be possible to take control of living fortresses that the player didn't initially create, or is it limited to what the player has started and retired?

(I added the bold) I've put these two questions together, since it is sort of the same flavor of decision.  The answer is currently no to both questions, but it's not a hard no, just a time no.  It isn't really a big deal to me if people want to take control of any historical figure or a fortress that already has the monarch in it, and we've discussed this on DF Talk and elsewhere quite a bit I think.  It more or less comes down to wanting some things to do appropriate to whatever position you are taking over, and having some world gen switches so that you can stop yourself from taking over historical figures etc. if you know it would inevitably prove to be a temptation you want to avoid for that world.

Quote from: Areyar

So are you suggesting fortressmode fruitpickers in future might need to carry ladder tools around which they then depoly/construct as upwardstairs ?

He he he, yeah, that was the suggestion in my remark, though I'm not sure how it'll turn out.  Seems dwarfy enough.

Quote from: tryrar

If you play a fort long enough, would a deep site spawn and become associated with your fort, and if so, would a tunnel likewise spawn connecting the sites, or have you not gotten far with how deep/hill sites interact with player forts/forts that are reclaimed?

I certainly haven't gotten that far for this release.  There'll be deep sites associated to your fort directly later on, though we don't have specifics sorted out.  It'll likely involve start scenarios that indicate how likely it is to happen, and that decision will likely be mutable.  Long ago you had the ability to connect a road that would sort of go off the screen forever to the left, and we'd still like to get you formally hooked into the road network at some point, especially now that you'll be able to reclaim world gen forts that already have roads up.

Quote from: Cruxador

Are redwoods planned to be in/special? If so what's going on there?

I like redwoods and grew up near some we visited from time to time.  Highwoods are probably in because of those, before we knew what we were going to do with trees.  I haven't put in redwoods yet, since I've been focused on fruit trees this time, but I suspect they'll still have to be dwarfed by the "magical" highwood trees in the high "savagery" areas.

Quote from: Japa

Will we be getting generated fotress screenshots, or will those be a surprise?

Probably a surprise, though more of a "they work!" surprise than a "wow!" surprise.  Maybe not even that sometimes.

Quote from: Bloax

Is the Adventure mode questlog going to be made slightly more useful?
There's already a key (m) that's supposed to show information, but instead of something minorly useful like a log of the quest giver's words, it only shows the name and race of the target.

A log of the questgiver's words would at least provide you with a description of your target, because something like "Kill Atir Ragthroat | dwarf" doesn't provide you with information of what Atir really is.
Is he a werewolf? Is he a vampire? Or something else due to mods? Who knows, certainly not you if you forgot it! Which is very likely with a lot of quests.. And this is where a quest log should come in, after all.

but alas, all the quest log says to you only to kill Atir Ragthroat, a dwarf.
The problem comes in when you forget that Atir Ragthroat is a master vampire due to you playing with a mod that can do that, and that master vampires are actually very lethal.
Now, if only you had logged that little detail in your quest log, you'd know exactly who's who. But currently you don't, and that's a bit silly.

The quest log won't really be recognizable.  I never tried to finish what was there before, and now that's just as well.  I don't want to commit to things since a few of the notes could still be dropped, but hopefully it'll be more interesting.  There are things like rumors and incidents that need to be catalogued, for example, and your reputations and affiliations are more important.  Individual quests are also slightly less important at this point, if you are working against a village for example, though there are still specific critters people want killed.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

How easy will it be to climb log walls made from wood, or walls made from metal bars? If walls made from metal bars are like a sheet of metal, would it be possible to climb them (in-game) at all, or would they act as smooth rock walls?

I'm not sure what metal bar walls are meant to be, especially since we have vertical bars, but they are the easy kind to climb.  A wall made from any kind of "blocks" is much more difficult to climb -- logs and rough stone walls are treated the same way, as easier climbs.  Which one would be more difficult would probably depend on nuances of size and arrangement we don't have.  Natural walls that are smoothed aren't climbable right now, but that'll probably change for certain creatures (all pillar-shaped walls are climbable now).

Quote from: theqmann

Now that combat has been updated, can you give us any details (or equations/code) on how weapon-target interactions work?  Preferably also with some notion of how the numbers in the raws affect things.

You also mentioned that skulls are harder now than before versus blunt objects, does that apply to other things, like armor or other body parts?  Does this mean blunt weapons are now less effective than they previously were?

...

Like when a dwarf swings a bronze axe at another dwarf with a iron mail shirt, what happens?  How do the weapon & armor raws affect whether the defender gets limbs removed, or bones broken, or no damage at all?  Does it multiply the dwarf's strength times the weapon weight vs the armor material shear fracture strength times some constant?  What about against a bronze breastplate, or leather cloak, or silk cap (or 3 caps for that matter, since many items can have multiple copies worn simultaneously)?

I haven't done much with raw numbers, aside from the new attack speeds and the skull change.  I don't know if I want to do large code dumps here in FotF about non-release stuff.  The material rules of combat haven't changed as far as I remember, and there are a ton of equations and functions mushed together, using the numbers in the raws.  Those equations and functions have issues, and I haven't tried to address them this time.

Quote from: MrWillsauce

When you program Dwarf Fortress, are you more concerned with making the code more comprehensible or with optimizing it? With such a huge game, I would imagine that using optimization techniques such as utilizing bitwise operators would make the game run a lot faster, but then again with the sheer size and complexity of the code it would also probably help to use a more memory intensive but easier to read style.

It is important that it be readable, especially when I don't see portions of the code for years at a time sometimes now.  That said, a lot of stuff like bitwise operators are still used all the time -- preprocessor defines make most of those plain text.  The larger algorithmic changes yield me the best results, and that doesn't really change readability.  The main sort of restructuring I'd probably need to do now involves things I don't really have a handle on regarding arranging things in properly sized and placed chunks in memory for the cache or whatever, and I'm not sure what that would do to readability.  Some of it probably isn't practical at this point, and it isn't my area of expertise, if I have one.  As far as I know, the micro-optimizations that used to make code totally unreadable are often done by the compiler now, thankfully, though I don't know enough about it to say anything with certainty.

Quote from: Shinotsa

Now that we're getting closer to some mingling between cultures with the taverns and inns, how do you plan on making different civilizations of the same race unique?

I know we already have religions to some extent and the idea of different architecture has been mentioned for the final game, but I'm wondering if there will be any hint of a person's origin from their description (other than the part where it is explicitly stated) or gear.

The equipment and physical appearance are somewhat culture specific already, but there's quite a bit more that can be done.  I don't really have a timeline or specific plans here.  The things that don't come out of trade/items/genetics are...  well, lots of stuff, I guess, and the human entity in particular is probably going to end up as a total mush of "variable" for many of the tags.  Their languages are all the same, which is odd, but changing that has some annoyances we've discussed, and things like differing ethics and value systems are simple enough but would have limited in-game effect until we add more stuff.  It might be around the time to start doing that, though.  For the non-humans, I'm not really sure.  We haven't thought very much about same-race diversity there.  If humans are any guide, there's quite a bit of wiggle room.  Dwarves might be the hardest to wiggle, since they have the most game/interface associated with them, but that also makes it the most interesting avenue to explore.  When we start setting up specific fort types and so on with start scenarios, we should have more food for thought there anyway, if anything, since there will be sub-cultural differences (if you are a religious sect fort, say), and this might guide us on entity differences somewhat.

Quote from: Mopsy

With all the new opportunities for adventure in caverns, tunnels and dwarf/goblin sites, the practicalities of going below have become more important. Are you going to increase the adventurer's sight radius in (some of the) underground areas beyond the three tiles it is in 0.34.X?

Will NPCs (dwarves, for example) in the new version be handing out quests whose targets reside in the deep underground? Will there be bandit camps and lairs in the caverns?

We added an eerie light to certain areas we felt it belonged, but most of the underground is still dark.  I haven't felt a need to increase it yet (of course, when we get to actual lighting, it'll be much greater when you have a light).  If it comes up during the ensuing testing, it might be made higher to match a lantern or torch, but probably not.

We don't have any new quests placed deep down right now -- there have never been proper sites down there until the addition of the deep dwarf sites, and those aren't so questy.  There need to be more things at some point, but it isn't that way yet.

Quote from: Deinos

Are we still on for the five or so levels of combat in adventure mode? I am SERIOUSLY hoping that horseplay and training fights can be in adventure mode, as a welcome counterpoint to the tooth-losing grimdarkery of regular DF adventure mode. Will there be a way to mod them in, at the very least? I love the idea of challenging NPCs to training duels, or even challenging retired PCs. I would dearly love for those modes of combat to remain in the update plan.

It's still on, but I never had plans to formalize training for example in adventure mode for this release.  Those lower levels are necessary to keep dwarf mode working.  They'll make it to adventure mode sometime.

Quote from: monk12

Does this mean that the possibility for peaceful run-ins with bandits will make it in the next release? As in, if you just run into a dispossessed leader bandit, he might not automatically be hostile and instead offer you a quest (presumably to kill the incumbent leader/usurper of his old village)

Yeah, I think that's quite likely at this point, though robbery and murder will still be the common initial interactions.

Quote from: DG

Is climbing going to be tiring in the first implementation? If so, will the weight you are carrying be taken into consideration?

Energy use for all forms of movement can be set by gait in the raws now, though I think right now it only causes exertion in vanilla to climb quickly.  If the weight slows you down, you'll exert more energy when using an energy-exerting gait, but all of that could afford some betterment.

Quote from: Ribs

Speaking of activities making you tired, how tiring is running going to be? Realistically, while people in good physical condition can "run" for several hours, it's very hard to sprint at full velocity for a long time. Are we going to see creatures passing out from exaustion from running? It would add a whole new dimention to persuing a target when you have the possibility of beating him in endurance instead of only speed.

Another running question:
One interesting aspect of including "natural" abilities such as climbing and swimming as skills is that they can attach themselves to other core abilities, like strengh and endurance. It makes sense to increase strengh, stamina, etc by training your climbing or swimming skill, although as far as I can tell that doesn't happen right now with non-fighting skills. Is there a reason why running isn't getting the same treatment? It would make sense to have your endurance enhanced as you train your running "skill".  Although I could see how running is something that is much more attached to more general abilities such as strengh and agility rather than a specific skill...

Yeah, you get tired very quickly sprinting at this point, and running also makes you tired over time.  I think lower endurance characters also get tired when jogging, though I don't recall exactly how that balances out.

It's because it doesn't have an associated skill that the game doesn't train atts.  Now that climbing has a skill, it builds atts (presumably, since that happens automatically whenever skills are checked in the right way).  Running will probably just be given a skill sometime.  I don't have a particular reason why it isn't that way -- presumably track athletes are learning a specific action/whatever and not just building their endurance/muscles, so it seems like a fine thing to me.  The original Armok had a very cumbersome body familiarity skill in preparation for soul-swapping stuff which never happened, and that sort of thing'll probably be done in some way or another eventually.  A running skill would make even more sense at that time, for souls that have never experienced legs.

Quote from: Mopsy

Adventure mode bandits and night creatures and so forth are going to follow actual patrol routes now instead of teleporting to your location to ambush you, right? Are these patrol routes through the wilderness realized all the way down into the gameplay view? Will we be able to sit hidden among the leaves and watch a shadow crone or a goblin squadron make its way through the underbrush, without ever noticing us up there? Have the old travel mode ambushes been replaced by the game pulling you out of fast travel whenever your character observes something interesting (tracks, creatures, etc.) in the surroundings?

Yeah, they move around and never teleport (unless there is a weird bug or something, or unless they are on a site which gets obstructions when it realizes).  The patrol routes are realized down to the gameplay level, so you can watch them go by.  It'd be very rare, unless you are being tracked, say, in which case you'll see them walk on -- they don't currently know how to track at the gameplay level though, so they'll probably start shuffling around or leave on their old route once they catch up to where they wanted to go.  I still have a few notes related to this, so it might be improved slightly before the release.  The game doesn't always pull you out of fast travel -- I've abstracted tracks so you can interact with them while traveling for instance.

Quote from: HugoLuman

will refugees and bandits be able to settle in caves the way kobolds currently do?

I haven't gotten to the in-play other-civs-reclaim part yet, so we'll see.  I'm going to do whatever is fastest at this point, I think, for that part.

Quote from: Knight Otu

Are the goblins' trolls an exception, or will more exotic pets occur in all site maps?

The elf sites certainly had an animal party going on.

Quote from: Adrian

Will the bickering between villages be noticeable at all in Dwarf Mode?
Like refugees from occupied towns or something?

Aside from some merchant talk, I don't think it'll come up until we add better support for multiracial fort stuff, which are currently planned for dwarf mode taverns/inns.  Those aren't that far off in the grand scheme of things (that is, they are vying for the next slot after job priorities/bug fixes).

Quote from: DS

The description for Dralthas indicates that they feed on the tops of tower-cap mushrooms. Now that tower-caps are large multi-tile objects, but the Draltha's are still single-tile creatures (like everything else), will the description for Dralthas change?

Things always get ahead of other things.  King Mir brought up giraffes and Eric Blank mentioned giant sloths.  That's pretty much the eventual idea, and our original sketch had one feeding in a very giant slothish depiction.  When we have browsing creatures properly handled, however that's going to work, then things'll be okay.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will we eventually be able to learn or teach skills or secrets to/from NPCs via talking to them? Such as learning a secret orally from someone who knows it, and then passing it on to a student?

I suspect, yeah, though the current plan is for skill training to be a longer term process in general (whether or not that has you do something with a different character during the time is an open question).  You can currently pass along rumor/incident information, which can spread around, so we have it in baby form now.

Quote from: mastahcheese

Will you be able to bribe people for various reasons this release?
If not, what would it likely be included with on your plans?

We don't have anything like that now.  It seems like something that'd happen during the Thief role stuff, as a way to avoid the consequences of the justice process at first, or to get by a watchperson.  It would be amusing in fort mode as well, though I have no idea how that'd play out.

Quote from: thvaz

Will companions now be able to find you if you lost them? Some change on their AI?

Groups have the ability to track now, but at this point they don't specifically know how to follow you once they are offloaded, since your "army" doesn't have an initial controller.  That makes them a little brain-dead when they haven't formally split from you.  Once we have guide and insurrection meetings expiring properly, before the release, I'll see if something can be done naturally at that point.

Quote from: Thomar

What happens if the player loses a fight by being knocked unconscious before he can yield? Will the attacker beat the player until his skull caves in? Will the player wake up in an alleyway later in the day with bruises and a splitting headache?

What happens depends on what level of lethality the opponent considers themselves to be in, and if they want to flee.  If you are in a lethal fight and don't get a chance to yield, your opponent will continue striking you if they've got nothing better to do.  If you at any level from "non-lethal" and below, your opponent will stop hitting you even if you don't yield.  So fist fights should be mostly survivable unless you escalate.

Quote from: Atomic Chicken

How will fluid motion affect climbing? For instance, if you attempt to climb up a wall while a stream of water is falling on you, are you likely to be pushed off?

The chances are the same as they have been.  I'm not sure what the difference is in general -- trying to hold your feet as you stand in such a way that a rush of water doesn't bowl you over vs. holding your grasp on a wall.  It would really depend on the nature of the wall, your grip and whether you could grasp with your legs etc., so it might be best to just leave it for now, or throw in a few bonuses.  It's all the same right now, and you can be pushed.

Quote from: Darchitect

Also, will we ever be able to eat and drink from the fast travel map?

As Valtam mentioned, it's sort of cool to have to stop and take little breaks and so on, from a camp perspective.  It can also handle any food effects better if the units are loaded.  That said, there may be some room to cut down on annoyingness if it starts to get problematic.  I'd have to think about "magical" interaction effects carefully though.  It's hard to do certain things without having the map/units loaded and available in their proper setting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DS on September 05, 2013, 03:37:36 am

Quote from: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Quote from: DS

The description for Dralthas indicates that they feed on the tops of tower-cap mushrooms. Now that tower-caps are large multi-tile objects, but the Draltha's are still single-tile creatures (like everything else), will the description for Dralthas change?

Things always get ahead of other things.  King Mir brought up giraffes and Eric Blank mentioned giant sloths.  That's pretty much the eventual idea, and our original sketch had one feeding in a very giant slothish depiction.  When we have browsing creatures properly handled, however that's going to work, then things'll be okay.

Thanks for the answers Toady!

The next release seems awesome, as always.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Belvita on September 05, 2013, 06:16:12 am

With the new multi-tile trees, will the physics cause the entire tree to fall down on the dwarf due to a missing base, or will the woodcutter cut branches/small bits off at a time? Basically, like cave-ins with removed supports, except it's a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 05, 2013, 10:30:13 am

Thanks, Toady! :) Eerie light, reworked quest log, more types of animals at least for elves and goblins apparently...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Thanks for the answers!

Does the [CAVE_ADAPT] tag currently (or in the coming release) give the dwarves a longer line of sight underground than other creatures, or is the three-tile limit underground universally imposed in adventure mode but not in fortress mode?

Is there a designated source of the Eerie light, or not? Is it a quality we could give to a tree or something underground? Or is it to do with the Hidden Fun Stuff?

How do you expect the maximum map height to be affected by the trees on the map? Will the magical highwoods be able to grow more than 15 z-levels, for example?

Are kobold sites and caves still on the to-do list for the release, or have they been pushed back?

Are you interested in doing a kind of "Mod Spotlight" for Dwarf Fortress as is done with Kerbal Space Program? An example format can be found on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content.php/212-KSP-Weekly-September-03-2013

Finally, just because.... November? Seriously?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 05, 2013, 01:13:37 pm

Quote from: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Quote from: thvaz

Will companions now be able to find you if you lost them? Some change on their AI?

Groups have the ability to track now, but at this point they don't specifically know how to follow you once they are offloaded, since your "army" doesn't have an initial controller.  That makes them a little brain-dead when they haven't formally split from you.  Once we have guide and insurrection meetings expiring properly, before the release, I'll see if something can be done naturally at that point.

Will companions we lose (and survive) at the very least turn up somewhere predictable, like their hometown, or generate a path for themselves back towards their home? Currently they just turn up in the darndest places, such as a town you'd never visited before. Or not at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on September 05, 2013, 01:51:51 pm

To make the non-human races more diverse, would things like making different elves be associated with a different element depending on where they live or what has happened in history? Like Sea elves or city elves?

Unless this goes to this suggestion forum instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 05, 2013, 02:38:52 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Finally, just because.... November? Seriously?

I'm not sure what answer you want here? He already said November, and his dev process is very transparent so it's not like he's going to answer with "well I took this long on this, and this long on that," or anything like that. Nobody likes long development cycles, but it's not like he's unaware of that fact, and he doesn't like them himself.

I guess I'm saying your comment is a bit rude.

Quote from: Zavvnao on September 05, 2013, 01:51:51 pm

To make the non-human races more diverse, would things like making different elves be associated with a different element depending on where they live or what has happened in history? Like Sea elves or city elves?

Unless this goes to this suggestion forum instead.

Cultural variations are planned for the humans (Elves have animals, Dwarves have steel and mountains, Humans have cultural diversity) but I don't think he's addressed the possibility of spheres being directly associated with different societies, unless someone else has better information.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 05, 2013, 02:50:59 pm

Interestingly, Humans actually evolved to run very far. We might not be the fastest, but our endurance is among the best in the animal kingdom. Our ancestors seriously just chased things that ran faster than them until they found them passed out from exhaustion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 05, 2013, 03:02:20 pm

Quote from: DS on September 05, 2013, 03:37:36 am

Thanks for the answers Toady!

The next release seems awesome, as always.

Seconded and seconded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on September 05, 2013, 03:10:44 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 05, 2013, 02:50:59 pm

Interestingly, Humans actually evolved to run very far. We might not be the best, but our endurance is among the best in the animal kingdom. Our ancestors seriously just chased things that ran faster than them until they found them passed out from exhaustion.

Slightly more specifically, Humans evolved to run for long distances in very hot areas without overheating nearly as much as other animals. It wasn't just exhaustion, it was heat exhaustion that sometimes literally killed the prey we were hunting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 05, 2013, 03:25:21 pm

Neat

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 05, 2013, 03:32:45 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Thanks for the answers!
...
Are kobold sites and caves still on the to-do list for the release, or have they been pushed back?
...

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 10, 2013, 02:09:58 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 10, 2013, 01:07:41 pm

With the bug-fixing to deal with dwarves idling out for specific jobs, are we going to be able to get dwarves to clean up areas better now?

Do you think we will be seeing kobold sites and improved caves in the coming release, or is this going to go straight for download when the bugs and trees are sorted out?

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

Have you done any work on Kobolds yet and what ish do you have planned for them in short?

Nah, they are the largest yawning void left, probably.  Playing Kobold Quest is my only suggestion.  There may be other notes elsewhere, but I'm not sure where the twists and turns will bring us.

I'd say this points towards it definitely being planned to go in bar unforeseen complications :>

I doubt much has changed since this was asked the last time, especially with November now being the best guesstimate of when things will starting to shape up for the end bugfixing stuff. If this changes as we draw nearer to that date I'm sure Toady will let u know in the devlog/monthly update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on September 05, 2013, 04:41:12 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Is there a designated source of the Eerie light, or not? Is it a quality we could give to a tree or something underground? Or is it to do with the Hidden Fun Stuff?

since he has not reworked the whole lighting code there wont be any kind of light sources, because right now, there isnt much of a lighting code at all. so no glowing mushroom-trees yet. the naming indicates its the lighting state of the circus tent just like "light" when you use k on a tile above ground or "dark" when you k in a tunnel.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

How do you expect the maximum map height to be affected by the trees on the map? Will the magical highwoods be able to grow more than 15 z-levels, for example?

i assume they will be handled like constructed towers and therefore trees will most likely be able to grow more than 15 z-levels. some technical complications might come up when a tree tries to instantaneously grow higher than what the current map height is but that depends on the exact code in place for adjusting map-height to the terrain. technicaly the solid tiles of a tree should be no different than those of a mountain or tower.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Are you interested in doing a kind of "Mod Spotlight" for Dwarf Fortress as is done with Kerbal Space Program? An example format can be found on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content.php/212-KSP-Weekly-September-03-2013

i doubt toady will do anything like that. while he stated that he is in favour of modding in general he (and a part of the comunity) also probably wont want to take time from working on the actual game. also toady dislikes burdening himself with promises that might be difficult to keep (at least i got that impression, maybe he even said something like that himself at some point, i dont remember).

as for threetoe... i have no idea.

edit: as always, typos, misspellings and grammatical errors

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on September 05, 2013, 06:37:59 pm

Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 05, 2013, 07:27:53 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on September 05, 2013, 03:10:44 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 05, 2013, 02:50:59 pm

Interestingly, Humans actually evolved to run very far. We might not be the best, but our endurance is among the best in the animal kingdom. Our ancestors seriously just chased things that ran faster than them until they found them passed out from exhaustion.

Slightly more specifically, Humans evolved to run for long distances in very hot areas without overheating nearly as much as other animals. It wasn't just exhaustion, it was heat exhaustion that sometimes literally killed the prey we were hunting.

also following tracks. calmly jogging after an animal for days was our earliest hunting strategy

but i'd say that's something elves and dwarves would share with us from a common ancestor

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on September 05, 2013, 08:38:20 pm

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler on September 05, 2013, 07:27:53 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on September 05, 2013, 03:10:44 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 05, 2013, 02:50:59 pm

Interestingly, Humans actually evolved to run very far. We might not be the best, but our endurance is among the best in the animal kingdom. Our ancestors seriously just chased things that ran faster than them until they found them passed out from exhaustion.

Slightly more specifically, Humans evolved to run for long distances in very hot areas without overheating nearly as much as other animals. It wasn't just exhaustion, it was heat exhaustion that sometimes literally killed the prey we were hunting.

also following tracks. calmly jogging after an animal for days was our earliest hunting strategy

but i'd say that's something elves and dwarves would share with us from a common ancestor

Elves? Yes. Dwarves? Doubt it, they're to stubby.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

Re. micro-optimization, there are actually arguments out there (I don't remember any of the details because I'm not wildly interested in optimization, I prefer to pick it up where code is already robust and there's an obvious inefficiency that can be corrected without altering the robustness; so take this with a grain of salt...) that most optimizations that go lower into the details than reworking the overall structure are the most likely thing to stop the compiler from optimizing even better than you can, hence that most programmer optimization actually makes the result worse. On the other hand, there are arguments that modularity is opposed to optimization since it's hard to optimize the details of functions that are neatly split up into pieces and spread across various components of the program. And, mind you, that's talking about optimizing human-readable code that the compiler has flexibility in turning into the optimal binary code that accomplishes what the human-readable code says to accomplish... There are people out there who still write libraries in assembler and boast of benchmarking them against the most lightweight and efficient C libraries and proving their assembler-based library is several times faster, but I don't really know how they get that good at that sort of programming -- they're probably the same people who can literally calculate hundreds of digits of pi in their heads and stuff like that.

That digression aside... Toady, you mention bug fixes and job priorities in discussion of future focus. When job priorities are revamped, will we have any level of control over changing those priorities, or will the priorities only be improved in weight and/or in the algorithms used? At risk of being suggestiony, I think right now simply letting us change the priority system's weights so things like cleaning don't have to always be apparently lower priority than idling would be sufficient to alleviate most of the complaints I've heard about the current priority system. Relatedly, "On Break" seems like a misnomer for "dwarf is dead to the world for the better part of the month, out of nowhere, entirely beyond the player's control and inevitably at the one time when you need that dwarf for something; until further notice act as though you will never see this dwarf again." Will breaks be revised in any way along with job priorities, either to make them more workable for the player or perhaps to increase their inherent benefits (or make there be some inherent benefits if there currently are none)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Askot Bokbondeler on September 05, 2013, 09:36:28 pm

Quote from: EvilTwin on September 05, 2013, 08:38:20 pm

Elves? Yes. Dwarves? Doubt it, they're to stubby.

perseverance is more important than speed, dwarves are stubborn

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 06, 2013, 12:34:23 am

Quote from: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Quote from: Cruxador

Are redwoods planned to be in/special? If so what's going on there?

I like redwoods and grew up near some we visited from time to time.  Highwoods are probably in because of those, before we knew what we were going to do with trees.  I haven't put in redwoods yet, since I've been focused on fruit trees this time, but I suspect they'll still have to be dwarfed by the "magical" highwood trees in the high "savagery" areas.

I sort of feel like making something bigger than maximum-sized redwoods (as in, the ones people come from around the world to see) is a bit silly. I mean, a redwood is already really impressive, going beyond that is sort of like what science fiction does often where it just makes numbers higher for no particular reason. While questions of physics can be waved aside by magic I feel like they really don't need to be - unless a tree is something that's special as a singular entity, like Yggdrasil, and needs to be big enough to hold a world or a city or something, a redwood is pretty much the right size for being big.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 06, 2013, 01:03:30 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

Will breaks be revised in any way along with job priorities, either to make them more workable for the player or perhaps to increase their inherent benefits (or make there be some inherent benefits if there currently are none)?

Breaks are Jobs. So when Job Priority are revisited, how Dorfs perform breaks will probably go through another revision. The last change to breaks, included trying to make dorfs do more personal stuff, like buying and eating what not while on break. I think this also came with dorfs being more flexiable with their needing to go eat and drink while on the job.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on September 06, 2013, 06:16:49 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

That digression aside... Toady, you mention bug fixes and job priorities in discussion of future focus. When job priorities are revamped, will we have any level of control over changing those priorities, or will the priorities only be improved in weight and/or in the algorithms used? At risk of being suggestiony, I think right now simply letting us change the priority system's weights so things like cleaning don't have to always be apparently lower priority than idling would be sufficient to alleviate most of the complaints I've heard about the current priority system.

Yes, that's the plan.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Req86, JOB PRIORITIZING, (Future): Right now, there is a fixed order in which units decide to do the different types of jobs. This could be changed for a given unit (or for the whole fortress).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 10ebbor10 on September 06, 2013, 07:39:07 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on September 05, 2013, 10:47:48 am

Does the [CAVE_ADAPT] tag currently (or in the coming release) give the dwarves a longer line of sight underground than other creatures, or is the three-tile limit underground universally imposed in adventure mode but not in fortress mode?

IIRC, sight rules only apply to adventure mode. Fortress mode dwarves have a sphere of vision instead. (Makes it more resource efficient).

Quote

Is there a designated source of the Eerie light, or not? Is it a quality we could give to a tree or something underground? Or is it to do with the Hidden Fun Stuff?

The eerie light is just a standard background lightning, as no work has been done on lightning code.

Quote

Are you interested in doing a kind of "Mod Spotlight" for Dwarf Fortress as is done with Kerbal Space Program? An example format can be found on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content.php/212-KSP-Weekly-September-03-2013

I'm going to guess no. KSP has an entire team, meaning that there's always someone free to do this without interfering in development time. Seems like a good idea for a community project though.

Quote

Finally, just because.... November? Seriously?

I agree november is a silly name for the tenth month of the year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 06, 2013, 08:20:42 am

Quote from: 10ebbor10 on September 06, 2013, 07:39:07 am

Quote

Finally, just because.... November? Seriously?

I agree november is a silly name for the tenth month of the year.

Agreed. Curse those egotistical emperors and their need to put themselved on the calendars...  ( it's eleventh, btw ;) )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 06, 2013, 09:16:51 am

November didn't used to be the nine month of the year?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 06, 2013, 01:43:57 pm

Ninth before January and February were added, yeah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar , if it's of any real interest - although it didn't have anything to do with the roman emperors for whom July and August are named, which is what I assumed. I knew two were added, just not which two. Ah well, I suppose that'll just serve as a reminder to actually check things before saying them, from time to time  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on September 06, 2013, 02:44:15 pm

No wonder population growth was so slow back then- nine months would have been much more time with fewer months in the year!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 06, 2013, 02:46:01 pm

Doesn't January mean something about something called jupernalia or something like that? Or I have my brain fried by the heat again. Also getting a flu.

Today, will we ever see an artifact for time measure, like the goblets, toys and music instruments we have now? Will different civs carry different calendars with different lengths of the year? Or will it remain as something more abstracted, under the control of no one.

Also, now that towns are fleshing out, do you plan on anything like annual or season fairs or something to occur? Or I am too much ahead of time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: theqmann on September 06, 2013, 02:53:49 pm

Quote from: Trif on September 06, 2013, 06:16:49 am

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

That digression aside... Toady, you mention bug fixes and job priorities in discussion of future focus. When job priorities are revamped, will we have any level of control over changing those priorities, or will the priorities only be improved in weight and/or in the algorithms used? At risk of being suggestiony, I think right now simply letting us change the priority system's weights so things like cleaning don't have to always be apparently lower priority than idling would be sufficient to alleviate most of the complaints I've heard about the current priority system.

Yes, that's the plan.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Req86, JOB PRIORITIZING, (Future): Right now, there is a fixed order in which units decide to do the different types of jobs. This could be changed for a given unit (or for the whole fortress).

What about just making a RAW file with every job in it and the order they appear in the file determines  their priority?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 06, 2013, 03:56:23 pm

Quote from: theqmann on September 06, 2013, 02:53:49 pm

What about just making a RAW file with every job in it and the order they appear in the file determines  their priority?

That wouldn't allow priority changes on the fly, like if you really need that one lever pulled.

Quote from: LordBaal on September 06, 2013, 02:46:01 pm

Also, now that towns are fleshing out, do you plan on anything like annual or season fairs or something to occur? Or I am too much ahead of time?

We'll get there eventually. Fairs are specifically mentioned on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) under World Economy, and Toady also talks about them a bit in DF Talk 11.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 06, 2013, 08:08:50 pm

Changing the last-in, first-out tendencies of jobs might help some.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on September 06, 2013, 08:39:44 pm

Wait, do jobs use a queue or a stack?

With the new job priorities, will that mean you can give *orders* in adventure mode to your allies?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 06, 2013, 08:45:42 pm

Currently, jobs use a stack. Which, as far as dumb systems go, is probably the best one for jobs, since it means jobs you frantically designate in an emergency situation are done first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on September 07, 2013, 02:26:20 pm

Quote from: Japa on September 06, 2013, 08:45:42 pm

Currently, jobs use a stack. Which, as far as dumb systems go, is probably the best one for jobs, since it means jobs you frantically designate in an emergency situation are done first.

Usually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 07, 2013, 02:31:31 pm

If you make an "emergency lever pull" burrow and put an idle dorf in it during an emergency, it should be done post-haste.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 07, 2013, 04:43:37 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on September 06, 2013, 02:44:15 pm

No wonder population growth was so slow back then- nine months would have been much more time with fewer months in the year!

From what that wiki article mentioned, it seems they had days that weren't part of any month but were still there, so it seems they weren't that much longer.

Quote from: LordBaal on September 06, 2013, 02:46:01 pm

Doesn't January mean something about something called jupernalia or something like that? Or I have my brain fried by the heat again. Also getting a flu.

January (Januarius) supposedly is named after Janus. I suppose it makes sense that a god of "beginnings and transitions" would have the month that starts off a new year attributed to him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 07, 2013, 05:15:43 pm

March started the new year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on September 08, 2013, 01:11:33 am

Quote from: Jheral on September 06, 2013, 01:43:57 pm

Ninth before January and February were added, yeah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar , if it's of any real interest - although it didn't have anything to do with the roman emperors for whom July and August are named, which is what I assumed. I knew two were added, just not which two. Ah well, I suppose that'll just serve as a reminder to actually check things before saying them, from time to time  :)

Huh. Could've sworn it was July and August that were the new ones.

Also, on the subject of optimization: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.” — Donald Knuth (ie. working code first, optimization later)

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

[snip]...and proving their assembler-based library is several times faster, but I don't really know how they get that good at that sort of programming

It's not too difficult once you start. The worst part is how much more verbose you have to be about the simplest things, and that's not too bad. (Admittedly I've only ever worked with "small" assembly languages, such as 6502 and whatever chip's in my Arduino Uno. I'm not quite desperate enough yet to get into x86_64 :P)

Think of it like embarking in an evil biome instead of a more sane one: death is swifter and more horrendous, but the essentials of fortressing remain. Death is a program crashing and fortressing is programming. Writing assembler in as few instructions or clock cycles as possible is subjecting yourself to some great self-imposed challenge while in a terrifying biome. And in either situation, having a working fortress or program is way more rewarding when it's done in a terrifying biome during a bare-bones challenge than when you've done it in the most benign of biomes having started the journey well-stocked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 08, 2013, 11:21:58 am

Toady on Twitter:

Quote

I have seen large trees fall.

 :o I hope that fall was recorded! Also did it make a Sound?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 08, 2013, 11:26:18 am

Toady has a twitter?
:O

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on September 08, 2013, 11:29:40 am

Check the main page. It's the link that says @Bay12Games.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Geldrin on September 08, 2013, 11:48:13 am

Okay, so here's my question:

Regarding the new moving army feature, how does the large-scale pathfinding will work? Will the game consider the local terrain features too, or it will just ignore all obstacles (and distances) like merchants do in the current version?
I would like to know will it be possible to build 'The Great Dwarven Wall' with connecting walls between adjacent sites, and locking the fun outside the dwarven territory.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry if I asked a previously answered question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on September 08, 2013, 12:04:49 pm

Quote from: Geldrin on September 08, 2013, 11:48:13 am

Okay, so here's my question:

Regarding the new moving army feature, how does the large-scale pathfinding will work? Will the game consider the local terrain features too, or it will just ignore all obstacles (and distances) like merchants do in the current version?
I would like to know will it be possible to build 'The Great Dwarven Wall' with connecting walls between adjacent sites, and locking the fun outside the dwarven territory.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry if I asked a previously answered question.

Armies do not path through player made fortresses. Not yet at least. So you could build that "great wall" simply by repeatedly embarking and abandoning adjacent fortresses.

And to my knowledge local terrain features do not influence troop movements, because that would be too resource intensive. Local terrain features aren't loaded unless the player is there. That is why player made fortresses need special considerations and why armies avoid them for now.

EDIT: Large scale terrain should work though. Armies on an island would be unable to reach another island for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 08, 2013, 12:25:35 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on September 08, 2013, 11:29:40 am

Check the main page. It's the link that says @Bay12Games.

Well damn, how long has that been there?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on September 08, 2013, 12:41:08 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on September 08, 2013, 12:25:35 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on September 08, 2013, 11:29:40 am

Check the main page. It's the link that says @Bay12Games.

Well damn, how long has that been there?

6 days to a week. The oldest entry is from the 2nd September.

Toady will we have trees (oasis) at places that are particularly dry but have Aquivers (like the Tree of Ténéré)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dapper Clapper on September 08, 2013, 01:12:56 pm

Now that there are less-than-lethal forms of combat, will adventurers be given quests along the lines of "Beat the snot out of my annoying neighbor", or "A drunkard is terrorizing the locals, go teach him a lesson"? Perhaps even "Capture the outlaw alive, and return him here so he may be brought to justice"?  Also, what different levels of combat are planned for the next release?

edit:

On the topic of non-lethal combat, will there be weapons designed specifically for non-lethal altercations? For example, a sap or blackjack meant to render an opponent unconscious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on September 08, 2013, 03:02:09 pm

Quote from: Jheral on September 07, 2013, 04:43:37 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on September 06, 2013, 02:44:15 pm

No wonder population growth was so slow back then- nine months would have been much more time with fewer months in the year!

From what that wiki article mentioned, it seems they had days that weren't part of any month but were still there, so it seems they weren't that much longer.

Not at all, in fact - many of them were 29 days.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on September 08, 2013, 05:28:20 pm

In future releases, can we still get things like the Elf King of the Dwarves, or are those things of the past?

I just think things where you occasionally get a king/queen of an alternate species as a ruler of a civ is something that should stay a part of DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 08, 2013, 06:11:25 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on September 08, 2013, 05:28:20 pm

In future releases, can we still get things like the Elf King of the Dwarves, or are those things of the past?

I just think things where you occasionally get a king/queen of an alternate species as a ruler of a civ is something that should stay a part of DF.

Yes, those kind of things will keep on happening. The entity claims might allow for even more interesting stuff as time goes by. Multirracial forts have been discussed by Toady and they'll likely happen as the Tavern Arc unfolds, and that framework would not ignore taverns in other, non-playable sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on September 08, 2013, 10:44:00 pm

Quote from: toady

I also messed around with the new personalities a bit and taught the new dwarven brain how to stand up again, which has been an ongoing issue.

Quote from: toady

(06/15/2012) Entering a state of terror or being in a state of terror for a while also works as a stressor that can have longer-term personality changes/effects (which'll also be the rewrite for dwarf-mode happiness/tantrums etc. as we re-interpret the various stressors in the thought list there)

This is very interesting and something I have completely forgotten about. 

 So are we still having a personality re-write for this update? How will the long-term personality changes affect how the dwarves act in-game? I wonder if we'll have to start retiering soldiers that have had one too many morale failures...  will post-traumatic stress disorders be a thing? Also, how exactly will you re-interpret the various stressers, assuming this won't simple mean changing the values around the current system? 

I mean, the fact that you can have a dwarf remain "estactic" because he's eaten a legendary meal in a legendary dining room even though he just lost a close family member to tragedy seems wrong, but just changing the numbers would make tantrum spirals an even bigger problem in the current system. I wonder how this could be balanced. Can't wait to see what happens in this next release...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 08, 2013, 11:01:15 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on September 08, 2013, 05:28:20 pm

In future releases, can we still get things like the Elf King of the Dwarves, or are those things of the past?

I just think things where you occasionally get a king/queen of an alternate species as a ruler of a civ is something that should stay a part of DF.

It'll probably be less likely with this release, because Toady made succession less random, so it should actually make the son of a kind more likely to be monarch, instead of a random civilian.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on September 09, 2013, 02:30:45 am

Quote from: King Mir on September 08, 2013, 11:01:15 pm

It'll probably be less likely with this release, because Toady made succession less random, so it should actually make the son of a kind more likely to be monarch, instead of a random civilian.

I understand. it makes me think then about other things like will there be arranged marriages between nobles of different civs sometimes depending on the circumstances?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on September 09, 2013, 02:48:28 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on September 09, 2013, 02:30:45 am

Quote from: King Mir on September 08, 2013, 11:01:15 pm

It'll probably be less likely with this release, because Toady made succession less random, so it should actually make the son of a kind more likely to be monarch, instead of a random civilian.

I understand. it makes me think then about other things like will there be arranged marriages between nobles of different civs sometimes depending on the circumstances?

If you mean "sometimes" as in ever, then yeah that's planned. If you mean in the upcoming release, that would require some pretty substantial systems that Toady hasn't said anything about, so almost certainly not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 09, 2013, 09:05:34 am

Quote from: King Mir on September 08, 2013, 11:01:15 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on September 08, 2013, 05:28:20 pm

In future releases, can we still get things like the Elf King of the Dwarves, or are those things of the past?

I just think things where you occasionally get a king/queen of an alternate species as a ruler of a civ is something that should stay a part of DF.

It'll probably be less likely with this release, because Toady made succession less random, so it should actually make the son of a kind more likely to be monarch, instead of a random civilian.

Though if the king has no living descendants or relatives (as might be the case with vampires), someone will have to come to power. Instead of a random civillian, it should be more likely that someone in the nobility would rise to power.

Also, right now, in history mode, the game only seems to consider the children of the king, at least I've never seen anything saying that so and so inherited the throne from their grandfather/mother.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on September 09, 2013, 04:54:27 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 05, 2013, 09:06:04 pm

...At risk of being suggestiony, I think right now simply letting us change the priority system's weights so things like cleaning don't have to always be apparently lower priority than idling would be sufficient to alleviate most of the complaints I've heard about the current priority system...

My issue with this is that before, people were complaining that dwarves all rush out to pick socks. Then last version (or recently anyway, I forget) Toady made it so one dwarf would take a bin, go out and pick the bin full of clothes, then take it back. Granted, it doesn't work ideally, but he gave us the STORE_DIST_ settings in d_init to fiddle with to find an "optimal" balance. Yet as far as I know, little to no SCIENCE has been done on that.

Likewise, pathfinding being heavy gets a lot of attention, but the PATH_COST setting probably doesn't get enough. So yea, giving the community the tools to adjust game behaviour like pathing, item storing or job priorities isn't always a magic bullet that solves everything. I'm all for having less stuff be hardcoded and be in the raws instead, but not all the stuff that's already modifiable gets the attention it deserves, either.

Quote from: Parisbre56 on September 08, 2013, 12:04:49 pm

Quote from: Geldrin on September 08, 2013, 11:48:13 am

Okay, so here's my question:

Regarding the new moving army feature, how does the large-scale pathfinding will work? Will the game consider the local terrain features too, or it will just ignore all obstacles (and distances) like merchants do in the current version?
I would like to know will it be possible to build 'The Great Dwarven Wall' with connecting walls between adjacent sites, and locking the fun outside the dwarven territory.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry if I asked a previously answered question.

Armies do not path through player made fortresses. Not yet at least. So you could build that "great wall" simply by repeatedly embarking and abandoning adjacent fortresses.

And to my knowledge local terrain features do not influence troop movements, because that would be too resource intensive. Local terrain features aren't loaded unless the player is there. That is why player made fortresses need special considerations and why armies avoid them for now.

EDIT: Large scale terrain should work though. Armies on an island would be unable to reach another island for example.

What about the opposite: building (or obsidian-casting) bridges to islands, either with 1 or multiple embarks? I suppose access is checked only at world-creation, if civs don't build roads after world-gen (or has there been news that they would in the next version, as part of bringing the post-worldgen world to life). And if armies continue to not path through player-made fortresses, I guess the point is moot. Building bridge-forts and retiring them would still be great for adventurers, of course.

The "simple" way of handling road-building etc. by the player would seem to me to be to check for paved roads when the "retire" command is given, then check which map edges they access, and fill in the world map based off that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on September 09, 2013, 06:13:06 pm

Might as well ask.

Is there any plans with the old tree code? Perhaps create bushes and larger bamboo, for instance? Would the woodier of bushes and bamboo be able to be harvested for things like charcoal (and in bamboo's case, construction)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 09, 2013, 06:13:48 pm

Quote from: Jheral on September 06, 2013, 01:43:57 pm

Ninth before January and February were added, yeah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar , if it's of any real interest - although it didn't have anything to do with the roman emperors for whom July and August are named, which is what I assumed. I knew two were added, just not which two. Ah well, I suppose that'll just serve as a reminder to actually check things before saying them, from time to time  :)

Actually the new year remained in March (I think), rather than January even after January was added. This made September the 7th month, December the 10th month, and February the 12th month, etc.

Advice: people ask questions on the twitter feed, and they get them answered quite quickly. It looks like the Bay12Games twitter feed is the new best place to get questions answered and find out what is going on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 09, 2013, 07:31:36 pm

From Bay 12 Games twitter: "Footsteps and fighting are audible now, and there's workshop noise. Giant toppled tree? Not a sound yet..."

This is backwards from what the wiki says. I wonder what that means about tree cutting sounds? Did toady accidentally delete the feature?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 09, 2013, 07:34:07 pm

He did kind of do a complete overhaul of trees and the chopping thereof.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on September 09, 2013, 07:40:05 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 09, 2013, 06:13:06 pm

Might as well ask.

Is there any plans with the old tree code? Perhaps create bushes and larger bamboo, for instance? Would the woodier of bushes and bamboo be able to be harvested for things like charcoal (and in bamboo's case, construction)?

In an early reply (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3790400;topicseen#msg3790400), Toady said that you can't have single tile trees any more. Only saplings, and taller trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on September 10, 2013, 04:43:49 am

Quote from: Heph on September 08, 2013, 11:21:58 am

Also did it make a Sound?

I assure you, it will.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 10, 2013, 07:44:47 am

Quote from: King Mir on September 09, 2013, 07:40:05 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 09, 2013, 06:13:06 pm

Might as well ask.

Is there any plans with the old tree code? Perhaps create bushes and larger bamboo, for instance? Would the woodier of bushes and bamboo be able to be harvested for things like charcoal (and in bamboo's case, construction)?

In an early reply (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3790400;topicseen#msg3790400), Toady said that you can't have single tile trees any more. Only saplings, and taller trees.

From a screenshot though, it looked like we will still have trees that are a single tile horizontially, or at least the trunk would be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 08:01:20 am

Pines perhaps? Coniferous trees could still have a single tile trunk.
Oh great Toady One, maker of reality and God of the eternal code, I humbly ask: How many logs will be produced by the average tree? By what I can understand from your log, the trees will create logs after being chopped down. But how? Does it falls down into logs ready for the taking or does it requires an extra work once is on the floor to be chopped in logs? And how many logs per tile would it give a tree? Does depends on the type of tree or something else?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 10, 2013, 08:05:48 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 08:01:20 am

Pines perhaps? Coniferous trees could still have a single tile trunk.
Oh great Toady One, maker of reality and God of the eternal code, I humbly ask: How many logs will be produced by the average tree? By what I can understand from your log, the trees will create logs after being chopped down. But how? Does it falls down into logs ready for the taking or does it requires an extra work once is on the floor to be chopped in logs? And how many logs per tile would it give a tree? Does depends on the type of tree or something else?

One ready-to-use log per trunk tile. (https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/377202766407417857)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on September 10, 2013, 08:13:51 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 08:01:20 am

Oh great Toady One, maker of reality and God of the eternal code, I humbly ask: How many logs will be produced by the average tree? By what I can understand from your log, the trees will create logs after being chopped down. But how? Does it falls down into logs ready for the taking or does it requires an extra work once is on the floor to be chopped in logs? And how many logs per tile would it give a tree? Does depends on the type of tree or something else?

Quote from: https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/377202766407417857

[One] log per trunk tile right now. It increases wood greatly at first, but trees grow more slowly, have to see how it plays out

Earlier he mentioned that enemies can be smacked by flying logs and that it uses projectile damage, so I guess it's safe to say that trees collapse into logs with no extra work required.

Edit: semi-ninja'd. Oh well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 10, 2013, 08:16:38 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 08:01:20 am

Pines perhaps? Coniferous trees could still have a single tile trunk.

The smaller ones anyway and I suppose other smaller trees or narrow trees like say, birch could have a single tile trunk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 10, 2013, 09:10:21 am

Since when does Toady (I'm assuming that's Toady, anyway) use the twitter for DF updates?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 09:40:40 am

Since the last dev updated. He didn't mention the specifics but apparently somehow he ended up having to open a twitter account for Bay 12 "As a result of meeting a zillion independent developers over the last weekend", and while at it, might as well use it for more express communication with us.

However I'm afraid that twitter might just take much of his time. I know people getting addicted to it.

Anyway, the account for now will be used by both brothers as it's still undecided how they plan to use it officially on the long run: "Zach and I are both on there, at random, and we're not really sure how it'll be used."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 10, 2013, 09:43:59 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 09:40:40 am

Since the last dev updated. He didn't mention the specifics but apparently somehow he ended up having to open a twitter account for Bay 12 "As a result of meeting a zillion independent developers over the last weekend", and while at it, might as well use it for more express communication with us.

However I'm afraid that twitter might just take much of his time. I know people getting addicted to it.

Anyway, the account for now will be used by both brothers as it's still undecided how they plan to use it officially on the long run: "Zach and I are both on there, at random, and we're not really sure how it'll be used."

I kind of like how they answer the questions in this thread and not everybody looks at twitter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on September 10, 2013, 12:58:49 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 10, 2013, 09:43:59 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 09:40:40 am

Since the last dev updated. He didn't mention the specifics but apparently somehow he ended up having to open a twitter account for Bay 12 "As a result of meeting a zillion independent developers over the last weekend", and while at it, might as well use it for more express communication with us.

However I'm afraid that twitter might just take much of his time. I know people getting addicted to it.

Anyway, the account for now will be used by both brothers as it's still undecided how they plan to use it officially on the long run: "Zach and I are both on there, at random, and we're not really sure how it'll be used."

I kind of like how they answer the questions in this thread and not everybody looks at twitter.

They should link the twitter somewhere where it's visible so that I don't need to look through this thread or my bookmarks to get to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 01:00:56 pm

I like this thread better too. It's more cozy and organized. However twitter can be useful in order to spread our ways, the true ways, the ways of the Toad onto the unbelievers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 10, 2013, 03:02:14 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on September 10, 2013, 12:58:49 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 10, 2013, 09:43:59 am

Quote from: LordBaal on September 10, 2013, 09:40:40 am

Since the last dev updated. He didn't mention the specifics but apparently somehow he ended up having to open a twitter account for Bay 12 "As a result of meeting a zillion independent developers over the last weekend", and while at it, might as well use it for more express communication with us.

However I'm afraid that twitter might just take much of his time. I know people getting addicted to it.

Anyway, the account for now will be used by both brothers as it's still undecided how they plan to use it officially on the long run: "Zach and I are both on there, at random, and we're not really sure how it'll be used."

I kind of like how they answer the questions in this thread and not everybody looks at twitter.

They should link the twitter somewhere where it's visible so that I don't need to look through this thread or my bookmarks to get to it.

It's linked right above the devlog at http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on September 11, 2013, 10:48:32 am

Do you ever put in so-called 'easter egg' features?
Yes: Magma! Where they be? ;)
No: What is the philosophy behind this, total transparancy or waste of (unseen)effort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 11, 2013, 11:14:48 am

I think DF it self is a huge easter egg. The procedural nature of it makes each world it generates filled with wonderful surprises. Think of Cacame or other marvelous characters.

Of course I can't speak for Toady, however I seem to recall making that question myself and getting a nope as an answer, however it could be my brain not working properly as usual.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 11, 2013, 11:16:09 am

Quote from: Areyar on September 11, 2013, 10:48:32 am

Do you ever put in so-called 'easter egg' features?
Yes: Magma! Where they be? ;)
No: What is the philosophy behind this, total transparancy or waste of (unseen)effort?

Hidden Fun Stuff was the term Toady used when he did things like that previously, but it got adopted into meaning a very specific set of features.

Though for the most part Toady seems to at least allude to features like that somewhat, but waits for us to investigate and figure the specifics out first hand... like the mysterious gray squares on the world gen maps for the next version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on September 11, 2013, 12:03:18 pm

There was this article (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/23a:Easter_eggs) in the wiki called Easter eggs. Don't know if those things count.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 11, 2013, 12:04:28 pm

You can mod rabbits to lay eggs if you really want them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on September 14, 2013, 01:27:04 am

I'm really looking forward to the new personalities. It will really make a difference in the drawings I make.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 01:47:49 am

Quote from: Putnam

@Bay12Games Any raw changes *other* than attacks and trees, so far? Also, will attacks have to be updated, or are there default values?
Expand

Quote from: Bay 12 Games

@Putnam3145 Yeah, defaults.  Others...  gaits, tracking, new personality traits...  Could ask again on FotF for better accounting now.

Then I'd better.

 Any raw changes *other* than attacks and trees so far, especially ones that must be accounted for when updating mods?

I'm especially concerned about personality traits ._.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 14, 2013, 01:52:20 am

Accounted for what? Their awesomeness?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 01:54:04 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 14, 2013, 01:52:20 am

Accounted for what? Their awesomeness?

Mod updating.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 14, 2013, 02:21:15 am

I'm really excited too by the latest update about personnality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on September 14, 2013, 03:55:09 am

Wow, great devlog, completely unexpected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 03:58:49 am

Oh.

Ohhh.

Oh yes.

Definitely yes, very very very yes. There is much that can be done with this, oh, yes yes yes, I will be going for this, working with this, months of research, much time editing, oh yes, personalities, hahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Putnam, Modder has gone stark raving mad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on September 14, 2013, 04:57:09 am

ditto very exited!

More complex personalities, ones that come from somewhere and change for better or worse over time are awesome. :)
I hope values and minor ethics can be 'learned' from interactions with others - not only dwarves, but also visitors.
Do they learn? Also, does locking a dwarf in isolation drive him mad now?

Now, tarn only needs to add the player writing letters to dwarves and audible music at parties and finally I can have my LCP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8JaHD16lPI)  fortress! ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 14, 2013, 07:03:32 am

Quote from: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 03:58:49 am

Putnam, Modder has gone stark raving mad!

Again?  ;D

Quote from: Areyar on September 14, 2013, 04:57:09 am

More complex personalities, ones that come from somewhere and change for better or worse over time are awesome. :)
I hope values and minor ethics can be 'learned' from interactions with others - not only dwarves, but also visitors.

That would be absolutely awesome, yeah. Another interesting question is "With these changes, will there be dwarves with ethics and values that deviate greatly from their civ's ethics and values? For instance, a sociopathic dwarf who feel that killing and eating sapient creatures is perfectly fine, or a hippie dwarf that won't kill plants?".

And, if so Will this kind of thing be customizable for adventurers, allowing us to play a character with different limitations imposed by ethics (like being able to butcher kobolds/goblins and using their bones/hides/meat, for instance)?

It would definately make the sheriff and guards a more important thing in fortress mode if true, since you'd have to protect your fort from ordinary dwarves and not just moody ones and vampires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 14, 2013, 08:50:17 am

"Hundreds of new personality sentences." 6 personality sentences to the personality facet, if that stays the same. Taking a minimum of 102 new personality sentences - at least  17 new personality traits if the number of sentences per trait stays the same. Given Toady said hundreds, rather than a hundred, that could easily be a multiple. Should be fun. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Muffindog on September 14, 2013, 11:08:51 am

The devlog entry about the personality changes were a nice surprise. The dwarves already were unique, special snowflakes, but now they'll be even more so :D Nice to see even more diversity between them and other cultures as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on September 14, 2013, 11:41:07 am

Of course as one of the crazy people who rarely playes dwarves I need to ask this.

You mentioned Dwarven society highly values craftmanship.  How moddible is what different civs value?  Could I say for example make a fortress race that highly values combat proficiency over crafting skill?  Or perhaps number of kills?  Or even crazy societies that value high amounts of pets, owned items, number of children, or extremely high or low bodyweights?

Urist McTwig was proud to weigh under 50 pounds today.  She was happy to add another ☼Ceramic Troll Figurine☼ to her collection.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 14, 2013, 12:59:16 pm

These new personality traits, do they already actually do something, or they are just for show (for now)? Can you have dwarf with different ethics than general ethics of his civilisation? (like dwarf butcher happily converting goblins to food... of course, only dwarves with same ethics would eat it at all)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 14, 2013, 01:05:31 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on September 14, 2013, 12:59:16 pm

These new personality traits, do they already actually do something, or they are just for show (for now)? Can you have dwarf with different ethics than general ethics of his civilisation? (like dwarf butcher happily converting goblins to food... of course, only dwarves with same ethics would eat it at all)

The devlog implies that they are used somewhat, but can certainly be expanded, and will be used in some way before the release:

Quote from: Toady One

As usual, the system isn't used everywhere it could be, since it is a large project, but I'm finding myself much more enthusiastic about the new personality facets and values vs. the old system which was a bit wishy-washy, and this first release will use them at least as much as before, with some new stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 14, 2013, 01:35:09 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 01:47:49 am

Quote from: Putnam

@Bay12Games Any raw changes *other* than attacks and trees, so far? Also, will attacks have to be updated, or are there default values?
Expand

Quote from: Bay 12 Games

@Putnam3145 Yeah, defaults.  Others...  gaits, tracking, new personality traits...  Could ask again on FotF for better accounting now.

Then I'd better.

 Any raw changes *other* than attacks and trees so far, especially ones that must be accounted for when updating mods?

I'm especially concerned about personality traits ._.

"Concern" seems like a strange reaction to new features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 01:42:28 pm

I made that post right before the devlog :P It turned from concern to abject elatedness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on September 14, 2013, 02:45:04 pm

The mention of philosophies and religions in the future stemming from cultural values made me think of the philosopher noble from 2-D. Will the philosopher ever be returning to Dwarf Fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 02:49:03 pm

Quote from: MrWillsauce on September 14, 2013, 02:45:04 pm

The mention of philosophies and religions in the future stemming from cultural values made me think of the philosopher noble from 2-D. Will the philosopher ever be returning to Dwarf Fortress?

Quote from: devlog

The value system (combined with the old ethics) also makes it pretty clear to me now that philosophies/religions are going to be able to be generated and impact play immediately once that rolls around (not for this release).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on September 14, 2013, 02:50:52 pm

That doesn't really answer my question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 14, 2013, 02:53:27 pm

The last thing we heard about philosophers is this quote, I believe.

Quote

Quote from: Objective

Do you plan to add the philosopher back later with more usefulness? Or are they scrapped?

The philosopher as a single dwarf called "the philosopher" is likely out.  Adding dwarves with a philosophical bent that get into arguments and get followers and sway segments of the population toward one way of thinking or another are something we'd like to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 14, 2013, 07:07:34 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 14, 2013, 01:42:28 pm

I made that post right before the devlog :P It turned from concern to abject elatedness.

Oh, that makes more sense now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on September 14, 2013, 08:23:22 pm

Toady, if you had to guess when the next update would come out, what would you guess?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 14, 2013, 08:36:12 pm

Quote from: Bay12 September '13 Report

Looking over things, I think the realistic and hopefully somewhat conservative estimate (for a change) is that I'll be through the list in mid-November, and then I'll just have to deal with the bad-to-really-bad stuff that Zach and I find in the meantime.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 14, 2013, 08:53:06 pm

Quote

On the other hand, the paragraph writeups do criticize dwarves a bit harshly at times (since it highlights the extremes and doesn't mention the average personality facets at all), and they can be fundamentally worse people than before. The presentation can be a little overblown, since some good/useful things about dwarves (like high skills) do not appear on the personality page, so it might be good to give them a chance before you rush to the drawbridge or magma lever.

Reads the new devlog. *Puts on his religious hat*

Seems that the players, as all gods, will now have to learn the values of mercy and forgiveness. For every person deserves a magma bath if they are looked at without mercy, when one can fully see all their deeds.

*Takes off his religious hat.*

Well, seems like the game is complicated enough to unintentionally be entering into social commentary. (Not that it wasn't before.) This is going to be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 10:03:14 pm

Oh, I doubt it. Dwarves are still plenty expendable if you're careful. However, since we are running a simulation of true communism, the introduction of original sin could pose new and interesting problems- probably not now, but later on, once Toady has done a few more releases.

What would be a major game-changer is dwarves going batshit if they're kept from fulfilling a life dream. And new forms of batshittery, too- dwarven mass murderers who decide, one day, to steal a crossbow from the fort armory and start shooting at random in the meeting hall; dwarves who get a revelation from God and turn your fort into Jonestown; dwarves who try to start revolutions, or refuse to participate in fortress life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 14, 2013, 10:09:42 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 10:03:14 pm

Oh, I doubt it. Dwarves are still plenty expendable if you're careful.

What would be a major game-changer is dwarves going batshit if they're kept from fulfilling a life dream. And new forms of batshittery, too- dwarven mass murderers who decide, one day, to steal a crossbow from the fort armory and start shooting at random in the meeting hall; dwarves who get a revelation from God and turn your fort into Jonestown; dwarves who try to start revolutions, or refuse to participate in fortress life.

Arent moods a form of life dream? Or at least those could connect into moods.

Moods will definetly still be around, but seems like the dreams and personalities would change the way moods work.

Heck, we should start seeing emergent behavior soon maybe, what with all the interactions and the new personalities stuff, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 14, 2013, 10:19:36 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 10:03:14 pm

Oh, I doubt it. Dwarves are still plenty expendable if you're careful. However, since we are running a simulation of true communism, the introduction of original sin could pose new and interesting problems- probably not now, but later on, once Toady has done a few more releases.

What would be a major game-changer is dwarves going batshit if they're kept from fulfilling a life dream. And new forms of batshittery, too- dwarven mass murderers who decide, one day, to steal a crossbow from the fort armory and start shooting at random in the meeting hall; dwarves who get a revelation from God and turn your fort into Jonestown; dwarves who try to start revolutions, or refuse to participate in fortress life.

I was more talking about the idea of how being in a society is like wearing a mask. We all pretend to be something better than we are, but in truth, our personalities are much more extreme and repugnant. (Examples: Racism, Domestic Abuse, and Sexual Harrasment. Something we don't suspect about people, but is very frequent. And then people get freaked out when the truth comes out and remove him from office. Now imagine being able to see the truth of those things in every human being you meet.)

And the thing about the overseer and technically god of the fortress, is that you get to see beyond the mask. So someone unprepared for this could assume that the game and it's world are very dark, that there are no likable characters, and that it is too depressing. When in reality, the world and overall characters could be the same and even better than in the real world, but because you get to see them with their mask off, they just seem worse by comparison. And then one must learn to give forgiveness (to dwarves for their deeds) and mercy (not punish every crime) to have the best outcome.

This has nothing to do with original sin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 14, 2013, 10:30:12 pm

Quote

We all pretend to be something better than we are, but in truth, our personalities are much more extreme and repugnant.

A Nicer way of saying it is that we all try to be something better then we already are and aspire to be something better.

There is something that is lost with the statement "We all wear a mask" and it is that "We are the mask and the person behind it"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 14, 2013, 10:47:12 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on September 14, 2013, 10:19:36 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 10:03:14 pm

Oh, I doubt it. Dwarves are still plenty expendable if you're careful. However, since we are running a simulation of true communism, the introduction of original sin could pose new and interesting problems- probably not now, but later on, once Toady has done a few more releases.

What would be a major game-changer is dwarves going batshit if they're kept from fulfilling a life dream. And new forms of batshittery, too- dwarven mass murderers who decide, one day, to steal a crossbow from the fort armory and start shooting at random in the meeting hall; dwarves who get a revelation from God and turn your fort into Jonestown; dwarves who try to start revolutions, or refuse to participate in fortress life.

I was more talking about the idea of how being in a society is like wearing a mask. We all pretend to be something better than we are, but in truth, our personalities are much more extreme and repugnant. (Examples: Racism, Domestic Abuse, and Sexual Harrasment. Something we don't suspect about people, but is very frequent. And then people get freaked out when the truth comes out and remove him from office. Now imagine being able to see the truth of those things in every human being you meet.)

And the thing about the overseer and technically god of the fortress, is that you get to see beyond the mask. So someone unprepared for this could assume that the game and it's world are very dark, that there are no likable characters, and that it is too depressing. When in reality, the world and overall characters could be the same and even better than in the real world, but because you get to see them with their mask off, they just seem worse by comparison. And then one must learn to give forgiveness (to dwarves for their deeds) and mercy (not punish every crime) to have the best outcome.

This has nothing to do with original sin.

How Hobbes! We can't just demand Toady cram a "people are basically evil" philosophy down people's throats. He may or may not even have such a philosophy himself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 14, 2013, 11:00:00 pm

I'm sure he'll fix it so that it displays more average values and stops making everyone seem like complete assholes in due time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on September 14, 2013, 11:30:16 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on September 14, 2013, 10:30:12 pm

Quote

We all pretend to be something better than we are, but in truth, our personalities are much more extreme and repugnant.

A Nicer way of saying it is that we all try to be something better then we already are and aspire to be something better.

There is something that is lost with the statement "We all wear a mask" and it is that "We are the mask and the person behind it"

Sure. I was being a little bombastic. But there is still the idea that if we pretend to be something better than we are, we are still worse than we are seen.

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 14, 2013, 10:47:12 pm

How Hobbes! We can't just demand Toady cram a "people are basically evil" philosophy down people's throats. He may or may not even have such a philosophy himself.

I'm not demanding anything. Things like that are a natural result of having a more and more complex simulation, especially on in which one can see everyone's character at all times. And the thing about that, is that having that knowledge that we don't get in our regular lives should make it seem more "evil" than if we did not have that knowledge.

Even if they don't seem that evil compared to real life, and not everyone is an "asshole" in Fort Mode, the distinction will still remain between Fort and Adventure modes, as we won't be able to see who is a "bad man" in adventure mode that easily.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 14, 2013, 11:38:34 pm

Quote

Sure. I was being a little bombastic. But there is still the idea that if we pretend to be something better than we are, we are still worse than we are seen.

I know I just wanted to say "we are also the mask"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 11:46:21 pm

May as well make it a question: Toady, do you see dwarves/other races as being basically evil ("orginal sin"), basically good, or something else, like moral tabulae rasae or simply basically pragmatists?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 14, 2013, 11:56:02 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 14, 2013, 11:46:21 pm

May as well make it a question: Toady, do you see dwarves/other races as being basically evil ("orginal sin"), basically good, or something else, like moral tabulae rasae or simply basically pragmatists?

Toady seems to be on the side where there is no such thing as good and evil, at least inherently, as far as the game is concerned.

The Goblins for example are creatures who lack a sort of altruistic instinct.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on September 15, 2013, 02:35:55 pm

Toady, what's your 'design philosophy' of the dwarven character? Where do you see yourself on the scale of Hobbes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HobbesWasRight) vs. Rousseau (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RousseauWasRight)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 15, 2013, 03:00:25 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on September 15, 2013, 02:35:55 pm

Toady, what's your 'design philosophy' of the dwarven character? Where do you see yourself on the scale of Hobbes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HobbesWasRight) vs. [urlhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RousseauWasRight]Rousseau[/url]?

AAA! Tvtropes!

Though really, I didn't click the link as I wasn't interested.

Given the way moods work, will the new personality and dreams stuff have any affect on strange moods?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chthonic on September 15, 2013, 03:31:00 pm

". . . they can be fundamentally worse people than before."

Might we see some examples of these awful dwarves?

:D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on September 15, 2013, 04:31:25 pm

i think necromancers are a good enough example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on September 15, 2013, 04:38:08 pm

 can goblins climb this?

(http://s5.postimg.org/4poch58ev/image.png)

(http://s5.postimg.org/wr2duudp3/DDF.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 15, 2013, 05:04:17 pm

They shouldn't be able to climb smoothed walls well at all, so...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 15, 2013, 05:12:48 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 15, 2013, 05:04:17 pm

They shouldn't be able to climb smoothed walls well at all, so...

Until they invent ladders to scale said wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 15, 2013, 07:49:03 pm

Dont believe invaders in dorf mode can climb yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on September 15, 2013, 09:15:31 pm

When dwarves tantrum, what level of combat do they use? Or how about insane dwarves, or other scenarios when dwarves fight each other?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:41:39 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 15, 2013, 07:49:03 pm

Dont believe invaders in dorf mode can climb yet.

It has been said by Toady that there was a chance that it could occour "naturally" in dwarf mode, once it gets incremented with the new movement system. It was never clarified if it actually did happen... but constructed block walls should be climbable, if the AI is able to handle critters climbing at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 16, 2013, 07:47:50 am

To get Toady attention put your questions in green.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 16, 2013, 09:01:01 am

Quote from: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:41:39 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 15, 2013, 07:49:03 pm

Dont believe invaders in dorf mode can climb yet.

It has been said by Toady that there was a chance that it could occour "naturally" in dwarf mode, once ot gets incremented with the new movement system. It was never clarified if it actally did happen... but constructed block walls should be climbable, if the AI is able to handle critters climbing at all.

Until ladders are invented (and invaders are able to construct stuff), defending against climbers shouldn't be too hard, just make a overhanging ledge to prevent invaders from getting past, or make a moat to keep invaders from reaching the wall in the first place.

There is also the possibility of using a grapple and rope, but as you said, the AI has to be able to handle critters climbing.

On a note of things besides invaders, having climbing or even arboreal animals like monkeys would give a neat ambience, and another way for thieving monkeys to get into the fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on September 16, 2013, 09:46:09 am

Isnt that a failing fortification though?
IIRC missiles can slip diagonally between those F and wall/floor sections.

sideview gapped wall

Code: [Select]

..+@..
.g.#^.

sideview solid wall

Code: [Select]

...+@..
.g.##^.
And creatures should be able to climb natural walls, walls made of stone, but not smoothed walls or walls made of blocks. Walls made of metal/bars were still unclear but should be inherently climbable. natural wooden walls and wooden log-walls would be climbable, wooden blocks perhaps not. (but shuld be more easilly climbed using crampons, claws etc when that makes it in because it's less hard)

Don't actually have a question at the moment.  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 10:57:33 am

Quote from: Areyar on September 16, 2013, 09:46:09 am

And creatures should be able to climb natural walls, walls made of stone, but not smoothed walls or walls made of blocks. Walls made of metal/bars were still unclear but should be inherently climbable. natural wooden walls and wooden log-walls would be climbable, wooden blocks perhaps not. (but shuld be more easilly climbed using crampons, claws etc when that makes it in because it's less hard)

I think walls made out of blocks can be pretty climbable. Of course it depends... what kind of wall and what kind of blocks are we talking about?

This one seems very climb friendly, even with no tools, as long as you have a strong enough grip. And you can't really say that it's a rough stone wall, either...

(http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/mrincredible/mrincredible1204/mrincredible120400032/13179386-close-up-of-a-dry-stack-stone-wall-texture.jpg)

So I think that for we to say that a certain wall is unclimbable we would have to assume what kind of walls the dwarves are making. I guess that when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode there could be ways of making built block walls smoother and less friendly to potential climbers. Maybe even finally having the mason skill actually count for something when building walls, by making walls made by more skilled masons less climbable. Who knows? But none of those things will be in for this release, that's for sure, as climbing in dwarf mode probably won't even happen this time around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 16, 2013, 11:02:37 am

You ever tried climbing a wall like that? It's much harder than it looks. It can be done, but not by most.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 16, 2013, 11:10:47 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 16, 2013, 11:02:37 am

You ever tried climbing a wall like that? It's much harder than it looks. It can be done, but not by most.

Yeah, even if something is technically climbable without equipment, it could still be very hard to climb. The thing is that walls right now are really abstract, there is no halfway between a wall that has huge cracks and protrusions on it to the one that Ribs posted to one that is so smooth that even a lizard that typically climbs walls, can't even climb it, excepting geckos though, those guys can climb glass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on September 16, 2013, 11:51:56 am

Plaster, cement, concrete, and adobe come to mind for making constructed walls too smooth to climb. It'd probably be relatively easy to damage the smooth layer to expose the rough surface underneath, but I suspect most ways to do that would be just as applicable to damaging the wall itself, whether to break through or just make it into a rough surface. It'll probably be a long, long time before Toady implements wall damage via siege weaponry, though.

...Glass walls sound like a fun can of worms to contemplate. If you think of them as just conventional windows, yeah, you could get them pretty smooth, but in terms of resisting sieges, it's pretty silly to imagine goblins being halted by a glass house. On the other hand, I have a hard time imagining dwarves constructing thick, smooth siege-resistant glass walls without doing something akin to obsidian casting with molten sand. And finally, it's much easier to imagine walls made of blocks of glass, but they'd probably be on par with stone block walls in terms of climbing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 16, 2013, 12:22:02 pm

The only way to get glass blocks would be casting in a very hot furnace, creating a very smooth block. Even if it was bumpy or ridged, glass is too smooth in its basic texture to offer purchase. And if it was cast in identical molds, then the cracks between blocks would offer no purchase either, because even paper would not fit between them. In the most crappily constructed glass block wall, you'd still need tools to climb.

I also can't imagine climbing a brick-and-mortar wall without tools, as the mortar fills any cracks you might try to put your fingers/toes in. Any wall that requires sticking fingers/toes into cracks requires great skill (and small enough fingers) to climb unaided, so a brick wall would have to have bricks jutting out it places to be climbable without a lot of practice/any tools. A cobblestone wall would be the most climbable, still somewhat more difficult than a natural cliff face but not by much

I hope that we might see quality modifiers on rock blocks in the future, so we can build like Machu Pichu: blocks fit together perfectly, not scaleable without tools.

This is why walls can keep armies out. Only light, relatively unencumbered soldiers can climb walls, and not without difficulty. Unless it turns out Gobbos become Peter Jackson's spiderman orcs from Moria, then why even bother with walls. But I doubt it will come to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on September 16, 2013, 12:44:02 pm

So I guess after this release filling moats with water will actually do something besides freezing in the winter and letting invaders walk in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:48:01 pm

Well, I'm no climbing specialist, but yeah. It does look hard, but not impossible to climb. Because Toady said that block walls are climbable, yet harder to climb than rough stone walls that's what I imagine they would look.

I guess I may as well ask:

Is climbing in dwarf mode confirmed for this release, or it ended up not happening?

If and when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode, will we see/be able to construct walls that will be harder or easier for things to climb on them? Like being able to order the construction of a block wall that is either full of cracks or very smooth?

Do you plan on having mortar/cement type materials in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on September 16, 2013, 12:53:03 pm

Now that dwarves can have dreams, will they get any particular benefit from achieving that dream? If a dwarf, say, dreams of becoming a Master craftsdwarf, will anything happen when they eventually do become one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 16, 2013, 01:03:23 pm

I Imagine they'll feel like they're life's been fulfilled and will be very hard to sadden?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on September 16, 2013, 01:27:29 pm

Scamps told they start to contemplate the meaningless of achievements, their life and existence in general, and then they just starve...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 16, 2013, 10:50:10 pm

Quote from: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:48:01 pm

Well, I'm no climbing specialist, but yeah. It does look hard, but not impossible to climb. Because Toady said that block walls are climbable, yet harder to climb than rough stone walls that's what I imagine they would look.

I guess I may as well ask:
If and when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode, will we see/be able to construct walls that will be harder or easier for things to climb on them? Like being able to order the construction of a block wall that is either full of cracks or very smooth?

Yes, at the least quality of the surface affects climbing ability, I dont recall if the materiel matters.

EDIT: Spelling

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 17, 2013, 08:04:03 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 16, 2013, 10:50:10 pm

Quote from: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:48:01 pm

Well, I'm no climbing specialist, but yeah. It does look hard, but not impossible to climb. Because Toady said that block walls are climbable, yet harder to climb than rough stone walls that's what I imagine they would look.

I guess I may as well ask:
If and when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode, will we see/be able to construct walls that will be harder or easier for things to climb on them? Like being able to order the construction of a block wall that is either full of cracks or very smooth?

Yes, at the vest quality of the surface affects climbing ability, I dont recall if the materiel matters.

Vest quality, wut?

Still though, the thing is that right now, walls are very abstract, just smooth or rough, while climbing in reality is more complicated than just whether its marked as climbable or not climbable. Also, defensive walls in RL are usually made so that you can't climb it, not without a ladder or a rope and grapple anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 17, 2013, 10:39:25 am

On the other side, some Japanese castle walls where climbable because:
A) The highly tectonic activity forced them to make the walls with on angle (sort of like the pyramids) in order to resist better the earthquakes and distribute the weight of the building on more terrain. And

B) As a byproduct of the past I think, made purposely so in order to lure the climbers into fire zones and murder holes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: callisto8413 on September 17, 2013, 10:47:15 am

I know there has been some thought into making friendships HELPFUL instead of having them fuel tantrum spirals.  In fact I believe there is some debate about trying to take tantrums out of the game or lessen their effect on other Dwarfs.  Is there any projects/ideas on helpful professions or items or 'rooms' that could help slow down or stop a spiral once it has began?   An Order of Warrior Monks to help with grief (and kick butt) or maybe expanding the Hospital, an already existing structure, to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on September 17, 2013, 10:55:17 am

@rib: Not really my own opinion on climbability, just what I remembered (offhand) from what Toady had mentioned in talks/this thread. You are right about the 'impossible', that was supposed to be 'harder' (to climb blocks).

How about climbing/clamping onto the underside of floors/cave ceilings for flying and/or clawed creatures such as swallowmen, bats and spiders?
Will this be a 'lowhanging fruit' (;)) when climbing is put in, or will the additional pathfinding for climb-capables be a project in itself?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 17, 2013, 07:33:35 pm

With dreams coming into play, will there be new IS_SECRET_GOAL inclusions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 17, 2013, 09:10:47 pm

I think it would be nice if the new dwarf dreams and aspirations governed their mood artifacts rather than the highest profession skill. It would end the artifact seeding exploit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 17, 2013, 09:26:39 pm

Quote from: DG on September 17, 2013, 09:10:47 pm

I think it would be nice if the new dwarf dreams and aspirations governed their mood artifacts rather than the highest profession skill. It would end the artifact seeding exploit.

It would also help reduce the number of useless craftdwarf moods, which is partially the reason why people use the exploit, among other reasons.

The new dwarf dreams and aspirations would also help us decide which migrants we decide are useful or otherwise toss into the hauling pool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 17, 2013, 11:52:44 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 17, 2013, 09:26:39 pm

It would also help reduce the number of useless craftdwarf moods, which is partially the reason why people use the exploit, among other reasons.

The new dwarf dreams and aspirations would also help us decide which migrants we decide are useful or otherwise toss into the hauling pool.

...or the "unforunate accident" pool. I could see some fairly nasty gameplay trends arising from this. 

Though I guess it's not quite on par with the mermaids, so it might fly...  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 18, 2013, 03:09:33 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 17, 2013, 08:04:03 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 16, 2013, 10:50:10 pm

Quote from: Ribs on September 16, 2013, 12:48:01 pm

Well, I'm no climbing specialist, but yeah. It does look hard, but not impossible to climb. Because Toady said that block walls are climbable, yet harder to climb than rough stone walls that's what I imagine they would look.

I guess I may as well ask:
If and when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode, will we see/be able to construct walls that will be harder or easier for things to climb on them? Like being able to order the construction of a block wall that is either full of cracks or very smooth?

Least.
Yes, at the vest quality of the surface affects climbing ability, I dont recall if the materiel matters.

Vest quality, wut?

Still though, the thing is that right now, walls are very abstract, just smooth or rough, while climbing in reality is more complicated than just whether its marked as climbable or not climbable. Also, defensive walls in RL are usually made so that you can't climb it, not without a ladder or a rope and grapple anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 21, 2013, 11:41:55 am

Post fail?

Anyways, Toady One, will there be a way to better manage worn clothes in the next version as there really isn't any simple way to separate the worn clothes and keep them out of the new and unworn clothes stockpiles? Like for example, a stockpile option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gamerlord on September 21, 2013, 11:43:14 am

Are there plans to give a reaction for us to 'Repair Clothing' that automatically takes damaged clothes and fixes them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on September 21, 2013, 02:22:53 pm

Quote from: Toady

by mid-November

Well, we can forget about DF in 2013.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on September 21, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

Quote from: Areyar on September 17, 2013, 10:55:17 am

@rib: Not really my own opinion on climbability, just what I remembered (offhand) from what Toady had mentioned in talks/this thread. You are right about the 'impossible', that was supposed to be 'harder' (to climb blocks).

How about climbing/clamping onto the underside of floors/cave ceilings for flying and/or clawed creatures such as swallowmen, bats and spiders?
Will this be a 'lowhanging fruit' (;)) when climbing is put in, or will the additional pathfinding for climb-capables be a project in itself?

New bug: upon starting a fort, when the cave swallowmen eventually lose their grips on the ceiling...
The stray cave swallowman has blown apart after colliding with an obstacle! x52

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 21, 2013, 05:54:58 pm

Quote

Anyways, Toady One, will there be a way to better manage worn clothes in the next version as there really isn't any simple way to separate the worn clothes and keep them out of the new and unworn clothes stockpiles? Like for example, a stockpile option.

I support this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 21, 2013, 06:05:42 pm

Suggestions don't belong in the FotF thread and we have a board for that for a reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 21, 2013, 06:27:55 pm

Quote from: Putnam on September 21, 2013, 06:05:42 pm

Suggestions don't belong in the FotF thread and we have a board for that for a reason.

I was just giving an example of what a way to better manage worn clothes might be, and it's a legit question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on September 21, 2013, 06:41:51 pm

Well, if by "next version" you mean the one being worked on right now, the answer is most probably no. There has been no mention of improving the way the game deals with managing worn clothing in DF at all in the devlogs or anywhere else. Maybe on the subsequent release, when they will be dealing with smaller, more dwarf mode related problems while working on job priorities as they said they would, this could come up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 21, 2013, 07:50:09 pm

Quote from: Ribs on September 21, 2013, 06:41:51 pm

Well, if by "next version" you mean the one being worked on right now, the answer is most probably no. There has been no mention of improving the way the game deals with managing worn clothing in DF at all in the devlogs or anywhere else. Maybe on the subsequent release, when they will be dealing with smaller, more dwarf mode related problems while working on job priorities as they said they would, this could come up.

Its not a job priority thing though. Unless they made it a new job. If anything, its an extra setting for a stockpile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: O11O1 on September 22, 2013, 12:37:20 pm

Repairing clothing seems like it would be a workshop reaction, to improve the wear quality on things (and give us more of a use for those clothiers.) It seems like the perfect thing to get Toady to tangent into expanding wear quality to lots of -other- things too, so definitely not something to include in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 22, 2013, 03:00:42 pm

Reparing clothing is a popular suggestion and there are tons of threads to discuss it in. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAMheGrGBdnB89DoDSCqZSUqjHh8IJh-983POtvmwB9Xepa5-qk19aqBH4M8JkJFZt1utyBoIYTvUNY1PgobXksMKQtQcL_uBNagfBjtlEmINYQ0_4Bueswxw..)  It won't be in the next version.  It's not on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html), which means if it does get implemented, it probably won't be anytime soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarfhoplite on September 22, 2013, 03:42:10 pm

Does anyone know if the agriculture is getting any updates in the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 03:49:21 pm

Quote from: dwarfhoplite on September 22, 2013, 03:42:10 pm

Does anyone know if the agriculture is getting any updates in the next release?

I've heard about fruiting trees and Toady One has mentioned coconuts and maybe mangoes in the devlog, so I do know about that. As far as what other updates to agriculture are in the next release, no idea.

While a good deal of the agriculture update seems to be with fruiting trees, I have no idea about creating fruit tree farms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 22, 2013, 05:23:28 pm

You can pick berries in adv mode, IIRC, unless that was only fruits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:02:54 pm

Now that trees are relatively done for the time being, how is the addition of browsing for certain grazers looking? Since this is needed to fix the issue of certain larger grazers starving currently, is this something we might see touched in the post release fixing period? Or would that be too extensive an addition and have to wait for a future release? :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 22, 2013, 06:08:18 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:02:54 pm

Now that trees are relatively done for the time being, how is the addition of browsing for certain grazers looking? Since this is needed to fix the issue of certain larger grazers starving currently, is this something we might see touched in the post release fixing period? Or would that be too extensive an addition and have to wait for a future release? :>

Nopes, animal feeding isn't gonna be worked on for this release. There been no dev logs about it, and it'd be very unlikely that that bug would get fixed, as they aren't related to any of the features for this release.

Also how do they relate to trees?

Trees were adjusted for the Elves and the trees were never part of the animal feeding that currently in the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 06:14:49 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 22, 2013, 06:08:18 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:02:54 pm

Now that trees are relatively done for the time being, how is the addition of browsing for certain grazers looking? Since this is needed to fix the issue of certain larger grazers starving currently, is this something we might see touched in the post release fixing period? Or would that be too extensive an addition and have to wait for a future release? :>

Nopes, animal feeding isn't gonna be worked on for this release. There been no dev logs about it, and it'd be very unlikely that that bug would get fixed, as they aren't related to any of the features for this release.

Also how do they relate to trees?

Trees were adjusted for the Elves and the trees were never part of the animal feeding that currently in the game.

Well, the problem couldn't get fixed until multi-tile trees were implemented anyway. There was something about reaching or maybe the fruits that fall on the ground could supplement for the larger grazers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:27:08 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 22, 2013, 06:08:18 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:02:54 pm

Now that trees are relatively done for the time being, how is the addition of browsing for certain grazers looking? Since this is needed to fix the issue of certain larger grazers starving currently, is this something we might see touched in the post release fixing period? Or would that be too extensive an addition and have to wait for a future release? :>

Nopes, animal feeding isn't gonna be worked on for this release. There been no dev logs about it, and it'd be very unlikely that that bug would get fixed, as they aren't related to any of the features for this release.

Also how do they relate to trees?

Trees were adjusted for the Elves and the trees were never part of the animal feeding that currently in the game.

I didn't say this release. A bunch of issues will most likely be poked at, both old and new, after the release and new bugs are ironed out. As for how it's related to trees iirc updating trees was one of the hurdles to take care of last time this issue was discussed, hence the question :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 22, 2013, 06:29:12 pm

With the thief role, will it be possible for the people who buy stolen merchandise to be punished as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 07:12:55 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 22, 2013, 06:29:12 pm

With the thief role, will it be possible for the people who buy stolen merchandise to be punished as well?

Willingly/unwillingly/knowingly/unknowingly? Although merchants in DF always seem to know when something is in fact stolen or seized.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 22, 2013, 07:29:07 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:27:08 pm

I didn't say this release. A bunch of issues will most likely be poked at, both old and new, after the release and new bugs are ironed out. As for how it's related to trees iirc updating trees was one of the hurdles to take care of last time this issue was discussed, hence the question :P

It strikes me as a strong candidate for the post-release bugfixing, but I doubt Toady is going to make any promises until the release is out and he can turn his focus to bugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 08:03:35 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on September 22, 2013, 07:29:07 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 22, 2013, 06:27:08 pm

I didn't say this release. A bunch of issues will most likely be poked at, both old and new, after the release and new bugs are ironed out. As for how it's related to trees iirc updating trees was one of the hurdles to take care of last time this issue was discussed, hence the question :P

It strikes me as a strong candidate for the post-release bugfixing, but I doubt Toady is going to make any promises until the release is out and he can turn his focus to bugs.

You're probably right on that and he has to get the multi-tile trees working, among other stuff. There are also hill dwarves with aboveground(?) farms, but that's just site flavor and ambience than anything to do with changes to agriculture. It's possible that we might see some new farmable plants, but we'll have to wait and see.

Also, Toady One, you mentioned the elves bringing coconuts and since in RL, coconut milk is made into liquor, will we be seeing new alcohol brews in the next version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 22, 2013, 08:49:41 pm

Well, apples implies cider. Oranges could mean Mimosa, but that seems like a more Elven drink. And well after 1400, besides.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 23, 2013, 12:43:16 am

Unless I'm missing something horribly, I don't see why 14th century technology couldn't be used to brew champagne and then squeeze oranges into it or something. Although personally I'd just hack the oranges up and throw them in a barrel of water with some yeast. Mmmm alcohol!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 12:59:34 am

Who knows, maybe in the next version, things have actually advanced by a few centuries and the dwarves would have developed other brewing methods and techniques.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 23, 2013, 01:47:46 am

Toady did specifically decide that vanilla DF will not include technology developed after the 1400s, so I highly doubt that, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 23, 2013, 02:07:11 am

Chinese people already used Gunpowder long before 1400. And first use of it was mentionned around 1300-1350 in Europe.
On the other hand, the wheel wasn't even used in America by the civilisations who lived here.
So "1400 tech" doesn't mean a lot. It's more a fantasy Middle Age than anything accurate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 23, 2013, 02:08:39 am

I forget when Toady put the cutoff date. But it was either 1400 or 1200 in Europe. And Mimosa is from somewhere in the 20th century.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 02:31:54 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 23, 2013, 02:08:39 am

I forget when Toady put the cutoff date. But it was either 1400 or 1200 in Europe. And Mimosa is from somewhere in the 20th century.

Yeah, a quick google says the 1920s, but since oranges were cultivated for millennia, who's to say that at some point somewhere, someone decided to try mixing orange juice with the local beverages. The example given is from modern times, but you don't need modern technology to make orange juice. Though orange juice itself as a beverage seems to be a more recent phenomenon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 23, 2013, 02:33:28 am

Probably because it needs refrigeration to be good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on September 23, 2013, 09:18:59 am

If this picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireLanceAndGrenade10thCenturyDunhuang.jpg) is to be believed, gunpowder has been around since the 900s, in the form of grenades and fire lances. Even if gunpowder isn't included, I'm for adding more Asian elements to the game to increase the diversity in civilizations. I mean, who doesn't want to see a Dwarven civilization that uses elements of Oriental culture for a change?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 23, 2013, 09:24:07 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 23, 2013, 09:18:59 am

If this picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireLanceAndGrenade10thCenturyDunhuang.jpg) is to be believed, gunpowder has been around since the 900s, in the form of grenades and fire lances. Even if gunpowder isn't included, I'm for adding more Asian elements to the game to increase the diversity in civilizations. I mean, who doesn't want to see a Dwarven civilization that uses elements of Oriental culture for a change?

I don't.

I don't want to make of DF a mess of too many things. It would be like Pandaria for WoW or shits like that (not that it is shitty, but the mixture is...well...).
DF has its own universe, please don't mix it with things that has nothing to do with it.
But it's true that some of Asian medieval traits could be used to give more diversity for human societies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 23, 2013, 10:07:05 am

But what's more dwarfy that a huge tube of iron or steel filled with coal set ablaze to spit a huge ball of anything against your enemies, probably blowing half fortress in the process too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 23, 2013, 10:08:41 am

Quote from: Inarius on September 23, 2013, 02:07:11 am

Chinese people already used Gunpowder long before 1400. And first use of it was mentionned around 1300-1350 in Europe.
On the other hand, the wheel wasn't even used in America by the civilisations who lived here.
So "1400 tech" doesn't mean a lot. It's more a fantasy Middle Age than anything accurate.

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 23, 2013, 09:18:59 am

If this picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireLanceAndGrenade10thCenturyDunhuang.jpg) is to be believed, gunpowder has been around since the 900s, in the form of grenades and fire lances. Even if gunpowder isn't included, I'm for adding more Asian elements to the game to increase the diversity in civilizations. I mean, who doesn't want to see a Dwarven civilization that uses elements of Oriental culture for a change?

Quote from: Inarius on September 23, 2013, 09:24:07 am

I don't.

I don't want to make of DF a mess of too many things. It would be like Pandaria for WoW or shits like that (not that it is shitty, but the mixture is...well...).
DF has its own universe, please don't mix it with things that has nothing to do with it.
But it's true that some of Asian medieval traits could be used to give more diversity for human societies.

Quote from: LordBaal on September 23, 2013, 10:07:05 am

But what's more dwarfy that a huge tube of iron or steel filled with coal set ablaze to spit a huge ball of anything against your enemies, probably blowing half fortress in the process too?

No gunpowder derails, please.  At least half of you know better.   Control yourselves.

Quote from: Footkerchief on July 29, 2009, 04:44:31 am

There have been dozens of gunpowder threads. (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?action=search2;params=YWR2YW5jZWR8J3wxfCJ8YnJkfCd8NXwifHNob3dfY29tcGxldGV8J3x8InxzdWJqZWN0X29ubHl8J3x8Inxzb3J0X2RpcnwnfGRlc2N8Inxzb3J0fCd8cmVsZXZhbmNlfCJ8c2VhcmNofCd8Z3VucG93ZGVy)

If you want an official answer, though, it's "maybe":

Quote from: Toady One on November 06, 2007, 04:56:00 am

Given that anything I add which is both highly controversial and unnecessary will be optional, people can afford to be calm about future additions.

A lot of it comes down to where I devote my energy.  Technological innovations sort of fall into a category with projects like tileset support.  These options would make some people happy and expand the audience, while taking up some of my time that other people want put somewhere else.  As they get further and further away from what we've already got, they are less likely to have time found for them.

For those interested in a specific development timeline for gunpowder, I'll be faced with the question when I make the alchemist's workshop more interesting (assuming that workshop continues to exist).  Handling the workshop itself is a middle-priority matter, since the game elements involved aren't crucial but the the building is languishing in a limbo surrounded by mysterious useless raw entries like golden salve and gnomeblight.  I may or may not add optional gunpowder around that time.  I don't know.

Regarding gunpowder and some basic associated technologies, I can see myself playing either way, really, since I'm not that picky.  If I had to choose between having gunpowder on or off in a release distribution init file, it would be off, because Arnold got shot in Commando not Conan, and the Argonauts didn't get shot by handguns or cannons, and Medusa had a bow not a gun, and stuff.  We grew up with that crap, and our core DF, our myth/fantasy game, mainly hovers around that sort of fluffy nostalgia, but it doesn't need to impact you more than a one line file change.

Quote from: Toady One on March 20, 2009, 10:35:23 pm

Yeah, I'm aware of this.  I've been thinking for a while of using their chemistry as the dwarven model, prior to gunpowder arriving in the mid 13th century.  Plaster isn't the first time we've bumped into them.  In any case, as plaster casts predate that by 300 years and had the direct mineral link I mentioned, I think it's all good.  Dwarves should probably distinguish themselves in fields like this, if anything.  It's their element, at least in part.  Some of it'll depend on flavor (gunpowder is a decision like this more or less).  I'll have to decide on a case by case basis, but I think most of it will go in.  Our dwarves have more idle time than fighting crazy viking-style scottish dwarves.

edit:  though they drink twice as much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 23, 2013, 10:18:53 am

I was just commenting on that, and it's something Toady himself has say a "maybe" sounding a lot like "no". However it's one of the most popular claims and it's natural to have it pop up here and there every once in a while.

Eventually the game will get there, through design or modding, either way is the same, and that's just one of the many, many things that are awesome with this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 10:28:31 am

Quote from: Inarius on September 23, 2013, 09:24:07 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 23, 2013, 09:18:59 am

If this picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireLanceAndGrenade10thCenturyDunhuang.jpg) is to be believed, gunpowder has been around since the 900s, in the form of grenades and fire lances. Even if gunpowder isn't included, I'm for adding more Asian elements to the game to increase the diversity in civilizations. I mean, who doesn't want to see a Dwarven civilization that uses elements of Oriental culture for a change?

I don't.

I don't want to make of DF a mess of too many things. It would be like Pandaria for WoW or shits like that (not that it is shitty, but the mixture is...well...).
DF has its own universe, please don't mix it with things that has nothing to do with it.
But it's true that some of Asian medieval traits could be used to give more diversity for human societies.

Having early gunpowder =/= asian medieval traits, you can have gunpowder without having medieval asian traits.

Still though, footkerchief is right, there has been PLENTY of discussion on gunpowder and I think the masterwork mod has it, so lets end the derail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 23, 2013, 10:39:57 am

Anyhow as of this moment dwarf fortress deals in singular cultures and I am unsure when this will change but every impression I get from Toady is that this will eventually change.

How much, I don't know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 23, 2013, 10:51:05 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 08:03:35 pm

Also, Toady One, you mentioned the elves bringing coconuts and since in RL, coconut milk is made into liquor, will we be seeing new alcohol brews in the next version?

Toady has hinted at that being the case.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: caknuck

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 23, 2013, 01:18:01 pm

On the forums at http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131179.45 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131179.45) we've determined that the Dwarf Fortress moon either orbits the planet prograde with a sidereal period of exactly 24 days, or retrograde with a sidereal period of exactly 28 days (one dwarven month), assuming the planet goes around the sun the "normal" way with Earth (travels anti-clockwise around the sun when viewed from the Sun's north pole; we know the planet rotates from West to East already). Which one is it? If the moon orbits the planet retrograde, it means its orbit will decay and eventually crash into the planet. Was this ever a planned apocalypse scenario?

Yes, some of us did those calculations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 23, 2013, 01:23:11 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on September 23, 2013, 09:18:59 am

If this picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FireLanceAndGrenade10thCenturyDunhuang.jpg) is to be believed, gunpowder has been around since the 900s, in the form of grenades and fire lances. Even if gunpowder isn't included, I'm for adding more Asian elements to the game to increase the diversity in civilizations. I mean, who doesn't want to see a Dwarven civilization that uses elements of Oriental culture for a change?

Toady said on his twitter feed on 9th September that gunpowder will be a possible worldgen option. This will ensure that people who don't want gunpowder in their games won't have to deal with it. I'd personally like this to be sorted out sooner than later (i.e. next major release after the coming one), but that's just my opinion on it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on September 23, 2013, 01:31:31 pm

I presume that it might be a part of a larger "technology" arc or something like it. I could see a mode with technology advancement, and one with it. How exactly that would work could vary a lot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on September 23, 2013, 01:41:54 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 23, 2013, 10:51:05 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 22, 2013, 08:03:35 pm

Also, Toady One, you mentioned the elves bringing coconuts and since in RL, coconut milk is made into liquor, will we be seeing new alcohol brews in the next version?

Toady has hinted at that being the case.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: caknuck

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

Are dwarves going to be able to harvest from trees in the next release, or are the fruits only going to be delivered by caravan?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on September 23, 2013, 01:56:43 pm

Toady already stated that we'll be able to harvest fruits through some means, like picking them up off the ground when they fall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hague on September 23, 2013, 02:03:19 pm

On the topic of gunpowder. With or without, DF definitely needs a source of explosive force and modeling for it, if only for other kinds of explosions (preternatural or otherwise) I mean, imagine corpulent exploding zombies. Explosive mushroom spores.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 23, 2013, 02:29:26 pm

Quote from: Hague on September 23, 2013, 02:03:19 pm

On the topic of gunpowder. With or without, DF definitely needs a source of explosive force and modeling for it, if only for other kinds of explosions (preternatural or otherwise) I mean, imagine corpulent exploding zombies. Explosive mushroom spores.

Oh that's in, to some degree. With the projectile subsystem thing, ToadyOne could model Splatter exploding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 03:52:17 pm

Hm, I don't know if anybody here has asked this yet:

Will we be able to cultivate fruit trees? By that I mean be able to have orchards of one or more species of fruiting trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Man In Zero G on September 23, 2013, 03:56:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 03:52:17 pm

Hm, I don't know if anybody here has asked this yet:

Will we be able to cultivate fruit trees? By that I mean be able to have orchards of one or more species of fruiting trees.

I believe the answer was "Not yet".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 23, 2013, 04:01:13 pm

But eventually. I find this one to be one of those low hanging fruits the One Toad talks about, we could get it latter in one of the "post release" releases between big releases. (how much wood would a woodchuck... :P )

However I could be very wrong, only he knows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 04:18:56 pm

Quote from: Man In Zero G on September 23, 2013, 03:56:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 03:52:17 pm

Hm, I don't know if anybody here has asked this yet:

Will we be able to cultivate fruit trees? By that I mean be able to have orchards of one or more species of fruiting trees.

I believe the answer was "Not yet".

I know we can just selectively choose what not to cut down in a specific area, I was thinking some kind of large building. Then again, I'm not sure how it would be done with a building kind of thing.

Given enough time, a player could definetly set up an orchard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on September 23, 2013, 07:18:05 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 23, 2013, 03:52:17 pm

Hm, I don't know if anybody here has asked this yet:

Will we be able to cultivate fruit trees? By that I mean be able to have orchards of one or more species of fruiting trees.

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will we be able to get orchards in Dwarf Fortress Mode too?

I haven't done tree planting yet, and I'm not sure how that'll end up.  It should be possible to grab things from existing trees.

Quote from: Toady One on August 01, 2013, 04:34:12 am

Quote

Quote from: Japa

Will we be able to make gardens in fort mode?

Quote from: Aseaheru

Think its called farmplots...

There's the issue of planting, and the issue of gathering plant growths vs. whole plants.  One of those optional items I'd like to get done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 23, 2013, 08:07:57 pm

Where "like to" =/= "definately in"

I'm at once shuddering at the level of long term micromanagement involved yet intrigued at the idea of selective logging to induce an orchard in a "psuedo-organic" way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on September 24, 2013, 06:28:54 am

Ad Asian cultures:

"Urist has lost his honor."
"Urist refused to seppuku."
"Urist became kabukimono."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on September 24, 2013, 06:35:12 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on September 23, 2013, 12:43:16 am

Unless I'm missing something horribly, I don't see why 14th century technology couldn't be used to brew champagne and then squeeze oranges into it or something. Although personally I'd just hack the oranges up and throw them in a barrel of water with some yeast. Mmmm alcohol!

The champagne, actually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 24, 2013, 11:36:14 am

About Gunpowder, I'd like that some rocks or things, put together and with a certain temperature, can explode or become flammable.

That's the "alchemic" knowledge of gunpowder, like it was in the middle ages. I think it could be very cool, fun, and even, !!FUN!!. Like what we can do with lava, water and steam.

Controlling this to make real weapons like guns (even earlier ones)...well, I'm not very fan of this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on September 24, 2013, 02:06:46 pm

Actually, just heating certain shales can result in a shraptnel fest.

Shales have chemically bound water inside, and form discrete layers of cleavage. A bit like a pie crust fluffing up in the oven into crispy pastry layers, shales "puff up" when heated as that water becomes vapor, and gets trapped between those layers.  As the pressure builds up, it splinters the shale chunk, and it shoots little flat slivers of rock all over. (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmu1q98AdXE)

Some kinds of shale are more prone to this than others, as some contain oil and natural gas deposits as well as water and hydrated silica.

A combination of channeled magma plumbing, and a sedementary shale layer, really should result in much mayhem, depending on the shale. (Up to and including spontaneous surface firs.)

I don't think toady has such a thing planned though.

More interesting, would be potasium nitrate salt beds out in hardpan deserts. That stuff is a powerful accellerant, and is the real accellerant found in black powder. IIRC, Argentina and peru export a good deal of the stuff. It can't form mineral deposits where there is any kind of strongly active hydrology though. Toady would have to redo part of his geology engine to have it form proceedurally. The exploding shale would be much easier to implement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 24, 2013, 06:34:08 pm

^^ This.  So much.

I can't wait for VOC's to be modelled in game.  I highly doubt we'll ever get Dwarven fracking, but Firedamp will (:D) be an awesome addition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on September 24, 2013, 07:10:00 pm

I was leaning more toward oil shales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale) and oil bearing shales, which would be directly combustible, and should not only explode when heated crazily by magma exposure, but explode with actual fire.

Added bonus if this results in spontaneous non-constructed wall destruction, and escape of plumbed magma into the fortress, and flaming walls/floors elsewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 24, 2013, 07:25:48 pm

I think it might be touched on more when Toady gets to reworking light and illumination, due to the implications of torches and lamps

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on September 25, 2013, 02:19:01 am

Anyway, after this update (which will be a very good one), it's quite sure that, whatever Toady's choice, it will be a good one.

Diplomacy arc, caravan arc with tavern, personnality/psychology arc, reworking light, alchemy, mastering great beast, mounting skill ?
Seriously, all of these things are awesome. All we can do is supporting him, and acclaim, and make the game better known.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 25, 2013, 02:58:01 am

I think next planned after this update is the usual bugfixes followed by taverns, which'll be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on September 25, 2013, 12:50:40 pm

Next planned after the bugfixes is whatever Toady wants it to be...he's mentioned personality rewrite work as one of the post-release features.

As for what the next Big Project is after this arc of releases winds down...none but Armok and Toady know. You could try divining from the entrails of a sacrificed animal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 25, 2013, 01:13:53 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 25, 2013, 12:50:40 pm

Next planned after the bugfixes is whatever Toady wants it to be...he's mentioned personality rewrite work as one of the post-release features.

As for what the next Big Project is after this arc of releases winds down...none but Armok and Toady know. You could try divining from the entrails of a sacrificed animal.

Toady has been doing the personality rewrite on and off during the current development. Granted, it might not be complete as such, but it's there. What he has mentioned is taverns (as Putnam said, and seem to be among the most likely from recent posts), fortress starting scenarios, thief role work, hill/deep dwarves for fortress mode... but of course, first the bugfix period, along with job priorities and probably other little features (and maybe even "little features").

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 25, 2013, 08:04:13 pm

I seem to recall a quote where he mentioned that the "personality rewrite" was so big, he ended up dividing it into chunks that will be dealt with as the analogous adventure mode aspects get worked on. So he's working on some basic framework stuff now, and then goals/aspirations will get fleshed out when worldgen leaders get their stuff, and relationships will get updated when adventure mode relationships can form, etc etc.

I don't know where he said that though, so it'd be great if some genius could come up with a citation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on September 25, 2013, 09:43:21 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 25, 2013, 12:50:40 pm

As for what the next Big Project is after this arc of releases winds down...none but Armok and Toady know. You could try divining from the entrails of a sacrificed animal.

Tried that, all I ended up with was a platter of offal.

Yummy, yummy offal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 25, 2013, 09:58:14 pm

Quote from: Mr S on September 25, 2013, 09:43:21 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on September 25, 2013, 12:50:40 pm

As for what the next Big Project is after this arc of releases winds down...none but Armok and Toady know. You could try divining from the entrails of a sacrificed animal.

Tried that, all I ended up with was a platter of offal.

Yummy, yummy offal.

Sounds like a good harvest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 26, 2013, 07:47:17 am

Quote from: monk12 on September 25, 2013, 08:04:13 pm

I seem to recall a quote where he mentioned that the "personality rewrite" was so big, he ended up dividing it into chunks that will be dealt with as the analogous adventure mode aspects get worked on. So he's working on some basic framework stuff now, and then goals/aspirations will get fleshed out when worldgen leaders get their stuff, and relationships will get updated when adventure mode relationships can form, etc etc.

I don't know where he said that though, so it'd be great if some genius could come up with a citation.

Is it one of these?

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: monkeyfetus

What happened to the personality rewrite? I was under the impression it was a precursor to all this stuff about entities interacting with each-other.

Parts of it have already happened, but I'm not doing it as an independent large push in the way I thought, so I haven't particularly noted it -- there are lots of other things wrapped up with the personality changes that we're still going to do later.

Quote

Quote from: Areyar

Now that you have entities and groups setting goals and acting on them in adventurermode, will you soon add these features also to groups in the Fortress mode?

So that groups such as familiy, inactive squads ect will coordinate their goals and actions more. Also intergroup; feuds, alliances etc. influencing an individuals' thoughts,likes etc. animals could claim territories and defend them.

Quote from: Cruxador

How will these new thought-systems interface with the upcoming groups system?

Quote from: tahujdt

Toady, will dwarves ever try to assasinate people(outside of tantrums)? Will we find fighting factions within our forts?

Having factions/religions/guilds in the fortress is something we're holding in mind as we work with the thought/personality/emotion rewrite and the entity claims.  The new systems are basically the framework of the personality rewrite we've been going on about forever and the dwarf mode interface there with groups is all of the sort of decision making we've been talking about.  However, I still need to gut the dwarven brain in the same way I've gutted the adventure mode critter brain to get them to be able to use the new stuff, and the old dwarven brain is large and messy. 

The upside of that was also being able to support things like custom job prioritization and better for decision making, but I haven't embarked on this yet, so I'd hesitate to say I've truly begun the personality rewrite.  The adventure mode dabbling should make the dwarf mode rewrite a lot easier when it happens, since I've gotten a chance to prepare an AI function more like what I'm imagining the dwarf will have now.  Once a dwarf is allowed to weigh actions and can take a free action a little easier, they'll be able to think about doing something for their various allegiances, whether it's killing another dwarf or something a lot less extreme.  It's important that the game isn't constantly disrupted to the point of unplayability, but there should be room for stuff.

Quote from: drvoke

Toady, how have you been approaching the implementation and design of personality stuff as this bit of the project moves forward?  Have you been consulting with anybody who specializes in psychology, or is this basically the result of wiki-diving and/or astute induction?

Zach and I have mostly just been talking situations out as we come to them.  Some reading online back when we were hashing some of the new categories out, but nothing in particular.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on September 26, 2013, 10:17:06 am

Probably all of those, though mostly the first :P Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CanuckMonkey on September 26, 2013, 05:30:16 pm

Quote from: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Yeah, you get tired very quickly sprinting at this point, and running also makes you tired over time.  I think lower endurance characters also get tired when jogging, though I don't recall exactly how that balances out.

Toady, How do you distinguish between the different movement speeds in the code, especially running vs. jogging? I found http://www.runrunlive.com/the-difference-between-running-and-jogging (http://www.runrunlive.com/the-difference-between-running-and-jogging) which suggests that the difference is mostly a mindset, and that the roots of the word "jogging" are in a semi-slang term for walking briskly. I can certainly see room for differentiating speeds further, I'm just curious about how you've gone about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 26, 2013, 09:46:53 pm

Quote from: Cmega3 on September 26, 2013, 09:33:43 pm

((Sorry if I ask something already asked or something like that, this is my first time doing this.))

Toady, what will be the general layout of new sites? Is a dark fortress going to be completely aboveground? Also, will non-necromancer creatures be able to write books? Will adventurers be able to do it?

Judging from what the devlogs say, the goblin sites are mostly underground but they do have aboveground portions. I think anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 26, 2013, 11:15:22 pm

I'll assume they're something like those of 40d: Big towers on top of an underground complex.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on September 27, 2013, 07:52:30 am

 Will adventurers use their race ethics? Like allowing elf adventurers to devour corpses, as they do in world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 07:56:34 am

Quote from: WarRoot on September 27, 2013, 07:52:30 am

Will adventurers use their race ethics? Like allowing elf adventurers to devour corpses, as they do in world gen.

Don't they already do that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on September 27, 2013, 08:25:14 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 07:56:34 am

Quote from: WarRoot on September 27, 2013, 07:52:30 am

Will adventurers use their race ethics? Like allowing elf adventurers to devour corpses, as they do in world gen.

Don't they already do that?

They don't, but it's likely an oversight.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 12:30:42 pm

I looked around and didn't see anything about dwarves being able to weild foreign weapons in fort mode, so...

Will dwarves in fort mode be able to weild foreign weapons properly like say, whips or other weapons you can't normally make? I haven't attempted to make my dwarves equip foriegn weapons, but I've read about the bug on wiki.

Although I also read that you sort of can, but the one-handed vs two-handed doesn't work right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on September 27, 2013, 01:07:50 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 12:30:42 pm

I looked around and didn't see anything about dwarves being able to weild foreign weapons in fort mode, so...

Will dwarves in fort mode be able to weild foreign weapons properly like say, whips or other weapons you can't normally make? I haven't attempted to make my dwarves equip foriegn weapons, but I've read about the bug on wiki.

Although I also read that you sort of can, but the one-handed vs two-handed doesn't work right?

They already can, as long as they're not too big for them - halberds, pikes and two-handed swords tend to be outside the size range for dwarves. In theory, some can do it anyway, because they're bigger, but if I remember correctly, in practice everyone uses the base stats for their race, rather than their individual stats. So you can't use most of them.

I do that regularly with a slightly modded vanilla (modded in the sense of "slightly tweaked stats"), so I know it has been working for me for ages at least. The problem is that you can't make them, which means no steel or cotton candy, and usually low quality.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 01:30:47 pm

Quote from: Jheral on September 27, 2013, 01:07:50 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 12:30:42 pm

I looked around and didn't see anything about dwarves being able to weild foreign weapons in fort mode, so...

Will dwarves in fort mode be able to weild foreign weapons properly like say, whips or other weapons you can't normally make? I haven't attempted to make my dwarves equip foriegn weapons, but I've read about the bug on wiki.

Although I also read that you sort of can, but the one-handed vs two-handed doesn't work right?

They already can, as long as they're not too big for them - halberds, pikes and two-handed swords tend to be outside the size range for dwarves. In theory, some can do it anyway, because they're bigger, but if I remember correctly, in practice everyone uses the base stats for their race, rather than their individual stats. So you can't use most of them.

I do that regularly with a slightly modded vanilla (modded in the sense of "slightly tweaked stats"), so I know it has been working for me for ages at least. The problem is that you can't make them, which means no steel or cotton candy, and usually low quality.

Oh, I may have misunderstood the bug/issue then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 27, 2013, 01:39:31 pm

Quote from: Jheral on September 27, 2013, 01:07:50 pm

They already can, as long as they're not too big for them - halberds, pikes and two-handed swords tend to be outside the size range for dwarves. In theory, some can do it anyway, because they're bigger, but if I remember correctly, in practice everyone uses the base stats for their race, rather than their individual stats. So you can't use most of them.

Correct. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5812)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on September 27, 2013, 01:46:59 pm

So it's not a bug but an oversight? Is that the correct word?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 27, 2013, 01:48:46 pm

You can, however, use longswords, scimitars, morningstars, whips, and scourges. And blowguns and bows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 02:10:48 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 27, 2013, 01:48:46 pm

You can, however, use longswords, scimitars, morningstars, whips, and scourges. And blowguns and bows.

Oh, I thought the wiki meant that you couldn't due to the bug, so I'm misunderstanding the bug, or maybe oversight as it were.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 27, 2013, 02:13:10 pm

Dwarves are within the size range of those weapons. They can use scimitars 1-handed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 03:43:02 pm

Then what exactly is the bug with fortress dwarves equipping things one handed vs two handed? or is it just specific to two handed swords, great axes (although I've seen art with Tholtig using a greataxe), halberds, mauls, and pikes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 27, 2013, 04:50:05 pm

Tholtig's art is purely conceptual. At no point in legends mode does it tell you what equipment the person has, or even what they look like. For all we know she could have killed all those elves with a sock.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 10:44:47 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 27, 2013, 04:50:05 pm

Tholtig's art is purely conceptual. At no point in legends mode does it tell you what equipment the person has, or even what they look like. For all we know she could have killed all those elves with a sock.

Did whoever had the origional save try to stop worldgen at a point where they or someone else could find Tholtig? Then again, that may have been before the descriptions were added in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on September 28, 2013, 06:50:39 am

Quote from: Trif on September 27, 2013, 08:25:14 am

They don't, but it's likely an oversight.

Either that or it's held back for the crime & punishment arc, as it would be silly to gobble up human corpses in front of a human village, without them caring about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 28, 2013, 07:03:22 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 27, 2013, 10:44:47 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 27, 2013, 04:50:05 pm

Tholtig's art is purely conceptual. At no point in legends mode does it tell you what equipment the person has, or even what they look like. For all we know she could have killed all those elves with a sock.

Did whoever had the origional save try to stop worldgen at a point where they or someone else could find Tholtig? Then again, that may have been before the descriptions were added in.

I seem to recall that he or she tried, but something went wrong with the history generation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on September 29, 2013, 09:25:46 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 27, 2013, 04:50:05 pm

Tholtig's art is purely conceptual. At no point in legends mode does it tell you what equipment the person has, or even what they look like. For all we know she could have killed all those elves with a sock.

Well, we can still find out their skills through extrenal programs, and if the guy was, for example, legendary swordsdwarf, then he probably used sword.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 29, 2013, 09:49:59 am

Quote from: Matoro on September 29, 2013, 09:25:46 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 27, 2013, 04:50:05 pm

Tholtig's art is purely conceptual. At no point in legends mode does it tell you what equipment the person has, or even what they look like. For all we know she could have killed all those elves with a sock.

Well, we can still find out their skills through extrenal programs, and if the guy was, for example, legendary swordsdwarf, then he probably used sword.

Tholtig is a female dwarf... You're right though, there are external programs now which can do that. Is the save still around somewhere?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Thanks to monk12, Manveru Taurënér, eux0r, MrWiggles, Trif, 10ebbor10, Knight Otu, Japa, Parisbre56, Valtam, King Mir, Cruxador, Footkerchief, EmeraldWind, Putnam, Neonivek, Ribs, Eric Blank, Man In Zero G, LordBaal, Jheral and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time.  As you can see, lots of helpful people, and lots of helpful people means lots of skipped questions -- so if yours wasn't answered, please go and check its general vicinity in this thread and there could be a useful post.

Quote from: Belvita

With the new multi-tile trees, will the physics cause the entire tree to fall down on the dwarf due to a missing base, or will the woodcutter cut branches/small bits off at a time? Basically, like cave-ins with removed supports, except it's a tree.

If the tree loses its base in some odd way, then the cave-in mechanics trigger the collapse.  The woodcutter does not operate tile by tile, but rather on the tree from where they are standing.  I haven't related the cave-in to tree toppling, and I'm not really sure if that's how it should work or not, since the circumstances are already strange when it happens (mostly partial branch drops from fire).  Trees can't currently be pruned.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will companions we lose (and survive) at the very least turn up somewhere predictable, like their hometown, or generate a path for themselves back towards their home? Currently they just turn up in the darndest places, such as a town you'd never visited before. Or not at all.

The code that sent them to a random location is out of play now.  I still need to do some sorting of stranded people, but it has the proper information to work with so it should work out -- that's only if you die/retire.  If you are still playing, any person that goes out of view becomes an "army" at their location, if they aren't home, and they need to find their way back (which, as I discussed before, they don't exactly have a handle on yet, but they should soon).

Quote from: LordBaal

Today, will we ever see an artifact for time measure, like the goblets, toys and music instruments we have now? Will different civs carry different calendars with different lengths of the year? Or will it remain as something more abstracted, under the control of no one.

I think clocks and entity-dependent calendars are on the old dev pages.  So it's one of those things that's still up for consideration, but time-line-less.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

With the new job priorities, will that mean you can give *orders* in adventure mode to your allies?

They aren't closely related, but we're entertaining the idea of still getting a little of that in even before this release.  It can mess up your stealthiness if your hangers-on do every little thing with you.  After that, I'm not sure.

Quote from: Heph

Toady will we have trees (oasis) at places that are particularly dry but have Aquivers (like the Tree of Ténéré)?

There's nothing like that at this point.  We haven't really done much with local variation in any of the land's properties, or rare events like roots reaching down to the water table in your example (after a period of change where the table was close to the surface?  we don't really model change either).

Quote from: Dapper Clapper

Now that there are less-than-lethal forms of combat, will adventurers be given quests along the lines of "Beat the snot out of my annoying neighbor", or "A drunkard is terrorizing the locals, go teach him a lesson"? Perhaps even "Capture the outlaw alive, and return him here so he may be brought to justice"?  Also, what different levels of combat are planned for the next release?

edit:

On the topic of non-lethal combat, will there be weapons designed specifically for non-lethal altercations? For example, a sap or blackjack meant to render an opponent unconscious.

The fights between villages are mostly along those lines.  I don't have much else to work with at this point, but there'll be some stuff to do.  Capturing people and bringing them somewhere is one of the hero role things we didn't quite sort out, so that'll come later.

Saps are on the old dev pages, so the typical line applies there (all for it, no timeline).  The trick is getting the combat system to make the proper outcome likely without just flagging it (preferably).  It would be cool to make it a consequence of some inclusive mechanic.

Quote from: Ribs

How exactly will you re-interpret the various stressers, assuming this won't simple mean changing the values around the current system? 

The main thing is to stop calculating happiness directly from thoughts, but to have thoughts give rise to an extra layer of moods and emotions, which have an impact on long-term stress which impacts stability.  The personality and value system influence the process at each stage.  Hopefully people will behave a little more sensibly, but we haven't gotten a chance to tax dwarves much in-game.

Quote from: PigtailLlama

Is there any plans with the old tree code? Perhaps create bushes and larger bamboo, for instance? Would the woodier of bushes and bamboo be able to be harvested for things like charcoal (and in bamboo's case, construction)?

The shrub occupies a weird space now.  The trees are large, the grass is carpety, and the shrub is still one tile, even though many of the shrub example species should be multi-tile by any reasonable tile measure.  I'm not sure what the future will hold.  Probably other tile types and growth patterns, and more interesting vegetation as time goes on, so we can get giant blackberry bushes and bamboo forests, although plants kind of get infinitely complicated in their mixing and growing and the potential annoyances there.

Quote from: Putnam

Any raw changes *other* than attacks and trees so far, especially ones that must be accounted for when updating mods?

Here are some things:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gaits:

Humans, for example, have


[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]


which goes to


[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS]
   GAIT:type:name:full speed:build up time:turning max:start speed:energy use
      use NO_BUILD_UP if you jump immediately to full speed
      these optional flags go at the end:
         LAYERS_SLOW - fat/muscle layers slow the movement (muscle-slowing counter-acted by strength bonus)
         STRENGTH - strength attribute can speed/slow movement
         AGILITY - agility attribute can speed/slow movement
         STEALTH_SLOWS:<n> - n is percentage slowed
         it would be interesting to allow quirky attributes (like mental stats), but they aren't supported yet
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Sprint:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Run:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Jog:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Walk:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Stroll:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Faster Climb:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Fast Climb:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Climb:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Slow Climb:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Maximum Swim Speed:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Faster Swim:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Fast Swim:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Swim:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Slow Swim:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Creeping Swim:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Faster Crawl:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Fast Crawl:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Crawl:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Slow Crawl:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]




Entity values:

Here are the current dwarves, in their entity (you don't need the zeroes, but I left them to complete the list).  They go from 50 to -50.


[VALUE:LAW:30]
[VALUE:LOYALTY:30]
[VALUE:FAMILY:30]
[VALUE:FRIENDSHIP:30]
[VALUE:POWER:0]
[VALUE:TRUTH:30]
[VALUE:CUNNING:0]
[VALUE:ELOQUENCE:0]
[VALUE:FAIRNESS:15]
[VALUE:DECORUM:0]
[VALUE:TRADITION:0]
[VALUE:ARTWORK:30]
[VALUE:COOPERATION:15]
[VALUE:INDEPENDENCE:5]
[VALUE:STOICISM:5]
[VALUE:INTROSPECTION:0]
[VALUE:SELF_CONTROL:0]
[VALUE:TRANQUILITY:0]
[VALUE:HARMONY:0]
[VALUE:MERRIMENT:15]
[VALUE:CRAFTSMANSHIP:50]
[VALUE:MARTIAL_PROWESS:15]
[VALUE:SKILL:30]
[VALUE:HARD_WORK:30]
[VALUE:SACRIFICE:0]
[VALUE:COMPETITION:0]
[VALUE:PERSEVERENCE:5]
[VALUE:LEISURE_TIME:15]
[VALUE:COMMERCE:15]
[VALUE:ROMANCE:0]
[VALUE:NATURE:-15]
[VALUE:PEACE:0]




Personality facet list:

This is still subject to change, though maybe not by all that much now (there are still some archetypes I have trouble constructing with these plus values).  They run from 0 to 100 as before, but 0 is often the opposite of the listed phrase rather than just its lack.  So a person with CRUELTY 0 is abundantly merciful, even in situations where it might not be prudent.


LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY
ANGER_PROPENSITY
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY
GREED
IMMODERATION
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD
FRIENDLINESS
POLITENESS
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE
VANITY
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST
CLOSEMINDED
TOLERANT
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS
ALTRUISM
DUTIFULNESS
THOUGHTLESSNESS
ORDERLINESS
TRUST
GREGARIOUSNESS
ASSERTIVENESS
ACTIVITY_LEVEL
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING
IMAGINATION
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED

Quote from: Areyar

Do they learn?  Also, does locking a dwarf in isolation drive him mad now?

It hasn't changed that much.

Quote

Quote from: Jheral

Another interesting question is "With these changes, will there be dwarves with ethics and values that deviate greatly from their civ's ethics and values? For instance, a sociopathic dwarf who feel that killing and eating sapient creatures is perfectly fine, or a hippie dwarf that won't kill plants?".

And, if so Will this kind of thing be customizable for adventurers, allowing us to play a character with different limitations imposed by ethics (like being able to butcher kobolds/goblins and using their bones/hides/meat, for instance)?

Quote from: reality.auditor

Can you have dwarf with different ethics than general ethics of his civilisation?

Quote from: WarRoot

Will adventurers use their race ethics? Like allowing elf adventurers to devour corpses, as they do in world gen.

For dwarves, I've only done it with the values thus far.  Ethics'll happen at some point -- I've already specifically set up the framework for having individuals with different ethics, but I haven't set the ranges or chosen the ethics.  There are places where it clashes with the interface options, where you'd likely still be restricted by the ethics of the civ.  We'll need additional activities that let dwarves express themselves.

In adventure mode, I'm still not sure overall how I want to handle it.  The game occasionally tells you when your character won't do things, but that's odd.  You could do anything you want without personal penalty, do it but get some sort of broad depressiony minuses if it clashes with how you wanted your character to be (or some other penalty), or just not be allowed to do it.  I'd lean toward the first two.  The trick is to find the proper penalty.  We'd like to unfetter your options but find some proper cost if the game knows how you want to play (the flipside would be "rewards" for playing according to ethics/role/etc.), without it being too game-y.

This is different from someone else in your civ seeing or hearing about you doing it, which would always be looked on through their own ethics and not yours.

Quote from: Greiger

You mentioned Dwarven society highly values craftmanship.  How moddible is what different civs value?  Could I say for example make a fortress race that highly values combat proficiency over crafting skill?  Or perhaps number of kills?  Or even crazy societies that value high amounts of pets, owned items, number of children, or extremely high or low bodyweights?

You can set all of the values for an entity.  The choice of values is going to be limited by what I put in, so some of your examples won't be possible.  The list of what I have now is above in the spoiler, though not all of those are going to have clearly related dreams or impacts yet.

Quote

Quote from: MrWillsauce

The mention of philosophies and religions in the future stemming from cultural values made me think of the philosopher noble from 2-D. Will the philosopher ever be returning to Dwarf Fortress?

Quote from: me via Knight Otu

The philosopher as a single dwarf called "the philosopher" is likely out.  Adding dwarves with a philosophical bent that get into arguments and get followers and sway segments of the population toward one way of thinking or another are something we'd like to do.

I just wanted to reiterated this.  We have more of the building blocks in place, and eventually we'll see that sort of thing return to the game with much more backing behind it.

Quote

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

Toady, do you see dwarves/other races as being basically evil ("orginal sin"), basically good, or something else, like moral tabulae rasae or simply basically pragmatists?

Quote from: Helgoland

Toady, what's your 'design philosophy' of the dwarven character? Where do you see yourself on the scale of Hobbes vs. Rousseau?

I'm trying to avoid all that.  If there's a notion of original sin or soul improvement over several lifetimes, I want that to be modeled by the mechanics, and I want it to be adjustable.  I still need to systemetize something with objects and rules, and there are going to be biases there and so on, but I'm hoping the system can account for a variety of metaphysical realities (which we'll eventually want to generate with each world gen).  I don't need to get too deep into the root causes of things until I'm ready for it.  Then certain systems can be given exceptions (as with the individual variation we now have from the base entity values).

Quote from: smjjames

Given the way moods work, will the new personality and dreams stuff have any affect on strange moods?

We're still wondering about that.  A dwarf's actual talents might still matter, but we don't really have specific mechanisms plotted out for the different moods (it's a very old and game-y mechanic).  The fact that there is often a large skill increase probably means that dreams could be used with no skill required.

Quote from: Chthonic

Might we see some examples of these awful dwarves?

First I had it make 500 dwarves, where it highlighted the odd ones, and I went through them and picked a few winners:

Spoiler: A little too elfy (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers1.png)

Spoiler: Dreamless sadist that looks down on the core of dwarven culture (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers2.png)

Spoiler: Wants to try hard and thinks he's great, but just doesn't have it (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers3.png)

So you can expect those types to show up reasonably rarely, but sometimes they'll be there.  But then I took the last fort there and had it shuffle the personalities a few hundred thousand times, leaving the worst one, and found this guy:

Spoiler: Your future emperor (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers4.png)

You shouldn't have to deal with this unless the game starts baking them up for you for whatever reason.

Quote from: Ribs

Is climbing in dwarf mode confirmed for this release, or it ended up not happening?

If and when climbing becomes a thing in dwarf mode, will we see/be able to construct walls that will be harder or easier for things to climb on them? Like being able to order the construction of a block wall that is either full of cracks or very smooth?

Do you plan on having mortar/cement type materials in the future?

Climbing is still unknown -- I think it could still end up happening in combat.  Larger, planned climbs won't happen.

Block walls are harder to climb...  I'm not sure why you'd intentially carve the blocks and then tell them to make it easier to climb, or if you had something else in mind.

I'm all for whatever sorts of construction came up before the cut-off.

Quote from: Mephansteras

Now that dwarves can have dreams, will they get any particular benefit from achieving that dream? If a dwarf, say, dreams of becoming a Master craftsdwarf, will anything happen when they eventually do become one?

I haven't done it yet, but I'm not sure there'd be anything tangible or particular, aside from a large satisfaction/stress-buffer bonus, depending on their personality.  There are probably personality configurations where a dwarf wouldn't get much out of achieving their dream, or might even be harmed by it, but I don't know that that would be common, and the exposition would have to have something about what's going on there to avoid confusion.

Quote from: callisto8413

I know there has been some thought into making friendships HELPFUL instead of having them fuel tantrum spirals.  In fact I believe there is some debate about trying to take tantrums out of the game or lessen their effect on other Dwarfs.  Is there any projects/ideas on helpful professions or items or 'rooms' that could help slow down or stop a spiral once it has began?   An Order of Warrior Monks to help with grief (and kick butt) or maybe expanding the Hospital, an already existing structure, to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

We don't have a lot of specific planning.  Each cultural institution we throw in should have its typical effects if we do it correctly.  Whether that's helping people work through their difficulties or causing them to squabble with and murder each other, I'm not really sure how it'll play out on the average, since it'll depend on the numbers and specific dynamics.  I'm not sure when we'll get to that stuff, though the advent of dwarf mode start scenarios which is coming up in the vague sense is related to religious objectives.

Quote from: Areyar

How about climbing/clamping onto the underside of floors/cave ceilings for flying and/or clawed creatures such as swallowmen, bats and spiders?
Will this be a 'lowhanging fruit' (;)) when climbing is put in, or will the additional pathfinding for climb-capables be a project in itself?

The additional pathfinding is generally a mess, as with fliers in general, though what they hang on to doesn't really impact it.  You yourself can already hang down from tree branches in the open air, so that part won't be hard.  Just the overall concept of getting them to update their hold directions as they move and considering what's possible in a timely fashion.  Climbing is easier than jumping, anyway.

Quote from: Putnam

With dreams coming into play, will there be new IS_SECRET_GOAL inclusions?

Not at this time.  I'll probably have to merge them at some point, but they are also kinda different.

Quote from: HugoLuman

With the thief role, will it be possible for the people who buy stolen merchandise to be punished as well?

I'm not sure how it'll play out, with fences and all that, and how items get back into circulation.  As we add more of that, it'll start to impact the tangential players, and being caught with somebody else's identifiable stuff would not be good.  Depending on the turnover rate, the game might have the current holder of the object accused of the theft even after it has passed through several hands.  The way the incident/rumor system is shaping up, that is certainly possible.  So it could be a joyous mess.

Quote from: smjjames

Toady One, you mentioned the elves bringing coconuts and since in RL, coconut milk is made into liquor, will we be seeing new alcohol brews in the next version?

Coconut milks aren't currently related to it -- that sort of thing is complicated.  Starting with simple fruit is the easy road we are starting with, and there's an awful lot of new fruit coming next time.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

On the forums at http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131179.45 we've determined that the Dwarf Fortress moon either orbits the planet prograde with a sidereal period of exactly 24 days, or retrograde with a sidereal period of exactly 28 days (one dwarven month), assuming the planet goes around the sun the "normal" way with Earth (travels anti-clockwise around the sun when viewed from the Sun's north pole; we know the planet rotates from West to East already). Which one is it? If the moon orbits the planet retrograde, it means its orbit will decay and eventually crash into the planet. Was this ever a planned apocalypse scenario?

We didn't put much thought into this part of the game, since we assumed the moons and calendar situation would become fluid over time.  At that point, I have no idea how much we'll respect we'll have for astronomy vs. making the sun into a fiery chariot that goes underground at night or whatever.

Quote from: CanuckMonkey

Toady, How do you distinguish between the different movement speeds in the code, especially running vs. jogging? I found http://www.runrunlive.com/the-difference-between-running-and-jogging which suggests that the difference is mostly a mindset, and that the roots of the word "jogging" are in a semi-slang term for walking briskly. I can certainly see room for differentiating speeds further, I'm just curious about how you've gone about it.

It's just numeric speed vs. energy used.  Running is a faster word than jogging, so it is used for a faster speed, below sprinting and well above walking.  I haven't tried to get complicated on this initial embark.

Quote from: Cmega3

Toady, what will be the general layout of new sites? Is a dark fortress going to be completely aboveground? Also, will non-necromancer creatures be able to write books? Will adventurers be able to do it?

There's quite a bit of dark fortress sprawl now, in general.  Little watch towers, trenches, connected to an underground network of tunnels, and stuff, and other stuff, and there are the troll shearing areas, and so on.

No new features involving books at this point.  Ideally, all thems what can write books would.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 06:43:37 am

Great natural places of the world doesn't have to be all about trees, the Grand Canyon for example, so that one isn't quite too bad, but yeah, hippie dwarf.

That sadistic dwarf seems like one to keep an eye on, unless she was particularly skilled in something I might put her in the military, not sure. Also, sadistic with a good sense of empathy? Those traits kind of conflict there.

As for the 'dreamer but not really trying' , make him a pump operator or something, lol. Though if he was one of the starting seven, he would do for a metalworker due to preferences.

Wannabe emperor is a coward though.....

Will we see dreams going for a specific skill? One that is hopefully useful.

Also, will the dreams have some kind of effect on gameplay or are they just personality flavor right now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on September 30, 2013, 06:44:37 am

More personality! I love it. All four pariahs would be welcome in my fort. Though I hope some consideration is made to consolidating the aspects and display. There was already scope for some contradictions and overlap before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on September 30, 2013, 07:33:25 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 06:43:37 am

[snip]

Also, sadistic with a good sense of empathy? Those traits kind of conflict there.

Naaaah, not really. Empathy is recognizing other people's emotions, not feeling sorry that you're causing someone pain and suffering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on September 30, 2013, 08:04:59 am

Bay12, lets try to figure this out: What historical person is that emperor dwarf? I'd say Frederick the Great...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeterisP on September 30, 2013, 08:16:40 am

There have been a lot of changes during the past year or so - are you planning to continue with more features, or to wrap up some of them for a new release of DF?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nanomage on September 30, 2013, 08:28:17 am

I love that sadistic empathic dwarf girl. New personalities are absolutely brilliant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on September 30, 2013, 08:29:29 am

Quote from: PeterisP on September 30, 2013, 08:16:40 am

There have been a lot of changes during the past year or so - are you planning to continue with more features, or to wrap up some of them for a new release of DF?

We are on the downward-sloping cart ride towards a release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on September 30, 2013, 08:43:17 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 06:43:37 am

[snip]

Also, sadistic with a good sense of empathy? Those traits kind of conflict there.

Did some quick googling to find a good short explanation of the difference between empathy and sympathy, and came upon this quote...

"[M]aximum cruelty makes use of empathy without sympathy. To hurt someone, you must know what that person's sensitivities and vulnerabilities are, without having compassion or pity for the person's suffering. This is perhaps most obvious in the emotional abuse of intimates or family members. Intimates can say the most hurtful things because they know the other person's areas of vulnerability. The empathic bond is to the other person becomes an instrument to facilitate cruelty."

Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, p. 245 by Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D.

This dwarf sounds like a prime candidate :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 30, 2013, 08:48:30 am

Thanks Toady! Those new values and personality additions look quite interesting. At first glance, though, I kind of miss a Knowledge and/or Wisdom value (Cunning and Skill may be sort of related, but likely not quite) and maybe an Age value, but we can't get everything in one go, obviously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on September 30, 2013, 08:49:10 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 30, 2013, 08:43:17 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 06:43:37 am

[snip]

Also, sadistic with a good sense of empathy? Those traits kind of conflict there.

Did some quick googling to find a good short explanation of the difference between empathy and sympathy, and came upon this quote...

"[M]aximum cruelty makes use of empathy without sympathy. To hurt someone, you must know what that person's sensitivities and vulnerabilities are, without having compassion or pity for the person's suffering. This is perhaps most obvious in the emotional abuse of intimates or family members. Intimates can say the most hurtful things because they know the other person's areas of vulnerability. The empathic bond is to the other person becomes an instrument to facilitate cruelty."

Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, p. 245 by Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D.

This dwarf sounds like a prime candidate :D

Yes, exactly. This dwarf sounds like a prime candidate for diplomatic relations with elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on September 30, 2013, 09:50:54 am

Quote from: Lielac on September 30, 2013, 08:49:10 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on September 30, 2013, 08:43:17 am

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 06:43:37 am

[snip]

Also, sadistic with a good sense of empathy? Those traits kind of conflict there.

Did some quick googling to find a good short explanation of the difference between empathy and sympathy, and came upon this quote...

"[M]aximum cruelty makes use of empathy without sympathy. To hurt someone, you must know what that person's sensitivities and vulnerabilities are, without having compassion or pity for the person's suffering. This is perhaps most obvious in the emotional abuse of intimates or family members. Intimates can say the most hurtful things because they know the other person's areas of vulnerability. The empathic bond is to the other person becomes an instrument to facilitate cruelty."

Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, p. 245 by Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D.

This dwarf sounds like a prime candidate :D

Yes, exactly. This dwarf sounds like a prime candidate for diplomatic relations with elves.

I guess that dwarf is sort of Bay12's spirit dwarf or the High Priest of Armok.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on September 30, 2013, 10:16:37 am

Awesome stuff.

Just want to point out that 'overflated' should either be 'inflated' or 'overinflated' - overflated isn't actually a word.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 10:19:32 am

Quote from: Helgoland on September 30, 2013, 08:04:59 am

Bay12, lets try to figure this out: What historical person is that emperor dwarf? I'd say Frederick the Great...

Could work, though Frederick the Great was a bit of a naturalist and he did serve in the army. I don't see that dwarf as ever having been or being a soldier, at least a melee dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on September 30, 2013, 10:24:37 am

Quote from: MasterMorality on September 30, 2013, 10:16:37 am

overflated isn't actually a word.

Well it is a word, just not one in the dictionary.

Times like this makes me think Franklin and Oxford are evil emperors of the English language.

Though another way to say it that it is word. It is Inflated with over being used as a prefix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on September 30, 2013, 10:28:58 am

Oxford's goal was never too control the English language, only to document it.
People are constantly adding new words into dictionaries that come into common usage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 30, 2013, 10:49:24 am

Dreams to see the natural wonders of the world?

Sounds Elfy, but bear in mind that Dwarfs have an appreciation for nature, too. They probably wonder at natural geological marvels such as Mountains, the Caverns, and the Magma sea.

I can just imagine the whole Gimli vs. Legolas thing. "I'll come look at your pretty forest, if you'll come see these awesome crystal formations in this cave."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on September 30, 2013, 11:04:58 am

Lots of cool info in there.  Thanks!

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

In adventure mode, I'm still not sure overall how I want to handle it.  The game occasionally tells you when your character won't do things, but that's odd.  You could do anything you want without personal penalty, do it but get some sort of broad depressiony minuses if it clashes with how you wanted your character to be (or some other penalty), or just not be allowed to do it.  I'd lean toward the first two.  The trick is to find the proper penalty.  We'd like to unfetter your options but find some proper cost if the game knows how you want to play (the flipside would be "rewards" for playing according to ethics/role/etc.), without it being too game-y.

This is different from someone else in your civ seeing or hearing about you doing it, which would always be looked on through their own ethics and not yours.

It would be interesting for your companions to gain insight into your ethics over time, and remark on you not acting like yourself.  Maybe your answer to them could result in a permanent personality change.  Arguably game-y, but also a way to intertwine plot and character arcs, as in the Hero's Journey.  It's probably even more important for your companions and other NPCs to be similarly transformed by their experiences, for better or worse.  The storytelling will go to a whole new level when contextual motivations like revenge come into play.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on September 30, 2013, 11:23:01 am

I'm excited :D

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 30, 2013, 10:49:24 am

Dreams to see the natural wonders of the world?

Sounds Elfy, but bear in mind that Dwarfs have an appreciation for nature, too. They probably wonder at natural geological marvels such as Mountains, the Caverns, and the Magma sea.

I can just imagine the whole Gimli vs. Legolas thing. "I'll come look at your pretty forest, if you'll come see these awesome crystal formations in this cave."

Just accept it dude, only hippy dwarves have an appreciation for nature, others would rather flood the caverns with magma than marvel at it, especially with all the hideous creatures that crawl out of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 11:28:44 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 30, 2013, 10:49:24 am

Dreams to see the natural wonders of the world?

Sounds Elfy, but bear in mind that Dwarfs have an appreciation for nature, too. They probably wonder at natural geological marvels such as Mountains, the Caverns, and the Magma sea.

I can just imagine the whole Gimli vs. Legolas thing. "I'll come look at your pretty forest, if you'll come see these awesome crystal formations in this cave."

Like I said, not all natural wonders of the world are neccesarily about plants, there are natural geological wonders as well.

I wouldn't mind having such outliers in dwarven society as the ones that Toady listed, variety is a good thing.

Can't wait for the new version so that we don't have to destructively abandon forts that are functional or even self sustaining.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord_Phoenix on September 30, 2013, 11:44:16 am

Quote from: Helgoland on September 30, 2013, 08:04:59 am

Bay12, lets try to figure this out: What historical person is that emperor dwarf? I'd say Frederick the Great...

Not historical, but Littlefinger from Game of Thrones comes to mind.  Cowardly, avaricious, treacherous.  Will be all obsequious until he's ready to plant his dagger in your back.  Just the sort to skillfully and creatively maneuver their way up to a position of power via any means, where they all end up living in fear of him and doing what he says rather than the other way around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 30, 2013, 12:03:26 pm

Quote from: WarRoot on September 30, 2013, 11:23:01 am

I'm excited :D

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 30, 2013, 10:49:24 am

Dreams to see the natural wonders of the world?

Sounds Elfy, but bear in mind that Dwarfs have an appreciation for nature, too. They probably wonder at natural geological marvels such as Mountains, the Caverns, and the Magma sea.

I can just imagine the whole Gimli vs. Legolas thing. "I'll come look at your pretty forest, if you'll come see these awesome crystal formations in this cave."

Just accept it dude, only hippy dwarves have an appreciation for nature, others would rather flood the caverns with magma than marvel at it, especially with all the hideous creatures that crawl out of them.

I said they appreciate nature, I didn't say they don't exploit it's resources

After all, I'm sure they appreciate all that naturally formed iron ore :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on September 30, 2013, 12:24:29 pm

So I've tried to map the new personality traits to the old ones. Some are straightforward, even with names changed. Some are more tenuous. Two I couldn't find any mapping for - emotionality (as in being in touch with your emotions), and cooperation (now a value). Some may look odd - Achievement-striving to Perfectionist rather than to Ambition, but I tried to go with the sentences as much as possible.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY Cheerfulness
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY Depression
ANGER_PROPENSITY Anger
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY Anxiety
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY Vulnerability
GREED
IMMODERATION Immoderation
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE Self-Discipline
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD ??Liberalism??
FRIENDLINESS Friendliness
POLITENESS ??Straightforwardness??
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE Self-efficacy
VANITY ??Self-consciousness??
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY Modesty
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST Achievement-striving
CLOSEMINDED ??Intellectual curiosity??
TOLERANT ??Adventurousness??
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS Sympathy
ALTRUISM Altruism
DUTIFULNESS Dutifulness
THOUGHTLESSNESS ??Cautiousness??
ORDERLINESS Orderliness
TRUST Trust
GREGARIOUSNESS Gregariousness
ASSERTIVENESS Assertiveness
ACTIVITY_LEVEL Activity level
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING Excitement Seeking
IMAGINATION Imagination
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED Artistic interest

Emotionality
Cooperation

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on September 30, 2013, 12:29:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Quote from: Mephansteras

Now that dwarves can have dreams, will they get any particular benefit from achieving that dream? If a dwarf, say, dreams of becoming a Master craftsdwarf, will anything happen when they eventually do become one?

I haven't done it yet, but I'm not sure there'd be anything tangible or particular, aside from a large satisfaction/stress-buffer bonus, depending on their personality.  There are probably personality configurations where a dwarf wouldn't get much out of achieving their dream, or might even be harmed by it, but I don't know that that would be common, and the exposition would have to have something about what's going on there to avoid confusion.

Huh. I can see that. You get a dwarf who's finally achieved their life long goal and they go into a deep funk because now they have nothing else to strive for and everything just seems downhill from there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mnjiman on September 30, 2013, 12:30:52 pm

If a dwarf has a fear or a dislike for something, say they really hate being outdoors... will they freak out if they go outdoors? If this is the case, if you were to get a migrant dwarf that was scared of the outdoors, would they not freak out right away and unable to move? Not sure how fears or dislikes will alter the behavior of a dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinotsa on September 30, 2013, 12:40:56 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras on September 30, 2013, 12:29:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Quote from: Mephansteras

Now that dwarves can have dreams, will they get any particular benefit from achieving that dream? If a dwarf, say, dreams of becoming a Master craftsdwarf, will anything happen when they eventually do become one?

I haven't done it yet, but I'm not sure there'd be anything tangible or particular, aside from a large satisfaction/stress-buffer bonus, depending on their personality.  There are probably personality configurations where a dwarf wouldn't get much out of achieving their dream, or might even be harmed by it, but I don't know that that would be common, and the exposition would have to have something about what's going on there to avoid confusion.

Huh. I can see that. You get a dwarf who's finally achieved their life long goal and they go into a deep funk because now they have nothing else to strive for and everything just seems downhill from there.

Or perhaps their goal simply didn't jive well with their personality. In university I see plenty of people who are going paths in life that they obviously didn't pick for themselves, and probably don't really want to accomplish. This would probably come more into play if we ever get dwarven families or castes or some other force that would push people's goals in a different direction from their desires. It'd be nice to have people be able to get the benefit of being fulfilled in other ways, like a dwarf who appreciates nature roaming the wilderness as a hunter for many years forgets about his or her goal of leading and instead gets a message like "Is fulfilled due to his/her connection with nature."

The endless possibilities of the game are wonderful!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on September 30, 2013, 01:19:09 pm

Just chiming in to say thanks for the response Toady and keep up the excellent work!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 30, 2013, 01:56:58 pm

Spoiler: Compilation of all the raw changes from Toady so far (click to show/hide)

Plant raws:

Trees (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_new_trees.txt)
Garden plants (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)
Crops (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt)
Creature Variations:

Quote from: Wastedlabor

What's the format for passing these arguments to the variation?

Will there be any way to use a match as conditional? Example: to not try to add a tail if there's "TAIL" in the base creature.

To pass them, you send them into the variation when you apply it, like

[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION:STUFF:300]

where the variation might look like

[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:!ARG1:A:B!ARG2C]

and it would be interpreted as

[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:STUFF:A:B300C]

You can add very simple conditions.  For example

[CV_NEW_CTAG:1:ADD_SPEAK:CAN_SPEAK]

makes it do [CV_NEW_TAG:CAN_SPEAK] when !ARG1 is equal to ADD_SPEAK.

But it is a very simple format, and I haven't updated anything beyond this (you can't search for matches, etc.).  As usual, the spirits of dead programmers are calling out for an actual scripting language or something, but it hasn't occurred.

Gaits:

Humans, for example, have


[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]


which goes to


[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS]
   GAIT:type:name:full speed:build up time:turning max:start speed:energy use
      use NO_BUILD_UP if you jump immediately to full speed
      these optional flags go at the end:
         LAYERS_SLOW - fat/muscle layers slow the movement (muscle-slowing counter-acted by strength bonus)
         STRENGTH - strength attribute can speed/slow movement
         AGILITY - agility attribute can speed/slow movement
         STEALTH_SLOWS:<n> - n is percentage slowed
         it would be interesting to allow quirky attributes (like mental stats), but they aren't supported yet
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Sprint:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Run:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Jog:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Walk:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Stroll:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Faster Climb:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Fast Climb:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Climb:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Slow Climb:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Maximum Swim Speed:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Faster Swim:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Fast Swim:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Swim:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Slow Swim:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Creeping Swim:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Faster Crawl:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Fast Crawl:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Crawl:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Slow Crawl:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]




Entity values:

Here are the current dwarves, in their entity (you don't need the zeroes, but I left them to complete the list).  They go from 50 to -50.


[VALUE:LAW:30]
[VALUE:LOYALTY:30]
[VALUE:FAMILY:30]
[VALUE:FRIENDSHIP:30]
[VALUE:POWER:0]
[VALUE:TRUTH:30]
[VALUE:CUNNING:0]
[VALUE:ELOQUENCE:0]
[VALUE:FAIRNESS:15]
[VALUE:DECORUM:0]
[VALUE:TRADITION:0]
[VALUE:ARTWORK:30]
[VALUE:COOPERATION:15]
[VALUE:INDEPENDENCE:5]
[VALUE:STOICISM:5]
[VALUE:INTROSPECTION:0]
[VALUE:SELF_CONTROL:0]
[VALUE:TRANQUILITY:0]
[VALUE:HARMONY:0]
[VALUE:MERRIMENT:15]
[VALUE:CRAFTSMANSHIP:50]
[VALUE:MARTIAL_PROWESS:15]
[VALUE:SKILL:30]
[VALUE:HARD_WORK:30]
[VALUE:SACRIFICE:0]
[VALUE:COMPETITION:0]
[VALUE:PERSEVERENCE:5]
[VALUE:LEISURE_TIME:15]
[VALUE:COMMERCE:15]
[VALUE:ROMANCE:0]
[VALUE:NATURE:-15]
[VALUE:PEACE:0]




Personality facet list:

This is still subject to change, though maybe not by all that much now (there are still some archetypes I have trouble constructing with these plus values).  They run from 0 to 100 as before, but 0 is often the opposite of the listed phrase rather than just its lack.  So a person with CRUELTY 0 is abundantly merciful, even in situations where it might not be prudent.


LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY
ANGER_PROPENSITY
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY
GREED
IMMODERATION
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD
FRIENDLINESS
POLITENESS
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE
VANITY
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST
CLOSEMINDED
TOLERANT
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS
ALTRUISM
DUTIFULNESS
THOUGHTLESSNESS
ORDERLINESS
TRUST
GREGARIOUSNESS
ASSERTIVENESS
ACTIVITY_LEVEL
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING
IMAGINATION
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED

For trunk, branches, etc. just numbers to control things, no units, still subject to tweaking.  I'm still formalizing the exact root and cap params from my hard-coded test values, and that'll continue as I add more new critters.


[TRUNK_RATE:10]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_DENSITY:2]
[BRANCH_DENSITY:10]
[MAX_TRUNK_HEIGHT:5]
[HEAVY_BRANCH_RADIUS:1]
[BRANCH_RADIUS:2]
[TRUNK_BRANCHING:2]
[MAX_TRUNK_DIAMETER:3]
[TRUNK_WIDTH_RATE:200]


I don't remember if the twig density stuff is still hard-coded, but if it is, it'll be out by release time.


[STANDARD_TILE_NAMES] <-- there are tags like TRUNK_NAME, ROOT_NAME etc. if you don't want "mango trunk", "mango roots" etc.


Mango leaves/flowers/fruit (no seeds yet):


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango leaf:mango leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:ALL:1]
[GROWTH:FLOWERS]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:60000:119999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:4:0:1:60000:119999:2]
[GROWTH:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_NAME:mango:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:FRUIT]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000] <-- this and the flower entry will probably be decreased when it matters more
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:120000:200000]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF_NO_CLOUD]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:'%':7:4:0:1:120000:200000:3]
   Format here is character on branch, item character, 3 for color, season timing, print priority (higher better).


To do autumn leaves, you use several growth prints.  This info carries over to picked/fallen items.  Here's a maple leaf:


[GROWTH:LEAVES]
   [GROWTH_NAME:maple leaf:maple leaves]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:BRANCHES_AND_TWIGS]
   [GROWTH_HOST_TILE:SAPLING]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:0:300000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:2:0:0:0:209999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:6:0:1:210000:239999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:1:240000:269999:1]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:6:4:0:0:270000:300000:1]
   [GROWTH_DROPS_OFF]


Notably, I'm still missing size information for the items.

Meadowsweet buds/flowers used in grass file:


[GROWTH:BUD]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet bud:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:140000:149999]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:0:7:2:0:0:NONE]
[GROWTH:FLOWER]
   [GROWTH_NAME:meadowsweet flower:STP]
   [GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [GROWTH_DENSITY:1]
   [GROWTH_TIMING:150000:250000]
   [GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:7:0:1:150000:250000]


For item breath, where you'd normally put the breath weapon type after the material, you put.


UNDIRECTED_ITEM_CLOUD:<item type>:<subtype>
TRAILING_ITEM_FLOW:<item type>:<subtype>


The new type/subtype pair for plant growths is PLANT_GROWTH:<growth token>, with whatever material you want (generally the right one from the plant).


Odor


[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind
[ODOR_STRING:wet dog hair] <-- optional, displays race name (not caste name) if you don't provide a string
[LOW_LIGHT_VISION:100] bonus percentage, cannot penalize yet, default is zero, just throw in 10000 to make it perfect

Code: (Human Raws) [Select]

[CREATURE:HUMAN]
   [DESCRIPTION:A medium-sized creature prone to great ambition.]
   [NAME:human:humans:human]
   [CASTE_NAME:human:humans:human]
   [CREATURE_TILE:'U'][COLOR:3:0:0]
   [CREATURE_SOLDIER_TILE:154]
   [INTELLIGENT]
   [CANOPENDOORS]
   [BENIGN]
   [PREFSTRING:stature]
   [BODY:HUMANOID_NECK:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:5FINGERS:5TOES:MOUTH:TONGUE:FACIAL_FEATURES:TEETH:RIBCAGE]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS:SKIN:FAT:MUSCLE:BONE:CARTILAGE]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HEAD_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:EYEBROW:EYEBROW_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW:ABOVE:BY_CATEGORY:EYE]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:EYELASH:EYELASH_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:EYELID:EYELASH:FRONT]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:FINGER:NAIL:FRONT]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:TOE:NAIL:FRONT]
   [SELECT_TISSUE_LAYER:HEART:BY_CATEGORY:HEART]
    [PLUS_TISSUE_LAYER:SKIN:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT]
      [TL_MAJOR_ARTERIES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_HEAD_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_HEAD_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_RIBCAGE_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_RELSIZES]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SINEW:SINEW_TEMPLATE]
   [TENDONS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
   [LIGAMENTS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
   [HAS_NERVES]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:BLOOD:BLOOD_TEMPLATE]
   [BLOOD:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:BLOOD:LIQUID]
   [CREATURE_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
   [GETS_WOUND_INFECTIONS]
   [GETS_INFECTIONS_FROM_ROT]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:PUS:PUS_TEMPLATE]
   [PUS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:PUS:LIQUID]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SWEAT:SWEAT_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:TEARS:TEARS_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SPIT:SPIT_TEMPLATE]
   [SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SWEAT:LIQUID:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SKIN:EXERTION]
   [SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:TEARS:LIQUID:BY_CATEGORY:EYE:ALL:EXTREME_EMOTION]
   [CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
      [CDI:ADV_NAME:Spit]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:NEGATIVE_SOCIAL_RESPONSE]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:TORMENT]
      [CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:MOUTH]
      [CDI:MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SPIT:LIQUID_GLOB]
      [CDI:VERB:spit:spits:NA]
      [CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
      [CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
      [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
      [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]
   [BODY_SIZE:0:0:4000]
   [BODY_SIZE:1:168:17500]
   [BODY_SIZE:12:0:70000]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EYE]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CLOSE_SET:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DEEP_SET:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:ROUND_VS_NARROW:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LARGE_IRIS:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:LIP]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:THICKNESS:50:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:lips:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:NOSE]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:UPTURNED:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CONVEX:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:nose bridge:SINGULAR]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EAR]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:SPLAYED_OUT:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HANGING_LOBES:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:TOOTH]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:GAPS:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:teeth:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:100:100:100:100:100:100:100] for vampires
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:1000]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:teeth:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:SKULL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HIGH_CHEEKBONES:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROAD_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:JUTTING_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:SQUARE_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DEEP_VOICE:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:RASPY_VOICE:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
   [MAXAGE:60:120]
   [ATTACK:PUNCH:BODYPART:BY_TYPE:GRASP]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:GRASP_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:punch:punches]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_WITH]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
   [ATTACK:KICK:BODYPART:BY_TYPE:STANCE]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:STANCE_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:kick:kicks]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:4:4]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_WITH]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK]
   [ATTACK:SCRATCH:CHILD_TISSUE_LAYER_GROUP:BY_TYPE:GRASP:BY_CATEGORY:FINGER:NAIL]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:GRASP_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:scratch:scratches]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
   [ATTACK:BITE:CHILD_BODYPART_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:BY_CATEGORY:TOOTH]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:BITE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:bite:bites]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH]
   [BABY:1]
   [CHILD:12]
   [EQUIPS]
   [DIURNAL]
   [SMELL_TRIGGER:90]
   [HOMEOTHERM:10067]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [SWIMS_LEARNED]
   [MANNERISM_FINGERS:finger:fingers]
   [MANNERISM_NOSE:nose]
   [MANNERISM_EAR:ear]
   [MANNERISM_HEAD:head]
   [MANNERISM_EYES:eyes]
   [MANNERISM_MOUTH:mouth]
   [MANNERISM_HAIR:hair]
   [MANNERISM_KNUCKLES:knuckles]
   [MANNERISM_LIPS:lips]
   [MANNERISM_CHEEK:cheek]
   [MANNERISM_NAILS:nails]
   [MANNERISM_FEET:feet]
   [MANNERISM_ARMS:arms]
   [MANNERISM_HANDS:hands]
   [MANNERISM_TONGUE:tongue]
   [MANNERISM_LEG:leg]
   [MANNERISM_LAUGH]
   [MANNERISM_SMILE]
   [MANNERISM_WALK]
   [MANNERISM_SIT]
   [MANNERISM_BREATH]
   [MANNERISM_POSTURE]
   [MANNERISM_STRETCH]
   [MANNERISM_EYELIDS]
   [SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGET]
   [MUNDANE]
   [CASTE:FEMALE]
      [FEMALE]
      [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
   [CASTE:MALE]
      [MALE]
      [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]
   [SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYELASH]
   [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:AMBER:1:AUBURN:1:BLACK:1:BROWN:1:BUFF:1:BURNT_SIENNA:1:BURNT_UMBER:1:CHARCOAL:1:CHESTNUT:1:CHOCOLATE:1:CINNAMON:1:COPPER:1:DARK_BROWN:1:DARK_CHESTNUT:1:DARK_TAN:1:ECRU:1:FLAX:1:GOLD:1:GOLDEN_YELLOW:1:GOLDENROD:1:LIGHT_BROWN:1:MAHOGANY:1:OCHRE:1:PALE_BROWN:1:PALE_CHESTNUT:1:PUMPKIN:1:RAW_UMBER:1:RUSSET:1:SAFFRON:1:SEPIA:1:TAN:1:TAUPE_DARK:1:TAUPE_GRAY:1:TAUPE_MEDIUM:1:TAUPE_PALE:1:TAUPE_SANDY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:GRAY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [TLCM_TIMING:ROOT:40:0:70:0]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:WHITE:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [TLCM_TIMING:ROOT:70:0:90:0]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DENSE:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HIGH_POSITION:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYELASH]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyelashes:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_RATE:1:DAILY:0:1000:0:0:NO_END]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:10:25:75:125:200:300]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CURLY:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:GREASY:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DENSE:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:HAIR:STANDARD_HAIR_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:BEARD:STANDARD_BEARD_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:beard:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:MOUSTACHE:STANDARD_MOUSTACHE_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:moustache:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:SIDEBURNS:STANDARD_SIDEBURNS_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:sideburns:PLURAL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SKIN]
   [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:BROWN:1:BURNT_UMBER:1:CINNAMON:1:COPPER:1:DARK_BROWN:1:DARK_PEACH:1:DARK_TAN:1:ECRU:1:PALE_BROWN:1:PALE_CHESTNUT:1:PALE_PINK:1:PEACH:1:PINK:1:RAW_UMBER:1:SEPIA:1:TAN:1:TAUPE_PALE:1:TAUPE_SANDY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:skin:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:WRINKLY:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]
            [APP_MOD_RATE:1:YEARLY:0:100:30:0:NO_END]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:skin:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:0:0:0:1:25:50]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EYE:EYE]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:IRIS_EYE_AMBER:1:IRIS_EYE_AQUA:1:IRIS_EYE_AQUAMARINE:1:IRIS_EYE_ASH_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_AUBURN:1:IRIS_EYE_AZURE:1:IRIS_EYE_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_BRASS:1:IRIS_EYE_BRONZE:1:IRIS_EYE_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_CERULEAN:1:IRIS_EYE_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_CHOCOLATE:1:IRIS_EYE_CINNAMON:1:IRIS_EYE_COPPER:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_OLIVE:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_TAN:1:IRIS_EYE_ECRU:1:IRIS_EYE_EMERALD:1:IRIS_EYE_FERN_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_JADE:1:IRIS_EYE_LIGHT_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_LIGHT_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_MAHOGANY:1:IRIS_EYE_MIDNIGHT_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_OCHRE:1:IRIS_EYE_OLIVE:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_PERIWINKLE:1:IRIS_EYE_PINE_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_RAW_UMBER:1:IRIS_EYE_RUSSET:1:IRIS_EYE_SEA_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_SEPIA:1:IRIS_EYE_SKY_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_SLATE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_SPRING_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_TAN:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_DARK:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_MEDIUM:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_PALE:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_SANDY:1:IRIS_EYE_TEAL:1:IRIS_EYE_TURQUOISE:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on September 30, 2013, 02:55:36 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on September 30, 2013, 10:16:37 am

Awesome stuff.

Just want to point out that 'overflated' should either be 'inflated' or 'overinflated' - overflated isn't actually a word.

I was thrown off by this at first too, but it's not like you can't figure out what it means, so I don't care :) .

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on September 30, 2013, 04:25:56 pm

Awesome dwarves, there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on September 30, 2013, 06:34:02 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on September 30, 2013, 12:24:29 pm

So I've tried to map the new personality traits to the old ones. Some are straightforward, even with names changed. Some are more tenuous. Two I couldn't find any mapping for - emotionality (as in being in touch with your emotions), and cooperation (now a value). Some may look odd - Achievement-striving to Perfectionist rather than to Ambition, but I tried to go with the sentences as much as possible.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY Cheerfulness
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY Depression
ANGER_PROPENSITY Anger
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY Anxiety
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY Vulnerability
GREED
IMMODERATION Immoderation
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE Self-Discipline
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD ??Liberalism??
FRIENDLINESS Friendliness
POLITENESS ??Straightforwardness??
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE Self-efficacy
VANITY ??Self-consciousness??
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY Modesty
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST Achievement-striving
CLOSEMINDED ??Intellectual curiosity??
TOLERANT ??Adventurousness??
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS Sympathy
ALTRUISM Altruism
DUTIFULNESS Dutifulness
THOUGHTLESSNESS ??Cautiousness??
ORDERLINESS Orderliness
TRUST Trust
GREGARIOUSNESS Gregariousness
ASSERTIVENESS Assertiveness
ACTIVITY_LEVEL Activity level
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING Excitement Seeking
IMAGINATION Imagination
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED Artistic interest

Emotionality
Cooperation

I wouldn't map STRESS_VULNERABILITY to "vulnerability"

Vunlerability means emotionally vulnerable, or "sensetive". STRESS_VULNERABILITY sounds like how well they can deal with stress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on September 30, 2013, 06:40:09 pm

@ Your future Emperor:
He personally is disgusted by tradition and would flout any he encounters if given the chance,
"You're treating a symptom. That's a symptom of society."
sees power over others as something to strive for,
"The world is a mess, and I just... need... to rule it."
disdains loyalty and finds leisure time wasteful.
"♪Look at these people, ♫ amazing how sheep will line up for the slaughter....♪"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on September 30, 2013, 06:51:01 pm

He also has no interest in learning about the world he wants to rule.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on September 30, 2013, 07:17:43 pm

In other words: the perfect generic fantasy villain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on September 30, 2013, 07:44:42 pm

Thanks Toady! Just a few months left...

Also, that future emperor reminds me of a certain dictactor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 08:16:54 pm

Quote from: Valtam on September 30, 2013, 07:44:42 pm

Thanks Toady! Just a few months left...

Also, that future emperor reminds me of a certain dictactor.

Just out of curiosity, which one? Hitler?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 09:20:15 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

You should make the text green if you want Toady One to answer it.

I could see that happening as a bug, however I don't think the coding supports epiphytes yet.

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeingepiphytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyte) in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2013, 10:00:39 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 09:20:15 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

You should make the text green if you want Toady One to answer it.

I could see that happening as a bug, however I don't think the coding supports epiphytes yet.

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeingepiphytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyte) in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

Moss is in the game. If you have a fortress last long enough, you'll get moss growing on the fortress. I think it needs to last at least ten years? I remember having a puppy growing to a doggie dying of old age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on September 30, 2013, 10:12:51 pm

Quote from: flabort on September 30, 2013, 06:40:09 pm

@ Your future Emperor:
He personally is disgusted by tradition and would flout any he encounters if given the chance,
"You're treating a symptom. That's a symptom of society."
sees power over others as something to strive for,
"The world is a mess, and I just... need... to rule it."
disdains loyalty and finds leisure time wasteful.
"♪Look at these people, ♫ amazing how sheep will line up for the slaughter....♪"

"It's not enough to bash in heads; you've got to bash in miiiiiinds!"
~Urist McHammer, adventurer

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on September 30, 2013, 10:16:26 pm

Quote

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

Toady, do you see dwarves/other races as being basically evil ("orginal sin"), basically good, or something else, like moral tabulae rasae or simply basically pragmatists?

Quote from: Helgoland

Toady, what's your 'design philosophy' of the dwarven character? Where do you see yourself on the scale of Hobbes vs. Rousseau?

I'm trying to avoid all that.  If there's a notion of original sin or soul improvement over several lifetimes, I want that to be modeled by the mechanics, and I want it to be adjustable.  I still need to systemetize something with objects and rules, and there are going to be biases there and so on, but I'm hoping the system can account for a variety of metaphysical realities (which we'll eventually want to generate with each world gen).  I don't need to get too deep into the root causes of things until I'm ready for it.  Then certain systems can be given exceptions (as with the individual variation we now have from the base entity values).

yesyesyes. Everything is sliding scales!


On a different note, I wonder if we couldn't just mimic bushes by making a fruit tree with height 0 or 1 and a small-diameter crown. That's... kinda what a bush is anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 10:24:01 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 30, 2013, 10:00:39 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 09:20:15 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

You should make the text green if you want Toady One to answer it.

I could see that happening as a bug, however I don't think the coding supports epiphytes yet.

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeingepiphytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyte) in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

Moss is in the game. If you have a fortress last long enough, you'll get moss growing on the fortress. I think it needs to last at least ten years? I remember having a puppy growing to a doggie dying of old age.

I've had forts more than 10 years old and moss didn't show up. I use the mayday graphics pack though.

Edit: Does moss grow on constructed walls and floors?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on September 30, 2013, 10:32:24 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 10:24:01 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on September 30, 2013, 10:00:39 pm

Quote from: smjjames on September 30, 2013, 09:20:15 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

You should make the text green if you want Toady One to answer it.

I could see that happening as a bug, however I don't think the coding supports epiphytes yet.

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeingepiphytes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyte) in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

Moss is in the game. If you have a fortress last long enough, you'll get moss growing on the fortress. I think it needs to last at least ten years? I remember having a puppy growing to a doggie dying of old age.

I've had forts more than 10 years old and moss didn't show up. I use the mayday graphics pack though.

Edit: Does moss grow on constructed walls and floors?

I think the relevant step in older versions was that the fortress had to be abandoned and later reclaimed.  There might have been a visit by adventurer required also.  And yes, it grew on constructed walls and floors that were above ground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on September 30, 2013, 10:51:57 pm

My memory is fuzziness enough, I cant recall for sure if it was a reclaim or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on October 01, 2013, 06:27:05 am

Quote from: lue on September 30, 2013, 02:55:36 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on September 30, 2013, 10:16:37 am

Awesome stuff.

Just want to point out that 'overflated' should either be 'inflated' or 'overinflated' - overflated isn't actually a word.

I was thrown off by this at first too, but it's not like you can't figure out what it means, so I don't care :) .

Sure. I wasn't aiming to have a go, just kind pointing it out as a very minor attempt at help.

As he said a while back, he'd been writing several hundred lines of traits and that stuff gets sludgy at the best of times. I figured it was just a result of 'I can't think of the word, I still have X number of things to add, and my mind isn't working too well after all this coding/writing'. Happens to everyone. If not that, then probably a regional/dialect based word that - I would assume - isn't natural to most.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Niyazov on October 01, 2013, 09:28:35 am

Quote from: Helgoland on September 30, 2013, 08:04:59 am

Bay12, lets try to figure this out: What historical person is that emperor dwarf? I'd say Frederick the Great...

i'm gonna say sabbatai zevi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatai_Zevi) or didius julianus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 01, 2013, 09:40:57 am

Thanks for the replies Toady!
I'm tickled to see the new draws and thinking into the mechanics of how they'll work in application.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on October 01, 2013, 01:51:05 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on September 30, 2013, 08:55:21 pm

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo) happening?

Oh, cool. What a weird world we live in, that is awesome.

Quote from: Cobbler89 on September 30, 2013, 10:12:51 pm

"It's not enough to bash in heads; you've got to bash in miiiiiinds!"
~Urist McHammer, adventurer

Exactly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 01, 2013, 01:59:26 pm

yo dawg, i herd u liek trees...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 01, 2013, 03:27:53 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on September 30, 2013, 06:34:02 pm

I wouldn't map STRESS_VULNERABILITY to "vulnerability"

Vunlerability means emotionally vulnerable, or "sensetive". STRESS_VULNERABILITY sounds like how well they can deal with stress.

That's one that falls under the category "looks odd" - Vulnerability in the current version is already about stress (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Person on October 01, 2013, 03:38:13 pm

If one were to make a tree farm underground, would the "cave in" mechanics break through and fall to lower z levels provided the level below is empty?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: haydenmuhl on October 01, 2013, 05:13:17 pm

Will goblins be automatically hostile to an adventurer? Is there any way to go to a goblin site to trade or get quests?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 01, 2013, 05:33:48 pm

Quote from: haydenmuhl on October 01, 2013, 05:13:17 pm

Will goblins be automatically hostile to an adventurer? Is there any way to go to a goblin site to trade or get quests?

Well you could just make goblins playable as an adventurer. Very simple mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 01, 2013, 05:46:00 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 01, 2013, 05:33:48 pm

Quote from: haydenmuhl on October 01, 2013, 05:13:17 pm

Will goblins be automatically hostile to an adventurer? Is there any way to go to a goblin site to trade or get quests?

Well you could just make goblins playable as an adventurer. Very simple mod.

True, but what if you're playing some other race?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 01, 2013, 06:15:55 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 01, 2013, 06:27:05 am

As he said a while back, he'd been writing several hundred lines of traits and that stuff gets sludgy at the best of times. I figured it was just a result of 'I can't think of the word, I still have X number of things to add, and my mind isn't working too well after all this coding/writing'. Happens to everyone. If not that, then probably a regional/dialect based word that - I would assume - isn't natural to most.

Nah, I never thought of overflated as a word.  It's just a garden variety typo for overinflated, although perhaps inflated is better since you aren't supposed to inflate one in the first place.  There were/are lots of typos in the trait lines.  It tends to happen when I have to write lots of isolated sentences all at the same time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on October 01, 2013, 06:53:45 pm

Love the Emperor dwarf, his traits reminded me of some good times with the black adder.
"Urist! I've got a cunning megaproject..."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on October 02, 2013, 12:33:35 am

Have there been any question of How tree falling acts with a obstacle, say another tree, or perhaps simply the side of the mountain, in the way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 02, 2013, 02:15:21 am

Quote from: misko27 on October 02, 2013, 12:33:35 am

Have there been any question of How tree falling acts with a obstacle, say another tree, or perhaps simply the side of the mountain, in the way?

They become a projectile, I think, so they would collide and tumble down. But a tree, most probably can't knock down nother tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on October 02, 2013, 02:21:45 am

Quote from: Toady One on October 01, 2013, 06:15:55 pm

Quote from: MasterMorality on October 01, 2013, 06:27:05 am

As he said a while back, he'd been writing several hundred lines of traits and that stuff gets sludgy at the best of times. I figured it was just a result of 'I can't think of the word, I still have X number of things to add, and my mind isn't working too well after all this coding/writing'. Happens to everyone. If not that, then probably a regional/dialect based word that - I would assume - isn't natural to most.

Nah, I never thought of overflated as a word.  It's just a garden variety typo for overinflated, although perhaps inflated is better since you aren't supposed to inflate one in the first place.  There were/are lots of typos in the trait lines.  It tends to happen when I have to write lots of isolated sentences all at the same time.

Would you consider an advance release of the entirely of the new trait lines so that we can...help you proofread them? :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 02, 2013, 10:05:29 am

Quote from: misko27 on October 02, 2013, 12:33:35 am

Have there been any question of How tree falling acts with a obstacle, say another tree, or perhaps simply the side of the mountain, in the way?

It'll probably just act like it hit a wall and fall straight down.  (since it's directly related to misko27's question, you don't have to do this one if it gets answered in response to the above question. Might be something to think about physics wise though). I wonder if felling larger trees such as the 30 tile giants will crush smaller trees and create a small scale cavein effect.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 02, 2013, 10:18:46 am

Ohh the word was "overflated" I thought the "not a word" was "Overinflated"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dmatter on October 02, 2013, 01:45:31 pm

Are there any plans to include things like multilingual exogamy (I know it isn't a priority right now)?  I just think it would be a neat feature down the road, which could lead to all sorts of interesting situations with different civ interactions.

Example of multilingual exogamy can be found here: http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/300 (http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/300)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 02, 2013, 06:54:35 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 02, 2013, 10:05:29 am

Quote from: misko27 on October 02, 2013, 12:33:35 am

Have there been any question of How tree falling acts with a obstacle, say another tree, or perhaps simply the side of the mountain, in the way?

It'll probably just act like it hit a wall and fall straight down.  (since it's directly related to misko27's question, you don't have to do this one if it gets answered in response to the above question. Might be something to think about physics wise though). I wonder if felling larger trees such as the 30 tile giants will crush smaller trees and create a small scale cavein effect.

I bet thats tied into destructible constructions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Redzephyr01 on October 02, 2013, 08:34:09 pm

Will NPCs still build things after world-gen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 02, 2013, 09:22:13 pm

Quote from: Redzephyr01 on October 02, 2013, 08:34:09 pm

Will NPCs still build things after world-gen?

As discussed in DF Talk 13 (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_13_transcript.html#2), this is planned, although there's no definite timeline:

Quote

After world generation it's basically the same story. You have nothing happening right now changing in the towns, and the timeline for that is not really well known, we'll see when we get to it ... I think it was release 5, I'm going to go and check now ... there was a release there that really gets at the dynamic of the situation; right now we're just trying to get things to show up at all, so you have to be a bit patient with what we've got. Release 5: changing populations, food use and other world generation stuff moved to actual play; that entire release is basically dedicated toward making the situation more dynamic in the cities. So if people moved to a town then that needs to be reflected in the growth of the town, even if you've visited the town before; if you've visited a town and it had a population of one thousand and you play the game for twenty in-game years ... that would be a lengthy series of adventure mode games but it's not just adventure mode games being played, it's fortress mode games which pass the years quite quickly ... and so you can end up with a town, you know if its population changes from one thousand to two thousand and you've already visited the town in adventure mode then you would have a map for that town and that map would need to be updated, so basically it would need to take a summary of changes - it can't keep track of anything - but a summary of changes, and continue to create the city, basically, and more or less tear up farm land and extend the map outward. So the extent to which that's possible with, say, five hundred years of world generation history ... It's not something I'm doing right now as various people have noted, about these maps, and I don't have all the information stored that I need but it's certainly a feasible thing that shouldn't be too difficult overall.

It's also on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html):

Quote

Adventurer Role: Hero
    Villains
        Hostile civ leaders and the new hist figs being able to harass others by sending out groups
            Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play
            Towns destroyed/rebuilt in play

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Belvita on October 03, 2013, 08:26:10 pm

Toady, will adventurers have dreams/values now because of the new personalities? And what are the primary values of the other races? (i.e for elves, "Like others in his culture, he wants to preserve all plantlife."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on October 04, 2013, 06:33:02 pm

A few questions about the new 'gait' raws:

You used humans for your example, which have WALK, CLIMB, SWIM, and CRAWL gaits.  Will flying creatures have various FLY gaits that operate the same way?  Will creatures like snakes and fish lack WALK gaits, and be unable to stand up?

Is 'build up time' simply the number of ticks spent getting up to full speed, or the number of actions by the creature, or what?  What are the units for 'turning max'?  Does a creature have to attain 'start speed' to begin a gait, or can they enter any gait at start speed from a stop?

Does energy use cause over-exertion, hunger, or both?  How does it affect creatures with NOEXERT/NO_EAT?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: assasin on October 04, 2013, 08:17:49 pm

I'm assuming that personalities will eventually effect pretty much everything in the game. Such as whether or not dwarves will steal from communal stockpiles or other dwarves once the crime arc is in.

If that's the case my question is how much will events affect or even completely change a dwarves personality. Say during a famine an honourable dwarf may not steal more than his or her ration, but if the dwarf has children will that same honourable dwarf feel that it is more dishounourable to let his or her children starve than stealing food from the community

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 05, 2013, 12:29:11 am

One of my miners whacked off a kobold theifs arm and the kobold got away (didn't even get past the entrance anyhow), which gave me a thought, With the new historical continuation, will invaders and thieves who get wounded but manage to escape, return with the same wounds? Perhaps healed over even.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 05, 2013, 01:13:19 am

Wounds are already persistent. If the same invaders return (I'm not sure), then they'd already keep their wounds.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 05, 2013, 01:15:40 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 05, 2013, 01:13:19 am

Wounds are already persistent. If the same invaders return (I'm not sure), then they'd already keep their wounds.

Yeah, it'll happen.

If you wait long enough, then kidnapped dwarf babies will return to fight with the goblins against you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on October 05, 2013, 12:47:27 pm

 Can dreams be lost or modified, due to stressors? I'm thinking about, let's say two dwarves lose their family to goblins, one gets depressed, the other swears to kill the culprits.

Do trees have their own vermin? (woodpeckers, parasites, that sort of stuff)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kishmond on October 05, 2013, 01:30:42 pm

Quote

rampaging soldiers suddenly hitting beaches and stopping forever to admire the waves

I'm picturing a soldier holding a bloody axe, staring blankly out into the waves. A bit of drool hangs out the side of his mouth. Behind him several angry fortress guards charge over a sand dune.

It's too bad my artistic ability is not up to par with my imagination.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CanuckMonkey on October 05, 2013, 01:36:26 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on October 02, 2013, 02:21:45 am

Would you consider an advance release of the entirely of the new trait lines so that we can...help you proofread them? :D

More generally, do you want/need/appreciate proofreading help? I don't have any in-game examples in mind, but I've been re-reading Threetoe's epic stories (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_story.html) recently and noticed a number of typos that I'd be happy to catalogue and submit, if it would be of any use.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hippocleides on October 05, 2013, 04:05:16 pm

From Toady: "...rampaging soldiers suddenly hitting beaches and stopping forever to admire the waves..."

I for one look forward to the Dwarf Fortress version of War and Peace.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karadrass_Fr on October 05, 2013, 04:46:20 pm

Hello.

A small question : do we know what will be the features created, or changed in the next realease ? I am curious and I have not found these informations on the site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 05, 2013, 05:11:53 pm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit?pli=1

this doesn't include the personality overhaul

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karadrass_Fr on October 05, 2013, 05:26:31 pm

Thank you very much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 05, 2013, 08:39:04 pm

Quote from: Hippocleides on October 05, 2013, 04:05:16 pm

From Toady: "...rampaging soldiers suddenly hitting beaches and stopping forever to admire the waves..."

I for one look forward to the Dwarf Fortress version of War and Peace.

I interpreted it as a failed amphibious assault. Stopping forever, indeed.

Unless that's what happens in War in Peace, I've never read it myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on October 05, 2013, 10:09:14 pm

We could have Dwarven Cnuts the Great, commanding the waves to cease. And burning half of England.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on October 06, 2013, 03:00:36 am

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Quote from: Chthonic

Might we see some examples of these awful dwarves?

First I had it make 500 dwarves, where it highlighted the odd ones, and I went through them and picked a few winners:

Spoiler: A little too elfy (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers1.png)

 I just happened to notice that this "Too Elfy" dwarf is 24 years old and already has 7 children.  Are dwarves maturing younger now?  I can't recall ever seeing dwarves that young with so many children.   In fact I thought that dwarven females didn't even start having children until 30 or so, typically?

Not a big deal, but it will impact large forts fairly significantly after a few years if every dwarf over the age of 18 is having a child every year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 06, 2013, 03:04:37 am

12 years old has always been the age Dwarves begin to procreate at.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 06, 2013, 03:40:40 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 05, 2013, 05:11:53 pm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit?pli=1

this doesn't include the personality overhaul

If something is missing, please feel free to add it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on October 06, 2013, 03:44:21 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 06, 2013, 03:04:37 am

12 years old has always been the age Dwarves begin to procreate at.

I thought that 12 was when they started doing adult work, but it took them until 30 or so to start having children?

I've played a few no-dwarf embarks where I simply sealed the dwarves in after two years and in some of them I've gone 30-40 years in the fortress and had dwarves with 20-30 kids, but I cannot remember any of the Dwarves under 30 having children of their own.

Maybe I just never noticed it.  With the number of no-dwarf embarks I've done this would seem unlikely - but possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 04:43:05 am

I read on the list of changes that Kingdoms will be divided in counties, which will be divided in baronies.

Will the level of these groups (barony/county/kingdom) can change in time ?
For example if the king dies without a heir, would a count takes his place ? Then the count becomes king, and if his county remains a county, then who will become count ?
Will we see someday some civil wars to obtain power, between Counts, with Counts calling their baronies for help  ? Something like a tree of feodality...
Last, will the name of the groups reflect somehow the importance of this land ? Something like "the barony of the angelic sabre", or "the county of the future whip".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on October 06, 2013, 08:27:54 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 04:43:05 am

Will the level of these groups (barony/county/kingdom) can change in time ?
For example if the king dies without a heir, would a count takes his place ? Then the count becomes king, and if his county remains a county, then who will become count ?
Will we see someday some civil wars to obtain power, between Counts, with Counts calling their baronies for help  ? Something like a tree of feodality...
Last, will the name of the groups reflect somehow the importance of this land ? Something like "the barony of the angelic sabre", or "the county of the future whip".

If I recall correctly, the count's heir could become the new count. Religion and politics are going to play a huge role in wars, so yes, we'll be seeing strife inside members of the same civilization, with different allegiances and not always related to the chain of command; say, a baron gets called to fight for the county, but the baron refuses thanks to a deal made with a local cult, or a rampaging goblin tribe whose interests clash with those of the baron.

About names, I think Toady has spoke about refurbishing them, but I don't have a quote at hand. I think someone will find one as I'm writing this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 06, 2013, 10:18:25 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 04:43:05 am

Will the level of these groups (barony/county/kingdom) can change in time ?
For example if the king dies without a heir, would a count takes his place ? Then the count becomes king, and if his county remains a county, then who will become count ?
Will we see someday some civil wars to obtain power, between Counts, with Counts calling their baronies for help  ? Something like a tree of feodality...

Some aspects of succession are going in for this release:

Quote from: devlog

01/06/2013 Toady One Entity position succession (and the filling of open positions) is underway. It'll recognize when succession is necessary and try to schedule things effectively, and I set up a claim system so that there can theoretically be more than one person that says that they hold a given civilization's position (three dwarven counts vying for an open monarch position, for example). Competing claims don't have a resolution yet, and I need to work out appointment lists properly. I probably need to further specify some of the positions in the raws as well, since we don't want things like bookkeepers in every hill dwarf site.

Civil wars aren't being implemented yet AFAIK, but they're on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) as "succession struggles".  We are getting insurrections against occupying forces.

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 04:43:05 am

Last, will the name of the groups reflect somehow the importance of this land ? Something like "the barony of the angelic sabre", or "the county of the future whip".

This seems like an interface clarity suggestion.  In general, Toady favors clarity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 02:16:26 pm

I have always wanted something like trees in the legend mode. Today, everybody (outcasts, religion, civilisations and groups) are on the same list, and the same level, and I find this quite disturbing. At least, a color code or a system of directory/sub directory would be welcome !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on October 06, 2013, 02:24:39 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on October 06, 2013, 03:44:21 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 06, 2013, 03:04:37 am

12 years old has always been the age Dwarves begin to procreate at.

I thought that 12 was when they started doing adult work, but it took them until 30 or so to start having children?

I've played a few no-dwarf embarks where I simply sealed the dwarves in after two years and in some of them I've gone 30-40 years in the fortress and had dwarves with 20-30 kids, but I cannot remember any of the Dwarves under 30 having children of their own.

Maybe I just never noticed it.  With the number of no-dwarf embarks I've done this would seem unlikely - but possible.

It's just that marriage takes really long to happen in fortress mode. Immigrants younger than that with kids aren't important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on October 06, 2013, 02:54:05 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 02:16:26 pm

I have always wanted something like trees in the legend mode. Today, everybody (outcasts, religion, civilisations and groups) are on the same list, and the same level, and I find this quite disturbing. At least, a color code or a system of directory/sub directory would be welcome !

Even cooler would be cross-references that you select with the mouse and/or keyboard. For example, on Urist McAdventurer's history page,

Quote

In 938, Urist McAdventurer became an enemy in the eyes of The Cloistered Pages

And then you could select "The Cloistered Pages" and see their history page.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 06, 2013, 02:56:08 pm

Quote from: lue on October 06, 2013, 02:54:05 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 02:16:26 pm

I have always wanted something like trees in the legend mode. Today, everybody (outcasts, religion, civilisations and groups) are on the same list, and the same level, and I find this quite disturbing. At least, a color code or a system of directory/sub directory would be welcome !

Even cooler would be cross-references that you select with the mouse and/or keyboard. For example, on Urist McAdventurer's history page,

Quote

In 938, Urist McAdventurer became an enemy in the eyes of The Cloistered Pages

And then you could select "The Cloistered Pages" and see their history page.

There was some desire to get the Legends to be dumpable in XML so that communities members can make better Legend Readers.  Don't think there been any readers made though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on October 06, 2013, 03:00:17 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 06, 2013, 02:56:08 pm

Quote from: lue on October 06, 2013, 02:54:05 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 02:16:26 pm

I have always wanted something like trees in the legend mode. Today, everybody (outcasts, religion, civilisations and groups) are on the same list, and the same level, and I find this quite disturbing. At least, a color code or a system of directory/sub directory would be welcome !

Even cooler would be cross-references that you select with the mouse and/or keyboard. For example, on Urist McAdventurer's history page,

Quote

In 938, Urist McAdventurer became an enemy in the eyes of The Cloistered Pages

And then you could select "The Cloistered Pages" and see their history page.

There was some desire to get the Legends to be dumpable in XML so that communities members can make better Legend Readers.  Don't think there been any readers made though.

There's this: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72702 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72702)
The problem is there's data that is not exported in the XML file.

EDIT: The Utilities (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Utilities) section of the wiki has a lot of interesting tools.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 06, 2013, 08:33:09 pm

Quote from: blue sam3 on October 06, 2013, 02:24:39 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on October 06, 2013, 03:44:21 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 06, 2013, 03:04:37 am

12 years old has always been the age Dwarves begin to procreate at.

I thought that 12 was when they started doing adult work, but it took them until 30 or so to start having children?

I've played a few no-dwarf embarks where I simply sealed the dwarves in after two years and in some of them I've gone 30-40 years in the fortress and had dwarves with 20-30 kids, but I cannot remember any of the Dwarves under 30 having children of their own.

Maybe I just never noticed it.  With the number of no-dwarf embarks I've done this would seem unlikely - but possible.

It's just that marriage takes really long to happen in fortress mode. Immigrants younger than that with kids aren't important.

Especially when there isn't enough adults to do all the work that needs to be done, leading to very little time for socializing which makes relationships of any kind difficult to form and advance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 07, 2013, 12:39:17 am

Quote from: monk12 on October 06, 2013, 08:33:09 pm

Quote from: blue sam3 on October 06, 2013, 02:24:39 pm

Quote from: Farmerbob on October 06, 2013, 03:44:21 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 06, 2013, 03:04:37 am

12 years old has always been the age Dwarves begin to procreate at.

I thought that 12 was when they started doing adult work, but it took them until 30 or so to start having children?

I've played a few no-dwarf embarks where I simply sealed the dwarves in after two years and in some of them I've gone 30-40 years in the fortress and had dwarves with 20-30 kids, but I cannot remember any of the Dwarves under 30 having children of their own.

Maybe I just never noticed it.  With the number of no-dwarf embarks I've done this would seem unlikely - but possible.

It's just that marriage takes really long to happen in fortress mode. Immigrants younger than that with kids aren't important.

Especially when there isn't enough adults to do all the work that needs to be done, leading to very little time for socializing which makes relationships of any kind difficult to form and advance.

Would be easy enough to test. Check male and female babies born at the same time for compatible personalities, then seclude 'em in a room with each other when they're children. Keep 'em supplied and see how long it takes for them to marry when they hit adulthood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 07, 2013, 09:04:35 pm

It will happen pretty fast if you do that. The reason it takes so long to get marriages is due to being busy. If they can't work and only socialize with each other their relationship will progress quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hectonkhyres on October 08, 2013, 03:19:31 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 07, 2013, 09:04:35 pm

It will happen pretty fast if you do that. The reason it takes so long to get marriages is due to being busy. If they can't work and only socialize with each other their relationship will progress quickly.

With the new dwarven brain-mechanics in the coming update, this is going to end with carefully arranged dwarven social eugenics. People are going to be using this sort of thing, and a whoooole lot of magma, to carve their fortresses' cultures into obscene caricatures of all that is good and just.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 08, 2013, 01:23:44 pm

No, they're going to make as many psychopaths as possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 08, 2013, 01:48:16 pm

So... it would basically be still the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 08, 2013, 01:56:21 pm

Amoral psychopaths who care nothing for other people, and love slaughter. This would be the players attempting to remove relationship issues while maintaining an effective military. Not all players would do this, but the ones practicing eugenics would.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 08, 2013, 02:46:43 pm

Bah, still the same, you just would need to make less beautifully chairs and tables to compensate!

PS: I'm ;) just pulling your chain Mr. Jackman.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on October 08, 2013, 02:51:04 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 08, 2013, 01:56:21 pm

Amoral psychopaths who care nothing for other people, and love slaughter. This would be the players attempting to remove relationship issues while maintaining an effective military. Not all players would do this, but the ones practicing eugenics would.

Would an amoral psychopath spring to help another amoral psychopath who is being beaten to death by a colossal insect? Such kind of distopias would be hard to craft and mantain, not counting all the years that would require to get an entire generation of inbred maniacs; but maybe it could be as rewarding as building a lava-spewing elephant statue happens to be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 08, 2013, 04:27:56 pm

Quote from: Valtam on October 08, 2013, 02:51:04 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 08, 2013, 01:56:21 pm

Amoral psychopaths who care nothing for other people, and love slaughter. This would be the players attempting to remove relationship issues while maintaining an effective military. Not all players would do this, but the ones practicing eugenics would.

Would an amoral psychopath spring to help another amoral psychopath who is being beaten to death by a colossal insect? Such kind of distopias would be hard to craft and mantain, not counting all the years that would require to get an entire generation of inbred maniacs; but maybe it could be as rewarding as building a lava-spewing elephant statue happens to be.

Sadly you don't meet many mad social scientists (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090506). So the lava statues may end up more common.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hectonkhyres on October 08, 2013, 05:49:21 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 08, 2013, 01:56:21 pm

Amoral psychopaths who care nothing for other people, and love slaughter. This would be the players attempting to remove relationship issues while maintaining an effective military. Not all players would do this, but the ones practicing eugenics would.

Just think of the possibilities! You could breed in profound, irrational hatreds... or phobias... or obsessions... or manias. Regarding pretty much anything the game is coded to recognize, at least potentially, once Toady starts rubbing in the polish.

In a year or two we might be able to breed the archetypal Dwarven Caligula or Marquis de Sade, inclined to have their parties on the torn remains of their pet cats while insisting that every surface in the fortress is painted in cat blood. Or who believe that fluffy wamblers are the avatar of Armok's wrath. Or who can not feel comfortable unless their bedroom is stuffed with weapons and bladed surfaces.

MUCH more fun than an elephant that vomits magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 08, 2013, 05:52:19 pm

And this is why Toady's said he wants to make it so that dwarves might get unhappy or want to leave if they notice odd amounts of deaths of a certain subsection of the population :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 08, 2013, 05:54:29 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 08, 2013, 05:52:19 pm

And this is why Toady's said he wants to make it so that dwarves might get unhappy or want to leave if they notice odd amounts of deaths of a certain subsection of the population :P

Like cheesemakers and potash makers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on October 08, 2013, 09:25:16 pm

Quote from: Cmega3 on October 08, 2013, 05:56:34 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 08, 2013, 05:54:29 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 08, 2013, 05:52:19 pm

And this is why Toady's said he wants to make it so that dwarves might get unhappy or want to leave if they notice odd amounts of deaths of a certain subsection of the population :P

Like cheesemakers and potash makers?

One day, there will be no more cheesemakers...

And when the time comes he will appear, The Last of the Cheesemakers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 08, 2013, 09:41:13 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on October 08, 2013, 09:25:16 pm

Quote from: Cmega3 on October 08, 2013, 05:56:34 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 08, 2013, 05:54:29 pm

Quote from: Putnam on October 08, 2013, 05:52:19 pm

And this is why Toady's said he wants to make it so that dwarves might get unhappy or want to leave if they notice odd amounts of deaths of a certain subsection of the population :P

Like cheesemakers and potash makers?

One day, there will be no more cheesemakers...

And when the time comes he will appear, The Last of the Cheesemakers.

And yea, then shalt be end times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 09, 2013, 05:03:41 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

This is obviously not meant to be taken literally and applies to all manufacturers of dairy products.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 09, 2013, 05:27:31 pm

Quote from: Hectonkhyres on October 08, 2013, 05:49:21 pm

Just think of the possibilities! You could breed in profound, irrational hatreds... or phobias... or obsessions... or manias. Regarding pretty much anything the game is coded to recognize, at least potentially, once Toady starts rubbing in the polish.

In a year or two we might be able to breed the archetypal Dwarven Caligula or Marquis de Sade, inclined to have their parties on the torn remains of their pet cats while insisting that every surface in the fortress is painted in cat blood. Or who believe that fluffy wamblers are the avatar of Armok's wrath. Or who can not feel comfortable unless their bedroom is stuffed with weapons and bladed surfaces.

MUCH more fun than an elephant that vomits magma.

I personaly think what many religions, especialy religious extremism does. The social stuff just caters to it. Authority from the pew also gives you a chance do indoctrinate and breed bigger groups. So i for one wait for organized religion to pervert it and my dorfs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 09, 2013, 05:39:48 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

SHIT! I wish I'd thought of that one. My hat tips for you, good sir.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those who don't get it, it's a Monty Python reference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on October 09, 2013, 05:57:27 pm

Quote from: Heph on October 09, 2013, 05:27:31 pm

So i for one wait for organized religion to pervert it and my dorfs.

When talking about adventurer roles, I had an idea for a different sort: The cultist. I was going to generate worlds until I got a demon posing as a god and then I'd slavishly follow his whims and preach his name.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on October 10, 2013, 02:34:49 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 09, 2013, 05:39:48 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

SHIT! I wish I'd thought of that one. My hat tips for you, good sir.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those who don't get it, it's a Monty Python reference.

And here I thought it was a biblical reference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 10, 2013, 06:35:52 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 10, 2013, 02:34:49 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 09, 2013, 05:39:48 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

SHIT! I wish I'd thought of that one. My hat tips for you, good sir.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those who don't get it, it's a Monty Python reference.

And here I thought it was a biblical reference.

Are references by proxy still references? It could make Godwin's law much more difficult to avoid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 10, 2013, 10:49:50 am

Quote from: Helgoland on October 10, 2013, 06:35:52 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 10, 2013, 02:34:49 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 09, 2013, 05:39:48 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

SHIT! I wish I'd thought of that one. My hat tips for you, good sir.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those who don't get it, it's a Monty Python reference.

And here I thought it was a biblical reference.

Are references by proxy still references? It could make Godwin's law much more difficult to avoid.

Okay, that's siggable

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 10, 2013, 03:16:12 pm

Twice in one day - I must be getting good at this :D
Toady, how deep will social interactions become in the next release? Stuff like group/clique formation, prejudice, peer pressure etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 10, 2013, 04:06:39 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on October 10, 2013, 03:16:12 pm

Twice in one day - I must be getting good at this :D
Toady, how deep will social interactions become in the next release? Stuff like group/clique formation, prejudice, peer pressure etc.

Probably no deeper then what we have now. A lot of that stuff, from the groups and peer pressure, ect, are things he wants when Guilds are back in play.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on October 10, 2013, 10:35:56 pm

Hope everyone's OK. Best wishes, and such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 10, 2013, 11:12:04 pm

Indeed, I hope it wasn't anything serious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on October 11, 2013, 08:32:37 am

Time to donate again. Hospital bills are always serious, even if the reason isn't.

Best wishes for you and yours, Mr Adams. Here's hoping it's nothing much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 11, 2013, 09:51:33 am

Quote from: monk12 on October 10, 2013, 11:12:04 pm

Indeed, I hope it wasn't anything serious.

Agreed. Hope everything is all right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 11, 2013, 09:54:00 am

Yea, I hope it wasn't anything serious, but if it is, the community is with you Toady One.

Just out of curiosity, are there any new creatures in the next update?

Will all of the creatures have the gait stuff in their raws eventually? I understand if the humanoids just have those gait stuff at first because finding out the gaits of other stuff requires research that takes time. Also, gotta get the cheetahs speed in, right? :D

As far as research goes, there is a good deal of research into locomotion, just have to find it, and there are plenty of people in the community willing to help out with putting the data in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 11, 2013, 10:23:51 am

Hope you are okay, hospital visits are NEVER pleasant, no matter how superfluous or serious the problem might be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 11, 2013, 10:36:13 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 11, 2013, 09:54:00 am

Will all of the creatures have the gait stuff in their raws eventually? I understand if the humanoids just have those gait stuff at first because finding out the gaits of other stuff requires research that takes time. Also, gotta get the cheetahs speed in, right? :D

I believe all creatures will have gaits in the next version, though maybe not all perfectly-researched ones.

Quote from: Toady One, on 03/29/2013

In addition to cleaning up random unfunny bugs, I've been entering all of the gait data into the raws now that that part of combat is definitely settled. Creature variations can now take argument strings which replace argument markers in the variation definition (the arguments are different speed numbers in this case). The use of lines of the variation can also be made conditional on these arguments. There isn't enough resolution in the game's time system for speeds to make sense entirely, without letting critters like cheetahs understand moving more than one square per click. Fixing it isn't as easy as making projectiles go more than one tile per click. In any case, critters that should be faster than a dwarf or human at full speed are much faster at their full speed, while one creature's full speed is generally much faster than its walking speed, so it'll be an improvement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Emily Murkpaddled on October 11, 2013, 03:07:37 pm

Best wishes, Tarn, and for those around you! I hope this is all resolved well. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on October 12, 2013, 07:10:59 am

Have you ever considered the possibility of creating a new class of object for those things which tend to create lots of clutter due to small stacks?  For example, "mixed" bones.  "mixed" arrows, etc.  This could be a part of the cleaning job (which might then get a small boost in it's priority?), to collect and combine small stacks of items of varying types into a single group of "mixed" items with random effectiveness, which could then be used by dwarves rather than cluttering the landscape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Farmerbob on October 12, 2013, 07:23:02 am

Quote from: lue on October 06, 2013, 02:54:05 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 06, 2013, 02:16:26 pm

I have always wanted something like trees in the legend mode. Today, everybody (outcasts, religion, civilisations and groups) are on the same list, and the same level, and I find this quite disturbing. At least, a color code or a system of directory/sub directory would be welcome !

Even cooler would be cross-references that you select with the mouse and/or keyboard. For example, on Urist McAdventurer's history page,

Quote

In 938, Urist McAdventurer became an enemy in the eyes of The Cloistered Pages

And then you could select "The Cloistered Pages" and see their history page.

Eh, no, marriages can happen very quickly in fortress mode, if you only have a few dwarves, and micromanage them for best social effect.  I could get marriages in a year or so fairly regularly by having my dwarves do nothing but socialize, and grow food and make booze.  As soon as they were married though, BAM, time to stop socializing and get a job.  Dwarven children growing up in the fort would have highly developed social skills too, unlike new fortress dwarves.

But if others have seen 12 year old dwarves have kids that's fine too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 12, 2013, 09:34:45 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 11, 2013, 10:36:13 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 11, 2013, 09:54:00 am

Will all of the creatures have the gait stuff in their raws eventually? I understand if the humanoids just have those gait stuff at first because finding out the gaits of other stuff requires research that takes time. Also, gotta get the cheetahs speed in, right? :D

I believe all creatures will have gaits in the next version, though maybe not all perfectly-researched ones.

Quote from: Toady One, on 03/29/2013

In addition to cleaning up random unfunny bugs, I've been entering all of the gait data into the raws now that that part of combat is definitely settled. Creature variations can now take argument strings which replace argument markers in the variation definition (the arguments are different speed numbers in this case). The use of lines of the variation can also be made conditional on these arguments. There isn't enough resolution in the game's time system for speeds to make sense entirely, without letting critters like cheetahs understand moving more than one square per click. Fixing it isn't as easy as making projectiles go more than one tile per click. In any case, critters that should be faster than a dwarf or human at full speed are much faster at their full speed, while one creature's full speed is generally much faster than its walking speed, so it'll be an improvement.

Oh, missed that somehow when looking through the devlog posts.

It may just be a matter of looking up the numbers and translating them into whatever value he is using

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 12, 2013, 10:34:31 am

Quote from: Farmerbob on October 12, 2013, 07:10:59 am

Have you ever considered the possibility of creating a new class of object for those things which tend to create lots of clutter due to small stacks?  For example, "mixed" bones.  "mixed" arrows, etc.  This could be a part of the cleaning job (which might then get a small boost in it's priority?), to collect and combine small stacks of items of varying types into a single group of "mixed" items with random effectiveness, which could then be used by dwarves rather than cluttering the landscape.

Yes.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Req112, ITEM AGGREGATES, (Future): Need fake item stacks that combine items that aren't identical. There are a number of associated difficulties. Identical items should also be combined into actual stacks. These currently exist but are never reformed once they are broken part.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 13, 2013, 03:33:56 am

Quote from: Helgoland on October 10, 2013, 06:35:52 am

Quote from: Cruxador on October 10, 2013, 02:34:49 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 09, 2013, 05:39:48 pm

Quote from: Sizik on October 09, 2013, 04:53:37 pm

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they will be called children of Armok.

SHIT! I wish I'd thought of that one. My hat tips for you, good sir.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those who don't get it, it's a Monty Python reference.

And here I thought it was a biblical reference.

Are references by proxy still references? It could make Godwin's law much more difficult to avoid.

First, they came for Cheesrmakers and I was silent because I was not a cheesemaker.

Then they came for Potashmakers and I was silent, because I was not a potashmaker.

Finaly they came for me, but I was dabbling armorsmith a went Ned Kelly on them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 13, 2013, 04:40:35 am

Ned Kelly?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on October 13, 2013, 07:11:36 am

Australian criminal/folk hero (it's Australia, after all) who built himself an armored suit, effectively becoming a miniature tank. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 13, 2013, 10:58:56 am

Quote from: Helgoland on October 13, 2013, 07:11:36 am

Australian criminal/folk hero (it's Australia, after all) who built himself an armored suit, effectively becoming a miniature tank. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly)

Dwarfy:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Ned_Kelly_in_1880.png/220px-Ned_Kelly_in_1880.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on October 13, 2013, 12:21:22 pm

So an early Ironman?

I hope toady and threetoe ok and the hospital visit was a routine checkup.

Will there be atleast a haloween story by Zach/threetoe?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 13, 2013, 07:55:25 pm

 "Zach's doing much better, though he'll still be laid up a couple weeks."

Glad to hear he is doing better, hope he recovers. :D

Is it okay if I ask what happened?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Moddan on October 14, 2013, 02:34:58 am

Am I right assuming a "digging-too-deep" related nose-picking joke wouldn't be appropriate now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on October 14, 2013, 02:48:00 am

I hope the hospital was stocked with enough cat tallow soap and -pig tail cloth-.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 14, 2013, 04:33:15 am

*pig tail cloth* would be more appropriate. It's Threetoes !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 14, 2013, 07:34:27 am

I hope he makes a speedy recover. Also I join in Moddan curiosity, if is not considered rude, in which case my most sincere apologies for asking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on October 14, 2013, 09:28:15 am

Quote from: LordBaal on October 14, 2013, 07:34:27 am

I hope he makes a speedy recover. Also I join in Moddan curiosity, if is not considered rude, in which case my most sincere apologies for asking.

Tarn and Zach have been minor celebrities for a while now, their expectation of privacy should be appropriately diminished. Maybe they will cobble together a press release for the forums.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 14, 2013, 09:52:09 am

Well, my concerns doesn't stems from a morbid curiosity worth only of the worst Hollywood tabloids :P

But it's true concern over their health, since I would love them to live for at least 200 years in order to keep making and improving DF!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 14, 2013, 05:58:10 pm

Glad to hear Zach is doing better!

Will cities be repaired and rebuilt after siege damage in the upcoming release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on October 15, 2013, 01:50:03 am

"seeing the high priest impaled on a pole right in the temple grounds"

With this devlog showing "unique" deaths such as the priest impaled on a pole, will historical figures now have explanations of their deaths in legends mode? such as "impaled upon a pole by <attacking civ name here> as a message to <defending civ here>?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 15, 2013, 01:52:44 am

They already do, even down to the impaling on poles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on October 15, 2013, 09:46:19 am

Quote from: Putnam on October 15, 2013, 01:52:44 am

They already do, even down to the impaling on poles.

Maybe he was asking for motives rather than descriptions, but I think they won't be implemented. So, until next time, we won't really know why goblin leatherworker #342 murdered his own succesful demon lord and then followed an uneventful life, just like before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andreus on October 16, 2013, 02:59:54 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 14, 2013, 04:33:15 am

*pig tail cloth* would be more appropriate. It's Threetoes !

Uh, no, anything other than *adamantine cloth* would be completely unacceptable.

We can rebuild him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 16, 2013, 04:24:57 am

Quote

We can rebuild him.

I have seen a story about a FB and a soldier who has been completely destroyed by an acid blood, and who had no flesh left on him. And the doctor put adamantine on him everywhere, making him a sort of skeleton of adamantine. Sort of Wolverine, I guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on October 17, 2013, 11:12:29 am

Quote from: Andreus on October 16, 2013, 02:59:54 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 14, 2013, 04:33:15 am

*pig tail cloth* would be more appropriate. It's Threetoes !

Uh, no, anything other than *adamantine cloth* would be completely unacceptable.

We can rebuild him.

As if they would use anything else... for anyone. #1346 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1346)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 17, 2013, 11:30:57 am

I don't know if this got answered already, With the ability to properly dual wield weapons, will marksdwarves use secondary weapons correctly as in a backup weapon (even if it's just a dagger)? Although I can see them trying to fight with both at the same time anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 17, 2013, 12:26:34 pm

The correct method for two handed range weapons would be to "drop it", either figuratively putting it on a holster or something or literally dropping it to the ground if something else you have is better at close range. I'm not sure, but this behavior doesn't seem to be coded yet for what I recall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 17, 2013, 02:05:22 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 17, 2013, 11:30:57 am

I don't know if this got answered already, With the ability to properly dual wield weapons, will marksdwarves use secondary weapons correctly as in a backup weapon (even if it's just a dagger)? Although I can see them trying to fight with both at the same time anyway.

Unless dual-wielding is slated for near-term development, it's unlikely that Toady can make any guarantees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thistleknot on October 17, 2013, 02:42:07 pm

Before I posted this, I searched the eternal suggestions as well as this thread for this issues relating to what I call the MAW Bug: aka... Miner, Ambusher, Woodcutter Bug.  I should probably call it the MAWM bug: Miner, Ambusher, Woodcutter, Militia bug.

Anyways

People have described this issue as a bug, some say the game was intended to operate this way, with miners, ambushers, woodcutters dropping their equipment and/or refusing to pick up equipment when changing from military mode to laborer mode (even if uniform is worn over clothing).  It seems counter-intuitive that a dwarf should be removed from the militia, and re-added to fix some of these problems.

I'm not the only one who has experienced said issue.  In fact Splinterz Dwarf Therapist has it coded to exclude these labors from being assigned to each other for the added reason that if a miner wishes to do carpentry, he can't, because he's currently carrying a pick.

I consider it a "bug" where others might disagree, but it has created situations where it's pointless to try to have a dwarf who may be good at chopping wood down, and mining, and hunting, have all those labors, and/or be in the militia.  The militia one is what really gets me, because according to the wikipedia entry, the MINING labor increases the PICK use skill, which is great for in combat (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Pick), same goes for the hunter who increases his markmanship skill, and the woodcutter who chops with his axe... it's just extremely frustrating to not find a workaround...

So is there any hope that next release I can assign my miners to militia as well as be maybe a wood chopper too without any issues?  I would think a simple if check (for militia) for if the equipment currently being carried could be used for the military uniform, to not drop it, but keep it, should do.

References of other people having issue
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123769.msg4091194#msg4091194
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113093.msg3441776#msg344177
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122428.0
http://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/1mykrn/tip_the_mmmm_squad_miner_militia_mover_mason/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 17, 2013, 03:19:32 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on October 17, 2013, 02:42:07 pm

So is there any hope that next release I can assign my miners to militia as well as be maybe a wood chopper too without any issues?  I would think a simple if check (for militia) for if the equipment currently being carried could be used for the military uniform, to not drop it, but keep it, should do.

This is bug 1451 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1451). And no, it's unlikely to be resolved in the next version - while Toady went into the dwarven brain, he didn't specifically work on the dwarven military much. There's an off-chance that it was resolved incidentally, but more likely, it seems a candidate for the bugfix period after the next version (since it does involve dwarven brains in a way).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 17, 2013, 08:14:59 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 17, 2013, 03:19:32 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on October 17, 2013, 02:42:07 pm

So is there any hope that next release I can assign my miners to militia as well as be maybe a wood chopper too without any issues?  I would think a simple if check (for militia) for if the equipment currently being carried could be used for the military uniform, to not drop it, but keep it, should do.

This is bug 1451 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1451). And no, it's unlikely to be resolved in the next version - while Toady went into the dwarven brain, he didn't specifically work on the dwarven military much. There's an off-chance that it was resolved incidentally, but more likely, it seems a candidate for the bugfix period after the next version (since it does involve dwarven brains in a way).

Would't it be more a job issue?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 18, 2013, 12:23:30 pm

Possibly. It's all quite interconnected, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on October 18, 2013, 12:37:12 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 17, 2013, 08:14:59 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 17, 2013, 03:19:32 pm

Quote from: thistleknot on October 17, 2013, 02:42:07 pm

So is there any hope that next release I can assign my miners to militia as well as be maybe a wood chopper too without any issues?  I would think a simple if check (for militia) for if the equipment currently being carried could be used for the military uniform, to not drop it, but keep it, should do.

This is bug 1451 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1451). And no, it's unlikely to be resolved in the next version - while Toady went into the dwarven brain, he didn't specifically work on the dwarven military much. There's an off-chance that it was resolved incidentally, but more likely, it seems a candidate for the bugfix period after the next version (since it does involve dwarven brains in a way).

Would't it be more a job issue?

Well, solution is more general:

1) Dwarves should recognize that they are using item compatible with their military use and use it.

2) Dwarves should be able to carry unused equipment (backpack, holster, etc) and switch accordingly to situation.

That is inventory management issue, not job or military one. And since dwarf inventory management is not exactly developped...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rafal99 on October 18, 2013, 01:21:32 pm

The worst part of this bug is not the fact that they need separate axe for woodcutting and axedwarfing, but the fact that all miners/woodcutters/hunters refuse to wear armor while civilian while being explicitly set to wear it. They drop all their armor and military equipment when undrafted, which means when you draft them again they have to wander the fort for long time collecting all the armor pieces again, instead of being ready for combat like all other dwarves can.
This is imho one of the worst bugs left over from last bugfixing phase and I really look forward for it to be fixed in next one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 18, 2013, 04:43:19 pm

Quote from: Rafal99 on October 18, 2013, 01:21:32 pm

This is imho one of the worst bugs left over from last bugfixing phase and I really look forward for it to be fixed in next one.

Just keep in mind, I'm only speculating that it's a bug that could be hit in the next bugfix period, and can't guarantee that it'll get looked at.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ICBM pilot on October 19, 2013, 05:50:46 pm

I don't know if this was already answered, but does toady plan on adding slaves to Armok I spells?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 19, 2013, 06:03:05 pm

Quote from: ICBM pilot on October 19, 2013, 05:50:46 pm

I don't know if this was already answered, but does toady plan on adding slaves to Armok I spells?

Magic?

Totally. ToadyOne has spoken about adding a Magic System being a post v1.0 thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 20, 2013, 03:01:17 am

Quote

post v1.0 thing.

In 10-15 years, then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on October 20, 2013, 09:06:45 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 20, 2013, 03:01:17 am

Quote

post v1.0 thing.

In 10-15 years, then.

Well, the interactions system is the start of a magic system.  It is currently somewhat vague and malformed, but Toady thinks he can easily make it into a proper magic system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2013, 10:05:34 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on October 19, 2013, 06:03:05 pm

Quote from: ICBM pilot on October 19, 2013, 05:50:46 pm

I don't know if this was already answered, but does toady plan on adding slaves to Armok I spells?

Magic?

Totally. ToadyOne has spoken about adding a Magic System being a post v1.0 thing.

And if you're asking about specific effects, they probably will be possible, but not guaranteed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 20, 2013, 10:52:07 am

Quote from: ICBM pilot on October 19, 2013, 05:50:46 pm

I don't know if this was already answered, but does toady plan on adding slaves to Armok I spells?

I don't know what you're talking about with magic, but there are slaves that show up in worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blue sam3 on October 20, 2013, 11:10:46 am

Quote from: Rockphed on October 20, 2013, 09:06:45 am

Quote from: Inarius on October 20, 2013, 03:01:17 am

Quote

post v1.0 thing.

In 10-15 years, then.

Well, the interactions system is the start of a magic system.  It is currently somewhat vague and malformed, but Toady thinks he can easily make it into a proper magic system.

It's already entirely possible to implement all manner of magic with the interactions system and some cleverness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2013, 11:29:14 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on October 20, 2013, 11:10:46 am

It's already entirely possible to implement all manner of magic with the interactions system and some cleverness.

But nothing really that flays off someone's skin, teleports a brain out of the body, or summons a generic peasant out of nothing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on October 20, 2013, 11:56:06 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 20, 2013, 11:29:14 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on October 20, 2013, 11:10:46 am

It's already entirely possible to implement all manner of magic with the interactions system and some cleverness.

But nothing really that flays off someone's skin, teleports a brain out of the body, or summons a generic peasant out of nothing.

Actually, you can. you can make a syndrome that rots the skin and the skin only, and with Dfhack is posible to summon peasants
(masterwork) actually have a building to sumon peasants)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 20, 2013, 12:04:40 pm

Quote from: Broken on October 20, 2013, 11:56:06 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 20, 2013, 11:29:14 am

Quote from: blue sam3 on October 20, 2013, 11:10:46 am

It's already entirely possible to implement all manner of magic with the interactions system and some cleverness.

But nothing really that flays off someone's skin, teleports a brain out of the body, or summons a generic peasant out of nothing.

Actually, you can. you can make a syndrome that rots the skin and the skin only, and with Dfhack is posible to summon peasants
(masterwork) actually have a building to sumon peasants)

Rotting isn't flaying, and third-party utilities don't count. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 20, 2013, 12:05:09 pm

And there's no body-part teleporting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Mc Dwarf on October 20, 2013, 12:53:35 pm

hooved animals can teleport body parts out of the body.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 20, 2013, 01:05:50 pm

No, they remove them through an incision that appears not dissimilar to a bullet wound.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on October 20, 2013, 01:23:24 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 20, 2013, 03:01:17 am

Quote

post v1.0 thing.

In 10-15 years Never, then.

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 20, 2013, 01:28:06 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on October 20, 2013, 01:23:24 pm

Quote from: Inarius on October 20, 2013, 03:01:17 am

Quote

post v1.0 thing.

In 20 years, then.

FTFY

He was more right the first time

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on October 20, 2013, 01:52:21 pm

It's unfair to try and put such an exact a date on it, or to say never. It's only been in development for, what, ~10 years so far?
It may seem like forever, but I'm sure that anywhere between 5 and 25 years we'll get 1.0.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 20, 2013, 02:53:03 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 20, 2013, 10:52:07 am

Quote from: ICBM pilot on October 19, 2013, 05:50:46 pm

I don't know if this was already answered, but does toady plan on adding slaves to Armok I spells?

I don't know what you're talking about with magic, but there are slaves that show up in worldgen.

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood was the game that Dwarf Fortress took the name of when it took over as the Big Bay 12 Fantasy Game. It had a magic system of sorts which basically involved:

Full body teleportation.

Body part teleportation.

Full body explosion.

Body part explosion.

Creature summoning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 20, 2013, 06:46:21 pm

Don't forget:

Full body petrification

Body part petrification

But yes, basically just those effects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: G D on October 21, 2013, 06:06:29 am

And healing spells - very usefull if you want to make clothes out of your own skin and survive that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 21, 2013, 08:54:29 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 20, 2013, 06:46:21 pm

Don't forget:

Full body petrification

Body part petrification

But yes, basically just those effects.

Paralysis and motor nerve damage is closest to this. Not sure if you can make the paralysis syndrome apply to say an arm or leg rather than whole body paralysis.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 21, 2013, 09:28:42 am

Knew it! This will indeed be the release with a longer period of development since the start of Dwarf Fortress. Toady calculating the developing phase would take him at least 25 days more and then is some testing. We would perhaps have a December release if we are lucky, or a January maybe. Anyway, I think with that the old threshold will be surpassed (if I'm not wrong).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 21, 2013, 09:30:39 am

Well, he is going to try and get any nasty bugs out first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 21, 2013, 10:31:27 am

It's to be expected, in my humble opinion this is the greatest update ever, even more than the 2010 one. I mean we finally have a dynamic world that keep going while we play, that's the base of everything else in the game, armies, wars, trade.... you name it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on October 21, 2013, 11:21:39 am

DF has definitely been one of those games where patience is greatly rewarded.

I sometimes wonder what it'd be like if we could step into a parallel universe where DF was a "normal" commercial release. On one hand, Toady would have a team helping him to polish a lot of features, smooth out bugs, and optimize our FPS. On the other hand, the executives would likely try to curb his ambition, water down the difficulty, cut down on all the complex interactions, and other stuff that makes DF great.

I'd love it if Toady could get the best of both worlds, but I doubt major game companies would go for the long term investment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 21, 2013, 02:05:44 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on October 21, 2013, 11:21:39 am

DF has definitely been one of those games where patience is greatly rewarded.

I sometimes wonder what it'd be like if we could step into a parallel universe where DF was a "normal" commercial release. On one hand, Toady would have a team helping him to polish a lot of features, smooth out bugs, and optimize our FPS. On the other hand, the executives would likely try to curb his ambition, water down the difficulty, cut down on all the complex interactions, and other stuff that makes DF great.

I'd love it if Toady could get the best of both worlds, but I doubt major game companies would go for the long term investment.

Or quality sometimes......

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 21, 2013, 02:41:25 pm

Well, there's good reason for it:

Quote from: Toady

[Release 5 is] really testing the whole premise of the game, basically, that you can have systems like this that don't totally fall apart, or they only fall apart when they should, more or less. It's something that I can't say how it's going to turn out, there are too many moving parts to know if it's going to work or not, and I hope it works because that's kind of the whole thing we've been aiming at for years is release 5, more or less. Is the world actually going to survive being alive? (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_13_transcript.html)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 21, 2013, 03:07:59 pm

This is possible, if not 100% sure, the most complex game ever conceived, not by technical complexity alone, but by the very nature of it's simulations. No other game I know off ever dares to scratch the surface of the detailing of DF. Not only that, but it's the only one that actually create huge worlds filled with custom myths and histories worth of billionaire Hollywood movies, and it's not even complete!

My mind shrieks in curiosity and terror into thinking what the would the 1.0 version would be like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 21, 2013, 05:15:46 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on October 21, 2013, 03:07:59 pm

My mind shrieks in curiosity and terror into thinking what the would the 1.0 version would be like.

This.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 21, 2013, 06:26:17 pm

1.0 will physically absorb you into the world and subject you to all the horrors you put your dwarves (and modded creatures) through in the name of Fun. And it will still be Fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 21, 2013, 07:00:34 pm

From yesterdays devlog, sounds like things are going well. Hopefully we will have a release in December.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 21, 2013, 07:04:19 pm

There will be a point where it will become most detailed than real life, and it will be able to divide zero.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 21, 2013, 07:43:50 pm

"...and then the trees started cutting elves, too. Then the trees and dwarves made the elves into beer, and the trees combusted."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 22, 2013, 10:17:51 am

"And Armok didst grin.

And the inhabitants of the Mountainhomes feasted upon the lamb, and the sloth, and the orangutan, and the breakfast cereal...."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 22, 2013, 01:14:41 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

I'm pretty sure that, if artifacts aren't tracked properly, that it's a bug. There are some bugs with artifact tracking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 22, 2013, 01:31:25 pm

While you're working on sites, how have lairs come along?

I am tired of spending fifteen minutes to find a lair. If there's a mod for that I'll take it. Edit:thanks for the help. (Top left gives exact coordinates).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 22, 2013, 01:32:10 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

And where did you see that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on October 22, 2013, 02:00:20 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 01:32:10 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

And where did you see that?

It was a while ago when the trade network went in.

Quote from: Devlog 6-7-2011

Instead of being generated from scratch, the items all come from the site's world gen stockpiles now. The information stored there includes the source civilization, so a family could be the proud owners of a dwarven stone cabinet, for example, complete with dwarven artwork with the right materials, and the number of dwarven stone cabinets in the town would be the precise number that were traded in over the years.

I think he might have addressed it in a DF Talk as well (particularly regarding unique/specific items, like artifacts and "that axe the worldgen general used to slay the dragon" and things like that,) but I don't recall which one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 22, 2013, 02:06:32 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 01:31:25 pm

While you're working on sites, how have lairs come along? Is finding them either less time-consuming or more deliberately puzzling?

I am tired of spending fifteen minutes to find a lair. If there's a mod for that I'll take it.

What kind of lair do you mean? Lairs for quest targets? They've become harder, since the quest givers no longer can give you their exact locations (and they were never particularly hard to find). Random lairs you've never heard about? They're staying the same difficulty. Critters hiding out nigh-unfindably in the sewers and dungeons? I don't think there's been a change either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 22, 2013, 03:59:18 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 01:31:25 pm

While you're working on sites, how have lairs come along? Is finding them either less time-consuming or more deliberately puzzling?

I am tired of spending fifteen minutes to find a lair. If there's a mod for that I'll take it.

The compass in the top-left gives the exact relative location of the nearest lair at all times and you can press "q" then "c" (IIRC) to show the exact point on the world map where the lair is. By exact relative location I mean it'll show you what direction it is until you're literally on top of it, in which case you're probably inside it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 22, 2013, 04:52:04 pm

Toady, when you release the new version of DF 0.34.11, will it be compatible with OSX from 10.6 to 10.9 inclusive?

Since 10.9 came out today for free, besides time to back up, download, and install, I don't think there's a reason not to have it compatible for all thee systems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 22, 2013, 04:52:58 pm

I'm guessing you mean DF in general? Is 0.34.11 not currently compatible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 22, 2013, 05:12:07 pm

Quote from: monk12 on October 22, 2013, 02:00:20 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 01:32:10 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

And where did you see that?

It was a while ago when the trade network went in.

Quote from: Devlog 6-7-2011

Instead of being generated from scratch, the items all come from the site's world gen stockpiles now. The information stored there includes the source civilization, so a family could be the proud owners of a dwarven stone cabinet, for example, complete with dwarven artwork with the right materials, and the number of dwarven stone cabinets in the town would be the precise number that were traded in over the years.

I think he might have addressed it in a DF Talk as well (particularly regarding unique/specific items, like artifacts and "that axe the worldgen general used to slay the dragon" and things like that,) but I don't recall which one.

Huh. I thought that stuff just vanished at the moment.

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 22, 2013, 01:14:41 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

I'm pretty sure that, if artifacts aren't tracked properly, that it's a bug. There are some bugs with artifact tracking.

What bugs?

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 22, 2013, 02:06:32 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 01:31:25 pm

While you're working on sites, how have lairs come along? Is finding them either less time-consuming or more deliberately puzzling?

I am tired of spending fifteen minutes to find a lair. If there's a mod for that I'll take it.

What kind of lair do you mean? Lairs for quest targets? They've become harder, since the quest givers no longer can give you their exact locations (and they were never particularly hard to find). Random lairs you've never heard about? They're staying the same difficulty. Critters hiding out nigh-unfindably in the sewers and dungeons? I don't think there's been a change either.

I will try this.

Lastly, has anyone had their own artifacts used against them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lethosor on October 22, 2013, 07:46:11 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 22, 2013, 04:52:04 pm

Since 10.9 came out today for free, besides time to back up, download, and install, I don't think there's a reason not to have it compatible for all thee systems.

Considering that running DF 0.34.11 on Lion and Mountain Lion turned out to be possible, and this upgrade isn't a major overhaul either (as far as I can tell), there shouldn't be any major problems with upgrading to Mavericks/10.9 (although it's also unlikely to fix problems that came up with Lion/Mountain Lion, such as #5260 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5260)). Since the last major breaking OS update was 10.5 to 10.6 (removing PowerPC support), I'm hopeful that DF will remain compatible with 10.6 through 10.9 (I haven't tested this yet myself, but hopefully I'll be able to soon).

Quote from: Putnam on October 22, 2013, 04:52:58 pm

I'm guessing you mean DF in general? Is 0.34.11 not currently compatible?

I think CaptainArchmage may have been referring to 10.6 compatibility as well as 10.9 (as older versions of OS X, such as 10.5, have been known to have problems with DF upgrades). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 23, 2013, 11:59:34 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 05:12:07 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 22, 2013, 01:14:41 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 22, 2013, 12:40:09 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 22, 2013, 12:21:12 pm

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

Given that traded items are supposed to be tracked.... hopefully. I know there is already a general answer, but I don't think we know about artifacts specifically.

I'm pretty sure that, if artifacts aren't tracked properly, that it's a bug. There are some bugs with artifact tracking.

What bugs?

There's this one (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1179), at least. The other one I was thinking of was the book duplication bug linked from that report, but that was apparently already resolved and I forgot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 23, 2013, 03:12:49 pm

While stolen artifacts don't bite you in the ass because world gen doesn't yet continue?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 23, 2013, 04:04:30 pm

They already bite you in the ass because the maker goes ballistic for losing their precious work. It's not as if they could be used against you, artifact=/= superweapon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 23, 2013, 04:36:42 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 23, 2013, 04:04:30 pm

They already bite you in the ass because the maker goes ballistic for losing their precious work. It's not as if they could be used against you, artifact=/= superweapon.

Maddening Treachery or no deal, I'm afraid :P.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 23, 2013, 05:18:51 pm

That's what I'm saying. They already bite you in the ass because their creators go berserk. World gen continuing wouldn't make stolen artifacts bite you in the ass any more than they already do, because the people who steal them can't exactly do anything with them but sell them or keep them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on October 23, 2013, 05:38:43 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 23, 2013, 11:59:34 am

There's this one (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1179), at least. The other one I was thinking of was the book duplication bug linked from that report, but that was apparently already resolved and I forgot.

As far as I can tell this has been a problem since the dawn of Dwarf Fortress. And I say it's about time Toady got around to addressing it. Because if you can't reclaim/adventure into a fortress and pillage priceless relics from it, as opposed to just having them disappear from existence the second you abandon the fortress, then what the hell is the point? It feels like fortress-raiding is missing something fundamental.

Or heck, maybe even introduce a way to store artifacts in locked chests, crypts, and etc. So that finding artifacts doesn't just amount to a randomized Easter Egg hunt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 23, 2013, 07:30:51 pm

Quote from: Spish on October 23, 2013, 05:38:43 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 23, 2013, 11:59:34 am

There's this one (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1179), at least. The other one I was thinking of was the book duplication bug linked from that report, but that was apparently already resolved and I forgot.

As far as I can tell this has been a problem since the dawn of Dwarf Fortress. And I say it's about time Toady got around to addressing it. Because if you can't reclaim/adventure into a fortress and pillage priceless relics from it, as opposed to just having them disappear from existence the second you abandon the fortress, then what the hell is the point? It feels like fortress-raiding is missing something fundamental.

Or heck, maybe even introduce a way to store artifacts in locked chests, crypts, and etc. So that finding artifacts doesn't just amount to a randomized Easter Egg hunt.

The trouble is that dwarven artwork usually exists in a state where the description only materialises when the artefact is first viewed by the player. This means that besides the base material and type of object or artefact and the materials used for the decorations, the image is based on events previous to the player viewing rather than the object being constructed, so an artefact may end up having an image of itself on it. Statues were (from what I have read) made to depict events, people, objects, and creatures in DF2010 so they may behave differently.

Please correct my statement if it is wrong.

In the future, abandonment should result in the loss of some fortress items as your dwarves pack up and leave (almost certainly weapons, artefacts, food, booze, trinkets, and coinage). The most likely dwarf to take the item should either be the dwarf using the item at the time of abandonment (i.e. military dwarves) or the dwarf who made the item (in the case of crafts).

Loss because of sieges should probably result in the loss of some items due to plundering, while items further away from the map edge and behind drawbridges or in places where invaders cannot path will probably be left alone. Loss due to forgotten beasts or other events should result in some limited item scattering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 23, 2013, 08:45:38 pm

He may have fixed up how statues, images, engravings, etc work behind the scenes, no idea.

Also, I thought artifacts don't disappear from the fort when you abandon it? In any case, I think there are some workarounds using DFhack.

Hopefully the artifacts will stick around in the case of abandonment and definetly stick around when you 'retire' as overseer (non-destructive abandonment) and they should stick around somewhere in the world if they get stolen or lost otherwise.

The talk about items sticking around in the world after you trade them away has given me a thought, Will the laws of supply and demand come more into play now that the map edge is no longer an item sink? I'm not expecting anything along the lines of advanced economic interactions and the supply and demand stuff shouldn't prevent a fort from specializing in some specific export.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 23, 2013, 10:01:51 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 23, 2013, 08:45:38 pm

He may have fixed up how statues, images, engravings, etc work behind the scenes, no idea.

Also, I thought artifacts don't disappear from the fort when you abandon it? In any case, I think there are some workarounds using DFhack.

Hopefully the artifacts will stick around in the case of abandonment and definetly stick around when you 'retire' as overseer (non-destructive abandonment) and they should stick around somewhere in the world if they get stolen or lost otherwise.

The talk about items sticking around in the world after you trade them away has given me a thought, Will the laws of supply and demand come more into play now that the map edge is no longer an item sink? I'm not expecting anything along the lines of advanced economic interactions and the supply and demand stuff shouldn't prevent a fort from specializing in some specific export.

For forts?

That's a no. He hasn't really included Player Forts to the economic changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 24, 2013, 11:33:54 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 23, 2013, 05:18:51 pm

That's what I'm saying. They already bite you in the ass because their creators go berserk. World gen continuing wouldn't make stolen artifacts bite you in the ass any more than they already do, because the people who steal them can't exactly do anything with them but sell them or keep them.

So no appropriately armed elite kobold thieves? I hope enemy looting goes in some day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 24, 2013, 04:08:26 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 24, 2013, 11:33:54 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 23, 2013, 05:18:51 pm

That's what I'm saying. They already bite you in the ass because their creators go berserk. World gen continuing wouldn't make stolen artifacts bite you in the ass any more than they already do, because the people who steal them can't exactly do anything with them but sell them or keep them.

So no appropriately armed elite kobold thieves? I hope enemy looting goes in some day.

Kobolds, did at one point, if not still currently, steal items and then use them on return visits. I dont think artifacts would be consider too different. It probably doesn't happen due to the fact, most players equip their artifact weapons and armor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 24, 2013, 04:56:57 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 24, 2013, 11:33:54 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 23, 2013, 05:18:51 pm

That's what I'm saying. They already bite you in the ass because their creators go berserk. World gen continuing wouldn't make stolen artifacts bite you in the ass any more than they already do, because the people who steal them can't exactly do anything with them but sell them or keep them.

So no appropriately armed elite kobold thieves? I hope enemy looting goes in some day.

Artifact weapons and armor are very, very rare compared to other artifacts, and if one gets stolen, your fort likely won't survive the tantrum spiral to see whoever might use them anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on October 25, 2013, 04:12:40 am

I have had once a golden spear which was stolen, and my fortress wasn't troubled a lot. But I always my pop under 50 so not a good example...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on October 25, 2013, 09:04:50 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 24, 2013, 04:56:57 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 24, 2013, 11:33:54 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 23, 2013, 05:18:51 pm

That's what I'm saying. They already bite you in the ass because their creators go berserk. World gen continuing wouldn't make stolen artifacts bite you in the ass any more than they already do, because the people who steal them can't exactly do anything with them but sell them or keep them.

So no appropriately armed elite kobold thieves? I hope enemy looting goes in some day.

Artifact weapons and armor are very, very rare compared to other artifacts, and if one gets stolen, your fort likely won't survive the tantrum spiral to see whoever might use them anyway.

We don't even know that tantrum spirals will still be a thing after the personality rewrite  :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 25, 2013, 09:11:53 am

We may even get some other kind of spirals, who knows. There will still be tantrumming dwarves and those starting a fist fight are likely to do non-lethal combat now (though indirect death from injuries or accidents could still happen).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 25, 2013, 11:07:14 am

Can you run into other adventurers? Can they recruit you? On a possibly related note, can you conscript followers? Given our new-found vulnerability to numberless hordes, will world gen adventurers have companions or royal guards etc?

Now that there are plans to slow skill growth, will long-lived and otherwise extraordinary creatures use different metrics entirely? A 300 year old elf's sword-fighting prowess matched against a 130 year old mercenary vampire's axeman-ship couldn't be reached by a human legend, not to mention the difficulties in comparing the two combatants.

Will we have abstract control over hill dwarf settlements layout? If we do get some kind of united expansive fortress, will we be able to change which part we directly control? Sounds similar to next door retirements and reclaims as you offered in the DF talk, theoretically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on October 25, 2013, 11:26:54 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 25, 2013, 09:11:53 am

We may even get some other kind of spirals, who knows.

Bring on the party spiral?

Will there be more social effects of having artifacts being successfully completed by a dwarf? For instance, they might become more prominent and well-liked members of society after having made one, or become feared and disliked after making one with a fell or macabre mood.

Might have been asked already, I suppose - apologies if so. I'm curious as to the answer either way though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on October 25, 2013, 01:15:03 pm

Quote from: smjjames on October 25, 2013, 09:11:53 am

We may even get some other kind of spirals, who knows.

HAPPINESS SPIRAL
CREATIVITY SPIRAL
SPIRAL ENERGY
DRUNKENESS SOBRIETY SPIRAL
POWERTHIRST ALL CAPS SPIRAL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 25, 2013, 02:35:48 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 25, 2013, 11:07:14 am

Can you run into other adventurers? Can they recruit you? On a possibly related note, can you conscript followers? Given our new-found vulnerability to numberless hordes, will world gen adventurers have companions or royal guards etc?

None of those have been mentioned specifically by Toady yet.  A couple, such as conscription, have been implied as being part of Inn/Tavern development, but, as usual, no timeline.

Quote

Will we have abstract control over hill dwarf settlements layout? If we do get some kind of united expansive fortress, will we be able to change which part we directly control? Sounds similar to next door retirements and reclaims as you offered in the DF talk, theoretically.

Toady has stated that our interaction with sub-sites will be rather limited in this initial release.  It will be less of abstract control, and more like indirect influence.  By that I mean, we won't be able to order 40 barrels of whip wine a year and wait for the eventual delivery.  But the population, strength, defensibility, wealth, etc. of our main fortress will/may influence factors that play rise and fall to components of our outlying linked sites.  Also, Toady has said that in the medium to far-medium future, we will not be able to play as Hill Dwarf or Deep Dwarf sites, so directly controlling the floor plan of their sites is RIGHT OUT!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 25, 2013, 03:09:33 pm

You can always use DFhacks embark everywhere to embark on a hill dwarf or deep dwarf site.

As an actual game mechanic though, I doubt we'd ever be able to directly control the floor plan of such sites. Nothing stopping you from building your fort like a hill dwarf or deep dwarf site though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on October 25, 2013, 06:30:32 pm

Quote from: Mr S on October 25, 2013, 02:35:48 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on October 25, 2013, 11:07:14 am

Can you run into other adventurers? Can they recruit you? On a possibly related note, can you conscript followers? Given our new-found vulnerability to numberless hordes, will world gen adventurers have companions or royal guards etc?

None of those have been mentioned specifically by Toady yet.  A couple, such as conscription, have been implied as being part of Inn/Tavern development, but, as usual, no timeline.

Quote

Will we have abstract control over hill dwarf settlements layout? If we do get some kind of united expansive fortress, will we be able to change which part we directly control? Sounds similar to next door retirements and reclaims as you offered in the DF talk, theoretically.

Toady has stated that our interaction with sub-sites will be rather limited in this initial release.  It will be less of abstract control, and more like indirect influence.  By that I mean, we won't be able to order 40 barrels of whip wine a year and wait for the eventual delivery.  But the population, strength, defensibility, wealth, etc. of our main fortress will/may influence factors that play rise and fall to components of our outlying linked sites.  Also, Toady has said that in the medium to far-medium future, we will not be able to play as Hill Dwarf or Deep Dwarf sites, so directly controlling the floor plan of their sites is RIGHT OUT!

And so i would have it. It would be nice if the competence of your leaders dictates how much influence you have over your periphery's. Thanks for both replies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Fniff on October 26, 2013, 02:00:08 pm

The new personality changes look like they'd be great for succession games with narratives.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 26, 2013, 06:03:07 pm

Even with embark anywhere, you may still not get the whole site, since they will likely exceed 17x17, as hamlets do currently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 28, 2013, 12:36:03 am

I'm surprised that the whole week went by without a devlog entry.  Hope everything's okay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 28, 2013, 12:55:12 am

Quote from: from tomorrow's devlog

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Scamps ascended to a higher plane of existence, so we're still dealing with some of the side effects from that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on October 28, 2013, 01:18:17 am

If Stargate is any indication, that kind of thing is totally safe, and he'll be back to our plane in no time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Repseki on October 28, 2013, 04:44:07 am

Hopefully there wont be to many memory loss issues when they come back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 28, 2013, 06:53:57 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 28, 2013, 12:55:12 am

Quote from: from tomorrow's devlog

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Scamps ascended to a higher plane of existence, so we're still dealing with some of the side effects from that.

Wait! What? So sad.... I'm sorry for your loss Toady. May Scamps have a happy eternity scratching heaven's curtains.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 28, 2013, 08:08:03 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 28, 2013, 12:55:12 am

Quote from: from tomorrow's devlog

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Scamps ascended to a higher plane of existence, so we're still dealing with some of the side effects from that.

How did you get that? I don't see any devlog for today on the RSS feed or the devlog itself. I hope you aren't trolling :P Not that I think you'd have any reason to troll like that.

If Scamps really did die somehow, then I feel for your loss Toady One and Zach, I've lost a loved pet myself. He was a sort of community pet as well.

How did it happen? Scamps wasn't exactly old for a cat, more like middle aged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on October 28, 2013, 09:03:22 am

I'd assume that was a very poor attempt at humor :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 28, 2013, 09:03:55 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 28, 2013, 08:08:03 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 28, 2013, 12:55:12 am

Quote from: from tomorrow's devlog

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Scamps ascended to a higher plane of existence, so we're still dealing with some of the side effects from that.

How did you get that? I don't see any devlog for today on the RSS feed or the devlog itself. I hope you aren't trolling :P Not that I think you'd have any reason to troll like that.

If Scamps really did die somehow, then I feel for your loss Toady One and Zach, I've lost a loved pet myself. He was a sort of community pet as well.

How did it happen? Scamps wasn't exactly old for a cat, more like middle aged.

Its not real, and he's not trolling. Its just a farse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: eux0r on October 28, 2013, 10:20:54 am

note that the "quote" is titled "from TOMORROWS devlog", so this is most definitely not serious

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 28, 2013, 10:26:51 am

And it was "Higher plane of existence", not "passed away" :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 28, 2013, 11:11:47 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on October 28, 2013, 10:26:51 am

And it was "Higher plane of existence", not "passed away" :P

Which could be interpreted as.....

And you guys know better than to joke around like that, come on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on October 28, 2013, 11:22:56 am

Yes, perhaps "transcended" may have been better.

Or "has learned the secrets of life and death", whereby the Adams' have been busy defending against zombified hair ball sieges.

It could happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on October 28, 2013, 11:41:26 am

10000 years of darkness, cats and dogs living in harmony, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 28, 2013, 12:21:41 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 28, 2013, 12:36:03 am

I'm surprised that the whole week went by without a devlog entry.  Hope everything's okay.

It's not that unusual for devlogs to dry up a bit nearing the end of the month. I would guess it's simply other end of month stuff going on, like rewards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 28, 2013, 12:22:51 pm

Oh I got punkd! And by Huge Jackman no less!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on October 28, 2013, 01:22:11 pm

Zach is better. He posted on the "Get better" thread a couple of days ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 28, 2013, 01:30:40 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on October 28, 2013, 12:21:41 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 28, 2013, 12:36:03 am

I'm surprised that the whole week went by without a devlog entry.  Hope everything's okay.

It's not that unusual for devlogs to dry up a bit nearing the end of the month. I would guess it's simply other end of month stuff going on, like rewards.

Zach did say that they were going over to the island to catch up on the reward drawings and then theres the usual end of the month stuff, FotF questions getting answered for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 28, 2013, 10:17:14 pm

Yeah, the end of the month has been pretty skewed with catch-up.  Sorry for the lack of updates...  we didn't want to do that again this month, but it turned out that way.  Should still have the FotF together sometime in the next few days.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 28, 2013, 10:19:00 pm

I'm sure all of us understand, Toady. It's hard times. Thanks for the info!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 29, 2013, 10:45:20 am

Don't you worry about it Toady, we have waited for long, a few days more aren't going to be a big deal. Take the time you need.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on October 29, 2013, 11:49:36 am

Entire months have passed and we've endured, why would we wince for a matter of few weeks? Hope everything's all right and better take your time, Toady. Thanks again for using it to shape a work of art.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 09:38:17 pm

Thanks to MrWiggles, Footkerchief, HugoLuman, mastahcheese, Putnam, Valtam, Knight Otu, Trif, lethosor, and anybody I missed for helping out this time.  If you don't see your question below, it was likely addressed by one of these fine people right after you asked it.

Quote from: smjjames

Will we see dreams going for a specific skill? One that is hopefully useful.

Also, will the dreams have some kind of effect on gameplay or are they just personality flavor right now?

That's the plan, though I'm not sure if that'll happen now or a little bit later.  I had wanted to do it, since it interacts pretty directly with dwarf mode.  I think I had an answer to the second question last time, that we're just aiming for happiness-type effects now when they are accomplished, but nothing entirely special.  Dwarves don't have a lot of choice in their work, so the chase for the dream isn't really under their control.  I'm not sure how that'll change in the future.  It would probably involve a wholesale gutting of the labor list choice thing, and some care would have to be taken there, since people still need to have a game to play.  As the "official will of the fortress", it would be neat to have economies that are controlled and ones that are free-wheeling, with different effects, but the more stuff the more work.

Quote from: mnjiman

If a dwarf has a fear or a dislike for something, say they really hate being outdoors... will they freak out if they go outdoors? If this is the case, if you were to get a migrant dwarf that was scared of the outdoors, would they not freak out right away and unable to move? Not sure how fears or dislikes will alter the behavior of a dwarf.

We don't have specific phobias yet other than the old vermin ones.  If you're referring to typical dwarves now finding "nature disturbing", the new values are pretty simple now -- it's a positive/negative scale, but the sentences have to say something, so a negative sometimes sounds like it might imply a specific phobia/whatever.  It's still something that needs to be fleshed out.  It'll be one of the big challenges of the philosophy/religion section, having the ability to address issues with more variety, and I imagine it overlaps with psychological quirks.  Then it's just the work of having that matter at those places where dwarves have the freedom to make decisions.  We're still embryonic at the moment, and while the values will be used in places that'll cause difference in dwarven behavior, I don't think there'll be dwarves broken down in front of trees quite yet.

Quote

Quote from: Paaaad

Thinking of trees, is there any chance of something like this happening?  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialbero_de_Casorzo]

Quote from: smjjames

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeing epiphytes in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

Having a tree like that is technically possible and would be supported by the current code -- the difficulty is hollowing out the center of the lower tree to open up a tile for the upper tree to grow from, and I don't think there are currently ways for that to happen...  maybe a fire that you control with water in some elaborate way.

MrWiggles brought up moss being in the game in a specific case, and vines are clearly necessary for a credible general fantasy game.  The existing moss is just a tile flag, but it would probably work better in conjunction with a fully realized raw definition and then we could just use the existing framework for grass, so memory wouldn't be much affected (and at the same time, you could then pick some/harvest some and have it work right).  I'm not sure when I'll get to vines...  at some point there'll have to be giant dwarf-eating flowers and stuff too.

Quote from: Person

If one were to make a tree farm underground, would the "cave in" mechanics break through and fall to lower z levels provided the level below is empty?

Like if the tree catches on fire?  I'm trying to remember when it still uses cave-ins for trees.  If you chop down a tree underground, it turns into projectile items, and those'll be floor-safe.  But yeah, if you get a cave-in on a tree, it falls as powerfully as anything.  I don't think there are different cave-in mechanics for any material, and there should be all sorts of things.

Quote from: haydenmuhl

Will goblins be automatically hostile to an adventurer? Is there any way to go to a goblin site to trade or get quests?

The main issue is that we don't have the justice system, which involves code for moving and incarcerating the player, so goblins patrolling their own sites aren't left with many options.  So for now, they will probably err on the side of murdering you (just as elves/dwarves err on the side of letting you in without issue), to keep their leaders protected and their prisoners secure.  They might engage in the generic stop routines we've got for a bit of show first, from bandit harassmnet, but they can't do much with it.  If I remember, we had a power goal involving trade with goblins, and we're still all for that, but not for this time.

Quote from: dmatter

Are there any plans to include things like multilingual exogamy (I know it isn't a priority right now)? I just think it would be a neat feature down the road, which could lead to all sorts of interesting situations with different civ interactions.

Example of multilingual exogamy can be found here: http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/300

There aren't many specific plans, though we had some dev notes about difference in language being respected.  Right now, fort mode trade and adv mode reading/speaking don't respect language at all, so we have to start from a very basic place and move forward.

Quote from: Belvita

Toady, will adventurers have dreams/values now because of the new personalities? And what are the primary values of the other races? (i.e for elves, "Like others in his culture, he wants to preserve all plantlife."

We haven't done anything with adventurer personalities yet.  There are various previous discussions and the pros and cons and pitfalls there.  We've found in some tests that it can be fun and role-play-ey to have some personality stuff to monitor, and it wasn't too annoying or stifling, but we'll have to see how it plays out.

I still have to fill out the numbers for the other races, but yeah, they'd read like that.  The sentences are done.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to be able to let any values float yet -- humans should have pretty random value sets, but I might not do that yet since it takes more text to support the conversations and it might shut down the few mechanics we have to work with (if there are no fights between villages, we need replacement stuff to do, which doesn't exist so much yet).

Quote from: Demonic Gophers

You used humans for your example, which have WALK, CLIMB, SWIM, and CRAWL gaits.  Will flying creatures have various FLY gaits that operate the same way?  Will creatures like snakes and fish lack WALK gaits, and be unable to stand up?

Is 'build up time' simply the number of ticks spent getting up to full speed, or the number of actions by the creature, or what?  What are the units for 'turning max'?  Does a creature have to attain 'start speed' to begin a gait, or can they enter any gait at start speed from a stop?

Does energy use cause over-exertion, hunger, or both?  How does it affect creatures with NOEXERT/NO_EAT?

Yeah, there is FLY as well.  The issue with crawling animals hasn't yet been resolved to my satisfaction.  It has been a long-standing problem with them vs. the "grounded" flag.  It's a large refactor, and I haven't dealt with it.  The most annoying part is the issue of unit occupancy, since you'd want to have multiple snakes in a square while suffering only certain grounded penalties, and still have them use their crawling gait.  So it just needs to be redone.

Build up time is the number of actions.  A creature sets its desired gait and builds up to it, but it doesn't go verbally through other gaits on the way.  Turning max is the number of build up steps that are retained if you move in a direction sort of but not exactly in the direction you previously moved, you can run in a circle to build up speed, but only up to the level of turning max, and if you start curving when you are at full speed, your amount of build up credit will drop down to turning max.  If your turning max is zero and there is a build up time, you don't build up any speed at all if you move in a circle.  If there is no build up time, you always move at max speed.  It's sort of convoluted compared to just tracking the physical speed/acceleration of the critter and doing some physicsy stuff about handling turning effects, but if I remember I had some issues trying to define it differently so I just moved on.  I'm not happy with the current system, but that's normal.

Energy is over-exertion.  There isn't yet a strong energy/hunger connection, aside from fat layers maybe.  NOEXERT would turn off energy use from gaits.

Quote

Quote from: assasin

I'm assuming that personalities will eventually effect pretty much everything in the game. Such as whether or not dwarves will steal from communal stockpiles or other dwarves once the crime arc is in.

If that's the case my question is how much will events affect or even completely change a dwarves personality. Say during a famine an honourable dwarf may not steal more than his or her ration, but if the dwarf has children will that same honourable dwarf feel that it is more dishounourable to let his or her children starve than stealing food from the community

Quote from: WarRoot

Can dreams be lost or modified, due to stressors? I'm thinking about, let's say two dwarves lose their family to goblins, one gets depressed, the other swears to kill the culprits.

The examples here don't necessarily represent a change in personality/value/dreams as we've tabulated them.  It's the numbers responding to different inputs with different outputs, or the same input going through different numbers and giving a different output.  There are gray areas among jobs, dreams, long-term goals, quests and all that, but yeah, I think dreams can change, certainly.  I think there'll eventually be large personality changes in play -- the greatest just being dwarves going from children to adults.  Childhood personality extremes should change as part of normal development and childhood dreams should change quite often.   Right now they start out completely formed, but it shouldn't be that way.  There's plenty of room for tragedies and epiphanies to change personalities as well.  Nothing happens now, of course.

Quote from: WarRoot

Do trees have their own vermin? (woodpeckers, parasites, that sort of stuff)

There's nothing like that at this point.  Trees should be homes to critters, but it's not the case now.  It'll be fun to have holes in the trunks with small beasties.

Quote from: CanuckMonkey

More generally, do you want/need/appreciate proofreading help? I don't have any in-game examples in mind, but I've been re-reading Threetoe's epic stories recently and noticed a number of typos that I'd be happy to catalogue and submit, if it would be of any use.

Yeah, I always like to cleanup typos we've posted.  PM'ing me a list would probably be easiest.  Thanks for your help!

Quote from: smjjames

Just out of curiosity, are there any new creatures in the next update?

As far as I remember, there aren't any.  There'll be a large number of new fruit trees and veggie plants, which'll sort of put them on the same footing as the real-world animals and real-world grasses and real-world minerals.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will cities be repaired and rebuilt after siege damage in the upcoming release?

It's still in the release notes to have cities reclaimed by the AI during the game.  Right now, cities don't generally survive damaging attacks since there are no army fights.  There are occupations, which'll be reversible by your character, but those don't cause damage (though they are currently slated to cause site modifications).  I'm not sure for this time if towns will refill trenches and so on when normalcy returns.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

I haven't specifically changed anything here.  There's also the matter of kobold sites being the one place that haven't been done.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Can you run into other adventurers? Can they recruit you? On a possibly related note, can you conscript followers? Given our new-found vulnerability to numberless hordes, will world gen adventurers have companions or royal guards etc?

Now that there are plans to slow skill growth, will long-lived and otherwise extraordinary creatures use different metrics entirely? A 300 year old elf's sword-fighting prowess matched against a 130 year old mercenary vampire's axeman-ship couldn't be reached by a human legend, not to mention the difficulties in comparing the two combatants.

Will we have abstract control over hill dwarf settlements layout? If we do get some kind of united expansive fortress, will we be able to change which part we directly control? Sounds similar to next door retirements and reclaims as you offered in the DF talk, theoretically.

There's more than last time, but it's not entirely interesting.  Guides and mercenaries will be able to come along with you, with agreements, but you can't be hired in the same way yet.  You can get lots of people with you for a short time when you are leading an insurrection, or when you are raiding between villages.

I don't recall what the skill growth slowing is in reference to.  In any case, the issue of the skills of immortals is a defining issue in pretty much any setting where they occur.  We've whiffed it with world gen caps so far.  My problem with removing the caps at this stage is total game ruination.  We haven't felt pressed to address it at this point, and I'm not sure what's going to happen.

We haven't decided on the particulars for your hill and deep dwarf settlements.  Yeah, how much you are able to "move the camera" depends on how successful retirement and unretirement turns out.  I'm hesitant to say we'll be able to do much on the fly.  There's a lot of data and moving parts floating around.

Quote from: Jheral

Will there be more social effects of having artifacts being successfully completed by a dwarf? For instance, they might become more prominent and well-liked members of society after having made one, or become feared and disliked after making one with a fell or macabre mood.

I haven't done anything with that.  The dwarves' attitude toward fell mood dwarves in particular has been something we have in mind at times, but there aren't reputation-based effects right now at all, really.  Hopefully some of the adv mode changes are going to be preparing a sensible framework for that, though I'm not sure when it'll come up development-wise over in the fort.  There are lots of potential avenues, but those'll also involve basic development and might not get to the higher-up stuff (guilds, religions, fairs, succession, etc.).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 29, 2013, 09:42:52 pm

Woo! Update!

How is the cat?
because we haven't heard of it in a while... I think anyways...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Scamps is doing well.  It has been getting colder, so he has become a lap cat.  It's strictly a seasonal thing.  Once Spring rolls around, he'll be back to avoiding sitting on people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on October 29, 2013, 11:46:11 pm

That sounds like my cat.

Thanks, Toady!

Also, a lot less questions than I expected.
I'll pitch in one,
With the Goblins having "Troll shearing pits" in the towers, what would happen if you modded the game to put in a different race? Would we have empty pits, a lack of pits, pits filled with whatever shearable animals are available, or what?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on October 30, 2013, 01:37:31 am

You know, with the new history continuing along after worldgen, will we recieve reports of events from merchants or even migrants? I'm just wondering since new events will happen outside of the fort while in fort mode. So, basically, will we be able to get news or rumors speaking of events in the mountainhomes or in foriegn lands, both in fortress and adventure mode?

It would be cool if we could and it'd add to the immersion.

Also, I suppose eventually the Dwarves (or someone) would have to invent the postal system or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 30, 2013, 01:47:49 am

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Scamps is doing well.  It has been getting colder, so he has become a lap cat.  It's strictly a seasonal thing.  Once Spring rolls around, he'll be back to avoiding sitting on people.

Lucky for me, I tend to radiate more heat then most people in my family.

I always have warm hands for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeterisP on October 30, 2013, 05:04:50 am

Quote

Dwarves don't have a lot of choice in their work, so the chase for the dream isn't really under their control.

I can't agree with that - dreams (and phobia/aversion to specific kind of tasks) can fit the current order list.  There are two situations - if you have a list of jobs-to-be-done, then the dwarf can pick the first of his 'dream task' if there is one instead of simply the first task that fits the profession; and if you have a list of idle dwarves and suddenly a new task is assigned, then again it can go not to a random dwarf but to the one who wants it the most or simply is closest.   

It adds extra logic, and prevents implementing it as a simple-and-super-fast queue, so there can be a performance impact, but it feels possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on October 30, 2013, 05:53:18 am

The question was referring to the impact of dreams on gameplay "right now".  Things should become suitably more complicated over time.  Job priorities, whatever that ends up meaning, are coming just after the release and bug fixes, so we should see large changes to how the job queue works in the not too distant future.  What that'll do for dwarven autonomy is anybody's guess at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 30, 2013, 05:53:59 am

Quote from: PeterisP on October 30, 2013, 05:04:50 am

Quote

Dwarves don't have a lot of choice in their work, so the chase for the dream isn't really under their control.

I can't agree with that - dreams (and phobia/aversion to specific kind of tasks) can fit the current order list.  There are two situations - if you have a list of jobs-to-be-done, then the dwarf can pick the first of his 'dream task' if there is one instead of simply the first task that fits the profession; and if you have a list of idle dwarves and suddenly a new task is assigned, then again it can go not to a random dwarf but to the one who wants it the most or simply is closest.   

It adds extra logic, and prevents implementing it as a simple-and-super-fast queue, so there can be a performance impact, but it feels possible.

I also see some players totally trying to match dorfs with their dreams. And killing those they can't match.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hostergaard on October 30, 2013, 06:04:25 am

I am not sure if this have been asked before but;

 Will you get dwarf immigrants who lived in your other retired fortresses and can they potentially carry object with them to their new home that they owned or held during fortress retirement?

Will mercenaries and the like you can hire as an adventure have equipment and materials that reflects their preferences? For example a mercenary who like bronze might choose to have bronze armor and weapons. And if like maces he might choose to wield one. In fact, will they have minor goals like that, trying to get stuff that match their preferences and could one potentially hire them by providing or promising said items?

 

Quote from: Neonivek on October 30, 2013, 01:47:49 am

Lucky for me, I tend to radiate more heat then most people in my family.

I always have warm hands for example.

You must be able to bake some fantastic bread. Have you considered becoming a baker and compete in baking competitions?  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on October 30, 2013, 06:50:34 am

Quote from: hostergaard on October 30, 2013, 06:04:25 am

I am not sure if this have been asked before but;

 Will you get dwarf immigrants who lived in your other retired fortresses and can they potentially carry object with them to their new home that they owned or held during fortress retirement?
 

That already happens with abandoned fortresses. The same goes for retirement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gabrek on October 30, 2013, 10:00:32 am

Would it be possible to introduce different designations for stone engraving? For example, filling a room with "Geometric Engravings" or "Citizen Interests" (likes and dislikes), "Historic Events" for halls of remembrance, or what  I'd really like to see- "Deceptive Engravings" where you could inscribe false events making your civilization sound mightier in the scope of history and other civs to sound weak and puny compared to your bearded might!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 10:38:58 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 30, 2013, 01:37:31 am

You know, with the new history continuing along after worldgen, will we recieve reports of events from merchants or even migrants? I'm just wondering since new events will happen outside of the fort while in fort mode. So, basically, will we be able to get news or rumors speaking of events in the mountainhomes or in foriegn lands, both in fortress and adventure mode?

It would be cool if we could and it'd add to the immersion.

Also, I suppose eventually the Dwarves (or someone) would have to invent the postal system or something.

Yes: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html)

Quote

Rainseeker:   Is the goal to have news get to you, so you can be aware that this might happen to you in the next year or two, that there's been a dragon that's being laying waste to the countryside and it might come by?
Toady:   It has to update you somehow, and it's got to mesh in with what we're hoping to do with your own armies eventually, which means showing you some kind of world map or of the surroundings or whatever that you're going to be able to use to order your armies. We haven't thought about it too much but if it's going to give you, like, a snapshot of the world as you currently understand it and then the next time a merchant comes you get to update your snapshot or whatever ... then it can give you the same paragraph or a related paragraph that it gives you at the beginning of adventure mode, so that it would tell you about what's going on a little bit.

Quote from: hostergaard on October 30, 2013, 06:04:25 am

Will mercenaries and the like you can hire as an adventure have equipment and materials that reflects their preferences? For example a mercenary who like bronze might choose to have bronze armor and weapons. And if like maces he might choose to wield one. In fact, will they have minor goals like that, trying to get stuff that match their preferences and could one potentially hire them by providing or promising said items?

Yes, it's planned to make preferences and other personality stuff show up in gameplay more often.  Not in the upcoming version though.

Quote from: gabrek on October 30, 2013, 10:00:32 am

Would it be possible to introduce different designations for stone engraving? For example, filling a room with "Geometric Engravings" or "Citizen Interests" (likes and dislikes), "Historic Events" for halls of remembrance, or what  I'd really like to see- "Deceptive Engravings" where you could inscribe false events making your civilization sound mightier in the scope of history and other civs to sound weak and puny compared to your bearded might!

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, where there are already several threads (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNGrGBtrC89DYJmIBsEsiDHZw7sYuz-vGOubTQQvk8wyiuNei1YJ-TaUjzOiQq3T5XZQNTnF55fM1fiNdXkU-kUXI-I77gTLFBSRVrYNQyEkvFjFL-I.) on this topic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on October 30, 2013, 11:22:16 am

Quote from: hostergaard on October 30, 2013, 06:04:25 am

Quote from: Neonivek on October 30, 2013, 01:47:49 am

Lucky for me, I tend to radiate more heat then most people in my family.

I always have warm hands for example.

You must be able to bake some fantastic bread. Have you considered becoming a baker and compete in baking competitions?  :P

Ohh, I see what you did there  ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on October 30, 2013, 12:38:03 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on October 30, 2013, 12:48:08 pm

Glad to hear everything's okay again, and see a FotF reply! I do have a question now, though:

Toady; when we're assigned to find targets in the sewers, will they leave trails from recent voyages to the surface that we can follow back to them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 30, 2013, 02:08:50 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Thank you.

About how large are armies going to be, and are they segmented into squads or something?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on October 30, 2013, 03:05:50 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2013, 02:08:50 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Thank you.

About how large are armies going to be, and are they segmented into squads or something?

That's why he came up with squads way back in the 0.31.01 devcycle in the first place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on October 30, 2013, 03:22:32 pm

The question is if they are working now in the armies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 04:02:03 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on October 30, 2013, 02:08:50 pm

About how large are armies going to be, and are they segmented into squads or something?

Army size will probably be on the same level as the city populations.  The devlog mentions squads a number of times:

Quote

01/25/2013 Toady One I've mostly been working on finalizing army path-finding on the map near sites, which have areas popping back and forth between different levels of resolution. So armies might be in "the city" one moment, and then in specific sections of the city streets the next, and then in tiles, and then back, and they have to be able to adapt to that without getting too confused and without overtaxing the processor in indecision. It was very satisfying the see the squads walk around on the half-zoomed-in city map properly, turning at intersections and using bridges. This shouldn't have any impact on dwarf mode speed, since city maps aren't loaded (so it just uses straight-line algorithms for most movement, and I can make it even rougher if necessary), and adventure mode seems fine so far as well (since time moves slowly there, so the actual calculations are rare).

 08/04/2012 Toady One Army tracking information is left behind now, including your own trail as you move on the travel map. So you can loop around, go down into the local mode and signs of your own passing will be realized. You move in fairly large straight lines in only 8 directions in travel mode, so the paths are a little stilted, but that's fine for now. There's a memory concern to all of this as well, but I think I've got it cycling out at the right speed so that it won't drop too much tracking information too early. If there are lots of squads moving nearby there could be issues with information being cycled too rapidly to be of much use, but there are still a few things I can do. Now it's time to get started on actual tracking. I'll probably start with the player interface and then move to enemy squads.

07/28/2012 Toady One [...] After that, the next project is to get the army to organize a squad or two to search around for you after a time if they haven't caught up with you, which involve tracking in some form or another.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on October 30, 2013, 07:09:31 pm

Did you ever get around to finishing the cave and kobold sites, or is that going to be left out for this release?

Sorry for asking this so many times.

Is there now a riding skill for creatures to learn? If so, can you learn and use this in adventure mode then?

Glad to hear Zach is doing better.

Not too long before release now....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on October 30, 2013, 07:43:25 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 30, 2013, 07:09:31 pm

Did you ever get around to finishing the cave and kobold sites, or is that going to be left out for this release?

Sorry for asking this so many times.

Is there now a riding skill for creatures to learn? If so, can you learn and use this in adventure mode then?

Glad to hear Zach is doing better.

Not too long before release now....

I'm fairly certain that we'd have heard in the devlog if kobold sites had been done already. And I doubt they'd somehow be left out seeing as the other civ sites are done and it wouldn't make sense to leave the last and (seemingly) easiest one out. I'm sure this is one of the notes left on Toady's list for the release :>

(confirmation is always nice though ofc ^^)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on October 30, 2013, 07:48:28 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 09:38:17 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will stolen/traded artifacts be tracked now there's somewhere to take them too?

I haven't specifically changed anything here.  There's also the matter of kobold sites being the one place that haven't been done.

That answers the first part of the question anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 08:21:43 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on October 30, 2013, 07:09:31 pm

Is there now a riding skill for creatures to learn? If so, can you learn and use this in adventure mode then?

This release didn't involve working on mounts:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Helgoland

With the combat/movement speed split, will we be seeing mounts in the next release? If yes, both for fort and adventure modde or just for one of the two?

I think somebody mentioned that dwarf mode mounts for dwarves aren't really a high priority.  I'd like to do adventure mode mounts, and the combat/move speed split was the main barrier, but it might be an overreach to do adv mode mounts now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: NAV on October 30, 2013, 08:48:39 pm

Will we be able to trade with companions in the next version? To give them proper equipment or have them carry some of the loot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 09:31:17 pm

Quote from: NAV on October 30, 2013, 08:48:39 pm

Will we be able to trade with companions in the next version? To give them proper equipment or have them carry some of the loot.

Nope, that would be a big enough feature that we'd have heard about it in the devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 30, 2013, 09:37:16 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 09:31:17 pm

Quote from: NAV on October 30, 2013, 08:48:39 pm

Will we be able to trade with companions in the next version? To give them proper equipment or have them carry some of the loot.

Nope, that would be a big enough feature that we'd have heard about it in the devlog.

You're either able to give them simple order, or its 'low hanging fruit' before the release is out to give them orders. That relates to the sneaking that you can do. Since they can't sneak yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Armeleon on October 30, 2013, 09:54:02 pm

I figure now is a good time to ask my question, seeing as how this FOF somewhat addressed it:

"Will dwarves ever do anything besides loaf around in their free time? I can see how the personality rewrite can give them things to do without having to redo the job AI."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on October 30, 2013, 09:55:46 pm

Quote from: Armeleon on October 30, 2013, 09:54:02 pm

I figure now is a good time to ask my question, seeing as how this FOF somewhat addressed it:

"Will dwarves ever do anything besides loaf around in their free time? I can see how the personality rewrite can give them things to do without having to redo the job AI."

Eventually.

Though I suspect that when a dorf is playing an instrument or playing games, that it might still just look like loafing about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 10:32:56 pm

Quote from: Armeleon on October 30, 2013, 09:54:02 pm

I figure now is a good time to ask my question, seeing as how this FOF somewhat addressed it:

"Will dwarves ever do anything besides loaf around in their free time? I can see how the personality rewrite can give them things to do without having to redo the job AI."

Yes, the plan is to beef up those activities whenever taverns go in: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html)

Quote

Toady:   [...] I'm all for dwarves being proactive, especially on their free time where they might just now be sitting on break or doing parties where they don't do anything and just stand around.

[...]

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...
Menendez:   (banjo backing)
Toady:   ... and I don't if the kids show up at the bars and use their toys ... We want to get toys and instruments in but I'm not sure the toys ... like their little mini-forges, I don't know if you go to the bar for that, maybe you do if you're a dwarf.
Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on October 31, 2013, 07:44:21 am

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Scamps is doing well.  It has been getting colder, so he has become a lap cat.  It's strictly a seasonal thing.  Once Spring rolls around, he'll be back to avoiding sitting on people.

I live in Florida; my cat has never sat in my lap.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on October 31, 2013, 08:11:43 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 09:31:17 pm

Quote from: NAV on October 30, 2013, 08:48:39 pm

Will we be able to trade with companions in the next version? To give them proper equipment or have them carry some of the loot.

Nope, that would be a big enough feature that we'd have heard about it in the devlog.

There's the log entry from 02/22/2013, which states that

Quote from: Toady One

It's also getting to the point where you'd want to be able to walk into a house with a bundle of swords to hand out or something. Together with the new agreements, this raises the spectre of the potential critical game design flaw "NPC suddenly leaving with my stuff". I'll try to be careful, he he he, but you should be careful too.

I took that to mean that he was planning to implement at least a basic "Here. Use this weapon." mechanic, to make insurrections more effective. Of course, I don't know if that actually went in. I don't remember him mentioning it again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on October 31, 2013, 08:31:37 am

Don't remember clearly but I think I or someone else asked if you could tell your companions to use X or Y weapon. Can't remember either the response, but if I recall something was that it was the plan.
Toady we will be able to tell our companions (permanent or insurrection ones) which weapons and items equip and use?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on October 31, 2013, 11:19:36 am

Quote

Yeah, I always like to cleanup typos we've posted.

Noticed one in this post actually, hehehe.  :P
Ah! there it is : "bandit harassmnet"

Really looking forward to the next update, you can expect a new donation before S-max with a request for drawing depicting a carnivorous cavevine-flower eating a dwaerf. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nyxalinth on October 31, 2013, 05:00:26 pm

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 10:16:49 pm

Scamps is doing well.  It has been getting colder, so he has become a lap cat.  It's strictly a seasonal thing.  Once Spring rolls around, he'll be back to avoiding sitting on people.

I use my laptop while sitting on my bed.  Instead of sitting on my lap while I do, Carly sits in front of me, and I have to reach over or around her while doing anything!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on October 31, 2013, 11:48:38 pm

I'm sorry if it has been asked and i didn't noticed, but as i have been playing Adventure mode since a few weeks, and noticing the many new additions to it from the various development logs, i would like to ask :

In current version, i have observed that when i play the Fortress mod , performance is very good, it even surprised me that i could run full forts with stockpiles filled with crafts, foods etc.. while getting besieged by big goblins army and still the game is very responsive to my command, i do not observe "commands lag", each keypresses got the expected answer from the interface.

But in Adventure mode, the situation is very different, in town performance can take a hit in areas like the markets or when there are lots of shops and houses filled with citizens. And sometime when the character, with a few followers, enter in a keep located in those towns (and keeps have very few people in them), performance drop a lot more suddenly and the "commands lag" become very noticable.
So my question is

In regards to all the additions that will be for the Adventure mod, what will become of the performance for the Adventure mode, will the game run much better due to some bugfixes and optimisations or should we expect roughly the same and possibly worse ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 01, 2013, 01:08:48 am

Well I certainly hope it isn't worse. Most of the lag that I get from towns comes from the river not consistently staying 7/7 and of course, if your adventurer is weighed down by items, the slower your speed, the more things that the game has to proccess between time steps.

Performance actually gets a little better for me when I enter the area of the keep, so I don't know what is going on for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on November 01, 2013, 12:27:50 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on October 31, 2013, 08:31:37 am

Don't remember clearly but I think I or someone else asked if you could tell your companions to use X or Y weapon. Can't remember either the response, but if I recall something was that it was the plan.
Toady we will be able to tell our companions (permanent or insurrection ones) which weapons and items equip and use?

Not yet, but right now there are mods that allow you to do that, so it might be still a free alley after the release, unless you're a fervent vanilla-only user.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on November 01, 2013, 01:15:58 pm

Quote from: Robsoie on October 31, 2013, 11:48:38 pm

And sometime when the character, with a few followers, enter in a keep located in those towns (and keeps have very few people in them), performance drop a lot more suddenly and the "commands lag" become very noticable.

I remember this happening to me a few times.  At least once, I discovered that the reason for the lag near the keep was that there were literally hundreds of bandits crammed into the catacombs underneath the keep- not really a bug, just heavy use of pathfinding code.  Once my massively-legendary adventurer slaughtered them all, the lag situation got a lot better.  However, due to actual bug, once you leave the area, they respawn.  That bug should hopefully get fixed at some point. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on November 01, 2013, 03:13:07 pm

Maybe the 4/5 followers i always have with me does not help when that keep+underground pathfinding problems kick in.
In the underground dungeon of that town keep there were 15 or 16 bandits , but clearing it didn't seem to remove the problem, so i don't know if it's something specific to that world i generated or something else.

That said, it seems a known problem occuring since a lot of versions as i just noticed there was already a report on the bug tracker for version 0.31.25 and looking in the comments it's reported to be still there :
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5000

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on November 01, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Has the skill list been expanded upon regarding clothing, similar to what was done with farming? As in, Clothesmaker is the generic term, but a dwarf that specializes in hats would have the title of Hatter, or if it is shoes, he/she would be a Cobbler, or if in vests, coats, trousers, and shirts, a Tailor?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 01, 2013, 05:08:52 pm

Quote from: Valtam on November 01, 2013, 12:27:50 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on October 31, 2013, 08:31:37 am

Don't remember clearly but I think I or someone else asked if you could tell your companions to use X or Y weapon. Can't remember either the response, but if I recall something was that it was the plan.
Toady we will be able to tell our companions (permanent or insurrection ones) which weapons and items equip and use?

Not yet, but right now there are mods that allow you to do that, so it might be still a free alley after the release, unless you're a fervent vanilla-only user.

Not for a little while, no, because the mods are not raw-based but DFHack based.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 01, 2013, 05:28:13 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 01, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Has the skill list been expanded upon regarding clothing, similar to what was done with farming? As in, Clothesmaker is the generic term, but a dwarf that specializes in hats would have the title of Hatter, or if it is shoes, he/she would be a Cobbler, or if in vests, coats, trousers, and shirts, a Tailor?

Sounds kind of redundant to me, besides you aren't going to see that much specialization in most forts. Especially forts that have a small population.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 01, 2013, 07:45:08 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 01, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Has the skill list been expanded upon regarding clothing, similar to what was done with farming? As in, Clothesmaker is the generic term, but a dwarf that specializes in hats would have the title of Hatter, or if it is shoes, he/she would be a Cobbler, or if in vests, coats, trousers, and shirts, a Tailor?

What was done with farming?  But no, this hasn't been added.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 02, 2013, 12:07:56 am

Yes, what was done to farming?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ogdibus on November 02, 2013, 12:25:35 am

Nothing, recent, it sounds like.  Farmer is the profession name when you have more than one farming skill at the same level, such as Planting/Grower and Brewing/Brewer, isn't it?  Once they are no longer the same level, it switches to Planter or Brewer, depending on which one is higher.  That's what's being referred to, I think.

So the question is whether Clothes Making will be would become it's own profession group, separate from the other "crafts", and Clothier will be split into multiple skills/professions.  It sounds like the answer is still "no".  x3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 03, 2013, 03:12:46 am

You could probably do that with some creative use of burrows and DT for the custom professions, but honestly, I don't see the need for such specialization within DF itself, especially when there is one workshop for all cloth related items.

Besides, you can have one dwarf supply all clothing for a small fort and a handful can easily keep a medium to large fort well supplied with help from workflow automization. They will get to legendary in no time at all.

Title: "I wanna kill him myself"
Post by: cybergon on November 04, 2013, 11:57:53 am

With the implementation of nonlethal combat, I was wondering... let's say some pissed off bandits set out to track and kill you and your companions, but their leader is taking it personally and wants to take you out himself. Do you think it's feasible, code-wise, to implement a way for the game to reproduce this scenario?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 12:14:35 pm

Quote from: cybergon on November 04, 2013, 11:57:53 am

With the implementation of nonlethal combat, I was wondering... let's say some pissed off bandits set out to track and kill you and your companions, but their leader is taking it personally and wants to take you out himself. Do you think it's feasible, code-wise, to implement a way for the game to reproduce this scenario?

Duels already happen in world gen during battles, so it's reasonable to assume they will happen in gameplay eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 02:09:47 pm

Quote from: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

You mean this one, right? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  When requesting a fix, providing a link is good manners.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deboche on November 04, 2013, 04:37:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 02:09:47 pm

Quote from: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

You mean this one, right? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  When requesting a fix, providing a link is good manners.

whoa I didn't know about this bug but with the option of retiring fortresses it becomes an even more pressing concern

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on November 04, 2013, 05:40:44 pm

Quote from: Deboche on November 04, 2013, 04:37:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 02:09:47 pm

Quote from: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

You mean this one, right? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  When requesting a fix, providing a link is good manners.

whoa I didn't know about this bug but with the option of retiring fortresses it becomes an even more pressing concern

It's already been patched with a DFHack script, and I know that it's included in the Lazy Newb Pack. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126076) A few of the larger mods probably include it too.

Though an official fix would be nice, since not everyone uses modifications.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 05, 2013, 01:21:24 am

The game is meant to support mods, not relying on them to work. ;)
At least that's my opinion on the matter of modding in gaming.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 05, 2013, 02:09:31 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 05, 2013, 01:21:24 am

The game is meant to support mods, not relying on them to work. ;)
At least that's my opinion on the matter of modding in gaming.

I WISH people knew that.

Every single time I hear "just mod it" I want to go crazy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 05, 2013, 02:18:46 am

When it comes to bugfixing, I totally agree. When it comes to subjective-quality content additions...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 05, 2013, 09:55:18 am

Quote from: Putnam on November 05, 2013, 02:18:46 am

When it comes to bugfixing, I totally agree. When it comes to subjective-quality content additions...

Then it is especially crazy to say it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mavj96 on November 05, 2013, 06:39:24 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 02:09:47 pm

Quote from: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

You mean this one, right? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  When requesting a fix, providing a link is good manners.

Yes this! I had the thread bookmarked but I'd lost it.

The fix is only for dwarves too I think! So war creatures get the shaft.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mavj96 on November 05, 2013, 06:41:29 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 02:09:47 pm

Quote from: mavj96 on November 04, 2013, 01:49:41 pm

Toady I would love to know if you plan to fix the in-born fortress growth bug.
It affects fortress affairs greatly!

You mean this one, right? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  When requesting a fix, providing a link is good manners.

Yes this! I had the thread bookmarked but I'd lost it.

The fix is only for dwarves too I think! So war creatures get the shaft.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 05, 2013, 06:54:31 pm

Pretty sure the fix actually goes through every unit on the map.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 06, 2013, 10:14:38 am

Quote from: devlog

11/05/2013 Toady One We've been continuing along with the list. I just finished a bunch of bookkeeping with invaders picking out buildings to operate from -- when a site's map is realized and all the citizens are spread out between buildings, an army that arrives for occupation also needs to sort itself out in a more specific way, and any historical figure that is staying in town needs to have a home, and so on. Generally they'll displace the current leadership and take over whatever castle or mead hall structure is around. I also cleaned up how they set up the new government -- during the first test, a kidnapped child that grew up to be a scout for the goblins was the one they selected to be the ruler of the town under occupation. It's cool that things like that are happening during play now, though of course the really juicy stuff relating to relatives and so on hasn't been done yet.

"Cool" is an understatement.  Making this kind of meaningful interaction occur in gameplay has always been the big promise of DF's ground-up approach.  It's really exciting to see it beginning to happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 06, 2013, 10:34:58 am

I have a feeling that this is getting really close now.
Dibs on late November/early December release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 06, 2013, 12:05:52 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 06, 2013, 10:34:58 am

I have a feeling that this is getting really close now.
Dibs on late November/early December release.

I find that with Toady, the safe bet is always the latest time rather than the soonest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 06, 2013, 12:11:57 pm

More likely to be mid january.
Source: optimism

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on November 06, 2013, 01:00:44 pm

I vote for Christmas. Because it would make an awesome Christmas present.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 06, 2013, 01:24:44 pm

I've said in other threads that Toady seems to be aiming for sometime in December, So I'm hoping it'll happen near the end of the month.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 06, 2013, 01:54:06 pm

Maybe December. He say something about 15th this month but for a release? December/January is probably optimistic enough.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 06, 2013, 02:15:32 pm

He said that they would be finished with the main list by or around the 15th, then they would see where thy are at or something.

If things are going REALLY well or Toady feels good about where they are at with fit for release, then a mid or late December release is likely, but early or mid January seems a bit more likely. I'm sure Toady wants to try for a release around Christmas if its reasonable :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 06, 2013, 04:39:59 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 06, 2013, 02:15:32 pm

He said that they would be finished with the main list by or around the 15th, then they would see where thy are at or something.

If things are going REALLY well or Toady feels good about where they are at with fit for release, then a mid or late December release is likely, but early or mid January seems a bit more likely. I'm sure Toady wants to try for a release around Christmas if its reasonable :)

For 0.34.01, they got through the list IIRC two weeks before release, so...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gashcozokon on November 06, 2013, 06:08:00 pm

Toady, I've see lots of people ask about equipping followers. What I would be more interested in learning is if it is going to be easier to teach them to swim? It doesn't really matter what they swing, if they drown crossing the stream. I guess with new non-lethal combat system, could you find a lake to repeatedly 'push' cohorts into until they stop floundering?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on November 06, 2013, 07:29:23 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on November 06, 2013, 06:08:00 pm

Toady, I've see lots of people ask about equipping followers. What I would be more interested in learning is if it is going to be easier to teach them to swim? It doesn't really matter what they swing, if they drown crossing the stream. I guess with new non-lethal combat system, could you find a lake to repeatedly 'push' cohorts into until they stop floundering?

I want to say that many NPCs and followers are actually trained in swimming now?...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 06, 2013, 09:09:11 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on November 06, 2013, 06:08:00 pm

Toady, I've see lots of people ask about equipping followers. What I would be more interested in learning is if it is going to be easier to teach them to swim? It doesn't really matter what they swing, if they drown crossing the stream. I guess with new non-lethal combat system, could you find a lake to repeatedly 'push' cohorts into until they stop floundering?

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).  There are several already about giving creatures better swimming skills:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=39665.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30507.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 07, 2013, 12:27:59 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 06, 2013, 09:09:11 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on November 06, 2013, 06:08:00 pm

Toady, I've see lots of people ask about equipping followers. What I would be more interested in learning is if it is going to be easier to teach them to swim? It doesn't really matter what they swing, if they drown crossing the stream. I guess with new non-lethal combat system, could you find a lake to repeatedly 'push' cohorts into until they stop floundering?

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).  There are several already about giving creatures better swimming skills:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=39665.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30507.0

Sounds more like a question about interactions with companions and whether the non-lethal combat can 'push' them into the water than a suggestion to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on November 07, 2013, 12:50:25 am

Well then, I have an extension for it:

Toady, can we punch our companions in the face without them drawing a blade on us? Just what will they do when we punch them in the face?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on November 07, 2013, 12:50:49 am

Yes, it does seem more asking about is it safer to train companions as a result of the new systems, than it does seem to be about if the additions could lead to an overhaul of another system.

Er, that seemed clearer in my head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 07, 2013, 02:28:31 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 06, 2013, 10:14:38 am

Quote from: devlog

.... It's cool that things like that are happening during play now, though of course the really juicy stuff relating to relatives and so on hasn't been done yet.

"Cool" is an understatement.  Making this kind of meaningful interaction occur in gameplay has always been the big promise of DF's ground-up approach.  It's really exciting to see it beginning to happen.

This is a great little story, but I'm unclear what Toady means when he talks about relatives.  Can anyone tell me what he has in mind here?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 07, 2013, 02:46:50 am

Quote from: hermes on November 07, 2013, 02:28:31 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 06, 2013, 10:14:38 am

Quote from: devlog

.... It's cool that things like that are happening during play now, though of course the really juicy stuff relating to relatives and so on hasn't been done yet.

"Cool" is an understatement.  Making this kind of meaningful interaction occur in gameplay has always been the big promise of DF's ground-up approach.  It's really exciting to see it beginning to happen.

This is a great little story, but I'm unclear what Toady means when he talks about relatives.  Can anyone tell me what he has in mind here?

I think he might be talking about inheritance, though it's certainly more than just inheritance, I'm not exactly sure what things other than inheritance (which is in the next version I believe) he is talking about though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on November 07, 2013, 08:27:42 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 07, 2013, 02:46:50 am

I think he might be talking about inheritance, though it's certainly more than just inheritance, I'm not exactly sure what things other than inheritance (which is in the next version I believe) he is talking about though.

My bet is on 'I am the son of the deposed king, help me get my throne back.' type of stuff.

Also to all the pessimists out there, who think the release will be in December, keep in mind that Toady has a beard now, so the development cycle will be much faster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on November 07, 2013, 11:47:22 am

Considering just before he says that we got:

Quote

I also cleaned up how they set up the new government -- during the first test, a kidnapped child that grew up to be a scout for the goblins was the one they selected to be the ruler of the town under occupation.

So I believe he was talking about how the relatives of said kidnapped child will react to this and how the child would react to them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cybergon on November 09, 2013, 08:20:24 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 04, 2013, 12:14:35 pm

Quote from: cybergon on November 04, 2013, 11:57:53 am

With the implementation of nonlethal combat, I was wondering... let's say some pissed off bandits set out to track and kill you and your companions, but their leader is taking it personally and wants to take you out himself. Do you think it's feasible, code-wise, to implement a way for the game to reproduce this scenario?

Duels already happen in world gen during battles, so it's reasonable to assume they will happen in gameplay eventually.

I'm not really talking about duels. But here let me picture the scenario in more detail. A bunch of bandits slaughter your companions, knock you out or restrain you in some way and their leader comes in and slits your throat. Or maybe they actually wound you gravely but leave the final blow to their leader. And in this case maybe one of them actually winds up killing you and the leader beats him up for disobeying. There are many fun possibilities, and it'd be great to read about incidents like this happening to other characters and in other circumstances that don't involve bandits, or even being able to do it yourself. I just wanted to know if Toady had considered this and how do-able it is in terms of concept and coding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 09, 2013, 11:52:00 am

Quote from: cybergon on November 09, 2013, 08:20:24 am

I'm not really talking about duels. But here let me picture the scenario in more detail. A bunch of bandits slaughter your companions, knock you out or restrain you in some way and their leader comes in and slits your throat. Or maybe they actually wound you gravely but leave the final blow to their leader. And in this case maybe one of them actually winds up killing you and the leader beats him up for disobeying. There are many fun possibilities, and it'd be great to read about incidents like this happening to other characters and in other circumstances that don't involve bandits, or even being able to do it yourself. I just wanted to know if Toady had considered this and how do-able it is in terms of concept and coding.

Seems to be getting into suggestion territory.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 09, 2013, 03:31:34 pm

I have a strong feeling that we're in for release 3-4 weeks from now on. (assuming that Toady gets the notes done next week)
At least I hope that this happens. This release has been (rightfully) delayed more than Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (or Half-Life 3, as the case may be).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 09, 2013, 03:39:05 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 09, 2013, 03:31:34 pm

I have a strong feeling that we're in for release 3-4 weeks from now on. (assuming that Toady gets the notes done next week)
At least I hope that this happens. This release has been (rightfully) delayed more than Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (or Half-Life 3, as the case may be).

Half-Life 2 Episode 3 was set to come in 2008.

I wouldn't say so :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 09, 2013, 04:28:47 pm

Still though, my hype is (relatively) high. :)
Then again, pretty much everyone else's is, so that's not a surprise in the least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 09, 2013, 04:35:10 pm

Threetoes hasnt told us that the release is "around the corner" yet. So january-february is optimistic isnt it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 09, 2013, 07:16:27 pm

Quote from: BinaryBeast1010011010 on November 09, 2013, 04:35:10 pm

Threetoes hasnt told us that the release is "around the corner" yet. So january-february is optimistic isnt it?

Toady has said that he hopes for the release to be finished by the end of the year. Also, earlier he has said that he is on track to finish adding features this month.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on November 09, 2013, 07:16:51 pm

what features planned in DF2013 development log still hasn't been added yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on November 09, 2013, 08:27:58 pm

Quote

11/09/2013  The list is being continued along with. I ran through some kidnap rescues and added various conversation bits to allow you to know where to go to reunite them with their relatives and so on, and set up the companion agreement for that case, so they know why they are with you and when they should leave. I also made world animal populations restore themselves slowly (including the local populations in fort mode), handled non-historical population management for sites, respected the world pop cap for historical figure conceptions, and fixed an indexing error that has apparently been around for years involving families not being placed together in buildings (I noticed when I returned a child to a town and the parents were living in different houses).

PRAISE THE LORD! Extinction problems should be lessened. Does this also mean we will be able to fish in the caverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on November 09, 2013, 08:34:43 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 09, 2013, 08:27:58 pm

Quote

11/09/2013  The list is being continued along with. I ran through some kidnap rescues and added various conversation bits to allow you to know where to go to reunite them with their relatives and so on, and set up the companion agreement for that case, so they know why they are with you and when they should leave. I also made world animal populations restore themselves slowly (including the local populations in fort mode), handled non-historical population management for sites, respected the world pop cap for historical figure conceptions, and fixed an indexing error that has apparently been around for years involving families not being placed together in buildings (I noticed when I returned a child to a town and the parents were living in different houses).

PRAISE THE LORD! Extinction problems should be lessened. Does this also mean we will be able to fish in the caverns?

Sounds like good news for those of us who like a certain small carnivorous race.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cybergon on November 09, 2013, 11:33:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 09, 2013, 11:52:00 am

Seems to be getting into suggestion territory.

A little, but the main thing here is not 'I want this in the game' but rather the implication that the line between lethal and non-lethat combat is not clear-cut and I wanted to know how Toady is thinking of tackling it, if at all. But you have a fair point, I'll reformulate the question:

There are certain situations where you can't really call it lethal or non-lethal combat, like when bandits attack you in a lethal way but only so much because their leader called dibs on the final blow to take you out, or you attacked an animal lethaly and it returned the favor but isn't really set on killing you and flees as soon as it considers you incapacitated or something. Did you consider scenarios like these when you made the distinction between lethal and non-lethal combat? Or are you planning on blurring this line further in the future when the time is right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 09, 2013, 11:39:18 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2013, 05:54:39 am

Currently the levels are: horseplay, training, brawl, non-lethal, lethal and no quarter.  If a person is in a lethal conflict they are in the mindset that quarter will probably be given to them and so that yielding is an option they might attempt successfully.  They'll take any opportunity to kill their opponent and don't alter their attack choices, but they won't attack a yielded opponent (I don't remember if they attack unconcious opponents or just deprioritize them).  The only way a yielded lethal conflict opponent realizes that you are shifting up to no quarter is if you initiate an attack on them.  If they manage to block or dodge the attack, they'll jump up to no quarter and won't try to yield again, and they will ignore your attempts to yield.  That last part might be up for argument, since it should depend on some factors, but that's how it works right now.  Moreover, anybody in the conflict will shift up to no quarter.  Due to technical constraints, that part isn't based on vision or anything -- there'd be a huge fragmentation of conflicts if it had to check everybody in relation to everybody else, but hopefully at some point I'll be able to introduce an element of confusion and uncertainty to the AI there.

The distinction between brawl and non-lethal is currently conceptualized as say, the difference between a "fun" bar-fight and a fight where people are coming just short of killing each other (perhaps some level of street crime, say).  If you pounded somebody's face until they were unconscious or broke their joint, the participants in a "brawl" might be very unhappy with how far you took things.  Perhaps the lines there could be guided by civ ethics, though.  There's room to move.  I haven't accounted at all yet for things like contests, where rules could get arbitrarily obscure.

I haven't put the "play attack" stuff back in, so escalation there aren't handled, and I haven't handled training weapons yet, and I'm not sure I will yet outside of dwarf mode.  Other items will be considered a lethal escalation, and we'll have to work in escalations over time.  It depends on how the later bar brawl furniture and stuff ends up working...  it might be tough getting a balance there, since the escalation of breaking a chair over somebody really depends on the chair.

They don't understand not using a weapon in terms of a show of confidence, and if they are attacking you with a sword, presumably they have a reason to kill you at that point.  There will definitely be some adjustments after we have some time to mess around with this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 09, 2013, 11:42:33 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 09, 2013, 08:27:58 pm

PRAISE THE LORD! Extinction problems should be lessened. Does this also mean we will be able to fish in the caverns?

Underground fishing has a different bug that probably hasn't been fixed, (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5703) although it's been extensively diagnosed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 10, 2013, 12:18:17 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on November 09, 2013, 08:27:58 pm

Quote

11/09/2013  The list is being continued along with. I ran through some kidnap rescues and added various conversation bits to allow you to know where to go to reunite them with their relatives and so on, and set up the companion agreement for that case, so they know why they are with you and when they should leave. I also made world animal populations restore themselves slowly (including the local populations in fort mode), handled non-historical population management for sites, respected the world pop cap for historical figure conceptions, and fixed an indexing error that has apparently been around for years involving families not being placed together in buildings (I noticed when I returned a child to a town and the parents were living in different houses).

PRAISE THE LORD! Extinction problems should be lessened. Does this also mean we will be able to fish in the caverns?

Also, Will fish populations no longer become permanently extinct (as opposed to just locally extinct)? Sure, they can be overfished, but if you don't fish for a few years, will the vermin fish restock themselves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on November 10, 2013, 02:20:47 am

Toady, when animal populations are being restocked, is there a specific cap to the maximum population for that species, such as capping it at the numbers you can find exported to a world_sites_and_pops file, or can the population grow beyond that to a point? For instance, if a region immediately after world generation had exactly 8 moose, and you killed 4 of them and then allowed them to repopulate, would the population raise back up to 8 and then remain there, or could the population continue on climbing?

If the population can rise above that listed immediately after worldgen, then what determines how large that population can grow? Do predator populations (including civilizations) in the region affect other species' population caps?

Also, do tags like LITTERSIZE and other reproduction-related tags that take effect in fortress mode affect how quickly region populations refresh themselves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 10, 2013, 11:27:56 am

Will human outsiders (and their backstory) be given some love when adventure mode personalities and roleplaying comes around? It is effectively the self-insert option, and as such seems one of the best options to allow deliberate character design, though if treated as a genuine self-insert outsider (not knowing the languages, the history, blah- maybe a backstory) that may not scratch the same itch as a true inhabitant of the world who is conveniently just like me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: scriver on November 10, 2013, 11:36:59 am

I wonder if children automatically know where they're from regardless of what age they were taken at. Or if their parents have moved in the meantime. Children - now with the all new homing function.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 10, 2013, 02:56:00 pm

The answer is most likely no but: Toady did you respect the genetics of the remaining animals to seed the new generations? Will migrating animals seep in from other far out places? Say if a village kills the local wolf-population you get wolves from the outside?

Also with regeneration populations predation should be possible now without drawbacks. Natural nests for birds would be cool now too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 10, 2013, 07:31:16 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 10, 2013, 11:27:56 am

Will human outsiders be given some love when adventure mode personalities and roleplaying comes around? It is effectively the self-insert option, and as such seems one of the best options to allow deliberate character design, though if treated as a genuine self-insert outsider (not knowing the languages, the history, blah- maybe a backstory) that may not scratch the same itch as a true inhabitant of the world who is conveniently just like me.

This was discussed extensively in DF Talk 6: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_6_transcript.html)

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Capntastic:   What are your plans to make adventure mode more accessible?
Toady:   There are dozens of issues standing in the way, but a lot of them are things we've discussed like graphics and tutorials and instructions and all that kind of thing. So putting those important things aside, just to get at adventure mode specific matters - rather than just problems with Dwarf Fortress in general - you really start out in adventure mode - you create a character - and you start out in the middle of a building or something and there's really no clue about what's going on. The keybindings aren't really harder to learn that any roguelike, you just pop up the screen and they're there, so the problems with accessibility are more in the line of a direction for your character; right now there's not a lot to do and you have no direction at all, for a new player especially. If you've played before you at least know what the deal is and you might just wander off to your old fortress or you might just wander around and set a goal to kill some monster or something, but without that, if you press adventurer mode before even playing fortress mode then you'd really just have no idea what to do, and when you talk to people you might find your way eventually to the people that will give you quests, but their quests are all kind of cynical, it's just like 'Oh you, you want to do something for me? Alright, go kill the dragon.' It's not really appropriate for your character, so I think the thing to do here - and we'll get to the future of adventure mode, which is the topic - a huge part of that is character generation. So there's the idea of how can you improve character generation, just in general, and also how than to make the game entirely take care of all of the accessibility problems that don't have anything to do with graphics and the general interface, that kind of thing, but just the game itself. So the idea is to have some additional options and the main one would be ... you've got a character who - currently you just create them and they're this outsider who doesn't really belong to the world at all, they might belong to the overall civilization that you've selected for them, but they don't meaningfully tie into that, they don't have a parent in that civilization, they don't have any friends in that civilization, they don't know anybody in that civilization - so one of the ideas for a mode of character generation would be a scenario-driven thing. There are downsides to that sort of stuff, like if you have a Q and A process like the Ultima games or even our own Liberal Crime Squad, the main downside to that I think is that it's a cumbersome way to create a character when you know the questions are just building stats and giving you items, so it just gets really annoying and you have to game the system just to get where you want to get, and it's the same every time. The key difference here is that it really can't be the same every time in Dwarf Fortress because the worlds are all different; it can picks two parent for you and say 'you were born to these two people and you're living in this kind of situation' and then it can have things arise based on just running world generation, just continue world gen from whatever point the game's at. So if goblins were attacking that village that would be the scenario event it throws at you, how do you deal with this? Depending on how old you are you might just be forced to run away, but there might be choices to make in any case. So it can give you a past in this way, and it will let you interact with it. Ideally you'd be presented with a situation and you'd either have some options for resolving that and then continuing to the next situation, or a little more difficult would be allowing you to jump into any situation that you wanted to, so if you were nineteen years old in some village as a farmer in the beginning and the goblins attacked, maybe you'd want to just jump in right there, and that's where you start playing. And at that point you certainly wouldn't have an accessibility problem in the sense of not knowing what to do, or at least having a situation that you'd be confronted with because there'd be something going on, and you'd also have your parents and friends and things; that's the main point, you'd have relationships to begin with, and you should be able to punch up a screen that says what's going on there, and if during the early scenarios you had a situation where your parents were killed by somebody or something then you'd have a Conan relationship screen or something, where it's like 'Thulsa Doom killed your mom' or whatever, and that can be something that drives your life if you want. That's the scenario situation, running through that, being able to break out when you want, or just finishing a number of them, and that would start from wherever your last game ended. The downside here is that if you're starting from that year and it takes a certain time to grow up, then whatever was going on in the world is going to be spent by twelve, thirteen, sixteen, twenty more years by the time you jump in. It's more difficult to retcon you into the world and start you where you want to start off but using past events. We've talked about that a bit before with the fake populations and saving their historical events and how you can use that to retcon things in, including your own character. So it's possible, but ...
Rainseeker:   Well presumably you could choose from two different options.
Toady:   Aside from the scenario stuff and the retconning and that kind of thing, there would also be, especially for people that kind of know what they're doing, but for anyone else as well - when we were talking about accessibility the scenario driven way would give you direction - but another way to do it would be a role playing mode where you can create your character on the spot as an outsider, or just say 'I'm this guy's kid' just picking off the legends screen, that would be fine too. Then you could set everything about yourself, absolutely everything about yourself, and just start playing at the year that everything left off, as if you'd just popped into existence, or had a past, or whatever you want to set up, just to get you in with minimal difficulty without worrying about the retconning problems, get you in there at the right year, if you wanted to continue right where you left off. Another way to do that would be to just say 'I want to play an existing person in the world' and you just go down the legends list and pick someone. That would require something like a world generation parameter I think, because that's one of those things where you'd be tempted to deal with certain problems ... there are people who complain about being tempted to spoil their games. So if the goblins have been attacking you, you could be 'Well I'll be the goblin king and I'll jump into that volcano!' So that would be one of those world gen options most likely, like 'only allow you to jump into people that don't have entity positions/only allow you to jump into people of the good races/allow you to do anything/disallow you to do it at all'; I think that would resolve those issues, for any of the scenario or roleplaying type modes. There's also the notion - it goes to accessibility but difficulty more - so when you have skill points that you assign, or in the scenarios in terms of how much your character's learning or what kind of background they have, there's this notion of the different kinds of heroes that there are in myths and so on, since we're trying to generate and recreate those stories it's important to get at that. Three general options would be, firstly 'Well, I want my character to be a demigod' like Hercules, it could go into the human pantheons and you'd be like 'Zeus is my dad', and then that character would be exceptional, and you wouldn't have to worry as much about a wolf killing you or something, and you might have gods giving you gifts or cursing you; you'd have an epic life no matter what, you'd have no choice in the matter. Then there's also the middle option which would be a heroic character, which is similar to what we have now where you can start out as a really talented swordsman, someone who's like Batman who's exceptional but not supernatural necessarily, so you can really jam your numbers up or have an exceptional life in terms of your parents or whatever. Then there's the third mode which would be a normal mode, or an 'unlikely hero' mode instead of a hero mode, where you start off as a person who has skills per their scenario or if you're roleplaying you wouldn't add that much stuff to yourself, and that would be suited for the games where people just want to make their own way in the world, or create their little log cabin in the woods and hunt things, or become a bandit, any of those kind of games where they don't really care how survivable their character is if they ran into a goblin tower or something. It runs a bit against all the roleplaying games I've played since Legend of Zelda, where all the numbers and things increase, and the adversaries increase, and the areas that open up increase, and it's all matching larger and larger numbers against each other, and it's becoming less of an option in Dwarf Fortress just because of how the thing is set up, so you can't really run it that way. So it might be weird to start as a powerful character and stay a powerful character but it's really more about the story than the power levelling type of increase, although there are elements of that when your skills improve, and you occasionally find better equipment, although it's nothing the loot-driven systems. There are going to be issues here to tackle, repeatedly, we can't really see everything that's going to happen when you strike out on a new mode of thinking about how an RPG might work. I'm not saying this is the first time anything like this has been done, but I certainly don't know how to handle it myself. It should be interesting to see where this leads. I think when you've got that setup where your character starts and they have as much backstory as you want them to have, then you'll have more direction. You need a little bit of a push maybe and there's more that needs to be done with social interactions and so on when you talk to people, when you talk to like those meeting hall guys that tell you to go off and kill a goblin or kill a dragon should probably not cynically toss you away, especially if you look like you're worth anything, and they should probably just send you with a guy to prove yourself against some kobolds that are out on patrol rather than sending you on suicide missions and then when you get back, they're like 'Oh that was cool'; they don't really care.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 11, 2013, 12:56:17 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 10, 2013, 07:31:16 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 10, 2013, 11:27:56 am

Will human outsiders be given some love when adventure mode personalities and roleplaying comes around? It is effectively the self-insert option, and as such seems one of the best options to allow deliberate character design, though if treated as a genuine self-insert outsider (not knowing the languages, the history, blah- maybe a backstory) that may not scratch the same itch as a true inhabitant of the world who is conveniently just like me.

This was discussed extensively in DF Talk 6: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_6_transcript.html)

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Capntastic:   What are your plans to make adventure mode more accessible?
Toady:   There are dozens of issues standing in the way, but a lot of them are things we've discussed like graphics and tutorials and instructions and all that kind of thing. So putting those important things aside, just to get at adventure mode specific matters - rather than just problems with Dwarf Fortress in general - you really start out in adventure mode - you create a character - and you start out in the middle of a building or something and there's really no clue about what's going on. The keybindings aren't really harder to learn that any roguelike, you just pop up the screen and they're there, so the problems with accessibility are more in the line of a direction for your character; right now there's not a lot to do and you have no direction at all, for a new player especially. If you've played before you at least know what the deal is and you might just wander off to your old fortress or you might just wander around and set a goal to kill some monster or something, but without that, if you press adventurer mode before even playing fortress mode then you'd really just have no idea what to do, and when you talk to people you might find your way eventually to the people that will give you quests, but their quests are all kind of cynical, it's just like 'Oh you, you want to do something for me? Alright, go kill the dragon.' It's not really appropriate for your character, so I think the thing to do here - and we'll get to the future of adventure mode, which is the topic - a huge part of that is character generation. So there's the idea of how can you improve character generation, just in general, and also how than to make the game entirely take care of all of the accessibility problems that don't have anything to do with graphics and the general interface, that kind of thing, but just the game itself. So the idea is to have some additional options and the main one would be ... you've got a character who - currently you just create them and they're this outsider who doesn't really belong to the world at all, they might belong to the overall civilization that you've selected for them, but they don't meaningfully tie into that, they don't have a parent in that civilization, they don't have any friends in that civilization, they don't know anybody in that civilization - so one of the ideas for a mode of character generation would be a scenario-driven thing. There are downsides to that sort of stuff, like if you have a Q and A process like the Ultima games or even our own Liberal Crime Squad, the main downside to that I think is that it's a cumbersome way to create a character when you know the questions are just building stats and giving you items, so it just gets really annoying and you have to game the system just to get where you want to get, and it's the same every time. The key difference here is that it really can't be the same every time in Dwarf Fortress because the worlds are all different; it can picks two parent for you and say 'you were born to these two people and you're living in this kind of situation' and then it can have things arise based on just running world generation, just continue world gen from whatever point the game's at. So if goblins were attacking that village that would be the scenario event it throws at you, how do you deal with this? Depending on how old you are you might just be forced to run away, but there might be choices to make in any case. So it can give you a past in this way, and it will let you interact with it. Ideally you'd be presented with a situation and you'd either have some options for resolving that and then continuing to the next situation, or a little more difficult would be allowing you to jump into any situation that you wanted to, so if you were nineteen years old in some village as a farmer in the beginning and the goblins attacked, maybe you'd want to just jump in right there, and that's where you start playing. And at that point you certainly wouldn't have an accessibility problem in the sense of not knowing what to do, or at least having a situation that you'd be confronted with because there'd be something going on, and you'd also have your parents and friends and things; that's the main point, you'd have relationships to begin with, and you should be able to punch up a screen that says what's going on there, and if during the early scenarios you had a situation where your parents were killed by somebody or something then you'd have a Conan relationship screen or something, where it's like 'Thulsa Doom killed your mom' or whatever, and that can be something that drives your life if you want. That's the scenario situation, running through that, being able to break out when you want, or just finishing a number of them, and that would start from wherever your last game ended. The downside here is that if you're starting from that year and it takes a certain time to grow up, then whatever was going on in the world is going to be spent by twelve, thirteen, sixteen, twenty more years by the time you jump in. It's more difficult to retcon you into the world and start you where you want to start off but using past events. We've talked about that a bit before with the fake populations and saving their historical events and how you can use that to retcon things in, including your own character. So it's possible, but ...
Rainseeker:   Well presumably you could choose from two different options.
Toady:   Aside from the scenario stuff and the retconning and that kind of thing, there would also be, especially for people that kind of know what they're doing, but for anyone else as well - when we were talking about accessibility the scenario driven way would give you direction - but another way to do it would be a role playing mode where you can create your character on the spot as an outsider, or just say 'I'm this guy's kid' just picking off the legends screen, that would be fine too. Then you could set everything about yourself, absolutely everything about yourself, and just start playing at the year that everything left off, as if you'd just popped into existence, or had a past, or whatever you want to set up, just to get you in with minimal difficulty without worrying about the retconning problems, get you in there at the right year, if you wanted to continue right where you left off. Another way to do that would be to just say 'I want to play an existing person in the world' and you just go down the legends list and pick someone. That would require something like a world generation parameter I think, because that's one of those things where you'd be tempted to deal with certain problems ... there are people who complain about being tempted to spoil their games. So if the goblins have been attacking you, you could be 'Well I'll be the goblin king and I'll jump into that volcano!' So that would be one of those world gen options most likely, like 'only allow you to jump into people that don't have entity positions/only allow you to jump into people of the good races/allow you to do anything/disallow you to do it at all'; I think that would resolve those issues, for any of the scenario or roleplaying type modes. There's also the notion - it goes to accessibility but difficulty more - so when you have skill points that you assign, or in the scenarios in terms of how much your character's learning or what kind of background they have, there's this notion of the different kinds of heroes that there are in myths and so on, since we're trying to generate and recreate those stories it's important to get at that. Three general options would be, firstly 'Well, I want my character to be a demigod' like Hercules, it could go into the human pantheons and you'd be like 'Zeus is my dad', and then that character would be exceptional, and you wouldn't have to worry as much about a wolf killing you or something, and you might have gods giving you gifts or cursing you; you'd have an epic life no matter what, you'd have no choice in the matter. Then there's also the middle option which would be a heroic character, which is similar to what we have now where you can start out as a really talented swordsman, someone who's like Batman who's exceptional but not supernatural necessarily, so you can really jam your numbers up or have an exceptional life in terms of your parents or whatever. Then there's the third mode which would be a normal mode, or an 'unlikely hero' mode instead of a hero mode, where you start off as a person who has skills per their scenario or if you're roleplaying you wouldn't add that much stuff to yourself, and that would be suited for the games where people just want to make their own way in the world, or create their little log cabin in the woods and hunt things, or become a bandit, any of those kind of games where they don't really care how survivable their character is if they ran into a goblin tower or something. It runs a bit against all the roleplaying games I've played since Legend of Zelda, where all the numbers and things increase, and the adversaries increase, and the areas that open up increase, and it's all matching larger and larger numbers against each other, and it's becoming less of an option in Dwarf Fortress just because of how the thing is set up, so you can't really run it that way. So it might be weird to start as a powerful character and stay a powerful character but it's really more about the story than the power levelling type of increase, although there are elements of that when your skills improve, and you occasionally find better equipment, although it's nothing the loot-driven systems. There are going to be issues here to tackle, repeatedly, we can't really see everything that's going to happen when you strike out on a new mode of thinking about how an RPG might work. I'm not saying this is the first time anything like this has been done, but I certainly don't know how to handle it myself. It should be interesting to see where this leads. I think when you've got that setup where your character starts and they have as much backstory as you want them to have, then you'll have more direction. You need a little bit of a push maybe and there's more that needs to be done with social interactions and so on when you talk to people, when you talk to like those meeting hall guys that tell you to go off and kill a goblin or kill a dragon should probably not cynically toss you away, especially if you look like you're worth anything, and they should probably just send you with a guy to prove yourself against some kobolds that are out on patrol rather than sending you on suicide missions and then when you get back, they're like 'Oh that was cool'; they don't really care.

Thank you very much, though the question still stands. The example key event system sounds like suspension of disbelief would be the big thing, especially when it comes to ethics and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 11, 2013, 01:29:06 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 11, 2013, 12:56:17 pm

Thank you very much, though the question still stands. The example key event system sounds like suspension of disbelief would be the big thing, especially when it comes to ethics and so on.

Here's the question again:

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 10, 2013, 11:27:56 am

Will human outsiders be given some love when adventure mode personalities and roleplaying comes around?

It's a tricky question because it assumes that "personalities and roleplaying" is the feature that's definitely coming, while "character design" is less certain.  That seems backwards.  Character design is one of roleplaying's many aspects.  Toady has expressed strong support for character design, so it's a good bet that it will be implemented, but as usual, no timeline (it's not on the near-term dev page that I could find (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)).  Other aspects of roleplaying, like forcing the player to act in accordance with their personality, aren't as guaranteed.

Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding what you mean by "personalities and roleplaying."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Proterus on November 11, 2013, 09:03:26 pm

Can you create the option for us to specify which type of plant to brew or mill. For example brew sweet pods, mill dimple cups.

Basically I've been wanting to create one farm plot for all of my alcohol production and produce rum, beer, ale, wine. And then another for dimple cups and pig tails for my clothing industry.  Problem is I can never really get my still to produce the right kind of alcohol to get near equal amounts of each type of alcohol.  I also ended up making sugar instead of dye and having no sweet pods for rum and no bags to mill my dimple cups and then you don't get the spawns for the dimple cups and it disrupts the whole process.

Now I know I can possibly workaround this with smart stockpile management, that only seems to work so well and needs to be reconfigured if I want to occasionally make flour or something.  In any event I think everyone would agree that the process to achieve the results you want is way too cumbersome.   So I ask that we be able to specify what we want to brew or mill.  This seems like something that could be changed with minimal effort on your part.

Edit: sorry misread the original post and posted a suggestion here when you specifically told us that we shouldn't do that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 12, 2013, 06:15:00 am

This is essentially "Workshop Material Use and Specific Object Construction" from the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html). So, it's planned, but we're not sure when it will come in. It's the third of the Eternal Suggestion Vote items, but given that job priorities (fifth) will get attention post-release/post-bugfix period as they tie into Toady's recent work, their order doesn't seem important anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 12, 2013, 12:14:36 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 11, 2013, 01:29:06 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 11, 2013, 12:56:17 pm

Thank you very much, though the question still stands. The example key event system sounds like suspension of disbelief would be the big thing, especially when it comes to ethics and so on.

Here's the question again:

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 10, 2013, 11:27:56 am

Will human outsiders be given some love when adventure mode personalities and roleplaying comes around?

It's a tricky question because it assumes that "personalities and roleplaying" is the feature that's definitely coming, while "character design" is less certain.  That seems backwards.  Character design is one of roleplaying's many aspects.  Toady has expressed strong support for character design, so it's a good bet that it will be implemented, but as usual, no timeline (it's not on the near-term dev page that I could find (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)).  Other aspects of roleplaying, like forcing the player to act in accordance with their personality, aren't as guaranteed.

Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding what you mean by "personalities and roleplaying."

Ah. I suppose I'm more interested in the backstory/roleplaying and gameplay aspects of being a human outsider. Are you from a lost civilization, a traveler from another world, an amnesiac, a tool of the gods, someone absorbed by D.F 1.0 etc. Presumably you also don't know anything about the world, and will need to learn the basics. Thanks for reminding me, I'll edit the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 13, 2013, 12:05:09 am

Quote from: devlog

11/12/2013 Toady One More list, more stuff, more continuing along with. I cleaned up various starting paragraph and character background paragraph stuff, added some more conversation text, moved monster quests over to the new information system, moved bartering over to the new converstation system (in part, you still get to do the transaction itself automatically), that kind of thing. Yet another indexing error has been causing demons to get murdered in world gen way too often for quite some time, and that has been corrected.

I think the information system, especially the transfer of information between people, is one of the cooler overarching features in the upcoming version.  I pulled together some quotes on the topic for anyone else who's interested:

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: devlog

02/10/2013 Toady One Rare moment of restraint! The information and mechanics I need for the initial stages of the insurrection against occupying armies is more or less the same as the information and mechanics I need for the criminal role for later adventure mode. The existing dwarf mode crime stuff is enough to get me through, so I won't be adding the entire thief role to adventure mode now, he he he. In any case, your efforts against the goblins are going to be entirely dependent on who sees you and whom you talk to, and whom they get a chance to tell about it, so you'll be rewarded not only for stealth, but at times for discretion.

Quote from: DF Talk

Capntastic:   So if you scare someone away for instance, will they go for help at this point?
Toady:   Oh no no, that's.. that's.. so that's basically beyond the scope of what we've done. However if you start a conflict with somebody, now this gets back to the other thing that we were working on, which is improving the goblin insurrections and the conversations and stuff.. when you get a, when you start a fight with, say, a goblin in a town now, that gets saved as an event. So not only can you talk about that now then other people, but the goblin also knows that this happened, and if the goblin manages to get away from you and get offloaded, then everybody in town will, there's a timer on it, so it kinda propagates information more slowly, then it becomes a foregone conclusion then that the goblins are gonna know about that. And so the goblins will know then that you just tried to start a fight with a goblin, or that you killed a goblin if someone else saw it, and then gets away. So you can eliminate witnesses and so on, but if someone does get away, then that information will propagate.

Now that doesn't mean that the goblin is running back to that location to bring help immediately at least at this point. There's still kind of talk about, in the notes here, the notes talking back at me that I wrote months ago that there would be organised groups coming to hunt you down, which is something we put in the tracking information for. And right now patrols can hunt you down, when you're walking around you leave tracking information and they can pin it, and snoop up the trail and follow you during wilderness travel, but it doesn't happen in the context of the insurrection and in the town guards and it may, but it may not and so it's not something I want to promise at this point, when we're kind of chopping things out [...]

Quote from: Toady One on September 05, 2013, 03:27:47 am

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will we eventually be able to learn or teach skills or secrets to/from NPCs via talking to them? Such as learning a secret orally from someone who knows it, and then passing it on to a student?

I suspect, yeah, though the current plan is for skill training to be a longer term process in general (whether or not that has you do something with a different character during the time is an open question).  You can currently pass along rumor/incident information, which can spread around, so we have it in baby form now.

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: King Mir

If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?

When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?

Yeah, right now they get that information.  Eventually we'll have cause to be more picky about it, but we're more worried about people standing idiotically while you attack them.  I don't recall if the event is generated on the initiation or the strike.  That'll also determine how ranged attacks work.  It's probably on the strike.  This would give them extra information about the shooter since the incident doesn't yet have missing knowledge, but we'll get to fixing that at some point.

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

Quote from: Phlum

When an alert is given, the offended entity doesn't yet know of the offence, right? In other words, is it possible to kill a guard before he alerts others and not become enemy of a civ?

The cascading nature of alert information is still a work in progress, but yeah, there are going to be different levels of information passed along to the entity depending on when you kill the guard.  Even after the alert is raised, until the guard gives a report, I don't think your information will be passed along -- ideally, even after the report, they'd just have your appearance, but it's still tricky to store that as a properly abstracted chunk of information.

Also, I found a more direct answer for this:

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 30, 2013, 10:38:58 am

Quote from: smjjames on October 30, 2013, 01:37:31 am

You know, with the new history continuing along after worldgen, will we recieve reports of events from merchants or even migrants? I'm just wondering since new events will happen outside of the fort while in fort mode. So, basically, will we be able to get news or rumors speaking of events in the mountainhomes or in foriegn lands, both in fortress and adventure mode?

It would be cool if we could and it'd add to the immersion.

Also, I suppose eventually the Dwarves (or someone) would have to invent the postal system or something.

Yes: (http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html)

Quote

Rainseeker:   Is the goal to have news get to you, so you can be aware that this might happen to you in the next year or two, that there's been a dragon that's being laying waste to the countryside and it might come by?
Toady:   It has to update you somehow, and it's got to mesh in with what we're hoping to do with your own armies eventually, which means showing you some kind of world map or of the surroundings or whatever that you're going to be able to use to order your armies. We haven't thought about it too much but if it's going to give you, like, a snapshot of the world as you currently understand it and then the next time a merchant comes you get to update your snapshot or whatever ... then it can give you the same paragraph or a related paragraph that it gives you at the beginning of adventure mode, so that it would tell you about what's going on a little bit.

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote

Quote from: Aseaheru

For a limited legends screen, will it be something you need to talk to caravans for,with each caravan providing different info, thereby also promoting trade or will there be something else? i think it might be cool to see my dwarves talking to caravan guards and learning that say, a king has a new lover or something. you know, gossip.

Quote from: tahujdt

With history progressing even during Fortress Mode, would we see a diplomat coming to tell us that all of the immediate royal family were killed during the "Siege of Pointy Sticks", and the only living heir is a potash maker in the fort? That would be interesting.

Quote from: Escapism

Will there be any kind of conduit of information from the rest of the world to your fort regarding succession and army activities? Asking caravans or diplomats for news etc.

If so, will that information be useful? Being able to predict imminent goblin attacks because a nearby village was recently razed, for instance.

Quote from: darklord92

If so will it be through the liason? replacing one of the "you've carved a fine place for yourself" dialogues with some news of what is going on in the world?

I've always liked the idea of learning actually information from the visitors to your fortress, but I've never been able to move on it because nothing happened in the world post world-gen.  Now that some things actually happen in the world, we can move toward this, but it might not happen for this time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on November 13, 2013, 01:35:47 pm

Did you consider escape-pathfinding improvements? I mean Dwarf running away from entrance into an impregnable fortress, because another tile is few centimeters farther from forgotten beast, doesn't prove his "great analytical abilities"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 13, 2013, 01:52:49 pm

Will dwarves, goblins, and modded subterranean civilizations have the same day/night sleep schedule as humans in adventure mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 13, 2013, 02:17:09 pm

Quote from: Rinin_Rus on November 13, 2013, 01:35:47 pm

Did you consider escape-pathfinding improvements? I mean Dwarf running away from entrance into an impregnable fortress, because another tile is few centimeters farther from forgotten beast, doesn't prove his "great analytical abilities"

This is unchanged in the upcoming version.  As for the future, Toady knows it's a feature people want:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111607.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58921.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70163.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85588.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on November 14, 2013, 12:28:38 pm

So it occurred to me...
Is it possible yet to create custom slabs and signs, instead of only having the option to engrave the names and achievements of the deceased?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 14, 2013, 02:52:09 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 14, 2013, 12:28:38 pm

So it occurred to me...
Is it possible yet to create custom slabs and signs, instead of only having the option to engrave the names and achievements of the deceased?

Unless there's any indication Toady has worked on this, it's safe to assume the answer is no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 15, 2013, 11:44:30 am

Just to take advantage of your omniscience Footkerchief, what's the current plan when it comes to inherited names?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 15, 2013, 11:55:25 am

Lol scoops.

I don't think Toady has mentioned anything about that, however, if he does do inherited names (not talking about royal titles or nobility here), I hope he varies it by having some dwarven civ cultures do it matrilineally or patrilineally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 15, 2013, 01:14:49 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 15, 2013, 11:44:30 am

Just to take advantage of your omniscience Footkerchief, what's the current plan when it comes to inherited names?

Quote from: DFTalk 20

Threetoe:   Ok, so, we have a couple of questions from Ironbad and Isaacflashman, asks about inheriting surnames, so 'Will the children inherit the last names of their parents?'
Toady:   So this is a pretty popular thing, I think probably because of fort mode where you can't tell who's related to who and that kind of thing. I don't remember what the reason we hadn't done it is, if we just haven't setup the raws for it, or we wanted to support different systems, or we wanted to wait for the names to support different systems, or whatever. Technically speaking, we're all for having that kind of thing, being able to tell what families people are from, and so on. It's not necessarily the case that there'll always be family names and surnames, that's not present in all cultures, especially the further back in time you go. A lot of people just didn't have family names, they were just like 'I'm John from this city' and that was what they called themselves, they didn't really have a surname. But, just keeping our options open and having that kind of thing at some point maybe more in fort mode, or more for dwarves, just because it seems to ...
Threetoe:   It's just cool ...
Toady:   Yeah, I think for dwarves it would be more fun to see the families join each other and ... I don't know if dwarves have clans or whatever, I mean people think of them in different ways and we haven't really thought about it too deeply, but yeah, I think it would be cool to put a system in for dwarf mode and just raw-ify it and people can turn it off if they don't like it or whatever. I think we will do that. Both of them asked if it's coming in with the new succession stuff and it's not coming in at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 15, 2013, 01:38:44 pm

^^^ That pretty much covers it, the only other thing I found was an older quote from DF Talk 6:

Quote

Capntastic:   Will there be traditions for naming children, will they be named ... all dwarves that are female have specifically female names, will they be named after historical figures that are not adventurers, will they be named after popular kings and queens and suchlike? Will they be named after the favoured food of a country? All that fun stuff, have a bunch of dwarves named Rummy McGin.
Toady:   Yeah, or Plump Helmet McWhiskey.
Capntastic:   Someone's going to register on the forum with that name.
Toady:   Yeah. So I know you mentioned the adventure mode one because that's the one we kind of harp on about right, it's like 'people will be able to name their children after you later', but the general thing is that we wouldn't implement it that way because it would be kind of weird for them to specifically single out adventurers. So once that goes in they'd use historical figures and so on. There's been a lot of discussion about passing down family names and so on, people are kind of upset sometimes when they have a fortress for a while and the dwarves have babies and the babies just have completely unrelated names, that's just something that hasn't gotten in, but it'll go in as soon as we figure out what dwarves like to do, or what procedural stuff needs to be generated there. As for male versus female names, I don't have - kind of like the passing down of names - I don't have systems there but it's certainly something that I think should be supported and people are interested in having that kind of separation as well. I'm not sure what dwarves would think about that, we know humans often do it and when it's done it's not always a strict split, there are just ones that are rarely used for certain genders; would you want specific name lists if you want to set them up yourself, or just have the game choose them, for no reason it puts half here and half here, or should it put names that are of a certain symbol type - there's the symbols like flowery, violent, ones that have to do with agriculture or whatever - it might, based on the symbol , put names in certain categories. So there's a lot of different ways to do it, and we're thinking of doing stuff with that, but I'm not sure when. I think it's something that would reflect the world a bit more, I don't know if anyone's ever offended by this stuff either, if there are things like that put in. Right now we have no sexual dimorphism for instance with dwarves or even humans, people tend to prefer that kind of thing and it's an extra step to put it in anyway so I'm just lazy about it but yeah in general we're going to do more with that, and it should turn out well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 15, 2013, 02:08:21 pm

As it turns out, there is no community member with the handle Plump Helmet McWhiskey.

Yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 15, 2013, 05:22:58 pm

Thanks everyone, i knew you'd find something Footkerchief.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 15, 2013, 05:31:53 pm

Will low lethal fighting be easy to abuse as a way to gain skills quickly in adventure mode? I could see how easy it would be to safely gain legendary combat skills just roughhousing with random peasants for a short period of time, if you haven't set up anything to avoid rapid skill growth in those situations. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on November 15, 2013, 05:56:26 pm

Naturally someone would get better at combat from practice. You don't have to be going for a kill to get better. It balances itself out when you get arrested for going around starting fights, and then probably escalates if you resist the authorities.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 15, 2013, 06:40:13 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on November 15, 2013, 05:56:26 pm

Naturally someone would get better at combat from practice. You don't have to be going for a kill to get better. It balances itself out when you get arrested for going around starting fights, and then probably escalates if you resist the authorities.

The thing is, if low lethal fighthing works the same way is it does in dwarf mode, it would be way too safe for you to reach absurdly high skill levels just by "lightly tapping" your adversaries a few hundred times in adventure mode. I know there are ways to abuse combat right now, by harassing weak creatures with training weapons, etc. But "practice combat" in adventure mode could possibly add a whole new level to how easy it is to min/max your charachter from the get go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 15, 2013, 06:46:37 pm

At least it means less adventurers wrestling badgers.

It might make sense to nerf skill increases from combat globally, but doing it for training but not for live combat is the kind of thing that leads to danger rooms and other unrealistic exploits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on November 15, 2013, 07:38:11 pm

Training isn't a "cheap" exploit, unless you consider training outside combat to be dishonorable in real life itself. People would have to find a willing training partner, and they'd still have to put time and effort into it. And going around roughing up peasants or starting bar brawls sounds plenty dangerous to me, since I doubt it would be legal.

I don't think by "non-lethal combat" Toady meant you could go around attacking people as long as you didn't intend to kill them, and not expect them to react.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on November 15, 2013, 07:41:13 pm

Though, we're not at the point that you actually be arrested right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MeTekillot on November 15, 2013, 09:02:45 pm

With the way excessive blood-loss and loss of critical bodyparts causing instantaneous death, will any proposed magic in far-future builds have the power to bring the dead back to life as they were? Is there going to be a stage of critical injury that is 'only mostly dead without magickal assistance' and 'completely dead, bar none, even with magic'?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on November 15, 2013, 10:21:36 pm

Quote from: Vgray on November 15, 2013, 07:41:13 pm

Though, we're not at the point that you actually be arrested right?

Nope, we won't be getting the crime and punishment arc in full this release, so guards won't be making arrests or hauling people off to jail. I'd assume that if you do manage to piss the civ off and become an "enemy" they'd just gang up on you still. We'll just have to wait and see how far we can push it before we become an enemy of the people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 16, 2013, 05:03:18 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on November 15, 2013, 07:38:11 pm

Training isn't a "cheap" exploit, unless you consider training outside combat to be dishonorable in real life itself. People would have to find a willing training partner, and they'd still have to put time and effort into it. And going around roughing up peasants or starting bar brawls sounds plenty dangerous to me, since I doubt it would be legal.

I don't think by "non-lethal combat" Toady meant you could go around attacking people as long as you didn't intend to kill them, and not expect them to react.

It becomes cheap if you can get about as much experience with it as you would in real combat, but with absolutely no risks, which would make raising skills even more trivial than it currently is. You will just need to hold the upper arrow key up, and not think about it for a couple of minutes until your character is maxed out. That's the kind of exploit I'm worried about.

At least when you're wrestling badgers your guy usually has a slight chance of getting some permanent damage if you're not paying attention.

Toady mentioned "horseplay" rules and such... if there are situations where extremely non-lethal fighting is easy to initiate, this could be easily exploitable unless there are limitations to the ammount of experience you can get in said situations. At least I think so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on November 16, 2013, 12:48:50 pm

Perhaps a cap on how high training can make your skill could alleviate this, different levels of combat sort of offering more improvement on the upper limits of this. Training while you're grand master should still be able to beat away the rust, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 16, 2013, 12:58:59 pm

The skill grinding question seems on-topic to me, but a lot of discussion is drifting into Suggestions territory:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116203.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=115080.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=130915.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on November 16, 2013, 01:32:07 pm

If the possibility concerns you so much, don't exploit it.  It's not like other players are going to import their 'cheap' adventurers into your worlds and beat up your adventurers with them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on November 16, 2013, 02:27:28 pm

And the better argument is real people don't have to actually compete in the Olympics to train for them.

You or your training partner will likely get tired and have to stop, and the NPC will certainly stop when they get exhausted. And just because you're starting a fistfight with someone instead of a knife fight, it doesn't mean there are "no risks." Less than lethal quarter doesn't mean "no injuries whatsoever." At the very least you're likely to get bruised, and broken fingers, dislodged teeth, or even concussions seem likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on November 16, 2013, 02:49:53 pm

In dwarf mode, sparring is more or less completely safe. And if stamina doesn't change much in the next version, it would also be a non-issue. By the time your character is exausted, he's probably reached legendary in everything you're training him in, or close to it.

And yeah, skill grinding and exploits are popular topics and this can be discussed elsewhere. If people think I'm derailing the thread, I'll give it a break.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on November 16, 2013, 03:05:09 pm

Toady DID say he was changing the skill increase rates this release, so I doubt you'll be able to get legendary as quickly. And I've tried adventure sparring in DFhack, your companions already seem to tire quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Swonnrr on November 16, 2013, 06:06:30 pm

I don't know where to ask this, and there seems to be the right topic.
Search haven't helped me, due to too common words.

EDIT:ANSWERED
Will there be improvements in DF2013/4 on combat pathing IA?
I'm specifically thinking about the civilians running away from the enemy in the wrong direction (AWAY from security burrows), or military watching the fight with "can't reach target".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 16, 2013, 06:42:27 pm

Quote from: Swonnrr on November 16, 2013, 06:06:30 pm

Will there be improvements in DF2013/4 on combat pathing IA?
I'm specifically thinking about the civilians running away from the enemy in the wrong direction (AWAY from security burrows), or military watching the fight with "can't reach target".

Military attack orders are on the bug tracker. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=481)  It's very unlikely that Toady will look at it before the post-release bug-fixing period.  Regarding civilian escape pathfinding:

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 13, 2013, 02:17:09 pm

Quote from: Rinin_Rus on November 13, 2013, 01:35:47 pm

Did you consider escape-pathfinding improvements? I mean Dwarf running away from entrance into an impregnable fortress, because another tile is few centimeters farther from forgotten beast, doesn't prove his "great analytical abilities"

This is unchanged in the upcoming version.  As for the future, Toady knows it's a feature people want:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111607.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58921.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70163.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85588.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on November 16, 2013, 08:33:55 pm

Quote from: Ribs on November 16, 2013, 02:49:53 pm

In dwarf mode, sparring is more or less completely safe. And if stamina doesn't change much in the next version, it would also be a non-issue. By the time your character is exausted, he's probably reached legendary in everything you're training him in, or close to it.

And yeah, skill grinding and exploits are popular topics and this can be discussed elsewhere. If people think I'm derailing the thread, I'll give it a break.

As far as we know, there is no way to spar with someone in adventure mode in this version. Sparring makes for "light tapping" combat messages, because it's not real combat, but pretend combat in dwarf mode. The "non-lethal" combat Toady implemented for adventure mode involves people bashing each other with their hands and feet, possibly breaking bones and causing serious injures. The skull has been made bigger, so you probably won't get your head smashed in, but if the mechanics for lungs haven't changed, one deep bruise to each of them means death by suffocation, without any chance of survival.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 17, 2013, 12:21:27 pm

What are the current possibilities as far as interaction with retired forts in Adventurer mode goes? If our adventurer is from a civilization current at war with the fort in question, will (s)he get shot at and not considered a nice guest? Can we pick stuff up lying around without causing the entire fortress to turn on us?

Also...

Have you ever considered making experimental nightly builds, CataDDA-style? I know it's one of those things which fall under the category of "Cata's pros" rather than "DF's cons" (though quite a large amount of people wouldn't care about those builds, in all likelihood), but my point stands.

Pretty sure that both have been answered but I don't feel like going through 100-some pages that have piled up since the last release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 17, 2013, 12:33:26 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 17, 2013, 12:21:27 pm

Have you ever considered making experimental nightly builds, CataDDA-style? I know it's one of those things which fall under the category of "Cata's pros" rather than "DF's cons" (though quite a large amount of people wouldn't care about those builds, in all likelihood), but my point stands.

From a Suggestions search for "nightly build" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAMheGrGBdnB89DoG0EU8EU0JBweItx-983PIu3jUDYl772uTsZtWllnx4D6byYCqkNqu4gKCZFbr8kKQaD6ELK8IsuIabveBBZAa8Yw-4Lt8nVwPgCWXsv-w..):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3290.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55017.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80797.0

And it was directly addressed by Toady: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21498.msg231282#msg231282)

Quote from: Toady One

I can't release every day (the release process itself takes about 1 1/2 - 2 hours to get through my check list)

That was in 2008.  I wouldn't be surprised if the checklist is twice as long by now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ergzay on November 18, 2013, 03:27:36 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 17, 2013, 12:33:26 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 17, 2013, 12:21:27 pm

Have you ever considered making experimental nightly builds, CataDDA-style? I know it's one of those things which fall under the category of "Cata's pros" rather than "DF's cons" (though quite a large amount of people wouldn't care about those builds, in all likelihood), but my point stands.

From a Suggestions search for "nightly build" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAMheGrGBdnB89DoG0EU8EU0JBweItx-983PIu3jUDYl772uTsZtWllnx4D6byYCqkNqu4gKCZFbr8kKQaD6ELK8IsuIabveBBZAa8Yw-4Lt8nVwPgCWXsv-w..):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3290.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55017.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80797.0

And it was directly addressed by Toady: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21498.msg231282#msg231282)

Quote from: Toady One

I can't release every day (the release process itself takes about 1 1/2 - 2 hours to get through my check list)

That was in 2008.  I wouldn't be surprised if the checklist is twice as long by now.

There's no reason his release process can't be automated, no matter whats in it. It's not needed to be stable either. The whole idea of nightly builds is that a script runs every night, builds everything and shoves it to a server.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 18, 2013, 11:11:18 am

His checklist probably involve, you know, him checking, you know, stuff, as he checking a lot of things in the game. If you can come out with an automated Toady then we will get the full game in half the time! :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 11:22:47 am

Not sure if it's possible now, but Toady, even though Kobolds don't have a proper site, is it possible to mod them so that they can use one of the new site types?

Even if it WERE possible to do it now, towns/hamlets don't exactly fit Kobolds, know what I mean? I'd picture their sites to look more tribal. I don't know what the deep sites look like, but maybe the deep sites would fit them better.

Also, while I realize that the release is only months away, could we have some screenshots of the new dwarven sites? I know there were screenshots released of the goblin and (sortof for) elven sites, but not sure if screenshots were made for the dwarven sites. The hill dwarf sites sound like they would be a cross between hobbit burrows and hamlets.

Thought while typing: Will the problem of broken trans cavern-level passageways be fixed or at least minimized? They are at least common enough that you will eventually find one that does connect all the way through, but more often than not, they break somewhere, usually at the floor of the next cavern layer.
Edit: Bug report for this one: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6390

Can't wait for the new version! :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 18, 2013, 11:38:31 am

Quote from: Ergzay on November 18, 2013, 03:27:36 am

There's no reason his release process can't be automated, no matter whats in it. It's not needed to be stable either. The whole idea of nightly builds is that a script runs every night, builds everything and shoves it to a server.

Toady tends to gut parts of the game in such a way that it simply becomes unplayable. There was a semi-recent devlog where he said that dwarves forgot how to do pretty much everything, for example. I rather doubt that the majority of people would want this kind of build, even if they say otherwise.

Quote from: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 11:22:47 am

Not sure if it's possible now, but Toady, even though Kobolds don't have a proper site, is it possible to mod them so that they can use one of the new site types?

Well, of course they can be modded. And even without modding, they do have actual sites, the only nonhumans that currently do. I imagine that, if Toady doesn't get to kobolds as it seems right now, kobold caves will remain as they are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 11:56:38 am

Considering their tribal nature, Kobold sites wouldn't have much to them, maybe a central campfire with some huts.

I was mainly wondering how well it would work with the new ones or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 18, 2013, 11:59:44 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 11:22:47 am

Thought while typing: Will the problem of broken trans cavern-level passageways be fixed or at least minimized? They are at least common enough that you will eventually find one that does connect all the way through, but more often than not, they break somewhere, usually at the floor of the next cavern layer.

Is this bug report on the tracker?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 12:06:40 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 18, 2013, 11:59:44 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 11:22:47 am

Thought while typing: Will the problem of broken trans cavern-level passageways be fixed or at least minimized? They are at least common enough that you will eventually find one that does connect all the way through, but more often than not, they break somewhere, usually at the floor of the next cavern layer.

Is this bug report on the tracker?

I tried looking before and don't think I saw a bug report on that specifically, but I'll check.

Edit: Tried caverns as keyword, didn't find one, trying other keywords.

Edit2: Didn't see any reports about that issue specifically, but what I've noticed is that while the trans-cavern passages themselves are complete, they often have a spot (usually at the very top, but I've had it in other parts of the passageway) where there is an up ramp, but there is no corresponding downramp above it, just a floor blocking the way. It's not the same as, but is similar to http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4520 . The passages are common enough that you will eventually find one that does go all the way through.

Given that he was working on the demon sites, dwarf sites and goblin sites (which are mostly underground), he might have fixed it along the way, no idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 18, 2013, 01:53:16 pm

If it's not already on the tracker and you'd like Toady to fix it, filing a report would be productive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 18, 2013, 02:25:49 pm

Well, since the release is pretty close, I thought I might hold onto that, but yeah I guess. A bit surprised there isn't already a bug report though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 18, 2013, 08:15:58 pm

How do armor weight and armor user skill effect attack speed in light of the attack/movement split? Does the body part armor is on play a role?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 18, 2013, 08:18:01 pm

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Rainseeker:    So what would you say is the most important skill right now for combat?
Toady:    Knowing how to use your weapon is still the most important thing you can have, but you will be flailing away wildly if you don't know what you're doing with observing. Fighting has always been an important skill, there's just this fighter skill, and it kinda gives you bonuses to all your rolls and also lets you pick up a weapon you don't know if you get in trouble and lose your weapon and, and if you have the fighting skill you're given a small amount of skill with that weapon, commensurate with your fighter skill divided by two or four or something like that that lets you still continue on in the fight. That'll matter more when you can lose your weapon in more ways.

So, then there's dodging and armour-using. Armour using is actually a little less important now, it used to be that armour use as a skill would let you move faster, because it would count the weight less of the things that you're wearing, but now moving faster is not, it's still important to get good skill rolls which it helps you with because it makes you less ungainly, but if you are just moving now it'll cut your movement speed by a lot if you're wearing a bunch of heavy stuff, and carrying a lot of heavy stuff that you don't know how to use but your attack speed isn't affected the same way it was when before it would make you attack five times as slow and move five times as slow, now you just move five times as slow, and just get the minuses to your attack but not the ‘move in slow motion' (lethargic noise) or whatever, it was pretty silly the way it was before. But now people on the ground can attack quickly, they still get minuses but they don't attack three times as slow as their counterparts standing above them so it makes a lot more sense now and people on the ground are more dangerous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 18, 2013, 08:27:08 pm

Cool. I should listen to that talk/podcast again, see if there's anything else I forgot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 19, 2013, 11:38:27 am

I've got a question (or two) out of curiosity regarding retired forts (as opposed to outright abandoned) and visiting as adventurers.

Say the only entrance to your fort is a trap lined hallway and you visit the retired fort and you are friendly with the forts civ (whether you are of that civ or not), will you not have to worry about the weapon traps or will you still be at risk of triggering them?

Obviously I'd have the advantage of remembering where the traps are in general, and training in observer skill wouldn't hurt either.

Second thought: Now that we can visit our living forts, how will we accquire stuff from them without it counting as stealing? The barter system? Use the fortresses trade depot (which I guess makes sense)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 19, 2013, 11:56:31 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 19, 2013, 11:38:27 am

Second thought: Now that we can visit our living forts, how will we accquire stuff from them without it counting as stealing? The barter system? Use the fortresses trade depot (which I guess makes sense)?

I don't think we've got a final confirmation yet, but yes, you'll most likely trade at the depot in some fashion in fortresses, which should include your own.

Quote from: Toady One on June 30, 2013, 10:56:18 pm

Quote

Quote from: Buttery_Mess

Will Dwarf, Elf (and Goblin? Probably not kobold..) sites have shops selling equipment? Will small vendors only sell clothing and armour wearable by the small races, and medium vendors to the medium races; or will dwarves sell medium sized things, humans small things, and so on?

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial

Will there be shops in the non-human sites?

Yeah, there'll be such places for the dwarves and elves.  The dwarf one might be a little weird -- I have to handle their forts in such a way that they are reclaimable and playable by people, but we haven't brought the economy back to fort mode.  So you'll probably buy stuff at a depot.

There's a lot of multi-race sites, especially the human towns.  The objects sold should at the minimum reflect that, and ideally reflect their market.  That's not something I've handled yet, but we'll see what happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on November 19, 2013, 01:51:58 pm

Will you swing back round to fixing/improving human towns when Kobold caves are being worked on?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 19, 2013, 07:32:36 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on November 19, 2013, 01:51:58 pm

Will you swing back round to fixing/improving human towns when Kobold caves are being worked on?

Human Towns got some touches through this Dev Cycle. And they'll be a period of bug fixes after the release that'll address newer and older bugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 08:42:32 am

Here's one:
Now that dwarven towns and fortresses exist instead of being a marker on the map, will we now see immigrant waves put more favor on dwarves that exist in the world, and less on ones just being created out of thin air?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 20, 2013, 09:09:43 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 08:42:32 am

Here's one:
Now that dwarven towns and fortresses exist instead of being a marker on the map, will we now see immigrant waves put more favor on dwarves that exist in the world, and less on ones just being created out of thin air?

Immigration Waves were being pulled from Population Centers already, with historical figures being candidates for immigrants. So they werent being created out of thin air for the current release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 20, 2013, 09:12:37 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 20, 2013, 09:09:43 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 08:42:32 am

Here's one:
Now that dwarven towns and fortresses exist instead of being a marker on the map, will we now see immigrant waves put more favor on dwarves that exist in the world, and less on ones just being created out of thin air?

Immigration Waves were being pulled from Population Centers already, with historical figures being candidates for immigrants. So they werent being created out of thin air for the current release.

The starting seven is, though. Are they? Would seem like the only current logical thing to do with the fine-tuning of their skills when embarking and all that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on November 20, 2013, 09:29:58 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 20, 2013, 09:12:37 am

The starting seven is, though. Are they? Would seem like the only current logical thing to do with the fine-tuning of their skills when embarking and all that.

It is still on the drawing board as far as what form the start scenarios and "starting seven" are going to take, but it is possible they'll eventually be pulled from existing populations (if available).

EDIT:  Relevant Quote:
Quote from: finka (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2922259#msg2922259)

    What are the obstacles to just assembling the starting seven dwarves as if they were a migrant wave (and possibly replacing their skills)?


From a design perspective, location and skill replacements are pretty much the only obstacles.  Roughly, you're either going to be drawing dwarves from all over the world, which is weird, or you'll have a limited selection of skills available from your area, or you'll be mind-wiping people that have histories (which makes choosing historical figures half-pointless and strange).  Personally speaking, I'd prefer to choose dwarves from some locality with some start scenario explaining what's going on and dealing with having a non-perfect skill mix, with the option to elevate non-historical dwarves to fill gaps.

In the end, it's not exactly a huge problem, if people don't mind wiping skills it's not a hard thing to do, and now that we have historical migrants in general, this is an avenue that has opened up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 20, 2013, 09:30:38 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 20, 2013, 09:12:37 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on November 20, 2013, 09:09:43 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 08:42:32 am

Here's one:
Now that dwarven towns and fortresses exist instead of being a marker on the map, will we now see immigrant waves put more favor on dwarves that exist in the world, and less on ones just being created out of thin air?

Immigration Waves were being pulled from Population Centers already, with historical figures being candidates for immigrants. So they werent being created out of thin air for the current release.

The starting seven is, though. Are they? Would seem like the only current logical thing to do with the fine-tuning of their skills when embarking and all that.

Yea, the starting seven and the adventurer are *poof* from thin air.

That might not always be the case, but it might always be an option. ToadyOne has spoken about Starting Scenarios for DF and taking over Historical Figures in Adventure Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 12:18:05 pm

I will probably never like the idea of taking over important historical figures in game.

Probably because it goes against my videogame philosophy.

Ohh well. It is pretty much a sure thing now, the real question is when.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 20, 2013, 12:30:37 pm

Maybe he will leave the option to start like the way it is now?

Anyways, I wonder if they finished with the main list? He said that they would finish it around the 15th, give or take a week maybe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 20, 2013, 12:40:14 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 12:18:05 pm

I will probably never like the idea of taking over important historical figures in game.

Probably because it goes against my videogame philosophy.

Ohh well. It is pretty much a sure thing now, the real question is when.

Quote from: smjjames on November 20, 2013, 12:30:37 pm

Maybe he will leave the option to start like the way it is now?

This is why it's important to source your information.  The plan is to make both options available (blank slate and fleshed-out history scenario):

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_17_transcript.html

Toady:   That's one way to think about it, and then there is the specific scenarios way of thinking about it as well. I haven't thought about that so much, the only scenarios we've talked about before are these start scenarios for a specific fort, or start scenarios for a specific adventurer, where it's like 'You are a group of pilgrim dwarves that are here to visit this shrine and set up a little community around it' or something. That would be a scenario and that kind of thing, I think even for simulationist people, that's a plus, it's not just a gamist thing, right? Saying that your dwarves had a reason for embarking is a very realistic thing to ask, it's like 'What are you doing?' and even if that does proscribe some actions and encourage others, that's good, right? That's not bad necessarily. Of course you don't want to trammel people or anything , but I think that helps everybody and that's certainly something, like I said, we considered, with dwarf mode start scenarios and getting that fleshed out. It also helps you kind of see the roles of each of your dwarves when you're starting out; why they came and all that kind of thing. I think that's all cool for everybody.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Threetoe:   So falling[unintelligible] asks, 'What is your feelings on allowing complete customization of embark dwarves, such as their personalities and preferences?'
Toady:   I haven't thought about it that much, but I don't have a problem with people wanting to fully customize their seven starting dwarves. We're thinking of doing that for adventure mode sometime, there's some roadblocks to doing it this time. Just like in those RPGs it can be, it's not exactly standard these days, but it's often allowed that you can fully customize your face and that kind of thing. The only issue with dwarves, I guess, is if you can customize your preferences or your attributes, it can be kind of gamey, I guess? I don't know if that would kind of mess up ...
Threetoe:   Oh yeah, we were also talking about the problem with genetics, too. Yeah, that was the roadblock to ... the roadblock to customizing your adventurer is getting the genes to line up because there's genetics to determine appearance and if you want to bring your person out of ... just give him an arbitrary face, it might not be able to find the genes for it, then that would harm the adventurer reproduction later. Especially now that when your retire your adventurer, they can just go off and get married when you're not looking, so it needs to have their genetic information in place. There's workarounds for it though, but with dwarves I'm more worried about ... not exactly worried about gaming the system, it's a conversation we've had a bunch of different times on a bunch of different subjects whether or not people should be able to fully customize or fully amplify themselves and whether or not that's something that should be customizable or something that should be in a worldgen parameter and whether or not people are overcome by temptation, whether the temptation ruins the game, whether or not I should care about people ruining the game, because they are tempted? All of that kind of thing. We've found solutions to those things in the past without really restricting the options, so I think eventually customizing the dwarves, once you can do it in the adventurer will probably be a test case for it, because it's a little easier there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 20, 2013, 12:40:48 pm

They're probably just taking an extra while to finish it and only want to post an update once they're done.
Besides, Toady has been wrong about dates many a time now, as far as I can tell. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 20, 2013, 12:47:15 pm

The way I saw it is that he was just giving an estimate and he seems to be making good progress and doing various cleanup stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 20, 2013, 12:50:46 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 20, 2013, 12:40:48 pm

They're probably just taking an extra while to finish it and only want to post an update once they're done.
Besides, Toady has been wrong about dates many a time now, as far as I can tell. :P

He's only just done with the list less than a week ago. Chances are dwarves can't spar without gouging each other's eyes out or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 20, 2013, 01:10:41 pm

Quote from: Putnam on November 20, 2013, 12:50:46 pm

He's only just done with the list less than a week ago. Chances are dwarves can't spar without gouging each other's eyes out or something.

Wait, they're done with what?

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131655.0

The plan and scheduling, fortunately, managed to stay roughly the same -- we're still on track to be through the main notes in mid-November, at which point we'll have whatever testing notes are left over to deal with, and then a release!

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132774.0

So we appear to be in the final stretch.  There's a brick of stuff to do, and it will be chipped away at bit by bit until we just have our testing list left.  The dev list continues to be reasonably themeless, so I'll just be reporting back as I do random things.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-11-12

More list, more stuff, more continuing along with.

As far as I can tell, they're still working on the dev/main list, and have yet to begin the testing list.

(by the way, thanks for demonstrating (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4772756#msg4772756) the quote-from-link thing, that's awesome)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 20, 2013, 01:31:15 pm

It's been 8 days since the last devlog and my habit of projection spewing out of my brain as conviction remains as strong as ever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 20, 2013, 01:37:59 pm

I have learn over the years, the quietness of Toady (and most coders to be honest) is increasingly proportional to the progress he's making trough the code, with only a few rare exceptions (of which oddly he have had often lately).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 20, 2013, 02:16:15 pm

Toady was never as silent and quiet as he is lately. We know they had some problems though. I hope everything is fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 20, 2013, 02:31:08 pm

Quote from: thvaz on November 20, 2013, 02:16:15 pm

Toady was never as silent and quiet as he is lately. We know they had some problems though. I hope everything is fine.

It's been a bit over a week on the devlog, he's been online today, and ThreeToe was online yesterday. While I do hope everything is all right, it's not that rare for him to be silent this long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 20, 2013, 02:37:44 pm

Again, they're almost never on time (for good reasons, I guess) and they're probably just finishing the list (and that it's so random it's not really worth posting about).

I'm expecting an update on Friday and a month of testing stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:45:14 pm

I don't like the idea "play an important historical figure" as an option period. Whether or not blank slates were available.

Just to clarify.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on November 20, 2013, 02:47:06 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:45:14 pm

I don't like the idea "play an important historical figure" as an option period. Whether or not blank slates were available.

Just to clarify.

Why does that go against your "videogame philosophy"?

And I mean the option itself, not the option being available alongside the blank slate one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on November 20, 2013, 02:48:36 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:45:14 pm

I don't like the idea "play an important historical figure" as an option period. Whether or not blank slates were available.

Just to clarify.

Playing an important historical figure from a start wouldn't be ideal.
Becoming one mid-play however...Especially once the real fleshy stuff like kingdom mode (or any equivalent thereof), proper economy (or at this stage, any economy) and stuff gets implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:59:51 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on November 20, 2013, 02:48:36 pm

Playing an important historical figure from a start wouldn't be ideal.

It isn't going to be a thing you unlock. When implemented you can jump into any important historical figure you desire from the get go.

Quote

Why does that go against your "videogame philosophy"?

And I mean the option itself

Well, I don't want to dwell on this because this can just become one of those conversation sinks.

I don't like the idea of having the "better choice" that you can cheese. Self-limitation always carries the stench of "intentionally not playing well" and thus I rarely do so.

The blank slate doesn't even carry the usual advantage of "you can be anything" because there is nothing stopping you from taking control of a demon and becoming the king of kindness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 20, 2013, 03:05:11 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:59:51 pm

I don't like the idea of having the "better choice" that you can cheese. Self-limitation always carries the stench of "intentionally not playing well" and thus I rarely do so.

The blank slate doesn't even carry the usual advantage of "you can be anything" because there is nothing stopping you from taking control of a demon and becoming the king of kindness.

Toady has a plan to help you save yourself from yourself:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_6_transcript.html

Toady:   Aside from the scenario stuff and the retconning and that kind of thing, there would also be, especially for people that kind of know what they're doing, but for anyone else as well - when we were talking about accessibility the scenario driven way would give you direction - but another way to do it would be a role playing mode where you can create your character on the spot as an outsider, or just say 'I'm this guy's kid' just picking off the legends screen, that would be fine too. Then you could set everything about yourself, absolutely everything about yourself, and just start playing at the year that everything left off, as if you'd just popped into existence, or had a past, or whatever you want to set up, just to get you in with minimal difficulty without worrying about the retconning problems, get you in there at the right year, if you wanted to continue right where you left off. Another way to do that would be to just say 'I want to play an existing person in the world' and you just go down the legends list and pick someone. That would require something like a world generation parameter I think, because that's one of those things where you'd be tempted to deal with certain problems ... there are people who complain about being tempted to spoil their games. So if the goblins have been attacking you, you could be 'Well I'll be the goblin king and I'll jump into that volcano!' So that would be one of those world gen options most likely, like 'only allow you to jump into people that don't have entity positions/only allow you to jump into people of the good races/allow you to do anything/disallow you to do it at all'; I think that would resolve those issues, for any of the scenario or roleplaying type modes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Quote

That would require something like a world generation parameter

It doesn't count. It is an all or nothing sort of thing.

Having an option to turn it off is the same as having the option to have it in the first place.

It isn't about the urge to use it but rather the fact that it is there in the first place. If I have to not use a feature to enjoy the game, I can do that manually without messing with the game's options.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on November 20, 2013, 04:10:41 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 02:59:51 pm

I don't like the idea of having the "better choice" that you can cheese. Self-limitation always carries the stench of "intentionally not playing well" and thus I rarely do so.

Right.  Nobody would ever, say, embark with nothing but a pick, because that would carry the stench of "intentionally not playing well (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Challenge)".  That's why I always set embark points up to the maximum possible in world gen.  And mod dwarves to naturally be legendary in all skills.  Also, speed:0, no eat, no drink, no sleep...  After all, the option is there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 20, 2013, 04:28:03 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Quote

That would require something like a world generation parameter

It doesn't count. It is an all or nothing sort of thing.

Having an option to turn it off is the same as having the option to have it in the first place.

It isn't about the urge to use it but rather the fact that it is there in the first place. If I have to not use a feature to enjoy the game, I can do that manually without messing with the game's options.

You must hate that DFHack exists.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 20, 2013, 04:49:28 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Quote

That would require something like a world generation parameter

It doesn't count. It is an all or nothing sort of thing.

Having an option to turn it off is the same as having the option to have it in the first place.

It isn't about the urge to use it but rather the fact that it is there in the first place. If I have to not use a feature to enjoy the game, I can do that manually without messing with the game's options.

This wouldn't be the only advanced world gen parameter that can make the game easier if turned off. Setting the number of boogiemen to 0 is another example. Being able to play a character with a back-story is a good thing to have, and IMO it's reasonable to extend that to playing people of power in advanced worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 04:51:25 pm

Quote

You must hate that DFHack exists

Nope, that is outside the game and thus it doesn't affect me or the game.

Now if DFHack was built right into the game as a straight up feature, that would be different.

"This wouldn't be the only advanced world gen parameter that can make the game easier if turned off."

Ignoring that Boogeymen are broken. They are all different worlds with their own rules that at its best adapt to the changes you make. They shouldn't be any easier or difficult as they are just different worlds.

The "Jump into any historical figure" isn't a part of the world. It is completely separate from the world that is being created but is enforced because of a check you made during generation.

This is becoming a argument sink, so I won't post anymore on this subject.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on November 20, 2013, 04:56:02 pm

The disadvantage to choosing a historical figure, of course, is that you don't get the satisfaction of inventing your own character with its own backstory. You're constrained by whatever shortcomings or obligations or relations that figure had, rather than the freedom of starting from scratch.

You could start as Demon-lord of the goblins, sure, but then you're not going to make any adventuring friends, or form any relationships. Maybe you can lead your minions on evil campaigns, but you're missing out on the fun of fighting your way to the top of the hierarchy first. Maybe he's made of fire, so if you try to go looting as him, you'll just ruin everything you'll touch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on November 20, 2013, 05:28:59 pm

I dislike a lot that adventures come of nowhere. After all, with all the magnificient history that DF can provide to the worlds, is sad
that your adventurers have no family, nor backstory.

And about making the game easier, that is meaningless, since there is not any measure of success in the game except your own. DF doesn't give you points. Is like saying that demigods should not exist because they are better that peasants, or that you should not be capable
of changing embark points.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 05:58:30 pm

I think it would make a nice middle ground is if the last 100 years are "in dispute" historically for a world. As in, all accounts are not reliable, and as a result, whatever modes the player goes into, the last 100 years gets changed a slight bit in order to incorporate your new adventurer or your new seven to ten dwarves - When you start, your character(s) might have skills you didn't intend them to have, they might be missing a few digits, toes, or a leg or arm, or already be legendary in a skill you wanted them to have.

Speaking of skills...  Has there been any discussion of adding hobbies to personalities? Like a dwarf likes fishing, but doesn't want to do that as part of his duties in a fortress? And has apprenticeships been considered to make child dwarves more useful instead of just waiting on a strange mood to strike them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on November 20, 2013, 06:22:38 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 20, 2013, 04:01:23 pm

Quote

That would require something like a world generation parameter

It doesn't count. It is an all or nothing sort of thing.

Having an option to turn it off is the same as having the option to have it in the first place.

It isn't about the urge to use it but rather the fact that it is there in the first place. If I have to not use a feature to enjoy the game, I can do that manually without messing with the game's options.

Ah, that makes sense I guess. I thought you had something against being able to play historical characters for the sake of them being historical which I thought was odd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 20, 2013, 07:42:37 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on November 20, 2013, 05:58:30 pm

Speaking of skills...  Has there been any discussion of adding hobbies to personalities? Like a dwarf likes fishing, but doesn't want to do that as part of his duties in a fortress? And has apprenticeships been considered to make child dwarves more useful instead of just waiting on a strange mood to strike them?

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, where these are frequently posted:
search for "hobbies" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB4CyyRgkDULakz28C7G7s8rxsfLV0LUWRedNMio1aolvh3xfhR0mA06wwbqjmt5fmHpLmaxFdHoF1uCgu94ELxQMkwcQkZ7AT9JLag.)
search for "apprenticeship" (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzDEOgCAQRNG72FhbeB4CyyRgkCULakw4vIuh-_OKsf62meD72re-dCejdq0a-DHEZ0loUBt0uQPUDOf0TmFpxkfR5VFpii5Bwn88CFYoKNpSBLlFQg2xfIuUMKs.)

Toady has discussed leisure activities:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Toady:   [...] I'm all for dwarves being proactive, especially on their free time where they might just now be sitting on break or doing parties where they don't do anything and just stand around.

[...]

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...
Menendez:   (banjo backing)
Toady:   ... and I don't if the kids show up at the bars and use their toys ... We want to get toys and instruments in but I'm not sure the toys ... like their little mini-forges, I don't know if you go to the bar for that, maybe you do if you're a dwarf.
Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 21, 2013, 12:45:28 am

Mmmmm...... new devblog.  Delicious.

Thanks Toady!!

I love watching the process of how a feature gets turned around, squeezed, tried on for size, re-fitted, broken, fixed, broken again, completely re-engineered, decided to cut entirely, decided to put back in, but in an utterly different form and finally made ready for a release... for now.

Also, MEAD HALLS!!!  I. Can't. Wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on November 21, 2013, 02:21:04 am

Looks like we're on track for the longest dev cycle in DF history. Ah well- good things come to those who wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 21, 2013, 07:30:43 am

On the issue Neonivek has over an option on the game, it seems some kind of OCD behavior for considering a set of rules or game options to be the right thing. It's extra weird on a game like Dwarf Fortress where tons of options both for the world at hand and the whole game itself has almost infinite combinations and such.

[del]Not that long ago[/del] A long arse time ago I went to create a thread about that very same topic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123064.msg4040600#msg4040600), in which I asked about what settings where the most popular to play the game, and the general consensus was "whatever the hell you want to".

Having said that, it's kind of silly to oppose options on a game, because that's what they are, options. The more we have in all faces of the game, the better it gets and more wider the audience.

Also consider this, adventure mode could be effectively become a dual game, or separated modes or difficulties, where the first is about getting an average Joe and turning him into whatever you want and the other mode or difficulty level is about steeping on a defined roll and character and either trying to fulfill said roll or go crazy and do other stuff.

As always there's no goal beyond the one you make of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on November 21, 2013, 07:48:42 am

Well on the other side of the coin, from the standpoint of game design and general criticism of games, I'm almost completely against options.  Games that encourage players to toggle everything to their preference smack of designers not having a clear vision and/or wanting to please everyone.  No personality went into the game, you get none out when playing.  The whole point of *game* design is there are limits.

That said, games where the creators have carefully crafted a default world but the option is somewhere available to change somethings somehow, this is good.  TES games are the classic case in point, and everything Toady has said in interviews leads me to believe this is the path he's taking, which is great.  He's said arena mode, jumping into historical figures, digging invaders and other things shall likely be init file options.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 21, 2013, 08:10:34 am

The mead halls are back? I heard from someone that they got removed after 40d and since I didn't do a whole lot of adventuring in 40d, I don't remember the mead halls. So, could someone describe them as they were in 40d?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 21, 2013, 08:32:44 am

Of course, every option needs to be carefully planned, implemented and balanced in a full array of other options. Options for the sake of moar options is as blundering and idiotic as non having at all.

I guess that's why most game designers don't bother with them at all. Also it depends heavily on the kind of game, there are games such graphic adventures or fps where you want to tell a history on a linear fashion and the trill is on the challenges you are presented, not the gameplay options you can have, and by necessity this games tend to be limited otherwise they'll never end up telling the history as they should.

DF, being a open world, huge arse open world, and now a dynamic one at it, can only benefit from more options, as long they are carefully inserted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on November 21, 2013, 11:19:28 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 21, 2013, 08:10:34 am

The mead halls are back? I heard from someone that they got removed after 40d and since I didn't do a whole lot of adventuring in 40d, I don't remember the mead halls. So, could someone describe them as they were in 40d?

They were basically bars... sort of empty except with tons of drunks and an upper floor with more drunks and beds.

I THINK the mayor was also there, but I cannot remember clearly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 21, 2013, 12:39:37 pm

Maybe they're getting set up as a sort of prelude to taverns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on November 21, 2013, 01:00:04 pm

I seem to recall Today speaking of a place where the occupation force gathers after taking over the site. Isn't this? Or it was some sort of town hall?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 21, 2013, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 21, 2013, 12:39:37 pm

Maybe they're getting set up as a sort of prelude to taverns?

The mead halls are for the town lords to reside in until we get proper manors, from what I gather. They're probably also part of the fake taverns for gathering drunks and adventurers. Sort of a double-purpose placeholder.

And since it seems we'll get at least one more set of answers, something I noticed a while back...

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Spoiler: Wants to try hard and thinks he's great, but just doesn't have it (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers3.png)

Spoiler: Your future emperor (click to show/hide)

(http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/pers4.png)

The gods' names in these two images are titles, rather than proper names. Is that something that we can force to happen/not to happen, or is it random for each entity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 21, 2013, 01:09:16 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on November 21, 2013, 01:00:04 pm

I seem to recall Today speaking of a place where the occupation force gathers after taking over the site. Isn't this? Or it was some sort of town hall?

Quote from: Toady One

Generally they'll displace the current leadership and take over whatever castle or mead hall structure is around.

This? I guess whatever structure the current (or former, in the case of occupied sites) local leadership is using, whether it's the castle keep, mead hall or the town hall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 21, 2013, 02:20:37 pm

This:

Quote

Back on the dwarf peninsula, I reintroduced the manor houseish mead hally hybrid places for the petty lords to reside in, and I'm now finishing up conversation and reputation issues surrounding companion agreements to get your role as a participant in the village-village bickering established properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 21, 2013, 05:31:32 pm

I'm looking forward to seeing the new conversation system in action.  People yelling "Yield!" during fights and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dmatter on November 21, 2013, 07:13:31 pm

Toady, thank you for your reply. Happy to see that it got a reply, though I don't really feel like my question was answered.

What my original question boils down to is: Do you plan on, way down the road, implementing things like cultural marriage preferences/requirements where, for instance, a dwarf has to marry another dwarf that doesn't even speak the same language, potentially from another city/fort?

Speaking of which, another question came to mind: Once you get to the hill dwarves do you plan on having cultural variation within civs?  * Since dwarven society (and most of the df societies in general) seem to be feudal systems I imagine there might be a significant amount of cultural and linguistic variance between forts/settlements/cities within a civ.

*Both of my questions might be looking too far ahead. If so, no worries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 21, 2013, 07:18:46 pm

Most questions that ask "do you plan on" can be answered with this (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) page. The exact specific types of "things" each bullet point is and their effect on the version number may be out-of-date, but most of the stuff on there is still planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 22, 2013, 12:24:40 am

Quote from: dmatter on November 21, 2013, 07:13:31 pm

Toady, thank you for your reply. Happy to see that it got a reply, though I don't really feel like my question was answered.

What my original question boils down to is: Do you plan on, way down the road, implementing things like cultural marriage preferences/requirements where, for instance, a dwarf has to marry another dwarf that doesn't even speak the same language, potentially from another city/fort?

For everyone's reference, here's the previous conversation (emphasis mine):

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 09:38:17 pm

Quote from: dmatter

Are there any plans to include things like multilingual exogamy (I know it isn't a priority right now)? I just think it would be a neat feature down the road, which could lead to all sorts of interesting situations with different civ interactions.

Example of multilingual exogamy can be found here: http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/300

There aren't many specific plans, though we had some dev notes about difference in language being respected.  Right now, fort mode trade and adv mode reading/speaking don't respect language at all, so we have to start from a very basic place and move forward.

With highly specific features like these, Toady seldom has much to say about if or when they'll be implemented.  It would be speculation at best, and, unless he did some serious reading and thinking on the subject, probably uninformed speculation, which does nobody much good.

Quote from: dmatter on November 21, 2013, 07:13:31 pm

Speaking of which, another question came to mind: Once you get to the hill dwarves do you plan on having cultural variation within civs?  * Since dwarven society (and most of the df societies in general) seem to be feudal systems I imagine there might be a significant amount of cultural and linguistic variance between forts/settlements/cities within a civ.

*Both of my questions might be looking too far ahead. If so, no worries.

Yes, cultural variation, divergence, etc. is planned:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   Is it going to be possible for us to get civilizations like goblin civilizations that go in unexpected directions like maybe they get a leader somehow from an elven civilization who enforces their beliefs on the goblins or something?
Toady:   I only put in little teeny baby steps in that direction back when I set up those ethics; looking in that direction I made it so that the ethics sit inside the civilization so that they're mutable; it doesn't just look at the definition that you put in the raw files, but within each civilization they're mutable; but they don't actually change yet. But that kind of thing is what will allow certain individuals and even sub movements ... this is the kind of thing where say in dwarf mode if you have a philosophical movement spring up and enough of your dwarves adhere to it it should start changing the actual fortress civilization in terms of how it thinks, and whether that's happening because the actual fortress ethics are changing or just because a majority of the people follow the ethics of this movement ... it's kind of one leads to the other, or it should anyway. So we're thinking about those things, we're definitely not ignoring that kind of stuff, but it's just a matter of getting it done and that always takes a long time.

Toady:   Okay, so the original vision for the ... It's always evolving really. Originally we had in our earlier games these fantasy settlements and so on, with humans and a few other types of critters like dwarves and so on, and we added a few more but it wasn't in the raws or anything like that. Then we moved them out to the raws so you can put your own races in and those hard coded ethics that are in there now and a few things about what items they can use and what jobs you're going to find; people milling around the cities eating food out of magic barrels [and] having jobs that they don't do. The vision there has been changing over time, so when you say originally, back say three or four years ago, it wasn't a crucial part of the game having cultures that evolved but once you get started and have a world that is just sitting there and it's got civilizations that are sitting there and are all very similar then the need for variability arose pretty quickly, so the first thing we did was just vary their clothing and so on. But then you need ... instead of variation in space you also want to start thinking about variation over time and that's when these notions started coming up and maybe the past couple of years thinking about what kind of variations we'd like to have happen to cultures over time.

Toady:   Yeah, it'd just be bizarre. They'd put you in a little cage, and haul you off and put flowers in your hair and start worshiping you or something. Who knows, right? It's one of those things that the game doesn't respect right now. As for how to handle that, should that be an ethics thing? The ethics lists in the raws are a list of a premade culture for a group that's going to be created during world generation and then suddenly have that culture. This is so that you can have the flavour in the universe that you want to have, especially when you're modding where you have some notions of how they should behave and so on, like an elf or a dwarf when you want those to behave in certain ways in general, so you create these preconceived cultures for them. Now that doesn't respect how a culture might emerge, there's no notion of an emergent culture right now that's built up through racial traits and geography and history and so on. Those kinds of things should come up at least after the fact, like you've got these civilizations but they should be able to change a little bit once play begins at least, right? It's not really hard to give a really crappy simulation for an evolved culture, you plop the ten guys down, they have no ethics and then you just examine how crazy are the monsters in that area and what sort of resources are there and then bring up some silly model for how that would determine the ethics in some way, and then put a giant random element on it, and slap them down, and you've got a procedural starting point. But that's not necessarily compelling, it's interesting to have the variation, that certainly should be in there, but the main thing is how variation can occur through the history that occurs once the history starts. That's a step by step process, just putting in different influences and changes and what happens if you have several goblins somehow get assimilated into an elven society, and then all the elves get killed and then the goblins found a little thing up in the mountain somehow when they get chased out of the forest, then what are they? What do these goblins think? Does that lead to a whole goblin movement coming down from the mountains to reclaim the forests or something?
Rainseeker:   (as goblins)We are the true elves!
Toady:   Yeah it's all very weird, that kind of thing. Right now it's kind of strange ... Normally you'd think the hard part is getting the changes to occur, but right now there are too many changes in a way, like kidnapped dwarves and humans and elves and so on assimilate immediately and societies that are conquered by the dwarves and then get a dwarven overlord put over them, they're assimilated immediately and then they go on to spread that culture entirely without maintaining their previous one. It's kind of the opposite problem of implementing cultural diffusion and assimilation, and the interest comes when you do it half way, because the main thing that's missing from the game in terms of world generation and everything about making that interesting is the notion of conflict, not like a war but an internal conflict within one person, that drives their decision making. Having multiple cultural backgrounds for a single person is a great way to do that, and that's really the foundation of a lot of literature and so on, having those conflicting backgrounds and so on. It's one of those things that would start to be realised when you have the leaders moving around during play, which is not too far away, just getting more personal decision making in for the leaders, then there would be more of an impetus to draw on that kind of information. At least there's some challenges, because if you've got a hundred thousand people you can't keep track of every little thing about what they think and all that kind of stuff. The important decision makers are the ones that are going to be done first. It has all their background saved, it has all the historical things that led up to their present time and all of their previous entity affiliations and so on, so it can have a pretty good background but what it really needs is a snapshot sitting in their head of what their current ethical belief and value system is. Then it'll be easy to filter decisions through that and just have that vary over time as they move from place to place and various things happen to them that move them from culture to culture as they are exposed to other cultures. One of the main things we're missing is an exchange between two cultures that doesn't involve them just killing each other, there's not a notion of trade or alliance during world generation that can build up that sort of thing. Then when you get into regular play it's all just the same thing over again, when your adventurer's running around you are an agent of cultural diffusion as you go from place to place; that should have some kind of effect. It'd be cool for them not to just judge you based on the clothing that you're wearing but also to look at your clothing and then if you do something heroic for the town, there's some dev goals about them like naming their kids after you and all that kind of thing, but what if they started dressing like you but they're also dressing in the clothing of the southern culture as opposed to their own one ... whatever direction we're using this time in the example. Then it'd be cool if that started to lead to some kind of tension, we've already got the personality facet for traditionalism; traditional versus people that like to branch out and experiment, and that'd be very interesting, to have someone's kid dress up like you and then their parent would be like 'What are you doing? You've got to wear your robe'. It really all hinges on the personal goals and the personal decision making upgrades that are coming before the sieges. That's part of the excitement of the game is seeing what kind of things it comes up with that you didn't come up with yourself; when people start doing all kinds of crazy things we'll just have to revel in the horror.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MeTekillot on November 22, 2013, 04:52:22 am

If I'm not mistaken, with the new way you're changing entities and awareness or something, discreetly killing/stealing from a member of a civ won't have the entire civ turn hostile unless the act is witnessed by someone who is able to off-load themselves to "spread the rumour". Am I correct in this assumption?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 22, 2013, 11:29:47 am

Quote from: MeTekillot on November 22, 2013, 04:52:22 am

If I'm not mistaken, with the new way you're changing entities and awareness or something, discreetly killing/stealing from a member of a civ won't have the entire civ turn hostile unless the act is witnessed by someone who is able to off-load themselves to "spread the rumour". Am I correct in this assumption?

That's been implemented for killing:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

02/10/2013 Toady One Rare moment of restraint! The information and mechanics I need for the initial stages of the insurrection against occupying armies is more or less the same as the information and mechanics I need for the criminal role for later adventure mode. The existing dwarf mode crime stuff is enough to get me through, so I won't be adding the entire thief role to adventure mode now, he he he. In any case, your efforts against the goblins are going to be entirely dependent on who sees you and whom you talk to, and whom they get a chance to tell about it, so you'll be rewarded not only for stealth, but at times for discretion.

06/10/2012 Toady One Now that bandits can sometimes just be hanging out on the street waiting to mess with people, I've shut off immediate enemy recognition so that people don't start fighting to the death in the streets. I'm next going to use the dwarf mode training activity framework to allow them to coordinate their harassment a bit, and we'll probably move to the recognition of fights and non-lethal combat from there.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So if you scare someone away for instance, will they go for help at this point?
Toady:   Oh no no, that's.. that's.. so that's basically beyond the scope of what we've done. However if you start a conflict with somebody, now this gets back to the other thing that we were working on, which is improving the goblin insurrections and the conversations and stuff.. when you get a, when you start a fight with, say, a goblin in a town now, that gets saved as an event. So not only can you talk about that now then other people, but the goblin also knows that this happened, and if the goblin manages to get away from you and get offloaded, then everybody in town will, there's a timer on it, so it kinda propagates information more slowly, then it becomes a foregone conclusion then that the goblins are gonna know about that. And so the goblins will know then that you just tried to start a fight with a goblin, or that you killed a goblin if someone else saw it, and then gets away. So you can eliminate witnesses and so on, but if someone does get away, then that information will propagate.

However, it hasn't been implemented yet for stealing.  That will come later:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Thief
    Bounties and being hunted
        No automatic recognition that you have stolen an item
        People should notice when items are missing and raise an alert
        Strangers found around town when crime is suspected should be stopped and searched
        Your identity/appearance should be remembered for a time if you are seen in an area
        If your identity/appearance is associated to an alert over a crime, somebody responsible in the entity should put a bounty on you if appropriate for the entity
        You should leave tracking information and it should keep track of the last many people you have talked to
        Entity warriors and other adventurers should follow your tracking information
        Villains/raiders/etc. from the Hero role should also receive bounties that you can fulfill

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 22, 2013, 09:55:26 pm

So does your fluid modeling have the Venturi Effect?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 22, 2013, 09:57:12 pm

It certainly looks that way, doesn't it? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 23, 2013, 08:50:06 am

If we are talking about pressure resetting through diagonals, yeah it certainly looks like it does.

Outside of the thing with diagonals, I don't think anybody has tested with a straight pipe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 24, 2013, 04:39:30 pm

The behavior of fluid is pretty well understood. It acts a cellular automaton, using only adjacent tiles to determine where it goes, when not under pressure, and when it is under pressure, water instantly teleports from high to the lowest non-full square it can reach.

Trickier to describe is the behavior of creatures and items pushed around by flowing fluids, but this is probably because of the random nature of cellular automata motion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on November 24, 2013, 04:59:29 pm

It's not altogether too random; you can see the exact motion of updating liquids through simple observation, for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: IndigoFenix on November 25, 2013, 09:57:36 am

AI pathfinding aside, how moddable will jumping be?  Can we make a creature capable of jumping up multiple z-levels and attacking enemies by stomping on their heads??  How about vampires that gain the ability to leap over tall buildings in a single bound?

On a semi-related note, when and how will adventure mode syndrome timing be fixed?  It's a problem when a short-term syndrome in fort mode (say, an interaction that stuns the target for 10 ticks) gets lengthened out to last an entire battle when a creature is affected by it in adventure mode - and it isn't possible to make short-term interactions in adventure mode, because the shortest unit of time is 72 ticks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on November 25, 2013, 08:21:47 pm

I'm not so sure that this is a bug, per se, as a difference in expectations.  By one way of thought, seeing someone to be knocked completely unconscious, it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd miss the whole party.

It seems that what you're referring to is something more akin to being stunned.  With the advent of less than lethal combat, there are some hints that the stunning effect would make an appearance finally, possibly in this release, but I can't find a quote to confirm.  I say that since there has been mention of saps and blackjacks.  Knocking someone unconscious, binding them with ropes and carting them away as part of the combat AI has specifically been mentioned as something that is tabled until further development of the thief role by WoT.  That means ON PURPOSE.  The underlying mechanics have not been specifically stated to be non-present, so may be an emergent behavior soon.

Now, syndromes have an interesting way of getting directly into the data structure of bodies and/or souls.  That's how transformations work, for instance.  I'm not aware of any entity flag that isn't transparent to syndromes.  If not in vanilla reactions, there should, soon we hope, be a way to make a modded syndrome, i.e. and adventure mode reaction, that sets the stun flag/timer.  That would probably be closer to what you're looking for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: IndigoFenix on November 26, 2013, 03:00:05 am

No, I was just using unconsciousness as an example.  ALL syndromes last 72 times longer in adventure mode than they do in fortress mode.  This is a result of the discrepancy between adventure mode and fort mode timing, an adventure mode day is 72 times longer than a fort mode day (when measured in ticks).  For some reason, Toady decided to make syndrome times be based off of a given percentage of a day's length rather than the number of ticks.  For syndromes that are supposed to only last a few frames, a minor support spell in fort mode can turn into a party-wiper in adventure, especially since interaction recharge time is based on the number of ticks, regardless of mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on November 26, 2013, 12:07:28 pm

Quote from: IndigoFenix on November 25, 2013, 09:57:36 am

Can we make a creature capable of jumping up multiple z-levels and attacking enemies by stomping on their heads??

That particular verb is probably a Nopes. There a whole thing about respecting difference in body sizes and what not and this sounds like it would relate to that, even if your example wasnt about different sized creatures fighting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on November 26, 2013, 02:10:28 pm

Someone besides Toady can probably answer this, but I've read through the devlog and I'm not 100% clear on it.

Will tracking and/or player proximity to alerts be used by e.g. occupation patrols or town guards to associate the player with adv mode killings that did not have witnesses?

ed: Referring to this upcoming release, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on November 26, 2013, 02:28:28 pm

Pretty sure that's a no. There's been no mention of that kind of detective work. So as long as you're not seen, you're presumed innocent. For now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 26, 2013, 05:42:08 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on November 26, 2013, 02:10:28 pm

Someone besides Toady can probably answer this, but I've read through the devlog and I'm not 100% clear on it.

Will tracking and/or player proximity to alerts be used by e.g. occupation patrols or town guards to associate the player with adv mode killings that did not have witnesses?

ed: Referring to this upcoming release, of course.

It has to be directly seen.  Suspicion won't happen until the Thief role (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) gets more attention.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 26, 2013, 06:19:18 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 26, 2013, 05:42:08 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on November 26, 2013, 02:10:28 pm

Someone besides Toady can probably answer this, but I've read through the devlog and I'm not 100% clear on it.

Will tracking and/or player proximity to alerts be used by e.g. occupation patrols or town guards to associate the player with adv mode killings that did not have witnesses?

ed: Referring to this upcoming release, of course.

It has to be directly seen.  Suspicion won't happen until the Thief role (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) gets more attention.

So, can you sneak in at night, steal all the clothes off of the local lord (lol!), stick around, and when the local lord wakes up, you won't be labelled a thief? Or alternatively, steal all the clothes and then get out before dawn.

Although the only way to remove someones stuff from inventory (or pickpocket even) is by attacking an using wrestling to rip the item off of them. Don't know about the new non-lethal combat, but it would help if you did it in a way that did not make you an enemy of your own civ.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on November 27, 2013, 02:27:18 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 26, 2013, 06:19:18 pm

So, can you sneak in at night, steal all the clothes off of the local lord (lol!), stick around, and when the local lord wakes up, you won't be labelled a thief? Or alternatively, steal all the clothes and then get out before dawn.

Although the only way to remove someones stuff from inventory (or pickpocket even) is by attacking an using wrestling to rip the item off of them. Don't know about the new non-lethal combat, but it would help if you did it in a way that did not make you an enemy of your own civ.

I'm pretty sure you can already "steal" whatever you want in adventure mode that's not a $$shopitem$$, so if sleeping people you attack don't remember that you have attacked them in the next release, you could probably strip the Law-Giver of his clothes and walk in wearing them the next day without any untoward effects.

Just make sure the LG isn't a runaway circus clown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: powell on November 27, 2013, 01:39:52 pm

Are you going to work on world gen optimization after the current release arc?  I miss being able to generate thousands of years in 40d without slowing down, I can hardly make it to 200 years in the current release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 27, 2013, 01:52:55 pm

Last night I dreamed that I refreshed the devlog and ThreeToe had posted dozens of updates, dating back to like September, including drawings and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 27, 2013, 02:30:33 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 27, 2013, 01:52:55 pm

Last night I dreamed that I refreshed the devlog and ThreeToe had posted dozens of updates, dating back to like September, including drawings and stuff.

Oh, that's the secret hidden devlog. You have to leftclick on the big Dwarf in the corner, then type "SCAMPSISAGOODKITTY" into the invisible dialogue box. He's got like a courtroom sketch artist illustrating his bugtesting. I particularly liked the "insult duel" update from a few days ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on November 27, 2013, 06:08:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Doesn't attacking (including wrestling) someone currently make you the civ's enemy anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 06:40:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 27, 2013, 06:08:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Doesn't attacking (including wrestling) someone currently make you the civ's enemy anyway?

I know it does, just wanted to check the while sleeping bit, and I thought it might work if nobody saw me. Short of using DFhack, the only way, as an adventurer, to remove items from someone elses inventory is attacking with a wrestling move.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on November 27, 2013, 09:22:11 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 06:40:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 27, 2013, 06:08:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Doesn't attacking (including wrestling) someone currently make you the civ's enemy anyway?

I know it does, just wanted to check the while sleeping bit, and I thought it might work if nobody saw me. Short of using DFhack, the only way, as an adventurer, to remove items from someone else's inventory is attacking with a wrestling move.

Or chopping the relevant hand off. That works too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on November 27, 2013, 10:03:32 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on November 27, 2013, 09:22:11 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 06:40:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 27, 2013, 06:08:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Doesn't attacking (including wrestling) someone currently make you the civ's enemy anyway?

I know it does, just wanted to check the while sleeping bit, and I thought it might work if nobody saw me. Short of using DFhack, the only way, as an adventurer, to remove items from someone else's inventory is attacking with a wrestling move.

Or chopping the relevant hand off. That works too.

Stab in the eye, shattering the skull and tearing the brain, then pick up items and repeat ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 10:54:07 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on November 27, 2013, 10:03:32 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on November 27, 2013, 09:22:11 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 06:40:27 pm

Quote from: Sizik on November 27, 2013, 06:08:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on November 27, 2013, 03:35:22 am

Just tried the wrestle to steal clothes off of someone while sleeping and nobody else can see me, it made me an enemy of the civ :P

Doesn't attacking (including wrestling) someone currently make you the civ's enemy anyway?

I know it does, just wanted to check the while sleeping bit, and I thought it might work if nobody saw me. Short of using DFhack, the only way, as an adventurer, to remove items from someone else's inventory is attacking with a wrestling move.

Or chopping the relevant hand off. That works too.

Stab in the eye, shattering the skull and tearing the brain, then pick up items and repeat ;)

I meant without actually harming the creature you are stealing from.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on November 28, 2013, 07:24:45 am

Quote from: devlog on 11/28/2013

[...]reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now[...]

I assume that reputation will now be either positive or negative. But is anything beyond that planned (at some faraway point in the future)? For example how much you fail or succeed in quests, how many of your followers usually survive, or how many hostile creatures you kill on your quests. So, for example, you could be known as someone who always finishes even the hardest quests, but followers never return alive; meaning you can only get suicidal or confident followers, but almost every entity would entrust you with their problems. Or your reputation portrays you as someone that usually has to retreat from battles and never takes risks, but has a loyal group of followers whose safety is of utmost importance (so, everyone would follow you, but you'll get barely any quests).

Is "reputation" planned to encompass other features apart from "good/bad"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on November 28, 2013, 08:12:41 am

Quote from: CLA on November 28, 2013, 07:24:45 am

Quote from: devlog on 11/28/2013

[...]reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now[...]

I assume that reputation will now be either positive or negative. But is anything beyond that planned (at some faraway point in the future)? For example how much you fail or succeed in quests, how many of your followers usually survive, or how many hostile creatures you kill on your quests. So, for example, you could be known as someone who always finishes even the hardest quests, but followers never return alive; meaning you can only get suicidal or confident followers, but almost every entity would entrust you with their problems. Or your reputation portrays you as someone that usually has to retreat from battles and never takes risks, but has a loyal group of followers whose safety is of utmost importance (so, everyone would follow you, but you'll get barely any quests).

Why won't you get quests if you are overly cautious? I mean it's not like they are paying in advance, they are not even paying after you have done the quest, so why would they care if you loiter around the dragon's lair for a month then pack up?
Plus a lord or some other head honcho might think it's not worth it to send someone who while does the deed  but at too much cost of lives, so he might rather send someone who brings home the men and women.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on November 28, 2013, 08:15:00 am

Quote from: CLA on November 28, 2013, 07:24:45 am

Quote from: devlog on 11/28/2013

[...]reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now[...]

I assume that reputation will now be either positive or negative. But is anything beyond that planned (at some faraway point in the future)? For example how much you fail or succeed in quests, how many of your followers usually survive, or how many hostile creatures you kill on your quests. So, for example, you could be known as someone who always finishes even the hardest quests, but followers never return alive; meaning you can only get suicidal or confident followers, but almost every entity would entrust you with their problems. Or your reputation portrays you as someone that usually has to retreat from battles and never takes risks, but has a loyal group of followers whose safety is of utmost importance (so, everyone would follow you, but you'll get barely any quests).

Is "reputation" planned to encompass other features apart from "good/bad"?

The following passage from DFtalk 19 strongly supports that we'll get a far more intricate reputation system at some point:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html

Toady:   Yeah. There has to be punishment, and there has to be punishment for sitting there throwing rocks for 90 years or whatever people do to start their game. I guess you just become known for that, or something, and your heroic reputation would bleed away, they'd kind of forget that night troll that you killed. Maybe they think that it kind of touched your mind, maybe the night troll hit you in the head or something. You came back and you throw rocks and skulk around all the time. You've been touched by darkness, or whatever.
Rainseeker:   That would be really funny if you had someone observe you training, just the same thing over and over again. Spread rumors about you.
Toady:   Especially if you were wrestling with badgers, or whatever. They'd just be scratching their heads. Maybe someone would bring you a badger in a cage next time you come to town and just say, 'Here's our gift to you for all the great things that you've done.'
Rainseeker:   Yeah, if the game kept track of the things you liked to do and then responded to that, I would die of laughter, because that's just the game's way of winking at you and saying, 'You're stupid. That's not how real people behave.' I love it.
Toady:   It's all about role playing. What role have you played and so on.

That is, if we'll be getting reputations for badger wrestling and stone throwing, it's safe to assume any other reasonably conceivable idea will make it in too :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on November 28, 2013, 08:55:59 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 27, 2013, 01:52:55 pm

Last night I dreamed that I refreshed the devlog and ThreeToe had posted dozens of updates, dating back to like September, including drawings and stuff.

I'm quite upset with the lack of devlogs. I can't judge them because I dont know how far back ThreeToe's troubles began, but this trend of sparse devlogs started long before the remaining itens list. I miss the old days when we had almost daily devlogs, sometimes with pictures and videos.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on November 28, 2013, 09:44:29 am

Quote from: thvaz on November 28, 2013, 08:55:59 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 27, 2013, 01:52:55 pm

Last night I dreamed that I refreshed the devlog and ThreeToe had posted dozens of updates, dating back to like September, including drawings and stuff.

I'm quite upset with the lack of devlogs. I can't judge them because I dont know how far back ThreeToe's troubles began, but this trend of sparse devlogs started long before the remaining itens list. I miss the old days when we had almost daily devlogs, sometimes with pictures and videos.

What old days are you thinking of?  What I remember is that stretches of about 4 or 5 days between dev logs are the standard.  Every day updates are reserved for the early planning stages and when toady is doing especially interesting testing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 28, 2013, 09:59:57 am

Quote from: thvaz on November 28, 2013, 08:55:59 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 27, 2013, 01:52:55 pm

Last night I dreamed that I refreshed the devlog and ThreeToe had posted dozens of updates, dating back to like September, including drawings and stuff.

I'm quite upset with the lack of devlogs. I can't judge them because I dont know how far back ThreeToe's troubles began, but this trend of sparse devlogs started long before the remaining itens list. I miss the old days when we had almost daily devlogs, sometimes with pictures and videos.

There is one today, and understandably he would be busy lately and the holidays are coming up.

Quote from: Toady One

Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

Aw, so no more grabbing lots of companions to use as cannon fodder for mummies before going into the catacombs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 28, 2013, 10:06:35 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 28, 2013, 09:59:57 am

Quote from: Toady One

Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

Aw, so no more grabbing lots of companions to use as cannon fodder for mummies before going into the catacombs?

I don't think the amount of companions was limited, you just have to take more care of your reputation to get there. And random merchants and farmers probably won't be quite so eager to join up with you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 28, 2013, 10:45:28 am

Quote from: Trif on November 28, 2013, 10:06:35 am

Quote from: smjjames on November 28, 2013, 09:59:57 am

Quote from: Toady One

Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

Aw, so no more grabbing lots of companions to use as cannon fodder for mummies before going into the catacombs?

I don't think the amount of companions was limited, you just have to take more care of your reputation to get there. And random merchants and farmers probably won't be quite so eager to join up with you.

I grab soldiers from the keep and off the city walls as they are much more likely to survive.

Quote from: Tpady One

and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions

So, will we be able to ask just where the catacombs are?

Another questionthought (yes, I just made that word up) on companions:
Will your adventurers companions be less likely to run off and attack the nearest wildlife, be it a rabbit or an elephant? That's a particular annoyance that I (and lots of other people I'm sure) have with adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on November 28, 2013, 11:38:04 am

Quote from: devlog

11/28/2013 Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

I wasn't expecting the dragging in this release.  I wonder how it works -- physically dragging, or more like forcing them to join your group?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 28, 2013, 12:44:53 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 28, 2013, 11:38:04 am

Quote from: devlog

11/28/2013 Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

I wasn't expecting the dragging in this release.  I wonder how it works -- physically dragging, or more like forcing them to join your group?

I'm pretty sure Toady means it figuratively, rather than literally. I guess it's a forced guide "agreement."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on November 28, 2013, 03:33:48 pm

question for the last twittering: Will snow cover the branches of trees in winter? Icicles when it rains?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on November 28, 2013, 07:59:51 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 28, 2013, 12:44:53 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 28, 2013, 11:38:04 am

Quote from: devlog

11/28/2013 Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

I wasn't expecting the dragging in this release.  I wonder how it works -- physically dragging, or more like forcing them to join your group?

I'm pretty sure Toady means it figuratively, rather than literally. I guess it's a forced guide "agreement."

Given that he then mentions his concerns for the lethality of doing that, I'd guess that we're going to have an option to ask for directions, and then if we want we will also be able to request they lead us there, which they may or may not accept.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on November 28, 2013, 10:00:50 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on November 28, 2013, 07:59:51 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on November 28, 2013, 12:44:53 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on November 28, 2013, 11:38:04 am

Quote from: devlog

11/28/2013 Toady One Continuing along! Mainly stuff to do with the revised idea of a heroic reputation and reputations in general (which won't always be heroic now that you can start random fist fights with people), and quite a bit of amplification to asking for directions, including being able to drag somebody along with you, although that still isn't strictly necessary (we are worried about the lethality of that job and how often you might need replacements, so well-travelled individuals can direct you to sites and also join up if they want to).

I wasn't expecting the dragging in this release.  I wonder how it works -- physically dragging, or more like forcing them to join your group?

I'm pretty sure Toady means it figuratively, rather than literally. I guess it's a forced guide "agreement."

Given that he then mentions his concerns for the lethality of doing that, I'd guess that we're going to have an option to ask for directions, and then if we want we will also be able to request they lead us there, which they may or may not accept.

And if they don't, just grab their arm or something, assuming non lethal combat is what works here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on November 29, 2013, 07:22:21 pm

Do like minds attract now? Like if your reputation is -20, will NPCs whose reputTions are also -20 be more likey to follow you than a NPCs who's reputation is blank? Or more morally upstanding?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 29, 2013, 09:44:30 pm

Quote from: DVNO on November 29, 2013, 07:22:21 pm

Do like minds attract now? Like if your reputation is -20, will NPCs whose reputTions are also -20 be more likey to follow you than a NPCs who's reputation is blank? Or more morally upstanding?

Isn't that how it works already? If you're at the beginning of an adventure, you can get villagers to follow you and experienced soldiers will make fun of you. But if you have a heroic reputation, you can only get soldiers because villagers are too awestruck. And prisoners ignore reputation and always join you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on November 29, 2013, 09:49:02 pm

No, right now, you can get guardsmen to help you out from the very beginning, but only later are you able to recruit normal townsfolk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on November 29, 2013, 10:07:15 pm

Well, most guardsmen, but not all. I've definitely met some who were all "I'm supposed to join you? You can join me instead" or something like that. I'm guessing they have some historical figure kills. And you're right, the citizens are more willing to join up if you're killed a few monsters, but if your reputation is high enough to do quests for civ leaders and such, the peasants will just say that they're unfit to brave danger with you. Then you have to take soldiers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on November 30, 2013, 01:15:28 am

Sorry, What really ment is, do evil NPCs like to associate with evil players, and vice versa? Does this reputation system create preferences?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on November 30, 2013, 01:53:14 pm

Given that adventurers will be able to stuff children in bags when acting as freelance snatchers, will we be able to stuff other entities in bags such as unconscious kobolds or cats? Am I even correct in assuming that that's how snatching in adventurer mode will work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on November 30, 2013, 02:13:55 pm

Quote from: MrWillsauce on November 30, 2013, 01:53:14 pm

Given that adventurers will be able to stuff children in bags when acting as freelance snatchers, will we be to stuff other entities in bags such as unconscious kobolds or cats? Am I even correct in assuming that that's how snatching in adventurer mode will work?

Child snatching should be quite a ways off yet. It's unlikely that Toady worked out many details for it yet. It would be reasonable to assume that it'll become possible to stuff living creatures into bags at some point though - it's too common an occurrence in fiction not to happen. The following from the old dev page kind of plays into that as well:

Quote

Req236, ADVENTURE MODE BUILDING INTERACTIONS, (Future): Pickup and topple furniture. Plant seeds in the mud. Use the furnaces. Break windows and knock down supports. Using wells. Use siege engines. Deactivate, dismantle or set off traps. Use animal traps. Use archery targets and get feed back. Lock yourself or others up in cages and chains. Tie creatures up with rope. Interact with impaled players. Lock doors, push doors open briefly so you can see out before they close, secret doors, close doors, slam doors on vermin, lockpicking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on November 30, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

Thanks to Trif, Footkerchief, Putnam, VGray, MrWiggles, Knight Otu, HugoLuman, Dwarfu, Manveru Taurënér and anybody I missed for helping out this time.  Please check just after your posted question if it doesn't appear below.  It was probably answered there by one of the above forum-goers.

Quote from: mastahcheese

With the Goblins having "Troll shearing pits" in the towers, what would happen if you modded the game to put in a different race? Would we have empty pits, a lack of pits, pits filled with whatever shearable animals are available, or what?

I think it uses shearable creatures, though it could default to any "monster" pet if I forgot a check at any point.  I think the presence of the pits depends on the world gen economic activities, as with the human towns.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady; when we're assigned to find targets in the sewers, will they leave trails from recent voyages to the surface that we can follow back to them?

The sewer dwellers don't have any voyages that they make right now.  The city criminals and sewer animal people haven't really gotten any attention, and probably won't until we get around to the thief role.  We have roving bandits and armies and night creatures and famous predators running about.

Quote

Quote from: Aseaharu

About how large are armies going to be, and are they segmented into squads or something?

Quote from: Putnam

That's why he came up with squads way back in the 0.31.01 devcycle in the first place.

Quote from: Footkerchief

Army size will probably be on the same level as the city populations.

It depends on the size of the civ that sent them out.  I've seen more than a thousand, which is a bit unhealthy when they are clumped during travel.  They don't trail out into longer lines depending on their size yet.  Once they arrive at their destinations they break into smaller units or integrate into the town.  It isn't fully integrated with the dwarf mode system yet, since there's not enough going on yet to take advantage of it.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Did you ever get around to finishing the cave and kobold sites, or is that going to be left out for this release?

Probably won't make it since everything else has taken so long.

Quote from: LordBaal

Toady we will be able to tell our companions (permanent or insurrection ones) which weapons and items equip and use?

There's still a stray note for it in there but I can't guarantee anything.  When companion orders are run through their last pass, I'll know.  I'd like to do it but something unforeseen and slowing about it might have me pass on by.

Quote from: Robsoie

In regards to all the additions that will be for the Adventure mod, what will become of the performance for the Adventure mode, will the game run much better due to some bugfixes and optimisations or should we expect roughly the same and possibly worse ?

I'd expect it to be roughly the same, barring any stupid new announcement/pathing etc. bug that causes lag which might come up and be fixed.  I think the largest issue is still the 3D vision code, which is why you move faster indoors.

Quote

Quote from: Gashcozokon

I guess with new non-lethal combat system, could you find a lake to repeatedly 'push' cohorts into until they stop floundering?

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, can we punch our companions in the face without them drawing a blade on us? Just what will they do when we punch them in the face?

Party members are not happy to be subjected to combat of any kind, but yeah, you can punch your buddies in the face without them drawing a blade on you.  They'll fight back until somebody gives up.  Currently, they don't cancel their arrangement with you, but that has a chance of changing before the release.  The proper behavior should probably depend on the values/personalities as much as anything, and when I do my final pass on village-to-village stuff, we may get a small amount of this.

Quote from: PDF urist master

what features planned in DF2013 development log still hasn't been added yet?

I'm not doing any sort of countdown or public enumeration this time.  It always turns out badly in the long run.

Quote

Quote from: smjjames

Will fish populations no longer become permanently extinct (as opposed to just locally extinct)? Sure, they can be overfished, but if you don't fish for a few years, will the vermin fish restock themselves?

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, when animal populations are being restocked, is there a specific cap to the maximum population for that species, such as capping it at the numbers you can find exported to a world_sites_and_pops file, or can the population grow beyond that to a point? For instance, if a region immediately after world generation had exactly 8 moose, and you killed 4 of them and then allowed them to repopulate, would the population raise back up to 8 and then remain there, or could the population continue on climbing?

If the population can rise above that listed immediately after worldgen, then what determines how large that population can grow? Do predator populations (including civilizations) in the region affect other species' population caps?

Also, do tags like LITTERSIZE and other reproduction-related tags that take effect in fortress mode affect how quickly region populations refresh themselves?

Quote from: Heph

Toady did you respect the genetics of the remaining animals to seed the new generations? Will migrating animals seep in from other far out places? Say if a village kills the local wolf-population you get wolves from the outside?

Yeah, any wilderness population will replenish -- fish, larger roaming critters, other vermin...  People had a discussion about critters not showing up at all, and that's a different issue which'll be in the giant stack as we start the bug fixing after the release.

Right now, it uses the cap of the original pop after world gen.  There isn't any kind of food web or migration or evolution in wilderness populations at this time, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to control rates.  Until I have more information, it would be pointless.  The exception is that any breeding that happens in play in the local area will be accounted for and can exceed the cap until deaths bring it back in line, just because of how the counting works when creatures are offloaded.

Keeping track of genetics for individual animals wouldn't be possible for technical reasons, and even doing it for each wilderness population would be trouble (the current breed system for entities is okay, but I think it would be a memory/speed problem if I extended it everywhere).

Quote from: King Mir

Will dwarves, goblins, and modded subterranean civilizations have the same day/night sleep schedule as humans in adventure mode?

Yeah, intelligent creatures still haven't gotten even the basic respect of activity tags that animals have, in most/all cases.

Quote from: MeTekillot

With the way excessive blood-loss and loss of critical bodyparts causing instantaneous death, will any proposed magic in far-future builds have the power to bring the dead back to life as they were? Is there going to be a stage of critical injury that is 'only mostly dead without magickal assistance' and 'completely dead, bar none, even with magic'?

It's hard to say what'll happen in the far-future.  We're for generating magic systems that mimic common effects, and the injury system is already diverse enough that the kinds of healing effects available will imply the different stages you mentioned.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

What are the current possibilities as far as interaction with retired forts in Adventurer mode goes? If our adventurer is from a civilization current at war with the fort in question, will (s)he get shot at and not considered a nice guest? Can we pick stuff up lying around without causing the entire fortress to turn on us?

You can chat with all of your old dwarves.  Their military status at retire might determine if they can join you -- the way you can switch them on and off duty is different from the more dedicated roles of adventure mode, so it could be a little fuzzy how it ends up.  Yeah, the general rules for stopping intruders apply to everybody, though your civilian dwarves won't do that.  There aren't any new theft rules yet.  If they even care about stealing from stores anymore, it'll matter when you steal stuff from the depot but not anywhere else.

Quote from: smjjames

Also, while I realize that the release is only months away, could we have some screenshots of the new dwarven sites? I know there were screenshots released of the goblin and (sortof for) elven sites, but not sure if screenshots were made for the dwarven sites. The hill dwarf sites sound like they would be a cross between hobbit burrows and hamlets.

Thought while typing: Will the problem of broken trans cavern-level passageways be fixed or at least minimized? They are at least common enough that you will eventually find one that does connect all the way through, but more often than not, they break somewhere, usually at the floor of the next cavern layer.

I don't have anything new I'm happy enough with yet for screenshots.

I'm not sure what the current state of the cavern-to-cavern ramps is, but with climbing now, you can often overcome breaks that involve open air somewhere, so there's that at least.

Quote from: smjjames

Say the only entrance to your fort is a trap lined hallway and you visit the retired fort and you are friendly with the forts civ (whether you are of that civ or not), will you not have to worry about the weapon traps or will you still be at risk of triggering them?

You don't have any extra knowledge of things.  That system is an abstraction in fort mode, and we haven't added any sort of talking about traps in adventure mode.  Adding traps to the entrance isn't inviting.

Quote from: Knight Otu

The gods' names in these two images are titles, rather than proper names. Is that something that we can force to happen/not to happen, or is it random for each entity?

Each different type of object has a different naming scheme, and it's mostly hard-coded now (you can do a small amount with symbols in the entity raws and with spheres in the creature raws if I remember).  Like many language-based features, the lack of an overall basic grammar rewrite has stalled forward movement on content and moddability.  It'd be nice to get to that, but the entire thing is sort of tangential to everything else.

Quote from: IndigoFenix

AI pathfinding aside, how moddable will jumping be?  How about vampires that gain the ability to leap over tall buildings in a single bound?

On a semi-related note, when and how will adventure mode syndrome timing be fixed?  It's a problem when a short-term syndrome in fort mode (say, an interaction that stuns the target for 10 ticks) gets lengthened out to last an entire battle when a creature is affected by it in adventure mode - and it isn't possible to make short-term interactions in adventure mode, because the shortest unit of time is 72 ticks.

There isn't much in the way of jump modding at this point.  I'm not sure how to do it reliably yet, and I want to take a stab at jumping AI before I mush it up any more.

I don't have a timeline for most things, and I'm not sure what the solution will be.  There will always be a conflict between adv mode and dwarf mode timing with effects (because the dwarf mode combat moves are so unrealistically slow), and every effect will probably require an indicator about which way it is supposed to be treated (whether it is supposed to use day time or combat time).  Once there is such an indicator, it should be pretty simple to dilate the durations by a factor depending on the mode, but there will no doubt be complications.

Quote from: powell

Are you going to work on world gen optimization after the current release arc?

My understanding of the current slowness is that it relates to all the economic stuff being pushed around, and that started with the aborted caravan release scheme.  I was promising moving armies for longer, so I'm happy that's finally happening, but I'll have to loop back around to the tracking of objects in world gen at some point.  I have no idea exactly when that'll be, though.

Quote from: CLA

Is "reputation" planned to encompass other features apart from "good/bad"?

Yeah, even in the current release, your hero status is a separate variable from anything to do with being an enemy, and in the next release, there'll be a few more variables with more-or-less independent numbers.  So your adventurer can simultaneously have a reputation as a hero for rescuing several abducted children and a reputation for being a violent jackass that beats people up all the time.  It's not exactly complex character building, but we have started on the long road away from +/-.  The reactions of people are simple as it stands, but different people filter known reputations differently based on their position and personality...  the emphasis is on "simple" for now though, he he he.

Quote from: smjjames

So, will we be able to ask just where the catacombs are?

Another questionthought (yes, I just made that word up) on companions:
Will your adventurers companions be less likely to run off and attack the nearest wildlife, be it a rabbit or an elephant? That's a particular annoyance that I (and lots of other people I'm sure) have with adventure mode.

There's the matter of hearing about things in the first place.  You can ask after certain kinds of trouble and then ask about locations and specific critters, and you'll get general directions for buildings in the same town.  They don't know how to do road maps yet or directions that involve any kind of looping, but it is easier to get along to the sort of thing you want to get along to.

Yeah, with the massive rewrites of the conflict code, you'll be treated to an entirely new set of undiscovered targeting annoyances now.  It should be fun.

Quote from: Heph

question for the last twittering: Will snow cover the branches of trees in winter? Icicles when it rains?

No icicles yet, but we have snowy trees.

Quote from: DVNO

do evil NPCs like to associate with evil players, and vice versa? Does this reputation system create preferences?

We don't really have recognized evil interactions yet (you can't go off and be a goblin snatcher in this release, for example), though we're hoping to get some meat in along the village/bandit leader + ruffian/hero/fighting reputations spectrums before the release, and not all town/bandit leaders will have the same methods.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on November 30, 2013, 10:43:31 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 01, 2013, 12:16:29 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MeTekillot on December 01, 2013, 01:50:19 am

We love you, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 01, 2013, 02:00:47 am

Well, DF2014 borderline confirmed now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 01, 2013, 07:51:21 am

Thanks Toady!

When giving Megabeasts intelligence and schemes comes into play, do you have any plans for Forgotten Beasts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 01, 2013, 08:08:03 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 01, 2013, 07:51:21 am

When giving Megabeasts intelligence comes into play, do you have any plans for Forgotten Beasts?

Similarly, will it be possible to play as a megabeast or another historical creature? Minotaurs, demons and Cacame come to mind...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 01, 2013, 10:24:49 am

Thanks for the replies, Toady.  *twiddles thumbs and wastes time with other games expectantly*

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 01, 2013, 02:00:47 am

Well, DF2014 borderline confirmed now.

Blasphemy!  Though it does seem more and more likely.  It's got to the point in my life where, to be honest, the next DF is the only thing I need for Christmas.  In my stocking I hope to find a CD with the latest DF burned on it, from Santa.  I've gotta keep that dream alive.  8)  Once the "main list" is done... is that it, or is there more stuff to do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 01, 2013, 10:53:49 am

Quote from: Toady One on November 30, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Say the only entrance to your fort is a trap lined hallway and you visit the retired fort and you are friendly with the forts civ (whether you are of that civ or not), will you not have to worry about the weapon traps or will you still be at risk of triggering them?

You don't have any extra knowledge of things.  That system is an abstraction in fort mode, and we haven't added any sort of talking about traps in adventure mode.  Adding traps to the entrance isn't inviting.

I pretty much only play fort mode (though have been doing adventure mode recently) and I always make a single entrance, sounds like you need to play Fort mode more Toady One. :D As for the question, I get that there is no advanced knowledge, but will the traps trigger on the fort inhabitants as well? I'm just trying to figure out if I'll have to worry about the traps if I'm friendly to the civ. I feel like my question didn't get completely answered, but guess I'll just have to adapt and make adventurer friendly entrances in the next version if I want adventurers to visit the fort once we see how the whole retiring a fort works with adventurers vs traps that you have placed in the fort.

I wonder if anybody else gets the core of what I was trying to ask, but we'll find out when it gets released anyhow.

Quote from: toady one

Quote from: smjjames

So, will we be able to ask just where the catacombs are?

Another questionthought (yes, I just made that word up) on companions:
Will your adventurers companions be less likely to run off and attack the nearest wildlife, be it a rabbit or an elephant? That's a particular annoyance that I (and lots of other people I'm sure) have with adventure mode.

There's the matter of hearing about things in the first place.  You can ask after certain kinds of trouble and then ask about locations and specific critters, and you'll get general directions for buildings in the same town.  They don't know how to do road maps yet or directions that involve any kind of looping, but it is easier to get along to the sort of thing you want to get along to.

I wasn't expecting a road map or anything like that (though the temple location should show up in fast travel when you show structures), was just wondering if we'll get pointed in the direction of the catacombs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 01, 2013, 10:58:07 am

Quote from: Helgoland on December 01, 2013, 08:08:03 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 01, 2013, 07:51:21 am

When giving Megabeasts intelligence comes into play, do you have any plans for Forgotten Beasts?

Similarly, will it be possible to play as a megabeast or another historical creature? Minotaurs, demons and Cacame come to mind...

Cacame, or in other words a historical figure, is planned with no timeline. At a guess that goes for megabeasts as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 01, 2013, 11:05:20 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 01, 2013, 07:51:21 am

When giving Megabeasts intelligence comes into play, do you have any plans for Forgotten Beasts?

If you mean the [INTELLIGENT] token, you can mod that in now. Having [INTELLIGENT] and [CAN_LEARN] FBs would be scary.

I saw in a devlog several weeks back that you had fixed cavern populations going extinct in adventure mode (YAY!), I'm wondering if it would now be possible to encounter FBs while roaming the caverns in the next version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 01, 2013, 11:29:36 am

The troll shearing pits have captured my curiosity, so Are all the named sapients such as Trolls, Gnomes, Troglodytes and Merfolk higher up on the development lists then random animal people? Will fleshing out independent civs or tribes be on the table, especially if they correspond with other arcs such as the sea?

By the way, I'm talking about Megabeast plots and throwing around of weight. My questions are more on the lines of whether forgotten beasts will rule antmen civ's much as clowns do above, or whether Megabeasts could actively conspire to become forgotten beasts by lying low and torching histories, say. Thanks, I'll edit it in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 01, 2013, 08:23:12 pm

Thanks Toady for taking time out of your day to answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 01, 2013, 08:56:46 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 01, 2013, 11:29:36 am

The troll shearing pits have captured my curiosity, so Are all the named sapients such as trolls, gnomes and troglodytes higher up on the development lists then random animal people? Will fleshing out independent civs or tribes be on the table?

By the way, I'm talking about Megabeast plots and throwing around of weight. My questions are more on the lines of whether forgotten beasts will rule antmen civ's much as clowns do above, or whether Megabeasts could actively conspire to become forgotten beasts by lying low and torching histories, say. Thanks, I'll edit it in.

That fleshening probably wont happen in this release. As far as I understood, Toady said that it has taken too long, and caverns/kobold sites haven't been touched yet, but they're already on the list, so maybe animal men (which are lower in priority) might not get a better social structure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 02, 2013, 12:07:29 pm

Quote from: Valtam on December 01, 2013, 08:56:46 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 01, 2013, 11:29:36 am

The troll shearing pits have captured my curiosity, so Are all the named sapients such as trolls, gnomes and troglodytes higher up on the development lists then random animal people? Will fleshing out independent civs or tribes be on the table?

By the way, I'm talking about Megabeast plots and throwing around of weight. My questions are more on the lines of whether forgotten beasts will rule antmen civ's much as clowns do above, or whether Megabeasts could actively conspire to become forgotten beasts by lying low and torching histories, say. Thanks, I'll edit it in.

That fleshening probably wont happen in this release. As far as I understood, Toady said that it has taken too long, and caverns/kobold sites haven't been touched yet, but they're already on the list, so maybe animal men (which are lower in priority) might not get a better social structure.

Don't worry, i know that. Just seems to have been coming up recently, and bear in mind I'm asking about everything but animal men.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on December 02, 2013, 11:00:30 pm

AND another devblog!! Praise the Miners!  Thanks Toady!

Also, I've seen enough film noir to know that the violent offender might get you where it was you thought you needed to be going, but it might not turn out the way you expected it to.  Good catch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on December 03, 2013, 08:11:57 am

Quote from: devlog

people recommending violent criminals as guides, [...] rulers holding court in taverns, constant tearing down of keeps and mead halls in an alternating fashion year by year

Pffhaha, sounds like the Wild West arrived in Dwarf Fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 03, 2013, 10:47:14 am

Quote from: Toady One 12-3-2013 Devlog

The whole world will be a sock outside during a siege.

Well there's my quote of the day! Think I'll sig it, even.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 03, 2013, 10:48:04 am

Quote from: CLA on December 03, 2013, 08:11:57 am

Quote from: devlog

people recommending violent criminals as guides, [...] rulers holding court in taverns, constant tearing down of keeps and mead halls in an alternating fashion year by year

Pffhaha, sounds like the Wild West arrived in Dwarf Fortress.

Having violent criminals as guides and holding court in taverns, yes, the constant tearing down of keeps and mead halls, no.

 Will the new Dwarven, Elven, and Goblin sites have meadhalls/taverns or the equivalent of them? Not counting conquered human towns. Also, will the Dwarven sites have temples or equivalent?

I don't see the Elves as having temples, though maybe they'd have a sacred grove or something and the Goblins don't follow any deities anyway.

Dwarven beerhalls/taverns are a must have. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 03, 2013, 10:52:07 am

I'm already picturing, you send Urist McRelief to find some help, he returns running, from a dragon, a undead one.... EXTRA FUN!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 03, 2013, 12:36:24 pm

That was a quick new devlog.

Quote from: smjjames on December 03, 2013, 10:48:04 am

Will the new Dwarven, Elven, and Goblin sites have meadhalls/taverns or the equivalent of them? Not counting conquered human towns. Also, will the Dwarven sites have temples or equivalent?

I don't see the Elves as having temples, though maybe they'd have a sacred grove or something and the Goblins don't follow any deities anyway.

Dwarven beerhalls/taverns are a must have. :D

Dwarven hillocks, and presumably deep sites, will have the fake taverns where drunks are gathering. Elven sites likely won't have temples in any case - force-worshipping town-dwelling civs do not build temples right now. Goblins might get temples - they sometimes pick up religions from their abductees, and demon lords get worshipped as well (they used to have temples back when they had sites, too).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 03, 2013, 02:30:32 pm

Quote from: devlog

12/03/2013 Toady One I handled very basic companion orders today, in conversation and in practice. You can just tell them to wait in a place or follow you again, but the framework is the same one already used by every army, so if there were any point to issuing orders having your buddies patrol an area or occupy a city or something on their own right now, it would just take adding the conversation choices for it to be done. I might get some more out of the system for this time when I finalize site-to-site fighting, but it won't be interesting until you are able to run your own group out of your own site, which is planned for some release after this one. The same stuff will also work for fort-mode dwarves once you can send them off map, and it was nice to get the very first taste of that sort of interaction today, even if it is still down the road. It's fun to imagine your little dwarfy critters off on their own with even less control over their shenanigans, and what sort of trouble they could bring back to your doorstep, he he he. The whole world will be a sock outside during a siege. In any case, back in current release land, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to give your companions items in a day or so, so that's good.

Really cool stuff.  I'm curious whether there's any disobedience mechanism yet for the companion orders, and whether they can disobey without full-on leaving your group.  This release is creating so much fertile ground for personality-based storytelling -- in this case, a stew of intersecting values (trust, patience, loyalty) and circumstances (the promised reward, opportunities for betrayal). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 03, 2013, 02:37:07 pm

Wow, three logs in three days?
Maybe DF2013 will still happen after all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 03, 2013, 02:49:57 pm

Nah, see, whenever the post count is high, code must be going slowly (usually), or at least is on a not so dense phase.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 03, 2013, 09:22:50 pm

Toady, will we have general commands to tell all of our followers at once to stay put etc., or does each companion need to be given orders separately?

Will companions that have been ordered to stay put immediately run off to chase down the first hostile they spot, or will they hold position defensively?

Also, I can already see how companion groups using the army organization system can be immediately exploited for hacking to forcefully occupy a city. Whether there's actually any benefit to it or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist McVoyager on December 04, 2013, 12:34:56 am

To the person worried about trapped entrances . . . Taverns and Trade Depots are supposed to go OUTSIDE the Fortress.   :P Ideally for your Dwarves, this is where your stinking, foreign wanderer would stay. The main Fortress is for locals and migrants, which, sadly, you cannot be as an Adventurer. Yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 04, 2013, 01:09:02 am

Quote from: Urist McVoyager on December 04, 2013, 12:34:56 am

To the person worried about trapped entrances . . . Taverns and Trade Depots are supposed to go OUTSIDE the Fortress.   :P Ideally for your Dwarves, this is where your stinking, foreign wanderer would stay. The main Fortress is for locals and migrants, which, sadly, you cannot be as an Adventurer. Yet.

I immediately imagined a standard stubby dwarf saying "N'wah!".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 04, 2013, 02:51:24 am

Quote from: Toady One on November 30, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

I don't have anything new I'm happy enough with yet for screenshots.

we're hoping to get some meat in along the village/bandit leader + ruffian/hero/fighting reputations spectrums before the release, and not all town/bandit leaders will have the same methods.

Well, at least it still has a solid chance of coming out before 2015.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on December 04, 2013, 06:41:54 am

The wait has hit the eighteen-month mark today, so...we'll see. Personally, I'm optimistic for late January or early February.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 04, 2013, 07:10:17 am

With cool features like follower commands and inventory management going in I could wait a whole lot longer for the next release.  I think I need to read the new features document again, 18 months is a long time to remember what's gonna be in the next version...   ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ozyma on December 04, 2013, 07:49:56 am

Is there any possibility of Nobility succession for fortress mode in the next release?

Being stuck in noble limbo really sucks the fun out of the game for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 04, 2013, 09:27:43 am

Quote from: ozyma on December 04, 2013, 07:49:56 am

Is there any possibility of Nobility succession for fortress mode in the next release?

Being stuck in noble limbo really sucks the fun out of the game for me.

I believe he said somewhere that they will.

Quote from: Urist McVoyager on December 04, 2013, 12:34:56 am

To the person worried about trapped entrances . . . Taverns and Trade Depots are supposed to go OUTSIDE the Fortress.   :P Ideally for your Dwarves, this is where your stinking, foreign wanderer would stay. The main Fortress is for locals and migrants, which, sadly, you cannot be as an Adventurer. Yet.

I wasn't complaining, I was trying to find out how it would work for adventurers vs retired forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 04, 2013, 10:17:05 am

 How moddable will climbing abilities be in this release? Like are there tokens that say that they can climb or how well they can climb? I'm sure climbing will eventually be fully moddable, but just wondering at the current state of being able to mod climbing into other creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 04, 2013, 10:24:01 am

Toady posted some raws earlier.

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gaits:

Humans, for example, have


[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]


which goes to


[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS]
   GAIT:type:name:full speed:build up time:turning max:start speed:energy use
      use NO_BUILD_UP if you jump immediately to full speed
      these optional flags go at the end:
         LAYERS_SLOW - fat/muscle layers slow the movement (muscle-slowing counter-acted by strength bonus)
         STRENGTH - strength attribute can speed/slow movement
         AGILITY - agility attribute can speed/slow movement
         STEALTH_SLOWS:<n> - n is percentage slowed
         it would be interesting to allow quirky attributes (like mental stats), but they aren't supported yet
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Sprint:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Run:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Jog:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Walk:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Stroll:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Faster Climb:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Fast Climb:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Climb:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Slow Climb:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Maximum Swim Speed:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Faster Swim:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Fast Swim:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Swim:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Slow Swim:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Creeping Swim:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Faster Crawl:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Fast Crawl:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Crawl:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Slow Crawl:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 04, 2013, 10:32:48 am

Oh, I missed the climbing gaits somehow, thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 04, 2013, 12:05:07 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 30, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

I don't have anything new I'm happy enough with yet for screenshots.

we're hoping to get some meat in along the village/bandit leader + ruffian/hero/fighting reputations spectrums before the release, and not all town/bandit leaders will have the same methods.

Given all the development of leaders of small groups, are you considering making it possible for them to be independent civ's? Tribes, petty kings and all that jazz.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 04, 2013, 01:26:19 pm

This latest devlog XD

If you want a picture of the future, imagine you playing Dwarf Fortress. Forever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 04, 2013, 01:41:18 pm

Quote from: ozyma on December 04, 2013, 07:49:56 am

Is there any possibility of Nobility succession for fortress mode in the next release?

Being stuck in noble limbo really sucks the fun out of the game for me.

Short answer, it's in for next release, but things get tricky if the replacement is off-site. Word of Toad.

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2013, 10:23:19 pm

Quote

Quote from: Babylon

With the new inheritance rules will Baron etc and King be replaced in a fortress if they die?

Quote from: Mr S

On a related note, if we get this type of familial inheritance to on-site nobles, will off-site family be suitable candidates?  If so, will we be guaranteed their arrival on-site within X migration waves, or a special migration wave?

There will be a replacement, but it won't necessarily be somebody in your fortress at the time -- if it's a family position and the next person in line is off somewhere else, they'd get the nod, but this leads to the off-site problem.  I haven't addressed this.  I can't guarantee their arrival, since things can be complicated by their other responsibilities.  It's the sort of thing that should make the game interesting, but I'm not sure when I'll handle each of the interfering cases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ggobs on December 04, 2013, 04:07:40 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 04, 2013, 01:26:19 pm

If you want a picture of the future, imagine you playing Dwarf Fortress. Forever.

sig!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kishmond on December 04, 2013, 08:56:15 pm

Dwarf Fortress: The World is Your Sock

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on December 04, 2013, 10:25:12 pm

Quote from: Kishmond on December 04, 2013, 08:56:15 pm

Dwarf Fortress: The World is Your Sock (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Clothing#The_great_sock_obsession)

Sigged! :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on December 04, 2013, 11:45:49 pm

In reference to the new post about trading; do the dwarves trade in dwarf mode too?

Also, in adventure mode, will your companions be liable to trade away important items for food while with you?

Interesting situations.
Like your fellow travelers are weighed down with food after trading away all of their equipment that you gifted them.
Or that in dwarf fortress, the fellow who made an artifact trades it in for everyone in the fortresses stuff.
Well that's unlikely given that they would be one on one trades but...LOL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 05, 2013, 12:14:10 am

Quote from: Meansdarling on December 04, 2013, 11:45:49 pm

In reference to the new post about trading; do the dwarves trade in dwarf mode too?

Also, in adventure mode, will your companions be liable to trade away important items for food while with you?

I may be wrong, but I think this feature is only for player characters in adventurer mode.  So dwarves won't do it in fortress mode and your companions in adventurer mode still lack the agency to initiate trades by themselves.  Possibly.  I want to know, if I give my buddies a bunch of rocks to hold, will they give them back for free?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on December 05, 2013, 12:14:58 am

It'd be neat if they did though. But I could live with it being just player agency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 05, 2013, 12:16:30 am

Sure it'll come along sometime!  In the new release people will actually be doing stuff in adventurer mode which is a first.  So I'm sure they'll be trading away soon^tm.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 05, 2013, 02:22:51 am

Quote from: hermes on December 05, 2013, 12:14:10 am

Quote from: Meansdarling on December 04, 2013, 11:45:49 pm

In reference to the new post about trading; do the dwarves trade in dwarf mode too?

Also, in adventure mode, will your companions be liable to trade away important items for food while with you?

I may be wrong, but I think this feature is only for player characters in adventurer mode.  So dwarves won't do it in fortress mode and your companions in adventurer mode still lack the agency to initiate trades by themselves.  Possibly.  I want to know, if I give my buddies a bunch of rocks to hold, will they give them back for free?

If you're giving out rocks, why limit yourself to friends? People you're planning to attack may be happy to hold on to a few heavy stones for you while you try to put a sword through them. . .

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 02:56:46 am

Quote

You can also give anybody anything.

So now it basically makes the stores meaningless, and vampires can now be used as a repository for goods.
It will be a lot easier to just find the local legendary dude, and trade his weapons and armor for the junk you have.

Also, now if you want to kill someone, just come to them and trade their weapons for your junk. Then attack.

Not sure I like the sound of all that. Easily exploitable, negates already established systems, and may take a very long time to fix. Can't we just have it limited to our companions until we get proper restrictions and psychology behind trading? I mean, if we and our companions are already treated as an army, wouldn't it make sense to also have the army have it's equipment? And if not, I'd rather just keep the status quo.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 05, 2013, 03:25:53 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 02:56:46 am

Quote

You can also give anybody anything.

So now it basically makes the stores meaningless, and vampires can now be used as a repository for goods.
It will be a lot easier to just find the local legendary dude, and trade his weapons and armor for the junk you have.

Also, now if you want to kill someone, just come to them and trade their weapons for your junk. Then attack.

Not sure I like the sound of all that. Easily exploitable, negates already established systems, and may take a very long time to fix. Can't we just have it limited to our companions until we get proper restrictions and psychology behind trading? I mean, if we and our companions are already treated as an army, wouldn't it make sense to also have the army have it's equipment? And if not, I'd rather just keep the status quo.

I'm sure people, especially soldiers, won't give up their weapons that easily. You also have to consider how expensive weapons are in general. It will probably cost you a few gems or dozens of craft trinkets to get a sinlge copper spear from somebody.

And the only friendly people that carry weapons are soldiers and guards from towns that aren't hostile to you anyway. Not only it would be incredibly expensive and tedious to buy all their weapons, it would probably be a one-off thing now because when you attack you'll now get a bad reputation and people will probably avoid trading with you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 05, 2013, 03:28:22 am

Quote from: King Mir on December 05, 2013, 02:22:51 am

If you're giving out rocks, why limit yourself to friends? People you're planning to attack may be happy to hold on to a few heavy stones for you while you try to put a sword through them. . .

Hehe, here buddy, have these rocks and giraffe meat.  Yes, take it all.  For free!  That's right.  Now dodge this!

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 02:56:46 am

Quote

You can also give anybody anything.

So now it basically makes the stores meaningless, and vampires can now be used as a repository for goods.
It will be a lot easier to just find the local legendary dude, and trade his weapons and armor for the junk you have.

Also, now if you want to kill someone, just come to them and trade their weapons for your junk. Then attack.

Not sure I like the sound of all that. Easily exploitable, negates already established systems, and may take a very long time to fix. Can't we just have it limited to our companions until we get proper restrictions and psychology behind trading? I mean, if we and our companions are already treated as an army, wouldn't it make sense to also have the army have it's equipment? And if not, I'd rather just keep the status quo.

I don't think giving people things is quite the same as trading, so there is obviously still a need for shops.  The devlog says they will agree to a trade if they come out better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 05, 2013, 03:55:47 am

Quote from: hermes on December 05, 2013, 03:28:22 am

Quote from: King Mir on December 05, 2013, 02:22:51 am

If you're giving out rocks, why limit yourself to friends? People you're planning to attack may be happy to hold on to a few heavy stones for you while you try to put a sword through them. . .

Hehe, here buddy, have these rocks and giraffe meat.  Yes, take it all.  For free!  That's right.  Now dodge this!

Isn't the combat speed/move speed split wonderful?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 03:56:07 am

Quote from: Ribs on December 05, 2013, 03:25:53 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 02:56:46 am

Quote

You can also give anybody anything.

So now it basically makes the stores meaningless, and vampires can now be used as a repository for goods.
It will be a lot easier to just find the local legendary dude, and trade his weapons and armor for the junk you have.

Also, now if you want to kill someone, just come to them and trade their weapons for your junk. Then attack.

Not sure I like the sound of all that. Easily exploitable, negates already established systems, and may take a very long time to fix. Can't we just have it limited to our companions until we get proper restrictions and psychology behind trading? I mean, if we and our companions are already treated as an army, wouldn't it make sense to also have the army have it's equipment? And if not, I'd rather just keep the status quo.

I'm sure people, especially soldiers, won't give up their weapons that easily. You also have to consider how expensive weapons are in general. It will probably cost you a few gems or dozens of craft trinkets to get a sinlge copper spear from somebody.

And the only friendly people that carry weapons are soldiers and guards from towns that aren't hostile to you anyway. Not only it would be incredibly expensive and tedious to buy all their weapons, it would probably be a one-off thing now because when you attack you'll now get a bad reputation and people will probably avoid trading with you.

1: Will they? Also, it's not exactly hard to get rich in adventure mode. It just may be hard to find good weapons without abandoning a fortress.
2: I never said to buy all the weapons from everyone. I'm saying if you need to kill some Urist McVampire or McGangLeader, you can get his weapons, and then attack him freely.
3: No witnesses.

Quote

I don't think giving people things is quite the same as trading, so there is obviously still a need for shops.  The devlog says they will agree to a trade if they come out better.

Aren't the shops trying to come out better too? I don't see the difference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 05, 2013, 04:10:01 am

Shops will be more likely to have something besides just the clothes on their back to trade. Besides, Toady explicitly stated that this is a temporary situation: it'll change later when he has more time to devote to that, rather than postpone the new release even longer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 05, 2013, 04:23:27 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 05, 2013, 03:55:47 am

Quote from: hermes on December 05, 2013, 03:28:22 am

Quote from: King Mir on December 05, 2013, 02:22:51 am

If you're giving out rocks, why limit yourself to friends? People you're planning to attack may be happy to hold on to a few heavy stones for you while you try to put a sword through them. . .

Hehe, here buddy, have these rocks and giraffe meat.  Yes, take it all.  For free!  That's right.  Now dodge this!

Isn't the combat speed/move speed split wonderful?

It helps, but weight still gives you minuses to your attack force (or whatever) for carrying a lot. Maybe dodge ability too. So you just need to give away more stone and giraffe meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 05:30:25 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on December 05, 2013, 04:10:01 am

Shops will be more likely to have something besides just the clothes on their back to trade. Besides, Toady explicitly stated that this is a temporary situation: it'll change later when he has more time to devote to that, rather than postpone the new release even longer.

The most logical time to fix this would be in the Merchant Arc, which is probably years away. And there is nothing that can last longer than a temporary situation.

I think that instead of postponing the release, the feature should just be shelved, until it can be introduced without these problems. Especially since the idea of being able to trade anything with anyone goes a little beyond equipping companions, and can be a giant project on it's own.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 05, 2013, 06:05:58 am

I hope to see it implemented one day as your own companions having the ability to loot or to buy their own equipment. Maybe they would have a right to loot the corpses of every one they killed, to not conflict with the player's will to loot everything.

Not only them, but every npc. His town is gonna being invaded soon? It's better to trade that plow away for a sword.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 05, 2013, 06:39:33 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 05:30:25 am

Especially since the idea of being able to trade anything with anyone goes a little beyond equipping companions, and can be a giant project on it's own.

I'm pretty sure that trading with everyone was the easiest way of implementing companion equipment - the trade dialog option and the interface was already in place, Toady probably just removed the store requirement and he was good to go. It's a long requested feature and it makes sense to introduce it now that Toady has reworked groups and entity interaction.

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 03:56:07 am

2: I never said to buy all the weapons from everyone. I'm saying if you need to kill some Urist McVampire or McGangLeader, you can get his weapons, and then attack him freely.

Is this a bad thing? I'm reminded of some old trickster folk tales. Trading for a weapon before attacking sounds like something Odysseus could have done. I don't think it's out of place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 05, 2013, 07:37:23 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 05:30:25 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on December 05, 2013, 04:10:01 am

Shops will be more likely to have something besides just the clothes on their back to trade. Besides, Toady explicitly stated that this is a temporary situation: it'll change later when he has more time to devote to that, rather than postpone the new release even longer.

The most logical time to fix this would be in the Merchant Arc, which is probably years away. And there is nothing that can last longer than a temporary situation.

I think that instead of postponing the release, the feature should just be shelved, until it can be introduced without these problems. Especially since the idea of being able to trade anything with anyone goes a little beyond equipping companions, and can be a giant project on it's own.

People want to be able to equip their companions. The possibility that some players might not be able to keep themselves from (potentially) exploiting the feature isn't a good reason to leave it out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 07:45:36 am

Quote from: Trif on December 05, 2013, 06:39:33 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 05:30:25 am

Especially since the idea of being able to trade anything with anyone goes a little beyond equipping companions, and can be a giant project on it's own.

I'm pretty sure that trading with everyone was the easiest way of implementing companion equipment - the trade dialog option and the interface was already in place, Toady probably just removed the store requirement and he was good to go. It's a long requested feature and it makes sense to introduce it now that Toady has reworked groups and entity interaction.

Oh, that would make sense how that would work.
Still think that the equipping companions and free trading should probably not be on the same line.

Quote from: Trif on December 05, 2013, 06:39:33 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 05, 2013, 03:56:07 am

2: I never said to buy all the weapons from everyone. I'm saying if you need to kill some Urist McVampire or McGangLeader, you can get his weapons, and then attack him freely.

Is this a bad thing? I'm reminded of some old trickster folk tales. Trading for a weapon before attacking sounds like something Odysseus could have done. I don't think it's out of place.

It kind of requires awareness of the trickery. Some restrictions as not everyone might want to trade, some psychology, such as a recognition that you are a stranger who's trying to get your weapon, and so on. With that, it could be really cool. As it is now, it just makes the game even easier for dealing with initially non-hostile creatures.

Quote

People want to be able to equip their companions. The possibility that some players might not be able to keep themselves from (potentially) exploiting the feature isn't a good reason to leave it out.

Well, okay. I'll shut up on this, but it's not as much about exploits. It's just a really bad placeholder that removes some of the systems from the game, (need for stores,) and adds placeholder feature that will have a lot of time sunk into it when the "temporary situation" is resolved..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 05, 2013, 08:34:12 am

Just donated to thank Toady for the return of frequent devlogs. I think it helps to keep enthusiam about the game over the long development cycles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on December 05, 2013, 10:49:25 am

The latest log made me giggle.

They love you so much they fight to the death over who gets to follow you and who must stay.  At least according to my headcanon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 05, 2013, 11:11:53 am

Whoo, Toady is on a roll with the devlogs! :) I wonder if he read the couple of people who were complaining about the lack of devlogs and decided to do more of them. In any case, as long as Toady One enjoys writing the devlogs, all is good. :)

Quote from: Toady One 12/5/13 devlog

I mixed opponent's bragging about prior violent acts into the new conversation setup (which means they won't drone on and on in a separate screen).

So, does that mean they'll brag and say something like 'I killed Montoya, whose father I slew!' within the combat logs? Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

Quote from: Toady One 12/5/13 devlog

fixed an odd bug where telling one companion to wait while having another companion follow you caused them to hack at each other until only one was left, due to the waiting companion thinking of itself as an army camp guard and getting all antsy about the suspicious activity along his very short patrol route.

Lol, just, lol! Keep up the great devlogs man. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 05, 2013, 12:54:30 pm

*hopes for this marking the end(ing) of the list and making DF2013 happen*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on December 05, 2013, 01:11:11 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 05, 2013, 12:54:30 pm

*hopes for this marking the end(ing) of the list and making DF2013 happen*

People keep referring to the next release as "DF2013". But is it really going to be called that? I doubt we'll see a release before January, at the least. So wouldn't "DF2014" be more appro?

Anyway, haven't the development cycles typically been more like 2 years for major releases?
DF2010... DF2012... DF2014 ?  ???

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 05, 2013, 01:24:31 pm

That's what he meant by "making DF2013 happen," he's hoping the devlogs indicate increased progress so we'll get the release in time to call it DF2013 instead of DF2014. Though I think I favor DF:XMAS if it comes out before the new year.

I think he's still on list stuff, though, and isn't on pre-release cleanup yet. I still have hope for DF2013, but I'm an admitted optimistic fool, so there ya go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 05, 2013, 01:30:29 pm

Exactly.
Though DF2014 appears to be a progressively more likely of a name. Which is saddening to say the least, but alas, it's going to be very much worth it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 05, 2013, 08:08:55 pm

Quick question here: Did Toady rewrite the mountain environments? For some reason I want to think that he stated he did in a response several months ago. Did he ever release a screenshot or set of screenshots demonstrating the new environment?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Pancakes on December 05, 2013, 08:38:36 pm

With enemy forces invading towns, will they be bringing with them siege weapons? If so, can the location of their construction be traced, or are they generated?

Thank you in advance, Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 05, 2013, 08:45:09 pm

Quote from: Scarlet_Avenger on December 05, 2013, 08:38:36 pm

With enemy forces invading towns, will they be bringing with them siege weapons? If so, can the location of their construction be traced, or are they generated?

Thank you in advance, Toady.

No, I don't think so. If siege weapons were involved at all, they'd probably be updated to 3D to go with, and there hasn't been mention of siege weapons at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 05, 2013, 08:56:34 pm

Siege weapons and all that goes along with it is a pretty massive and game-changing project, we'll definitely know when that starts getting developed :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 05, 2013, 11:00:07 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 05, 2013, 08:08:55 pm

Quick question here: Did Toady rewrite the mountain environments? For some reason I want to think that he stated he did in a response several months ago. Did he ever release a screenshot or set of screenshots demonstrating the new environment?

Do you mean the mountain biome, or dwarf mountain halls?  Mountain halls have been updated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 06, 2013, 07:28:56 am

Siege weapons would be touched most probably when the "army arc comes around".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 06, 2013, 09:50:05 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 05, 2013, 11:00:07 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 05, 2013, 08:08:55 pm

Quick question here: Did Toady rewrite the mountain environments? For some reason I want to think that he stated he did in a response several months ago. Did he ever release a screenshot or set of screenshots demonstrating the new environment?

Do you mean the mountain biome, or dwarf mountain halls?  Mountain halls have been updated.

Yeah, I meant the mountain biomes. Sounds like they didn't get an update, so they'll still be the mostly barren, empty lands they've been for a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on December 06, 2013, 10:53:00 am

I like the fact that we can see news more often. Even if I know that debugging is not something you write a lot about (but which is necessary to do), it's good to have fresh news from you. Thank you, Toady !

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 06, 2013, 10:54:04 am

Did you ever get around to finishing off the multi-tile trees from way-back when?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 06, 2013, 10:57:58 am

What was there left to finish off about them? :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 06, 2013, 11:21:35 am

Quote from: Japa on December 06, 2013, 10:54:04 am

Did you ever get around to finishing off the multi-tile trees from way-back when?

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 06, 2013, 10:57:58 am

What was there left to finish off about them? :>

This, they're implemented in the current release. I think they got finished off months ago during development.

The only things that could be left to finish off are very minor details. They're climbable, have flowers and fruit, change colors in the fall, have snow accumulate on them, leaves fall off of them....

Also, new devlog. I wonder if the bookkeeping stuff is among the final things on the list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on December 06, 2013, 11:59:47 am

palms, cacti, that sort of thing.

we were promised pictures :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 06, 2013, 12:08:48 pm

I guess you do have a point. Toady One did mention coconuts in the devlogs a while back, so the palm trees have been touched on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 06, 2013, 12:19:08 pm

These two devlogs?

Quote from: Toady One, 09/25/2012 and 09/28/2012

Been toying around with the trees. I've been working with one set of rules for growing them so far, but I'll be expanding the parameters and pictures soon (for pines, saguaros, tower caps, etc). In the meantime here are some preliminary images. Issues include grass not being dry below trees, branches looping when they shouldn't, 48x48 boundaries being too visible, crowns hitting other artificial boundaries, and so on, but it is going okay so far. Nothing is final (and it can all be changed in the raws), but the 1/4 tiles are branches heavy enough to climb (but they still have some leaves), the single lines are heavy enough to climb on but won't have leaves/fruit, the semi-colons are too light for climbing (I haven't started climbing yet), and the little pentagons are parts of the trunk that slope or taper.
...
Worked through the raws and getting the vegetation on the screen linked up to the plant definitions so that all the different pictures work. I'm not sure how many different leaf pictures I'll end up using (such as a different picture for pine needles), but those options are now functioning fine. I've got a list of a dozen or so parameters for growth that I should be implementing tonight. Then I'll need to do roots and fruit and flowers and so on.

Given the context, I think pictures doesn't refer to screenshots here. It kind of sounds like Toady was talking about the default tiles? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that it's done - Toady mentioned that the tree parameters can create "(somewhat half-assed) saguaros."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on December 06, 2013, 09:42:25 pm

Hmm, a question the other day bringing up heritable succession, and other types of succession by extension, of positions filled in Fortress got me thinking of some of the lingering concerns I'd had about this.  In earlier FothF, some parts of the reply had been "I'll get into other details sometime this release, probably".  Sooo...

Toady, has development come to a satisfactory state, for now at least, in regards to succession of offices currently held in player Fortresses?  Previous FotF replies had made mention of conflicts for the successor.  In this context I took that to mean not so much fighting among candidates, but conflict with another position the succession candidate already holds, i.e. Baron dies, nephew would inherit Barony, nephew is already Trade Liaison to another Fortress.  Does the nephew quit one and take the other?  Does he hold both?  Will we see Nobles holding positions in absentia?

Related to this, what effect will off-site Nobles, holding an office associated to the player Fortress, have on the player Fortress?  If the late Countess' second cousin twice removed does indeed succeed the title, she's then listed in the Nobles menu?  Will you be able to see her in the Units screen?  Is the unit fully realized from the moment of assignment, i.e. relationships, description, labors etc. or upon arrival?  Will she have room requirements even before she arrives (if at all)?  Can she make mandates from afar?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on December 07, 2013, 03:31:58 am

Dear Fearless Toady One,

In the next release, will there be any alternate options to advance a world's timeline besides playing as an adventurer and playing through fortress mode (including, of course, the "skip to next spring" thing when starting new forts)? Will there be options e.g. to "retire for one year" as an adventurer or to advance time indefinitely in Legends mode? What are your views on player interaction with long stretches of in-world time?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 07, 2013, 03:36:44 am

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on December 07, 2013, 03:31:58 am

Dear Fearless Toady One,

In the next release, will there be any alternate options to advance a world's timeline besides playing as an adventurer and playing through fortress mode (including, of course, the "skip to next spring" thing when starting new forts)? Will there be options e.g. to "retire for one year" as an adventurer or to advance time indefinitely in Legends mode? What are your views on player interaction with long stretches of in-world time?

I think there's already been an answer to that and there hasn't been any mention, so no (at least so far).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 07, 2013, 05:39:40 am

Quote from: Japa on December 06, 2013, 11:59:47 am

palms, cacti, that sort of thing.

we were promised pictures :(

Redwoods too, and highwoods because apparently redwoods aren't majestic enough. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get fancy tree patterns realized as well as they could be for this release, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 07, 2013, 09:00:45 am

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on December 07, 2013, 03:31:58 am

Dear Fearless Toady One,

In the next release, will there be any alternate options to advance a world's timeline besides playing as an adventurer and playing through fortress mode (including, of course, the "skip to next spring" thing when starting new forts)? Will there be options e.g. to "retire for one year" as an adventurer or to advance time indefinitely in Legends mode? What are your views on player interaction with long stretches of in-world time?

There was a previous exchange about this:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 08, 2013, 10:08:49 am

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: monk12

There isn't yet the ability to time-skip, but it's a planned feature. Right now the best you can do is start/abandon a fortress a bunch of times- each new start will cycle the year forward to the next spring. Though actually, with worldgen activities continuing into play, that might change, or be a more involved process. Do world activities advance after an abandon? Will the game simulate world activities before the next fortress is founded?

Dealing with the abandonment/post-adventure time-skip is one of the clean-up things on the menu.  It'll have to advance the events, but as you can imagine, that's a reasonably messy process.

Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.

In the current version, there's something like a two week skip for a new adventurer and a skip to the next spring for a fortress.  The ramifications for such a thing vs. the new active-world mechanics have not been addressed, and I'm not sure what'll end up replacing the time-skip if anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nokao on December 08, 2013, 07:01:36 am

[This is mostly for Toady One but everyone could want to partecipate.]
I already know that you will not like my opinion ... but tonight for some reason I couldn't sleep and ... here I am. I must write that.

After Minecraft, now a new game (Terraria) clearly copied content from Dwarf Fortress and is making a lot of money out of it.
With around 2.7 millions copies sold, we can calculate ~ > 10 millions of $ of income in 2 years for 1 year of development.
This NOT because their developers are better -of course Toady One is a genius- but because they invested MANY money and had a staff of ~ 50 workers that made possible the full realization of that 2 games, their content, and their websites/commercial promotion in only 1 year (each).

What about Dwarf Fortress ?
current version is: 0.34.11 (June 4, 2012) when I started to play 10-hours-a-day to DF.
I see from the blog that "[developer just corrected some bugs about] guards and similar critters to think correctly moving forward [in adventure mode]".
GREAT !!! So, only other 15 years of development, and maybe we will see a 1.0 playable version.

Also the game is unplayable with other tools that are not included in the original game, like Dwarf Therapist, extra tools for Sounds (that works reading the logfile...), and was really enriched by other stuff like Masterwork Mods and other graphical texture packs.
So again, Dwarf Fortress was enriched by it's community, that couldn't give their contribute in the source code because this is a closed-source project, and tryed in many different and found many genial ways to improve it.
But it's past and future was and will always be strictly chained to his creator, that seems to have decided to keep going like it was until now, programming it alone, day by day, as an all-life-job.

This is NOT another  "please make it open source post", when I first discovered Dwarf Fortress I tought that open source was the better option for Dwarf Fortress, now I changed idea.
I would like Dwarf Fortress to become a new kick-ass amazing game, like it is already for it's engine, but with a better and modern gaming interface (even with Indie or ASCII style if you like it like that).
Then I will be one the first to buy it.

But ... I don't want to make a long post, so here are my schematic opinions about "future of the fortress":

OPTIONS FOR THE PROJECT

• Toady One makes a "kickstarter project" and gain millions of dollars, like the guys of Torment did (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera), then make a huge company of software development and accelerate the process of development under his command
• Toady One affiliate with some company (like Curse (http://www.curse.com/) and Re-Logic) that clearly played his game, then made commercial and high profits with Minecraft/Terraria/Gnomoria doing something different, but clearly inspired on his ideas. (the purpose of this post is not to explain what they copied, but I'm sure all of you know what I'm talking about)
• Toady One keeps going like now, his child Dwarf Fortress will slowly decay and loose the community in favor of other games, until Toady One eventually dye of old age / stop developing because other projects copy all his content, and make a game with SAME game-play.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS (Mighty Toady One, only YOU know what to do with your masterpiece game, but I want to write also some suggestions as a former software-developer myself):

• Assuming the new budget will be enough to hire MANY other programmers, Dwarf Fortress should be re-written in it's core then include the old scripting to "start from a good point"
• During this phase, the software should became multithreading of course, and also native support for sounds (not with logfile!!... maybe invent a TCP/IP protocol for that) and better instruments for modders like "editable build menu", "removable features", a bloody quest-interface that could evolve the jail-system, etc.
• IMHO, it should also become a client-server based game, not only for the FUTURE multiplayer compatibility (adventure mode), but expecially to make his core launchable by a server and playable on many different types of clients (isometric view, 3D view, and also old fashioned 2D view with or without graphical textures or ASCII version). At this inventing TCP/IP protocols for separate sounds, video, browsing content (legend mode) etc.
• Toady One should definitely take under his wings all the modders that gave SO MUCH to Dwarf Fortress only editing source-files, the few I know are (content creators) Meph, Putnam, but there is many people that actually developed software for DF hacking it and improving our experience (sounds, dwarf therapist, 3D clients, stonesense, etc)

With this post of course, I'm officially (sadly) stopping to create my worlds inside Dwarf Fortress, but I will keep dreaming them and designing them on paper when I suddenly wake up in the night.
Until another commercial copy of Dwarf Fortress, (this time with same gameplay), will come out from big-profit companies that can look ahead.
(oh please ... don't you hear that coming, after Minecraft/Terraria and Gnomoria (http://store.steampowered.com/app/224500/) ?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 08, 2013, 07:13:28 am

C'mon man. As a Bay Watcher you should know better than posting that in this thread. I won't comment on your opinion or ideas specifically, but I'll remind you that this thread is best kept free of suggestions that are likely to derail it, never mind how much you believe your suggestions relate to the future of the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 08, 2013, 07:44:56 am

I'd love to respond and explain why most of your views are way wrong, answered already and would imo probably kill off much of what makes this game awesome, but THIS is not the thread for this. You're better off reposting this in one of the other gazillion threads on the topic (or better yet read one of them).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nokao on December 08, 2013, 08:26:58 am

@Manveru Taurënér & @DG : I think I am on topic because my opinion about "the future of the fortress" is that "there is no future for the fortress".

Anyway, my only target with this post is to say hello to Toady One, and thank all the community for this game that I played for more that one year without ever getting bored.
I'm just more attracted by more commercial games that are stealing from Dwarf Fortress many ideas, making them look better even if their not their own.

I'm not polemic. There is no need to answer, or derail the topic of this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on December 08, 2013, 09:41:58 am

Quote from: Nokao on December 08, 2013, 08:26:58 am

@Manveru Taurënér & @DG : I think I am on topic because my opinion about "the future of the fortress" is that "there is no future for the fortress".

Quote from: Toady One

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments

Nope.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 10:59:25 am

Uh, Nokao, that deserves it's own thread, also:

1. Minecraft may have been released slightly later than the earliest DF stuff, but both are about equally old and as far as I can tell, was not based off of DF. In fact, I think development wise they are actually around the same age.

2. Terraria isn't that new and is obviously based off of MC, tell me what content you think was copied from dwarf fortress.

3. There is no three and if there was, it'd be get your own thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 08, 2013, 11:53:36 am

Quote from: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 10:59:25 am

1. Minecraft may have been released slightly later than the earliest DF stuff, but both are about equally old and as far as I can tell, was not based off of DF. In fact, I think development wise they are actually around the same age.

By all accounts I've heard, Minecraft did take inspiration from DF. I don't think that has any larger implications however. It's just another sandbox game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 12:07:40 pm

Quote from: King Mir on December 08, 2013, 11:53:36 am

Quote from: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 10:59:25 am

1. Minecraft may have been released slightly later than the earliest DF stuff, but both are about equally old and as far as I can tell, was not based off of DF. In fact, I think development wise they are actually around the same age.

By all accounts I've heard, Minecraft did take inspiration from DF. I don't think that has any larger implications however. It's just another sandbox game.

Yeah, taking inspiration is one thing and copying directly is another. I looked at the MC wiki about pre-classic and Notch did take inspiration from DF as far as resources, but its not the only thing that he took inspiration from.

DF has given inspiration to many developers and yet it remains it's own unique thing.

Anyways, this topic is getting derailed.

Also, lol on the latest devlog with sleep schedules. Did you know that the fans at the stadium there in Seattle recently broke a crowd noise record and registered as a magnitude one or so quake on a nearby seismometer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 08, 2013, 12:08:05 pm

Quote from: King Mir on December 08, 2013, 11:53:36 am

Quote from: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 10:59:25 am

1. Minecraft may have been released slightly later than the earliest DF stuff, but both are about equally old and as far as I can tell, was not based off of DF. In fact, I think development wise they are actually around the same age.

By all accounts I've heard, Minecraft did take inspiration from DF. I don't think that has any larger implications however. It's just another sandbox game.

Yeah, Notch says he got inspiration from DF, but the only gameplay similarities I see are "survive by crafting in a sandbox," which is hardly a unique gameplay mechanic, and blocks/tiles, which again yeah no. Since the dev practices are practically polar opposites, I'm guessing that's not the form of inspiration either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on December 08, 2013, 12:08:29 pm

Quote from: Nokao on December 08, 2013, 07:01:36 am

This is NOT another  "please make it open source post", when I first discovered Dwarf Fortress I tought that open source was the better option for Dwarf Fortress, now I changed idea.

Don't worry, it's only another "please hire more people for awesomer game" post :) .

Just out of curiosity, have there been any changes to the layout of existing structures in adventure mode, either to accommodate new features or fix old bugs? I'm thinking of if, for example, human keeps are now octagonal, or temples are no longer open-air, that sort of thing. I'd also ask if there are plans at any point to allow greater variation in how things are built, but I'd actually be surprised if that wasn't already a planned thing :) .

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on December 08, 2013, 12:52:54 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Next up we'll experiment with how my daytime sleep schedule interacts with neighbors, their television and a Sunday Seahawks game. Previously when I've tested this, the sleep job cancelled, I couldn't crash again, and there was lag all day. This time I've been forewarned about the test conditions, so hopefully I can have better results.

Oi. Flashbacks to student housing, is that. Best of luck; hopefully your bed is more than 4 tiles away from their TV.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 01:57:25 pm

So any knowledge on how much exploration (number of cities) the game can handle, and exactly how many resources will a city eat? With the game set to become even slower as cities are explored, it might be a disincentive to explore many different civilizations in favor of staying in a few cities. And is it going to affect dwarf mode? I'm not dissatisfied with the changes, I'd just like to be aware of the dangers of starting a world for too long, or starting a fort after playing adventure mode. (In case Toady doesn't, would be nice to have some !Science! done on this after release.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 08, 2013, 02:15:18 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 01:57:25 pm

So any knowledge on how much exploration (number of cities) the game can handle

3 GB.

Quote from: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 01:57:25 pm

With the game set to become even slower as cities are explored, it might be a disincentive to explore many different civilizations in favor of staying in a few cities.

Consider that an entire year of worldgen tends to take 10 seconds on a sufficient computer; it won't be that big an issue.

Quote from: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 01:57:25 pm

And is it going to affect dwarf mode? I'm not dissatisfied with the changes, I'd just like to be aware of the dangers of starting a world for too long, or starting a fort after playing adventure mode. (In case Toady doesn't, would be nice to have some !Science! done on this after release.)

Probably not performance-wise, no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 08, 2013, 04:08:36 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 08, 2013, 10:59:25 am

1. Minecraft may have been released slightly later than the earliest DF stuff, but both are about equally old and as far as I can tell, was not based off of DF. In fact, I think development wise they are actually around the same age.

Wikipedia says that Notch began work on Minecraft in 2009, making it six years newer than DF. That's a fair while in video game time. Perhaps more pertinently, it also started about half a year after DF got popular on the site where Minecraft first kicked off. You can also see other parallels, like adding a hell-realm right after Toady did. Let's look at the words of the dev though:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/113252305/credits-due
Notch cites infiniminer as the inspiration for the graphical appearance and the "terrain deformation", whatever that might mean. Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, is cited as the inspiration for the gameplay. It is old and describes that gameplay as a future thing. Now that we're in the future, we can clearly see that, while Notch isn't nearly on Toady's level, this has remained more or less the case as it became a current thing.

Over here
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27719/Interview_Markus_Notch_Persson_Talks_Making_Minecraft.php
I found a pretty good quote. "Dwarf Fortress and roguelikes in general are some of the biggest inspirations for the gameplay of Minecraft, and Toady One is a true hero." and Notch also cites DF as one of his favorite modern games.

Some minor details aside, the major difference is that Minecraft is very accessibility-oriented, and they sort of gave up development before including most promised features. Minecraft isn't a direct "DF but for casuals" like Towns or Gnomoria, but that doesn't mean it didn't get at least the start of its massive dosh tsunami on DF's coattails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 04:39:56 pm

Putnam: Well, the devlog does talk Toady doing his best to limit the numbers of historical figures, so yes, even if it probably doesn't have any effect on performance, there's still something to be said for intensive exploration that leads to a huge rise in historical figures that leads to much more memory hogging. And the raw number of 3 GB or the data on worldgen isn't really useful here, since we're talking about the stuff the game has to add after we begin playing it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 08, 2013, 10:47:46 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 04:39:56 pm

Putnam: Well, the devlog does talk Toady doing his best to limit the numbers of historical figures, so yes, even if it probably doesn't have any effect on performance, there's still something to be said for intensive exploration that leads to a huge rise in historical figures that leads to much more memory hogging. And the raw number of 3 GB or the data on worldgen isn't really useful here, since we're talking about the stuff the game has to add after we begin playing it.

I think historical figures impact heavily on world generation, but not so much during play. Hence the great increase in time to generate a new world in the last cycle of releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 08, 2013, 11:46:44 pm

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

I don't think world gen is ever going to get back to the speeds we could get through it before, and this might be a necessary evil to have worlds as complex as we're getting. But restricting the number of individuals who each would add more cycles to each year's overhead is a wise move in terms of keeping it from going into a stall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 09, 2013, 12:01:45 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 08, 2013, 01:57:25 pm

So any knowledge on how much exploration (number of cities) the game can handle, and exactly how many resources will a city eat? With the game set to become even slower as cities are explored, it might be a disincentive to explore many different civilizations in favor of staying in a few cities. And is it going to affect dwarf mode? I'm not dissatisfied with the changes, I'd just like to be aware of the dangers of starting a world for too long, or starting a fort after playing adventure mode. (In case Toady doesn't, would be nice to have some !Science! done on this after release.)

I would imagine that anything that caused the game to slowly lose FPS to be a bug. (DF has quite a few of these already)

Visiting lots of cities shouldn't be a problem, because places visited are regenerated every time they are loaded. The only thing that's saved is the results of the player's actions. The new thing is that there are now people and armies moving about, but that happens regardless of if you visit those places.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on December 09, 2013, 12:14:20 am

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on December 09, 2013, 12:21:32 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on December 09, 2013, 12:14:20 am

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

They go deep, but I don't think they go that deep.

Pretty sure deep sites only go as deep as cavern layer one.

Besides, deep dwarves would already be adapted to subterranean life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 09, 2013, 12:24:36 am

Quote from: Willfor on December 08, 2013, 11:46:44 pm

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

Quote from: King Mir on December 09, 2013, 12:01:45 am

Visiting lots of cities shouldn't be a problem, because places visited are regenerated every time they are loaded. The only thing that's saved is the results of the player's actions. The new thing is that there are now people and armies moving about, but that happens regardless of if you visit those places.

Well, there is still the part that it has to devote at least a little of memory once you visit a city to be able to regenerate it properly. I forget how exactly Toady said it works, but there's that. And the entire elevating of random people to historical figures that happens once you visit a city, is something that has been explicitly stated in the devlog. There's quite a lot of stuff now that is elevated from abstract to specific as you play.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 09, 2013, 12:46:18 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on December 09, 2013, 12:14:20 am

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

Who says they will?

Quote from: Dwarf Fortress Talk 20

Capntastic:  So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:        Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker: Exactly.
Capntastic:  But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:        Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:  They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:        Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:  Fleshy beards?
Toady:        Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker: Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:        A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:  But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:        That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 09, 2013, 04:00:23 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 09, 2013, 12:24:36 am

Quote from: Willfor on December 08, 2013, 11:46:44 pm

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

It might be that an often requested feature is the ability to restart world gen conditions after stopping it, and Toady realizes that this is something he will never be able to do if he doesn't try to keep historical figures down in the framework before attempting this down the road? Somewhat like the letting the genie out of the bottle conundrum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 09, 2013, 10:32:04 am

Quote from: Willfor on December 09, 2013, 04:00:23 am

Quote from: Anatoli on December 09, 2013, 12:24:36 am

Quote from: Willfor on December 08, 2013, 11:46:44 pm

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

It might be that an often requested feature is the ability to restart world gen conditions after stopping it, and Toady realizes that this is something he will never be able to do if he doesn't try to keep historical figures down in the framework before attempting this down the road? Somewhat like the letting the genie out of the bottle conundrum.

Toady has said before (Cue Footkerchief with quotes) that restarting world gen is already impossible because of genie bottle issues. He might add the ability to do time skips, but they won't be at the speed of worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 09, 2013, 01:02:54 pm

However, would it still be possible for historical figures to emerge from the guard through enough notable kills, turning into a vampire/werewolf, or a change in leadership?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 09, 2013, 01:14:59 pm

Do you plan to include alloys in the game? If so, how might it be handled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on December 09, 2013, 01:28:45 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 09, 2013, 01:14:59 pm

Do you plan to include alloys in the game? If so, how might it be handled?

...This question puzzles (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Metal#Alloys_2) me.  Do you mean alloys in some figurative sense?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 09, 2013, 01:31:30 pm

Right. Brain fart. Carry on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 09, 2013, 01:43:31 pm

I think is just a post traumatic shock or withdrawal if you like, caused by the lack of release of a new version of DF.

I like to believe that after this one, the most significant release of DF, where you actually have a living world now to toy with, things will be metaphorically "downhill" for Toady One, development wise. Emphasis on metaphorically and "downhill", as I meant that this living, active world was a needed for a lot of things to be organic and logical, and others to exist at all.

No, I don't think that the programing will be easier or that the speed of development will be increased from now on, actually I think it will even harder and slower to develop or at least the same phase Toady has keep all this years.

What I mean with this is that the child will be birth, the bird will be hatched and it will finally take it's first breath of air, filling it's lungs full with life, and now all it takes for it is to keep growing and become a whole animal.

Or at least that's how I see it. Carry on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on December 09, 2013, 01:57:47 pm

When you mention village relationships, does that apply only to human villages or is it all civilized and populated sites? And if so, do all the villages act independently, or is there now a concept of nations/civs in their interactions with each other? Do the village warlords have any relationship with their lieges?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 09, 2013, 02:06:34 pm

You mentioned wilderness creatures and bogeymen - and I'm extending the question to other night creatures too - there will be a change in the next release where the villages and town react to them independently of the player involvement? There will be a  chance of the guards catching them or organizing raids to their lairs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CypherLH on December 09, 2013, 02:15:10 pm

Quote from: metime00 on December 09, 2013, 01:57:47 pm

When you mention village relationships, does that apply only to human villages or is it all civilized and populated sites? And if so, do all the villages act independently, or is there now a concept of nations/civs in their interactions with each other? Do the village warlords have any relationship with their lieges?

Will villages "bicker" for actual reasons such as competing land/resource claims in this release or will feuds of some sort simply be generated with no real reason behind them? I would ask the same thing about the reasons behind Orc occupations of villages/towns.  I suppose delving into this might get into some of the old Army Arc stuff where entities were supposed to start to actually caring about stuff.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on December 09, 2013, 03:16:44 pm

Wait a minute, since when does DF have Orcs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CypherLH on December 09, 2013, 03:47:24 pm

Quote from: Vgray on December 09, 2013, 03:16:44 pm

Wait a minute, since when does DF have Orcs?

haha, I meant goblins ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 09, 2013, 10:30:21 pm

Wow, I never imagined villages would be fighting each other.  The new world is going to be glorious for adventurers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on December 10, 2013, 12:40:18 am

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-09

Cue xenophobic village leaders deciding that adventurers are trouble to be eliminated, while apathetic villagers don't mind you being around. They are willing to sell you stuff and so on, but won't support a revolution against their "protective" leader, who is a relative.

Can leaders have and enforce beliefs that are generally not supported by the population, but not in such a way that their population suffers or hates them? (as a consequence of the way things will be implemented, not as a special feature) I am thinking of something like a sheriff who doesn't want "vagrants" in his town.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 10, 2013, 11:18:54 am

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on December 10, 2013, 12:40:18 am

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-09

Cue xenophobic village leaders deciding that adventurers are trouble to be eliminated, while apathetic villagers don't mind you being around. They are willing to sell you stuff and so on, but won't support a revolution against their "protective" leader, who is a relative.

Can leaders have and enforce beliefs that are generally not supported by the population, but not in such a way that their population suffers or hates them? (as a consequence of the way things will be implemented, not as a special feature) I am thinking of something like a sheriff who doesn't want "vagrants" in his town.

Who knows what emergent behavior will crop up, but the next update is certainly ripe for it.

As for leaders having and enforcing beliefs, at first I thought you meant religon, but there is no religous conflict in the game yet and no plans for them I don't think, then again, emergent behavior.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 10, 2013, 11:29:33 am

Quote from: CypherLH on December 09, 2013, 02:15:10 pm

Quote from: metime00 on December 09, 2013, 01:57:47 pm

When you mention village relationships, does that apply only to human villages or is it all civilized and populated sites? And if so, do all the villages act independently, or is there now a concept of nations/civs in their interactions with each other? Do the village warlords have any relationship with their lieges?

Will villages "bicker" for actual reasons such as competing land/resource claims in this release or will feuds of some sort simply be generated with no real reason behind them? I would ask the same thing about the reasons behind Orc occupations of villages/towns.  I suppose delving into this might get into some of the old Army Arc stuff where entities were supposed to start to actually caring about stuff.   

Toady called them abstract topics, so I'm guessing they're like most reasons for war currently - kind of fake, but looking reasonable. Also, he mentioned that goblin and human settlements squabble this way. It's not clear, as far as I know, if it is based on site type or on other factors.

Quote

So yeah, the gear switching since the last release had sort of scuttled one of the major thrusts of the game part of the game we were initially planning to add with bandits, or at least timed it out for this version. We're trying to salvage that portion into a playable segment without extending the length of the to-do list (which is possible since it had some defunct notes). Adjacent human/gob sites now squabble between themselves and each other in world gen, and tensions over various abstract topics (livestock, fishing, water, right-of-way, etc., depending on the entity/site) boil over into raids and sometimes the establishment of site-to-site tribute relationships and nepotistic (nepotic? words are hard) rulership changes. Generally, all the world gen leaders respect family a bit more in terms of how the tensions play out, and they don't make position holder selections so randomly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 10, 2013, 07:44:26 pm

Will languages ever differentiate, such that an adventurer might not be able to read the signs or understand people in a far-off land?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 10, 2013, 07:48:54 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 10, 2013, 07:44:26 pm

Will languages ever differentiate, such that an adventurer might not be able to read the signs or understand people in a far-off land?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_10_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   So how do you see that affecting adventure mode? You have your adventurer, he finds this 'leafen tablet' scrawled by the squirrel people that he just slaughtered and he's like 'hmm, what does this say?'
Toady:   It might be harder to learn the language now you've killed them all.
Rainseeker:   That's true, so you could maybe have an ability to talk and learn their language gradually?
Toady:   Yeah, that's what we're hoping for. The thing that's neat is in a rudimentary way – it would be impossible to pull this off, for me anyway, in a really satisfying way – but if you've got ... Right now the grammatical structure of all the languages is the same, well they can only say one phrase, like 'Johnny run/walk the dog of war', there's only one kind of phrase they have but they're all the same. So even now you could say 'you know thirty percent of the goblin vocabulary, these are the exact words you know' and then whenever you hear a phrase it could translate those words and not the others. But the thing that'll be neater, if we're storing the things that people will say in conversations ... this conflicts with other things, so I'm not really sure how this is going to work, it might just be the writing, it might not be with the conversations; I'm not quite sure ... but if you have the basic sentence trees syntax ... noun/phrase things or whatever, sitting behind the sentences then the grammatical rules can take those trees and turn them into all kinds of different stuff, shifting the word order, cramming certain things together, putting little helper words everywhere, all that kind of stuff ... and still have your knowledge of the language interpret parts of it, or let you pick out pieces of it, in a really straightforward fashion while still preserving all the diversity of the languages. It would be pretty easy to do overall, except for the part where you actually build the sentence trees for everything you want to say. So it's like, you want to say 'the sword is hidden in such-and-such a cave'; that sentence tree's not so hard to build, it involves two of those noun type phrases we already have, like the 'shiny sword' or whatever it's called and the 'cave of darkness' or whatever it would be called, those we can already do. Then you just need to say how the verb works, and once you can construct that you can translate that into all the different languages and they can apply their rules to how those things work. It's nowhere near as complicated as an actual language where you just need all these little rules that modify them, and people don't even have a complete theory; but the game can have a complete theory, because I know what sentences are allowed to be in the books. We control that information and it allows us to complete the picture, so it should be cool. I guess that's a 'yes' for that question, if it was a 'yes/no' question. Is there any possibility of old languages? Yes. It should come in with the treasure hunter stuff, that's where it's on the dev page, if I remember.

There's obviously a bit more info to it in there if you're interested, but this part answers the question well enough ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on December 11, 2013, 12:40:04 am

Do the village conflicts only relate to human villages, or does it work with any inter-kingdom settlement disputes? Also, now that we're going to have fights between two towns of the same kingdom, will we be seeing larger scale wars between nations of the same race? It'd be fun playing as the commando champion to the true heir to the throne and taking out the pretender's generals one at a time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on December 11, 2013, 03:16:16 am

Excerpts from Dwarf Fortress Talk #7.2 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_7_transcript_2.html):

Quote

Toady:   It’s basically a magic question at the end of the day, so you have to step back and ask yourself again what have we got planned for magic and then how does it fit into fortress mode and all that kind of thing. There’s an extent to which we haven’t been able to plan this out because we’re still not sure exactly what we want to do. What we want to focus on is making it so that if there’s a magical object that’s really a rare special magical object then it should be something that you don’t really understand that well and that’s not necessarily reliable. It depends on the source; where does the magic come from? Was the dwarf inspired by all those gods that don’t actually exist in the game right now, that are just names, or did the dwarf create something so perfect that it just gets infused by magic because it’s a perfect thing, or did the dwarf really have some understanding of magical forces and create such a thing...

Quote

...The other kinds of magic there is where it’s not an industrial process are things like having conditions, so if one dwarf were inspired by the god of the harvest to create a chest that you can bring with your armies so that they never have to have supplies or food, then that artifact could in fact be very reliable; it would not be understood and the god might say ‘if you want to keep using this then never march during the full moon’ and if you do then we can really indulge in catastrophic horrible things because it’s your fault; the werewolves can come out of the chest and eat everybody, or whatever needs to happen.

I do understand that magic and magical artifacts are a long way off. And this talk explains that not all artifacts will be inspired by gods. But, my question:

When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

I would think that if a deity actually got involved in dwarf affairs by giving a dwarf a mood to make an artifact, then that deity would probably "sign" his or her name on it. In a way, it's more their creation than the moody dwarf's. And even artists tend to sign their name on their works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 11, 2013, 03:20:54 am

These are the magic strings that are in-game right now, for comparison:

Code: [Select]

The item sparkles with a supernatural brillance.
The air around the object seems warped as if it were very hot, yet the item is cool to the touch.
The object looks oddly square.
The item constantly emits a nearly inaudible high-pitched whistle.
The item is covered with small bumps.
The item smells like wet earth.
Tiny streaks of lightning streak quickly over the object's surface.
Creatures that look at the item cannot think negative thoughts.
The item is covered with minute gray hairs.
The item sounds like rustling leaves when moved.

These descriptions are assumedly in the loo"k" description.

These will probably be replaced later on, but it may give you an idea as to the things that item descriptions might have later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 11, 2013, 10:00:13 am

Ow. Awesome devlog. I like the fact that the war between villages was triggered by an extreme opposition by their faiths, so it wouldn't be too common, making it special.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 11, 2013, 10:11:38 am

I think you mean wow not ow, heh.

Wow, that devlog is a perfect example of emergent behavior right there. Exciting times in the next update, right? :D

Got two questions here: Are you going to apply the AI to the other races as well? Also, would it be possible for a full blown civil war to erupt within a civilization? The new devlog hints at the potential for larger scale internal conflicts to arise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 11, 2013, 10:29:43 am

More than exciting! Too bad we will likely have a February or so release. Having it before December 20th would be golden for me, the company is giving everyone paid vacations from that day up to January 2.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 11, 2013, 12:21:10 pm

Quote from DF talk 19:
Toady:   I mean, we were thinking of running it with different groups, because the goblins don't get along, they're not supposed to get along with each other, it's supposed to be the power of the demon that keeps them under control and able to take over a bunch of civilizations instead of just descending into violence among the goblins themselves, so there are going to be different groups of goblins that don't care about the other groups of goblins and I think the only thing keeping it together is going to be the demon's secret police, set up with goblins and worse, like undead things and other kind of horrible night creatures and stuff.
Rainseeker:   'Hey, you! No fighting, okay? Thank you. I will suck your blood if you don't stop fighting.'
Toady:   That's right, and those humans that they're kidnapping, that grow up and so on, can bring some order to the situation.
Rainseeker:   'Okay, guys. Let's talk about our feelings now. Let's not raise our voices, just use healing words.'

Will goblin civ's ruled by demons be the only ones who get to recruit night creatures? Will the night creature hierarchy and goblin anarchy show up when they attack in Fortress Mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Little Kingpin on December 11, 2013, 01:35:57 pm

Are village-village squabbles ever going to turn into civil wars inside larger empires? And are we ever going to get to play agent provocateur and create such a civil war in an empire in the name of a foreign power or something?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 11, 2013, 02:25:00 pm

For the next release, can entities change faiths and what regulates those changes? What regulates the strength of those faiths?

Taking the example in the devlog, what exactly is the end goal for those villages? Do they actually conquer the other village, or does the other village just gives up it's claim (or faith, in this case,) after they've been beat up a certain amount?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 11, 2013, 03:23:57 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 11, 2013, 10:11:38 am

Got two questions here: Are you going to apply the AI to the other races as well?

The "for now" implies other races will get it later:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-11

I turned on the in-play AI for site leaders (just humans for now)

Quote from: smjjames on December 11, 2013, 10:11:38 am

Also, would it be possible for a full blown civil war to erupt within a civilization? The new devlog hints at the potential for larger scale internal conflicts to arise.

Quote from: Little Kingpin on December 11, 2013, 01:35:57 pm

Are village-village squabbles ever going to turn into civil wars inside larger empires?

Wars of succession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_succession) are a type of civil war that's explicitly planned:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Hero

    Villains
        Historical figures that come out of world gen and come to control segments of entity populations (bandits, etc.)
        Hostile civ leaders and the new hist figs being able to harass others by sending out groups
            Need to handle seeing them depart, seeing them raid, seeing them arrive back, and running into them during travel (with or without spoils)
            Tracking information from hunting needs to apply to following these groups
            Generally, "villians" are just leaders of groups you oppose at the time, and in this way can include squabbling petty warlords in nearby towns as well, so the groups can be large armies or assassins, though the former will probably come through the dwarf mode expansions below
            Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play
            Succession and succession struggles
            Towns destroyed/rebuilt in play
            Villain groups can include degenerates harassing people in towns

Other types of civil war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war#Causes_of_civil_war_in_the_Collier-Hoeffler_Model) are certainly fair game.  We can expect to see village conflicts escalating into civil war, but not in this version.

Quote from: Little Kingpin on December 11, 2013, 01:35:57 pm

And are we ever going to get to play agent provocateur and create such a civil war in an empire in the name of a foreign power or something?

I unfortunately can't find a quote, but this kind of intrigue (and player agency) shows up in all kinds of stories and powergoals.  I think it's safe to call it a goal.

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 11, 2013, 12:21:10 pm

Will goblin civ's ruled by demons be the only ones who get to recruit night creatures? Will the night creature hierarchy and goblin anarchy show up in Fortress Mode?

Recruiting night creatures is a recurring theme in ThreeToe's stories:
a wizard tries to use a night creature as a servant (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_moclem.html)
a professional hunter of night creatures takes control of one (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_terror.html)

Having night creatures and goblins in a player fortress will happen to the extent that Goblin Fortress gets official support, which Toady has expressed ambivalence about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 11, 2013, 03:46:49 pm

Thanks Footkerchief ye hermes, i meant to ask whether the goblin hierarchy will show up when they invade (including apathy if they're killed/not looking), and I'll make that clear though i suspect it's a yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 11, 2013, 04:58:56 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 11, 2013, 03:46:49 pm

Thanks Footkerchief ye hermes, i meant to ask whether the goblin hierarchy will show up when they invade (including apathy if they're killed/not looking), and I'll make that clear though i suspect it's a yes.

I don't follow about the apathy.  Who would have apathy about whose death?  I think it's a safe bet that eventually goblins will bring their night creature allies along, to the extent to it makes practical military sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 11, 2013, 05:10:58 pm

Alright, we now have internal conflicts (civil war) over religion and opposing ideology. Is this going to come to fort mode, so we will get a choice of which side we want to support (at least just options a, b), and then begin drafting dwarves into our chosen army?

This will be a great way to see your 200-dwarf fort get ruined.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 11, 2013, 05:12:31 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 11, 2013, 05:10:58 pm

Alright, we now have internal conflicts (civil war) over religion and opposing ideology. Is this going to come to fort mode, so we will get a choice of which side we want to support (at least just options a, b), and then begin drafting dwarves into our chosen army?

This will be a great way to see your 200-dwarf fort get ruined.

I don't think the game is able to do that just yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on December 11, 2013, 05:18:11 pm

Considering all this "internal conflicts" framework, is this applied to Fortress mode? More specifically, is loyalty cascade bug fixed? Would be possible to have this kind of internal conflict with your own (former) mountainhome after accidentally or "accidentally" killing dwarf caravan?
Probably not yet, but as it is closely related, I want to be sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on December 11, 2013, 05:37:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 11, 2013, 04:58:56 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 11, 2013, 03:46:49 pm

Thanks Footkerchief ye hermes, i meant to ask whether the goblin hierarchy will show up when they invade (including apathy if they're killed/not looking), and I'll make that clear though i suspect it's a yes.

I don't follow about the apathy.  Who would have apathy about whose death?  I think it's a safe bet that eventually goblins will bring their night creature allies along, to the extent to it makes practical military sense.

I think he's talking about this:

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 11, 2013, 12:21:10 pm

Quote from DF talk 19:
Toady:   I mean, we were thinking of running it with different groups, because the goblins don't get along, they're not supposed to get along with each other, it's supposed to be the power of the demon that keeps them under control and able to take over a bunch of civilizations instead of just descending into violence among the goblins themselves, so there are going to be different groups of goblins that don't care about the other groups of goblins and I think the only thing keeping it together is going to be the demon's secret police, set up with goblins and worse, like undead things and other kind of horrible night creatures and stuff.
Rainseeker:   'Hey, you! No fighting, okay? Thank you. I will suck your blood if you don't stop fighting.'
Toady:   That's right, and those humans that they're kidnapping, that grow up and so on, can bring some order to the situation.
Rainseeker:   'Okay, guys. Let's talk about our feelings now. Let's not raise our voices, just use healing words.'

That is, he's wondering whether some of the goblins that invade your fort will stop participating in the invasion (and fight each other, wander off, etc.) if their commanders/whipcrackers are dead or absent.

Edit: Personally, I don't recall reading anything about any changes to fort mode invasions specifically. They'll use the new combat system, but otherwise they might still work exactly as in the current version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 11, 2013, 06:26:17 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 11, 2013, 05:10:58 pm

Alright, we now have internal conflicts (civil war) over religion and opposing ideology. Is this going to come to fort mode, so we will get a choice of which side we want to support (at least just options a, b), and then begin drafting dwarves into our chosen army?

This will be a great way to see your 200-dwarf fort get ruined.

These village raids aren't full-blown civil wars -- there hasn't been any mention of e.g. other villages taking sides.  Once that does happen, the Army Arc will allow your fortress to take part, at least militarily.  The diplomatic aspects of choosing sides aren't mentioned, but they're basically unavoidable.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Military

    Dwarven armies
        Ability to send out fortress dwarves to lead larger groups of surrounding dwarves out around mid-level maps (or just go alone)
        Ability to send equipment and fortress dwarves out to train surrounding dwarves
        Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies
        Ability to set fires and select supplies to haul back when sacking a site
    Villain interactions
        Must adjust villains etc. to allow them to operate at dwarf mode time scale
        Make armies/beasts that attack fortress come from actual groups moving on world map
        Ability to fight other armies with your dwarven armies
            Larger armies should spread over multiple mid-level map squares
            Ability to create fortifications/lines/etc. instead of spreading haphazardly
            There are complications to be worked out if you can zoom in to battles and control them at the local level, concerning what happens to your fortress
            If you can zoom in, situations like being surrounded need to be respected and have the desired results regardless of what area is zoomed in on
        Allow villains to attempt to demand tribute from you
    Improved sieges
        Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
        More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
        Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
        Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
            Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
            Ability to build bridges/ramps
            Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
        Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
            For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
        Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Quote from: reality.auditor on December 11, 2013, 05:18:11 pm

Considering all this "internal conflicts" framework, is this applied to Fortress mode? More specifically, is loyalty cascade bug fixed? Would be possible to have this kind of internal conflict with your own (former) mountainhome after accidentally or "accidentally" killing dwarf caravan?
Probably not yet, but as it is closely related, I want to be sure.

Presumably you mean this bug? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3259)  When discussing bugs, it's helpful to link the report, especially when requesting a fix.  Generally, if Toady hasn't mentioned fixing a bug or making a related change, the chances that a given bug was fixed are so miniscule that you can safely assume "no".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on December 11, 2013, 06:29:38 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on December 11, 2013, 05:37:46 pm

I think he's talking about this:

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 11, 2013, 12:21:10 pm

Quote from DF talk 19:
Toady:   I mean, we were thinking of running it with different groups, because the goblins don't get along, they're not supposed to get along with each other, it's supposed to be the power of the demon that keeps them under control and able to take over a bunch of civilizations instead of just descending into violence among the goblins themselves, so there are going to be different groups of goblins that don't care about the other groups of goblins and I think the only thing keeping it together is going to be the demon's secret police, set up with goblins and worse, like undead things and other kind of horrible night creatures and stuff.
Rainseeker:   'Hey, you! No fighting, okay? Thank you. I will suck your blood if you don't stop fighting.'
Toady:   That's right, and those humans that they're kidnapping, that grow up and so on, can bring some order to the situation.
Rainseeker:   'Okay, guys. Let's talk about our feelings now. Let's not raise our voices, just use healing words.'

That is, he's wondering whether some of the goblins that invade your fort will stop participating in the invasion (and fight each other, wander off, etc.) if their commanders/whipcrackers are dead or absent.

Edit: Personally, I don't recall reading anything about any changes to fort mode invasions specifically. They'll use the new combat system, but otherwise they might still work exactly as in the current version.

Don't goblin squads often break and flee when their commander dies?  The only change I can see happening is that some squads end up made up of the demon's secret police and don't break when their commander dies whereas squads led by less invested goblins break when the dwarven militia shows up (having been happy to slaughter civilians and animals up to that point).

Back to the recent dev log, I am fairly certain there was a power goal about having a religious war between two groups.  Does anyone have a good list of all the power goals that have actually been observed to happen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 11, 2013, 06:37:51 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 11, 2013, 05:12:31 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 11, 2013, 05:10:58 pm

Alright, we now have internal conflicts (civil war) over religion and opposing ideology. Is this going to come to fort mode, so we will get a choice of which side we want to support (at least just options a, b), and then begin drafting dwarves into our chosen army?

This will be a great way to see your 200-dwarf fort get ruined.

I don't think the game is able to do that just yet.

Yep. You can't send Armies off site yet in Fort Mode. BUT all this stuff most likely is the ground to be able to do that.

Quote from: reality.auditor on December 11, 2013, 05:18:11 pm

Considering all this "internal conflicts" framework, is this applied to Fortress mode? More specifically, is loyalty cascade bug fixed? Would be possible to have this kind of internal conflict with your own (former) mountainhome after accidentally or "accidentally" killing dwarf caravan?
Probably not yet, but as it is closely related, I want to be sure.

If the Loyalty Cascade bug was fixed, it probably would have been mention. The log posts are seemingly concentrating on Adventure Mode. So surprisingly, they aren't applying to Fort Mode. Civil war, internal conflicts, that's all planned. When ToadyOne has spoken about Family Units and Guilds, hes spoken about them having conflicts with each other.

And the vampire stuff and LoS for nervous actions, as stated in a long ago FoTF stated that that framework can be used for Criminal dorfs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 11, 2013, 06:45:16 pm

It seems the entity relation/link system has been changed completely, which means there may be a chance that the bug is gone simply because the system that made it happen doesn't exist anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 11, 2013, 11:00:56 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 11, 2013, 06:45:16 pm

It seems the entity relation/link system has been changed completely, which means there may be a chance that the bug is gone simply because the system that made it happen doesn't exist anymore.

I did some looking into how cascades happen a while back, and I must say I think this may be the case. The old one had a very one-off "You attacked, you are now an enemy of all my entity", and since fort-mode dwarves are part of two distinct entities (civ and site governments), one of which they revoked by attacking a guard, they became conflicted: an enemy to their civ, but since they were also loyal to fort, an attack on one of them by a fort dwarf would revoke one of the fort dwarf's loyalties and make him conflicted ,although in the opposite way to the attacked dwarf, and this could continue on and on.

If fort-civ governments were made more closely related, if entity x-on-entity x violence was significantly changed (which it was), and if loyalties were made less absolute (which they were), there could possibly be a fix not of Toady's intention in there.

Anyway, with religious conflicts coming up, Will we be able to worship a god, and if so will people react to us differently because of it? I would think not, but it would make sense in the current work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 11, 2013, 11:40:55 pm

Quote from: misko27 on December 11, 2013, 11:00:56 pm

Anyway, with religious conflicts coming up, Will we be able to worship a god, and if so will people react to us differently because of it? I would think not, but it would make sense in the current work.

Adv Mode used to let you do this.  You can't anymore, but that seems to be a bug (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6346).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 12, 2013, 10:06:31 am

Holy cow... the new devlog is just too awesome. Finally I'll be able to unite the world in one empire under my command. I'm so giddy I can barely type!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 10:29:52 am

I'm looking forward to establish a fort and then make half of the world pay tribute to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 12, 2013, 10:50:51 am

I think I'm not going even touch fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 10:57:42 am

From what I read we are at the door steep of the most perfect and detailed RPG ever. Once more professions are up it would be interesting. I think I'll become a dwarf shoemaker.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on December 12, 2013, 11:00:30 am

Quote from: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 10:57:42 am

From what I read we are at the door steep of the most perfect and detailed RPG ever. Once more professions are up it would be interesting. I think I'll become a dwarf shoemaker.

Which decorates shows in the day and is vigilante in the night?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on December 12, 2013, 11:10:05 am

Quote from: Toady

Once you state a claim, you become the leader of a new site entity based on your current culture, but it is meaningless (other than as a new rumor) if you don't take the main building from the previous owners (at which point you get a handy announcement).

Does this allow for adventurers (or even NPCs) to become like Emperor Norton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 11:19:28 am

Quote from: zwei on December 12, 2013, 11:00:30 am

Quote from: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 10:57:42 am

From what I read we are at the door steep of the most perfect and detailed RPG ever. Once more professions are up it would be interesting. I think I'll become a dwarf shoemaker.

Which decorates shows in the day and is vigilante in the night?

Which make shoes while drunk in the day and gets drunk(er) in the night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on December 12, 2013, 11:27:48 am

Quote from: Sizik on December 12, 2013, 11:10:05 am

Does this allow for adventurers (or even NPCs) to become like Emperor Norton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton)?

Hmm. Head of an entity whom no-one else officially recognizes, but is nevertheless well-liked enough to subsist on the goodwill of the locals. Possible to an extent, but I'm doubtful this release will include charity. It MIGHT be possible that sufficient fame leads to more favorable prices (both buying and selling), but no one will be exploiting your name for their own monetary gain either. It's all in how you write the fluff after the fact, I suppose.

Oh man, I might actually start this release in adventure mode. Unheard of.
If we retire an adventurer who is head of an entity, Will they still be able to migrate to one of our later fortresses? If so, does that give our fortress a stake in said entity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on December 12, 2013, 11:28:28 am

This is really unexpected (the great daily devblogs since December began). It's like there is more content in the last 15 days than in the whole update.
DF 2014 will probably be the longest (nearly 2 years) update, but it's for sure the biggest one, too. It completely change the perspective of the game(s).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on December 12, 2013, 11:30:23 am

Wow, this is complicated stuff to model. I predict we will have the funniest ever DF bugs out of this update.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on December 12, 2013, 12:13:47 pm

Quote from: cephalo on December 12, 2013, 11:30:23 am

Wow, this is complicated stuff to model. I predict we will have the funniest ever DF bugs out of this update.

Forget the bugs... just the emergent situations are going to range from funny to interesting.

I imagine we'll be getting a lot of interesting Legends out of this one. I mean, Toady has already pointed out that religious differences could bring about a feud between two towns in the same civ. The world is going to have a lot more color to it.

But dang if this stuff doesn't sound unbelievable though. I mean trying to describe DF to a person who doesn't know about it usually is already met with disbelief. People are going to have even more trouble believing it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2013, 12:48:36 pm

Plenty of good work here! Looks like the last few days had more work than we have seen in a long time, probably since June or so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 12, 2013, 12:56:26 pm

Toady: you say that we'll be able to set up a new site government and take over sites and declare new site governments under our control, but will we be able to strong-arm the civilization's top leaders as well and become a sort of revolutionary dictator or monarch, or does the system only support controlling site governments at the moment?

In the process of taking over sites will other leaders in the civ recognize us as a threat and attack us, or will that be handled at a later date?

If civ governments can be taken control of and site governments can be remade entirely, then can we also declare ourselves leader of an entirely new, sovereign civilization and take over, say, one of our retired forts?

If so, would the entity template be taken from the local culture of the first site we take over or the civilization we hail form?

I have so many questions! And I'm so excited! We're gonna have SO MUCH FUN!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 12, 2013, 01:00:57 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2013, 12:48:36 pm

Plenty of good work here! Looks like the last few days had more work than we have seen in a long time, probably since June or so.

I submit that the frequency and verbosity of the devlogs doesn't necessarily reflect the amount of work being done.  In fact, often Toady writes a lot when he's just planning a new feature.  I like reading the devlog, but I'm also glad that our perspective on Toady's work is inherently limited -- it works out much better for everyone's long-term sanity (c.f. the List leading up to the 2010 release).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 12, 2013, 01:10:40 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 12, 2013, 01:00:57 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2013, 12:48:36 pm

Plenty of good work here! Looks like the last few days had more work than we have seen in a long time, probably since June or so.

I submit that the frequency and verbosity of the devlogs doesn't necessarily reflect the amount of work being done.  In fact, often Toady writes a lot when he's just planning a new feature.  I like reading the devlog, but I'm also glad that our perspective on Toady's work is inherently limited -- it works out much better for everyone's long-term sanity (c.f. the List leading up to the 2010 release).

When he does tests with the features he implemented he usually have something funny or interesting to tell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 12, 2013, 01:27:04 pm

Will adventurers be able to reclaim abandoned fortresses for their Civ through capturing the main building, such as a keep or mead hall? When goblins capture a dwarf fortress, is the site map converted to a goblin fortress template and vice versa? How long does this take? Will players be able to embark on recently conquered sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on December 12, 2013, 02:03:48 pm

 I've got a few questions, so I'll try to keep this concise. If I have this right, there are now three sorts of site conflicts:

*The goblin invasions and resultant insurrections, which are lethal combat.

*The harassment based village raids we heard about earlier, which are non-lethal/brawling.

*These new village raids, where the winner captures the site in question. (I'm not sure if these are lethal or not?)

Is that right? If so,

*Where do the old worldgen battles fit into all this? Do they take place during worldgen alongside these other types of conflict, or have these conflicts replaces them?

*What happens when a player starts stabbing enemies during a non-lethal raid?

*How do beaten enemies decide whether to flee into banditry or yield into servitude? Is it based on attributes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 12, 2013, 02:20:48 pm

I think that battles are still abstracted so far. Don't quote me on that, I'm not sure but I seem to recall Toady saying he hasn't touched that yet.

As for the what happens if you stab somebody in the middle of a non-lethal whatever, I think it either escalates or the other people flee in terror depending either on attributes or a decision making process.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on December 12, 2013, 02:54:18 pm

Quote from: smirk on December 12, 2013, 11:27:48 am

Oh man, I might actually start this release in adventure mode. Unheard of.
If we retire an adventurer who is head of an entity, Will they still be able to migrate to one of our later fortresses? If so, does that give our fortress a stake in said entity?

That's a really good question! I'd love to hear the answer to that, myself. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aerval on December 12, 2013, 03:38:02 pm

Someone out there who wants to sum up the recent devlogs? I really love daily devlogs but Today it is definitly a TL;DR. Nevertheless, I hope Toady continues doing it  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on December 12, 2013, 04:08:55 pm

Allright, what I can tell from them is that:

• you can make claims on towns
• these claims have no effect unless you have the main building
• you dont have to kill everyone, and can have the old ruler continue to rule in your stead
• And that leaving the town can cause you to loose it via uprisings and invasions

Oh, and that with the AI on they have lotsa wars, even from simple religious things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 12, 2013, 04:34:51 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on December 12, 2013, 04:08:55 pm

Oh, and that with the AI on they have lotsa wars, even from simple religious things.

Well, maybe it's not Warhammer 40.000 in that sense. The religion example was more of an exception than a rule, and as I understood, it happened because the differences were pretty extreme. Usually, if there are no goblins or radical menaces, then people might lead seldomly rambunctious lives.

Quote from: Toady One, 12/11/2013

I turned on the in-play AI for site leaders (just humans for now), coupling the stuff goblins and bandits were already doing with some of the considerations from world gen (like site disputes and the qualities of leaders). The result for a medium world was an addition of three dozen village raids right at the outset, on top of the existing goblin invasions, including one corner of the map where the village leader worshipping Mirding Fairwaves, the goddess of the sun, the sky, light and day was fighting with the leader of another village that worshipped the Scraped Webs, god of night and nightmares. Normally their shared culture can keep a lid on that sort of thing, but the opposition was so fundamental and the faith so strong that it didn't even take any generic land disputes to set off hostilities. I guess while I'm working on this part, I should be happy to accept a bunch of villagers beating each other up for their zealot leaders as our randomized version of an epic battle between light and dark. In any case, direct player participation in such trouble should be coming soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on December 12, 2013, 04:37:50 pm

Realized, probably should have made that more clear...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 12, 2013, 05:02:03 pm

 What happens if you attack the leader of one of your retired fortresses? Can you claim it with your adventurer? Can you claim dwarven fortresses at all?
If so,

Will there be some variation there, or will the dwarves from retired fortresses always be the more loyal types who will try very hard to kill your adventurer before surrendering?

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on December 12, 2013, 06:01:15 pm

Quote from: Ribs on December 12, 2013, 05:02:03 pm

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?[/color]

I think he's not handling player title acquisition for this release, as there wouldn't be anything for the player to do with the authority of the titles yet.

Anyway, Fearless Toady One,

Will the new site claim system allow player characters (/and their gangs?) to retire and live out of places like caves and lairs (that is, without "giving in to starvation")? When can we reasonably expect to be able to coax people to start living at sites we capture?  "Find a new life in my goblin fortress! Don't mind the goblin bones. And the trolls. Oh, and bring food."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 12, 2013, 09:03:45 pm

Holy balls, best devlog EVER. I was just gonna roll an adventurer and check out the mysterious demon(?) sites first thing, but I might have to pull an Old West "We run this town!" thing instead.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 12, 2013, 09:09:44 pm

So we can take over towns as adventurers now?

If so there will probably be a "conquer the world" challenge: Fastest to world dominion on a given save.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 12, 2013, 09:43:58 pm

Quote from: monk12 on December 12, 2013, 09:03:45 pm

Holy balls, best devlog EVER. I was just gonna roll an adventurer and check out the mysterious demon(?) sites first thing, but I might have to pull an Old West "We run this town!" thing instead.

Why not both? Claim the demon site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on December 13, 2013, 12:45:02 am

Yeah, all this stuff is exciting. With the developing entity interactions, I'm scared and fascinated by the possibility of Dwarven !!POLITICAL SCIENCE!! being conducted on this forum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 13, 2013, 01:31:35 am

maybe in the far future of df, we can get something like this magma-like guy http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=234428

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on December 13, 2013, 05:21:06 am

Yeah, I would imagine titles would be pointless and you won't be able to do anything with them, just like "tribute" will be abstract. Still, if you can become the "leader" of a village you take by force, why not a "baron" of a fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Thundercraft on December 13, 2013, 06:38:27 am

Quote from: Ribs on December 13, 2013, 05:21:06 am

Yeah, I would imagine titles would be pointless and you won't be able to do anything with them, just like "tribute" will be abstract. Still, if you can become the "leader" of a village you take by force, why not a "baron" of a fortress?

Pointless? Abstract? Aww!  ::)

If you're a "baron", a (war)lord or a "leader" of some sort, then shouldn't you receive some sort of tax or tithe or something? I mean, you did have to "liberate" them from some occupying force or their former "oppressive" leader. And now - in theory - they're your responsibility to protect. Maybe if it's a really poor village they'll give you a share of the eggs their hens lay or something? :P At least you should get free meals and a room to stay in. On the other hand, taxes from a conquered dwarf fortress might be something worth protecting and fighting over.  :D

Okay... I'm not saying I expect it to work like that in the next release. But maybe one day?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 13, 2013, 09:10:19 am

Is it possible to claim a site for an allied civilization, e.g. expanding the dwarven motherland by defeating a goblin tower? Or do you have to be completely independent for now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on December 13, 2013, 11:11:10 am

I took being able to have tributes sent to other civs to imply that you can conquer them for your civ. I could be wrong tho'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 13, 2013, 11:12:54 am

I know they are abstracted right now, but when you speak of tributes, what do you have in mind? Would you wait for an economic system to be in place to demand tribute in coinage? Or would it be more common to demand tribute in the form of minerals, objects or "people", like for example gold, weapons and inmigrants/warriors/slaves and coinage would be just yet another type of tribute if available? ... and for now, when you say is abstracted, what does it means?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 13, 2013, 11:43:47 am

Quote from: LordBaal on December 13, 2013, 11:12:54 am

I know they are abstracted right now, but when you speak of tributes, what do you have in mind? Would you wait for an economic system to be in place to demand tribute in coinage? Or would it be more common to demand tribute in the form of minerals, objects or "people", like for example gold, weapons and inmigrants/warriors/slaves and coinage would be just yet another type of tribute if available?

Historically, all kinds of valuable and/or symbolic items were used as tribute.  I expect those all to be fair game in DF -- restricting it to currency would be boring as well as ahistorical.  Golden goblets came up:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   I definitely think that the social aspects of adventure mode, all that sort of stuff, will be interesting, especially when you get to the point where you are the leader of a group, then you can eventually shift over to a fortress style mode.
Toady:   We were thinking about what the goals are of these meeting hall people, they might be accumulating treasure or something like that, like getting tribute from people and then they'd have this little treasure room ... You could start working on that kind of thing yourself, who knows what people do with their little treasure rooms, they finance armies and things somehow but I don't know what you do with a golden goblet at the end of the day ... I guess you drink from it, or something. But these accumulation type goals lead to things like ruins that are a lot of fun to run around in and fight zombies and snatch their things ...

Quote from: LordBaal on December 13, 2013, 11:12:54 am

... and for now, when you say is abstracted, what does it means?

It means nothing changes hands, as with the world gen tribute relationships in the current release.  I don't think that'll change until we have caravans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 13, 2013, 01:06:55 pm

The monetary aspect comes from the value of things, in the case of the gold goblet you could yeah, use it for drinking, or perhaps melt it into something else. Eventually you might sell it, specially the case with things you can't re-use like a wool dress if you are raising an army for example (cue somebody in here dressing their generals in flower stamped dresses).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 14, 2013, 01:16:20 pm

Will we be able to persuade our companions to retire with our adventurer, or at least "keep in touch"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 14, 2013, 02:06:15 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 14, 2013, 01:16:20 pm

Will we be able to persuade our companions to retire with our adventurer, or at least "keep in touch"?

Yes.  Adventurer retirement, like fortress retirement, is planned to be made much more flexible:

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.3

Rainseeker:   So now let's talk about how adventure mode is going to progress into more of a legacy mode, perhaps the adventurer decides that he wants to be a mighty warrior and so he explores and after a number of years he decides to perhaps retire and then maybe we talk about what happens after that? Is that what you're thinking?
Toady:   Yeah, it's a broad topic so we can just kind of bat some things around, so let's take that. So your adventurer retires, and the question first off is where do they retire? Right now you select a town and you retire there and then you become a person who stands around in that town, right? That's how it's going to be for quite a long time. The first thing that we're going to need ... there are a couple of things to kind of improve upon the quality of your retired characters - we can take that direction first - which is the creation of sites, which is on the dev log, just being able to select a location and either build your own site or rent or purchase a place to stay, so that you have a home base. Then with your retirement ... it would understand your character better, it would keep them in the right spot, you'd be able to find them again and talk to them. Then the other thing that we have up there is being able to create your own kind of adventurer entity, which I imagine would start ... an entity is just a civilization or group of people in this game, and being able to create your own entity means having ... it's either your band of merry people or it's your ruthless scumbags group of people, or some entity that you've joined, rather than created, and when it understands your character in those terms then it would also be able to plan their retirement a little better; that means having them AI driven and doing the right things. That's one form of legacy, just can your character persist properly when they retire?


Rainseeker:   So does that mean that I could create a new adventurer and go to the town where the old adventurer retired and meet him and possibly recruit him to my party?
Toady:   Yeah, you can actually do that right now.
Rainseeker:   Oh wow, I didn't realize that.
Toady:   Yeah. It's funny, you can fight them and cause all kinds of trouble having a Old West shootout with your old adventurers in the town and so on. So we've already kind of gotten started on that, so I think those two things I mentioned would help make the retired ... Right now they're like this weird window dressing, though, it's like ... they go there, they don't really fit in and the only way they fit in is that they do join the town that they retire in, so starting trouble with them starts trouble with everybody and so on, but having their own group would be interesting.

Now if your adventurer were to actually die then the nice part about the sites that you create is that they still exist and the entities that you create actually still exist. So, if you created, say, a group of bandits and you were going and taking things from towns and so on, and people disliked you and hunted you down and killed you - which is actually in the list of the dev goals for that, so it's not just something I'm saying - you'd then have that group of people, and once we get succession in, which is very soon - we're probably going to do succession before we finish the caravan arc because it's ... well it is actually part of the caravan arc, I think it's release 5 right now - but once we have succession then the group that you've created, named, and everything, and you've told them all to wear little blue hats or something - assuming you can secure those things and actually help your people wear stuff, you'd probably have to hand them out manually at first, like 'Here's your hat, here's your hat. Now put it on, put it on here' and they're like 'Okay!' - so that group would persist; whatever position you'd created for yourself, probably just like 'I'm the leader of the bandits' or whatever, because you have these entity positions right, with names and so on, like when you're fighting bandits yourself it's like 'Here's the ringleader; here's the boss' or whatever, it just gives them silly names, you'd be able to do the same thing and you'd have your little group with the leadership position, and when the leadership position is vacated, when you meet your untimely demise, then the leadership position would be filled; when we get to release 5, or whenever we do succession, which is going to be release 5 or sooner, right. So you have that, and then you've got this group that persists forever, or as long as it has a breathing member, or someone willing to resurrect it after everyone's gone. Then you'd leave that behind and that would be one of the first real feelings that you've created something rather than destroyed something, because right now you can kill all the beasts in the world and then the world has changed in that way; that's a way of leaving a mark, but it's a negative mark.


Rainseeker:   So would you be able to set goals for your organization, or similar?
Toady:   Well, the way that we have it set up on the dev page - and we haven't thought about this too much - is that you'd be able to assign little tasks for people and so on that they could do in your absence, but we haven't thought about, you know ... what is, and I don't even know if ... there's nothing really that says, that's anywhere, like what the overarching goal of your organization is. It's like the aggregate version of the personality rewrite, because the personality rewrite involves not just coming up with facets of the personality that are more interesting than the current ones, that allow you to tell better stories, but also new categories entirely of things, like what are the dreams of this dwarf, what are the dwarf's lifelong goals and that kind of thing. Then in adventure mode you don't quite have the same thing because you're playing, whereas your dwarves will have those things independent of your existence, but when you make an organization there's ... the two ways to think about it are, does my organization ... is the game going to try to guess what you're doing? It's like 'Well, they've killed their seventeenth person so obviously this is an organization bent on randomly killing people', or is it something that ... what will probably end up happening because the computer can never really be smart enough to tell, is that you just say what you're about, and if you completely violate the principles of what you're about then it'll probably start trying to come up with something on its own, it'd be like 'Well, you're supposed to be wandering around and helping the sick, but you keep killing them' and eventually it would decide that you're actually some kind of weird euthanasia organization or something. But that's all kind of wishful thinking; not the content that I just mentioned but just the ability that it would be able to do anything like that, but it's ...
Rainseeker:   'Hey man, I'm just preventing an epidemic, okay?'
Toady:   It's true, it's going to be dangerous when there are plagues, you'll have some difficult decisions to make. But that is the general idea of what kind of legacy you can leave behind, and that you'd be able to have an organization that made some kind of sense ... I mean at first you'd probably just be selecting from a list of ... like when you form the organization there are other people around because you don't just form it in your head, right? So you'd probably take your three or four adventuring companions that you'd picked up and say 'Alright, let's go rob wagons together!' and they're like 'Yay!' or some of them leave or one of them tries to kill you or something, but once they all agree that you are now an organization that goes and robs wagons together, which at first would probably just be as simple as selecting, you know, 'bandit' as your option or whatever ... Because that sort of organization already exists, right, you can just declare that 'I want to be a type of organization that already exists', it already understands how they work and so when the adventure is over either by retirement or death it would understand what to do with those guys, and then they'd fit right in; you'd get quests to kill yourself or whatever. Right now you can get a quest to kill yourself but only through the animosity between civilizations; if your adventurer is a notable killer of another civilization then retires back in a friendly town, and then you start at the aggrieved civilization you can get a quest to kill your adventurer, but they're still just window dressing over there. So that's that form of legacy, and then there's the familial legacy you can have, when we get to the relationship stuff you'll be able to leave behind little playable childrens and things. I suppose your spouse might be playable too, I wonder ... if you get killed it'd be fun to go on a vengeance quest or something as the aggrieved widow or widower.
Rainseeker:   So is it possible right now to play until you die of old age?
Toady:   Possible, technically, I suppose, but you'd have to be a patient person who sits and sleeps repeatedly until you die.
Capntastic:   But isn't there going to be the kind of time skip adventurer thing like you were talking about a while ago?
Toady:   Yeah, exactly ... I think the question was can you do it now? Now it would require patience, but definitely the idea was that you'd be able to skip years at a time if you want ...
Rainseeker:   Right, because it'd be kind of cool to train your kids, you know? Like make them awesome warriors too.
Toady:   Yeah, and then you could have your little team, and they could go on adventures with you and you could carry the smallest one and just run in there ... Especially if you're a dwarf, you just strap them on and jump into it.
Rainseeker:   Of course you could adopt, too, if you wanted to I guess.
Toady:   Well yeah, adoption is one of the things the game sorely needs, right? Because there's all of these orphans ...
Rainseeker:   They're everywhere.
Toady:   People should help each other out. So yeah ... it'd be something that would be fun in adventure mode too, because then you'd have your little orphan, or your little orphanage, I guess just tell them all to work on your farm or whatever.
Rainseeker:   You have an orphanage ... that'd be great.
Toady:   Yeah, so that's it. The only other thing - I wrote down a few things - the only other thing I had written down for the adventurer legacy are the things that can already happen but they could be focused on a little bit more; things like statues and artwork and people naming their kids after you, that kind of stuff, which we've touched upon, I think, before, and already happens to some extent, the statues and artwork. So there are a lot of ways to leave a ... I guess what I was trying to focus on this time was a creative impact on the world rather than a destructive impact, because obviously there's the legacy of slain dragons and so on, and then there's the creative impact of making new entities, new sites, having artwork created about you, having a family and leaving more people behind than you were yourself. Then I guess there's impacts of change ... more of, say, an army arc or trading thing where stuff moves around or changes ownership and I suppose you could also, when we get the crafting beyond ... Like right now I guess you could leave a legacy of sharpened stones, but you'll be able to do better than that in terms of leaving things behind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 14, 2013, 04:25:41 pm

So, if I understand this correctly, it should be possible to do the following with the upcoming version:

1. Claim a site ruled over by someone,

2. If said person denies my claim and states that I am a "silly person", with the new conversation and combat systems can A) duel to the death or B) pin and lift said person, and throw them into the nearest fire and watch them burn alive,

3. Rule with an iron fist and kill all who oppose me by way of law?

...Neat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 14, 2013, 04:26:40 pm

Yeah, sounds about right. The main issue would be getting the fire running. Also, I don't think ruling with an iron fist in a way that's recognizable by the game is quite going to be possible next version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 14, 2013, 05:57:17 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 14, 2013, 04:25:41 pm

So, if I understand this correctly, it should be possible to do the following with the upcoming version:

1. Claim a site ruled over by someone,

2. If said person denies my claim and states that I am a "silly person", with the new conversation and combat systems can A) duel to the death or B) pin and lift said person, and throw them into the nearest fire and watch them burn alive,

3. Rule with an iron fist and kill all who oppose me by way of law?

...Neat.

#3 is interesting to me.

What happens if you start mistreating the citizens of your new entity? Will they kick you out of the entity, or will they leave it, or will they just be like "well the King can do what he wants, I guess." Are they more tolerant of stealing in the name of the new site leader (considering it tribute or something?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lue on December 14, 2013, 06:09:01 pm

With tributes running the town while you're away, will messengers ever find you to alert you to problems in that town, e.g. the guy you left it charge was killed and someone new controls the town? Or will you intrinsically know when your rule is affected?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 14, 2013, 07:14:05 pm

Quote from: lue on December 14, 2013, 06:09:01 pm

With tributes running the town while you're away, will messengers ever find you to alert you to problems in that town, e.g. the guy you left it charge was killed and someone new controls the town? Or will you intrinsically know when your rule is affected?

Tributes and such are likely going to be kept abstract, but Toady hasn't mentioned anything about a prompt telling "you have lost a settlement" or something like that. So maybe you're going to be kept up in the news thanks to rumours and improved dialog system. I might be wrong.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 14, 2013, 09:34:15 pm

And remember, there will probably be secrets that we are supposed to find for ourelves also.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 14, 2013, 09:39:59 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 14, 2013, 09:34:15 pm

And remember, there will probably be secrets that we are supposed to find for ourelves also.

Like the mysterious demon sites. Though I know you mean secrets that haven't been revealed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 15, 2013, 09:51:50 am

Given that the process of creating or controlling existing adventurers has been discussed, i 'd like to ask how do you intend to handle players who want to create custom "heroes" from scratch? You mentioned writing characters into world gen after the fact, but i was wondering how this would be affected by creating characters with more impact on the world then mcpeasant. On a related note, could a player's backstory be affected by his actions in play? Could some traits, like social skills, be similarly affected? This does depend on a lack of life-changing/important events before play if you wish to make sweeping changes, which might be rare for many adventurers, but perhaps how a freshly created peasant with little personality interacts with his acquaintances in his village could let the game make some fair judgements. A adventurer who nicks pies could be reasonably accused of never growing up, for example. As for the skills, this again requires unimportant, bored characters, and even then could raise eyebrows if the difference between how they acted in "world gen" and play is dramatic enough. This ties into a broader question of handling differences between the player's game-play style and the internal consistency of their character. You've previously mentioned that the current inability of the game to simulate the duties, relationship and general "role" of historical figures, or notice/handle people "breaking character" is the reason we can't assume control of them, but how important is acting like a historical figure as opposed to playing like a historical figure? Obvious examples include combat, but even simple things like a player controlling a unobservant character looking at everything, or a new player controlling a experienced tomb raider triggering every single trap, would be relevant. Would players in this position be able to use abstraction, or be able to use (limited) hints?

The world is becoming more and more lively, and this should make it much less predictable, but nevertheless i was wondering what plans do you have to handle players who know the ins and out of a favorite world, particularly those with a roleplaying bent who do not want to reenact past discoveries and struggle to resist "spoiling" new characters? How much of the worlds fundamentals (theme, magic, critters, geography) could change after world gen has stopped and play has started?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wdiksolan on December 15, 2013, 09:53:09 am

I was reading through some old devlogs about tracking and combined with giving companions orders this question popped up:

When being tracked, can you tell a companion to wait and then ambush the hunters while you escape?
Or better yet, will you be able to give your companion your shoes and then tell him to head in another direction to confuse them and if so, will they follow him?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on December 15, 2013, 10:43:43 am

So, Now that the duplicating populations are being fixed, does this mean that bringing the age of death is posible, like in the old days?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on December 15, 2013, 11:09:24 am

friendly fire is nice though. will a loyalty cascade happen if i order a marksdwarf to shoot another dwarf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on December 15, 2013, 11:21:36 am

Quote

you can choose to shoot non-hostiles now

Woo! I can properly go bow hunting giraffes now!  Do you know how hard those things were to melee?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 15, 2013, 12:13:49 pm

On the population duplication, if you, say, clean out a kobold cave, leave the site, come back, and now it won't be populated by things in massive lag inducing numbers of hundreds (and about a thousand ravens in one case)? Currently you have to make the site a lair via DFhack in order to keep that from happening. Kobold caves seem especially prone to the population duplication.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 15, 2013, 12:20:15 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 15, 2013, 12:13:49 pm

On the population duplication, if you, say, clean out a kobold cave, leave the site, come back, and now it won't be populated by things in massive lag inducing numbers of hundreds (and about a thousand ravens in one case)? Currently you have to make the site a lair via DFhack in order to keep that from happening. Kobold caves seem especially prone to the population duplication.

That would fall under site population duplication, which is what Toady worked on, yeah.  Was there something you wanted clarified beyond that?

Quote from: monk12 on December 14, 2013, 05:57:17 pm

What happens if you start mistreating the citizens of your new entity? Will they kick you out of the entity, or will they leave it, or will they just be like "well the King can do what he wants, I guess." Are they more tolerant of stealing in the name of the new site leader (considering it tribute or something?)

The only rebellions we've heard about are insurrections against occupiers, so I think this would depend on whether the adventurer is considered an occupier.  That might be based on whether you're from the same civilization?

Quote from: devlog

I also updated the player targeting code for shooting and throwing to respect the new conflict system -- nothing special like aiming or anything, but as a side effect you can choose to shoot non-hostiles now (there is still no friendly fire if it isn't intended, but you have the option to select them).

Quote from: PDF urist master on December 15, 2013, 11:09:24 am

friendly fire is nice though. will a loyalty cascade happen if i order a marksdwarf to shoot another dwarf?

The devlog is talking about the player's ability to target other creatures in Adv. Mode.  I don't think it affects Fortress Mode attack orders.

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 15, 2013, 09:51:50 am

Given that the process of creating or controlling existing adventurers has been discussed, i 'd like to ask how do you intend to handle players who want to create custom "heroes" from scratch? You mentioned writing characters into world gen after the fact, but i was wondering how this would be affected by creating characters with more impact on the world then mcpeasant. On a related note, could a player's backstory be affected by his actions in play? This does depend on a lack of life-changing events, which might be rare for many adventurers, but perhaps how a freshly created peasant with little personality interacts with his acquaintances in his village could let the game make some fair judgements. A adventurer who nicks pies could be reasonably accused of never growing up, for example.

Toady has discussed this at length.  Basically, retconning is hard.

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_6_transcript.html

Toady:   There are dozens of issues standing in the way, but a lot of them are things we've discussed like graphics and tutorials and instructions and all that kind of thing. So putting those important things aside, just to get at adventure mode specific matters - rather than just problems with Dwarf Fortress in general - you really start out in adventure mode - you create a character - and you start out in the middle of a building or something and there's really no clue about what's going on. The keybindings aren't really harder to learn that any roguelike, you just pop up the screen and they're there, so the problems with accessibility are more in the line of a direction for your character; right now there's not a lot to do and you have no direction at all, for a new player especially. If you've played before you at least know what the deal is and you might just wander off to your old fortress or you might just wander around and set a goal to kill some monster or something, but without that, if you press adventurer mode before even playing fortress mode then you'd really just have no idea what to do, and when you talk to people you might find your way eventually to the people that will give you quests, but their quests are all kind of cynical, it's just like 'Oh you, you want to do something for me? Alright, go kill the dragon.' It's not really appropriate for your character, so I think the thing to do here - and we'll get to the future of adventure mode, which is the topic - a huge part of that is character generation. So there's the idea of how can you improve character generation, just in general, and also how than to make the game entirely take care of all of the accessibility problems that don't have anything to do with graphics and the general interface, that kind of thing, but just the game itself. So the idea is to have some additional options and the main one would be ... you've got a character who - currently you just create them and they're this outsider who doesn't really belong to the world at all, they might belong to the overall civilization that you've selected for them, but they don't meaningfully tie into that, they don't have a parent in that civilization, they don't have any friends in that civilization, they don't know anybody in that civilization - so one of the ideas for a mode of character generation would be a scenario-driven thing. There are downsides to that sort of stuff, like if you have a Q and A process like the Ultima games or even our own Liberal Crime Squad, the main downside to that I think is that it's a cumbersome way to create a character when you know the questions are just building stats and giving you items, so it just gets really annoying and you have to game the system just to get where you want to get, and it's the same every time. The key difference here is that it really can't be the same every time in Dwarf Fortress because the worlds are all different; it can picks two parent for you and say 'you were born to these two people and you're living in this kind of situation' and then it can have things arise based on just running world generation, just continue world gen from whatever point the game's at. So if goblins were attacking that village that would be the scenario event it throws at you, how do you deal with this? Depending on how old you are you might just be forced to run away, but there might be choices to make in any case. So it can give you a past in this way, and it will let you interact with it. Ideally you'd be presented with a situation and you'd either have some options for resolving that and then continuing to the next situation, or a little more difficult would be allowing you to jump into any situation that you wanted to, so if you were nineteen years old in some village as a farmer in the beginning and the goblins attacked, maybe you'd want to just jump in right there, and that's where you start playing. And at that point you certainly wouldn't have an accessibility problem in the sense of not knowing what to do, or at least having a situation that you'd be confronted with because there'd be something going on, and you'd also have your parents and friends and things; that's the main point, you'd have relationships to begin with, and you should be able to punch up a screen that says what's going on there, and if during the early scenarios you had a situation where your parents were killed by somebody or something then you'd have a Conan relationship screen or something, where it's like 'Thulsa Doom killed your mom' or whatever, and that can be something that drives your life if you want. That's the scenario situation, running through that, being able to break out when you want, or just finishing a number of them, and that would start from wherever your last game ended. The downside here is that if you're starting from that year and it takes a certain time to grow up, then whatever was going on in the world is going to be spent by twelve, thirteen, sixteen, twenty more years by the time you jump in. It's more difficult to retcon you into the world and start you where you want to start off but using past events. We've talked about that a bit before with the fake populations and saving their historical events and how you can use that to retcon things in, including your own character. So it's possible, but ...
Rainseeker:   Well presumably you could choose from two different options.
Toady:   Aside from the scenario stuff and the retconning and that kind of thing, there would also be, especially for people that kind of know what they're doing, but for anyone else as well - when we were talking about accessibility the scenario driven way would give you direction - but another way to do it would be a role playing mode where you can create your character on the spot as an outsider, or just say 'I'm this guy's kid' just picking off the legends screen, that would be fine too. Then you could set everything about yourself, absolutely everything about yourself, and just start playing at the year that everything left off, as if you'd just popped into existence, or had a past, or whatever you want to set up, just to get you in with minimal difficulty without worrying about the retconning problems, get you in there at the right year, if you wanted to continue right where you left off. Another way to do that would be to just say 'I want to play an existing person in the world' and you just go down the legends list and pick someone. That would require something like a world generation parameter I think, because that's one of those things where you'd be tempted to deal with certain problems ... there are people who complain about being tempted to spoil their games. So if the goblins have been attacking you, you could be 'Well I'll be the goblin king and I'll jump into that volcano!' So that would be one of those world gen options most likely, like 'only allow you to jump into people that don't have entity positions/only allow you to jump into people of the good races/allow you to do anything/disallow you to do it at all'; I think that would resolve those issues, for any of the scenario or roleplaying type modes. There's also the notion - it goes to accessibility but difficulty more - so when you have skill points that you assign, or in the scenarios in terms of how much your character's learning or what kind of background they have, there's this notion of the different kinds of heroes that there are in myths and so on, since we're trying to generate and recreate those stories it's important to get at that. Three general options would be, firstly 'Well, I want my character to be a demigod' like Hercules, it could go into the human pantheons and you'd be like 'Zeus is my dad', and then that character would be exceptional, and you wouldn't have to worry as much about a wolf killing you or something, and you might have gods giving you gifts or cursing you; you'd have an epic life no matter what, you'd have no choice in the matter. Then there's also the middle option which would be a heroic character, which is similar to what we have now where you can start out as a really talented swordsman, someone who's like Batman who's exceptional but not supernatural necessarily, so you can really jam your numbers up or have an exceptional life in terms of your parents or whatever. Then there's the third mode which would be a normal mode, or an 'unlikely hero' mode instead of a hero mode, where you start off as a person who has skills per their scenario or if you're roleplaying you wouldn't add that much stuff to yourself, and that would be suited for the games where people just want to make their own way in the world, or create their little log cabin in the woods and hunt things, or become a bandit, any of those kind of games where they don't really care how survivable their character is if they ran into a goblin tower or something. It runs a bit against all the roleplaying games I've played since Legend of Zelda, where all the numbers and things increase, and the adversaries increase, and the areas that open up increase, and it's all matching larger and larger numbers against each other, and it's becoming less of an option in Dwarf Fortress just because of how the thing is set up, so you can't really run it that way. So it might be weird to start as a powerful character and stay a powerful character but it's really more about the story than the power levelling type of increase, although there are elements of that when your skills improve, and you occasionally find better equipment, although it's nothing the loot-driven systems. There are going to be issues here to tackle, repeatedly, we can't really see everything that's going to happen when you strike out on a new mode of thinking about how an RPG might work. I'm not saying this is the first time anything like this has been done, but I certainly don't know how to handle it myself. It should be interesting to see where this leads. I think when you've got that setup where your character starts and they have as much backstory as you want them to have, then you'll have more direction. You need a little bit of a push maybe and there's more that needs to be done with social interactions and so on when you talk to people, when you talk to like those meeting hall guys that tell you to go off and kill a goblin or kill a dragon should probably not cynically toss you away, especially if you look like you're worth anything, and they should probably just send you with a guy to prove yourself against some kobolds that are out on patrol rather than sending you on suicide missions and then when you get back, they're like 'Oh that was cool'; they don't really care.

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 15, 2013, 09:51:50 am

The world is becoming more and more lively, and this should make it much less predictable, but nevertheless i was wondering what plans do you have to handle players who know the ins and out of a favorite world, particularly those with a roleplaying bent who do not want to reenact past discoveries? How much of the worlds fundamentals could change after world gen has stopped and play has started?

What sorts of fundamentals do you have in mind?  This may be relevant:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_17_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   Yeah, that actually is interesting, to have the concept of, maybe, scenarios where that is stated, like, you know, 'In ten years, the end of the world is coming, prepare yourself.'
Capntastic:   That'd be fun.
Toady:   Yeah. We're definitely thinking, when we said ... there was this old Armok system where, I think it was the atmosphere, plot ... what was the other word, there were three words right? There was the atmosphere and the plot and the something else ... a genre. The genre, atmosphere, plot system of Armok I, which of course ... we didn't get anywhere with that game, but the genre, atmosphere, plot system ... the idea was you'd pick your overall genre that your game is in, if you want to do horror/fantasy or if you want to have My Little Mermaid or something like that, and then you'd have the overall plot: is it an apocalyptic My Little Mermaid game which means that someone's going to come and steal all your toys at the end of the world, or is it a cyclic game, or is it a game where everything kind of fades into mundanity or whatever. Then there's the atmosphere which is kind of everything else, the little things about the game and little tweaks that you can do to it. So, even if we're not using that same system, we have those world generation parameters right, in Dwarf Fortress, where you can set up various facts about the world and that would be where this apocalypse thing fits in, you could give an overall arc to your world each time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 15, 2013, 01:03:33 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on December 15, 2013, 11:09:24 am

friendly fire is nice though. will a loyalty cascade happen if i order a marksdwarf to shoot another dwarf?

Loyalty cascades as we know them should be dead with the new reputation system. It's possible that a new, similar bug is in existence, but I'd rather wait and see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 15, 2013, 02:20:04 pm

I've been thinking about enemies, and I've got to ask: Where are we in terms of automata? Will bronze colossi and iron men still be lumps of living metal that take the form of a bipedal being, or will they soon be beings with metal flesh and mechanisms for bones and muscles?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 15, 2013, 02:46:21 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 15, 2013, 02:20:04 pm

I've been thinking about enemies, and I've got to ask: Where are we in terms of automata? Will bronze colossi and iron men still be lumps of living metal that take the form of a bipedal being, or will they soon be beings with metal flesh and mechanisms for bones and muscles?

It's fair game for the future, but there are no immediate plans:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_2_transcript.html#2.megabeasts

Rainseeker:   Speaking of the bronze colossuses; could it possibly be that you have it be connected together with a bunch of bolts or something that could fall off and that's the way you could kill it even if it's solid.
Toady:   I guess one of the things to consider is why is it there? Was it made by somebody?
Capntastic:   Some sort of supernatural intervention.
Toady:   I don't remember anymore, but was the one in Jason and the Argonauts made by Hephaestus or something? So created by a forge god type thing, right? Then there's the idea; could they have been made by old dwarves, then you have the problem of, well, can your dwarves make them? And then you get into the whole automaton segue into steampunk and so on. Then there's just them being ... or are they some kind of bronzey spirit of nature type thing, that's just kind of wondering around, causing trouble.
Ampersand:   I don't know if you've ever played Morrowind or anything, but in the lore of Morrowind or Daggerfall even, the dwarves did in fact make a gigantic mecha.
Toady:   Yeah, they had all kinds of steam automatons, right? I remember ... no I won that game, I think, if you're talking about the big statue at the end. So there's a notion of dwarves there, just ... there's something about steam [that] bothers me, I don't know why. Having all these steam powered ...
Ampersand:   I don't think their giant machine was steam powered, it was part of Lorkhan ...
Toady:   Oh yeah that's right, there's magic and stuff, and we don't have a whole lot of that, but we should, yeah. I don't remember what our thoughts on automatons were completely; I believe that having something like an intelligent automaton walking around would be an artifact type situation.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Bloat42, AUTOMATONS, (Future): Automatons could be created, but it's campy to overdo it, at least in the standard world model. An artifact creating dwarf could make special automatons.

PowerGoal45, MEET THE CYBERFIST, (Future): You use your iron geared prosthetic hand to crush a piece of stone in front of the cowering goblin, and it passes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 15, 2013, 02:55:53 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 15, 2013, 02:20:04 pm

I've been thinking about enemies, and I've got to ask: Where are we in terms of automata? Will bronze colossi and iron men still be lumps of living metal that take the form of a bipedal being, or will they soon be beings with metal flesh and mechanisms for bones and muscles?

You could do something with the tissues and creative raw editing. I know the Masterwork mod has these golems and automaton things.

I see no reason why someone can't do it now. Though I guess the problem then becomes keeping them as formidable as they are now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 15, 2013, 04:01:21 pm

I've cleared up what i mean by "fundamentals" in the post Footkerchief, thanks for asking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 15, 2013, 04:05:37 pm

I think the animated statues thing is pretty straightforward. They could perhaps be hollow, though.

IIRC, Talos had a single vein full of molten lead, held closed by a bronze nail, and someone popped the nail and made him "bleed" to death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on December 15, 2013, 06:56:14 pm

Coming next release, will hill, mountain or deep dwarves differ from one another on any level? Will hill dwarves tend to be more tan, or deep dwarves pale? Will hill or deep sites fight amongst themselves in a similar manner to human villages?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 15, 2013, 07:56:31 pm

Quote from: Witty on December 15, 2013, 06:56:14 pm

Coming next release, will hill, mountain or deep dwarves differ from one another on any level? Will hill dwarves tend to be more tan, or deep dwarves pale? Will hill or deep sites fight amongst themselves in a similar manner to human villages?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:   Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker:   Exactly.
Capntastic:   But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:   Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:   They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:   Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:   Fleshy beards?
Toady:   Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker:   Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:   A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:   But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:   That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 15, 2013, 09:47:07 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on December 15, 2013, 11:09:24 am

friendly fire is nice though. will a loyalty cascade happen if i order a marksdwarf to shoot another dwarf?

I doubt you will be able to do so, it's only because of the (I hope I remember this right) [ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:JUSTIFIED_IF_SANCTIONED] that allows you to kill merchants anyway, killing citizens (friendlies) is still covered by murder. Loyalty cascades work in that being a member of an enemy entity or being an enemy of a entity overrides being friendly for most things, but keeps it for reversing a dwarves allegiances when they attack someone from friendly to an entity to an enemy.


And, depending severely on how fort mode loyalties are affected by the new system, there may not even be cascades. Which reminds me: How is fort mode loyalty now? Is it still possible to be friendly to a civ and an enemy of the fort and vice versa? And will dwarves still attack someone who is friendly to one of their entities but an enemy to others? This one might have been asked earlier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 15, 2013, 09:49:56 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 15, 2013, 07:56:31 pm

Quote from: Witty on December 15, 2013, 06:56:14 pm

Coming next release, will hill, mountain or deep dwarves differ from one another on any level? Will hill dwarves tend to be more tan, or deep dwarves pale? Will hill or deep sites fight amongst themselves in a similar manner to human villages?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:   Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker:   Exactly.
Capntastic:   But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:   Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:   They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:   Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:   Fleshy beards?
Toady:   Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker:   Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:   A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:   But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:   That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

That's talking about future direction though. Maybe Toady can answer more precisely what's the differences will be in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on December 15, 2013, 09:54:43 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 15, 2013, 04:05:37 pm

I think the animated statues thing is pretty straightforward. They could perhaps be hollow, though.

IIRC, Talos had a single vein full of molten lead, held closed by a bronze nail, and someone popped the nail and made him "bleed" to death.

I think Iron Men are hollow, and release a poisonous gas when breached, though they don't "bleed" to death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on December 16, 2013, 06:53:48 am

Replication bug will be fixed?
huehueh,i can cause massive genocide now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 16, 2013, 10:10:42 am

Regarding this answer from last week:

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 07, 2013, 09:00:45 am

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on December 07, 2013, 03:31:58 am

Dear Fearless Toady One,

In the next release, will there be any alternate options to advance a world's timeline besides playing as an adventurer and playing through fortress mode (including, of course, the "skip to next spring" thing when starting new forts)? Will there be options e.g. to "retire for one year" as an adventurer or to advance time indefinitely in Legends mode? What are your views on player interaction with long stretches of in-world time?

There was a previous exchange about this:

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Thundercraft on February 08, 2013, 10:08:49 am

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: monk12

There isn't yet the ability to time-skip, but it's a planned feature. Right now the best you can do is start/abandon a fortress a bunch of times- each new start will cycle the year forward to the next spring. Though actually, with worldgen activities continuing into play, that might change, or be a more involved process. Do world activities advance after an abandon? Will the game simulate world activities before the next fortress is founded?

Dealing with the abandonment/post-adventure time-skip is one of the clean-up things on the menu.  It'll have to advance the events, but as you can imagine, that's a reasonably messy process.

Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.

In the current version, there's something like a two week skip for a new adventurer and a skip to the next spring for a fortress.  The ramifications for such a thing vs. the new active-world mechanics have not been addressed, and I'm not sure what'll end up replacing the time-skip if anything.

There's more info in today's devlog:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-16

More handling of tangential issues related to all the new people running around. The main goal today was to get something in place to deal with the passage of time between games. Since there are people running all over the map now, it can't just set the clock forward when you want to play again, at least not without being very weird and time-freezey for any pre-existing travelers. The basic rule of the current release is that the next fortress starts at the beginning of the next year, and that new adventurers push time forward two weeks, and I haven't changed that -- this means that sometimes quite a bit of time is passing. The first step was to take that time advancement out of a single function and make a new screen for it. There'll need to be work done with abstraction -- passing a pre-fort-mode calendar through almost an entire year to the next spring is actually pretty fast, since not a lot of fine-grained detail is going on in fort mode outside of the fort, but in adventure mode it still insists on handling things like tracking information, which can be slower in highly-populated worlds when you are trying to crunch it all through rapidly. Ideally, you'd keep some details from what it does in the two weeks it passes for adventure mode, so that you start off with accurate trails to follow and so on, and you'd also prefer to perform every decision made in diplomacy and war and so on as they happen, but we'll probably end up making some concessions there depending on how optimization goes. At least overall, it seems like it'll work out fine for the amount of information it is handling.

Theoretically whatever the screen becomes could be used to pass time arbitrarily between games later on if we decide we want to do something there, but right now you just watch a little calendar go forward to the standard target date. A fuller "resume world generation" option might fit here as well, although it would be a different creature than regular world generation, even after all of the world generation mechanics work in play. The same screen more or less could also be used later to handle dev goals relating to passing longer-than-sleep chunks of time in play (with training or study or work or whatever, if you don't want to play a fort or another character in the non-adventurous downtime), and it would be reasonably easy to make it sensitive to interruptions (like your training area being attacked three weeks in).
[...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PersonGuy on December 16, 2013, 01:05:15 pm

Just a few questions will fortresses still be active when you visit in adventure mode as in soldiers still patrolling, Brewers making Booze, smiths making weapons and armor, and will we be able to see Urist MCDumbasanelf still ignoring mandates and fiddling around with the magma cannon levers and exploring the giant spider infested caverns while walking around with valuable objects.

Also will world gen battles be improved in the future as in simulating companies of soldiers engaging in massed combat in varied terrain with formations and fortifications with archers using them to rain down indirect fire and artillery taking out chunks of soldiers from phalanxes or said phalanxes holding off a cavalry charge and will we be able to do that in dorf mode in the near future.

Will we see some more building types and items in the next update such as vats and pots that are used for various purposes( industry and warfare such as boiling oil/molten lead) with things like a portcullis for defense and player built and operated wagons and things like slings and flame ammunition like barrels of oil/burning material for catapults and fire pots with possibly some gunpowder weapons such as grenades, rockets, bombs, and cannon(no guns) for defense/conquest.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 16, 2013, 01:11:23 pm

I swear I had posted on that question that Footkerchief responded to. Wierd. Oh well, we were thinking of the same question anyway.

@personguy: Make your text green if you want Toady One to answer the questions.

1. You can visit them yes, no idea how 'lively' it'll be in terms of activity, maybe thats a later thing.

2. That stuff is a ways off.

3. Come on, gunpowder? That's been suggested and debated to death and no, Toady One isn't putting in gunpowder. Though gunpowder DID exist during the time frame limit of 1400's, give or take a century. Still though, no new buildings in fort mode that we are aware of.

If you want gunpowder, I think the Masterwork mod has it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 16, 2013, 01:15:48 pm

Quote from: PersonGuy on December 16, 2013, 01:05:15 pm

Just a few questions will fortresses still be active when you visit in adventure mode as in soldiers still patrolling, Brewers making Booze, smiths making weapons and armor, and will we be able to see Urist MCDumbasanelf still ignoring mandates and fiddling around with the magma cannon levers and exploring the giant spider infested caverns while walking around with valuable objects.

Also will world gen battles be improved in the future as in simulating companies of soldiers engaging in massed combat in varied terrain with formations and fortifications with archers using them to rain down indirect fire and artillery taking out chunks of soldiers from phalanxes or said phalanxes holding off a cavalry charge and will we be able to do that in dorf mode in the near future.

Will we see some more building types and items in the next update such as vats and pots that are used for various purposes( industry and warfare such as boiling oil/molten lead) with things like a portcullis for defense and player built and operated wagons and things like slings and flame ammunition like barrels of oil/burning material for catapults and fire pots with possibly some gunpowder weapons such as grenades, rockets, bombs, and cannon(no guns) for defense/conquest.   

I doubt any of this is in for the next version, since it's all quite large undertakings that I'm certain we'd have heard a lot about if that was the case.  I'd guess most of it will prolly make it in at some point though.

About the world gen battles:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_8_transcript.html (Toady)

Once we add in some tactics and things it'll talk about that and you might be able to have a general with really high military skills not at the individual combat level but more up at the strategic and tactical levels being able to defeat a superior force, and it could say what happened even if it's just waving its hands a little bit about pincers and flanking manoeuvres and attacking at night, doing a ruse to lure this group of people away from their position; all that kind of stuff. You can pay lip service to that in world generation and then you can start actually working it in over in the actual gameplay modes. But right now it's very blah blah blah.

Also, portcullises are pretty much in the game currently, just make a metal bar gate activated by lever, or is there some particular to it you feel is missing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 16, 2013, 01:23:08 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 16, 2013, 01:15:48 pm

Quote from: PersonGuy on December 16, 2013, 01:05:15 pm

Just a few questions will fortresses still be active when you visit in adventure mode as in soldiers still patrolling, Brewers making Booze, smiths making weapons and armor, and will we be able to see Urist MCDumbasanelf still ignoring mandates and fiddling around with the magma cannon levers and exploring the giant spider infested caverns while walking around with valuable objects.

I doubt any of this is in for the next version, since it's all quite large undertakings that I'm certain we'd have heard a lot about if that was the case.  I'd guess most of it will prolly make it in at some point though.

Yeah, I doubt we will see that much activity in the next version, but the most we are likely to get is the same behavior that NPC sites have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 16, 2013, 01:50:14 pm

So about the whole "site claim" thing going on which I can't exactly understand...
Can we, for example, claim a site of an enemy civ for our own civ to affect the political world map? The idea of running around as a group of soldiers conquering the region for our own civ's good and profit sounds at least interesting, and I wonder if something like this is possible right now.
Or are the site claims purely an abstract thing in that respect as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on December 16, 2013, 02:25:17 pm

I think I actually have a valid question for once.

How will enemies deal with people who are out of melee reach but attacking them? As in, say they're in a tree, on a roof, or on a particularly large rock and they're chucking bolts, arrows, or other rocks at them. Would enemies be able to climb up there and deal with them, chuck rocks back, take cover, or just stand there staring at the man who discovered third directional movement?

A typical game exploit people employ, rather cheap too. I hope enemies have the sense to scour for rocks and chuck them, or climb on their own.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 16, 2013, 03:13:06 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on December 16, 2013, 02:25:17 pm

I think I actually have a valid question for once.

How will enemies deal with people who are out of melee reach but attacking them? As in, say they're in a tree, on a roof, or on a particularly large rock and they're chucking bolts, arrows, or other rocks at them. Would enemies be able to climb up there and deal with them, chuck rocks back, take cover, or just stand there staring at the man who discovered third directional movement?

A typical game exploit people employ, rather cheap too. I hope enemies have the sense to scour for rocks and chuck them, or climb on their own.

Well, they won't be climbing up after you, according to everything we currently know: AI don't have climbing pathfinding yet. They might fly up next to you, if they have wings. Maybe. Highly doubt they're going to be bright enough to take the initiative to either take cover or return fire if they don't already have a ranged weapon, though. They'll at least flee if injured sifficiently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 16, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters? I know that companions are now a bit less faithful, which should be fun. Will there be hidden cities?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 16, 2013, 04:32:53 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 16, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters? I know that companions are now a bit less faithful, which should be fun. Will there be hidden cities?

Do you mean AI adventurers or player adventurers?  AI adventurers don't really exist yet.

What kind of hidden cities do you have in mind?  There are already large ruins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 16, 2013, 04:36:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 16, 2013, 04:32:53 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 16, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters? I know that companions are now a bit less faithful, which should be fun. Will there be hidden cities?

Do you mean AI adventurers or player adventurers?  Those don't really exist.

What kind of hidden cities do you have in mind?  There are already large ruins.

I'd assume something like Gondolin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin) from the Silmarillion, which would be cool to see obviously. Probably not going to happen in a long while though :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 16, 2013, 04:43:13 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 16, 2013, 04:36:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 16, 2013, 04:32:53 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 16, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters? I know that companions are now a bit less faithful, which should be fun. Will there be hidden cities?

Do you mean AI adventurers or player adventurers?  Those don't really exist.

What kind of hidden cities do you have in mind?  There are already large ruins.

I'd assume something like Gondolin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin) from the Silmarillion, which would be cool to see obviously. Probably not going to happen in a long while though :>

Bang on. The AI does have "wanderers of the wild", though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 16, 2013, 04:55:11 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 16, 2013, 04:43:13 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 16, 2013, 04:36:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 16, 2013, 04:32:53 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 16, 2013, 03:25:59 pm

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters? I know that companions are now a bit less faithful, which should be fun. Will there be hidden cities?

Do you mean AI adventurers or player adventurers?  Those don't really exist.

What kind of hidden cities do you have in mind?  There are already large ruins.

I'd assume something like Gondolin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondolin) from the Silmarillion, which would be cool to see obviously. Probably not going to happen in a long while though :>

Nail on the head. The AI does have "wanderers of the wild", though.

Except that you can't randomly run into them out in the wilds, not that there is a high chance of running into one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 16, 2013, 05:52:55 pm

To which i say, soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: shadowclasper on December 16, 2013, 06:49:55 pm

What I want more detail on is how exactly the passage of time outside of fortress mode and between forts is going to work exactly.

Will there be wars and stuff going on outside our fortress? So that if the King of our civ dies outside the fort then it'll eventually descend to the point where our own mayor or whatever is spontaneously elected king?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 16, 2013, 06:55:13 pm

Quote from: shadowclasper on December 16, 2013, 06:49:55 pm

What I want more detail on is how exactly the passage of time outside of fortress mode and between forts is going to work exactly.

Will there be wars and stuff going on outside our fortress? So that if the King of our civ dies outside the fort then it'll eventually descend to the point where our own mayor or whatever is spontaneously elected king?

This is what every devlog since, oh, June 6 2012 has been about. Read up ;)

To answer the succession question:

Quote

Entity position succession (and the filling of open positions) is underway. It'll recognize when succession is necessary and try to schedule things effectively, and I set up a claim system so that there can theoretically be more than one person that says that they hold a given civilization's position (three dwarven counts vying for an open monarch position, for example). Competing claims don't have a resolution yet, and I need to work out appointment lists properly. I probably need to further specify some of the positions in the raws as well, since we don't want things like bookkeepers in every hill dwarf site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 17, 2013, 10:12:50 am

Oh my god, this is getting awesomer by the minute!

I can't wait to go around saying a evil force of evil is on it's way to eat everybody's hearts, rape their horses, raze their womens and steal their homes.

Oh wait...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on December 17, 2013, 11:29:24 am

I know it's always a lost cause, but... Toady, as there has to be more and more dialogue options, would it be reasonable to have Threetoe write the dialogue? Since he's the writer and all. And you're already working together, so it's not exactly like expanding your team.

Also, these devlogs are made of awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RedKing on December 17, 2013, 11:55:39 am

Am I the only one who read today's devlog and thought "Dwarf Fortress: Darfur"?

Or would that be Dwarfur?


_{I'm a bad person} :-[

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 17, 2013, 11:57:44 am

Quote from: RedKing on December 17, 2013, 11:55:39 am

Am I the only one who read today's devlog and thought "Dwarf Fortress: Darfur"?

Or would that be Dwarfur?


_{I'm a bad person} :-[

I didn't think that, though I did think it could spiral out of control.

Also, considering the size of those camps, if a large number of villages, or even an entire town goes to one, 'ARG, THE LAG!' Unless they are a different size from bandit camps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 17, 2013, 02:09:17 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on December 17, 2013, 11:29:24 am

I know it's always a lost cause, but... Toady, as there has to be more and more dialogue options, would it be reasonable to have Threetoe write the dialogue? Since he's the writer and all. And you're already working together, so it's not exactly like expanding your team.

Also, these devlogs are made of awesome.

I'm pretty sure that ThreeToe has always written some of the dialogue, although I only have writing style to go on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on December 17, 2013, 02:46:39 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 17, 2013, 02:09:17 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on December 17, 2013, 11:29:24 am

I know it's always a lost cause, but... Toady, as there has to be more and more dialogue options, would it be reasonable to have Threetoe write the dialogue? Since he's the writer and all. And you're already working together, so it's not exactly like expanding your team.

Also, these devlogs are made of awesome.

I'm pretty sure that ThreeToe has always written some of the dialogue, although I only have writing style to go on.

You can see some of the dialogue from the game out of Threetoe's stories - specifically Bride Price, where the kobold taunts with ""Behold human scum! I am Bacabadabis! Slayer of Terrance, whose beer mug decorates my throne room!" which is similar to the taunts by minotaurs, cyclops, etc. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 17, 2013, 03:03:57 pm

So chances are that most immigrants that come to a fort would be refugees now? Huh. Guess they should have taken their chances and stayed home given some forts...

Wait - If a rumor that an army is heading for a site can cause the population in that site to leave, could a similar rumor that involves your fort also affect it the same way if some dwarves do not feel safe enough?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Golym on December 17, 2013, 03:27:32 pm

Quote

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ)

How will the game behave in case of the player decides to remain in/go to the site to confront the invaders?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 17, 2013, 04:08:20 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 17, 2013, 03:03:57 pm

Wait - If a rumor that an army is heading for a site can cause the population in that site to leave, could a similar rumor that involves your fort also affect it the same way if some dwarves do not feel safe enough?

Not in the upcoming version, but in the future, they may at least request to leave:

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_2_transcript.html#1g.war_triggers

Capntastic:   So would it be possible for a dwarf randomly deciding to leave forever? I know that would make some people mad, it'd be like 'aah, my soapmaker left, now what I am going to do?'
Toady:   I think that having it be sudden or random would be bad; I think if you're going to take something away from someone like that there should be warning signs, and when they leave it should feel like it's your fault. At that point that'd be good enough. Or there's a case like Rainseeker came up with where there's a larger action that might be beyond your control, then it's a trickier situation: should people be able to go off and handle matters? There won't be a lot of things while people are randomly generated migrants, but if migrants are coming from other areas and have situations and family and everything else that exists outside of your fortress ...
Rainseeker:   I'm sorry sir but my grandmother's sick.
Toady:   (pauses) Oh! I thought Rainseeker was stopping the show, because there was kind of air of silence.
Capntastic:   I know, there was ... realism! He was like 'aah! I must go on a quest!'
Toady:   So Rainseeker I understand, we can continue the recording tomorrow if you have to go take care of that.
Rainseeker:   (more subdued) I need to leave the fortress because my grandmother's sick.
Toady:   Yeah, it's that kind of thing. How much of that do you want? How much would that really mess up the game? It's one of those things that probably needs some balance but I think if you've got a fortress with a hundred people, you can always spare one, even if it messes things up a little bit [and] that kind of would be really cool. Just like with every other concern with high population numbers and so on, there's the game to be thought of. People say that you kind of have to think of gameplay first and fun before realism, all that kind of thing, but it's a more tricky balance than you might think because adding realism gives you these fun payoffs as well, especially when things work together. Having people leave the fortress might seem like it's a bad thing but the payoffs for that could actually be pretty huge in terms of what happens later in the overall story of the world, or what comes back to your fortress from that, and so on. So I think it's definitely worth considering.
Rainseeker:   Yeah especially if the game could tell you the story of what happened. Sorry go ahead Ampersand.
Ampersand:   There's always the possibility that you could leave it up to the player whether they are going to allow that dwarf to leave, they [could] came and ask you 'may I please leave the fortress to go take care of my affairs?'

Quote from: www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_18_transcript.html#18.13

ThreeToe:   So the next one is TKGP. 'Have you ever considered the possibilities of emigration? Some dwarves would be more attached to your fort than others, but it stands to reason if a new migrant ventures into your fortress expecting legendary dining rooms and lovely waterfalls, only to discover a cloud of miasma the size of a small mountain, he might want to set off again to look elsewhere.' So this is where we ... I think we've discussed this before about the hill dwarves, a kind of settlement that it outside of your mountain, to where dwarves will come and go more easily than just having migrants show up all the time.
Toady:   With that also, I guess the other element is the fortress starting scenarios so that if you've got a group of dwarves that is on a secret expedition to found a little site to then send out little scout parties to check where the goblins are, or something like that, and that's, kind of, the whole mission of your little fort then maybe you'll only receive reinforcements every, you know, so often, and it would just be a few soldiers, or something, or whatever's related to your mission. We're all for doing different scenarios and things like that. I mean, the only thing to watch out for with emigration, I guess, is if the game is going to, kind of, haphazardly pull one of your really skilled or important dwarves away from you, it's got to not feel so capricious that you rage quit and chuck your computer on the ground, or something. That would be annoying.
ThreeToe:   Yeah, especially since a vampire could have eaten one of them, instead.
Toady:   Yeah. Maybe it doesn't matter then, yeah maybe when we're on the subject of death and horror and just leaving your fort, but, I mean, the leaving thing, that would just be ...
ThreeToe:   Yeah, leaving does seem kind of cheap.
Toady:   Yeah, we'll see how that ... but we're definitely going to have some things happen, and even more so when you have the hill dwarves there was the whole thing of actually assigning some of your dwarves to leave, and bringing in new people from the hills and kind of switching people out, and not just necessarily assigning them to leave as a form of exile, but to do useful things, like arming the dwarves, or, like, they could go out with weapons, and arm and teach the dwarves, and then send out, you know, 30 or 40 guys. One of the main points of hill dwarves was the army stuff, so you could send out a guy to raise the hill dwarves, and then have an army of 400 dwarves marching somewhere. So, there's going to be some interesting, kind of, emigration.
ThreeToe:   Yeah, so, sort of, more of a flow, a back and forth flow of dwarves.

Quote from: Golym on December 17, 2013, 03:27:32 pm

Quote

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ)

How will the game behave in case of the player decides to remain in/go to the site to confront the invaders?

Same deal as visiting an occupied town or a goblin fortress:

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So can you now go to goblins, and talk to them? Eventually bad things and have them join you?
Toady:   They don't have a reason to join you right now so they're all like... the goblins in the town are all on the job right? They're all occupying the town and... You can talk to them though it's a standard thing right now in the game where... This is from the older code from before, would make it so someone is in a civilization that disagrees with you but they're not outright trying to kill you then they just say don't talk to me. That's how it works with the goblins right now. They just tell you not to talk to them and that may or may not be changed depending on how this whole posses of people hunting you down and all that kind of stuff... What will we end up skipping and what we end up putting in for this time may make the goblins more interesting but when you go to the goblin sites themselves they don't particularly care right now if I remember.

There's all this kind of nebulous gray areas that need to be worked out since goblins have home sites now, and aren't always at war with you. You used to only meet them through kinda ambushes or by going and killing everyone that lived in their little homes and so on. Instead of just sneaking around and getting caught and there's a troll shearing pit. It's all sort of this, this gray area now that just needs to have a yes or no decision made about it. We we're planning to put in you know more conversational options or something. A lot of times now we're just going to be ‘no' , it just turns into a violent situation immediately.
Toady:   That's just something that we'll have to go through as we do our final checklist of issues that need to be worked out. It's still quite a long list of issues that need to be worked out.
Rainseeker:   'Cause eventually you could use bribery.
Toady:   Yeah, you should be able - I mean eventually you should be able to, like, grab someone's kid and bring it to the goblins. Be like, Hey, I'm a freelance snatcher, or something like that, or bring them the heads of elves or something like that. You shouldn't have to be good all the time. That's one of the things about having freedom of choice in a video game. So the goblins shouldn't kill you immediately, although if they don't have a reason not to kill you, then, you know, free stuff or whatever. So, it's not smart to go to the goblin place. It shouldn't ever be a really good decision, unless you have a really good reason to go there. But yeah, I'm not sure how that's going to work out.

The main thing that's missing, actually, in all of this is the sort of crime-and-punishment type of stuff, because you can't get captured by the goblins, right? The crime-and-punishment arc is not all about, strictly, you stealing from the market stall and then being dragged off to some type of dungeon and then having your hand chopped off and then being released or something. It's about being able to lose control of your character, and to be imprisoned or to be dragged somewhere, and that's just not in the game right now, so it's really hard to do an interaction with the goblins that isn't just either friendly banter or you just getting chopped to pieces on the spot.

So there's a good reason why that thief role is in there. It's a pretty expansive thing. Part of the hero role is going to be exploring you being able to sort of interrogate captured people and so on. We didn't get to that part. It was on the table for this time, but we moved toward the active world for deaths, succession, and army stuff instead, and so we'll just have to do that some other time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 04:16:02 pm

Quote from: Golym on December 17, 2013, 03:27:32 pm

Quote

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ)

How will the game behave in case of the player decides to remain in/go to the site to confront the invaders?

I doubt anything special will happen here. The invasion will happen, and people will get slaughtered. Do you think something should go on?

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 17, 2013, 03:03:57 pm

So chances are that most immigrants that come to a fort would be refugees now? Huh. Guess they should have taken their chances and stayed home given some forts...

Wait - If a rumor that an army is heading for a site can cause the population in that site to leave, could a similar rumor that involves your fort also affect it the same way if some dwarves do not feel safe enough?

I'm pretty sure we'd have heard if Fortress Mode emigration was going to be a thing in the next version. So, I expect they'll continue to put their misguided trust in us.

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 17, 2013, 02:09:17 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on December 17, 2013, 11:29:24 am

I know it's always a lost cause, but... Toady, as there has to be more and more dialogue options, would it be reasonable to have Threetoe write the dialogue? Since he's the writer and all. And you're already working together, so it's not exactly like expanding your team.

Also, these devlogs are made of awesome.

I'm pretty sure that ThreeToe has always written some of the dialogue, although I only have writing style to go on.

Yeah, I'd be pretty surprised if I heard that Zach wasn't involved in the dialogue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

I can't possibly foresee how Toady could get things done before the 27th (or 28th) or 31st, which in turn means two things:

DF2013 officially renamed to DF2014
DF2014 confirmed for longest development cycle in history

Let's face it, it takes Toady (IIRC, haven't been here to witness) two weeks average to finish the testing and there are exactly two weeks left of this year, so...

If he does somehow manage to release it this year then you can call me the biggest idiot on bloody Earth, but honestly that's just as unlikely as anything else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on December 17, 2013, 04:47:00 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

DF2014 confirmed for longest development cycle in history

What about Dukem Nukem Forever?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 17, 2013, 04:48:33 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on December 17, 2013, 10:12:50 am

Oh my god, this is getting awesomer by the minute!

I can't wait to go around saying a evil force of evil is on it's way to eat everybody's hearts, rape their horses, raze their womens and steal their homes.

Oh wait...

Why can't there be nice invaders who steal everybody's hearts, eat the spare horses, raise the children, and only rape the homes for good booze?  ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 05:01:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

DF2013 officially renamed to DF2014

Inofficially. They're both fan nicknames.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 17, 2013, 06:10:04 pm

Quote from: King Mir on December 17, 2013, 04:48:33 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on December 17, 2013, 10:12:50 am

Oh my god, this is getting awesomer by the minute!

I can't wait to go around saying a evil force of evil is on it's way to eat everybody's hearts, rape their horses, raze their womens and steal their homes.

Oh wait...

Why can't there be nice invaders who steal everybody's hearts, eat the spare horses, raise the children, and only rape the homes for good booze?  ;D

Sounds like a nanny state coming to oppress them. Still an excuse to put them all six feet under. Or flee. Do you really want them seducing your lovers, eating your horses without paying full price for them, raising your children as loyal slaves to THEIR cause, and taking all the good beer!?

Regardless, I look forward to the day when the AI is able to come up with a good lie to mislead us. Such villainy!

Toady: Will refugee populations camping outside towns slowly disperse into that town's or other towns' populations, or will they remain there indefinitely/until the rumored force of darkness is rumored to have left?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PersonGuy on December 17, 2013, 09:38:00 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 16, 2013, 01:11:23 pm

3. Come on, gunpowder? That's been suggested and debated to death and no, Toady One isn't putting in gunpowder. Though gunpowder DID exist during the time frame limit of 1400's, give or take a century. Still though, no new buildings in fort mode that we are aware of.

If you want gunpowder, I think the Masterwork mod has it?

I was suggesting possible siege weapons that existed in that period or sometime before that that would likely be useful in fortress defense and or attack and also have some weapons that also existed around or before then that would add to the game in some way.

Gunpowder weapons are the most prominent due to how many applications they had before and during the 1400s and how much they where already affecting warfare by then and why i specifically mentioned no guns was that i think they would either have to raise the tech limit and clash with the medieval games feel to make them useful for players or add a weapon that is near useless due to how most players handle their militaries(why is say this is how guns of that period where mainly good for mass conscript armies and most militaries in this game beside the elves who wouldn't touch guns have at least some focus on having an army made of dedicated soldiers that are trained and assembled during peace time with no significant military action on the horizon and generally stay there for the rest of their working life most of the time).     

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 17, 2013, 09:58:01 pm

Quote from: PersonGuy on December 17, 2013, 09:38:00 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 16, 2013, 01:11:23 pm

3. Come on, gunpowder? That's been suggested and debated to death and no, Toady One isn't putting in gunpowder. Though gunpowder DID exist during the time frame limit of 1400's, give or take a century. Still though, no new buildings in fort mode that we are aware of.

If you want gunpowder, I think the Masterwork mod has it?

I was suggesting possible siege weapons that existed in that period or sometime before that that would likely be useful in fortress defense and or attack and also have some weapons that also existed around or before then that would add to the game in some way.

Gunpowder weapons are the most prominent due to how many applications they had before and during the 1400s and how much they where already affecting warfare by then and why i specifically mentioned no guns was that i think they would either have to raise the tech limit and clash with the medieval games feel to make them useful for players or add a weapon that is near useless due to how most players handle their militaries(why is say this is how guns of that period where mainly good for mass conscript armies and most militaries in this game beside the elves who wouldn't touch guns have at least some focus on having an army made of dedicated soldiers that are trained and assembled during peace time with no significant military action on the horizon and generally stay there for the rest of their working life most of the time).   

There are probably more siege weapons available for the game to use, and I think Toady will add some of them, but I think it will perhaps be in the arc where we get dwarven raids.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on December 17, 2013, 10:41:40 pm

To be quite honest, when magic (eventually) gets in the game I bet the first thing people will do is replicate gunpowder/guns with it. Or most likely something far worse. I can't exactly claim innocence here, as I'd do the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 17, 2013, 11:41:55 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on December 17, 2013, 10:41:40 pm

To be quite honest, when magic (eventually) gets in the game I bet the first thing people will do is replicate gunpowder/guns with it. Or most likely something far worse. I can't exactly claim innocence here, as I'd do the same.

It's in the game enough to do something like that, really.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 18, 2013, 01:17:34 am

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on December 17, 2013, 04:47:00 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

DF2014 confirmed for longest development cycle in history

What about Dukem Nukem Forever?

Longest DF development cycle in history

Comparing DNF and DF is literally comparing apples and oranges.

Quote from: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 05:01:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

DF2013 officially renamed to DF2014

Inofficially. They're both fan nicknames.  :P

As officially as it can get.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 18, 2013, 01:55:24 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 18, 2013, 01:17:34 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 05:01:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 17, 2013, 04:20:45 pm

DF2013 officially renamed to DF2014

Inofficially. They're both fan nicknames.  :P

As officially as it can get.

Well, I better go rename my thread, then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 18, 2013, 02:03:39 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 17, 2013, 11:41:55 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on December 17, 2013, 10:41:40 pm

To be quite honest, when magic (eventually) gets in the game I bet the first thing people will do is replicate gunpowder/guns with it. Or most likely something far worse. I can't exactly claim innocence here, as I'd do the same.

It's in the game enough to do something like that, really.

Tv tropes says someone created magic that can crush a lung instantly. While it would depend on what specifically you want to model (I know there are gun and gun workshop mods out there using crossbow templates), it seems likely that we could model it.


I wonder if we'll be able to make things rapid fire. Probably not, but we are still closer to a WW1 trenches mod then ever before thanks to climbing and jumping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 18, 2013, 02:08:20 am

I think Toady's said he hasn't messed about with prepare/recover times for ranged attacks yet...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 18, 2013, 08:12:07 am

And of course, it' obvious he's releasing the next year. I think a late January is an optimistic (overly so) date for release. To tell the truth is most likely we have to wait the whole first third of the year.

Which is completely fine. I could (and will) wait years for this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on December 18, 2013, 08:26:50 am

Do you mean just for the initial release or the bug fixes and minor tweaks before the three year Armies and Dimensions arc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on December 18, 2013, 10:47:28 am

Toady: Currently underground tunnels are capped at the map's edge in fortress mode to prevent invaders from using them. In future will this be different? Drums, drums in the deep!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Golym on December 18, 2013, 11:54:48 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 04:16:02 pm

Quote from: Golym on December 17, 2013, 03:27:32 pm

Quote

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ)

How will the game behave in case of the player decides to remain in/go to the site to confront the invaders?

I doubt anything special will happen here. The invasion will happen, and people will get slaughtered. Do you think something should go on?

What I was trying to say is how it will behave when looking in the Legends mode? How it will be called?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 18, 2013, 12:34:36 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on December 18, 2013, 08:26:50 am

Do you mean just for the initial release or the bug fixes and minor tweaks before the three year Armies and Dimensions arc?

I mean the initial release would be within the first third of the year. I'm lost on translation here. What I meant is that a year third is four months, so a year can be divided up to three thirds, the first one from January to April, the second one from May to August and a third one from September to December. I thus believe the release of the next version to be within January to April next year.

What do you mean by Armies and Dimensions arc? I believed Toady didn't know what to work following this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 18, 2013, 12:53:24 pm

Quote from: MDFification on December 18, 2013, 10:47:28 am

Toady: Currently underground tunnels are capped at the map's edge in fortress mode to prevent invaders from using them. In future will this be different? Drums, drums in the deep!

Do you mean worldgen tunnels, or tunnels that the player orders the dwarves to dig?  It's planned that attacking enemies will be able to attack through both of those, as well as dig their own tunnels to attack through:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Improved sieges

    Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
    More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
    Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
    Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
        Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
        Ability to build bridges/ramps
        Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb

Quote from: Golym on December 18, 2013, 11:54:48 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on December 17, 2013, 04:16:02 pm

Quote from: Golym on December 17, 2013, 03:27:32 pm

Quote

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ)

How will the game behave in case of the player decides to remain in/go to the site to confront the invaders?

I doubt anything special will happen here. The invasion will happen, and people will get slaughtered. Do you think something should go on?

What I was trying to say is how it will behave when looking in the Legends mode? How it will be called?

Do you mean how Legends will describe the player's participation in the conflict?  Legends currently has formalized battle descriptions, but those only apply to the special abstract battles that occur during world generation.  In the scenario you described, Legends would describe it like any other ordinary fight -- it won't recognize that you're taking part in a larger struggle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 18, 2013, 01:33:54 pm

When in-game languages are fleshed out, will it be possible to mod in real earth-native more-or-less accurately simulated languages? What if we pay you for it? I feel the Egyptians should have their due, for one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 18, 2013, 03:08:16 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 18, 2013, 01:33:54 pm

When in-game languages are fleshed out, will it be possible to mod in real earth-native more-or-less accurately simulated languages? What if we pay you for it? I feel the Egyptians should have their due, for one.

Mancipia ut Armok: Deus in sanguine: Caput II - Pumilio Præsidium

Omnia dicta fortiora, si dicta latina!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 18, 2013, 03:13:05 pm

I just come up with an idea, if each of us from different regions and languages make dictionaries in our corresponding languages and ditch them to the game DF could force you to learn new languages, specially while playing as an adventurer. Of course when and if different languages are fleshed out en el juego.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 18, 2013, 03:14:48 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 18, 2013, 01:33:54 pm

When in-game languages are fleshed out, will it be possible to mod in real earth-native more-or-less accurately simulated languages? What if we pay you for it? I feel the Egyptians should have their due, for one.

It'll probably be possible to mod in half-baked imitations of real languages, but since Toady hasn't begun work on it yet, no guarantees as usual.  I doubt there'll be a grammatical sponsorship drive or anything.

Spoiler: long (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_10_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   [...] I have one here from Elijah. He says: 'Could Tarn spend some time talking about the possibility of implementing different languages and written works. Is there any possibility of old languages, and what about books made of sheets, metal, paper, papyrus or even clay tablets.
Toady:   We're into that stuff and it reminds me of the Steles, the big pillars that the Syrian kings wrong all their conquests on and so on, and the translations of those were some of the inspirations for some of the world generation tortures after the towns were taken over, like stretching out skins and sticking them on walls and stuff. We like that kind of thing – not the tortures, personally, for ourselves, but the written languages – so we're all for it, especially when we get to the treasure hunter section where we've mentioned old books and things like that that we'd like to throw in there. It'd be cool to find one of those old libraries they had, I think they had an ancient library with these cuneiform tablets, they looked like little triangles pressed in different configurations on this clay tablet ... to find a library of one of those things would be really cool. The issues that come up – there's a couple of them – one is displaying the language written out. It would be cool to use different symbols for it, and it would be a time to go add some tiles. These are the kinds of tiles that we can actually draw without total failure, doing it ourselves, so it might be possible to extend some language tiles or ... I don't know if that would involve Unicode in any way since we have better font support now. It's not clear to me exactly how we'd go about doing it but we're definitely ... even if it's just adding some symbols like the graphics for creatures currently, you could just add some more symbols, then it would be cool to actually display the words that are written in the books or on the tablets or whatever, and see them there, and then be able to translate them. It might be difficult to ask the player to do that manually, but they could do it based on their characters skill, and translate pieces of the tablet and then reveal them as you translate them. The other issue is if you're having the game randomly generate a language, which is something that we've avoided up to this point, even though you can throw something together, especially with as little structure as our languages have now – we don't really have any grammar for them or anything, it's just here's a word, here's how you write it – the only reason we haven't done that is because we're afraid of getting too many words that are real life words. So for our dwarf language we didn't want the word for 'mine' to be randomly generated as 'pepsi', and have the word for 'dwarf' just be some swear word because of what it comes up with ... so if your name is 'Dwarf Mine' your name would be like 'Poop Pepsi' or something. it's just not what we imagined for the dwarf language.
Rainseeker:   That does become a problem unless you're using random characters.
Toady:   That's why there're a couple of solutions, there's using different characters for the languages, or, when the language isn't as central – it's not the dwarf language, but is just some language of some randomly generated three-armed squirrel people that live in the forest and fight with leaves, but they still use, for whatever reason, the same alphabet – then if they had something that was called pepsi, that doesn't really matter. I'm sure there'll be ... if you've got thousands of people playing, I'm sure someone out there is going to get a screenshot that's just horrifying, horrifying in the worst possible way and we'll just let it go at that point and hopefully the news doesn't pick it up. But that's basically the only obstacle. I kind of had a pet fascination with linguistics in college, I was fishing around for a double major for so long when I was doing math; I went from computer science to animal behaviour to chemistry to linguistics, and so I never actually ended up getting one. But I took like six or seven or eight classes and I got all the books from the advanced classes ...
Rainseeker:   Makes you a very interesting person, that's for sure.
Toady:   Well ... I don't know ... But I read them. I missed the coursework and I can read online ... so I don't really know where I'm at with that stuff, but it is one of my little fascinations. That's why it's always been up on the dev page even if I never get to it.
Rainseeker:   So how do you see that affecting adventure mode? You have your adventurer, he finds this 'leafen tablet' scrawled by the squirrel people that he just slaughtered and he's like 'hmm, what does this say?'
Toady:   It might be harder to learn the language now you've killed them all.
Rainseeker:   That's true, so you could maybe have an ability to talk and learn their language gradually?
Toady:   Yeah, that's what we're hoping for. The thing that's neat is in a rudimentary way – it would be impossible to pull this off, for me anyway, in a really satisfying way – but if you've got ... Right now the grammatical structure of all the languages is the same, well they can only say one phrase, like 'Johnny run/walk the dog of war', there's only one kind of phrase they have but they're all the same. So even now you could say 'you know thirty percent of the goblin vocabulary, these are the exact words you know' and then whenever you hear a phrase it could translate those words and not the others. But the thing that'll be neater, if we're storing the things that people will say in conversations ... this conflicts with other things, so I'm not really sure how this is going to work, it might just be the writing, it might not be with the conversations; I'm not quite sure ... but if you have the basic sentence trees syntax ... noun/phrase things or whatever, sitting behind the sentences then the grammatical rules can take those trees and turn them into all kinds of different stuff, shifting the word order, cramming certain things together, putting little helper words everywhere, all that kind of stuff ... and still have your knowledge of the language interpret parts of it, or let you pick out pieces of it, in a really straightforward fashion while still preserving all the diversity of the languages. It would be pretty easy to do overall, except for the part where you actually build the sentence trees for everything you want to say. So it's like, you want to say 'the sword is hidden in such-and-such a cave'; that sentence tree's not so hard to build, it involves two of those noun type phrases we already have, like the 'shiny sword' or whatever it's called and the 'cave of darkness' or whatever it would be called, those we can already do. Then you just need to say how the verb works, and once you can construct that you can translate that into all the different languages and they can apply their rules to how those things work. It's nowhere near as complicated as an actual language where you just need all these little rules that modify them, and people don't even have a complete theory; but the game can have a complete theory, because I know what sentences are allowed to be in the books. We control that information and it allows us to complete the picture, so it should be cool. I guess that's a 'yes' for that question, if it was a 'yes/no' question. Is there any possibility of old languages? Yes. It should come in with the treasure hunter stuff, that's where it's on the dev page, if I remember.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_17_transcript.html

Capntastic:   EggFibre asks, 'How did you create the languages for all the civilizations? Did you base them off of something in real life or did they all come from your imagination? Also, how long did the process take?'
Toady:   We created all the languages. They were not based on anything in real life and the main reason for that is because we haven't added grammar yet. What we did is we had the list the words, which took a while to just type in all the words - the English versions of the words - and then we had a generator that just had certain rules about how consonants could be combine and what frequencies there were for the vowels, and that kind of thing. It had to generate a list of words and then we went through by hand and picked out words that were either existing words - especially words that are profanity, because it would generate plenty of those - and words that just sounded wrong; when you look at the word for candy or something and when you end up with some really harsh sounding word, and then you just roll the generator on that again until it gets something that matches. That's really all it was. With goblins we let more things go through regardless of their tone because we wanted the language to sound more alien, but it was pretty much just that. When we get to things like grammar it's going to be harder to completely ... we'll just put in different processes there, but I don't think it's going to be randomly generated because you either have a rule or you don't, or you have variants of a rule or whatever, but there's only four or five stock languages, so we're probably just going to pick and choose which rules we think are appropriate and place them in.

Then there's the larger question or what about a randomly generated language. The computer can spit one of those out really fast with random grammar and random words and all that, but then you will have the problem where some of the words are really not something you want to have. We haven't tried that yet, and it might not be that bad of a problem in retrospect so it could be that we do the random generation and then what we'd do it just ... depending on how we store our sentence trees, when we get to that kind of thing, because computers are good at that sort of thing, so you can just throw it in ... It's obviously going to be simplified from the giant thousands of pages of, you know, even entry-level textbooks you can get on this kind of thing, it's progressively more complicated theory that they've got floating around now, but we throw some simple stuff in there and I imagine it'll all work really nicely. The only thing I'm not sure about is when you get a lot of words that are recognizable or so on, if that breaks it too badly. I mean it would be interesting to have a conlang generator and just see how it turns out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 18, 2013, 07:20:19 pm

gun powder does not have to be weapons though if that is the developers aversion, what about medicine or other things its ingredients where used for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 18, 2013, 11:05:17 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 18, 2013, 07:20:19 pm

what about medicine or other things its ingredients where used for?

I'm pretty sure Dwarven medicine is more booze and water/lava falls to ease the pain, along with soap and water to clean cuts...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 19, 2013, 02:06:32 am

And eventually, Herbalism.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 19, 2013, 03:35:16 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 19, 2013, 02:06:32 am

And eventually, Herbalism.

Is this the point people make funny elf jokes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on December 19, 2013, 03:36:41 am

Just don't make vegetarian jokes. Elves eat meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 19, 2013, 03:38:02 am

"Jest keep stuffin' mushrooms in th' wound till ye stop bleedin'."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 19, 2013, 03:58:08 am

Quote from: Vgray on December 19, 2013, 03:36:41 am

Just don't make vegetarian jokes. Elves eat meat.

Then eat as many plants as possible to get the elves angry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PersonGuy on December 19, 2013, 04:12:26 am

1.Will there be a civilization mode for dwarves and other races as in a strategy game that will allow general control over a nation like ordering the building of cities and assembling armies and such and such.

2. Will we see technological advancement and or the discovery of magic for other races.

3. Will mounts and realistic mounted combat be implemented and will their be per chance by things like horse armor as i noticed having ones mount taken out is of serious detriment to the rider.

4. Will we be able to participate in politics as an adventurer and possibly be a strategic and or battlefield commander and will we see mobile constructions such as siege towers, ships, and wheelbarrows and will they be build able by the player.

5. Armies will there be logistics involved in npc armies such as wagon trains and non soldier workers like doctors, builder, cooks, and possibly smiths and assorted weapon/armor makers and will we see ambushes such as invaders digging tunnels into your fortress from beyond the map edge and assorted devilry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 19, 2013, 04:23:09 am

Quote from: PersonGuy on December 19, 2013, 04:12:26 am

1.Will there be a civilization mode for dwarves and other races as in a strategy game that will allow general control over a nation like ordering the building of cities and assembling armies and such and such.

Been talked about over the years. Seems like a defiant probably. But no time line.

Quote

2. Will we see technological advancement and or the discovery of magic for other races.

Technology will be stagnate more or less. Magic wont be discoverable per se. There a lot of grand plans for magic. But no tech tree for magic. More like, do magic and see what it do. And randomly generated magic for each generated world. No time line though.

Quote

3. Will mounts and realistic mounted combat be implemented and will their be per chance by things like horse armor as i noticed having ones mount taken out is of serious detriment to the rider.

Mounts and mounted combat are planned for fixes. Splitting the speed from combat will in part address some of the mount issues.
I dont believe anything in particular been said about animal armor, but lots of examples of animal armor so probably gonna happen.  No time line though.

Quote

4. Will we be able to participate in politics as an adventurer and possibly be a strategic and or battlefield commander and will we see mobile constructions such as siege towers, ships, and wheelbarrows and will they be build able by the player.

Yep. Thats planned in manner. No time line.

Quote

5. Armies will there be logistics involved in npc armies such as wagon trains and non soldier workers like doctors, builder, cooks, and possibly smiths and assorted weapon/armor makers and will we see ambushes such as invaders digging tunnels into your fortress from beyond the map edge and assorted devilry.[/color]

Yep. There been a lot of talk on digging invaders in general too. And ToadyOne has spoken about making them more Information Aware instead of Omnipresent knowledge.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 19, 2013, 04:25:59 am

Quote from: PersonGuy on December 19, 2013, 04:12:26 am

1.Will there be a civilization mode for dwarves and other races as in a strategy game that will allow general control over a nation like ordering the building of cities and assembling armies and such and such.

2. Will we see technological advancement and or the discovery of magic for other races.

3. Will mounts and realistic mounted combat be implemented and will their be per chance by things like horse armor as i noticed having ones mount taken out is of serious detriment to the rider.

4. Will we be able to participate in politics as an adventurer and possibly be a strategic and or battlefield commander and will we see mobile constructions such as siege towers, ships, and wheelbarrows and will they be build able by the player.

5. Armies will there be logistics involved in npc armies such as wagon trains and non soldier workers like doctors, builder, cooks, and possibly smiths and assorted weapon/armor makers and will we see ambushes such as invaders digging tunnels into your fortress from beyond the map edge and assorted devilry.

1. Yes, eventually, not this release This is from the old dev page, but this seems like something that hasn't changed much since then:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Core30, KINGDOM, (Future): If you manage to get the monarch of the dwarves to arrive, you should obtain at least indirect control over the entire corresponding dwarven civilization. This includes the movement of all dwarven armies on the map and the ability to make the most important diplomatic decisions. Requires Core28.

2. link (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg3927794#msg3927794)

3. see above

4. above

5. above

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 19, 2013, 05:38:41 am

Are we at some point going to see non-omniscient dwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 19, 2013, 06:38:35 am

Quote from: Helgoland on December 19, 2013, 05:38:41 am

Are we at some point going to see non-omniscient dwarves?

We already have it. Dorfs in Fort Mode can go missing and commit a select number of crimes without it being known to the Fort at large.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on December 19, 2013, 11:49:17 am

Probably meant in regards to pathfinding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 19, 2013, 12:57:11 pm

In general, you'll get better answers if you 1) think carefully about the meaning and wording of your question and 2) include examples whenever possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 19, 2013, 04:18:46 pm

Question on the 12/19 devlog on refugees. Could we see war refugees come in migrant waves, whether they are normal or forced waves. By forced migrant waves, I mean like a migrant wave that is determined and driven by outside events rather than the outpost liaison sending them. A forced wave would be a future thing and is just a hypothetical and is in no way a suggestion.

On the forced migrant wave thing, I am completely aware of the community sentiment towards migrant waves and I've had huge migrant waves myself, but they should be rare enough that they shouldn't be a major annoyance. Although a huge refugee wave, gah XD Then again, you should have some warning of that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 19, 2013, 04:40:17 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 19, 2013, 04:18:46 pm

Question on the 12/19 devlog on refugees. Could we see war refugees come in migrant waves, whether they are normal or forced waves. By forced migrant waves, I mean like a migrant wave that is determined and driven by outside events rather than the outpost liaison sending them. A forced wave would be a future thing and is just a hypothetical and is in no way a suggestion.

A previous devlog confirms that refugees can become migrants to your fortress:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-17

I figured I'd continue the theme of tangential issues to armies -- some of the remaining army stuff is still a little ill-formed, code-wise, and by doing the related features that I have a better handle on, it sort of pounds the core ideas into a more technical shape from the outside while they are mulled over. So today's project was trying to finish refugees. If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ), many of the citizens decide it is worth it to leave. There'd normally be refugees with regular wars as well, but we don't have large-scale regular wars and related economic/agricultural hardship etc. yet, so I didn't bother with anything there at this point. In any case, the groups look for a safe spot to head for, often ending up together in a camp outside of a nearby non-hostile market town. Having historical figures going to live with their relatives will also be a possibility. I still need to finish some parts of it up (mainly the conversations again, which seem to take more time, even for simple options, since there are lots of moving parts now), which I'll try to manage tomorrow. You'll also be able to convince people to leave with you, if they haven't left town yet, and you can take them to existing refugees or another town, with a corresponding change to your reputation with any involved local groups (the entity controlling the refugees and the possibly multiple local cultures that are a part of it are now separate things, and they'd all be affected). Dwarves from abandoned fortresses fall under the refugee framework and will act accordingly. They should still be able to come to future fortresses, but they'll arrive from wherever the refugees are at, rather than from a randomly chosen dwarf site or wherever in the world it has been putting them.

The fact that the refugees leaving town are initially urged on by a rumor and not actual knowledge of the game world should prove fodder for the "legendary liar" skill in a later release. You're still restricted to telling the truth at this point, but I imagine you could cause quite a bit of trouble once that restriction is relaxed. Even if listeners start disbelieving certain rumors, that could get them into even more trouble when it turns out the rumor is true. It's hard to say how that'll play out game-wise when you (as the recipient of rumors) are just trying to sift through basic information. We'll have to get a feel for how much of a handle on the actual facts the player needs to rely upon to enjoy themselves, given the overall limits of what we'll have programmed when it goes in at first, but the option is sitting there now, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 19, 2013, 04:42:55 pm

You know what I'm looking forward to?
The background map on the main Bay12 page, when it shows all those little provinces everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 19, 2013, 05:01:13 pm

Could forced refugee migrant waves be a thing? That's mostly what I was wondering about with event driven waves, but that would be in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 19, 2013, 05:09:28 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 19, 2013, 05:01:13 pm

Could forced refugee migrant waves be a thing? That's mostly what I was wondering about with event driven waves, but that would be in the future.

Yes, today's devlog already says that: "They could just as easily have chosen an active player fort, and that'll really matter around the time we get to the player-controlled inns and taverns."  That seems pretty clear, but here's some extra confirmation:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html

You get a lot of migrants yourself, but in those fortresses that don't get a lot of migrants, or especially when migrants start changing over to something that actually has to migrate and come to your fortress then you might find that there are more other types of critters visiting. It doesn't mean you need to keep them, it doesn't mean you need to even welcome them, and if you don't have a tavern established you might not have to worry about this stuff, because I can definitely see the side of people that just want to have their dwarves without dealing with all this riffraff. So it's something that's only going to happen if you really encourage it to happen for the most part, although there are things like refugee crises that already happen in the game, but the guys just kind of go off into the wilderness and then re-establish sites in world generation, but if world generation is over they're just hanging out, and those situations might be thrust onto your fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 19, 2013, 06:49:12 pm

Do the caravans now bring us news about the surrounding area?

With the length of time the release has taken so far, I don't think it matters if Toady implements refugees moving through our fortress now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 19, 2013, 06:58:38 pm

Will merfolk ever show more signs of sentience in future releases such as small tribes/clans or kingdoms that trade or war with landwellers? And would their ever be anything like the selkies from Ireland?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 19, 2013, 07:37:27 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 19, 2013, 06:58:38 pm

Will merfolk ever show more signs of sentience in future releases such as small tribes/clans or kingdoms that trade or war with landwellers? And would their ever be anything like the selkies from Ireland?

As soon as Toady begins to mess with meaningful stuff to do at the sea (see: ships and navigation) then I'm pretty sure that sea dwellers are going to have a huge overhaul. Right now, sea titans have no shrines (surely no worshippers as well) and that could change as soon as we get there, given that animal people worshipping is up too to that point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 19, 2013, 10:17:48 pm

Daily devlog and Footkerchief smiting questions left and right?  Ahh, just like the old days.   :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 20, 2013, 08:15:27 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on December 19, 2013, 06:49:12 pm

Do the caravans now bring us news about the surrounding area?

With the length of time the release has taken so far, I don't think it matters if Toady implements refugees moving through our fortress now.

He pretty much said in the 12/19 devlog that we would hear news from the caravans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on December 20, 2013, 11:16:34 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 19, 2013, 04:42:55 pm

You know what I'm looking forward to?
The background map on the main Bay12 page, when it shows all those little provinces everywhere.

Pretty sure those are all made with the current version.

Edit: they're from v0.31.01.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on December 20, 2013, 04:16:30 pm

Quote from: Toady One, in devlogs

They could just as easily have chosen an active player fort, and that'll really matter around the time we get to the player-controlled inns and taverns. Right now you'll probably just hear about any nearby camps from the caravan.

I have a feeling this may have been asked (but no time right now to dig into the thread, I apologize), but... Will refugee camps share any common framework(s) with hill dwarf sites as far as relating to and communicating with your fortress? (Obviously the content of the relationship and many of the actions you could take with it will be vastly different, but inasmuch as they're both nearby sites that will affect fort mode, I'm curious if they're on the same foundation somewhere down underneath.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 20, 2013, 04:57:09 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on December 20, 2013, 04:16:30 pm

Quote from: Toady One, in devlogs

They could just as easily have chosen an active player fort, and that'll really matter around the time we get to the player-controlled inns and taverns. Right now you'll probably just hear about any nearby camps from the caravan.

I have a feeling this may have been asked (but no time right now to dig into the thread, I apologize), but... Will refugee camps share any common framework(s) with hill dwarf sites as far as relating to and communicating with your fortress? (Obviously the content of the relationship and many of the actions you could take with it will be vastly different, but inasmuch as they're both nearby sites that will affect fort mode, I'm curious if they're on the same foundation somewhere down underneath.)

Camps are also sites, and they presumably belong to a parent civ like hill dwarf sites, so that implies a ton of commonality.  Once you can meaningfully communicate at all, your choice of recipient will probably be limited only by where the messenger's willing to go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on December 20, 2013, 06:43:18 pm

With refugee camps settling near forts, would that mean that now there is a chance that the thieves encountered in fortress mode could be members of this camp trying to feed his/her family? Can we send an army to make the camp move elsewhere by force if problems from it continue to persist?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on December 20, 2013, 06:44:52 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 20, 2013, 06:43:18 pm

With refugee camps settling near forts, would that mean that now there is a chance that the thieves encountered in fortress mode could be members of this camp trying to feed his/her family? Can we send an army to make the camp move elsewhere by force if problems from it continue to persist?

Armies aren't being touched yet, and I believe that kobolds are still the primary thieves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 21, 2013, 12:53:18 am

Quote from: misko27 on December 20, 2013, 06:44:52 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on December 20, 2013, 06:43:18 pm

With refugee camps settling near forts, would that mean that now there is a chance that the thieves encountered in fortress mode could be members of this camp trying to feed his/her family? Can we send an army to make the camp move elsewhere by force if problems from it continue to persist?

Armies aren't being touched yet, and I believe that kobolds are still the primary thieves.

Yeah, you can't send any kind of armies out.  Thieving hasn't changed that we've heard -- it still depends on the ITEM_THIEF entity tag (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Entity_token#ITEM_THIEF), not on more complex motivations like feeding one's family.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on December 21, 2013, 09:49:50 am

Two quick, unrelated questions.

 1. How were goblins running away from themselves?
2. Do you have any plans to do something with the refugees on the fringes of dwarven settlements and the like before the next update?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 21, 2013, 10:22:17 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 21, 2013, 09:49:50 am

Two quick, unrelated questions.

1. How were goblins running away from themselves?
2. Do you have any plans to do something with the refugees on the fringes of dwarven settlements and the like before the next update?

Greened them for ya, I'm also curious on what was up with the goblins.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 21, 2013, 11:04:26 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on December 21, 2013, 09:49:50 am

2. Do you have any plans to do something with the refugees on the fringes of dwarven settlements and the like before the next update?

Do something like what? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on December 21, 2013, 11:49:47 am

Giving them stuff to do: Goals, schedules, everyday activities... The works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 21, 2013, 02:05:51 pm

Not sure if this has been answered previously, but here goes: will refugees in camps give players quests to go investigate/free their hometown, or do they expect us to take the initiative? Will they also know something about the happenings in the area they are now in and give quests to kill local night creatures and bandits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 22, 2013, 10:31:40 am

Is the role of the starting 7 going to be given especial thought when fortress founding scenarios come up? Logically, they could be forward scouts, prospectors, merchants starting a inn by the road, hardened mercenaries looking to claim long-rumored gold, and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 22, 2013, 12:04:25 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 22, 2013, 10:31:40 am

Is the role of the starting 7, going to be given especial thought when fortress founding scenarios come up? Logically, they could be forward scouts, prospectors, merchants starting a inn by the road, hardened mercenaries looking to claim long-rumored gold, and so on.

Wait, is there a difference between the starting scenario and the role of the starting 7?  I think of those as the same thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 22, 2013, 06:59:17 pm

I wouldnt be surprised, that you still start off with seven, no matter the starting scenario.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 22, 2013, 07:10:32 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on December 22, 2013, 06:59:17 pm

I wouldnt be surprised, that you still start off with seven, no matter the starting scenario.

Norp :>

Quote

Threetoe:   Okay, so the next question: 'Are we likely to see the old 80-dwarf reclaim teams again anytime soon? I miss being able to command a huge military of dwarves to reclaim that legendary metal from the invaders, and a starting seven kitted out with bronze weapons just doesn't do it.'
Toady:   I don't remember why we got rid of that, because it was cool. I think the issue was more of a technical one, and a release-time one. This is me trying to remember stuff from years ago, but I think it was when the military screen changed and the whole military structure changed, and we started having to track all this extra information about the military; it became a pain to set up the reclaim squads right. It could just be something like that. I don't think we're against that because the start scenarios that we're doing for fort mode are going to have all kinds ... there could still be a core seven dwarves, if we want to stick with that out of a sense of tradition, but there are going to be scenarios where you start with a bunch of hill dwarves outside of your civilization, and starting with a larger military group - especially to reclaim a really dangerous fort - seems as cool to me as back when we had it before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on December 22, 2013, 07:11:51 pm

What did you think of Atrocious Beards Part Two (assuming you saw it)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 22, 2013, 11:51:42 pm

What new features to or new maps will there be to export from the game in the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 23, 2013, 12:04:13 am

Quote from: MrWillsauce on December 22, 2013, 07:11:51 pm

What did you think of Atrocious Beards Part Two (assuming you saw it)?

Assuming that means The Hobbit, I don't think it falls under this:

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 22, 2013, 11:51:42 pm

What new features to or new maps will there be to export from the game in the next release?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2012-11-09

[...] the Nobility/Holdings map, which is a work-in-progress export from the legends view [...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 23, 2013, 12:53:45 am

With all these changes to how rumors and such get spread, is there any change to, say, demons impersonating gods?

I'm thinking it'd be fun to somehow let the player impersonate a god...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 23, 2013, 12:59:54 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 23, 2013, 12:53:45 am

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]With all these changes to how rumors and such get spread, is there any change to, say, demons impersonating gods?
I'm thinking it'd be fun to somehow let the player impersonate a god...

"You're not sbmimet, hamster god of volcanoes!"

"Yes I am! I'll smite you!"

"What, with your volcano powers?"

"WITH MY KNIFE"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on December 23, 2013, 01:02:23 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on December 23, 2013, 12:59:54 am

Quote from: Putnam on December 23, 2013, 12:53:45 am

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]With all these changes to how rumors and such get spread, is there any change to, say, demons impersonating gods?
I'm thinking it'd be fun to somehow let the player impersonate a god...

"You're not sbmimet, hamster god of volcanoes!"

"Yes I am! I'll smite you!"

"What, with your volcano powers?"

"WITH MY FACE"

FIFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 23, 2013, 01:14:18 pm

Can the AI loot sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 23, 2013, 04:00:35 pm

These big releases always seem to result in the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) getting major restructuring.  I wonder how much it'll change after this release.

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 23, 2013, 01:14:18 pm

Can the AI loot sites?

Yes (emphasis mine):

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-02-08

[...] Meanwhile, back in the year 2, the Taut Evils, led by the demon Rafovi Larvaboil, pillaged the capital fortress of the dwarves. [...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on December 23, 2013, 07:48:51 pm

Probably isn't a reasonable question to ask, but is conflict planned within civs in some future release? Will you be able to go to war with usurpers to the throne, or things like that?
Nowhere near possibly as the loyalty system currently can't process it, but could it happen in the distant future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 23, 2013, 07:50:45 pm

Quote from: MDFification on December 23, 2013, 07:48:51 pm

Probably isn't a reasonable question to ask, but is conflict planned within civs in some future release? Will you be able to go to war with usurpers to the throne, or things like that?
Nowhere near possibly as the loyalty system currently can't process it, but could it happen in the distant future?

It's almost in this release. The loyalty system that is in the current version of Dwarf Fortress is completely and utterly gone with the next release. In fact, here's a devlog from just over a week ago (emphasis mine):

Quote

In part for preparation of restoring governments after completing insurrections and otherwise turning over sites to other people, but also just for the mess of village-to-village fighting, you can now claim a site when you are there.

Another related post by Footkerchief from just under two weeks ago. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4828859;topicseen#msg4828859)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on December 23, 2013, 07:51:12 pm

Edit: Ninja'd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 23, 2013, 11:26:15 pm

Quote from: devlog

12/23/2013 Toady One I should be getting back to the remaining core issues with site-to-site fighting tonight. The main complication is that something important can be happening nearby as you shift back and forth between different levels of abstraction. If you are walking away from a place where somebody is demanding tribute from a site leader mid-conversation, it has to make sure the more abstract system occurring at the "realized site" level picks up at the proper point and moves forward at the proper speed, more or less, and that negotiations occurring at the "non-realized site" level jump to the correct building if the site's building map becomes realized, and that they further jump to the correct room if you get the actual tiles generated. I'm not going to try to have the game jump into the middle of conversations at this point if you zoom in, but you might arrive at a location just as a conversation is starting. There's also the matter of multiple groups trying to attack or make demands of a site at the same time.

Whoa, NPCs initiating conversations with each other as part of world events!  That seems like a big step -- it'll be important for making the world feel dynamic and alive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 24, 2013, 12:18:25 am

Will there be any indication NPCs are having a conversation?
Will eavesdropping be possible?
What happens if the conversation is interrupted by player antics? I'm thinking especially of important conversations; can you create Groundhog Day style loops by constantly interrupting conversations through violence or other shenanigans, etc

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 24, 2013, 12:39:10 am

Quote from: monk12 on December 24, 2013, 12:18:25 am

Will there be any indication NPCs are having a conversation?
Will eavesdropping be possible?

The new conversation system works in regular play, not through a menu, so I'm pretty sure everyone can hear everyone else.  Not sure how distance/volume factors in, though.

Quote from: devlog

02/15/2013 Toady One In our ongoing 'moments of restraint' boss rush, I'm currently up against the conversation engine. I've decided I pretty much have to get conversations out into regular play so that I can tell a room full of people that I just killed a goblin patrol, but I'm trying to avoid a completely monstrous overhaul. Bartering will remain an instanteous activity for instance -- pulling that out right now is unnecessary and would take a bit of time. It is a continuing process, but the result should be cool, and it'll allow you to spread news in a more satisfying fashion (rather than telling one person and having it magically spread around instantly, though they will still spread news after a time once they are offloaded). I should have an honest insurrection in place before long here.

 02/20/2013 Toady One The new conversation approach is working out well enough. Each statement takes about as much time as a regular step, so if you find enough to talk about in some later release, you'd be able to chat until the sun goes down. This also means that conversations are susceptible to interruption, and each statement made by people you are talking to is a "move" they are making either simultaneously with their other actions (like walking and fighting) or instead of them. Incidents you are a part of or rumors that you hear now go into your head, and you can pass them along or bring them up with whoever you talk to. Right now these incidents include every time you strangle a wolf out in the woods, so I'll probably have to find a way to manage the lists according to how interesting they are. In any case, since you can now bring up the occupation and related events, it's a matter of adding some reactions and conversation options geared toward getting the ball rolling.

 12/05/2013 Toady One I mixed opponent's bragging about prior violent acts into the new conversation setup (which means they won't drone on and on in a separate screen). This also has the effect of allowing you to brag to people, though there isn't an effect from that at this point. In addition, you can demand that an opponent yield or request a cease to fighting without anybody surrendering. It helps to get you out of accidental or non-accidental fist fights, for instance, and it'll likely come up as we get to the last village-to-village pass and other antics. I also cleaned up the trading stuff a bit more and fixed an odd bug where telling one companion to wait while having another companion follow you caused them to hack at each other until only one was left, due to the waiting companion thinking of itself as an army camp guard and getting all antsy about the suspicious activity along his very short patrol route.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on December 24, 2013, 12:58:57 am

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 24, 2013, 01:05:15 am

Quote from: Sizik on December 24, 2013, 12:58:57 am

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Oh, I'm sure. As has been said before, not everything's been moved to in-play yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on December 24, 2013, 01:11:05 am

Furthermore, even offloaded areas in fortress mode have the luxury of more resources for more detailed events than world gen allows. That means more things for the RNG to be used for, which means completely different results.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 24, 2013, 03:45:28 am

this feels nice, hearing conversations will happen in the next means a step closer to language implementation in the far future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 24, 2013, 10:08:23 am

Quote from: Sizik on December 24, 2013, 12:58:57 am

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Thanks, you beat me to the punch.

Will reputation of heroes and villains go for certain "styles" of legend, depending on the nature of the heroics/villainy and the background of the character? I imagine that a local peasant who kills a rampaging dragon might be considered an everyman who rose to the odds, as opposed to a barely glimpsed mysterious stranger who coincides with a suspicious lack of megabeasts wherever he goes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 24, 2013, 12:55:20 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 24, 2013, 10:08:23 am

Will reputation of heroes and villains go for certain "styles" of legend, depending on the nature of the heroics/villainy and the background of the character? I imagine that a local peasant who kills a rampaging dragon might be considered an everyman who rose to the odds, as opposed to a barely glimpsed mysterious stranger who coincides with a suspicious lack of megabeasts wherever he goes.

Yes:

Quote from: Toady One on November 30, 2013, 10:31:32 pm

Quote from: CLA

Is "reputation" planned to encompass other features apart from "good/bad"?

Yeah, even in the current release, your hero status is a separate variable from anything to do with being an enemy, and in the next release, there'll be a few more variables with more-or-less independent numbers.  So your adventurer can simultaneously have a reputation as a hero for rescuing several abducted children and a reputation for being a violent jackass that beats people up all the time.  It's not exactly complex character building, but we have started on the long road away from +/-.  The reactions of people are simple as it stands, but different people filter known reputations differently based on their position and personality...  the emphasis is on "simple" for now though, he he he.

Quote from: DVNO

do evil NPCs like to associate with evil players, and vice versa? Does this reputation system create preferences?

We don't really have recognized evil interactions yet (you can't go off and be a goblin snatcher in this release, for example), though we're hoping to get some meat in along the village/bandit leader + ruffian/hero/fighting reputations spectrums before the release, and not all town/bandit leaders will have the same methods.

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Bronze Dog

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

I'm not sure how the reputation will be handled.  I've removed the "hero" hf-entity link and merged it with the vampire etc. information from world gen, so there's this overall entity reputation that has lots of different variables.  It hasn't gotten to the point where that matters yet though, and I'm not sure how it'll play out.  At least it's already in a place where you certainly won't be getting "heroic" fame as a trader, once you can get fame as a trader, so it should be neat once more roles go in.

Those quotes don't explicitly mention your backround or how much you keep to yourself, but it's certainly fair game.  Mysterious, sinister strangers come up in many of ThreeToe's stories such as A Terror to Behold (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_terror.html).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on December 24, 2013, 01:07:47 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 19, 2013, 04:42:55 pm

You know what I'm looking forward to?
The background map on the main Bay12 page, when it shows all those little provinces everywhere.

Ooh, that sounds like fun...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 24, 2013, 01:30:16 pm

Quote from: Putnam on December 24, 2013, 01:05:15 am

Quote from: Sizik on December 24, 2013, 12:58:57 am

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Oh, I'm sure. As has been said before, not everything's been moved to in-play yet.

Sounds like something that someone could do !SCIENCE! on. However, 90 years is a REALLY long time, even if your computer is a beefy one. Maybe something like 20 or 30 years would tax your patience less, though differences might be harder to notice.

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=457) (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 24, 2013, 02:43:03 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 24, 2013, 01:30:16 pm

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=457) (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Inarius

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

I wouldn't expect super-roots, but they will grow through the space they fit in.  For some of the tunnelly areas we might not have anything.  I've saved finalizing things like tower-caps for deep sites, and we are almost there.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-07-06

[...] There are now properly gigantic underground mushrooms. In the open caverns the tower caps can become quite voluminous, but they can also squeeze into tunnels at times. [...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 24, 2013, 04:27:31 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 24, 2013, 02:43:03 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 24, 2013, 01:30:16 pm

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=457) (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Inarius

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

I wouldn't expect super-roots, but they will grow through the space they fit in.  For some of the tunnelly areas we might not have anything.  I've saved finalizing things like tower-caps for deep sites, and we are almost there.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-07-06

[...] There are now properly gigantic underground mushrooms. In the open caverns the tower caps can become quite voluminous, but they can also squeeze into tunnels at times. [...]

He didn't say how big the tunnels were while I have a pretty specific example

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aseaheru on December 24, 2013, 04:30:30 pm

If it dont fit it dont grow, sounds like.

Tunnels are normally one wide, yes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 24, 2013, 05:48:25 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on December 24, 2013, 01:07:47 pm

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 19, 2013, 04:42:55 pm

You know what I'm looking forward to?
The background map on the main Bay12 page, when it shows all those little provinces everywhere.

Ooh, that sounds like fun...

It would be cool, but those images haven't been updated since the revamp of the site. What has been updated are the screenshot and feature portions of the site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 24, 2013, 07:24:58 pm

Quote from: Aseaheru on December 24, 2013, 04:30:30 pm

If it dont fit it dont grow, sounds like.

Tunnels are normally one wide, yes?

Usually, yes, but it wasn't really specified.

Even if that bug still exists, the fact that they don't or can't grow in one tile wide tunnels will help some against the annoyance of the bug itself.

There will be many bugs that no longer exist (the loyalty cascade one might not even exist anymore, or mutate into some other form), bugs that are still around, but different, and entirely new ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 25, 2013, 09:27:02 am

I know it's not the right thread, but merry Christmas for everyone here, specially Toady and Three Toe!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on December 25, 2013, 10:47:13 am

Bold added for clarity:

Quote from: Toady One on May 01, 2012, 04:08:08 am

We'd considered the ability to tie people up and place them places, since that comes up with tracks, but ended up not having done it up to this point.

Quote from: Toady One on August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am

I haven't gotten to more-peaceful-than-total-destruction occupations yet, so it doesn't really handle the long term meaning of the camp yet.  I imagine they won't need to stay long if they are raiding or destroying...  perhaps just long enough for you to get word and follow their signs, in terms of the game.  But once we have occupation, the raiders won't need to stay unrealistically long.  Occupations are definately going in this time, along with various prisoner issues, since it'll be fun to adventure around those sorts of antics.  These can be post-world-gen wars.  There aren't separate snatcher squads yet.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:00:07 am

Yeah, we want to get to that -- we were going to start by having you talk to refugees, rescued captives and people you capture.  I'm not sure we'll be able to get to capturing people or not, but we should have the other stuff.  We also wanted people hunting you to do collective punishment when they are hunting you, and I imagine that'd have some interrogation to direct them to you if they've talked to you recently.

Because of the inclusion of Non-lethal combat and the above remarks that were made I am curious as to how non-lethal combat will affect the game world on a long term timeline. Will we possibly see the inclusion of the above mentioned method of restraining individuals and making them a prisoner? Will entities and associated adventurers have access to jails, prisons, and/or dungeons for storing restrained individuals?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 25, 2013, 12:05:31 pm

...yes? Just not at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 25, 2013, 08:22:44 pm

Yea. ToadyOne made talk about arresting folks, putting them in jail, being tracked, then arrested and being put in jail (and of course trying to escape from jail).

Thats tied to the Justice and Thief player roles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 25, 2013, 08:51:48 pm

I think Toady One also said that you can force someone to guide you (though an unwilling guide could lead you into a trap instead). Though just how much physical or psychological force that would entail is unknown.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tsuchigumo550 on December 25, 2013, 09:22:14 pm

Is there/ will there be an option to "fire and forget" minecarts? The hauling menu is... difficult for me, as I can't remember how I ever got it working, and that was before not playing for a few months. I had a "railgun" built in my fort that only gathered dust- a single-way tile (East Only) followed by a windmill-power Roller and a long section of East/West track. It was never meant to carry anything but a militant dwarf into combat, but I couldn't get this to work.

I'm sure it's probably just stupidity on my part, but I can't figure out how to assign a cart either. I don't want constant hauling, and while I -guess- I could fill it with rocks instead of angry dwarves, I want the whole cart to follow through on the joyride.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 26, 2013, 12:09:22 am

Quote from: Tsuchigumo550 on December 25, 2013, 09:22:14 pm

Is there/ will there be an option to "fire and forget" minecarts? The hauling menu is... difficult for me, as I can't remember how I ever got it working, and that was before not playing for a few months. I had a "railgun" built in my fort that only gathered dust- a single-way tile (East Only) followed by a windmill-power Roller and a long section of East/West track. It was never meant to carry anything but a militant dwarf into combat, but I couldn't get this to work.

I'm sure it's probably just stupidity on my part, but I can't figure out how to assign a cart either. I don't want constant hauling, and while I -guess- I could fill it with rocks instead of angry dwarves, I want the whole cart to follow through on the joyride.

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/), and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).

There's also Gameplay Questions (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=7.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nukularpower on December 26, 2013, 05:07:05 pm

Question:

There has been a bug (or several) for many years that ends up preventing marksdwarves and hunters from picking up ammo.  It's either related to ammo in bins, or whatever else - getting rid of ammo bins in my latest fort hasn't helped.  It happens to me personally in every fort I build - I can never use marksdwarves.

Are there any plans to fix this extremely frustrating bug, or perhaps introduce a workaround such as allowing manual assignation of bolts via the uniform/equip screen like most other military items?

I realize that there is a bug report section and all that, but this is a bug that is many years old, and I don't think reporting it again would matter much.  Please don't let it go another 2 years :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 26, 2013, 05:14:54 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on December 26, 2013, 05:07:05 pm

Question:

There has been a bug (or several) for many years that ends up preventing marksdwarves and hunters from picking up ammo.  It's either related to ammo in bins, or whatever else - getting rid of ammo bins in my latest fort hasn't helped.  It happens to me personally in every fort I build - I can never use marksdwarves.

Are there any plans to fix this extremely frustrating bug, or perhaps introduce a workaround such as allowing manual assignation of bolts via the uniform/equip screen like most other military items?

I realize that there is a bug report section and all that, but this is a bug that is many years old, and I don't think reporting it again would matter much.  Please don't let it go another 2 years :(

The plan is obviously to fix all bugs eventually. As for whether this one will make the cut for the bug-fixing release, I doubt Toady would know that yet, since he's still got the current release to worry about. We'll just have to wait and see when we get to it. One can hope that this is somehow job priority related, since it'd then hopefully be solved when Toady gets to that rewrite, which is planned to be included in the post-release work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 26, 2013, 05:15:24 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on December 26, 2013, 05:07:05 pm

Question:

There has been a bug (or several) for many years that ends up preventing marksdwarves and hunters from picking up ammo.  It's either related to ammo in bins, or whatever else - getting rid of ammo bins in my latest fort hasn't helped.  It happens to me personally in every fort I build - I can never use marksdwarves.

Are there any plans to fix this extremely frustrating bug, or perhaps introduce a workaround such as allowing manual assignation of bolts via the uniform/equip screen like most other military items?

I realize that there is a bug report section and all that, but this is a bug that is many years old, and I don't think reporting it again would matter much.  Please don't let it go another 2 years :(

The answer is yes, but no time line.

It wont be happening in this release, as ToadyOne didnt really touch the military or item handling for fort mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 26, 2013, 06:35:08 pm

Quote from: nukularpower on December 26, 2013, 05:07:05 pm

Question:

There has been a bug (or several) for many years that ends up preventing marksdwarves and hunters from picking up ammo.  It's either related to ammo in bins, or whatever else - getting rid of ammo bins in my latest fort hasn't helped.  It happens to me personally in every fort I build - I can never use marksdwarves.

Are there any plans to fix this extremely frustrating bug, or perhaps introduce a workaround such as allowing manual assignation of bolts via the uniform/equip screen like most other military items?

I realize that there is a bug report section and all that, but this is a bug that is many years old, and I don't think reporting it again would matter much.  Please don't let it go another 2 years :(

Bug reports go on the bug tracker, where there are many reports about ammo issues (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1374).  You can help by uploading current-version saves demonstrating specific problems (for reports that don't have them already).  That'll be much more productive than posting a green "question".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Svankensen on December 26, 2013, 07:39:39 pm

I got a new laptop for christmas, i hope that in less than a year i can start invading other laptops with my dwarves. I have this friend of mine that has always loved to hear my DF stories thats really excited with the latest developments, i believe that the next release might just be enough to get him to play.

Feature Request: Have your fortress lay siegue to another players fortress  :P.
Man that would be cool, but the overhaul the game would need would prolly be tremendous.

2016: 24 hour DF matches held in Korea just like with Starcraft. I imagine Pros sending reinforcements to the siegue, rushing deep for adamantite to get an edge, or the armies meeting halfway, or all that cool stuff that will happen in fortress mode on the next release. Man, i wouldnt watch 24 hours of someone playing DF, nor is there a comentator that can live up to that challenge, but the highlights would be so cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 26, 2013, 07:44:42 pm

Quote from: Svankensen on December 26, 2013, 07:39:39 pm

I got a new laptop for christmas, i hope that in less than a year i can start invading other laptops with my dwarves. I have this friend of mine that has always loved to hear my DF stories thats really excited with the latest developments, i believe that the next release might just be enough to get him to play.

Feature Request: Have your fortress lay siegue to another players fortress  :P.
Man that would be cool, but the overhaul the game would need would prolly be tremendous.

2016: 24 hour DF matches held in Korea just like with Starcraft. I imagine Pros sending reinforcements to the siegue, rushing deep for adamantite to get an edge, or the armies meeting halfway, or all that cool stuff that will happen in fortress mode on the next release. Man, i wouldnt watch 24 hours of someone playing DF, nor is there a comentator that can live up to that challenge, but the highlights would be so cool.

Feature requests go in the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0), this particular one has been discussed quote a bit already. Also, IF this were somehow to make it in at some point, I'd put it at closer to 2036 than 2016 ;P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Svankensen on December 26, 2013, 07:49:23 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on December 26, 2013, 07:44:42 pm

Quote from: Svankensen on December 26, 2013, 07:39:39 pm

I got a new laptop for christmas, i hope that in less than a year i can start invading other laptops with my dwarves. I have this friend of mine that has always loved to hear my DF stories thats really excited with the latest developments, i believe that the next release might just be enough to get him to play.

Feature Request: Have your fortress lay siegue to another players fortress  :P.
Man that would be cool, but the overhaul the game would need would prolly be tremendous.

2016: 24 hour DF matches held in Korea just like with Starcraft. I imagine Pros sending reinforcements to the siegue, rushing deep for adamantite to get an edge, or the armies meeting halfway, or all that cool stuff that will happen in fortress mode on the next release. Man, i wouldnt watch 24 hours of someone playing DF, nor is there a comentator that can live up to that challenge, but the highlights would be so cool.

Feature requests go in the Suggestions forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0), this particular one has been discussed quote a bit already. Also, IF this were somehow to make it in at some point, I'd put it at closer to 2036 than 2016 ;P

Ah, well, i imagined that much, it was a tongue-in-cheek feature request, hence the tongue smiley. The cheek smiley is way too complicated to create, thats probably the cause of the misunderstanding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on December 27, 2013, 04:51:18 am

And multiplayer DF is one of those that get suggested every now and then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 27, 2013, 02:14:47 pm

With all the new stuff, will there be any changes to arena functionality (besides the combat related changes)? I'm just wondering if we will have the option to edit the arena.txt so that we can put in rough walls for climbing for example? I know we can just use obsidian casting to make rough walls, but we'd have to rebuild the walls every time we exit the arena.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 27, 2013, 02:42:06 pm

There are more arena options:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2013-04-11

Let's see, you can set the combat state in the arena now, from lethal combat without quarter down to brawls and horseplay, and you can also turn morale on and off -- I did that mainly to test yielding and to fix some issue there with aardvarks surrendering and so on. Unarmed combat is more survivable, and on the other hand you don't have to actually damage somebody's brain to knock them out now. I didn't go too deeply into that, though, so as to move onward. That's the last of what I wanted to do with the combat changes. The next few days are going to be pretty busy though, with continued non-DFish stuff, so I should have some details of the next steps after the weekend. I'll probably be going back to the insurrections I had detoured away from to finish combat, unless other things need taking care of (stealth cleaning, perhaps).

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2013-05-18

I was starting in on tracking finalization when I became dissatisfied with having to hunt down certain situations, so I added some more options to arena mode. The map file can be given grass, dirt or sand, and the temperature, time, weather/clouds and fog level can also be set. You can pump the temperature up to dragonfire if you want to see the arena water channels boil off and the grass ignite, or you can put it down to deathly cold if you want to watch everything freeze. Playing around with stealth in heavy fog is also entertaining.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 27, 2013, 02:48:29 pm

Quote from: Trif on December 27, 2013, 02:42:06 pm

There are more arena options:
[ snip ]

You can also set mounts in the arena and control the mounts (from one of the DF Talks - controlling the rider apparently isn't recommended). We haven't heard anything about rough walls, though, as far as I remember.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 27, 2013, 03:08:22 pm

Quote from: Trif on December 27, 2013, 02:42:06 pm

There are more arena options:
*snip*

I said other than the combat related stuff as I know that the arena would be updated to match the current combat code. However, I had missed and didn't know about the environmental changes and the placement of natural terrain.

Branchoff(s) of my origonal question:

Will we be able to make the dirt and sand into walls in the arena? (actually, thats the same as my origional question, I just didn't know we could place them in the new version).

And will we be able to plant trees and shrubs on the soil in the arena?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on December 27, 2013, 09:02:51 pm

Am I the only one hoping that the recent quiet is a prelude to a New Year's release? Well, if all my hopes are up then yours can be too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 27, 2013, 09:55:35 pm

I think you're the only one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on December 27, 2013, 11:34:01 pm

Me too, but I'm infected with irrational optimism and don't want to have my hopes too dashed!  Also I'd hope Toady and Threetoe are spending time with family.  But when I read Monk's post I did try to run through in my mind what's left on the devlist toady talked about, and I really have no idea what else there is to do...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 28, 2013, 03:51:01 am

Quote from: monk12 on December 27, 2013, 09:02:51 pm

Am I the only one hoping that the recent quiet is a prelude to a New Year's release? Well, if all my hopes are up then yours can be too.

Well if Toady was going to keep with his previous desire to not exceed the 40d->2010 cycle, he'd have to release tonight. And there's no clear evidence that he ISN'T just about to release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 28, 2013, 04:01:30 am

If he's going to release it, he'll release it.
If he's not going to release it, he won't release it.

It's that simple.
My heart wishes for the former, but my mind tells me the latter, seeing as we had no mention of the pre-release cleanup.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 28, 2013, 08:28:21 am

Be realistic, if any date is probable, it would be for the next year. I highly doubt he's going to release rushed to the end year date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 28, 2013, 12:41:15 pm

He's probably just busy with end of the year stuff, also it's the holidays.

FotF monthly Q&A is also coming up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on December 28, 2013, 03:53:09 pm

Well, he was releasing devlogs daily, now there's a near week-long gap.  So maybe he's setting up for a release.

HOWEVER, lately there's been a holiday followed by the end month when he does donation rewards and the other end month stuff.  So a more likely explanation is that Toady hasn't done any work on DF worth commenting on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 28, 2013, 06:09:35 pm

Most likely is the holiday with his family keeping him busy, I know mine has been like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 28, 2013, 08:03:08 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

What do you mean by that? Theres nothing particularily Euro-centric about DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 28, 2013, 08:06:28 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 28, 2013, 08:03:08 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

What do you mean by that? Theres nothing particularily Euro-centric about DF.

If you don't count elves, dwarves, dragons (very western in this game), bronze colossuses, hydras, unicorns, minotaurs and every other fantasy element in the game, you're entirely right :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on December 28, 2013, 08:36:50 pm

While there are definitely some euro-centric elements to DF, I would argue that just the fact that there are multiple accepted skin tones that have no effect on how awesome a character can be, DF is still years ahead of mainstream video games when it comes to moving away from the European default.

Though this is probably not what was being asked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 28, 2013, 09:21:37 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

Well, a lot of things are planned to end up more procedural as things move along (for example randomized dragons with differing shapes, breath attacks or other abilities and weaknesses. Same for vamps, werecreatures and a lot of other staple fantasy creatures), which will obviously move it further away from standard european fantasy. We already have the forgotten beasts which I'd say are a fairly unique and awesome flavoring agent. Another planned addition is procedural civilizations to complement the standard ones. Just imagine having say a race of turkey people, that'd be pretty far out there (although I guess the varieties might be limited to keep it from not getting too silly).

Then again, I might be interpreting this wrong and what you're actually asking if we'll see say asian fantasy elements added, or middle-eastern ones. I don't recall seeing Toady comment on that (although I'm sure Footkerchief will chime in if he did).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on December 28, 2013, 10:13:41 pm

(http://0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/vg/image/1388/25/1388257266212.png)
Assuming he doesn't release the day after tomorrow, this will be the longest waiting time for a release, ever. In my opinion it's a bit inflated when you consider Fort Mode (the mode nearly everyone plays) is hardly changed. Adventure mode is going to be extremely awesome, however, and will possibly become the "main" mode for DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 28, 2013, 10:45:29 pm

Quote from: Nopenope on December 28, 2013, 10:13:41 pm

In my opinion it's a bit inflated when you consider Fort Mode (the mode nearly everyone plays) is hardly changed. Adventure mode is going to be extremely awesome, however, and will possibly become the "main" mode for DF.

I cannot tell you how much I hate this mindset. Is the ten years of development before the focus switch not good enough? The reason people don't play Adventure is because it hasn't been focused on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on December 28, 2013, 10:52:27 pm

I never said the switch was a good or a bad thing, only that the waiting time is a bit disproportionate to the expectations (in terms of actual changes) of Fort mode players who are the main userbase here. The switch was probably necessary but what I said isn't less true. No need to be defensive all of a sudden.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 28, 2013, 11:06:23 pm

A thread was just posted about allocation of dev time to the Fortress and Adventure Modes. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134818.0)  That might be a better place for this discussion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 28, 2013, 11:07:07 pm

Sorry, I go in auto-mode at some statements. There's an awfully large subset of people who say that Adventure mode being worked on sucks because "nobody plays it".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on December 29, 2013, 01:11:00 am

Claiming that Fort Mode has hardly been worked on for the next release is mischievous at best. And it's wrongheaded to question extra work being put into a historically neglected mode simply because less people play it, when less people play it because it has been historically neglected in development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 29, 2013, 01:19:19 am

The personality rewrite will affect fort mode greatly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 29, 2013, 01:49:32 am

"I" play Adventure mode as I will never do good on the fort mode, so its good for me as I also love the history much more than either of the first two aspects I said.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on December 29, 2013, 03:54:16 am

Unless I'm mistaken, the turning point has passed: This is now the longest release cycle.

Quote from: Putnam on December 28, 2013, 08:06:28 pm

Quote from: smjjames on December 28, 2013, 08:03:08 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

What do you mean by that? Theres nothing particularily Euro-centric about DF.

If you don't count elves, dwarves, dragons (very western in this game), bronze colossuses, hydras, unicorns, minotaurs and every other fantasy element in the game, you're entirely right :P

The gods and religions feel a lot more like the stuff in Mesopotamian/central Asian early civilizations than anything remotely European though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 29, 2013, 04:03:28 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 28, 2013, 07:50:50 pm

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

Nothing wrong if it does not, but its just something to ask.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Toady:   I think it's always been in the plan to have randomized main races, it was up on the old dev pages, I don't remember if it made it anywhere on the new dev pages or not? I think it might actually be there. Maybe not. It would be the last one, because doing randomized civilizations is an extra step beyond randomized monsters. Because we've kind of been easing in, we have the forgotten beasts now, we've got the titans, those are randomized. We have some of the underworld creatures randomized and we wanted to ease in to having some of the regular kind of monsters in the woods and stuff, randomizing those with a few extra night creature entries at some point and then kind of ease in to having some randomized regular creatures and then finally adding in randomized civilization creatures. The problem with randomized civilization creatures is there needs to be a lot of exposition or you're just going to be completely confused about what's going on, but it would definitely be an option, I think there would be a slider or something for how strange you want your world to be because we definitely think having dwarves and elves and goblins is cool for a lot of people just to kind of understand what's going on without having to do a lot of extra reading.

So yeah, the plan is to grow beyond our-reality centric fantasy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 29, 2013, 04:22:33 am

Manveru Taurënér and Trif, thank you both. I had not thought of those that much until now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Thanks to Valtam, Knight Otu, smjjames, Trif, monk12, hermes, Putnam, Footkerchief, Willfor, King Mir, Demonic Gophers, Manveru Taurënér, Mopsy, Rockphed, MrWiggles, LordBaal and everybody else that helped out this time.  There were many questions which were addressed by people, so if you don't see yours below, you should check back around where you asked and see if it is handled within 10 posts or so.

This is also the first time I've had the forum yell at me about a FoTF reply taking more than 40000 characters, though perhaps I've broken them up before.  There will be two posts.

Quote

Quote from: Novel Scoops

When giving Megabeasts intelligence and schemes comes into play, do you have any plans for Forgotten Beasts?

Quote from: Helgoland

Similarly, will it be possible to play as a megabeast or another historical creature? Minotaurs, demons and Cacame come to mind...

There aren't any particular plans for forgotten beasts sitting around.  I remember some dev item or another about playing monsters, but this is all distant stuff.

Quote from: smjjames

I saw in a devlog several weeks back that you had fixed cavern populations going extinct in adventure mode (YAY!), I'm wondering if it would now be possible to encounter FBs while roaming the caverns in the next version?

In the testing mode, there are these question marks where the forgotten beasts have been placed as armies underground.  I haven't investigated them yet, but it seems like it might be possible.  They'd be almost impossible to find though, since they don't roam around leaving a trail.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

The troll shearing pits have captured my curiosity, so Are all the named sapients such as Trolls, Gnomes, Troglodytes and Merfolk higher up on the development lists then random animal people? Will fleshing out independent civs or tribes be on the table, especially if they correspond with other arcs such as the sea?

I'm not really sure when they'll fit in, and there isn't an order to any of those things.  They can certainly come up during any related arc.

Quote from: Footkerchief

I'm curious whether there's any disobedience mechanism yet for the companion orders, and whether they can disobey without full-on leaving your group.  This release is creating so much fertile ground for personality-based storytelling -- in this case, a stew of intersecting values (trust, patience, loyalty) and circumstances (the promised reward, opportunities for betrayal).

The basic companion orders are just follow/wait right now, and they won't wait forever, but it'll have to be made slightly more interesting before we can really dig into it.  I have one note left about yielding and having companions follow you in yielding and behaviors for them -- that runs right into some of their values potentially, and I'm probably going to do something with it.  There's definitely a lot just sitting right in front of me.  It's all a matter of pretending it's not the case so I can get a release together now.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, will we have general commands to tell all of our followers at once to stay put etc., or does each companion need to be given orders separately?

Will companions that have been ordered to stay put immediately run off to chase down the first hostile they spot, or will they hold position defensively?

Right now orders are issued individually, but I don't imagine that'll stand for very long, since it's annoying even during testing.

The main idea behind the wait order is that they won't engage hostiles so that your sneaking isn't screwed up, aside from having them actually wait while you go off someplace entirely different.  It'll probably need to be further specified as we go along.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Given all the development of leaders of small groups, are you considering making it possible for them to be independent civ's? Tribes, petty kings and all that jazz.

All of the humans are independent if they don't have a tribute relationship.  There is no civilization leader, unless there's a god impersonator (or successor -- I don't remember if vamps can create their own position or need to act through a god successor).  Gobs are similar, though they are generally saddled with a demon.  The other civs are subject to their entity definitions, so that dwarves and elves in their main civs find such arrangements more unthinkable, though dwarves or elves that have moved to human civs can become local leaders of human-style sites.  It shouldn't be so clear-cut with the dwarves and elves, but it'll be a bit before we sort that out.  If a dwarf group breaks off from the main dwarves, they'll probably establish analogous entity positions in their new entity, since that's how they live, but there's also room to define some wiggle room into the raw file.

Quote from: smjjames

So, does that mean they'll brag and say something like 'I killed Montoya, whose father I slew!' within the combat logs? Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

Yeah, that's right.  All of the conversations are more like the people screaming in the market now, or a capybara sounding a warning or something.

Quote

Quote from: Japa

palms, cacti, that sort of thing.

we were promised pictures

Quote from: Knight Otu

Given the context, I think pictures doesn't refer to screenshots here. It kind of sounds like Toady was talking about the default tiles? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that it's done - Toady mentioned that the tree parameters can create "(somewhat half-assed) saguaros."

Yeah, those pictures were the tile images of the trees, though I probably have various screenshots I should put together.

Quote from: Mr S

Toady, has development come to a satisfactory state, for now at least, in regards to succession of offices currently held in player Fortresses?  Previous FotF replies had made mention of conflicts for the successor.  In this context I took that to mean not so much fighting among candidates, but conflict with another position the succession candidate already holds, i.e. Baron dies, nephew would inherit Barony, nephew is already Trade Liaison to another Fortress.  Does the nephew quit one and take the other?  Does he hold both?  Will we see Nobles holding positions in absentia?

Related to this, what effect will off-site Nobles, holding an office associated to the player Fortress, have on the player Fortress?  If the late Countess' second cousin twice removed does indeed succeed the title, she's then listed in the Nobles menu?  Will you be able to see her in the Units screen?  Is the unit fully realized from the moment of assignment, i.e. relationships, description, labors etc. or upon arrival?  Will she have room requirements even before she arrives (if at all)?  Can she make mandates from afar?

There can be people that originally hold a position off-site, and I think they can still get stuck with multiple positions.  Their unit definition won't be loaded, they don't have requirements and they don't have demands as long as they have not arrived.  It might put their name in the noble list, but that's about it.  Game-wise there are complications until this gets sorted out, however it might work, with the diplomats and so on, if they want to meet with the missing person.

Quote from: lue

Just out of curiosity, have there been any changes to the layout of existing structures in adventure mode, either to accommodate new features or fix old bugs? I'm thinking of if, for example, human keeps are now octagonal, or temples are no longer open-air, that sort of thing.

I don't recall anything immediately with the existing human structures.

Quote from: metime00

When you mention village relationships, does that apply only to human villages or is it all civilized and populated sites? And if so, do all the villages act independently, or is there now a concept of nations/civs in their interactions with each other? Do the village warlords have any relationship with their lieges?

I've only done the human villages so far, and it's the civ-level stuff that complicates the other ones (humans don't have any civ level stuff, though you can end up with an sort-of analog where the larger market towns dominate their surroundings).  I'm not sure what we'll end up with this time.  The humans can end up with civ level positions through exotic means, but they don't know how to push their weight around yet (and won't until the dwarves/elves do the same thing).

Quote from: thvaz

You mentioned wilderness creatures and bogeymen - and I'm extending the question to other night creatures too - there will be a change in the next release where the villages and town react to them independently of the player involvement? There will be a  chance of the guards catching them or organizing raids to their lairs?

We aren't to that point with the night creatures yet -- they now exist as a critter wandering the map or sitting in their lair depending on the time of day and so on, and are trackable, but they don't perform their world gen activities, like kidnapping people, and the world gen adventurers don't confront creatures...  they just hang out in pseudo-taverns.  The people that work for village leaders can be a bit more enterprising, but they are just interested in village-to-village fighting.

Quote from: CypherLH

Will villages "bicker" for actual reasons such as competing land/resource claims in this release or will feuds of some sort simply be generated with no real reason behind them? I would ask the same thing about the reasons behind Orc occupations of villages/towns.  I suppose delving into this might get into some of the old Army Arc stuff where entities were supposed to start to actually caring about stuff.

There are disputes over various real-world things, but since we don't have an active economy or people going about actual jobs with actual resources, it can't be anything but faked right now.  I suppose the matter of holding territory and having power over people now is real in a sense, since they draw soldiers from actual pools of people and controlling more sites makes one more effective at that, so you can take that as a reason for their actions.

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

Can leaders have and enforce beliefs that are generally not supported by the population, but not in such a way that their population suffers or hates them? (as a consequence of the way things will be implemented, not as a special feature) I am thinking of something like a sheriff who doesn't want "vagrants" in his town.

There aren't really enough AI actions for something meaningful to happen there yet.  The leaders have their own personality, and their decisions are filtered through them, but their decisions are all about fighting at this point.  When we get to the thief role, one of the main features will be laws and their enforcement, which'll really flesh all of this out.

Quote from: Thundercraft

When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

It's difficult to say what's going to happen there.  That said, the new demon sites have a slight touch of that in the next release, on a whim.

Quote from: smjjames

Would it be possible for a full blown civil war to erupt within a civilization? The new devlog hints at the potential for larger scale internal conflicts to arise.

The struggles are all still local, and they aren't as mindful of larger succession issues as they could be, but the network of tribute relationships could lead to something that feels partially like a civil war -- if a few cities have their villages in hand, there could be many smaller skirmishes between the main actors with villages switching hands, within the same civilization, but no large army battles.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will goblin civ's ruled by demons be the only ones who get to recruit night creatures? Will the night creature hierarchy and goblin anarchy show up when they attack in Fortress Mode?

It's hard to say how it'll play out until we get there.  There are already vampires and necromancers that don't have anything to do with demons and goblins, so I imagine it'll continue to be diverse.

Quote from: Anatoli

For the next release, can entities change faiths and what regulates those changes? What regulates the strength of those faiths?

Taking the example in the devlog, what exactly is the end goal for those villages? Do they actually conquer the other village, or does the other village just gives up it's claim (or faith, in this case,) after they've been beat up a certain amount?

All of the historical critters have their own faiths, and those generally align with the populace but they don't have to.  The abstract populations have some factional information that governs how the on-the-fly people are generated, but that's all very random.

The goals of the fights are either to get a tribute relationship or to install a new ruler that will give you a tribute relationship.  A single historical figure can't change their religious views at this point, though they can be deposed.  The religious differences just give rise to the hatred at this point -- they don't govern how the war unfolds or what the goals are.

Quote from: misko27

Will we be able to worship a god, and if so will people react to us differently because of it?

People know the religious affiliations of everyone at this point (they tend to know things that don't yet have a rumor format), so if you worship a god, and claim a site, other site leaders can hate you for it and attack your site based on your faith alone, though that isn't that common since most gods aren't in opposition through their spheres (when we have juicier myths and philosophies, there'll be all sorts of reasons).  You can pick a god to worship in character generation at this point.  Footkerchief mentioned how you used to be able to join up at a temple and how that was bugged -- I don't recall updating that conversation option to the new system, but it isn't as high a priority now that you can start with an affiliation.

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Quote from: Sizik

Does [claiming sites] allow for adventurers (or even NPCs) to become like Emperor Norton?

Quote from: smirk

Hmm. Head of an entity whom no-one else officially recognizes, but is nevertheless well-liked enough to subsist on the goodwill of the locals. Possible to an extent, but I'm doubtful this release will include charity. It MIGHT be possible that sufficient fame leads to more favorable prices (both buying and selling), but no one will be exploiting your name for their own monetary gain either. It's all in how you write the fluff after the fact, I suppose.

Yeah, the only nice thing people do for you now is let you sleep in their homes, but getting your own currency would be an additional step.  You can certainly be an irrelevant claimant.

Quote from: smirk

If we retire an adventurer who is head of an entity, Will they still be able to migrate to one of our later fortresses? If so, does that give our fortress a stake in said entity?

I don't think the adventurer will migrate in, since they'd have a position responsibility that binds them to their residence.  They don't give that up positions when they retire, though you can pass them along before you retire if you want.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady: you say that we'll be able to set up a new site government and take over sites and declare new site governments under our control, but will we be able to strong-arm the civilization's top leaders as well and become a sort of revolutionary dictator or monarch, or does the system only support controlling site governments at the moment?

In the process of taking over sites will other leaders in the civ recognize us as a threat and attack us, or will that be handled at a later date?

If civ governments can be taken control of and site governments can be remade entirely, then can we also declare ourselves leader of an entirely new, sovereign civilization and take over, say, one of our retired forts?

If so, would the entity template be taken from the local culture of the first site we take over or the civilization we hail form?

Human civilizations don't have civ leaders (aside from the occasional god-demon and their successors), so it's not usually an issue.  I haven't handled that case, or any of the civ cases (dwarf, elf, etc.), so I don't have answers for any of those.

You'll be recognized as a threat at some point in the process, since it is the same as regular village-to-village fighting.  This means guards stopping you, fist fights and escalations.  Making a claim is also a way to spoil a friendly visit, I imagine, though where you say it and when a rumor spreads to a person and so on determines how that can work.

Quote from: tfaal

I've got a few questions, so I'll try to keep this concise. If I have this right, there are now three sorts of site conflicts:

*The goblin invasions and resultant insurrections, which are lethal combat.

*The harassment based village raids we heard about earlier, which are non-lethal/brawling.

*These new village raids, where the winner captures the site in question. (I'm not sure if these are lethal or not?)

Is that right? If so,

*Where do the old worldgen battles fit into all this? Do they take place during worldgen alongside these other types of conflict, or have these conflicts replaces them?

*What happens when a player starts stabbing enemies during a non-lethal raid?

*How do beaten enemies decide whether to flee into banditry or yield into servitude? Is it based on attributes?

I think that's right, if you don't count things you could do yourself (like rescuing kids etc.).  Worldgen battles are the same as usual -- I just haven't finished the army arc, and have only sort of started it, so there's a lot missing.

If you start stabbing enemies during a non-lethal raid it becomes a lethal fight.  Everybody involved will pull weapons if they have them and a lot of people will potentially die if one side doesn't give up first or run off -- the tendency to run off will increase if the people involved aren't battle-hardened or otherwise cut out for that sort of thing, so it won't necessarily end with everybody dead.  The diplomacy state stores the overall level of each war, but that isn't fully integrated yet -- so I'm not quite sure at this point whether or not a lethal raid that you escalate will lead to a more permanent increase in lethal hostilities across the board between the two groups, but the idea is in play.  You certainly have the potential to be a catalyst for negative changes.

The last bit with banditry isn't decided yet, since I haven't completed the bandit conversion.  It'll probably check the personality of the leader.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

(*continued from above*)

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Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will adventurers be able to reclaim abandoned fortresses for their Civ through capturing the main building, such as a keep or mead hall? When goblins capture a dwarf fortress, is the site map converted to a goblin fortress template and vice versa? How long does this take? Will players be able to embark on recently conquered sites?

Quote from: Ribs

What happens if you attack the leader of one of your retired fortresses? Can you claim it with your adventurer? Can you claim dwarven fortresses at all?
If so,

Will there be some variation there, or will the dwarves from retired fortresses always be the more loyal types who will try very hard to kill your adventurer before surrendering?

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?

I think the way it "works" now, you could claim one of your retired fortresses, but it wouldn't actually know how to have it change hands, since there is no power location (at least not in a way that is currently understood by the adventure part of the game).  Abandoned fortresses don't have people in them, so you'd have to bring a companion along, state a claim to them, and then not have it recognized because there is no power location.  You can kill whomever, but you can't obtain the civ-level positions.  If you kill a monarch, you'll end up with a replacement, if there's a claimant around, or a lack of decision making -- which doesn't matter so much for dwarves, since they don't attack anybody yet.  I haven't allowed adventurers to place a claim on an existing entity position (they can only form a new entity with a new site claim), but you'll definitely be able to do that when we get into the meat of succession wars later.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

Will the new site claim system allow player characters (/and their gangs?) to retire and live out of places like caves and lairs (that is, without "giving in to starvation")? When can we reasonably expect to be able to coax people to start living at sites we capture? "Find a new life in my goblin fortress! Don't mind the goblin bones. And the trolls. Oh, and bring food."

There isn't anything like that yet -- this isn't really the "be a bandit gang"/"have your own entity" release, but elements of that came about as a side effect of the village-to-village fighting.  We don't have anything like a recruitment system for your own sites for regular citizens of other sites, though refugees can be dragged around and people can be inducted into your site squad (which is linked to your position as entity leader in the usual way, and thereby usable by any successor to your position).

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Quote from: Trif

Is it possible to claim a site for an allied civilization, e.g. expanding the dwarven motherland by defeating a goblin tower? Or do you have to be completely independent for now?

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Can we, for example, claim a site of an enemy civ for our own civ to affect the political world map? The idea of running around as a group of soldiers conquering the region for our own civ's good and profit sounds at least interesting, and I wonder if something like this is possible right now.
Or are the site claims purely an abstract thing in that respect as well?

Adventurer affiliations are loose now -- you can't establish a new barony, for example, or conquer a site for a goblin or elf civ.  You can subordinate your site entity through a tribute relationship, but I haven't done anything with the official dwarven hierarchies.  Once the dwarves are causing some trouble of their own, that'll establish a framework, though I'm not sure in which order things will play out.  The adventurer's site claims are real though, in the sense that they have the weight of an entity behind them and all associated mechanics (including succession, squads, diplomacy, reputation tracking and so on).

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Quote from: monk12

What happens if you start mistreating the citizens of your new entity? Will they kick you out of the entity, or will they leave it, or will they just be like "well the King can do what he wants, I guess." Are they more tolerant of stealing in the name of the new site leader (considering it tribute or something?)

Quote from: Footkerchief

The only rebellions we've heard about are insurrections against occupiers, so I think this would depend on whether the adventurer is considered an occupier.  That might be based on whether you're from the same civilization?

If you start running around beating people up, say, you'll develop a crappy personal reputation with the affected local culture, and technically people can start thinking insurrectionist thoughts, though they don't have enough independence to rise up without an outside catalyst (like another group attacking your village, at which point they can help).  The occupation flag is applied in goblin-type circumstances rather than village-to-village skirmishes, but it isn't the sole determiner of behavior -- it's more to separate out populations between occupier and occupied, since the game has some (mainly conversation) assumptions about people and the site entity otherwise.  It's an early distinction that may eventually be dropped, especially when we get to law-type stuff in the thief role that can make a change in human leadership a major change (or when we get to the implementation of the vampire laws from world gen, which might have some minor influence even in this release).

Quote from: lue

With tributes running the town while you're away, will messengers ever find you to alert you to problems in that town, e.g. the guy you left it charge was killed and someone new controls the town? Or will you intrinsically know when your rule is affected?

There aren't any personal messengers right now, so you'd have to go back to figure out precisely what's going on, or if you are slow a rumor'll spread.  Depending on how I update the information screen though, you might learn certain things instantly.  I haven't yet obscured your own position data, for instance, so you'd know when something is lost, but not to whom.  There's probably a line to walk between reality, user friendliness, cruelty and humor in any updates there...  you could end up with a string of conquests in your information screen that are all undone without your knowledge, and whether or not people believe them would depend on which group of refugees came through or how fast the general rumor clocks are ticking (ideally recent rumors would never spread by clock, but we won't know how far we can take that until the caravans are moving).

Quote from: Novel Scoops

You've previously mentioned that the current inability of the game to simulate the duties, relationship and general "role" of historical figures, or notice/handle people "breaking character" is the reason we can't assume control of them, but how important is acting like a historical figure as opposed to playing like a historical figure? Obvious examples include combat, but even simple things like a player controlling a unobservant character looking at everything, or a new player controlling a experienced tomb raider triggering every single trap, would be relevant. Would players in this position be able to use abstraction, or be able to use (limited) hints?

Presumably some of these things would be governed by skills, unless you are talking about deliberately screwing up.  I'm not sure I understood.

Quote from: wdiksolan

I was reading through some old devlogs about tracking and combined with giving companions orders this question popped up:

When being tracked, can you tell a companion to wait and then ambush the hunters while you escape?
Or better yet, will you be able to give your companion your shoes and then tell him to head in another direction to confuse them and if so, will they follow him?

You can't tell them to ambush anybody -- right now we just have wait/follow available.  That'll definitely change, but perhaps not for this time.  But yeah, if you had your companion do this or that later on, as things currently stand they would leave tracks, and these tracks would have the same standing as your tracks in terms of your pursuers.

Quote from: Broken

So, Now that the duplicating populations are being fixed, does this mean that bringing the age of death is posible, like in the old days?

Just having the higher population numbers makes it more work to accomplish if you don't abort world gen really early, depending on how old days your old days are, and I'm not sure what other obstacles there are, but the hist fig and entity counts seem zero-able now.

Quote from: Witty

Coming next release, will hill, mountain or deep dwarves differ from one another on any level? Will hill dwarves tend to be more tan, or deep dwarves pale? Will hill or deep sites fight amongst themselves in a similar manner to human villages?

I haven't linked skin colors to actual sun effects or anything, so it doesn't understand any of that.  The game understands cave adaptation, but that doesn't have any physical ramifications aside from the barfy stuff.  Putnam posted some of our speculation, and we'll work toward something over time.

Quote from: misko27

How is fort mode loyalty now? Is it still possible to be friendly to a civ and an enemy of the fort and vice versa? And will dwarves still attack someone who is friendly to one of their entities but an enemy to others?

It is harder to start fights now, since the game requires more context.  It's likely still possible to get any sort of configuration of entity reps, though the gaining of enemy status doesn't work the same way any more.  Civil war bugs have probably changed.  It's unclear if it'll be for the better, especially at first.

Quote from: Xanmyral

How will enemies deal with people who are out of melee reach but attacking them? As in, say they're in a tree, on a roof, or on a particularly large rock and they're chucking bolts, arrows, or other rocks at them. Would enemies be able to climb up there and deal with them, chuck rocks back, take cover, or just stand there staring at the man who discovered third directional movement?

A typical game exploit people employ, rather cheap too. I hope enemies have the sense to scour for rocks and chuck them, or climb on their own.

Enemy climbing AI is still an open question for this release.  It depends on how easy it is to adapt a few of the existing functions -- I can hope for a two line change and end up with a train-wreck.  It's hard to say until I try with this one.  Jumping seems harder, or at least more prone to slow things down since it has to look outward farther than they've had to in the past.  It'd be especially bad with running/long jumps.  I haven't taught them any new tricks with ranged combat.  The reason the AI is still an open question rather than something I've put off is these kind of concerns, and I'm mindful of having cheap exploits lying around even if it doesn't seem that way many times, but it might be difficult to prioritize depending on how tough it is.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

As part of the tavern arc, can we expect to see better detailed and possibly less dedicated motivations of adventurers and monster hunters?

I'm not sure what'll happen with the arc when it comes to tangential issues.  There are many tangents for that one.  Presumably when we have the dwarf mode taverns in play, you'll need visitors with the initial release, and they'd need a variety of reasons for being there to make the taverns properly bustly.

Quote from: Anatoli

Toady, as there has to be more and more dialogue options, would it be reasonable to have Threetoe write the dialogue? Since he's the writer and all. And you're already working together, so it's not exactly like expanding your team.

This wasn't the issue with the speed of the conversation additions.  The moving parts that bog down the process are all technical.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady: Will refugee populations camping outside towns slowly disperse into that town's or other towns' populations, or will they remain there indefinitely/until the rumored force of darkness is rumored to have left?

They don't spread out at this point, though since we have populations mixing together in world gen, I'm pretty sure it'll happen at some point, and it would be ideal to mix diffusion and tension there.

Quote from: MDFification

Toady: Currently underground tunnels are capped at the map's edge in fortress mode to prevent invaders from using them. In future will this be different? Drums, drums in the deep!

I suspect when we get to the deep dwarves under-outside of your fortress map (which'll very likely happen at the same time that the hill dwarves matter, and that's not too far away), the game will come to understand how to use the tunnels.  Once it knows that, anything's possible, and I'll probably feel compelled to take advantage of the situation.

Quote from: Helgoland

Are we at some point going to see non-omniscient dwarves?

I saw a few people ask for clarification, and I'm also not sure what this was referring to.  There are a few things like witnessing deaths now that they don't know immediately, and (most) other things that they do know.  For something like pathing, I suspect it would cause more trouble than it's worth, if they didn't know that a passage had become blocked for instance, though there are probably cool cases and annoying time-wasting cases.

Quote from: Cobbler89

Will refugee camps share any common framework(s) with hill dwarf sites as far as relating to and communicating with your fortress?

Keeping in mind that none of that happens yet, yeah, I think all of them (deep dwarves and others as well) will probably work in the same way, though the hill and deep dwarves might have a more official relationship that affects the options (especially if they are considered a part of your barony/county/etc.).  The refugees are also a bit more uncomfortable in that they have both an army status and a pseudo-site status -- armies can't leave sites everywhere as they move, for memory reasons, but once refugees have settled for a while, you want to be able to tie diverse site information to them.  It isn't fully resolved yet because refugees won't have a full set of mechanics for quite a while.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

1. How were goblins running away from themselves?
2. Do you have any plans to do something with the refugees on the fringes of dwarven settlements and the like before the next update?

1. Once they took a town, a form of the old invasion rumor persisted in the new site entity, and a portion of the occupying population fled at the rumored invasion (as if the demon were somehow displeased with them even though they were the ones that carried it out in their old affiliation).

2. It'll be best to wait for hill dwarves to become fort-mode integrated so it can all be under the same umbrella.

Quote from: Eric Blank

will refugees in camps give players quests to go investigate/free their hometown, or do they expect us to take the initiative? Will they also know something about the happenings in the area they are now in and give quests to kill local night creatures and bandits?

The refugees and people in general have their list of problems, which is also the list of things they react positively to if you do something about them.  For refugees, the main one is what happened back home.  It's not quite questy but it's functionally similar.  Their new local night creatures and bandits don't yet bother them (due to the lack of battles and complete site data), so no associated rumors are generated and they don't know about them.  Once we get the world gen night creature antics moved over, it should happen naturally once the refugees encounter trouble.  The bandits don't know how to target refugee camps, but if they did, that rumor would be generated as things stand.  I'd need to handle the site data there (a tricky question of timing) or abstract bandit actions a bit (which is similar to adding army battles).

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Is the role of the starting 7 going to be given especial thought when fortress founding scenarios come up? Logically, they could be forward scouts, prospectors, merchants starting a inn by the road, hardened mercenaries looking to claim long-rumored gold, and so on.

The old jokes have tended to be removed over time as things become generalized.  At the same time, if it is convenient to keep a sort of "party" of initial dwarves for familiarity purposes, that might happen.  I'm not sure the same population growth speed will be maintained in different scenarios though.  They could be very different from each other, and some might not involve immigration at all, which could affect starting numbers (though having to define skills for more than seven starting dwarves might be a bit much as well -- it might be that a core group works well there too).

Quote from: MrWillsauce

What did you think of Atrocious Beards Part Two (assuming you saw it)?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I guess it's appropriate that the one that didn't even have a beard fell for a flesh eater.  We knew going in that it was silly, so we could appreciate it as an extension of Peter Jackson's earliest movies more than a Tolkien adaptation.  Even in that vein, the action sequences were too goofy to enjoy a lot of the time though...  barrels for instance.

Quote from: Putnam

With all these changes to how rumors and such get spread, is there any change to, say, demons impersonating gods?

There probably should have been, but that's still something that exists from world gen and then isn't continued on as anything but an odd fact.  It'll technically matter when civ-level actions can be taken by non-gob entities, but there's something inherently rumory about it that isn't touched by the new rumor stuff.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Can the AI loot sites?

There aren't any objects to loot yet.  Just as the tribute is "abstract", anything like looting has to wait for all the economy stuff to come to fruition.  The part from the 2/8 devlog that Footkerchief quoted with demons pillaging dwarven capitals was the world gen backstory -- once you get into play, everything involving items doesn't matter.  Items move around in world gen with trade, though I'm not sure if even the pillaging at that time is abstract or not.  The tribute is.

Quote from: monk12

Will there be any indication NPCs are having a conversation?
Will eavesdropping be possible?
What happens if the conversation is interrupted by player antics? I'm thinking especially of important conversations; can you create Groundhog Day style loops by constantly interrupting conversations through violence or other shenanigans, etc

All conversations currently happening around you pop up in the regular announcement list, and if you can see a speaker, they get a number printed over them with a corresponding number on the announcement line.  Conversations aren't so frequent that this has caused problems, but as more banter goes in we'll see if adjustments are required.  Conversations fizzle over time if they aren't used, so if you start a fight, anything going on would need to be reestablished.  I'm sure people will find many ways to mess with the poor critters.  It just takes a simple two statement exchange to establish sweeping entity changes and so on, though, or even less (like a declaration of a site claim), so you'll have to be on the ball if you want to disrupt the march of history at a given location.

Quote from: smjjames

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Trees start at one tile and they grow from there, so issues with blockage and all that haven't really changed.

Quote from: smjjames

Will we be able to make the dirt and sand into walls in the arena? (actually, thats the same as my origional question, I just didn't know we could place them in the new version).

And will we be able to plant trees and shrubs on the soil in the arena?

I don't think you can set the wall type, and it doesn't let you plant and age specific tree types to test them out yet.

Quote from: Zavvnao

Will fantasy in the game ever grow beyond Euro-centric fantasy?

The randomization was mentioned while I was typing this up -- there's definitely going to be a randomization and a smearing out of things, and the sources of inspiration there are varied.  I have no idea about adding specific stock elements from real-world cultures farther afield, since we were never really strongly pro-stock-stuff to begin with, and we'd just be looking stuff up and putting crappy versions of it in (not that what we have is much different from that already).  There are no doubt several more general thematic biases of which I'm not even consciously aware, and each of those would have to be raised and tackled separately.  The genre/atmosphere/plot stuff from Armok 1 was supposed to address this, or at least allow you to play very atypical worlds, but we are a long way from that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 29, 2013, 08:40:57 am

Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 29, 2013, 08:46:05 am

Thanks for the answers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Adrian on December 29, 2013, 09:06:22 am

I had to read Tarn's spoiler to find out what "Atrocious Beards Part Two" meant.
We use the Candy Cane and Circus euphemisms because the real names are spoileriffic. The title of a movie is not a spoiler and it shouldn't be given a euphemism.

That's my two cents.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on December 29, 2013, 10:45:11 am

Quote from: Adrian on December 29, 2013, 09:06:22 am

I had to read Tarn's spoiler to find out what "Atrocious Beards Part Two" meant.
We use the Candy Cane and Circus euphemisms because the real names are spoileriffic. The title of a movie is not a spoiler and it shouldn't be given a euphemism.

That's my two cents.

Atrocious Beards isn't supposed to be a euphemism, it's a reference to DF Talk #20 where Toady and Co made fun of the facial hair in The Hobbit Part 1.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 29, 2013, 02:10:36 pm

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

The basic companion orders are just follow/wait right now, and they won't wait forever, but it'll have to be made slightly more interesting before we can really dig into it.  I have one note left about yielding and having companions follow you in yielding and behaviors for them -- that runs right into some of their values potentially, and I'm probably going to do something with it.  There's definitely a lot just sitting right in front of me.  It's all a matter of pretending it's not the case so I can get a release together now.

Agonizing.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

If you start stabbing enemies during a non-lethal raid it becomes a lethal fight.  Everybody involved will pull weapons if they have them and a lot of people will potentially die if one side doesn't give up first or run off -- the tendency to run off will increase if the people involved aren't battle-hardened or otherwise cut out for that sort of thing, so it won't necessarily end with everybody dead.  The diplomacy state stores the overall level of each war, but that isn't fully integrated yet -- so I'm not quite sure at this point whether or not a lethal raid that you escalate will lead to a more permanent increase in lethal hostilities across the board between the two groups, but the idea is in play.  You certainly have the potential to be a catalyst for negative changes.

Having that level of nuance in the fights sounds really cool, not just for gameplay variation but also for making the fights more tense and suspenseful.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I guess it's appropriate that the one that didn't even have a beard fell for a flesh eater.  We knew going in that it was silly, so we could appreciate it as an extension of Peter Jackson's earliest movies more than a Tolkien adaptation.  Even in that vein, the action sequences were too goofy to enjoy a lot of the time though...  barrels for instance.

I think I'd be happier with the silly action scenes if they had Braindead-style splatter.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

It just takes a simple two statement exchange to establish sweeping entity changes and so on, though, or even less (like a declaration of a site claim), so you'll have to be on the ball if you want to disrupt the march of history at a given location.

I'm reminded of The Princess Bride when Westley fails to interrupt the wedding, to Buttercup's chagrin.  It's so cool to have big moments realized in gameplay, whether they're interrupted or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on December 29, 2013, 02:58:00 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady!

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

It just takes a simple two statement exchange to establish sweeping entity changes and so on, though, or even less (like a declaration of a site claim), so you'll have to be on the ball if you want to disrupt the march of history at a given location.

Hmm... Do NPCs in adventure mode take everything you say at face value right now? Or can they disbelieve your ridiculous claims yet? Say if a green adventurer wanders into a capital city and lays claim to the throne. Would there always be a "so-and-so has laid claim to the rightful throne of Milord Arglebargle!" rumor, or a "Hey, look! There's a new crazy guy in town" rumor, or even no rumor at all because the citizen you told was too busy laughing his ass off? Is it possible, in fact, for such a claim to have no effect upon the entity at all (i.e. not even listing you as a claimant)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 29, 2013, 03:06:35 pm

Quote from: smirk on December 29, 2013, 02:58:00 pm

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

It just takes a simple two statement exchange to establish sweeping entity changes and so on, though, or even less (like a declaration of a site claim), so you'll have to be on the ball if you want to disrupt the march of history at a given location.

Hmm... Do NPCs in adventure mode take everything you say at face value right now? Or can they disbelieve your ridiculous claims yet? Say if a green adventurer wanders into a capital city and lays claim to the throne. Would there always be a "so-and-so has laid claim to the rightful throne of Milord Arglebargle!" rumor, or a "Hey, look! There's a new crazy guy in town" rumor, or even no rumor at all because the citizen you told was too busy laughing his ass off? Is it possible, in fact, for such a claim to have no effect upon the entity at all (i.e. not even listing you as a claimant)?

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Quote

Quote from: Sizik

Does [claiming sites] allow for adventurers (or even NPCs) to become like Emperor Norton?

Quote from: smirk

Hmm. Head of an entity whom no-one else officially recognizes, but is nevertheless well-liked enough to subsist on the goodwill of the locals. Possible to an extent, but I'm doubtful this release will include charity. It MIGHT be possible that sufficient fame leads to more favorable prices (both buying and selling), but no one will be exploiting your name for their own monetary gain either. It's all in how you write the fluff after the fact, I suppose.

Yeah, the only nice thing people do for you now is let you sleep in their homes, but getting your own currency would be an additional step.  You can certainly be an irrelevant claimant.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-12

Which site claims from which entities take precedence in a given site should be pretty complicated later on, but it's not time for more complications, so the recognized claim (for purposes of diplomacy and site disputes and displacement after invasions and all that) is just based at this point on who is physically holding the main building (whether that's a keep or a mead hall).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 29, 2013, 06:03:42 pm

Thanks, Toady!

While individuals won't change religious/political beliefs in the next release, when they do get added in, will we be able to forcibly change another persons beliefs? I'm imagining some sort of Liberal Dwarf Squad where you go around kidnapping and converting people to your ideologies, presumably to achieve some sort of goal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on December 29, 2013, 07:26:54 pm

Thanks for the answers, Fearless Toady Leader, and may you have a merry New Year.

Ah, but ze questions, zey nevair end.

I haven't seen this mentioned specifically, but does the new contract system allow for dismissing companions? e.g. If a companion is too badly wounded to fight or too cowardly, can I tell them to take a hike, or do I have to order them to wait on the edge of a volcano until they get the message?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 29, 2013, 08:21:08 pm

A FotF reply! Happy birthday to me! :P

Thanks for the answers Toady. It's all starting to make more sense now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silicoid on December 29, 2013, 08:53:31 pm

Quote

Quote from: Thundercraft
When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

It's difficult to say what's going to happen there.  That said, the new demon sites have a slight touch of that in the next release, on a whim.

Now I have to find out this secret....  With one small statement you caused the death of a thousand adventurers in search of this mystery.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on December 29, 2013, 09:26:52 pm

Keep up the pace, Toady, and thanks for the enlightening answers. Have a nice new year, by the way.

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 29, 2013, 06:03:42 pm

Thanks, Toady!

While individuals won't change religious/political beliefs in the next release, when they do get added in, will we be able to forcibly change another persons beliefs? I'm imagining some sort of Liberal Dwarf Squad where you go around kidnapping and converting people to your ideologies, presumably to achieve some sort of goal.

You know how it goes for releases that are further away from the next one, but I think this Powergoal should give a glancing answer.

Quote from: dev_single

PowerGoal139, A BATTERY OF AA MECHANICS, (Future): You receive the holy relic of Aa from a manifestation of the deity. You bring it to the Temple of Aa and set it on the altar. People dance as you chant the prayer of Aa. Word spreads quickly that a prophet of Aa has arisen, and the religion of Aa sweeps throughout the land.

It should make sense to be able to change people's convictions and beliefs, as soon as these make sense and serve a physical purpose in the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on December 29, 2013, 11:57:16 pm

thank you for the answers, I do like the random genned ideas more than putting in even more stock myths.

will refugees or migration of members of a species ever have an affect on the culture or values the civs they assimilate into eventually?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 30, 2013, 12:25:31 am

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on December 29, 2013, 07:26:54 pm

I haven't seen this mentioned specifically, but does the new contract system allow for dismissing companions? e.g. If a companion is too badly wounded to fight or too cowardly, can I tell them to take a hike, or do I have to order them to wait on the edge of a volcano until they get the message?

I think Toady is still finalizing this:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2013-12-02

Finalized some details with guide agreements and cleaned up various issues there (people recommending violent criminals as guides, a broken status from world gen leading to rulers holding court in taverns, constant tearing down of keeps and mead halls in an alternating fashion year by year in world gen, etc.). I just need to handle the termination of guide agreements after the goal is reached, which I'm going to do when I handle the general termination of agreements (over infractions and so on, which is coming up).

Quote from: Zavvnao on December 29, 2013, 11:57:16 pm

will refugees or migration of members of a species ever have an affect on the culture or values the civs they assimilate into eventually?

These mechanics would also apply in refugee situations:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   Is it going to be possible for us to get civilizations like goblin civilizations that go in unexpected directions like maybe they get a leader somehow from an elven civilization who enforces their beliefs on the goblins or something?
Toady:   I only put in little teeny baby steps in that direction back when I set up those ethics; looking in that direction I made it so that the ethics sit inside the civilization so that they're mutable; it doesn't just look at the definition that you put in the raw files, but within each civilization they're mutable; but they don't actually change yet. But that kind of thing is what will allow certain individuals and even sub movements ... this is the kind of thing where say in dwarf mode if you have a philosophical movement spring up and enough of your dwarves adhere to it it should start changing the actual fortress civilization in terms of how it thinks, and whether that's happening because the actual fortress ethics are changing or just because a majority of the people follow the ethics of this movement ... it's kind of one leads to the other, or it should anyway. So we're thinking about those things, we're definitely not ignoring that kind of stuff, but it's just a matter of getting it done and that always takes a long time.

[...]

Toady:   Yeah, I guess the next immigration wave would just be a bunch of dwarven runaways, all these kids come and they just want to check out the ... All the hipsters and various drug addicts and so on can come spilling into your fortress.
Capntastic:   So then we have Liberal Dwarf Squad, everything's a circle.
Toady:   Also there's the issue of ... This comes back to the internal groups within your fortress, like the religions and guilds and so on, because they all have the same cultural and ethical setups as well and each of those can come into play again as far as determining what the overall cultural makeup of your fortress is, and that's another way that cultures can change over time, by introducing new subgroups. Right now I'm not really sure how religions start during dwarf mode; it could be that pilgrims arrive and start preaching about things, or a dwarf could have a revelation, or there could just be your pioneer guys, your seven guys, all come there with their own beliefs to begin with, which is how it works now. They could then, when it comes time that your fortress is large enough for you to set up some kind of temples, or whatever the dwarves end up having for that kind of thing, then you could at that point have the religious subculture spring up around those locations. Then the aesthetics of that group can start coming into play when they interact with different objects in your fortress and other people come, and the outpost liaison again could be accosted by worshipers of a certain religion either in a peaceful way or a non-peaceful way, all that kind of thing. It's all a big mishmash and again the important part is when you have dwarves that overlap in several of those groups. It could be that the outpost liaison himself fits into one of those groups, like had been a miner during the first ten years during world generation, and so is very predisposed to your miner's guild guys and chats a few of them up when they meet in the hallway and then overall has a good disposition during the meeting with your mayor. There's all kinds of things like that just slowly get put in over time.

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 29, 2013, 06:03:42 pm

While individuals won't change religious/political beliefs in the next release, when they do get added in, will we be able to forcibly change another persons beliefs? I'm imagining some sort of Liberal Dwarf Squad where you go around kidnapping and converting people to your ideologies, presumably to achieve some sort of goal.

As mentioned above, subgroups will be able to cause broad changes in a culture, which could reasonably include forcible conversions.  Another type of forcible conversion will probably be used by cults -- the trolls in the current version already do some of this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 30, 2013, 01:27:30 pm

Alright, so at at the moment goblins are the only ones who move around conquering things in play, and with no army battles they can only be defeated by insurrection or hijinks at their camps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 30, 2013, 01:30:18 pm

What are the raw tokens that are associated with whether a civ attacks or not?

It would be important for modding purposes, and we may even be able to just make the current races also attack if the token doesn't affect much else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on December 30, 2013, 01:43:47 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on December 30, 2013, 01:27:30 pm

Alright, so at at the moment goblins are the only ones who move around conquering things in play

Huh?  Did you get that from this quote?

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote from: Putnam

With all these changes to how rumors and such get spread, is there any change to, say, demons impersonating gods?

There probably should have been, but that's still something that exists from world gen and then isn't continued on as anything but an odd fact.  It'll technically matter when civ-level actions can be taken by non-gob entities, but there's something inherently rumory about it that isn't touched by the new rumor stuff.

Humans still conduct town-to-town raids.  They just don't act as a civilization yet.

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 30, 2013, 01:30:18 pm

What are the raw tokens that are associated with whether a civ attacks or not?

What kind of attacks do you mean?  Are you responding to a specific quote?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on December 30, 2013, 02:57:00 pm

To clarify Footkerchief, I'm getting the impression that humans and others have village raids, with the establishment of tribute relationships, but the goblins are the only ones who attack the larger settlements, and the only ones able to occupy or demolish them. I also think they're the only ones with camps. I'm getting most of that from this in the devlog, 02/08/2013:  "More than fifty well-armed goblins round out the force, which is sizeable for this early year (21), and enough to take Meadowabbeys by surprise (that is, there aren't any army fights in this release)".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on December 30, 2013, 04:55:18 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on December 30, 2013, 01:43:47 pm

What kind of attacks do you mean?  Are you responding to a specific quote?

I think what was meant was site raids.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Little Kingpin on December 30, 2013, 08:16:09 pm

About the multitile trees, how big are they going to get? Like, if we leave world gen running for a couple thousand years, are we going to start seeing Highwoods fifty z-levels tall that take a season to cut down?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 30, 2013, 08:20:19 pm

Quote from: Little Kingpin on December 30, 2013, 08:16:09 pm

About the multitile trees, how big are they going to get? Like, if we leave world gen running for a couple thousand years, are we going to start seeing Highwoods fifty z-levels tall that take a season to cut down?

There are already trees with trunks that grow up to 30 tiles wide (was that in diameter or radius?), although not sure if those are only found on Elven sites. The height wasn't mentioned, but such trees could easily be 50+ z levels tall.

I'm sure the width and heights are completely moddable, so you could make even more massive trees.

Edit:

Quote from: Toady One 07/10/2013 devlog

The elf caravan rolled in with chestnuts, mangos and coconuts, and also some grown oak items that won't make them angry if you try to resell them later. I've got their sites sorted out (at least in some releasable way, if not a satisfactory one), with some of their largest trees 30 tiles across now. So this section is pretty much handled -- I have a few more days of issues, new tree/vegey data entry which'll be ongoing up to the release, and dwarves chopping down trees left to do. That means I'll be getting on to finalizing dwarf sites pretty soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 30, 2013, 09:57:49 pm

Actually, I think he meant that the canopy was 30 tiles across, not the trunk :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 30, 2013, 10:35:48 pm

Yeah it's possible I misunderstood what he said.

Since full grown trees seem to exist from the beginning of time, there could be thousand year old trees already existing. It is a good question though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smurfingtonthethird on December 30, 2013, 11:52:49 pm

How will civilisations react if their surroundings change? For example, if I built a bridge over to a remote island civilisation, would that civilisation begin to interact with my fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on December 30, 2013, 11:54:49 pm

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on December 30, 2013, 11:52:49 pm

How will civilisations react if their surroundings change? For example, if I built a bridge over to a remote island civilisation, would that civilisation begin to interact with my fort?

Toady has stated that any sites you make will be avoided, so you can't make bridges that will be used.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 12:23:07 am

Quote from: mastahcheese on December 30, 2013, 11:54:49 pm

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on December 30, 2013, 11:52:49 pm

How will civilisations react if their surroundings change? For example, if I built a bridge over to a remote island civilisation, would that civilisation begin to interact with my fort?

Toady has stated that any sites you make will be avoided, so you can't make bridges that will be used.

May still work in the abstract as far as caravans go? I've heard of people building bridges to connect an island separated from the mainland and that worked.

I wonder why they would be avoided? Could be lots of reasons such as AI.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on December 31, 2013, 12:55:47 am

Is tree height affected by the worldgen z-level height limit?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 11:51:59 am

Quote from: Sizik on December 31, 2013, 12:55:47 am

Is tree height affected by the worldgen z-level height limit?

Isn't the worldgen height limit just the number of sky z-levels above the highest point on the embark at embark time? In theory it would go from the highest treetop, but yes, interesting question.

I have a tree modding related question of my own:

The other day I had an idea of making giant trees which are 100 z levels tall and 50 tiles wide, but are extremely rare. Is it possible to do this kind of thing? I'm sure the height and width of it would be doable, if extreme, but is it possible to use a population token like creatures have to control the rarity?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 31, 2013, 11:56:14 am

Quote from: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 11:51:59 am

Isn't the worldgen height limit just the number of sky z-levels above the highest point on the embark at embark time? In theory it would go from the highest treetop, but yes, interesting question.

I have a tree modding related question of my own:

The other day I had an idea of making giant trees which are 100 z levels tall and 50 tiles wide, but are extremely rare. Is it possible to do this kind of thing? I'm sure the height and width of it would be doable, if extreme, but is it possible to use a population token like creatures have to control the rarity?

Something like a world tree with whole civilizations living inside and up in the canopies sure would be cool, either modded or in vanilla ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on December 31, 2013, 12:07:22 pm

Quote from: Sizik on December 31, 2013, 12:55:47 am

Is tree height affected by the worldgen z-level height limit?

Yes.

Quote from: Toady One on August 01, 2013, 04:34:12 am

Quote from: Cruxador

But how tall are they? By all logic trees that wide should be like a thousand Z-levels tall, but that sounds likely to cause technical issues. On the other hand, a tree that's not substantially taller than it is wide would be far too silly.

For the 30 tile wide trees, I was talking about the crown, not the trunk, if that's the issue.  They are still limited in size by the sky, and to save time I haven't changed that.  Other trees are more okay the way they are -- maple trees, for example, can be roughly equal in height and width, and mine are currently too tall compared to their width, if anything.  I would prefer to get the heights up in general, though, if practical, and some of the elf ones are definitely on the short side.

Quote from: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 11:51:59 am

The other day I had an idea of making giant trees which are 100 z levels tall and 50 tiles wide, but are extremely rare. Is it possible to do this kind of thing? I'm sure the height and width of it would be doable, if extreme, but is it possible to use a population token like creatures have to control the rarity?

As above, trees are affected by the the sky limit. On twitter, Toady mentioned that the largest trunks are 3 by 3 tiles, but it's not clear yet whether that's a hardcoded maximum or not. Trees already have a frequency token, defaulting to 50, and I wouldn't expect further controls for the time being.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on December 31, 2013, 04:08:02 pm

Is there any way for us to plant our own trees?

For example, say I was trying to make elves a playable civ, and wanted to give them giant trees they can plant to live in once they grow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on December 31, 2013, 05:19:23 pm

Happy new year everyone!! Please don't drink and drive. If you are drinking please take a cab or stay the night.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 31, 2013, 05:35:00 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on December 31, 2013, 05:19:23 pm

Happy new year everyone!! Please don't drink and drive. If you are drinking please take a cab or stay the night.

Half an hour until 2014 here still.
That said, borderline no hope of DF2013 is left now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on December 31, 2013, 05:53:01 pm

Still got several hours here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on December 31, 2013, 05:54:41 pm

Well, ToadyOne is Pacific time and it's only about 3pm here, so in theory he has plenty of time to release something today if he so desires.

But I seriously doubt that's going to happen based on the Dev logs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on December 31, 2013, 06:06:39 pm

In my timezone it's still 2013 for 8 hours.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 06:11:31 pm

Quote from: Baffler on December 31, 2013, 04:08:02 pm

Is there any way for us to plant our own trees?

For example, say I was trying to make elves a playable civ, and wanted to give them giant trees they can plant to live in once they grow.

I'm sure that's planned, but I seriously doubt that's in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on December 31, 2013, 07:36:09 pm

Quote from: Baffler on December 31, 2013, 04:08:02 pm

Is there any way for us to plant our own trees?

For example, say I was trying to make elves a playable civ, and wanted to give them giant trees they can plant to live in once they grow.

Quote from: Toady One on October 06, 2012, 07:01:00 am

Quote from: CLA

Do the fruits contain seeds of the trees? Will we see seeds for all plants now? Do new plants only grow where seeds are? Will animals disperse seeds?
Does tree growth depend on fertility of the ground? Can we influence that with fertilizer? Possibly order trees to be grown somewhere specific by planting a seed?

I haven't done the seeds yet.  I'm not sure exactly what'll happen there.  It would be really cool to be able to plant trees.  We'll see.  I haven't messed with the soil.

From a while back so not sure if much more has happened since on that front, but since we haven't really heard about it I'd guess no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 31, 2013, 07:43:12 pm

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I now consider the term DF2013 to be outdated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on December 31, 2013, 07:53:00 pm

Not for another 7 hours, no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on December 31, 2013, 07:57:15 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 31, 2013, 07:43:12 pm

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I now consider the term DF2013 to be outdated.

Why? It's about the release date...

DF2014 will come soonish I'm sure ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on December 31, 2013, 08:14:29 pm

If it miraculously does come out within the next few hours, you may be calling it DF2013.
But given that now I live in the new year it's going to be DF2014.

What even makes you think it'll come out tonight? #cynicism

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on December 31, 2013, 08:20:58 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 31, 2013, 08:14:29 pm

If it miraculously does come out within the next few hours, you may be calling it DF2013.
But given that now I live in the new year it's going to be DF2014.

What even makes you think it'll come out tonight? #cynicism

The dream is alive! #things I read watching Saltybets #yes I will never use hashtags on the forum again

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on December 31, 2013, 08:22:47 pm

It sounded like he still has work to do for Dwarven sites, and maybe Elven sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 01, 2014, 09:39:21 am

if you read the report for this year, it seems that there will be a noticeable number of releases this year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 01, 2014, 10:43:26 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on January 01, 2014, 09:39:21 am

if you read the report for this year, it seems that there will be a noticeable number of releases this year.

(http://i.imgur.com/QP3JMYc.gif)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 01, 2014, 12:45:33 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on January 01, 2014, 09:39:21 am

if you read the report for this year, it seems that there will be a noticeable number of releases this year.

Well, that usually is the plan anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: krenshala on January 01, 2014, 01:08:09 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on December 31, 2013, 08:20:58 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on December 31, 2013, 08:14:29 pm

If it miraculously does come out within the next few hours, you may be calling it DF2013.
But given that now I live in the new year it's going to be DF2014.

What even makes you think it'll come out tonight? #cynicism

The dream is alive! #things I read watching Saltybets #yes I will never use hashtags on the forum again

Wait ... you aren't just adding comments to your post?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 02, 2014, 10:25:45 am

First devblog post of the new year (not counting the January report post) and 2013 has been archived.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on January 02, 2014, 11:46:54 am

So how big are the squads we are talking about, and why would there be multiple leaders?
And exactly what kind of orders are we talking about? (I assume it has to far simply been "conquer that village," but still.)
PS: Also, are we talking about our own group, (why would we have other leaders?) or about the village garrison?

Also, love-bot?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 02, 2014, 11:52:51 am

Quote from: Anatoli on January 02, 2014, 11:46:54 am

Also, love-bot?

Some sort of spambot I assume.

Edit: According to this post: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132904.msg4876619#msg4876619  they were love counseling spambots or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on January 02, 2014, 12:02:44 pm

As far as I could gather from a quick skim (I didn't want to read too much, lest I lose SAN), they were promising to make you get a better love-life through black magic. And, interestingly, were providing a phone number, rather than a link.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on January 02, 2014, 01:57:03 pm

Awesome. I do love these bots and their stupidity sometimes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 02, 2014, 05:06:28 pm

How will you avoid all the (mortal) adventurers loitering in taverns from dying of old age?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 02, 2014, 05:32:55 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 02, 2014, 05:06:28 pm

How will you avoid all the (mortal) adventurers loitering in taverns from dying of old age?

New ones will be born during gameplay:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-01-03

Children grow up throughout the world now, as you are playing, and new relationships are scheduled properly. There aren't always people available, especially in the smaller sites, so they can look down the trade network at times. Members of a new pair don't move to each other's sites yet, though. I'm going to handle that with entity position succession, which is next, so we should see various travellers on occasion when that is done. I'm looking forward to the world being a bit more of a churning mass of activity, and it'll be nice for fortress mode especially to have proper replacements for all of the people that eventually pass on, so that you can keep up successive games for longer in the same world at the same level of involvement as time goes on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 03, 2014, 02:11:47 am

Quote from: Anatoli on January 02, 2014, 11:46:54 am

Also, love-bot?

I know it was probably just spam, but in my mind it was robots that give you procedurally generated compliments.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on January 03, 2014, 03:16:03 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 02, 2014, 05:32:55 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 02, 2014, 05:06:28 pm

How will you avoid all the (mortal) adventurers loitering in taverns from dying of old age?

New ones will be born during gameplay:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-01-03

Children grow up throughout the world now, as you are playing, and new relationships are scheduled properly. There aren't always people available, especially in the smaller sites, so they can look down the trade network at times. Members of a new pair don't move to each other's sites yet, though. I'm going to handle that with entity position succession, which is next, so we should see various travellers on occasion when that is done. I'm looking forward to the world being a bit more of a churning mass of activity, and it'll be nice for fortress mode especially to have proper replacements for all of the people that eventually pass on, so that you can keep up successive games for longer in the same world at the same level of involvement as time goes on.

To play the devil's advocate, we cannot be sure that historical figures will become adventurers during play yet, as they do in worldgen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Adrian on January 03, 2014, 09:54:11 am

Besides trees, is anything else going to make the migration from the code to the raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 03, 2014, 10:30:42 am

Quote from: Adrian on January 03, 2014, 09:54:11 am

Besides trees, is anything else going to make the migration from the code to the raws?

These are all the new raws I could find mention of.  Some of them are just new features, but gaits and attack cooldowns were arguably hardcoded before, I think:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-05-14

I've gotten through a number of the promises I had written down for stealth over the months, mostly arising from my Future of the Fortress replies: you can set the angles of the full/peripheral vision arcs within the raws, creatures with multiple heads etc. can be set to have the full vision circle as long as their multiple parts have working vision, size and movement impact stealth and attempted sneaking affects maximum speed, and so on.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-04-09

It looks like the hydra is working correctly. Two heads snatched a lower arm a piece and then shook around and ripped them off at the same time. It's reasonably dangerous. The heads can each choose a different style of attack that have different times to strike and recover, so they get pleasantly out of sync as they roil around. The attacks are marked in the raws as independent so the hydra doesn't suffer a multi-attack penalty (which encourages the AI to go ahead with them as well). I also hacked apart a lot of undead corpses and skins and things to test that out, and it seems to be working fine. Next up'll be some tweaks to non-lethal combat damage and yielding, which'll get us out of combat and back to other things.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-03-29

In addition to cleaning up random unfunny bugs, I've been entering all of the gait data into the raws now that that part of combat is definitely settled. Creature variations can now take argument strings which replace argument markers in the variation definition (the arguments are different speed numbers in this case). The use of lines of the variation can also be made conditional on these arguments. There isn't enough resolution in the game's time system for speeds to make sense entirely, without letting critters like cheetahs understand moving more than one square per click. Fixing it isn't as easy as making projectiles go more than one tile per click. In any case, critters that should be faster than a dwarf or human at full speed are much faster at their full speed, while one creature's full speed is generally much faster than its walking speed, so it'll be an improvement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 03, 2014, 10:36:56 am

Don't know, probably this was already asked (even by me perhaps?), but how long does all the "races" live? I mean, which is the average life span of a regular dwarf, human, goblin, grass smoking tree hugging hippie, and some others like the animal men and such?

I ask because I hardly play adventure and my forts aren't really up to OSHA standards, which translates in people not dying of old age like, never. And I'm a tad interested on the expected length of life and how can be increased in game (besides becoming a vampire or necromancer).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 03, 2014, 11:16:19 am

Quote from: LordBaal on January 03, 2014, 10:36:56 am

Don't know, probably this was already asked (even by me perhaps?), but how long does all the "races" live? I mean, which is the average life span of a regular dwarf, human, goblin, grass smoking tree hugging hippie, and some others like the animal men and such?

I ask because I hardly play adventure and my forts aren't really up to OSHA standards, which translates in people not dying of old age like, never. And I'm a tad interested on the expected length of life and how can be increased in game (besides becoming a vampire or necromancer).

You could just look at the raws you know. Elves and Goblins are chronologically immortal, Humans have the same average lifespan as in RL, I think Kobolds have the same lifespan as humans?, Dwarves generally average around 160-170 years. I did have one dwarf who managed to get so old that at first glance I thought he/she was a vampire (they weren't), that dwarf had lived to the very ripe old age of 179, maybe 180.

Edit: The maxage of dwarves is 150-170, but I find that they usually live well into their 160s. I also checked the raws and kobolds have the same maxage as dwarves, but with their lifestyle, seems like most wouldn't live to see 40, let alone 140.

As for increasing the lifespan in game, just edit the maxage, but that only affects when they die of old age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 03, 2014, 11:31:47 am

also note that, in the current version at least, changes to the MAXAGE token in the raws does not have an affect on pre-generated creatures in worlds; people will still die at the date set upon their birth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 03, 2014, 11:34:29 am

I think the kobolds living that long could just be played off as being "lucky" enough to live that long if things go good for them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 03, 2014, 02:26:24 pm

Didn't knew the age was on the raws... sorry!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on January 03, 2014, 02:48:17 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on January 03, 2014, 02:11:47 am

Quote from: Anatoli on January 02, 2014, 11:46:54 am

Also, love-bot?

I know it was probably just spam, but in my mind it was robots that give you procedurally generated happy endings.

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on January 03, 2014, 04:52:20 pm

Quote from: tfaal on January 03, 2014, 03:16:03 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 02, 2014, 05:32:55 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 02, 2014, 05:06:28 pm

How will you avoid all the (mortal) adventurers loitering in taverns from dying of old age?

New ones will be born during gameplay:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-01-03

Children grow up throughout the world now, as you are playing, and new relationships are scheduled properly. There aren't always people available, especially in the smaller sites, so they can look down the trade network at times. Members of a new pair don't move to each other's sites yet, though. I'm going to handle that with entity position succession, which is next, so we should see various travellers on occasion when that is done. I'm looking forward to the world being a bit more of a churning mass of activity, and it'll be nice for fortress mode especially to have proper replacements for all of the people that eventually pass on, so that you can keep up successive games for longer in the same world at the same level of involvement as time goes on.

To play the devil's advocate, we cannot be sure that historical figures will become adventurers during play yet, as they do in worldgen.

Given the following quote from Toady's lastest reply, I'd say they probably won't. It seems highly unlikely that post-worldgen NPC adventurers will go hunt down monsters while all the world gen adventurers idle in pseudo-taverns. Furthermore, it would be quite strange if post-worldgen NPCs occasionally declared themselves adventurers and then headed straight to the nearest pseudo-tavern without any actual adventuring phase. Therefore, I believe that while births will continue post-worldgen, only our own characters will rise to adventurerhood during play.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

.... the world gen adventurers don't confront creatures...  they just hang out in pseudo-taverns. ....

Thinking about NPC adventurers and post-worldgen dynamics led me to another question for Toady. Will NPCs that are born post-worldgen be able to start careers and gain skills in some way (without being the player character's companions)? If they don't, we'll eventually end up with a classless all-peasant society.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 03, 2014, 05:02:46 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on January 03, 2014, 04:52:20 pm

Thinking about NPC adventurers and post-worldgen dynamics led me to another question for Toady. Will NPCs that are born post-worldgen be able to start careers and gain skills in some way (without being the player character's companions)? If they don't, we'll eventually end up with a classless all-peasant society.

That is actually a very good question and very good point on the classless all peasant society.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 03, 2014, 05:38:23 pm

With the new companion mechanics, will we be able to get pets in adventure mode soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 03, 2014, 06:44:13 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 03, 2014, 05:38:23 pm

With the new companion mechanics, will we be able to get pets in adventure mode soon?

Soon and DF development?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on January 03, 2014, 06:45:40 pm

in adventurer mode,will night troll's perhaps do spouse convertion if they kidnap/defeat your adventurer in combat? I imagine non-lethal combat would have something to do with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on January 03, 2014, 06:48:47 pm

With the personality rewrite, will vampires hide their identity in a more complete manner? Such as fake group associations and the like?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 03, 2014, 06:58:55 pm

Quote from: blazing glory on January 03, 2014, 06:45:40 pm

in adventurer mode,will night troll's perhaps do spouse convertion if they kidnap/defeat your adventurer in combat? I imagine non-lethal combat would have something to do with it.

Night trolls are always hostile to your adventurer, I doubt they are going to do non-lethal combat, especially when you're trying to to kill them in the first place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 03, 2014, 07:01:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 03, 2014, 05:38:23 pm

With the new companion mechanics, will we be able to get pets in adventure mode soon?

Mounts are on the dev page.  That's the first implementation of animal ownership we'll see, and the dev page is as close as anything gets to being scheduled:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Hero
    Mounts
        Can buy them as with livestock, handled as with livestock
        Combat move/speed split
        Movement speeds, turning and inertia
        Combat effects (velocity addition, body part selection, trampling)

Quote from: blazing glory on January 03, 2014, 06:45:40 pm

in adventurer mode,will night troll's perhaps do spouse convertion if they kidnap/defeat your adventurer in combat? I imagine non-lethal combat would have something to do with it.

In the upcoming release, night creatures won't kidnap anyone during play.  When that gets added later, your adventurer will be a fair target.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Quote from: thvaz

You mentioned wilderness creatures and bogeymen - and I'm extending the question to other night creatures too - there will be a change in the next release where the villages and town react to them independently of the player involvement? There will be a  chance of the guards catching them or organizing raids to their lairs?

We aren't to that point with the night creatures yet -- they now exist as a critter wandering the map or sitting in their lair depending on the time of day and so on, and are trackable, but they don't perform their world gen activities, like kidnapping people, and the world gen adventurers don't confront creatures...  they just hang out in pseudo-taverns.  The people that work for village leaders can be a bit more enterprising, but they are just interested in village-to-village fighting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 03, 2014, 09:02:35 pm

I don't mean mounts, just pets in general. You know, dogs, cats, that sort of thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 03, 2014, 09:08:17 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 03, 2014, 09:02:35 pm

I don't mean mounts, just pets in general. You know, dogs, cats, that sort of thing.

Well, they'll most likely be making it in together though, so the answer is a valid one. Hopefully Toady will finish it up in the next dev-cycle seeing as he's already got the systems needed in place now and had started tinkering with it a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarf_reform on January 04, 2014, 11:06:40 pm

First FOTF question I've ever asked! WOO! Question is (hope it hasn't been asked before): Could you "un-hardcode" the starting dwarf amount so that players can choose to start with 1-7 dwarves and receive extra embark points for starting with less?

Always dreamed of the Hermit Fortress.. This could potentially be a separate mode where migrants don't ever come, or only one per year shows up.. (Yes, even more difficulty!) I'd rely on the great modding community for this, but those starting dwarves, so hardcoded :P Can Hermit Fortress ever be a reality? :|

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 04, 2014, 11:35:34 pm

Quote from: dwarf_reform on January 04, 2014, 11:06:40 pm

First FOTF question I've ever asked! WOO! Question is (hope it hasn't been asked before): Could you "un-hardcode" the starting dwarf amount so that players can choose to start with 1-7 dwarves and receive extra embark points for starting with less?

Always dreamed of the Hermit Fortress.. This could potentially be a separate mode where migrants don't ever come, or only one per year shows up.. (Yes, even more difficulty!) I'd rely on the great modding community for this, but those starting dwarves, so hardcoded :P Can Hermit Fortress ever be a reality? :|

I dont think anything been said about moving the number of starting dorfs to the raws just for that

But the number of starting dorfs will change with the addition of Starting Scenarios. And those could totally be moved into the raws. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 05, 2014, 01:14:25 am

and that general pet idea sounds interesting, especially if you could have little creatures such as a bird or lizard to sit on your shoulder. Adventure mode vermin taming would be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 05, 2014, 01:17:52 am

Speaking of vermin pets, will kobolds ever wield dangerous vermin creatures as weapons like they do in Kobold Quest?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 05, 2014, 01:42:28 am

Quote from: dwarf_reform on January 04, 2014, 11:06:40 pm

First FOTF question I've ever asked! WOO! Question is (hope it hasn't been asked before): Could you "un-hardcode" the starting dwarf amount so that players can choose to start with 1-7 dwarves and receive extra embark points for starting with less?

Always dreamed of the Hermit Fortress.. This could potentially be a separate mode where migrants don't ever come, or only one per year shows up.. (Yes, even more difficulty!) I'd rely on the great modding community for this, but those starting dwarves, so hardcoded :P Can Hermit Fortress ever be a reality? :|

Congrats! But this topic isn't about suggestions--that's what the suggestions board is for.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deinos on January 05, 2014, 01:58:17 am

Hey Toady, first, I want to thank you for everything, and answering my last question.

Do you suppose we will receive any options as far as customizing our adventurer's physical appearance within the next few releases? Such as making him ultra fat (how else do I protect against blunt damage), ultra tall, or whatever?

Also, will it be possible anytime soon to have adventurers gain significant amount of weight? I mean, they already tend to eat a hundred times as much or more as a fortress denizen. It feels weird to have all my dorfs who eat nothing but meat and drink liquid grease wind up as svelte as my elves who eat three strawberries a day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 05, 2014, 02:15:34 am

Quote from: Deinos on January 05, 2014, 01:58:17 am

It feels weird to have all my dorfs who eat nothing but meat and drink liquid grease wind up as svelte as my elves who eat three strawberries a day.

Strawberries are pretty freaking small, though. Three of those a day and an adventurer's active lifestyle aren't going to combine to make weight gain a thing at all.

I think this sort of issue is another example of the differences between fortress and adventure mode. Fort mode is much more abstracted and time goes by 72 times more quickly; dwarves wouldn't do any shit at all if their metabolisms worked at the same relative rate in fort mode as they do in adventure more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smurfingtonthethird on January 05, 2014, 06:51:41 am

There are tales of player-controlled superdwarven god-adventurers who destroy whole towns. How will civilisations react to this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 05, 2014, 07:19:49 am

Quote from: Deinos on January 05, 2014, 01:58:17 am

Hey Toady, first, I want to thank you for everything, and answering my last question.

Do you suppose we will receive any options as far as customizing our adventurer's physical appearance within the next few releases? Such as making him ultra fat (how else do I protect against blunt damage), ultra tall, or whatever?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Threetoe:   Oh yeah, we were also talking about the problem with genetics, too. Yeah, that was the roadblock to ... the roadblock to customizing your adventurer is getting the genes to line up because there's genetics to determine appearance and if you want to bring your person out of ... just give him an arbitrary face, it might not be able to find the genes for it, then that would harm the adventurer reproduction later. Especially now that when your retire your adventurer, they can just go off and get married when you're not looking, so it needs to have their genetic information in place. There's workarounds for it though, but with dwarves I'm more worried about ... not exactly worried about gaming the system, it's a conversation we've had a bunch of different times on a bunch of different subjects whether or not people should be able to fully customize or fully amplify themselves and whether or not that's something that should be customizable or something that should be in a worldgen parameter and whether or not people are overcome by temptation, whether the temptation ruins the game, whether or not I should care about people ruining the game, because they are tempted? All of that kind of thing. We've found solutions to those things in the past without really restricting the options, so I think eventually customizing the dwarves, once you can do it in the adventurer will probably be a test case for it, because it's a little easier there.

Keep in mind, there is never a time frame for any features. Asking whether it'll happen in the next releases is pointless.

Quote from: Deinos on January 05, 2014, 01:58:17 am

Also, will it be possible anytime soon to have adventurers gain significant amount of weight? I mean, they already tend to eat a hundred times as much or more as a fortress denizen. It feels weird to have all my dorfs who eat nothing but meat and drink liquid grease wind up as svelte as my elves who eat three strawberries a day.[/color]

I'm pretty sure that's already possible. You get slower if you gain more muscle mass, and I'm think that you get fatter if you eat too much food. Adventurers just tend to get a lot of exercise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 05, 2014, 01:03:06 pm

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-05

Apparently their commander hadn't trained with any weapons in world gen, because he was listed as a "recruit". Since he was just the follower of another lord, he didn't have a position of his own with a name (he had a squad membership, which is named, but doesn't override the weapon-based name). The commander didn't develop much skill getting the last blows in on a few unconscious people, so he was still a recruit when he arrived at the central chamber and declared his claim over the site, promptly becoming a purple "lord". I'm sure it'll be an enduring and noble line.

I think that may be related to this bug: 0004828: Goblin general shows up unarmed (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4828).  Also, awesome devlog.

Quote from: Trif on January 05, 2014, 07:19:49 am

Keep in mind, there is never a time frame for any features. Asking whether it'll happen in the next releases is pointless.

That goes double for features that aren't on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html).

Quote from: mastahcheese on January 05, 2014, 01:17:52 am

Speaking of vermin pets, will kobolds ever wield dangerous vermin creatures as weapons like they do in Kobold Quest?

It's planned, yes:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   Throw in some random ancient ruins to explore and all that sort of thing, get some Stargate stuff going on.
Toady:   We're not going full-on treasure-hunter arc yet but there are going to be dwarf fortresses without dwarves in them because it usually ends up that way in world gen, that something has gone wrong, somewhere. A lot of my goblin sites seemed pretty empty and I was wondering where they were and I was, like, 'Oh yeah, I sent them all off to kill people.' There's an awful lot of void and emptiness in the goblin sites, but actual ruins are another critter. Also, once we've got these sites, like all the different ways that the races build things, we'll be able to start thinking about things like 'What does a place look like if it was owned by humans for the first half and then owned by dwarves for the second half?' There could be, like, the old town part and then extended past that it suddenly dips down into the earth and there are all this dwarf mining operation surrounding an old human city. Theoretically we should be able to do all that stuff; it's all pretty modular the way things glue together by necessity because in adventure mode when you're walking around you load sections of the map, right? So everything is subject to these restrictions of having to live in a certain-sized space, but that means that if you want to have the flavor of the map change it's really not so bad. I mean ideally you'd like things to intermesh in a not-square way, but for a starting point we certainly have an easy problem and then it only becomes harder when you try and make it look really organic, but it's good, it's always possible to move forward with this stuff, so we're going to have all kinds of cool things going on. Going down, talking to the kobolds and trying to steal things from them, and getting giant centipedes thrown at you or something.

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on January 05, 2014, 06:51:41 am

There are tales of player-controlled superdwarven god-adventurers who destroy whole towns. How will civilisations react to this?

In the upcoming version, nothing will happen if no witnesses escape.  If there are witnesses, you'll become an enemy of the civ and they'll attack you on sight.  Patrols will try to track you down.  Later on, entities will make a stronger effort to hunt you down and punish you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SirPenguin on January 05, 2014, 05:19:14 pm

I know that Toady is from WA, so I wonder if he's ever been to San Juan island. I hope so, as per today's devlog, he basically simulated the Pig War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on January 05, 2014, 07:08:17 pm

In the upcoming version human civilizations will apparently consist of clusters of city states in various tributary relationships. The only supreme lords will be the god impersonators and their successors. (Is that actually the case in the current version as well? I thought they had lawgivers as their standard civ rulers.) Considering that, which entities will be responsible for the construction and garrisoning of the fortress sites that usually show up on the frontiers of human civs? Can fortress sites be claimed and fought over just like towns and hamlets? Can the goblins occupy them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 05, 2014, 07:47:05 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on January 05, 2014, 07:08:17 pm

In the upcoming version human civilizations will apparently consist of clusters of city states in various tributary relationships. The only supreme lords will be the god impersonators and their successors. (Is that actually the case in the current version as well? I thought they had lawgivers as their standard civ rulers.) Considering that, which entities will be responsible for the construction and garrisoning of the fortress sites that usually show up on the frontiers of human civs? Can fortress sites be claimed and fought over just like towns and hamlets? Can the goblins occupy them?

The responsibility is probably the same as it is now, the local city-state of the civilization since there isn't any 'leader of the whole civilization'.

As for goblins occupying a fort, I think they can kind of do that now because in adventure mode, I once ran into a fort that was occupied by goblins that were hostile to me. I know they might have been a criminal group, but i looked at legends and that particular fort had been attacked and looted recently by a goblin civ that was still at war with the civ I started with (or was friendly with).

It wasn't a site occupation in the way the next version does it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 05, 2014, 10:36:52 pm

and I like the idea of human civs being loose, almost-confederations like this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 06, 2014, 08:46:27 am

I'd like for (the concept of) civilizations to be much more loose and dynamic.

I.e. a specific group of humans might organize their society as a confederation of city-states, while a whole different one could more closely resemble a proper kingdom/empire. When it comes to fantastic races, these might adhere to pre-defined kinds of societies (say, dwarven civs always have a king/queen no matter what), but ideally all of this stuff would go into the raws.

I don't know much about what is/isn't in the raws, so part of this might already be data-driven rather than hard coded (like the definition for various positions and nobles are, unless I'm being mistaken).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 06, 2014, 10:40:44 am

Well, Toady might try to allow different government types to arise either through RNG or emergent behavior.

Right now, the human civs are kind of like the Ancient Greek civilization as a whole with the various city states.

Nice new devlog this morning, looks like things are shaping up towards release. I wonder if he still has work to do on the dwarven and elven civs, or maybe he uses the human civ as a template to make sure it works and then copies the raws over to the dwarven and elven civs and makes sure it works there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 06, 2014, 10:53:37 am

Is that just me or do the few latest devlogs suggest the beginning of the testing period and, gasp, release?  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 06, 2014, 11:36:57 am

I thought he was already in the testing period where he does testing and tweaking?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 11:41:30 am

From the devlog today:

Quote

The bumble bee called, however, and she abandoned her home and family.

Did the bumble bee personally visit Thomod and would we have been able to witness the moment if present as an adventurer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 06, 2014, 11:54:59 am

If that's true, then we might be finally in for a release.
Either now or in February, which would be the most badass early/late birthday present ever. (Groundhog Day represent!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 06, 2014, 11:56:24 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 11:41:30 am

From the devlog today:

Quote

The bumble bee called, however, and she abandoned her home and family.

Did the bumble bee personally visit Thomod and would we have been able to witness the moment if present as an adventurer?

This happened in world gen; I don't think this will happen during play in the next version. For the next version will be mostly, birth, death, succession and squabbles between villages.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 06, 2014, 12:02:18 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 06, 2014, 10:53:37 am

Is that just me or do the few latest devlogs suggest the beginning of the testing period and, gasp, release?  :o

Pretty much. He did say he might finish off this release's notes by the end of January. I don't think that's quite in the testing phase, though.

I love today's poast:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quite a while ago, we put in a few short random snippets to enable some other things we wanted, so in the little world gen it cooked up tonight, Dumur the dwarven goddess of torture decided to release a skinless lizard demon upon the world "that it might bathe in misery forever." The fiend raised a goblin army and attacked the dwarven forces in the Swamp of Fountains, killing their general and the mayor and leaving their bodies in the muck a few months after recorded history began.

This appears not to have been lost on the necromancer Thomod. Twenty years later, she raised both of their bodies using the powers given to her by the bumble bee queen goddess of murder, Ume. Using their strength and that of her other zombies, Thomod erected a tower where she went on to train four apprentices and author essays about dying, such as More Doom and the Nuanced Death. Before she became obsessed with her own mortality, Thomod had been a great hunter of the giant dingo and the leader of a small village. The bumble bee called, however, and she abandoned her home and family.

Nearby, another family was also experiencing tragedy. Or dozens of families, since the vampire Olum had killed quite a few people over the years before anybody got suspicious. Now the vampire's own family was sundered -- she had to escape the watchful eyes of the neighbors and take up a simple life in one of the villages surrounding her former home of Masterweavers. Not long after, her husband Pictham became the lord of the town, and disputes over livestock and other matters flared up. It came to blows, and in the ensuing violence Pictham struck down his wife during an attack on the village. The recent blood-drinking murder spree in her village stopped, but people were probably too wrapped up in killing each other over cows to notice.

That was all world gen, so then I started playing.

The necromancer's great-grand-daughter Nikom was a fishery worker in a small hamlet, and Sothro was the vampire's great-grand-son, laboring as a farmer outside Masterweavers until the day they decided to get married. After a short journey, Sothro stepped into Nikom's cottage and said "This is my new home," making the move was official.

Since I've been doing camera tests, I thought I might as well fix up and check out the marriage travel code. The pairings are just picked locally or according to trade links, but I'd like to think they bonded over their sinister ancestors (or the strange childhood coincidence of having younger siblings gobbled up by different werebuffalo in the same year).

The tragic stories of worldgen are pretty much my favorite thing to see in DF. The poast brings to mind a memorable personality I recently saw: a human law-giver who battled a clown-led goblin civ into peace, losing her husband, father, and daughter in the process, and subsequently profaned a temple, resulting in her exile as a forlorn werewarthog. I prefer to believe that Alu Necrowheeled was driven to profane the temple by her overwhelming grief.

I also find it very interesting that clowns are potentially even bigger elements of life on the surface world than before. This raises the question: will piercing the cotton candy and unleashing the circus result in an actual apocalypse if they aren't contained? I don't expect an answer to that, but I can't wait to try and see what happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 06, 2014, 12:08:30 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 06, 2014, 11:56:24 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 11:41:30 am

From the devlog today:

Quote

The bumble bee called, however, and she abandoned her home and family.

Did the bumble bee personally visit Thomod and would we have been able to witness the moment if present as an adventurer?

This happened in world gen; I don't think this will happen during play in the next version. For the next version will be mostly, birth, death, succession and squabbles between villages.

Yep, and also, deities don't manifest in the world yet.  That would be a big change.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on May 27, 1974, 11:06:13 am

I also find it very interesting that clowns are potentially even bigger elements of life on the surface world than before. This raises the question: will piercing the cotton candy and unleashing the circus result in an actual apocalypse if they aren't contained? I don't expect an answer to that, but I can't wait to try and see what happens.

I don't think the role of demons has changed.  They already emerge and seize control in the current release -- the upcoming change is just flavor text ("snippets" as the devlog says).  So, no apocalypses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 06, 2014, 12:16:33 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 06, 2014, 12:08:30 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on May 27, 1974, 11:06:13 am

I also find it very interesting that clowns are potentially even bigger elements of life on the surface world than before. This raises the question: will piercing the cotton candy and unleashing the circus result in an actual apocalypse if they aren't contained? I don't expect an answer to that, but I can't wait to try and see what happens.

I don't think the role of demons has changed.  They already emerge and seize control in the current release -- the upcoming change is just flavor text ("snippets" as the devlog says).  So, no apocalypses.

I think what he is trying to ask is whether the demons will start terrorizing the local area outside of the fort after they escape and take part of the ongoing history. This assumes a fort abandonment because I don't think they'll get bored and leave the map.

Also, the skinless lizard demon is just one of the usual unique demons that escape at the start of worldgen, not the randomly generated demons that appear out of hell.

As for the goddess, I'm pretty sure Toady wasn't speaking literally. It's the same thing as saying 'following god's calling'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 06, 2014, 12:24:07 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 06, 2014, 12:16:33 pm

I think what he is trying to ask is whether the demons will start terrorizing the local area outside of the fort after they escape. This assumes a fort abandonment because I don't think they'll get bored and leave the map.

Right. Or wherever they could get to. It could also assume a crumbling rather than an abandonment.

Digging too deep without sufficient precautions has always seemed like it should be a monumentally Bad Idea to me, and not just for an individual fort.

Didn't Toady also make some changes to clown sites that he's keeping mum about? We don't know quite how much our fine festive friends have changed, yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 06, 2014, 12:29:28 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on January 06, 2014, 12:24:07 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 06, 2014, 12:16:33 pm

I think what he is trying to ask is whether the demons will start terrorizing the local area outside of the fort after they escape. This assumes a fort abandonment because I don't think they'll get bored and leave the map.

Right. Or wherever they could get to. It could also assume a crumbling rather than an abandonment.

Digging too deep without sufficient precautions has always seemed like it should be a monumentally Bad Idea to me, and not just for an individual fort.

Didn't Toady also make some changes to clown sites that he's keeping mum about? We don't know quite how much our fine festive friends have changed, yet.

Yeah, today's devlog has no bearing on the release of demons in Fortress Mode.  If that's been changed at all for the upcoming release, Toady has deliberately not mentioned it for spoiler reasons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Atomic Chicken on January 06, 2014, 01:02:12 pm

So, I was reading the most recent FOTF answers, and this one in particular caught my eye:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Quote from: Thundercraft

When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

It's difficult to say what's going to happen there.  That said, the new demon sites have a slight touch of that in the next release, on a whim.

Anyone care to speculate on what this could mean? :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on January 06, 2014, 01:09:01 pm

Quote from: Atomic Chicken on January 06, 2014, 01:02:12 pm

So, I was reading the most recent FOTF answers, and this one in particular caught my eye:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Quote from: Thundercraft

When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

It's difficult to say what's going to happen there.  That said, the new demon sites have a slight touch of that in the next release, on a whim.

Anyone care to speculate on what this could mean? :D

Maybe the Demon sites will have random artifacts in them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 06, 2014, 01:10:10 pm

Quote from: Atomic Chicken on January 06, 2014, 01:02:12 pm

So, I was reading the most recent FOTF answers, and this one in particular caught my eye:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

Quote from: Thundercraft

When it comes time for magical artifacts, if their creation actually was inspired by a god, then will the item description mention this fact or even the name of the deity?

It's difficult to say what's going to happen there.  That said, the new demon sites have a slight touch of that in the next release, on a whim.

Anyone care to speculate on what this could mean? :D

Spoiler: my guess (click to show/hide)

The masterwork adamantine weapon (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Demonic_fortress) will mention its origin in the item description.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 06, 2014, 03:32:48 pm

That last dev log, must have been one of the most awesome I have ever read here. This.. this game, no matter where you look, even if you only glance it a few moments, a few short paragraphs, it constantly gives you enough material to a whole series of books, now think it does that every day on thousands of computers all over the world!!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 06, 2014, 03:50:10 pm

Toady, when you say the bumblebee came to visit thomod in world gen, just what does that mean? I'm not aware of deities interacting with necromancers after giving them the secrets in the current version, so what is this new behavior?

Additionally, will accusing vampires of being night creatures still result in an immediately lethal fight, and will peasants in the home still take part?

If we get caught sucking someone's blood and a witness escapes, will it immediately result in the civilization exiling us on pain of death or just start a rumor about us?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 06, 2014, 03:58:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on January 06, 2014, 03:50:10 pm

Toady, when you say the bumblebee came to visit thomod in world gen, just what does that mean? I'm not aware of deities interacting with necromancers after giving them the secrets in the current version, so what is this new behavior?

The last two sentences were before the rest of the paragraph. Thomod had a family until Ume gave her the Secrets of Life and Death ("the bumblebee called").

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 04:14:16 pm

Fine. If this is just the bugtesting, we could get the release tomorrow (or rather, once an impending overload of work is completed in a week or two) and enjoy the bugs.

Bugs can be features. Bugs can be art. It is nice to have releases stored for all eternity on the internets, so we can proudly point to the one where you can get a surface HFS fort, or have a massive 10,000z tall space elevator.

....

Have you considered modelling air pressure in Dwarf Fortress, so we could have mountains that would be difficult to climb because of the lack of oxygen?

I don't think this would be too hard. It would just mean air-breathing creatures would gradually run out of oxygen at high altitudes, and there would be warning messages in adventure mode. It would also provide new trap options for dealing with goblins.

Edit:

Quote from: Putnam on January 06, 2014, 03:58:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on January 06, 2014, 03:50:10 pm

Toady, when you say the bumblebee came to visit thomod in world gen, just what does that mean? I'm not aware of deities interacting with necromancers after giving them the secrets in the current version, so what is this new behavior?

The last two sentences were before the rest of the paragraph. Thomod had a family until Ume gave her the Secrets of Life and Death ("the bumblebee called").

I was wondering whether the God suddenly materialises as a unit in either physical form or spirit form or other etheral form, and gives the tablet to the person, or does the tablet just drop out of the sky?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on January 06, 2014, 04:28:23 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 04:14:16 pm

I was wondering whether the God suddenly materialises as a unit in either physical form or spirit form or other etheral form, and gives the tablet to the person, or does the tablet just drop out of the sky?

Unless this is another one of the surprises that kind of thing is still an abstracted process in world gen, and not something that has any physical mechanic associated with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on January 06, 2014, 04:50:05 pm

Are drawbridges and caveins causing absolute obliteration of whatever it caught in it intended behavior or is this a placeholder until you figure out a way to handle such occurrences in a more sensible manner?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 06, 2014, 05:36:52 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 06, 2014, 04:14:16 pm

Have you considered modelling air pressure in Dwarf Fortress, so we could have mountains that would be difficult to climb because of the lack of oxygen?

I don't think this would be too hard. It would just mean air-breathing creatures would gradually run out of oxygen at high altitudes, and there would be warning messages in adventure mode. It would also provide new trap options for dealing with goblins.

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, which already has a number of threads on the topic. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=search2;params=eJwtzMEKgCAQBNBfiS6dO_Q9ouuAhansahH48a3RbeYxjPWXTQTfl772uTseadMkId-G8lkiKtQGNXeAqskpPv9eMlfjd9bqIfSLNkbE9zwIliko2p2nwhBpjBdLUS_S)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on January 06, 2014, 07:34:20 pm

It feels like some kind of limbo being fed these amazing tidbits about the new version.  "the strange childhood coincidence of having younger siblings gobbled up by different werebuffalo in the same year" ...   :o  ... ... Hey, my younger brother was eaten by a werebuffalo in year 158.  158 you say?  Werebuffalo?  Why, mine brother too!  Ye, we should marry.

Also, I like how Toady said the new version would be a much more reasonable place to punch a horse in, yet livestock seem to now be the catalysts of much more horrific developments than the lynching of a fist happy adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 06, 2014, 10:25:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on January 06, 2014, 04:50:05 pm

Are drawbridges and caveins causing absolute obliteration of whatever it caught in it intended behavior or is this a placeholder until you figure out a way to handle such occurrences in a more sensible manner?

A lot of things don't work as expected, but for game (and testing) purposes turn into inadverted features, like quantum stockpiling. Drawbridges don't affect giant creatures, so it has been adressed to at least do that, and maybe caveins will be less lethal (or do damage based on material strenght) as soon as we have other ways to deal with the nastier creatures the game has to offer. But it's just a guess, maybe Toady has other plans for caveins in particular.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nicolo on January 07, 2014, 01:16:42 am

Hi Toady,

We know that marriage, position succession and pregnancy will continue in worldgen in the upcoming release. What about other aspects of worldgen - will temples continue to be defiled? Will monarchs suddenly start to obsess over their mortality?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 07, 2014, 04:02:47 am

Quote from: Nicolo on January 07, 2014, 01:16:42 am

Hi Toady,

We know that marriage, position succession and pregnancy will continue in worldgen in the upcoming release. What about other aspects of worldgen - will temples continue to be defiled? Will monarchs suddenly start to obsess over their mortality?

No, not this time. I can't bother to search for a quote, but you can find it in the last reply from Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarf_reform on January 07, 2014, 05:29:01 pm

After today's update post on the main development page an (probably already suggested!) idea hit me, but in the rare chance that it hasn't been mentioned, or isn't already planned:

Since the detailed history/legend pages are so epic, wouldn't it be amazing if we could view these pages in-game during fort or adventure mode? As in you come across a random dwarf living in a cave and you can examine him and view his Legends page from there..

I've saved/quit out of a game on certain occasions just to look a person up in worldgen before interacting with them, or when they arrive at the fort :> This would make it much more friendly for storytelling purposes (and this is, after all, an interactive story generator ;)   )

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 07, 2014, 05:44:32 pm

I need a devlog... I'm holding out for a devlog til the morning light

Quote from: dwarf_reform on January 07, 2014, 05:29:01 pm

Since the detailed history/legend pages are so epic, wouldn't it be amazing if we could view these pages in-game during fort or adventure mode? As in you come across a random dwarf living in a cave and you can examine him and view his Legends page from there..

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, where this already has at least a couple threads:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22356.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=52287.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: Toady One 1/8/14 devlog

Today seemed like a good day to finish reclaiming forts that happened to become ruined in world generation, so that's working in the game now.

So we can now reclaim ruined NPC forts? Awesome! Although, what about the fact that such sites are usually larger than the 16x16 max embark and aren't always centered inside the embark?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 11:57:15 am

Quote from: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: Toady One 1/8/14 devlog

Today seemed like a good day to finish reclaiming forts that happened to become ruined in world generation, so that's working in the game now.

So we can now reclaim ruined NPC forts? Awesome! Although, what about the fact that such sites are usually larger than the 16x16 max embark and aren't always centered inside the embark?

You're thinking the hill and deep sites. The forts are 3x3, at least according to the export images from a while back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 12:31:10 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 11:57:15 am

Quote from: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: Toady One 1/8/14 devlog

Today seemed like a good day to finish reclaiming forts that happened to become ruined in world generation, so that's working in the game now.

So we can now reclaim ruined NPC forts? Awesome! Although, what about the fact that such sites are usually larger than the 16x16 max embark and aren't always centered inside the embark?

You're thinking the hill and deep sites. The forts are 3x3, at least according to the export images from a while back.

Ah, so the dwarves can now build forts similar to (in function, if not appearance) the human forts? I didn't see the export images from a while back.

Are the elves and goblins going to build forts as well?  The ones goblins make are probably similar to humans, but I can see the elves forts looking more like a frontier fort made of wood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 12:47:31 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 12:31:10 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 11:57:15 am

Quote from: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 11:47:16 am

Quote from: Toady One 1/8/14 devlog

Today seemed like a good day to finish reclaiming forts that happened to become ruined in world generation, so that's working in the game now.

So we can now reclaim ruined NPC forts? Awesome! Although, what about the fact that such sites are usually larger than the 16x16 max embark and aren't always centered inside the embark?

You're thinking the hill and deep sites. The forts are 3x3, at least according to the export images from a while back.

Ah, so the dwarves can now build forts similar to (in function, if not appearance) the human forts? I didn't see the export images from a while back.

Are the elves and goblins going to build forts as well?  The ones goblins make are probably similar to humans, but I can see the elves forts looking more like a frontier fort made of wood.

Well, not exactly - the dwarf forts are the same forts we are building in fortress mode (except we get fancier with our ideas). It's highly unlikely that elves and goblins get anything in that direction - they're not playable by default, and so do not need the equivalent of a playable site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 08, 2014, 12:56:24 pm

Well, if there is a tag that sets the entity to be able to build such sites, then it could be modded. It would be odd for the elves to have dwarven style forts though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 01:09:09 pm

I expect (but hope to be proven wrong) that the hillock/deep site/fortress divide will be hardcoded for the dwarf site tag for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 08, 2014, 03:12:57 pm

There's no way to hardcode site assignments right now AFAIK. I'm assuming that CAVE_DETAILED will imply hill sites and deep sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 08, 2014, 03:18:32 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 08, 2014, 03:12:57 pm

There's no way to hardcode site assignments right now AFAIK. I'm assuming that CAVE_DETAILED will imply hill sites and deep sites.

That's exactly what I'm meaning. That's hardcoding the divide into CAVE_DETAILED, aka the dwarf site tag.

Edit - well, almost exactly, if you mean that the "implied sites" could be separate tags (which is what I'm hoping for).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 09, 2014, 08:31:18 am

The latest blog update should make some people happy.
At least one!

Calling dibs on late January/early February release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 09:44:22 am

Where??? Blog??

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 10:38:55 am

Quote from: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 09:44:22 am

Where??? Blog??

I think Dark's still talking about yesterday's devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on January 09, 2014, 10:45:48 am

Quote from: Valtam on January 06, 2014, 10:25:39 pm

Quote from: iceball3 on January 06, 2014, 04:50:05 pm

Are drawbridges and caveins causing absolute obliteration of whatever it caught in it intended behavior or is this a placeholder until you figure out a way to handle such occurrences in a more sensible manner?

A lot of things don't work as expected, but for game (and testing) purposes turn into inadverted features, like quantum stockpiling. Drawbridges don't affect giant creatures, so it has been adressed to at least do that, and maybe caveins will be less lethal (or do damage based on material strenght) as soon as we have other ways to deal with the nastier creatures the game has to offer. But it's just a guess, maybe Toady has other plans for caveins in particular.

No, i mean the portion where it erases whatever it crushes out of existence. The lethality seems fine, could possibly use some tweaking for survivability, but it'd be nice if crushed items were at least damaged, and then turned to relevant material rubble when destroyed. That's a bit suggestion-y though, so that is why i inquired what changes he was planning to make to crushing mechanic, if any.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 11:28:14 am

Quote from: iceball3 on January 09, 2014, 10:45:48 am

No, i mean the portion where it erases whatever it crushes out of existence. The lethality seems fine, could possibly use some tweaking for survivability, but it'd be nice if crushed items were at least damaged, and then turned to relevant material rubble when destroyed. That's a bit suggestion-y though, so that is why i inquired what changes he was planning to make to crushing mechanic, if any.
[/quote]

Oh, right, got you now. Well, item clouds are now a thing, maybe there's a small chance to get vaporized stuff underneath a drawbridge instead of nothing. But cave-ins are another issue, last time I checked (which was a few months ago) cave-ins don't obliterate everything in their path, just blow it away with sheer force. Unless what's falling down happens to be a whole set of walls, which play a similar role as drawbridges.

... But right, Toady hasn't said anything about changing crush and cave-in mechanics, we would've noticed, unlikely as it is to have new features in the short term.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 09, 2014, 11:30:49 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 10:38:55 am

Quote from: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 09:44:22 am

Where??? Blog??

I think Dark's still talking about yesterday's devlog.

Well I'm sorry, but timezones are not an exact science.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 11:56:11 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 09, 2014, 11:30:49 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 10:38:55 am

Quote from: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 09:44:22 am

Where??? Blog??

I think Dark's still talking about yesterday's devlog.

Well I'm sorry, but timezones are not an exact science.

Well, technically... :P (I didn't mean it as an accusation, just an explanation)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 12:48:51 pm

Never mind! Have you seen the dev log of today??!! Basically the engine made a Smaug situation where a Dragon got a hold of a freaking Dwarf Fortress during world gen!!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 09, 2014, 12:54:01 pm

Huh. Not showing up for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 09, 2014, 12:56:35 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on January 09, 2014, 12:54:01 pm

Huh. Not showing up for me.

Try refreshing the page.

" Toady One I went ahead and made the reclaims more interesting by allowing forgotten beasts to be active in world generation"

Forgotten Beast hunting anybody!?!? :D :D ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 12:59:20 pm

Now forgotten beasts seem to claim or at least hang out on fortress (and presumably other sites). The history of "The necromancers of the seven towers" is a vivid example of what I was saying earlier. Eventually this game will make Tolkien look like an aficionado. (if already hasn't by this height).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 09, 2014, 01:12:17 pm

1) Demon Wars. Yesssss

2) I imagine nobody wanted to claim the crown because all the other claimants met a horrible end. Of course, this is why it's gonna be cool when heroic adventurers can rule nations, since that situation is basically crying out for a "noble hero to pull the sword from the stone and overthrow the dark demons and vile necromancers which plague the land" scenario. There's even a Steward of Gondor kind of thing with the "self-styled" baron and the widower general! I really hope the major release after this one is starting scenarios.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 01:23:55 pm

BEST DEVLOG EVER

Quote from: monk12 on January 09, 2014, 01:12:17 pm

2) I imagine nobody wanted to claim the crown because all the other claimants met a horrible end. Of course, this is why it's gonna be cool when heroic adventurers can rule nations, since that situation is basically crying out for a "noble hero to pull the sword from the stone and overthrow the dark demons and vile necromancers which plague the land" scenario. There's even a Steward of Gondor kind of thing with the "self-styled" baron and the widower general! I really hope the major release after this one is starting scenarios.

What are you talking about? This one is already an start scenario!

What is best in Toady's stories about what happen in his tests are that there is none or very little invention there... everything was generated by the game.

My eagerness for the next version is officially unbearable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 09, 2014, 01:33:52 pm

Wow.
I...I'm at a loss for words.

...Dwarf Fortress 2014 is going to be the greatest Dwarf Fortress to date!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 09, 2014, 01:41:44 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 09, 2014, 01:33:52 pm

Wow.
I...I'm at a loss for words.

...Dwarf Fortress 2014 is going to be the greatest Dwarf Fortress to date!

So much potential for awesome bugs <3

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 01:43:47 pm

Of course, some of the forgotten beasts occupying worldgen fortresses will be comically weak (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4058).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 09, 2014, 01:48:06 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on January 09, 2014, 01:41:44 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 09, 2014, 01:33:52 pm

Wow.
I...I'm at a loss for words.

...Dwarf Fortress 2014 is going to be the greatest Dwarf Fortress to date!

So much potential for awesome features <3

FTFY.
With love.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 01:48:29 pm

Damn...
Had to take a deep breath and let this sift through before posting. What a devlog.
Thanks for your efforts, Toady! I'm just filled with this weird, childlike creeping enthusiasm and I can barely contain it. So in with a question:

How are civilians reacting to an invading monster that happens to be their object of fervent adoration? I know this happens seldomly with dwarves, given that their usual spheres might be related to a few titans and creatures from deep below, and they'll often kneel before their appearance while those same twisted gods rip their heads and souls apart.

Also, is pilmigrage only considered with marriage and violent displacement in the next release? Or do you plan to enable bare-bones religious or political reasons to show up as well? Now that the personality rewrite is up, I was thinking about scenarios of moving to the town that has the temple of a preferred god or just because a peasant is "sick of it all" and packs up to a place with an agreeable government, and they seem valid and simple (not trying to shoehorn them as suggestions, mind you). Maybe not for this release, but in regard of both questions, it would be awesome to see a lot of ill-advised townspeople flocking to the outskirts of a ruined fortress or town, just because their megabeast of choice is nesting there for the time being.



This is just awesome. Excuse me, fellow Baytwelvers, while I keep on daydreaming.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 01:48:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 01:43:47 pm

Of course, some of the forgotten beasts occupying worldgen fortresses will be comically weak (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4058).

Maybe there is some sort of combat test that avoids it in world gen? This leads to the question:

Forgotten Beasts and Megabeasts will always win or can they be defeated or beaten back by the defenders? Their strenght plays a part in these attacks or is it random?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 09, 2014, 01:49:54 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 01:23:55 pm

BEST DEVLOG EVER

Quote from: monk12 on January 09, 2014, 01:12:17 pm

2) I imagine nobody wanted to claim the crown because all the other claimants met a horrible end. Of course, this is why it's gonna be cool when heroic adventurers can rule nations, since that situation is basically crying out for a "noble hero to pull the sword from the stone and overthrow the dark demons and vile necromancers which plague the land" scenario. There's even a Steward of Gondor kind of thing with the "self-styled" baron and the widower general! I really hope the major release after this one is starting scenarios.

What are you talking about? This one is already an start scenario!

What is best in Toady's stories about what happen in his tests are that there is none or very little invention there... everything was generated by the game.

My eagerness for the next version is officially unbearable.

Actually, if your civ has no ruler at game start, will you still get one if you get a fort up that far? I'm not greening it just yet since I'm sure somebody knows.

As far as my start scenario comment, I meant something more explicit in a "we need a monarch" attitude from the outset, particularly a "reclaim this site to stake your claim to nobility" thing, in both fort and adventure mode. I'm pretty sure all of that fluff is pulled from Legends, and you wouldn't realize how epic the scale of such a reclaim is if you didn't go through Legends first.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 01:50:28 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 01:43:47 pm

Of course, some of the forgotten beasts occupying worldgen fortresses will be comically weak (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4058).

Maybe, I don't know how that combat is handled, if is still basically the same then yes, but on the dev log all creatures sounded pretty solid (and we had no less than 3 dragons!).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 09, 2014, 01:56:42 pm

It looks to me like Toady enabled megabeasts to launch army style combat rather than attacks targeted at single historical figures.  AKA the old system of a dragon sneaking in, breaking one dwarf's leg, and then leaving.  Now it looks like we'll get the legends entry with the battle description where it will be like "A: 1 dragon, 0 losses/D: 120 Dwarfs, led by Urist Mcgeneral, 105 losses" and a description of all the duels that happened.

In regards to how combat works in worldgen, it takes skills, size, and maybe attributes into account, but nothing else as far as I know.  So a forgotten beast made of snow is almost exactly the same as one made of diamond.  That is, until it gets loaded into play and a hunter one-shots it with a copper arrow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 02:04:29 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 01:48:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 01:43:47 pm

Of course, some of the forgotten beasts occupying worldgen fortresses will be comically weak (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4058).

Maybe there is some sort of combat test that avoids it in world gen? This leads to the question:

Forgotten Beasts and Megabeasts will always win or can they be defeated or beaten back by the defenders? Their strenght plays a part in these attacks or is it random?

Quote from: EnigmaticHat

It looks to me like Toady enabled megabeasts to launch army style combat rather than attacks targeted at single historical figures.  AKA the old system of a dragon sneaking in, breaking one dwarf's leg, and then leaving.  Now it looks like we'll get the legends entry with the battle description where it will be like "A: 1 dragon, 0 losses/D: 120 Dwarfs, led by Urist Mcgeneral, 105 losses" and a description of all the duels that happened.

In regards to how combat works in worldgen, it takes skills, size, and maybe attributes into account, but nothing else as far as I know.  So a forgotten beast made of snow is almost exactly the same as one made of diamond.  That is, until it gets loaded into play and a hunter one-shots it with a copper arrow.

Even then, a few of those challengers get lucky and manage to kill a dragon, titan, colosus, FB, et cétera. So yes, there might be chance of not only fighting back, but also winning over the attacking creature, no matter how dire the odds may appear.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 02:07:51 pm

From the dev log it seemed many other fortress where doing okay, I can only infer some where attacked by megabeasts and either killed them or made them route.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 02:16:51 pm

Excellent devlog. It looks like the world is being brought into proper form, without much missing anymore. We can finally adventure into dwarf fortresses and goblin towers and elf retreats.

I hope road networks between the new sites are sorted out as of the release. Can you provide us with one of these worldgen maps?

We can reclaim ruined dwarf fortresses built by the computer now? Can you provide a screenshot of the place on embark?

Will there ever be an option to start at Necromancer towers?

Do the necromancer towers form some kind of confederacy or organisation themselves, like The Alliance from Warcraft?.

Is there any point at which the necromancers will say "[REDACTED] it, this tower is getting crowded, lets build a new one"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 02:21:07 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 02:16:51 pm

Excellent devlog. It looks like the world is being brought into proper form, without much missing anymore. We can finally adventure into dwarf fortresses and goblin towers and elf retreats. I hope road networks between the new sites are sorted out as of the release.

We can reclaim ruined dwarf fortresses built by the computer now? Can you provide a screenshot of the place on embark?

Yes, we can.

Quote from: Toady One, 01/08/2014

Today seemed like a good day to finish reclaiming forts that happened to become ruined in world generation, so that's working in the game now. The fortress designs probably blow out all the metrics experienced players have figured out in terms of efficient placement of workshops and living areas and all that, but I guess you can consider yourself a bringer of a golden age to their stagnant civilization as you remodel. I'm also not trying to do anything fancy with mechanisms or anything like that for this time. I'll be happy if they don't flood the lower levels with their poor decision making. All of the world gen fortresses have access to the open cavern layers, and most of them also have built up underground tunnels off to the deeper sites, though those sites won't interact with your fort in play until around the time we get to fortress hill dwarf interactions.

As for screenshots, we'll have to wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 09, 2014, 02:28:32 pm

Thought as say by the man himself, don't expect the AI made fortress to be completely logical, they will be heavy inclined to be creatures of chaos (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChaosArchitecture).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 02:33:36 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 01:48:43 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 01:43:47 pm

Of course, some of the forgotten beasts occupying worldgen fortresses will be comically weak (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4058).

Maybe there is some sort of combat test that avoids it in world gen? This leads to the question:

Forgotten Beasts and Megabeasts will always win or can they be defeated or beaten back by the defenders? Their strenght plays a part in these attacks or is it random?

Materials don't matter in world gen combat, although strength does:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   I have a question from Nill; he or she wants to know more about combat during world generation, how it works; do you just put a bunch of armies in front of each other or do they actually travel and cause trouble for each other?
Toady:   It's pretty weak right now, they have their enemy, you have the civilization, it has its target that it wants to attack and then they pull all of the able bodied people they can from their civilization and lump them into a group and send them at their target which then lumps its people - generally the defenders at the site but they can pull in more people I think if they have that kind of civilization that isn't just site based - and then it ... I'm trying to remember here if it just pairs them off and fights zillions of little duels ... Like when you read the details of a duel between important historical figures, where it just says 'his right arm was wounded and then the other guy ran away', that is what's happening with every single fight, with every single person, you just don't see it. That's why when you go into their legend you can still read the details of how their arms and legs were hacked off, even if they're not the civilization leader and it doesn't show up in the era based list as an important duel. But it's not like the new adventure mode/dwarf mode combat with all of the specific tendons and materials because it would just grind to a halt if you had thousands of people fighting each other every single year in world generation, so right now I think it classifies things as wounds or killing blows and then assesses what a wound might be - what's a feasible would that could have been caused - it matches up a few things like is the thing fire resistant versus does this guy breath fire and that kind of stuff, and gives some plausible wounds to the ... mostly chopping crap off, but occasionally just saying 'this was wounded' or whatever. I don't think I've even added scars yet, that's one of the things that was on the list that I haven't gotten the chance to get to was adding scars to people that were injured in world generation without severs, just giving them cool looking scars when you meet them. So it's pretty simple and there's nothing like ... there's another thing that was written down, doing military tactics and little strategy things to spice it up before we actually get to those when we start doing the improved sieges and sending out armies, but I didn't get a chance to do any of that so it's still just throwing people at each other. There are terrain bonuses, so if you're in a cave and they send an army at you then I think it improves your combat rolls by two or three times, things like that. It's stuff that you'd see in the more traditional strategy game where people get a hundred and fifty percent defensive bonus from a fortified position, that kind of stuff. Once we add in some tactics and things it'll talk about that and you might be able to have a general with really high military skills not at the individual combat level but more up at the strategic and tactical levels being able to defeat a superior force, and it could say what happened even if it's just waving its hands a little bit about pincers and flanking manoeuvres and attacking at night, doing a ruse to lure this group of people away from their position; all that kind of stuff. You can pay lip service to that in world generation and then you can start actually working it in over in the actual gameplay modes. But right now it's very blah blah blah.

The devlog makes clear that, as with the current world gen battles, the defenders can win:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-09

Before the first winter had passed, a demon named Mete Deepterror and a couple dozen goblins and trolls killed almost everybody, but the king managed to hold out with the help of the baron he placed over the fortress, who single-handledly killed more than half of the attackers.

Quote from: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 01:48:29 pm

How are civilians reacting to an invading monster that happens to be their object of fervent adoration? I know this happens seldomly with dwarves, given that their usual spheres might be related to a few titans and creatures from deep below, and they'll often kneel before their appearance while those same twisted gods rip their heads and souls apart.

It's treated like any other attack.  They aren't smart enough to have cognitive dissonance yet.

Quote from: Valtam on January 09, 2014, 01:48:29 pm

Also, is pilmigrage only considered with marriage and violent displacement in the next release? Or do you plan to enable bare-bones religious or political reasons to show up as well? Now that the personality rewrite is up, I was thinking about scenarios of moving to the town that has the temple of a preferred god or just because a peasant is "sick of it all" and packs up to a place with an agreeable government, and they seem valid and simple (not trying to shoehorn them as suggestions, mind you). Maybe not for this release, but in regard of both questions, it would be awesome to see a lot of ill-advised townspeople flocking to the outskirts of a ruined fortress or town, just because their megabeast of choice is nesting there for the time being.

In addition to marriage, people will travel for succession purposes, i.e. if they are appointed to an office:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-01-06

01/06/2013 Toady One Entity position succession (and the filling of open positions) is underway. It'll recognize when succession is necessary and try to schedule things effectively, and I set up a claim system so that there can theoretically be more than one person that says that they hold a given civilization's position (three dwarven counts vying for an open monarch position, for example). Competing claims don't have a resolution yet, and I need to work out appointment lists properly. I probably need to further specify some of the positions in the raws as well, since we don't want things like bookkeepers in every hill dwarf site.

01/03/2013 Toady One Children grow up throughout the world now, as you are playing, and new relationships are scheduled properly. There aren't always people available, especially in the smaller sites, so they can look down the trade network at times. Members of a new pair don't move to each other's sites yet, though. I'm going to handle that with entity position succession, which is next, so we should see various travellers on occasion when that is done. I'm looking forward to the world being a bit more of a churning mass of activity, and it'll be nice for fortress mode especially to have proper replacements for all of the people that eventually pass on, so that you can keep up successive games for longer in the same world at the same level of involvement as time goes on.

But that's it -- pilgrimages and other political stuff would be significant changes; we'd have heard about them.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 02:16:51 pm

I hope road networks between the new sites are sorted out as of the release. Can you provide us with one of these worldgen maps?

"Sorted out" how?  Are you referring to these bugs (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=111)?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 02:16:51 pm

Will there ever be an option to start at Necromancer towers?

All kinds of starting scenarios are fair game as long as they make some sense in the context of the world.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 02:16:51 pm

Do the necromancer towers form some kind of confederacy or organisation themselves, like The Alliance from Warcraft?.

Is there any point at which the necromancers will say "[REDACTED] it, this tower is getting crowded, lets build a new one"?

No, these behaviors are unchanged from the current release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on January 09, 2014, 02:53:06 pm

The next update is basically what would have happened if Tolkien and Lovecraft had written the Silmarillion.

I can't wait to hear the stories that come out of the next update. They're going to be absolute gold.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on January 09, 2014, 03:04:09 pm

So I gotta ask: What were the settings for the following world? Seems to me like natural savagery and number of forgotten beasts was set to very high (along with a few other settings) for it to see so much travesty...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:05:16 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 02:33:36 pm

The devlog makes clear that, as with the current world gen battles, the defenders can win:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-09

Before the first winter had passed, a demon named Mete Deepterror and a couple dozen goblins and trolls killed almost everybody, but the king managed to hold out with the help of the baron he placed over the fortress, who single-handledly killed more than half of the attackers.

No, demons and goblins attacking configure a normal siege, as it already happens, and nowhere he said he uses the same calculations as the megabeast attacks. None of the examples have a megabeast or forgotten beast losing or being beaten back.  Although this used to happen in the previous versions, they did as someone said very little damage and ate some livestock and then got away. Something clearly changed, and my first question stands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 03:25:21 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:05:16 pm

None of the examples have a megabeast or forgotten beast losing or being beaten back.  Although this used to happen in the previous versions, they did as someone said very little damage and ate some livestock and then got away. Something clearly changed, and my first question stands.

I would chalk this up to coincidence or selective reporting and leave the confirmation for the release, but that's just me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:37:34 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 03:25:21 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:05:16 pm

None of the examples have a megabeast or forgotten beast losing or being beaten back.  Although this used to happen in the previous versions, they did as someone said very little damage and ate some livestock and then got away. Something clearly changed, and my first question stands.

I would chalk this up to coincidence or selective reporting and leave the confirmation for the release, but that's just me.

If the release comes before the end of the month we will know, but we don't have a release date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 09, 2014, 03:43:48 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 09, 2014, 03:04:09 pm

So I gotta ask: What were the settings for the following world? Seems to me like natural savagery and number of forgotten beasts was set to very high (along with a few other settings) for it to see so much travesty...

There's always a ridiculous number of forgotten beasts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 03:43:49 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 09, 2014, 03:04:09 pm

So I gotta ask: What were the settings for the following world? Seems to me like natural savagery and number of forgotten beasts was set to very high (along with a few other settings) for it to see so much travesty...

I don't think there's anything special about the settings. Forgotten beast number depends solely on world size and depth (though mega- and semimegabeast number can be varied), and savagery would mostly apply in this scenario to reduce the number of sites to conquer. I don't have comparison numbers, but 39 dwarf fortress sites sounds like a good number for a 100-year medium world.

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 03:25:21 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:05:16 pm

None of the examples have a megabeast or forgotten beast losing or being beaten back.  Although this used to happen in the previous versions, they did as someone said very little damage and ate some livestock and then got away. Something clearly changed, and my first question stands.

I would chalk this up to coincidence or selective reporting and leave the confirmation for the release, but that's just me.

It seems pretty clear to me that the beasts do not always succeed - "I went ahead and made the reclaims more interesting by allowing forgotten beasts to be active in world generation and I also let the other large beasts sometimes have very successful attacks ending in a lasting change of residency." Though I guess it can be read differently.

Edit - I can't addition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on January 09, 2014, 03:44:30 pm

I'd be with Footkerchief that this may be selective reporting.  Perhaps by Toady to illustrate the more interesting types of fall out.  Perhaps just that legends mode only had one good line for Toady to read anyway about a FB made of soup vapors being beaten back by a child with a kitchen knife in one strike.

As always, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 09, 2014, 03:46:07 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 03:25:21 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 03:05:16 pm

None of the examples have a megabeast or forgotten beast losing or being beaten back.  Although this used to happen in the previous versions, they did as someone said very little damage and ate some livestock and then got away. Something clearly changed, and my first question stands.

I would chalk this up to coincidence or selective reporting and leave the confirmation for the release, but that's just me.

It seems like coincidence and a low number of defenders, though it's hard to say for sure.
The first fort was severely weakened by a demon they defeated, so it certainly was in no state to fight a dragon.
Third fort: Only the leaders were killed.
Fourth: Mayor dead.
Etc...

I'm guessing some citizens may have abandoned the forts after the leadership was killed. Probably something with the military+leadership defining if the fort can still be kept, though I'm prob missing something/wrong.


Then again, it might just be selective snips or exceptionally powerful megabeasts. Or an unlucky civ/civs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 03:59:18 pm

In the current version, there can quite a few difficulties in getting Dwarf civilisations to grow, especially when there are a lot of good-aligned mountains or on smaller maps. Larger maps, meanwhile, end up with large amounts of empty space. How much has this changed in the new version, especially with the new sites?

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 03:43:49 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 09, 2014, 03:04:09 pm

So I gotta ask: What were the settings for the following world? Seems to me like natural savagery and number of forgotten beasts was set to very high (along with a few other settings) for it to see so much travesty...

I don't think there's anything special about the settings. Forgotten beast number depends solely on world size and depth (though mega- and semimegabeast number can be varied), and savagery would mostly apply in this scenario to reduce the number of sites to conquer. I don't have comparison numbers, but 39 dwarf fortress sites sounds like a good number for a 100-year medium world.

Were these including the deep sites or hill sites or just the Dwarf Fortresses?

According to the wiki, the number of forgotten beasts is related to the size of the world. I'm not sure if they appear during worldgen after it starts running the world history though.

Do forgotten beasts spawn or demons escape from the underworld during active gameplay now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 09, 2014, 04:08:56 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 03:59:18 pm

Were these including the deep sites or hill sites or just the Dwarf Fortresses?

The devlog said forts, so I'm assuming it didn't include deep  and hill sites.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 03:59:18 pm

In the current version, there can quite a few difficulties in getting Dwarf civilisations to grow, especially when there are a lot of good-aligned mountains or on smaller maps. Larger maps, meanwhile, end up with large amounts of empty space. How much has this changed in the new version, especially with the new sites?

Hill sites appear outside mountains, so they should help if you get an excess number of aligned mountains.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on January 09, 2014, 04:28:28 pm

Perhaps refugee mechanics were at work, and most people who weren't leaders (and some defenders) simply fled in the wake of the incoming beatdown?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 09, 2014, 04:34:23 pm

Man, I loved today's devlog. And some say fort mode is being neglected!

This post raises one major question for me, which is: if a player adventurer kills a megabeast occupying a fort and makes a claim on the site, is the fort still reclaimable through fort mode? Will a reclamation party have to fight a hostile band of adventurers if they're an enemy of the dwarves' home civ? Can such a site claim generate hostility by itself?

The presence of moving armies on the world map during play also raises tactical and strategic concerns about the placement of forts. How do hostile civs target each other's sites for attack? Could an "outpost" fort placed between a metropolitan fort and a necromancer tower or dark fortress divert attacks away from the larger fort? Will attack frequency and strength be reflected by proximity? (apart from the 20-tile necromancer tower "attack radius")

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 03:59:18 pm

In the current version, there can quite a few difficulties in getting Dwarf civilisations to grow, especially when there are a lot of good-aligned mountains or on smaller maps. Larger maps, meanwhile, end up with large amounts of empty space. How much has this changed in the new version, especially with the new sites?

I suspect that this purported emptiness on large maps isn't really as empty as it feels, primarily due to the lack of other entities moving around the world map and the lack of dwarven, elven, and goblin (goblen?) sites. Other things being equal, worlds will probably feel well-populated compared to the way they are now, simply due to these changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 09, 2014, 04:51:24 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 09, 2014, 03:59:18 pm

Do forgotten beasts spawn or demons escape from the underworld during active gameplay now?

No (except by player action, but you probably know that).  That would imply that your adventurer could watch dwarves mining out new tunnels (or otherwise releasing underworld creatures), which would be a big change.  We've heard about many ways the world will be more active during gameplay, but this isn't one of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 09, 2014, 04:56:26 pm

In 2010 I "got" 5 days off work after the release. The hype for the new release is at least as stronger than in 2010.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 09, 2014, 04:58:50 pm

Megabeasts can be defeated in worldgen currently.  It actually doesn't take that much.  Often random elves will somehow beat them in one on one combat.  Although on the other hand there are often megabeasts who last for centuries and have a hundred kills to their name.  Which is still ridiculously low for a rampaging dragon or whatever, but it looks like this release has sorted that out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 09, 2014, 05:19:48 pm

I dunno, In my checking the people who kill Megabeasts often have pretty good combat skills, except when the Megabeast was already injured.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 09, 2014, 06:03:36 pm

How exactly would a single elf kill a dragon in the current combat system though?  I mean a born and raised elf, not one of those snatched or conquered ones that is OK with using metal weapons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 09, 2014, 06:09:22 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on January 09, 2014, 06:03:36 pm

How exactly would a single elf kill a dragon in the current combat system though?  I mean a born and raised elf, not one of those snatched or conquered ones that is OK with using metal weapons.

By firing the lucky wooden arrow that hit the weak spot exposed by the thousands of other wooden arrows?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on January 09, 2014, 07:05:48 pm

I just wanted to say this:

TODAY DEVLOG IS AWESOME.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Andrew425 on January 09, 2014, 09:16:13 pm

Quote from: Broken on January 09, 2014, 07:05:48 pm

I just wanted to say this:

TODAY DEVLOG IS AWESOME.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ggobs on January 09, 2014, 10:47:24 pm

Have you ever world genned a city/town/hill fort/fortress that was completely inhabited by vampires?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 09, 2014, 11:06:31 pm

this will be interesting when I make newer 10k year old worlds, as some beast, even vulnerable hydras, can make it from the dawn of time to surviving in the play year. Many descendants and stories from those I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 10, 2014, 12:59:45 am

Guys, it's still too early to be alarmed, but the International Consortium of Bay Watchers has recently recorded a spike in the DFX of several thousand urists. Here's the latest graph from the site:

(http://i39.tinypic.com/2lnzpx.png)

Official breifings to governments are being organized and I assume responsible and informed policy will be the result thereafter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 10, 2014, 02:47:46 am

So there's mountainhomes with dragons in the next version? I wonder if we can reclaim with thirteen dwarves and a gnome now. ;^)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 10, 2014, 04:22:56 am

Quote from: Cruxador on January 10, 2014, 02:47:46 am

So there's mountainhomes with dragons in the next version? I wonder if we can reclaim with thirteen dwarves and a gnome now. ;^)

We only need Starting Scenarios now. And proper human wizards I suppose?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

You know, it only just dawned on me that we might be seeing Mines of Moria with Balrog-style places now. Or Erebor and Smaug. And we can reclaim those areas. A LotR mod + right starting settings -> Relive the Hobbit.

Just realised what this release actually means: Story. Of Heroes and Beasts. Of Might and Magic. Of Dungeons and Dragons. Of Orcs and Men. Okay, enough of that.
But yeah, serious story possibilities, and it makes mods all the more awesome.

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

I'm guessing yes, but I need to ask anyways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 10, 2014, 07:28:46 am

Put your questions in green to get a reply.

Oh Great Toady One! Maker of Infinite Universes within Infinite Universes! Oh Great Lord of Creation and Glory! Of Dwarves and Smelly Hippies alike! I come to you seeking to sip from the never ending fountain of your wisdom.

It is possible to retire a fort to become and adventurer or start another fort planing to return to the retired fortres latter, and while playing the new adventurer/fortress, the first fort to succumb to invasion/destruction like it does in world gen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 10, 2014, 07:37:11 am

'Proper human wizards' got me thinking: What are you long-term plans for non-necromancy magic?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 10, 2014, 07:54:08 am

Quote from: Helgoland on January 10, 2014, 07:37:11 am

'Proper human wizards' got me thinking: What are you long-term plans for non-necromancy magic?

This has been covered fairly extensively in the DFtalks, at least as fair as the general idea goes. Doubt we'll get any specifics before Toady actually gets to starting implementing it :>

http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

ctrl+f "magic"

(there's really just too much of it and too broad to easily be able to pick out any part to quote without bloating up this whole page)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 10, 2014, 11:01:57 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

You know, it only just dawned on me that we might be seeing Mines of Moria with Balrog-style places now. Or Erebor and Smaug. And we can reclaim those areas. A LotR mod + right starting settings -> Relive the Hobbit.

Just realised what this release actually means: Story. Of Heroes and Beasts. Of Might and Magic. Of Dungeons and Dragons. Of Orcs and Men. Okay, enough of that.
But yeah, serious story possibilities, and it makes mods all the more awesome.

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

I'm guessing yes, but I need to ask anyways.

This was stated in the Dev Log, and the answer was yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 10, 2014, 11:06:34 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 10, 2014, 11:01:57 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

You know, it only just dawned on me that we might be seeing Mines of Moria with Balrog-style places now. Or Erebor and Smaug. And we can reclaim those areas. A LotR mod + right starting settings -> Relive the Hobbit.

Just realised what this release actually means: Story. Of Heroes and Beasts. Of Might and Magic. Of Dungeons and Dragons. Of Orcs and Men. Okay, enough of that.
But yeah, serious story possibilities, and it makes mods all the more awesome.

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

I'm guessing yes, but I need to ask anyways.

This was stated in the Dev Log, and the answer was yes.

I only saw it made clear to be in world generation? Afaik there won't really be any history progression in fort mode yet apart from births/deaths and positions being passed along, but I might've misunderstood things :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 10, 2014, 11:10:47 am

Will all sites be susceptible to beasties from above or below? You need to go through Laketown to get to Erebor after all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 10, 2014, 11:20:14 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 10, 2014, 11:06:34 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 10, 2014, 11:01:57 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

You know, it only just dawned on me that we might be seeing Mines of Moria with Balrog-style places now. Or Erebor and Smaug. And we can reclaim those areas. A LotR mod + right starting settings -> Relive the Hobbit.

Just realised what this release actually means: Story. Of Heroes and Beasts. Of Might and Magic. Of Dungeons and Dragons. Of Orcs and Men. Okay, enough of that.
But yeah, serious story possibilities, and it makes mods all the more awesome.

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

I'm guessing yes, but I need to ask anyways.

This was stated in the Dev Log, and the answer was yes.

I only saw it made clear to be in world generation? Afaik there won't really be any history progression in fort mode yet apart from births/deaths and positions being passed along, but I might've misunderstood things :>

Yeah, where does the dev log say that, again?  I don't even see a mention of dwarves doing reclaims in world gen, just world gen adventurers trying to kill megabeasts.

V V V oops!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 10, 2014, 11:29:19 am

The reclaim part was in this paragraph:

Quote

Torasstinthad is the sixth ruin, and Dungsfur the Tufted Certainty was a hydra. Maybe it was routine by now, but many dwarves died and the hydra came to stay in 38. The baroness's father was not present, as he was a mayor elsewhere, but he met his own beast in 41 when a dragon destroyed Pickconfines. Unlike other fortresses and their beasts, that dragon wasn't the kind to stick around. Pickconfines was reclaimed in 45 and still stands.

Unless you mean trying to go and reclaim a still beast-inhabited fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 10, 2014, 12:19:12 pm

Eh, i think he's asking about post world gen. In that case, i think the answer is no they will not reclaim sites on their own. As to this

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on January 09, 2014, 04:34:23 pm

Man, I loved today's devlog. And some say fort mode is being neglected!

This post raises one major question for me, which is: if a player adventurer kills a megabeast occupying a fort and makes a claim on the site, is the fort still reclaimable through fort mode? Will a reclamation party have to fight a hostile band of adventurers if they're an enemy of the dwarves' home civ? Can such a site claim generate hostility by itself?

I aked whether sites can be reclaimed by adventurers, and when i asked it you couldn't. Things might have changed by now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on January 10, 2014, 01:28:45 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 10, 2014, 11:20:14 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 10, 2014, 11:06:34 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 10, 2014, 11:01:57 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

You know, it only just dawned on me that we might be seeing Mines of Moria with Balrog-style places now. Or Erebor and Smaug. And we can reclaim those areas. A LotR mod + right starting settings -> Relive the Hobbit.

Just realised what this release actually means: Story. Of Heroes and Beasts. Of Might and Magic. Of Dungeons and Dragons. Of Orcs and Men. Okay, enough of that.
But yeah, serious story possibilities, and it makes mods all the more awesome.

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

I'm guessing yes, but I need to ask anyways.

This was stated in the Dev Log, and the answer was yes.

I only saw it made clear to be in world generation? Afaik there won't really be any history progression in fort mode yet apart from births/deaths and positions being passed along, but I might've misunderstood things :>

Yeah, where does the dev log say that, again?  I don't even see a mention of dwarves doing reclaims in world gen, just world gen adventurers trying to kill megabeasts.

V V V oops!

Is Footkerchief missing something in a log or the forum a sign of the apocolypse? Seems fitting...never thought it could happen :O

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 01:37:10 pm

Oh man, I was joking when I mentioned that DF would update when Hell froze over, but now Foot missed something in a devlog... better break out the thermal undies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 10, 2014, 02:00:09 pm

Ahem. (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/08/260721630/its-so-cold-that-hell-freezes-over)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 10, 2014, 02:03:24 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 01:37:10 pm

Oh man, I was joking when I mentioned that DF would update when Hell froze over, but now Foot missed something in a devlog... better break out the thermal undies.

God dammit. The way you phrased this made me think DF updated because you put "DF would update when hell froze over" and "footkerchief missed something in a devlog" in the same sentence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 02:07:18 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 10, 2014, 02:03:24 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 01:37:10 pm

Oh man, I was joking when I mentioned that DF would update when Hell froze over, but now Foot missed something in a devlog... better break out the thermal undies.

God dammit. The way you phrased this made me think DF updated because you put "DF would update when hell froze over" and "footkerchief missed something in a devlog" in the same sentence.

If there's an update inside 24 hours, I'm eerily prophetic! I think we've got another week, minimum, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 10, 2014, 02:53:10 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 02:07:18 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 10, 2014, 02:03:24 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 01:37:10 pm

Oh man, I was joking when I mentioned that DF would update when Hell froze over, but now Foot missed something in a devlog... better break out the thermal undies.

God dammit. The way you phrased this made me think DF updated because you put "DF would update when hell froze over" and "footkerchief missed something in a devlog" in the same sentence.

If there's an update inside 24 hours, I'm eerily prophetic! I think we've got another week, minimum, though.

If you'd said "DF will update after hell freezes over", you'd be completely right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 10, 2014, 03:25:33 pm

Quote from: Lielac on January 10, 2014, 02:53:10 pm

If you'd said "DF will update after hell freezes over", you'd be completely right.

1. take a cup of water with the word hell written on it.
2. Put it in the freezer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 10, 2014, 03:44:11 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on January 10, 2014, 03:25:33 pm

Quote from: Lielac on January 10, 2014, 02:53:10 pm

If you'd said "DF will update after hell freezes over", you'd be completely right.

1. take a cup of water with the word hell written on it.
2. Put it in the freezer.

Congratulations, you made me cackle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 10, 2014, 04:02:55 pm

welcome then.  anything can be done in an alternate way if you think about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 04:10:25 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on January 10, 2014, 06:54:48 am

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

For clarification, yes, the question was if reclamation, siege by semi-/megabeasts and general fort disoccupation* happens post-worldgen.

_{*:I believe that word means something entirely different than what I just used it for.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on January 10, 2014, 09:30:36 pm

I like the idea of a kingdom where the role of monarch lapses and the remaining nobles carry out a sort of regency, as mentioned in the last dev log.

That said...

What happens to a fort that earns the monarch if the civilization has a baron, general etc but no king or queen? Do you just get the surviving consort?

The queen not getting replaced by the baron or general is also a good catalyst for many interesting situations that could be later targets for development. For instance, maybe she has an heir who needs an adventurer to help her be recognized. Perhaps the evil necromancer queen must be killed before a successor can be crowed, and eventually one of the nobles of the kingdom, or even an unknown hero, will appear to challenge and kill her and claim her crown. Or maybe the kingdom is planning to crown the adventurer who kills the queen as the next ruler.

Might scenarios like these be possible in a soon-to-come version?


These latest updates are truly worthy of the word 'epic'...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 12:28:52 am

when given the option to react to an attack and you decide to dodge, do you get to decide which direction you will dodge in?

I just listened to the most recent df talk and I'd forgotten how much great combat stuff will be in now, but this is my most pressing concern with the current combat, dodging off ledges and all!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nahere on January 11, 2014, 12:37:10 am

If memory serves, when they talked about dodging they mentioned that you dodge via the movement controls, rather than any sort of menu option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 11, 2014, 02:31:12 am

Quote from: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 12:28:52 am

when given the option to react to an attack and you decide to dodge, do you get to decide which direction you will dodge in?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Toady One: [...] And dodging - active dodging involves jumping to another square. You can't actively dodge and just say 'oh, I want to dodge.' The passive dodging, if you get a really good roll, still does that.

It sounds like there's no active dodge button, you just use the jump feature, which will have to be directional.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 11, 2014, 02:45:41 am

Quote from: darkflagrance on January 10, 2014, 09:30:36 pm

What happens to a fort that earns the monarch if the civilization has a baron, general etc but no king or queen? Do you just get the surviving consort?

Doesn't this already happen in the current version?

Quote from: darkflagrance on January 10, 2014, 09:30:36 pm

The queen not getting replaced by the baron or general is also a good catalyst for many interesting situations that could be later targets for development. For instance, maybe she has an heir who needs an adventurer to help her be recognized. Perhaps the evil necromancer queen must be killed before a successor can be crowed, and eventually one of the nobles of the kingdom, or even an unknown hero, will appear to challenge and kill her and claim her crown. Or maybe the kingdom is planning to crown the adventurer who kills the queen as the next ruler.

Might scenarios like these be possible in a soon-to-come version?

"Succession struggles" are on the dev page, (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) but it'll start off pretty basic, e.g. a war between two equally eligible nobles.  All kinds of intrigue are fair game for later on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 11, 2014, 05:44:12 am

Quote from: monk12 on January 10, 2014, 02:07:18 pm

If there's an update inside 24 hours, I'm eerily prophetic! I think we've got another week, minimum, though.

My most optimistic estimate would still be for a mid February/early March release, considering Toady is still going through the last items on his dev list for the build and the proper bug-hunting phase was not even started yet. Unless I'm completely out of sync with what Toady is up to atm.

Oh, this is maybe a very silly question, but I don't think this has been brought up yet: If we happen to reclaim a fort which fell to a FB or other MB, and if the beast happened to set its lair there, are the initial 7 to actually confront it? I.e. will the beast be there when the party arrives?

If that's the case, that would somewhat make for something akin to a starting scenario (though w/o all the bells and whistles). One could take a look at Legends and see if any fort site might be the potential home to an uninvited guest, then fit the embark for the (likely !!FUN!!) task.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 07:43:42 am

Quote from: Trif on January 11, 2014, 02:31:12 am

Quote from: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 12:28:52 am

when given the option to react to an attack and you decide to dodge, do you get to decide which direction you will dodge in?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Toady One: [...] And dodging - active dodging involves jumping to another square. You can't actively dodge and just say 'oh, I want to dodge.' The passive dodging, if you get a really good roll, still does that.

It sounds like there's no active dodge button, you just use the jump feature, which will have to be directional.

I just thought that was just a casual use of the word, because dodging isn't like walking to another square. I feel like I remember that true jumping was some multiple tile movement that you didn't necessarily know how far before doing it. Still, it sounded to me like he meant actual jumping mechanics with that, but he might've. It could go either way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on January 11, 2014, 09:48:06 am

Quote from: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 07:43:42 am

Quote from: Trif on January 11, 2014, 02:31:12 am

Quote from: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 12:28:52 am

when given the option to react to an attack and you decide to dodge, do you get to decide which direction you will dodge in?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Toady One: [...] And dodging - active dodging involves jumping to another square. You can't actively dodge and just say 'oh, I want to dodge.' The passive dodging, if you get a really good roll, still does that.

It sounds like there's no active dodge button, you just use the jump feature, which will have to be directional.

I just thought that was just a casual use of the word, because dodging isn't like walking to another square. I feel like I remember that true jumping was some multiple tile movement that you didn't necessarily know how far before doing it. Still, it sounded to me like he meant actual jumping mechanics with that, but he might've. It could go either way.

You're right... I checked what Toady said about jumping:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Toady One: [...] Right now it's very simple. It might not actually last that way before we get to the release because there's a little odd...How it works right now. Right now it's just based on your speed. So the faster creatures that can sprint faster and then press the jump button can jump farther based on their speed but I don't have a skill for it. Attributes don't matter yet. There's just not a lot of...Because it's either one, two or three tiles or whatever, there's not too much resolution there. It'd be nice to think of a way if it's not...If it's based on too many things of like knowing how far you're going to be able to jump before you arrive at the cliff face going full speed and then discover that you're just not going to jump far enough. So I've made, the system right now acts in a predictable fashion and we'll work from there.

So if jumping is just based on speed, it doesn't have to be directional after all.
Good question, I'll leave it for Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 11, 2014, 01:13:14 pm

No devblog for the last two days. Either mind-numbingly boring stuff is going on or Toady is wrapping up things for a release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 11, 2014, 01:29:19 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 11, 2014, 01:13:14 pm

No devblog for the last two days. Either mind-numbingly boring stuff is going on or Toady is wrapping up things for a release.

It's not unusual for the devlog to skip a day or two, especially when the last entry was essay-length.  Also, sometimes they get posted in the afternoon.  I'm pretty sure the release is still weeks away, minimum.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 11, 2014, 01:32:31 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 11, 2014, 01:13:14 pm

No devblog for the last two days. Either mind-numbingly boring stuff is going on or Toady is wrapping up things for a release.

Dwarf Fortress 2014 confirmed!
Geez, now I know how do those Half-Life guys feel all the time. Or maybe he took off the weekend, I think there's still some stuff left on the alleged notes that we've not already seen in development, kobold caves anyone? It's highly unlikely we get a release in the next week or two.

... Oh, well, Ninjago'd by Footkerchief, no less.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 11, 2014, 01:49:05 pm

After the notes are done with you should add ~two weeks of extra time for the testing period, which we're close to, but not at, at least it doesn't seem like it.

Still, a February release seems very much likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on January 11, 2014, 02:08:33 pm

I don't know, the way things have been going as of late, I'm thinking a mid-March release is more likely (at the very minimum). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 11, 2014, 02:38:00 pm

There were periods, especially with the Holidays, where he didn't post for several days. It seems reasonable to imagine that he, at the very minimum, has to thoroughly look over for bugs to avoid things like the spastic sun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 11, 2014, 06:21:36 pm

Quote from: Witty on January 11, 2014, 02:08:33 pm

I don't know, the way things have been going as of late, I'm thinking a mid-March release is more likely (at the very minimum).

Toady said it would be out March. He just didn't say what year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 11, 2014, 06:32:06 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on January 11, 2014, 06:21:36 pm

Quote from: Witty on January 11, 2014, 02:08:33 pm

I don't know, the way things have been going as of late, I'm thinking a mid-March release is more likely (at the very minimum).

Toady said it would be out March. He just didn't say what year.

Mind=Blown  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 07:50:26 pm

And he also said he's not particularly great at estimation. And considering that this is the longest stretch of time without a release, it's fair to say it's gotten worse. It could very well have been released March of 2011. It's that hard to predict. Of course, we would have seen it by now. But there's probably people keeping it underground. They don't want to share their time travel Dwarf Fortress.

Actually that made me think of something: has a version of DF ever been released earlier than predicted? I know it has never happened past DF 2010, but perhaps before 40d?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 11, 2014, 08:50:09 pm

Quote from: metime00 on January 11, 2014, 07:50:26 pm

And he also said he's not particularly great at estimation. And considering that this is the longest stretch of time without a release, it's fair to say it's gotten worse. It could very well have been released March of 2011. It's that hard to predict. Of course, we would have seen it by now. But there's probably people keeping it underground. They don't want to share their time travel Dwarf Fortress.

Actually that made me think of something: has a version of DF ever been released earlier than predicted? I know it has never happened past DF 2010, but perhaps before 40d?

Toady One has the source tightly locked down, so I SERIOUSLY doubt that theres some underground group with a hacked version from in the middle of development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 11, 2014, 08:52:09 pm

I believe "earlier than original predictions" is what was meant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 11, 2014, 09:07:01 pm

Quote from: misko27 on January 11, 2014, 02:38:00 pm

There were periods, especially with the Holidays, where he didn't post for several days. It seems reasonable to imagine that he, at the very minimum, has to thoroughly look over for bugs to avoid things like the spastic sun.

Isn't having the Sun jumping around backwards and forwards in the sky like a dwarf with a strange mood just part of the quintessential dwarf fortress experience?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 12, 2014, 02:04:00 am

In 2010 Toady had the game tested by a small group of testers before release. Given that this version surpassed 2010 DF's length of development I wonder if he is gonna try it again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: shadenight123 on January 12, 2014, 06:02:48 am

I think, after reading the latest update on progress, that there will come a day where people will turn on DF not to play Fortress or Adventure, but to read Legend Mode and compare it to the Silmarillion. "Hey pal, have you read Dwarf Fortress?"
"You mean, the Ever-changing story of Madness and Blood?"
"I had the Ever-Changing story of Despair and Grief."
"In the year 25, this and this happened."
"In my case, the year 98 is when things went bang!"
"Oh and here I had a large demon war raging against..."
"But in my case..."
"And when the book is finished...we create a new one!"
"New characters, new names, new flaws...new motifs..."
And that was how the fantasy industry began to take hits in the midsections.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 12, 2014, 06:20:56 am

People already do that. At least I do. :v

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 12, 2014, 08:11:25 am

Yeah, Legends mode is already pretty fun to trawl, especially since one's ability to gain information during play is relatively limited. My biggest personal hope for future DFs is that one will be able to wander the world in adventure mode and write Silmarillions based on the information one can gather with some persistence and curiosity. Even so, I suspect that Legends mode will rise in popularity after this next release.

Anyways, questions.

Dear Toady One, you've mentioned that you don't want PC adventurers to be forced to run away involuntarily because of emotional status effects like terror. Will PCs instead be affected involuntarily by such emotional states with things like combat effectiveness penalties, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 12, 2014, 11:13:46 am

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus on January 12, 2014, 08:11:25 am

Dear Toady One, you've mentioned that you don't want PC adventurers to be forced to run away involuntarily because of emotional status effects like terror. Will PCs instead be affected involuntarily by such emotional states with things like combat effectiveness penalties, etc?

Some extensive speculation from DF Talk:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   I think that the important thing would be to - if there are limitations - maybe not make them limitations so much as guidelines, and if there are guidelines make them something that the player wants to follow. Maybe through some sort of cultural benefit or something similar, or just make it ...
Toady:   For dwarf mode, yeah, for that. It's the conflicts we were talking about where we let the player do what they want but there are norms that can be followed. It's kind of the same idea as putting a personality on your adventurer, it's like 'Your adventurer's a coward' ...
Capntastic:   'You're a coward and you cry yourself to sleep every night'
Toady:   And then when you go to attack a monster there are two choices, you can either act out of character and maybe the game doesn't actually penalise you for that, or the game is like 'no you can't walk towards the monster'. That would be annoying, there's this sense in which your adventurer having a personality is a real hindrance on play and you'd have to be very confident in your system if you were going to actually force restrictions, and I don't think I'd ever be confident enough in setting something up that wasn't really annoying. So you'd want to allow the maximum freedom there. You could put in penalties, like attack penalties if it thinks your player should be freaked out or afraid or something, but even that interferes with a role playing in a sense because maybe the confluence of events that led up to that point would not really admit cowardice even in a cowardly person for whatever reason. So if it suddenly popped up 'You're feeling a little afraid' at the bottom of the screen 'minus five', then that might drop you out of whatever moment you've been building towards. It's difficult to do internal psychology that way and at the same time maintain the role playing immersion. On the other hand maybe it enhances the role playing immersion in a lot of ways because you see that the character is behaving in a predictable fashion, so like I said it's down to the quality of the system and I'm not sure how good I could do there.
Capntastic:   What might work there would be an Ultima style 'if you had to fight a dragon would you throw rocks at it, or sneak up behind it and hit it with a rock, or drop a rock on it from a contraption you built', maybe not with the rock theme but instilling the personality onto the character before you play it.
Toady:   And then at that point ... I guess the issue there is that dealing with a changing situation might be difficult and that's kind of what I was getting at with the half baked example is that you need to be able to deal with situations where the character's personality could be overcome for a moment, and if it decided that you didn't overcome it but in your mind you had that's where you start to chafe a little bit. But yeah if you write down what you think the player is like just so interactions in town are befitting your overall demeanour and that kind of thing is certainly doable, just for an overall reactions thing. Specific penalties and mechanics might still be an issue but for the overall reputation and just how people react to how you are, it could be good. Also as kind of a general ... what's it called, perks and faults and all that kind of thing, if that worked through a personality system then it would be easier to swallow mostly if you picked that you were cowardly and then you get combat minuses all the time; at least you wouldn't be surprised.
Rainseeker:   Perhaps you could go on a quest to rid yourself of cowardice.
Toady:   Well if you go on a quest it should probably rid you of cowardice. I guess that's one of those lessons from children's books. It's all about judging player intent, I don't know if it's even weird to half way through your life or anytime you want to be able to go in and tweak your personality numbers. You'd run into power gaming issues there I guess, it's a thing where you can tell the ... If you told the game 'I'm angry right now' and then it started reacting accordingly it fits back into the conversation engine; should you be able to not just say a thing but put in the tone for how you're talking to somebody and so feed your tone and your actual content of your statement - tone, gestures, all that kind of thing - to the extent that you want to feed that information in to vary the responses, so that you can behave in character. Maybe you wouldn't be able to raise your voice at somebody if you had the wrong personality for it or something, it's undetermined right now, but all very interesting anyway.
[...]
Rainseeker:   I just remembered, my priority is not battle, it's thinking! I'm going to go think now!
Toady:   Having anger screw you up when you're fighting or having that kind of stuff, or just being totally scared, having that screw you up, that's certainly ... You'd hate to start with that sort of constitution as an adventurer probably, just always being a coward, but that runs into a whole larger conversation about whether or not adventurers should have emotion at all when they player's playing them ... There's a big question there about how much that interferes with your role playing. I think there's an ongoing discussion right now about that in one of the dev things, like whether or not it would be a good idea to have you get bored, so that you want to go off drinking and whoring or whatever you need to do, or sitting in your fancy leather couch so that you regenerate for your adventurer. It interferes with role playing ...
Rainseeker:   Kind of turning into The Sims at that point.
Toady:   Yeah. It interferes with role play to tell you what you're thinking , but at the same time it makes you act more like a real person. So it's a trick, and I don't like doing that, but it makes a lot of sense to, so it's a difficult decision.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 12, 2014, 06:12:35 pm

(probably going to miss another dev log today -- weekend has been surprisingly camera and mic-full, though I did get started on post-world-gen AI reclaims, hopefully get something up on that in a day or two)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on January 12, 2014, 07:28:53 pm

Quote from: Toady One on January 12, 2014, 06:12:35 pm

(probably going to miss another dev log today -- weekend has been surprisingly camera and mic-full, though I did get started on post-world-gen AI reclaims, hopefully get something up on that in a day or two)

And here I was hoping it meant you were getting ready to release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 12, 2014, 07:31:09 pm

Tarn's celebrity is rising.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 12, 2014, 09:17:18 pm

Yeah, I'm intrigued to find out what that's all about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 12, 2014, 09:51:18 pm

Quote from: DG on January 12, 2014, 07:31:09 pm

Tarn's celebrity is rising.

Knowing Toady, he's probably going to find all sorts of ways to make money off of this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 13, 2014, 07:49:54 am

Ladies calendar's anyone? Thought seriously, it's weird to hear about that, according to mainstream media, our beloved duo is camera shy somehow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on January 13, 2014, 12:36:05 pm

Maybe a lecture interview on how to make consistant procedural worlds. I for the Games industry toadys experience must be like a treasuretrove.

Heh that or toady was out in the woods photgraphing and recording Animals to incoorporate the sounds into the game ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 13, 2014, 02:33:43 pm

From the devlog:

Quote

The mayor's father was a tragic character, obsessed with his own mortality, but unable to secure the secrets of life and death before becoming a skink monster, attacking communities until he died of old age in 93.

Don't werebeasts live forever (unless killed) in the current version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on January 13, 2014, 02:38:46 pm

I have never heard of were beasts living forever, just vampires as far as I know

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 13, 2014, 02:47:51 pm

Godcursed werebeasts live forever. The infected ones can die of old age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Calathar on January 13, 2014, 04:37:36 pm

Quote from: Bandreus on January 11, 2014, 05:44:12 am

If we happen to reclaim a fort which fell to a FB or other MB, and if the beast happened to set its lair there, are the initial 7 to actually confront it? I.e. will the beast be there when the party arrives?

I think we can assume he meant that it would be there when he put

Quote from: Toady

Over the last 100 years, the dragon has defeated seven heroes and is looking forward to seven dwarves or another naive adventurer.

which meant either your adventurer or your starting 7 in dwarf mode can confront it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on January 13, 2014, 05:26:32 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 12, 2014, 02:04:00 am

In 2010 Toady had the game tested by a small group of testers before release. Given that this version surpassed 2010 DF's length of development I wonder if he is gonna try it again.

No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 13, 2014, 08:18:02 pm

Well, Google indicates the most recent and only news articles to show up on the search regarding Tarn were on Dec. 19 and Dec. 30, and the latter both only referenced a previous article as a year-end recap.  However, his results are small enough that I can make a Google alert for "As it Happens" and not get spammed, so I will let people know when I see it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BenLubar on January 13, 2014, 09:52:58 pm

I've been reading the dev log, and I like the "living world" that's being created (non-player actions affecting the world even while the player is somewhere else) - but this leads me to a question: In 0.34.11, just how much of the world is actually simulated after the generation ends? Do vampires go around terrorizing villages, or do they just sit in their hill-caves until an adventurer happens to get a quest to kill them? Do titans and forgotten beasts roam the world and the underground, or do they not "physically exist" until a fortress gets to a certain wealth threshold?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 13, 2014, 09:59:08 pm

That's more a question for the community.

The answer is none of it. There is nothing going on. Titans and forgotten beasts exist before they show up at your fort, but only in an abstract, sedentary manner. You can find titans in adventure mode at their shrines or embark on top of them, but they do nothing when you aren't around. Nothing happens when the player isn't around in Dwarf Fortress.

EDIT: As of 0.34.11, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 13, 2014, 10:59:30 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 13, 2014, 09:59:08 pm

That's more a question for the community.

The answer is none of it. There is nothing going on. Titans and forgotten beasts exist before they show up at your fort, but only in an abstract, sedentary manner. You can find titans in adventure mode at their shrines or embark on top of them, but they do nothing when you aren't around. Nothing happens when the player isn't around in Dwarf Fortress.

While that was how I had interpreted things as well, Toady's latest post here makes me wonder if we might've not underestimated the changes coming somehow, unless post world gen AI reclaims doesn't encompass what it sounds like. Some clarification on this point sure would be nice, especially as to how far these things will also be simulated in fortress mode (including all the new village fighting and goblin shenanigans)

Quote from: Toady One on January 12, 2014, 06:12:35 pm

(probably going to miss another dev log today -- weekend has been surprisingly camera and mic-full, though I did get started on post-world-gen AI reclaims, hopefully get something up on that in a day or two)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 14, 2014, 12:21:11 am

Newest devlog should provide some insights for everyone!

Quote

Over another large bump today, as both non-player reclaims and new site foundations are in the game in the basic form I wanted to get finished. They don't create new markets, you can't yet create sites in adventure mode, and nobody builds roads, but they can send out groups to form new villages. So you can start a map now at, say, year 2 or year 10 and get some solid growth over time, though not in all the ways a world gen map can evolve. The game respects the site caps from world gen (which are often set up for speed/mem reasons), so you shouldn't have to worry about it getting out of control. This means that a world with a long history still won't place new sites either in the later years of world gen or after play begins, but they'll do reclaims. Non-player reclaims don't challenge any sites with monsters at this point, since I haven't done that kind of fighting, and until monsters can act freely and capture additional sites in play, I want to preserve those sites for player reclaims.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 14, 2014, 04:26:10 am

Quote from: Calathar on January 13, 2014, 04:37:36 pm

I think we can assume he meant that it would be there when he put

Quote from: Toady

Over the last 100 years, the dragon has defeated seven heroes and is looking forward to seven dwarves or another naive adventurer.

which meant either your adventurer or your starting 7 in dwarf mode can confront it.

Right, I totally forgot about that bit while writing my question (that was a ☼<<☼ long devlog ☼>>☼). Thanks for pointing that out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on January 14, 2014, 10:31:29 am

Ok, I thought of a question:

Can we, when we are choosing which world gen sites to reclaim, see some prospecting information regarding the mineral deposits that were found there?

I like my dwarves to be filthy rich and adorned with precious metals and gems, but for the last few versions, I've had to cheat a bit with the MINERAL_SCARCITY world gen tag. It would be more meaningful if I could set up on sites that were actually uniquely rich, instead of just cheating and making every site rich.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 14, 2014, 11:56:30 am

Quote from: cephalo on January 14, 2014, 10:31:29 am

Ok, I thought of a question:

Can we, when we are choosing which world gen sites to reclaim, see some prospecting information regarding the mineral deposits that were found there?

I like my dwarves to be filthy rich and adorned with precious metals and gems, but for the last few versions, I've had to cheat a bit with the MINERAL_SCARCITY world gen tag. It would be more meaningful if I could set up on sites that were actually uniquely rich, instead of just cheating and making every site rich.

There is a DFhack tool, but I know what you mean. I doubt that will happen this version as Toady One hasn't said anything about changing that part of the pre-embark UI. Could happen in a future release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 14, 2014, 12:05:53 pm

Are players and infighting the only reasons for post world gen AI site reclaims?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 14, 2014, 12:51:25 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 14, 2014, 12:05:53 pm

Are players and infighting the only reasons for post world gen AI site reclaims?

Aren't armies moving about and taking over sites now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 01:01:32 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 14, 2014, 12:05:53 pm

Are players and infighting the only reasons for post world gen AI site reclaims?

I may be misunderstanding your question, but a site can be left abandoned at the end of worldgen (e.g. from megabeast activity), which would make it reclaimable by either the player or the AI.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on January 14, 2014, 02:53:03 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 01:01:32 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 14, 2014, 12:05:53 pm

Are players and infighting the only reasons for post world gen AI site reclaims?

I may be misunderstanding your question, but a site can be left abandoned at the end of worldgen (e.g. from megabeast activity), which would make it reclaimable by either the player or the AI.

Good point, though toady said they wouldn't, post world gen that is, try to reclaim megabeast conquered sites.

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 14, 2014, 12:51:25 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on January 14, 2014, 12:05:53 pm

Are players and infighting the only reasons for post world gen AI site reclaims?

Aren't armies moving about and taking over sites now?

Well there are (moving?) army camps, and there are definitely village squabbles, but i thought there were no army fights in the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 14, 2014, 03:33:11 pm

(many times the beast won't stick around, then it is fair even for a post wg ai reclaim)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 04:43:04 pm

*Dances happily*

Post-worldgen reclaims, people going out to raise sites...
Many-thousand year old worlds, here we come!

In any case I'm not counting the days until release, I'm sure the servers will be so cluttered that I'll have to wait a couple of days until I can download the new version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 05:08:43 pm

Quote from: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 04:43:04 pm

Post-worldgen reclaims, people going out to raise sites...
Many-thousand year old worlds, here we come!

Yeah, it's extremely cool.  I wonder what the in-play site creation looks like if you're present as an adventurer -- the devlog says there are no markets or roads, but presumably there are some basic buildings that pop into existence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 14, 2014, 05:19:47 pm

I really hope DF2014 comes out before March.
I'm nearing my rage event horizon with Awesomenauts with every session I play. (and I do need a fresh experience)

And hearing about all the great things in DF2014 just brings a smile to my face.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on January 14, 2014, 06:15:06 pm

Hmm... How are markets built anyways? If it's something akin to workshop creation, then I'd predict that we won't see new markets until workshops are able to generate within sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 06:38:46 pm

Wait, I have a community question.
Isn't this release the one in which we're able to barter stuff with random people, not just merchants? Or am I just thinking in a planned-but-no-timeline feature?

If my assumptions are true, then there's not too much need for markets right now, at least if we're venturing through the unexplored frontier.
And now that I think of it...

Toady, how do civilizations stablish their priorities for post worldgen town founding? Does it work the same as the worldgen process (like, looking for the right ecosystem/elevation/savagery/alignment)? If, for example, you somehow hunt down and scour wildlife at an untamed wilds area that is otherwise right for human thriving, does this turn the place into fair game for settlers to come in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 14, 2014, 06:59:14 pm

I often see "Blabla was a market created in Kobold Cave" and such when looking through legends. Will the game generate actual kobold markets now, or will it prevent kobolds from making their non-existent markets?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 07:02:36 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 14, 2014, 06:15:06 pm

Hmm... How are markets built anyways? If it's something akin to workshop creation, then I'd predict that we won't see new markets until workshops are able to generate within sites.

Can you clarify the question?  The only markets are the ones placed in towns during world gen.  They have hardcoded types of stalls, which are placed by a procedural generation algorithm.  Are you asking if the code uses the same data structure for market stalls and workshops?

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 14, 2014, 06:59:14 pm

I often see "Blabla was a market created in Kobold Cave" and such when looking through legends. Will the game generate actual kobold markets now, or will it prevent kobolds from making their non-existent markets?

This seems like a bug.  Are you using mods?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 07:16:27 pm

Are we going to see roads expanded during gameplay (not worldgen) for this coming release or is that just going to be left out for now?

I'd really like to see roads get built during gameplay as of the coming release. In 23a, it used to be that when you built a road to the map edge, your fort would get connected up. Unfortunately that has gone out now.

If a dwarven civilization loses a site, can a different dwarven civilization reclaim that site?

Will migrants still stop when the unit list reaches 3000, regardless of the population cap and number of dwarves, or has that changed now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 14, 2014, 07:43:35 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 07:16:27 pm

Are we going to see roads expanded during gameplay (not worldgen) for this coming release or is that just going to be left out for now?

In the last dev log, it says they dont expand roads during game play.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on January 14, 2014, 07:54:23 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 07:02:36 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 14, 2014, 06:15:06 pm

Hmm... How are markets built anyways? If it's something akin to workshop creation, then I'd predict that we won't see new markets until workshops are able to generate within sites.

Can you clarify the question?  The only markets are the ones placed in towns during world gen.  They have hardcoded types of stalls, which are placed by a procedural generation algorithm.  Are you asking if the code uses the same data structure for market stalls and workshops?

Yeah, pretty much this - Does markets use something like a workshop data structure, or something more towards a farm plot structure, or is it something of its own system?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 14, 2014, 08:18:03 pm

They're just barrels as of now, by the looks of it, so neither.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 08:20:26 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 07:16:27 pm

If a dwarven civilization loses a site, can a different dwarven civilization reclaim that site?

I understand that, as goblins and other creatures (at least in worldgen) can occupy a dwarven site, then there shouldn't be a restriction for another civilization to do it. Also, if a civilization physically crumbles and all it's members die, then their sites should be up for someone else to call dibs on them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on January 14, 2014, 08:35:49 pm

Quote from: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 06:38:46 pm

Wait, I have a community question.
Isn't this release the one in which we're able to barter stuff with random people, not just merchants? Or am I just thinking in a planned-but-no-timeline feature?

This is the one, unless Toady took it out again.

Quote from: Toady

12/04/2013: You can trade objects with pretty much anybody friendly now, without the requirement that you be in a store, and as long as they'll make out alright, they'll go for it. You can also give anybody anything. It should probably be restricted a bit, since people are more than happy to tear off their shoes for an equal value of food or whatever while they are standing in the mud, and so on, but it does let you give whatever to whomever, which'll help some of the dire equipment problems companions have until we have more time to do something better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 09:14:51 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on January 14, 2014, 07:43:35 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 07:16:27 pm

Are we going to see roads expanded during gameplay (not worldgen) for this coming release or is that just going to be left out for now?

In the last dev log, it says they dont expand roads during game play.

OK let me make that a bit clearer:

In the devlog you said roads are not expanded during gameplay yet. Is this completely put off for another release or do you think you will get around to it for this one?

Regarding the latest devlog:

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 14, 2014, 09:49:17 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 07:02:36 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 14, 2014, 06:59:14 pm

I often see "Blabla was a market created in Kobold Cave" and such when looking through legends. Will the game generate actual kobold markets now, or will it prevent kobolds from making their non-existent markets?

This seems like a bug.  Are you using mods?

No mods, at least. I got a single kobold market in 125 years of history. Maybe we'll be able to get down there in the next release, just to understand how does a kobold market work. Now, if it is a bug or not, I would rather think it's a feature, as a marketplace for a community of finder-keepers seems like a must.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/CaaaVe2.png)

*I really don't know if it's advisable to post images on this thread, or to post this image at all, but it might clarify the existence of kobold markets. End of my derail.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 15, 2014, 01:52:48 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 07:16:27 pm

Will migrants still stop when the dead unit list reaches 3000, regardless of the population cap and number of dwarves, or has that changed now?

Clarified the question as far as the unit list since it's related to the number of dead units. Can't find the relevant bug report, if there is one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 15, 2014, 06:26:44 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 14, 2014, 06:59:14 pm

I often see "Blabla was a market created in Kobold Cave" and such when looking through legends. Will the game generate actual kobold markets now, or will it prevent kobolds from making their non-existent markets?

Given that Toady apparently won't get to do kobold sites for this release, no.

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 14, 2014, 07:02:36 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 14, 2014, 06:59:14 pm

I often see "Blabla was a market created in Kobold Cave" and such when looking through legends. Will the game generate actual kobold markets now, or will it prevent kobolds from making their non-existent markets?

This seems like a bug.  Are you using mods?

I'm pretty sure kobold markets are intentional, given the 06/09/11 devlog:

Quote

Found my first tower-cap bed in a human's bedroom. It had an image of the foundation of a dwarven mountain hall in giant toad bone. An iron scourge made by the goblins made it to the back of the warehouse as well -- it commemorated a skinless demon becoming the law-giver of the goblin civilization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 15, 2014, 10:20:28 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 15, 2014, 06:26:44 am

I'm pretty sure kobold markets are intentional, given the 06/09/11 devlog:

Quote

Found my first tower-cap bed in a human's bedroom. It had an image of the foundation of a dwarven mountain hall in giant toad bone. An iron scourge made by the goblins made it to the back of the warehouse as well -- it commemorated a skinless demon becoming the law-giver of the goblin civilization.

I think you may not have quoted the relevant part:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2011.html#2011-06-09

I also put in some extra precautions and tweaks so that dwarves form markets properly and are more survivable in world gen. Kobolds as well.

I figured "Kobolds as well" just meant the survivability part -- kobold survivability was a known bug at the time (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4025).  It's hard for me to imagine kobolds putting together anything as organized as a market.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 15, 2014, 11:02:27 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 15, 2014, 10:20:28 am

I think you may not have quoted the relevant part:

Weird. It's there in klipper. I must have accidentally deleted it when I decided to remove another question. Either way, to me it reads that kobolds are supposed to form some kind of market.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 15, 2014, 11:42:39 am

It's ambiguous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 15, 2014, 01:00:41 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 09:14:51 pm

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

I seriously doubt it if the AI designs as poorly as Toady One claims. The AI would just undo your work in horrible ways. While that would definetly be FUN in more ways than one, it can quickly become annoying.

It'll be interesting to see how the AI deals with the various designs and aspects of player forts, and the bugs that arise from them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 15, 2014, 01:33:55 pm

It makes sense that kobolds would at least know the bassic concept of trade - exchange of stolen goods would be vital for any [SKULKING] entity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 15, 2014, 03:28:21 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 15, 2014, 01:00:41 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 09:14:51 pm

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

I seriously doubt it if the AI designs as poorly as Toady One claims. The AI would just undo your work in horrible ways. While that would definetly be FUN in more ways than one, it can quickly become annoying.

It'll be interesting to see how the AI deals with the various designs and aspects of player forts, and the bugs that arise from them.

Imagine leaving mysterious levers around as if for other players in a succession game. Now imagine them in the hands of AI who don't need orders from you to pull them :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on January 15, 2014, 04:41:59 pm

I'm pretty sure Toady has alluded to AI not using complex devices, such as things linked to levers.

But for hilarity sake, cue the suicide booth parade!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on January 15, 2014, 05:38:51 pm

Will dwarves migrate to player made fortresses that have been retired? If so, can we set specific restrictions on the number of immigrants that are allowed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 15, 2014, 08:16:14 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 15, 2014, 01:00:41 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 09:14:51 pm

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

I seriously doubt it if the AI designs as poorly as Toady One claims. The AI would just undo your work in horrible ways. While that would definetly be FUN in more ways than one, it can quickly become annoying.

It'll be interesting to see how the AI deals with the various designs and aspects of player forts, and the bugs that arise from them.

Actually this is pretty much up in the air, as we got the very first instance ever (I think) of the AI modifying existing sites in the latest devlog.

Quote

Today I allowed certain sites to move away from their strict preset building types a bit, with goblins currently being able to alter sites that they are occupying. Trenches and small towers can now pop up in human villages, elf sites and dwarf hill sites that have been taken after some time passes.

That being said, I would assume Toady is going to favor the player's ability to return to a retired fortress without having to undo anything stupid done by the AI, meaning retired forts are not going to be altered in the next release. Unless he doesn't.

If the fort is however being occupied by goblins after retirement... who knows? Toady didn't mention player forts in the devlog, but still that might end up being a concrete possibility.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on January 16, 2014, 08:30:05 am

Can you retire while under siege, and let the AI handle it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on January 16, 2014, 09:33:32 am

Quote from: Sizik on January 16, 2014, 08:30:05 am

Can you retire while under siege, and let the AI handle it?

This question is going to delay the release by a month. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 16, 2014, 12:18:38 pm

Quote from: Sizik on January 16, 2014, 08:30:05 am

Can you retire while under siege, and let the AI handle it?

No. Toady has said a few times that there are no army battles yet. I would guess that either you'll have only an abandon fort option, or the retirement option becomes a give in to siege option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 16, 2014, 01:16:19 pm

"Your strength has been broken"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Niveras on January 16, 2014, 05:24:11 pm

I suspect this question may have already been answered, but:

Are there any plans to add player-made layouts into the world generation as NPC fortresses?

I expect this could cause some difficulty if worldgen tries to place a highly Z-level variable fort into an area that can't really fit, but then again it would be pretty interesting to cross a fort that sticks up and out of the ground or mountain - that is, any rooms that lack walls (because there is no natural terrain around them) can have constructed walls replace them. Other difficulties might be integrated water and magma systems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 16, 2014, 05:37:29 pm

Quote from: Niveras on January 16, 2014, 05:24:11 pm

I suspect this question may have already been answered, but:

Are there any plans to add player-made layouts into the world generation as NPC fortresses?

I expect this could cause some difficulty if worldgen tries to place a highly Z-level variable fort into an area that can't really fit, but then again it would be pretty interesting to cross a fort that sticks up and out of the ground or mountain - that is, any rooms that lack walls (because there is no natural terrain around them) can have constructed walls replace them. Other difficulties might be integrated water and magma systems.

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, where this is frequently posted:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30790.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=39304.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132725.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59455.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63894.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63054.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=26435.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55021.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Niveras on January 16, 2014, 05:44:06 pm

It's difficult to know whether it was an already-considered planned goal. Only if that was not the case would it have been a suggestion.

I agree that I could have just asked pretty much anyone rather than asking directly with a colored question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 16, 2014, 05:45:04 pm

Will entities with slavery permitted go around enslaving people in-game? Can a player be enslaved?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 16, 2014, 06:01:47 pm

We would have heard, especially since night creatures dragging people off to convert them into spouses (a similar, more immediately relevant feature) isn't in yet.

Toady would probably go on to say we'd need the thief arc stuff or people wouldn't know how to punish their slaves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 16, 2014, 06:14:01 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 15, 2014, 03:28:21 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 15, 2014, 01:00:41 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 14, 2014, 09:14:51 pm

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

I seriously doubt it if the AI designs as poorly as Toady One claims. The AI would just undo your work in horrible ways. While that would definetly be FUN in more ways than one, it can quickly become annoying.

It'll be interesting to see how the AI deals with the various designs and aspects of player forts, and the bugs that arise from them.

Imagine leaving mysterious levers around as if for other players in a succession game. Now imagine them in the hands of AI who don't need orders from you to pull them :D

I think that is all abstracted out for now. Buildings could be destroyed during sieges or added to the existing fortress, but it will not fully simulate the fortress like a succession game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on January 16, 2014, 06:19:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 16, 2014, 05:45:04 pm

Will entities with slavery permitted go around enslaving people in-game? Can a player be enslaved?

I think we can safely say that players will never be enslaved - how would you even play that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on January 16, 2014, 06:37:21 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on January 16, 2014, 06:19:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 16, 2014, 05:45:04 pm

Will entities with slavery permitted go around enslaving people in-game? Can a player be enslaved?

I think we can safely say that players will never be enslaved - how would you even play that?

you pick up the fork... Really aim an attack at the slave master?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 16, 2014, 06:53:17 pm

Quote from: blazing glory on January 16, 2014, 06:37:21 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on January 16, 2014, 06:19:25 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 16, 2014, 05:45:04 pm

Will entities with slavery permitted go around enslaving people in-game? Can a player be enslaved?

I think we can safely say that players will never be enslaved - how would you even play that?

you pick up the fork... Really aim an attack at the slave master?

I imagine players can be enslaved the same way they can be imprisoned for life: currently, not at all, but an option in the future; options for escape presumably coming in tandem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 16, 2014, 07:04:01 pm

I'd find playing as a slave interesting... although if there was no immediate threat of death or likelihood of escape, I'd want a time skip option.  Or at the very least for manual labor tasks to be one action to initiate and then if nothing happens it jumps ahead to the task being done.

If its ever possible to have an "adventure" where you take on a civilian role (be a peasant and live out your life sustenance farming, be a blacksmith and make swords and horseshoes) I imagine being a slave would be like that but more interesting.  You'd have your job, and then on top of that you have to deal with the possibility of escape attempts and the dangers of being at the button of society's ladder.  The trade off being that the game wouldn't really be a sandbox until you escape... but then, that would be the point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on January 16, 2014, 08:08:02 pm

I dunno, I would find it a lot more interesting to be a village blacksmith who picks up because of wanderlust, or a peasant driven from his home by marauding undead, rather than just kind of appearing in the middle of a random village.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 16, 2014, 08:24:56 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on January 16, 2014, 07:04:01 pm

I'd find playing as a slave interesting... although if there was no immediate threat of death or likelihood of escape, I'd want a time skip option.  Or at the very least for manual labor tasks to be one action to initiate and then if nothing happens it jumps ahead to the task being done.

If its ever possible to have an "adventure" where you take on a civilian role (be a peasant and live out your life sustenance farming, be a blacksmith and make swords and horseshoes) I imagine being a slave would be like that but more interesting.  You'd have your job, and then on top of that you have to deal with the possibility of escape attempts and the dangers of being at the button of society's ladder.  The trade off being that the game wouldn't really be a sandbox until you escape... but then, that would be the point.

It could be the start of an interesting career if they went the standard fantasy route of slavery: you get sent to the gladiator pits or to the front line as a grunt.

Or, even better: Be legendary misc. weapon user. Get enslaved. Use chains to kill your way to freedom!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on January 16, 2014, 09:04:44 pm

I'd honestly find it awesome if you could start or become a slave and fight/sneak/persuade your way out of it through escape. Maybe you just kill your way out after getting lucky and getting your hands on a good weapon, maybe you stealth out with just yourself or a friend or two, maybe you start a full fledged uprising...

There's fun stuff to be had. I do agree with the Hat on skipping past the menial labor unless something interesting came up or if you actually want to do it do it manually however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 16, 2014, 11:02:49 pm

Yeah, I think it'd be quite interesting to play as an enslaved or imprisoned character. A deeper justice system is already planned for DF, including adventure mode, as well as time compression while a character learns a skill or works on a task; slavery isn't such a huge leap from that. Personally, I'd enjoy the challenge of playing an enslaved character working to find some way to escape. Alternately, waiting ten years until the character is an accepted member of the goblins/whoever and resuming control after that point would also be interesting. The insurrection stuff slated for the next release even suggests that one could eventually lead a slave rebellion.

"You're all named Spartacus? Your parents must have been interesting."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 16, 2014, 11:32:03 pm

Some stories are just asking to be told. 12 Years a Dwarf, anyone? Uristacus, Dastot Unchained... Wonder what happens when things get touchy and the world has access to slave trade. Would it stir a bone or two in the ethics department?

Toady, if sites aren't going to be absolutely ruled by a single entity, but rather by a series of claims, is it possible to see something like a "goblin neighborhood" inside a large town, where conquered or fully integrated goblins (like the ones that currently live peacefully among humans and other races) develop their own architecture? Or the goblin buildings are only built when a properly goblin civilization is in charge? I assume the second scenario is the most likely, but it never hurts to ask.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on January 16, 2014, 11:35:29 pm

Quote from: Valtam on January 16, 2014, 11:32:03 pm

Some stories are just asking to be told. 12 Years a Dwarf, anyone? Uristacus, Dastot Unchained... Wonder what happens when things get touchy and the world has access to slave trade. Would it stir a bone or two in the ethics department?

Toady, if sites aren't going to be absolutely ruled by a single entity, but rather by a series of claims, is it possible to see something like a "goblin neighborhood" inside a large town, where conquered or fully integrated goblins (like the ones that currently live peacefully among humans and other races) develop their own architecture? Or the goblin buildings are only built when a properly goblin civilization is in charge? I assume the second scenario is the most likely, but it never hurts to ask.

If the first one is the case, then will dwarves and elves have the same influence on new buildings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 16, 2014, 11:49:11 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 16, 2014, 05:45:04 pm

Will entities with slavery permitted go around enslaving people in-game? Can a player be enslaved?

Player enslavement is fair game for the future, but not in this release:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2629820#msg2629820

Quote from: Greendogo

Will the following ever be possible?: Your adventurer and his companions are taken captive and sold to a slave caravan transporting them deep underground to the caverns for days, joining in with the other inmates and captured subterranean folk to fight off attacking underground monsters while the evil goblins and dwarves who captured you bet on survivors, finally ending your trek in a deep slavery trade depot, whereupon non-player characters are sold for hard labor and the player character must somewhere along the way devise his escape.

There are precursor elements for that in world gen and you can find slaves in adventure mode that came about from world gen.  Natural extensions of these systems would involve the player in whatever way, but as with everything, it currently sits as it sits.

As for captives resulting from site occupation, that was yet to be resolved last time Toady mentioned it:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Tov01

How extensive will Goblin slavery be in the next release? I know that kidnapped children are in, but is anything else planned?

There are slaves on the sites at times, though humans seem just as good at it, if not better, since they tend to leave more people alive.  I haven't particularly addressed this yet, though we are still quite likely to do more with site occupation before the release.

Quote from: Valtam on January 16, 2014, 11:32:03 pm

Toady, if sites aren't going to be absolutely ruled by a single entity, but rather by a series of claims, is it possible to see something like a "goblin neighborhood" inside a large town, where conquered or fully integrated goblins (like the ones that currently live peacefully among humans and other races) develop their own architecture? Or the goblin buildings are only built when a properly goblin civilization is in charge? I assume the second scenario is the most likely, but it never hurts to ask.

Eventually, yes.  Not in the next release though:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

We haven't really planned a lot for version 1 especially for massively multiracial forts with like ten goblins hanging out, but really when you get back to some of this entity stuff we were talking about, there should be a notion of them cliquing up a bit and making a sub-entity, at least for certain races. It's quite possible that goblins with all their kidnapping behaviour and so on don't really see the species of the creatures the same way and might not even clique up based on their goblin nature unless they're spurned by the rest of the dwarves or something. It's all going to depend on how that works out, I don't pretend to have the algorithms set up for making sure that stuff is going to work right, but hopefully that would be one of the main considerations when you start forming sub-groups like miners' guild is if there's multiple species in the fort.
[...]
Also, once we've got these sites, like all the different ways that the races build things, we'll be able to start thinking about things like 'What does a place look like if it was owned by humans for the first half and then owned by dwarves for the second half?' There could be, like, the old town part and then extended past that it suddenly dips down into the earth and there are all this dwarf mining operation surrounding an old human city. Theoretically we should be able to do all that stuff; it's all pretty modular the way things glue together by necessity because in adventure mode when you're walking around you load sections of the map, right? So everything is subject to these restrictions of having to live in a certain-sized space, but that means that if you want to have the flavor of the map change it's really not so bad. I mean ideally you'd like things to intermesh in a not-square way, but for a starting point we certainly have an easy problem and then it only becomes harder when you try and make it look really organic, but it's good, it's always possible to move forward with this stuff, so we're going to have all kinds of cool things going on.

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on January 16, 2014, 11:35:29 pm

If the first one is the case, then will dwarves and elves have the same influence on new buildings?

It'll all apply for any race.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 17, 2014, 12:37:29 am

How deep are worldgenned dwarf fortresses?

There was some discussion about how deep they'd be, but that was before they were coded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 17, 2014, 01:45:26 am

Quote from: King Mir on January 17, 2014, 12:37:29 am

How deep are worldgenned dwarf fortresses?

There was some discussion about how deep they'd be, but that was before they were coded.

Probably as deep as the deep sites, down to the first cavern level since forgotten beast attacks have been mentioned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 17, 2014, 07:32:58 am

Quote from: King Mir on January 17, 2014, 12:37:29 am

How deep are worldgenned dwarf fortresses?

There was some discussion about how deep they'd be, but that was before they were coded.

This quote is from after fortresses were worked on:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

Right now I've got forts going from the surface down to the magma and deep sites up in the first layer.  Currently the thinking is to reserve the secret stuff for the forts (not just player ones, but that special category of site), which are also better armed for dealing with deeper troubles from layers two and three.  It'll be fine to make deep sites more interesting over time, but I also don't want to smear things too much, especially since they aren't reclaimable -- this makes keeping the most interesting stuff in forts more important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 17, 2014, 10:23:18 pm

Quote from: devlog

I have a late morning thing next week and in the switch-around off graveyard developed jet lag braindeath, but today was better. Even though it is winter, I've seen so much sun lately it has been like visiting an alien world. In any case, I put a bow on demon sites, which ended up with me finally using the last random raw frameworks that have been sitting around forever (entities, items). They have turned into a testbed for the gray goo of full randomization, but hopefully we won't be hearing any more from them before the release as stuff continues to become done

Holy cow, randomized demon societies... or something?  That should be exciting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 17, 2014, 10:35:08 pm

Quote

01/17/2014  I have a late morning thing next week and in the switch-around off graveyard developed jet lag braindeath, but today was better. Even though it is winter, I've seen so much sun lately it has been like visiting an alien world. In any case, I put a bow on demon sites, which ended up with me finally using the last random raw frameworks that have been sitting around forever (entities, items). They have turned into a testbed for the gray goo of full randomization, but hopefully we won't be hearing any more from them before the release as stuff continues to become done.

The jetlag sounds terrible. Hope it gets better!

Alright, we get randomized entities items in the new version? Does that mean there will be demon civilizations in those depths of the world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 17, 2014, 10:35:58 pm

I have no idea why people debate  me when I saw this is the biggest update ever :I

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 17, 2014, 10:43:23 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 17, 2014, 10:35:58 pm

I have no idea why people debate  me when I saw this is the biggest update ever :I

I thought the z-level was even bigger. But then again, I didn't play DF then...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 17, 2014, 10:50:44 pm

Maybe on the highest level (I.E presentation), but when it comes to actual changing of the game and features and such this is biggest. Maybe 0.31 had the most affect on the workings, but this one adds the most features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 18, 2014, 12:10:31 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 17, 2014, 07:32:58 am

Quote from: King Mir on January 17, 2014, 12:37:29 am

How deep are worldgenned dwarf fortresses?

There was some discussion about how deep they'd be, but that was before they were coded.

This quote is from after fortresses were worked on:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In which cavern layers are the deep sites going to be?

Right now I've got forts going from the surface down to the magma and deep sites up in the first layer.  Currently the thinking is to reserve the secret stuff for the forts (not just player ones, but that special category of site), which are also better armed for dealing with deeper troubles from layers two and three.  It'll be fine to make deep sites more interesting over time, but I also don't want to smear things too much, especially since they aren't reclaimable -- this makes keeping the most interesting stuff in forts more important.

Thanks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 18, 2014, 12:14:06 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 17, 2014, 10:23:18 pm

Quote from: devlog

I have a late morning thing next week and in the switch-around off graveyard developed jet lag braindeath, but today was better. Even though it is winter, I've seen so much sun lately it has been like visiting an alien world. In any case, I put a bow on demon sites, which ended up with me finally using the last random raw frameworks that have been sitting around forever (entities, items). They have turned into a testbed for the gray goo of full randomization, but hopefully we won't be hearing any more from them before the release as stuff continues to become done

Holy cow, randomized demon societies... or something?  That should be exciting.

I wonder if the new demon sites are something like demon towns? (demon civilizations? OH NOES!)

I wonder if they'll have a chance to be friendly with you (whether fort or adventurer) or if they are auto-hostile to anything that is not a demon.

Does anybody know whether demons (the randomly generated ones, not the ones that escape at worldgen) automatically have the [CAN_SPEAK] and [INTELLIGENT] tags?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 18, 2014, 12:20:01 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 17, 2014, 10:35:58 pm

I have no idea why people debate  me when I saw this is the biggest update ever :I

From what I heard the game was re-written between 40d and DF2010. This meant there were changes but besides the new cavern system and map depth the changes weren't as massive as they are now. In this update the world will be well populated and there will be things going on at every level of the world, even deep down. Pity it took so long.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on January 18, 2014, 12:24:21 am

Quote from: smjjames on January 18, 2014, 12:14:06 am

Does anybody know whether demons (the randomly generated ones, not the ones that escape at worldgen) automatically have the [CAN_SPEAK] and [INTELLIGENT] tags?

It's random. Those who've made it into the HFS may notice that some types of demons are butchered and others are left alone.

Some are basically wild animals, while others are generated as intelligent beings.

E: I don't know if this will change, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 18, 2014, 12:26:38 am

Quote from: smjjames on January 18, 2014, 12:14:06 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 17, 2014, 10:23:18 pm

Quote from: devlog

I have a late morning thing next week and in the switch-around off graveyard developed jet lag braindeath, but today was better. Even though it is winter, I've seen so much sun lately it has been like visiting an alien world. In any case, I put a bow on demon sites, which ended up with me finally using the last random raw frameworks that have been sitting around forever (entities, items). They have turned into a testbed for the gray goo of full randomization, but hopefully we won't be hearing any more from them before the release as stuff continues to become done

Holy cow, randomized demon societies... or something?  That should be exciting.

I wonder if the new demon sites are something like demon towns? (demon civilizations? OH NOES!)

I wonder if they'll have a chance to be friendly with you (whether fort or adventurer) or if they are auto-hostile to anything that is not a demon.

Does anybody know whether demons (the randomly generated ones, not the ones that escape at worldgen) automatically have the [CAN_SPEAK] and [INTELLIGENT] tags?

I literally went out of my way to make a thread to speculate demons in. Voila (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=135538.0). You don't have to use the spoiler tags they are btw.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on January 18, 2014, 12:51:09 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 18, 2014, 12:20:01 am

. Pity it took so long.

Pity it didn't. Had it come any sooner, or any later, it would not be the same as it's going to be.
That's just how the universe works. No use saying "what if", for the path is set...

Until we finally travel laterally across the second temporal dimension. Time is two dimensional, you know. We only perceive one because of the forces that keep us all in a straight line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on January 18, 2014, 05:29:07 am

Quote from: flabort on January 18, 2014, 12:51:09 am

Until we finally travel laterally across the second temporal dimension. Time is two dimensional, you know. We only perceive one because of the forces that keep us all in a straight line.

Don't start on time; there are things about time and its spatial form, as well as space's temporal form, that cannot be comprehended by anyone two cackles short of bat-shit insane.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 18, 2014, 06:42:00 am

So by how many times has DF2014's dev cycle beaten the previous record holder already (and remind me which version it was)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 18, 2014, 07:51:40 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 18, 2014, 06:42:00 am

So by how many times has DF2014's dev cycle beaten the previous record holder already (and remind me which version it was)?

By 23 days this version beats the development cycle between 0.28.181.40d and 0.31.01.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 18, 2014, 07:55:12 am

I shudder to imagine how large the devcycles are going to be in the future.
At the same time, the new versions will provide even more fun/!FUN! stuff (case in point: DF2014) so the waiting times should be less noticeable in the long run. :V

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 18, 2014, 08:44:36 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 18, 2014, 07:55:12 am

I shudder to imagine how large the devcycles are going to be in the future.
At the same time, the new versions will provide even more fun/!FUN! stuff (case in point: DF2014) so the waiting times should be less noticeable in the long run. :V

I think that when enough of the frameworks are in place development will be faster. But it is only a guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ozyma on January 18, 2014, 01:53:53 pm

I play DF for the story the world tells (and they can be really amazing) but legends mode is nearly unusable and obfuscates everything. Will there be any changes to legends mode in this or further releases? to help the players get the information they want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on January 18, 2014, 02:17:37 pm

Quote from: ozyma on January 18, 2014, 01:53:53 pm

I play DF for the story the world tells (and they can be really amazing) but legends mode is nearly unusable and obfuscates everything. Will there be any changes to legends mode in this or further releases? to help the players get the information they want.

legends viewer is great for making legends actually readable.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72702.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72702.0)

As far as I know, no changes have been made this release, and there are no plans for it in any near future release

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 18, 2014, 05:12:55 pm

Ummm... sounds like Toady is suffering from cave adaptation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 18, 2014, 06:10:00 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 18, 2014, 05:12:55 pm

Ummm... sounds like Toady is suffering from cave adaptation.

Cave adaption and a nocturnal schedule.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 18, 2014, 09:11:11 pm

Quote from: ozyma on January 18, 2014, 01:53:53 pm

I play DF for the story the world tells (and they can be really amazing) but legends mode is nearly unusable and obfuscates everything. Will there be any changes to legends mode in this or further releases? to help the players get the information they want.

There's at least one change in the upcoming version:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-11-09

In the Nobility/Holdings map, which is a work-in-progress export from the legends view, you can currently see the location of dukes in red, counts in orange and barons in yellow, with the monarch in purple.

And all kinds of changes later on.  As with most of the game, Legends is a work-in-progress that's full of placeholders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on January 18, 2014, 11:55:58 pm

Oh my.  Each devlog entry drives me insane with how much I want to play the next version.  At the same time though, it is really nice to see Toady just "switching" features on which change the game in fundamental ways. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 19, 2014, 12:11:04 am

Oh man, jumping and climbing for NPCs.  I didn't expect that to make it in for this release.  Shit's gonna get real.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: crapabear on January 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on January 19, 2014, 12:31:43 am

How many styles of player-designed defense systems will become obsolete with this release?

The "Walls with no roof" design is definitely out.
The "Dodge-me" weapons over a big pit style trap may or may not still work.
Will the "goblin grinder" infinite speed 4x impulse ramp in a tight square still work? I doubt they'll be able to climb around that one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 19, 2014, 12:33:49 am

Quote from: crapabear on January 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

I'm 90% sure that you'll be able to embark on top of a demon site in Fort Mode, and play with any items therein.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on January 19, 2014, 12:44:02 am

Quote from: crapabear on January 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

"Ah, you have keen eyes, my friend! This is Oversharp the Five-Forged, wrought from the fire and brimstone of hell itself! Behold the sharpness of the edges -- no man nor dwarf could smith that! Examine the exquisite curves of the handle -- only wieldable by the five-handed lemur-fiends of the ancient tales, not seen by mortals in a thousand years! Now clearly, this magnificent weapon is priceless, but for you, my friend, I'm willing to let it go for a reasonable sum of gold, of which I'm willing to- "

"We ain't got gold."

"...what?"

"See that big shiny mountain over there, the one we live in? All nickel. Whole way through. No gold."

"But the many cartfuls of barrels you've brought-"

"Full of roast quarry-cabbage. Me wife made 'em. Try one."

"...how much is there, exactly?"

"Enough to feed your entire kingdom for a month, I reckon'."

"Your offer is generous, my friend. Oversharp the Five-Forged is yours."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 19, 2014, 02:30:51 am

Climbing and jumping enemies in fort mode sound amazing... though I am a little concerned my marksdwarves might start climbing over fortifications to slap goblins in stead of going to get more ammunition.

I think having sufficiently tall walls will still deter attackers.  I don't remember if block-walls are more difficult to climb than rough ones, but that would be a start I suppose.  Also digging a trench and smoothing the inside stone would work.  I think in general this is going to remove a large portion of the "silly" defenses.  Getting an active military is going to be a lot more important.  Lots of exciting challenges to look forward to!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 19, 2014, 02:39:30 am

Now I can imagine people designing their fortress interiors in order to force dwarves to jump in their daily lives, to train strength and to cull the weak and slow down possible invaders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on January 19, 2014, 02:45:51 am

Quote from: Untelligent on January 19, 2014, 12:44:02 am

Quote from: crapabear on January 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

"Ah, you have keen eyes, my friend! This is Oversharp the Five-Forged, wrought from the fire and brimstone of hell itself! Behold the sharpness of the edges -- no man nor dwarf could smith that! Examine the exquisite curves of the handle -- only wieldable by the five-handed lemur-fiends of the ancient tales, not seen by mortals in a thousand years! Now clearly, this magnificent weapon is priceless, but for you, my friend, I'm willing to let it go for a reasonable sum of gold, of which I'm willing to- "

"I can give five cabbages for that. Six, at the most. There's not really a demand for those right now."

"But I..."

"Look at this. It's unweildly, and clearly rather tarnished. I'll have to call up an expert in eldritch weapons and see what they think"

(Later)

"I got three cabbages for that priceless artifact, what a bargain."

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rinin_Rus on January 19, 2014, 04:43:28 am

Will it be possible to jump from downward slope? Will walls upgraded with overhang be still unpassable? And which creatures (or parts of creatures) can jump and climb?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 19, 2014, 05:52:31 am

So, with the jumping of invaders, could this be a viable defense? :

CPCB

C-channel, P-pressure plate, B-bridge linked to pressure plate. If timed right, invaders should jump right onto a bridge that would - a.) fling them away, b.) open into a bottomless/water/magma-filled pool.
To be honest, I haven't played with pressure plates/DF/fort mode in a while, so...

Also,
Can a (non-player) creature jump a space then climb upwards a wall on the other side of the empty space? As in, jump over a channel then climb a rough wall.
I'm curious because it would affect the effectiveness of the above idea. Namely, if they can climb, then the magma has to be directly under the bridge, then again, they may smash into the wall from the force of the jump...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 19, 2014, 06:08:24 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 19, 2014, 05:52:31 am

Also,
Can a (non-player) creature jump a space then climb upwards a wall on the other side of the empty space? As in, jump over a channel then climb a rough wall.
I'm curious because it would affect the effectiveness of the above idea. Namely, if they can climb, then the magma has to be directly under the bridge, then again, they may smash into the wall from the force of the jump...

If I understand you correctly, I don't think so. You mean a configuration like GCW (Ground, Channel, Wall)? Toady said that they jump to walkable tile, and walls aren't walkable tiles.

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 19, 2014, 12:33:49 am

Quote from: crapabear on January 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

I'm 90% sure that you'll be able to embark on top of a demon site in Fort Mode, and play with any items therein.

I wouldn't expect it. The demon sites seem to be visible by default, and you can't embark on such sites, like towers. You can embark on lairs, caves, and camps, I think, the sites that aren't visible by default.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 19, 2014, 07:01:41 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 19, 2014, 06:08:24 am

Quote from: Wimopy on January 19, 2014, 05:52:31 am

Also,
Can a (non-player) creature jump a space then climb upwards a wall on the other side of the empty space? As in, jump over a channel then climb a rough wall.
I'm curious because it would affect the effectiveness of the above idea. Namely, if they can climb, then the magma has to be directly under the bridge, then again, they may smash into the wall from the force of the jump...

If I understand you correctly, I don't think so. You mean a configuration like GCW (Ground, Channel, Wall)? Toady said that they jump to walkable tile, and walls aren't walkable tiles.

Ah, true. That might have been a hurried question, still, say I retract the bridge that the invader saw as walkable, will they fall down a pit that was hidden by the bridge, or can they grab the side of said pit and climb up instead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 19, 2014, 09:39:33 am

Quote from: flabort on January 19, 2014, 12:31:43 am

How many styles of player-designed defense systems will become obsolete with this release?

The "Walls with no roof" design is definitely out.
The "Dodge-me" weapons over a big pit style trap may or may not still work.
Will the "goblin grinder" infinite speed 4x impulse ramp in a tight square still work? I doubt they'll be able to climb around that one.

He's not going to know all of the varieties of player defense networks, but yes it's going to upend many strategies, this is what !!!SCiENCE!!! is for :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on January 19, 2014, 09:59:34 am

Excellent. A part of me dreads the pathing issues that will come of this, but it's all worth it if it means the AI can finally overcome the 1 z level wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 19, 2014, 10:04:44 am

Quote from: Witty on January 19, 2014, 09:59:34 am

Excellent. A part of me dreads the pathing issues that will come of this, but it's all worth it if it means the AI can finally overcome the 1 z level wall.

And maybe dwarves can get themselves unstuck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on January 19, 2014, 10:16:57 am

I thought that player built walls were supposed to be harder to climb than natural walls. I can't quite remember.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 19, 2014, 10:36:10 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on January 19, 2014, 10:16:57 am

I thought that player built walls were supposed to be harder to climb than natural walls. I can't quite remember.

Yeah, smooth walls (such as built walls) are supposed to be harder to climb or not climbable at all. However, I thought there was something about material coming into play?

This is going to require plenty of science when the new version gets released since we don't know all of the details.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MasterMorality on January 19, 2014, 11:06:19 am

It'd be really cool if they could jump and grasp. Can you imagine how awesome it'd be for you to lay out this trap, drop some floor out from a charging goblin horde, and then have a Goblin weaponmaster/general/whatever grab the edge of a ledge as it's falling, climb up and then go nuts on your shocked military?

Fun!

But seriously, this is awesome even if they can't do that yet. Just the idea of enemies and dwarfs scaling walls and jumping gaps is great. I imagine, with the move and action split, that some truly epic moments can occur out of this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 19, 2014, 11:39:47 am

I think Toady should now just finish the long jumping and hanging goblins already. I'd like to see jumping over (lava-filled) moats.

Is there a chance that goblins will jump over a one-tile gap and fail, or does it always succeed?

If there is a chance of failure, we can ensure the goblins drop onto an active minecart track.

Are dwarves also going to jump over gaps to get to invaders?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 19, 2014, 11:46:46 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 19, 2014, 11:39:47 am

I think Toady should now just finish the long jumping and hanging goblins already. I'd like to see jumping over (lava-filled) moats.

Is there a chance that goblins will jump over a one-tile gap and fail, or does it always succeed?

If there is a chance of failure, we can ensure the goblins drop onto an active minecart track.

Are dwarves also going to jump over gaps to get to invaders?

The wording was "non-player" jumping and climbing. That includes your dwarves. They probably will jump and climb under other circumstances as well.

So you can really make your mines more abandoned looking if you want. Dwarves might be able to get out of more stupid situations too (Perhaps a newbie who has a dwarf stuck in a hole and can't get him out on his own will find an easier solution now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 19, 2014, 11:56:14 am

Dear Fearless Leader,

Now that noise is a potentially important factor in sneaking, will NPCs respond to the noises produced by fighting? For instance, if an adventurer is assassinating a hapless lord in his bedroom, will other NPCs come to help when they hear fighting sounds or the intended victim calling for help?

Also, will monarchs and law-givers that die post-worldgen be entombed/mummified during play? And, do you plan to eventually allow the practice of mummification (if it is a practice) during Fort mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 19, 2014, 12:04:00 pm

It would be nice if some creatures could jump further than one tile. Giant Cave Spiders, for example.

Thniking about it, I don't know how it could be done, but it would be still cooler if some creatures could hang on at the ceilings.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 19, 2014, 03:16:26 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 19, 2014, 12:04:00 pm

It would be nice if some creatures could jump further than one tile. Giant Cave Spiders, for example.

Thniking about it, I don't know how it could be done, but it would be still cooler if some creatures could hang on at the ceilings.

I'm sure it will happen eventually. There's all sorts of jumping related things in descriptions and such. Pond-grabbers, for example, are supposed to jump out and grab passerby; Giant Jumping Spiders, presumably, should jump a lot and well; etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 19, 2014, 05:15:15 pm

Quote from: thvaz on January 19, 2014, 12:04:00 pm

It would be nice if some creatures could jump further than one tile. Giant Cave Spiders, for example.

Thniking about it, I don't know how it could be done, but it would be still cooler if some creatures could hang on at the ceilings.

If that ever happens I'd hope there was some list of creatures/enemies your adventurer can see, as in Cataclysm.  I would not enjoy manually looking up 3 z levels every step whenever I'm in a large cavern underground, on the off chance that my adventurer sees a GCS on the ceiling.

And yes, I know there's the display of other z levels in adventure mode, but that only displays things right next to you.  So I think if you could see the GCS with that you'd already be in web range.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on January 19, 2014, 06:19:14 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 19, 2014, 11:39:47 am

I think Toady should now just finish the long jumping and hanging goblins already. I'd like to see jumping over (lava-filled) moats.

I tend to agree. Since a release is still many months away, this seems like a nice thing to just wrap up rather than leave unfinished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mastahcheese on January 19, 2014, 06:24:44 pm

Quote from: misko27 on January 19, 2014, 11:46:46 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 19, 2014, 11:39:47 am

I think Toady should now just finish the long jumping and hanging goblins already. I'd like to see jumping over (lava-filled) moats.

Is there a chance that goblins will jump over a one-tile gap and fail, or does it always succeed?

If there is a chance of failure, we can ensure the goblins drop onto an active minecart track.

Are dwarves also going to jump over gaps to get to invaders?

The wording was "non-player" jumping and climbing. That includes your dwarves. They probably will jump and climb under other circumstances as well.

So you can really make your mines more abandoned looking if you want. Dwarves might be able to get out of more stupid situations too (Perhaps a newbie who has a dwarf stuck in a hole and can't get him out on his own will find an easier solution now.

Oh god, if dwarves can climb themselves out of holes and off roofs now, then I can't wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 19, 2014, 09:07:17 pm

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 21, 2014, 08:59:38 am

Quote

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

And falling of magma, did you think about it ? :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 21, 2014, 10:07:18 am

Quote from: Inarius on January 21, 2014, 08:59:38 am

Quote

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

And falling of magma, did you think about it ? :)

I'm pretty sure it's hard to climb with melting arms, but I might be mistaken.

For the question: I'm guessing it's going to count as any waterfall, so it'll just flush people down. (It does that, right?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 21, 2014, 10:37:11 am

Quote from: Inarius on January 21, 2014, 08:59:38 am

Quote

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

And falling of magma, did you think about it ? :)

What about magma creatures and not-flying clowns...?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 21, 2014, 03:48:38 pm

It'll be interesting to find out how fast climbing is compared to other actions and it'll probably need to be tweaked and balanced over time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: balrogkernel on January 21, 2014, 06:52:28 pm

I can't wait for the jumping whales and carps.  Also fisherdwarves jumping into the swamps to grab turtles, and hopping right back out.  Stories of madness and mayhem while hunting with deers jumping, crashing, and falling into swamps while the dwarf runs and jumps through hazards.  Also can dogs please go through agility training?  It would be amazing. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DogsRNice on January 21, 2014, 08:25:21 pm

jumping steel forgotten beast...  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on January 22, 2014, 05:26:51 am

Quote from: Witty on January 18, 2014, 02:17:37 pm

Quote from: ozyma on January 18, 2014, 01:53:53 pm

...Will there be any changes to legends mode ... ?

legends viewer (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=72702) is great

What are the chances of suggestions such as an 'export all' option in legends mode, or enhancing the names of site maps and seasonal backups  being implemented - and is there anything that could make them more useful?  How does this kind of feedback compare to (eg) "please add minecarts!"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 22, 2014, 07:14:58 am

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on January 22, 2014, 05:26:51 am

On a similar note, I've started curating a list of low-effort non-gameplay enhancements (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=135487) - such as an 'export all' option in legends mode, or enhancing the names of site maps and seasonal backups.  It seems to have solid if low-key support. 

What are the chances of this kind of suggestion being implemented - and is there anything that could make them more useful?  How does this kind of feedback compare to (eg) "please add minecarts!"?

It is considered bad taste in this thread to suggest, ask for or promote specific suggestions. Besides that, it is difficult to know if something is "low-cost" without knowing the code.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 22, 2014, 07:58:06 am

Exactly what I was thinking, what might seem like an innocent suggestion could be a programming nigthmare, or at least big enough to be non-trivial and thus, something to be left for latter.

Perhaps you could rephrase that as simply non-gameplay enhancements, and even then some people might argue some things are not enhancements.. see, it's hard to please everyone.

Never mind I see you already done that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on January 22, 2014, 11:41:11 am

I'm, wondering if upper-body strength, number of limbs, length and articulation of said limbs, claws, ect, etc will be factors in climbing success/speed.
Are creature body plans and/attributes (cangrab, number of manipulators etc) factored into your current concept for (non-player) climbing?

Some sticky creatures, such as spiders, could possibly merrit a natural-climber or no-fall tag or something.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on January 22, 2014, 01:55:56 pm

And with a single devlog entry, everything we knew about fortress defence becomes worthless!

Except of course for minecart ballista cannons...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 22, 2014, 02:27:27 pm

And walls being invincible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 22, 2014, 02:36:13 pm

For now... and actually no.. now they can be climbed remember? He does says that only if you build them without certain preventions. I'm guessing an.. over.. thingy.. you know, that thing that is like a roof above the wall, to prevent people finish climbing all the way, for now...

Lucky for me, for immersion reasons I'm used to make the other walls on a T fashion, with fortifications both inwards and outwards as safe rails and patrols of crossbow dwarves at all times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 22, 2014, 03:13:37 pm

You could always make a moat+wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 22, 2014, 03:27:46 pm

I think he meant that they're indestructible. You can still just wall off your fort's mountain entrance and be perfectly safe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 22, 2014, 03:29:14 pm

I'm fairly sure he said fort mode climbing AI wouldn't be in this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 22, 2014, 03:32:56 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 22, 2014, 03:29:14 pm

I'm fairly sure he said fort mode climbing AI wouldn't be in this release.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-18

I mentioned in the last FotF reply that non-player climbing and jumping were still open questions and that I'd have to try them out before I knew how much we'd have this time around. That was today's project, and it looks we'll be having them both. This includes dwarf mode, so you might have to rethink certain defensive decisions you've been making. I haven't done anything with the strategic thinking of critters, but if they get within about 20 tiles of a target, they can formulate paths that include climbs and horizontal jumps through one air tile to a walkable tile, and they'll also use these forms of movement in limited non-combat situations. Longer jumps aren't yet possible for them, since it is harder to code running starts into the pathing routine, and they don't understand how to jump and then hang onto surface. It's a weakness you can exploit, but they still hop around and cause trouble enough to delight and entertain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 22, 2014, 03:46:05 pm

This is the kind of information I wished I didn't know. It would be amazing to be surprised by climbing critters without expecting them!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 22, 2014, 03:49:39 pm

Come on guys, aren't smooth (constructed) walls supposed to be unclimbable? Or at the very least much more difficult to climb?

Defenses will probably start resembling real world defenses more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 22, 2014, 03:57:17 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 22, 2014, 03:49:39 pm

Come on guys, aren't smooth (constructed) walls supposed to be unclimbable? Or at the very least much more difficult to climb?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-08-04

things like constructed block walls are harder to climb than constructed rough walls (smoothed natural walls can't be climbed at all, at least while we are still dealing with tool-less people)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 22, 2014, 04:14:18 pm

I think this will create a new and highly effective placement of rockfall traps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 22, 2014, 04:35:08 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 22, 2014, 04:14:18 pm

I think this will create a new and highly effective placement of rockfall traps.

Or maybe just minecart defenses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on January 22, 2014, 04:52:58 pm

In a retired fortresses, will caged creatures remain where they where?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 22, 2014, 08:33:42 pm

Quote from: metime00 on January 22, 2014, 03:27:46 pm

I think he meant that they're indestructible. You can still just wall off your fort's mountain entrance and be perfectly safe.

I know, but you can't completely rely on them for your security anymore. At least not with simple design.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 22, 2014, 08:59:35 pm

Unless, you know, the wall goes up to the ceiling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 22, 2014, 10:19:08 pm

I'm hoping water will wash invaders off walls. Build a really high wall, let enemies climb over to the inside, then wash them off and collect the rain of goblinite!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on January 22, 2014, 10:38:19 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 22, 2014, 10:19:08 pm

I'm hoping water will wash invaders off walls. Build a really high wall, let enemies climb over to the inside, then wash them off and collect the rain of goblinite!

Considering they don't fall earlier from climbing the demanding, several z-level high wall. Also arrowslits/fortifications here and there scattered through the wall, forced routes and non climbable strongholds carved within the mountain. More reasons to be a dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Caldfir on January 23, 2014, 01:00:15 am

Quote from: Vattic on January 19, 2014, 09:07:17 pm

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

Remember: if something is worth doing, it's worth doing with magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 23, 2014, 07:18:31 am

Took the words out of my mouth..

Now castle/fortress design gets more interesting

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: evilman222 on January 23, 2014, 09:40:08 am

Is DF2014 actually in development, or are you just playing a sick (yet dorfish) game with us? :P

On a more serious note,

Will the ability to send out armies from your fort make it into this release? If so, how will it be handled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 23, 2014, 09:45:31 am

Quote from: evilman222 on January 23, 2014, 09:40:08 am

Is DF2014 actually in development, or are you just playing a sick (yet dorfish) game with us? :P

No.

Quote from: evilman222 on January 23, 2014, 09:40:08 am

Will the ability to send out armies from your fort make it into this release? If so, how will it be handled?

And not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cybergon on January 23, 2014, 09:55:27 am

What's the rewrite you dread the most? I mean that one part of the code you know you have to completely change sooner or later but wish you didn't have to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 23, 2014, 09:58:04 am

Quote from: Broken on January 22, 2014, 04:52:58 pm

In a retired fortresses, will caged creatures remain where they where?

It's reasonable to assume that they will, but yeah good question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on January 23, 2014, 04:18:21 pm

People, you are missing the obvious!

I bet one of the choisiest passive defences would be an overhang.

Try to climb over this, axis is xz or yz:

Code: [Select]

..._____..
..._   _..
....| |...
....| |...
----------


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TalonisWolf on January 23, 2014, 04:36:18 pm

I figure that all units can climb/jump up, however, can they climb/jump back down?

 The way pathing works, what may actually end up happening is goblins climb up and get stuck up there for your dwarves (preferably behind fortifications) to pick off, or for weapon traps to trick them into dodging off wall and falling (into magma, if possible).


Also,


Will dwarves be able to jump out of minecarts or through fire?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 23, 2014, 05:14:03 pm

Quote from: Kappas on January 23, 2014, 04:18:21 pm

People, you are missing the obvious!

I bet one of the choisiest passive defences would be an overhang.

Try to climb over this, axis is xz or yz:

Code: [Select]

..._____..
..._   _..
....| |...
....| |...
----------


We've already mentioned overhangs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 23, 2014, 10:36:29 pm

I just called them overthingies or something two pages ago..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 24, 2014, 01:20:27 am

That might not actually work, given that flying creatures can already slip through diagonal joints. The invaders might squeeze themselves up "between" the overhanging joint and wall and onto the walkable floor on top of the wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 24, 2014, 01:27:46 am

Flyers can only slip between horizontal diagonals, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on January 24, 2014, 08:21:45 am

You can always thicken up the wall, though. It's kind of recommended due to building destroyers anyways, or until you're able to pump up magma to the surface so you can improve the effectiveness of your (magma-safe) defensive walls with lavafalls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 08:26:18 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 24, 2014, 08:21:45 am

You can always thicken up the wall, though. It's kind of recommended due to building destroyers anyways, or until you're able to pump up magma to the surface so you can improve the effectiveness of your (magma-safe) defensive walls with lavafalls.

Building destroyers can't do a thing about constructed walls yet. (Yet.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on January 24, 2014, 10:10:06 am

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 08:26:18 am

Building destroyers can't do a thing about constructed walls yet. (Yet.)

When they can, it will be time to upgrade your walls with a juicy magma filling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 10:14:45 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on January 24, 2014, 10:10:06 am

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 08:26:18 am

Building destroyers can't do a thing about constructed walls yet. (Yet.)

When they can, it will be time to upgrade your walls with a juicy magma filling.

A pressurized juicy magma filling. >:D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 24, 2014, 10:21:27 am

And so the fortress defense meta has shifted overnight...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 24, 2014, 12:27:30 pm

Will climbers be able to hang from the ceiling?

If they can, it would cause trouble with overhangs.

When invaders get grappling hooks, you will need to completely seal off an area, or build walls and fortifications up to the to z-level. Yes, you can build fortifications on the highest level.

How much of an effect does the new dwarven personality system have on the way they work i.e. item quality?

One reason for the lack of updates seems to be that Toady was in a video game conference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 24, 2014, 12:53:22 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 24, 2014, 12:27:30 pm

Will climbers be able to hang from the ceiling?

Toady already answered the last time you asked this:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote

Quote from: thvaz

We will have creatures like spiders climbing on the ceilings?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the inclusion of climbing, will invaders now be able to scale walls?

Will creatures be able to grapple a ceiling?

Will creatures be able to climb up and over raised drawbridges?

Quote from: Vattic

Will we be able to specify that some creatures can climb smooth and ice walls?

I haven't done super-climbers yet that can use smoother surfaces, but it'll have to go in sometime.  Climbing specifies the surface that is held, and this currently includes being able to hang in an air tile while you hold on to a tile above (like tree branches), so ceiling walking can use the floor/wall type above in the same way.  I haven't addressed buildings like raised drawbridges or doors.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 24, 2014, 12:59:33 pm

Ummm so maybe rough surfaces might enable entities to hang from them... quite the nightmare of arachnophobic players if you ask me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on January 24, 2014, 01:27:24 pm

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

I haven't addressed buildings like raised drawbridges or doors.

Seems like we can make climber-proof walls by surrounding them with raised drawbridges.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on January 24, 2014, 01:51:46 pm

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 10:14:45 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on January 24, 2014, 10:10:06 am

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 08:26:18 am

Building destroyers can't do a thing about constructed walls yet. (Yet.)

When they can, it will be time to upgrade your walls with a juicy magma filling.

A pressurized juicy magma filling. >:D

What about those building destroyers made of magma?  :-\

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 24, 2014, 01:54:11 pm

Quote from: Dazenith on January 24, 2014, 01:51:46 pm

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 10:14:45 am

Quote from: Osmosis Jones on January 24, 2014, 10:10:06 am

Quote from: Lielac on January 24, 2014, 08:26:18 am

Building destroyers can't do a thing about constructed walls yet. (Yet.)

When they can, it will be time to upgrade your walls with a juicy magma filling.

A pressurized juicy magma filling. >:D

What about those building destroyers made of magma?  :-\

Make an extra water filling behind the magma.
Duh.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 24, 2014, 03:24:42 pm

I remember an earlier discussion claiming that goblins should have some kind of invulnerable monster that can tunnel right through walls, magma, and water, so that players wouldn't use the "cheap" strategy of sealing their fort in an obsidian cube with water and magma envelopes around it. The conclusion we came to was that if someone can engineer such a thing, they deserve their invincible fort. Invincible right up until someone fails a strange mood, that is.

Anyway, even with climbing, walls should pose some obstacle rather than merely adding distance. It's hardly realistic to expect armored troops to come swarming up over the ramparts, else why bother building the ramparts, and why bother bringing siege engines to breach them? Will people in armor climb slower/get tired faster than unarmored climbers? How fast do creatures climb in general, compared to walking up stairs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 24, 2014, 04:39:47 pm

I mean the more basic issue is that if you were to surround yourself in an obsidian cube in real life, you'd die due to conservation of matter.  You can't create more food or water or air, so you WANT access to the outside world in RL.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 24, 2014, 04:50:49 pm

Well, IRL, with sufficiently advanced life-support, you can continue to recycle the same materials as long as you have an influx of energy to keep the recycling processes going.

As we're dealing with quasi-medieval technology, though, this legendary cube of dwarven engineering would probably have some complex opening mechanism that allows stuff to get in and out, which would be shut during siege. Or perhaps shut at all times, and only opened to refill the stockpiles when necessary. The point being that something like it requires a lot of effort and cleverness to build, and thus isn't a "cheap" strategy that requires the enemy get an automatic counter to for "balance". It doesn't need additional weaknesses, and doesn't make the defenders utterly invincible as destruction from within still remains possible (failed moods, tantrum spirals, and in future releases, disease and starvation.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 24, 2014, 05:16:57 pm

Yeah, I see that.  However, I also don't think 100% defense should ever be possible, barring maybe bizarre magic.  It should be a matter of resource conflict.  For example even with the super-cube on your side, it should be possible to starve you out if the attackers are determined enough.

All of which is sort of moot now, since we're a third of the way through alpha.  I'm hoping we'll see this kind of balance eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 24, 2014, 05:41:49 pm

Actually we don't know how far into alpha we are in, seeing as 1.00 would merely serve as an indicator of "100 core items implemented", rather than "All features are implemented", IIRC.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on January 24, 2014, 05:45:35 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 24, 2014, 05:41:49 pm

Actually we don't know how far into alpha we are in, seeing as 1.00 would merely serve as an indicator of "100 core items implemented", rather than "All features are implemented", IIRC.

IIRC toady changed the version numbering so that the number was just a rough percentage of cores completed (rather than the actual number of cores completed) when he shortened up the version numbers.

So yeah, version 34 would mean more or less a third of the way there (and I imagine DF2014 will be a bit higher).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on January 24, 2014, 06:02:14 pm

Do caravans still bring barrels of blood & ichor? What is the intention for those anyways - Blood sausage/black pudding production in butcheries or kitchens?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 24, 2014, 06:06:29 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 24, 2014, 06:02:14 pm

Do caravans still bring barrels of blood & ichor? What is the intention for those anyways - Blood sausage/black pudding production in butcheries or kitchens?

It's for the vampires, I suppose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 24, 2014, 06:37:21 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 24, 2014, 05:41:49 pm

Actually we don't know how far into alpha we are in, seeing as 1.00 would merely serve as an indicator of "100 core items implemented", rather than "All features are implemented", IIRC.

"All core features completed" means "alpha done".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on January 24, 2014, 06:42:30 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 24, 2014, 06:06:29 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on January 24, 2014, 06:02:14 pm

Do caravans still bring barrels of blood & ichor? What is the intention for those anyways - Blood sausage/black pudding production in butcheries or kitchens?

It's for the vampires, I suppose.

As strange as barrels of blood being a popular commodity is, traders pandering to the needs of vampires in a world where vampires are seen as blood-thirsty, night-stalking monsters who need to be exterminated would be even stranger. Vampires don't drink blood that doesn't come straight from a neck anyway, so the barrels of blood and ichor are useless at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 24, 2014, 07:43:46 pm

I think its the way DF processes things.  The game doesn't divide materials into useless and useful, it just knows which materials a civ has access to.

Kind of like how towns get filled with bone crafts because the civs have bone, not because bone crafts serve a purpose.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 24, 2014, 08:43:38 pm

Oh man, now we're really going to have to pay attention to who we put in the militia. They could just be a waste of resources to arm them for nothing when it gets down to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 24, 2014, 08:56:16 pm

Cowards need not apply!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 24, 2014, 09:10:53 pm

It's going to make all those dehumanizing supersoldier programs even more useful, just for the mental toughness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 24, 2014, 11:36:03 pm

This is just soooo awesome. Finally starting to see some more direct personality derived behaviour :D

How does it determine that a soldier runs away rather than fights? Is there some kind of will check involved, that can be overcome based on other stats or just plain luck? Will it matter what kind of creature a dwarf is confronted with, for example facing a creature he detests or a megabeast vs an animal?

Quote

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on January 25, 2014, 12:02:02 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 24, 2014, 11:36:03 pm

This is just soooo awesome. Finally starting to see some more direct personality derived behaviour :D

How does it determine that a soldier runs away rather than fights? Is there some kind of will check involved, that can be overcome based on other stats or just plain luck? Will it matter what kind of creature a dwarf is confronted with, for example facing a creature he detests or a megabeast vs an animal?

Quote

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

In the most recent DF Talk on combat there was some prolonged discussion about yielding and running, where size of the enemy force is definitely taken into account.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on January 25, 2014, 12:14:36 am

*snicker*
that's awesome. So in that dwarf's mind, the force was far larger than him. Of course, his buddy just said, "chill, dude, it's a snake. Look, it's dead, I killed it. You can come down now."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2014, 12:49:46 am

Quote from: metime00 on January 25, 2014, 12:02:02 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 24, 2014, 11:36:03 pm

This is just soooo awesome. Finally starting to see some more direct personality derived behaviour :D

How does it determine that a soldier runs away rather than fights? Is there some kind of will check involved, that can be overcome based on other stats or just plain luck? Will it matter what kind of creature a dwarf is confronted with, for example facing a creature he detests or a megabeast vs an animal?

Quote

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

In the most recent DF Talk on combat there was some prolonged discussion about yielding and running, where size of the enemy force is definitely taken into account.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Rainseeker:    Now, if you've broken his wrist, is he gonna stop fighting?
Toady:    This is, (laughter) the new part about, way early on when we were doing the bandit occupations of town we added all this stuff from non lethal combat about yielding, and all that. And that comes up even in the arena now! I think I might end up changing that so you can have a setting on the arena about, is this no quarter fighting? or is this non-lethal? ‘Cause, ‘cause right now in the arena if you set ten people on ten people and then just say three or so on one side dies, then that side will just all stop and scream ‘I yield, I yield' and the other side will stop fighting too and just stand over them with their swords and that'll be the end of the arena fight. And there are some other funny bugs happening now, like if you take three people in the arena that are all sorta on the independent side so everybody's fighting everybody they all just run away, they're all like ‘I'm not fighting two guys!'. (laughter) Everyone runs away.

There are, there are issues and problems from the new yielding code right now, but I'll probably just have an option in the arena to set what level of intensity you want, so then you can set up like a bar fight in the arena or something. You can also set up mounts in the arena now, ‘cause I have, thats another thing about the move/combat speed split stuff, it counts your current momentum in the attack, as long as your momentum - your velocity vector or whatever, is pointing toward the guy and the guy is either not moving or not moving away faster from you so that there is actual motion toward the other person. And if a person is running at you, you actually get the same bonus. So as long as there's relative motion, that's at least ninety degrees. So it could be perpendicular motion, or motion toward the person, then you get a bonus to your swing speed that's in line with how fast you're moving, so, and it also takes into account the speed of anything you're riding.

Now this doesn't mean I've added in adventure mode mounts yet - there's probably some bug in the arena when you control a mounted adventurer or whatever but it's something we're, I don't know how far I'm gonna get with that but it's fun to, it was fun to control the mount. I created a horse with a person riding it and then another horse with a person riding it and then took control of one of the horses and then just kind of rode around and tried to get my person the best gallop I could to dismount the other person or whatever. It'd be a fun game by itself I guess, it's like controlling the horse. So that'll all be interesting when we get that done and it is probably going to be something that causes adventure mode mounts to happen sooner rather than later, but I'm trying not to add anything else this release because it's getting long in the tooth.

...

Rainseeker:    Right. So now if you're, speaking of a psychological angle, if you're fighting a, say you're fighting a group of goblins or ‘evil creatures', if you kill a couple of them will they split up and run, or realise you're better than they, or..
Toady:    Yes. Yeah, yeah. People are endowed with slightly more sense now. And..
Rainseeker:    Are there creatures that don't?
Toady:    Are there creatures that don't? This is one of the easy to fix bugs that's also in the arena right now. When I was playing an aardvark, I was fighting another aardvark, and the aardvark yielded to me. So I'm sure it's something that I wrote down, 'cause there are a bunch of bugs, I'm pretty sure that that was written down way back months ago and that was just one of those things I was going to go handle during cleanup, but yeah there are going to be things that don't give up. The dead likely aren't going to yield and run away, uh, animals..
Capntastic:    Zombie yield, zombie yield!
Toady:    (laughter) Animals will probably be able to run away but they aren't gonna talk about it too much. And then people will, there's already a personality component to this. So some people yield more easily than others. Then there's also, when people get enraged there's that whole sort of rage thing, that, there's aside from the yield effects there's also the, if you become enraged, or a dwarf or whatever becomes enraged. Or a badger as often happens becomes enraged, then it only lets them throw wild attacks. So it's not a, it's a less advantageous state than it was previously and yeah. So it's, but you don't want to be hit by one of those either. It's still better to be more talented or just to stay away. Stay away from something that's angry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 25, 2014, 01:06:21 am

As informative as all that is it sadly doesn't really answer either of the 2 questions. Not that it really matters that much, I'm sure it'll make it in later on either way. would be nice to know though ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 25, 2014, 01:18:08 am

Quote

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

Rofl on that!

I guess the tree pathfinding is fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 25, 2014, 01:22:28 am

It'll be interesting to see how many new players that will attribute this to some sort of bug, not knowing that DF actually simulates things at this level :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on January 25, 2014, 01:22:54 am

So, Manveru, may I take the liberty of breaking up your questions?
Does a dwarf take whether he detests or has a phobia of a certain creature type into account when yielding or running away?

Does a dwarf take the size and/or rarity of a foe into account?

Does he take allies he may have with him into account? What if they are part of his squad, but half the map away en route at the moment?

And how does he actually take it all into account? Are two sets of variables added up and compared, or is there more to it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2014, 01:26:24 am

3 is a yes, I'm pretty sure, at least for the first part.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on January 25, 2014, 01:28:16 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 25, 2014, 01:06:21 am

As informative as all that is it sadly doesn't really answer either of the 2 questions. Not that it really matters that much, I'm sure it'll make it in later on either way. would be nice to know though ^^

I believe the main factor on a dwarf by dwarf basis is personality traits, which have been redone for this release.  If you go to a dwarf's info in fort mode it will tell you they "doesn't like people, get frustrated easily" that kind of thing, I believe now it will also tell you how well they handle fear.

Quote from: flabort on January 25, 2014, 01:22:54 am

So, Manveru, may I take the liberty of breaking up your questions?
Does a dwarf take whether he detests or has a phobia of a certain creature type into account when yielding or running away?

Does a dwarf take the size and/or rarity of a foe into account?

Does he take allies he may have with him into account? What if they are part of his squad, but half the map away en route at the moment?

And how does he actually take it all into account? Are two sets of variables added up and compared, or is there more to it?

1. No idea
2. Rarity isn't tracked currently, size almost certainly will be accounted for but I don't remember it ever being confirmed
3. Yes, the size of the two opposed factions are taken into account
4.  Its likely comparing all the variables and then doing a random roll, same as normal.  But Toady hasn't talked about specifics on this one yet either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 25, 2014, 01:36:29 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on January 25, 2014, 01:28:16 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on January 25, 2014, 01:06:21 am

As informative as all that is it sadly doesn't really answer either of the 2 questions. Not that it really matters that much, I'm sure it'll make it in later on either way. would be nice to know though ^^

I believe the main factor on a dwarf by dwarf basis is personality traits, which have been redone for this release.  If you go to a dwarf's info in fort mode it will tell you they "doesn't like people, get frustrated easily" that kind of thing, I believe now it will also tell you how well they handle fear.

Well yeah, I get that the personality traits will be the major deciding factor, I was rather inquiring a bit more into how/if they'd synergy with the rest of his personality for now, and whether there's any kind of "roll" or randomness influencing the outcome ^^

Quote from: flabort on January 25, 2014, 01:22:54 am

So, Manveru, may I take the liberty of breaking up your questions?
snip

No problem at all. Like EnigmaticHat mentioned though, the first part of your third question was answered in the DFtalk quote a few posts back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 25, 2014, 04:50:54 am

Now, I can imagine two reactions when encountering a creature the soldier has a phobia of; either he panics and runs away or panics and attacks wildly, with little thought of self-defence.

Is it possible for a dwarf to panic and fight in that state, or will running always be the chosen option when broken by fear?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cybergon on January 25, 2014, 06:52:45 am

I'm not sure if someone asked this before, but just in case.
When escalating combat from non-lethal to lethal, will both creatures simultaneously escalate combat or do they do this independently of what their opponent is trying to do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 25, 2014, 04:39:40 pm

Quote

01/24/2014  The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

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I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift.

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I'll stay on a day schedule

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day schedule

Is this a sign of the apocalypse? The release is nigh!

While you are working fixing the bugs from the personality rewrite and AI changes, have you implemented improvements to the military (besides climbing) or not yet? Are we now less likely to have trouble getting soldiers to shoot through fortifications?

It would be great if the apparently-necessary pre-release A.I. fixes fixed that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2014, 04:47:05 pm

Haven't heard anything about military improvements; all he's doing right now is fixing stuff related to the dwarven soul overhaul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Edmus on January 25, 2014, 05:36:16 pm

That dwarf sounds like Samwell Tarley.
Considering this development will Dwarven soldiers prone to fear run away when they start to lose friends to goblins? and visa-versa?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on January 25, 2014, 05:42:08 pm

Samwell Tarly wouldn't have run up a tree; he would have pissed his pants and fallen to the floor, shivering and waiting to die. That, or he would have driven a knife through the adder's neck like a badass. I don't think Sam is capable of climbing trees under any conditions anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 25, 2014, 05:43:39 pm

Quote from: Edmus on January 25, 2014, 05:36:16 pm

Considering this development will Dwarven soldiers prone to fear run away when they start to lose friends to goblins? and visa-versa?

Yes. This was one of the first examples ever given of yielding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 25, 2014, 07:56:40 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 25, 2014, 04:39:40 pm

Quote

01/24/2014  The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it. I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift. Today I cleaned up some dwarf mode problems with their generally broken minds. A soldier failed to move when confronted with a kill-ordered adder through a series of bug fixes, and when I finally got some movement, he ran away and climbed up a tree. He has "great difficulty mastering his fear when confronted with danger", so I guess that wasn't a bug, although he didn't seem to be afraid of heights at all. His friends on the squad managed to take care of the snake.

Quote

I guess I'll stay on a day schedule until I drift.

Quote

I'll stay on a day schedule

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day schedule

Is this a sign of the apocalypse? The release is nigh!

While you are working fixing the bugs from the personality rewrite and AI changes, have you implemented improvements to the military (besides climbing) or not yet? Are we now less likely to have trouble getting soldiers to shoot through fortifications?

It would be great if the apparently-necessary pre-release A.I. fixes fixed that.

I don't think so, on any count. For one, I've heard chatter about the update being "in the next few days" for several weeks now; skepticism is now at maximum speed. I don't think there is any improvements regarding military AI, unless he prevents them from scaling their own walls and attacking the enemy (which, according to release notes, could well happen often if you don't have two-tile high fortifications or a ditch in front or something).

This is just bug-fixing. Bug fixing is extensive. He is still adding things too, like the decision to add climbing recently.

It opens other questions though.So a dwarf ran up a tree, does that mean one of the situations in which they climb includes running away? Will civilians do that too? When will they decide it's safe?

EDIT:Devlog:

Quote from: 01/25/2014 Toady One

I continued on to clean up various dwarf mode issues today. Updated how animals think of their encounters (there will be animal-animal interactions now in dwarf mode, however that'll work out), updated meandering, updated sleeping/resting, updated some of the dig/channel/construct ai (just to get it back where it was, such as that is), fixed up vehicle collisions, and a projectile issue. I also updated the quarry leaf jobs to support growths -- a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material, so a single reaction can produce different item types depending on the incoming reagent's material. I'm not sure how useful that is overall, but it could cut down on some clutter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 26, 2014, 12:27:16 am

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a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material,

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 26, 2014, 12:36:22 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 26, 2014, 12:27:16 am

Quote

a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material,

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

First thing I thought when I saw that was "I bet Putnam will be happy."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 26, 2014, 12:37:05 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 26, 2014, 12:27:16 am

Quote

a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material,

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

...? Explain to me this ecstatic reaction, I cannot parse what Toady is saying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 26, 2014, 12:42:33 am

A reaction that can take a generic plant as a material and output the correct item+material each time automatically, making farming micromanagement dead? Yes.

A reaction that generates an "optimized" weapon for each material, such as always outputting a hammer for silver or a sword for adamantine? Yep.

These are just things I can think of off the top of my head.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on January 26, 2014, 12:48:06 am

Quote from: Putnam on January 26, 2014, 12:42:33 am

A reaction that can take a generic plant as a material and output the correct item+material each time automatically, making farming micromanagement dead? Yes.

A reaction that generates an "optimized" weapon for each material, such as always outputting a hammer for silver or a sword for adamantine? Yep.

These are just things I can think of off the top of my head.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I get the optimized weapon thing, but what's special about the farming stuff? The farthest I've usually delved into that stuff is pig tail/rope reed production for clothing and sometimes even remembering to process quarry bushes to bags.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on January 26, 2014, 04:06:49 am

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Updated how animals think of their encounters (there will be animal-animal interactions now in dwarf mode, however that'll work out), updated meandering, updated sleeping/resting

Does that include breeding thus are the Spores gone for the Forts own animals? Will Males be aggressive to other Males say if you have territorial Animals? Hunter/prey relationships? Will pets be begging for food? Will cats knock over dwarven Keyboards?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 26, 2014, 05:41:59 am

Quote from: Heph on January 26, 2014, 04:06:49 am

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Updated how animals think of their encounters (there will be animal-animal interactions now in dwarf mode, however that'll work out), updated meandering, updated sleeping/resting

Does that include breeding thus are the Spores gone for the Forts own animals? Will Males be aggressive to other Males say if you have territorial Animals? Hunter/prey relationships? Will pets be begging for food? Will cats knock over dwarven Keyboards?

Will we need to start a nobles cattle raising program in order to keep our local War Grizly Bear community fed? In other words, are carnivores going to actually need to keep themselves fed up appropriately just like grazers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 26, 2014, 06:08:44 am

Thinking about encounters is neither breeding nor getting hungry. That's reading far too much into that sentence. Presumably wild predators will attack nonpredator animals, who will flee from the predators, but don't expect elaborate food webs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 26, 2014, 06:10:30 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 26, 2014, 06:08:44 am

Thinking about encounters is neither breeding nor getting hungry. That's reading far too much into that sentence. Presumably wild predators will attack nonpredator animals, who will flee from the predators, but don't expect elaborate food webs.

Given this is Toady we're talking about, the next version might as well called Spore+1.
With, hopefully, 100% less spore-breeding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on January 26, 2014, 06:35:06 am

While all that is doubtlessly planned I doubt Toady would put off the release further by even more feature creep like that. Sure, making all animals require food should technically be an easy change, but since he hasn't enabled it thus far I assume there's a good reason. Proper mating would probably take a bit more work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on January 26, 2014, 06:53:11 am

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(there will be animal-animal interactions now in dwarf mode, however that'll work out)

AW YESSS. Baby steps.

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 26, 2014, 06:08:44 am

Thinking about encounters is neither breeding nor getting hungry. That's reading far too much into that sentence. Presumably wild predators will attack nonpredator animals, who will flee from the predators, but don't expect elaborate food webs.

Yeah, I agree, I doubt that it will be more than that. Though  that could possibly to a bit more interesting gameplay already. You might have to control predator populations a bit more active to secure your own game, or corral animals in some way. Well, that's wrong, you can corral them already with pastures. But build some defense for jumping/climbing predators.

Edit:

Will these animal-animal encounters be both in adventure mode and fortress mode? Would predators now enter adventure mode cities and prey on livestock?

That would be kind of a nice little beginner quest. "Hero! We're plagued by a fox! Slay him!" And it could sometimes turn out that it's not a fox that kills all these hens but actually some sort of night creature or a reluctant vampire. You might even be able to let the vampire live, because he doesn't prey on humanoids or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 26, 2014, 12:48:20 pm

Quote from: CLA on January 26, 2014, 06:53:11 am

That would be kind of a nice little beginner quest. "Hero! We're plagued by a fox! Slay him!" And it could sometimes turn out that it's not a fox that kills all these hens but actually some sort of night creature or a reluctant vampire. You might even be able to let the vampire live, because he doesn't prey on humanoids or whatever.

"If you seek to prove yourself, we are in dire need of assistance. At night, something feeds on our livestock. Find the culprit or culprits, and slay them, lest we run out of food!"

And then you have to go to the animal pens at night and wait to see what attacks. It could be a fox, a pack of wolves, a goblin scout party, night creature or werebeast, or hell, even a megabeast. Or simply a peasant with anger management issues (which, with the new personalities, is actually possible, I'd guess.)

Now, this could turn out to be a very easy peasant-level quest or a suicidal mission, depending on the culprit. Fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on January 26, 2014, 01:06:05 pm

@Wimopy
Yeah! That's exactly what I had in mind.
Edit:
And it even works nicely together with the new stealth and footprint tracking mechanics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 26, 2014, 11:31:42 pm

New Devlog. I'm imagining a hunter, a fox and two rabbits; all just standing still staring at each other, trying to mentally decide who is on whose side.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 27, 2014, 09:33:42 am

Quote from: devlog

Merged the in-play morale calculations with the world gen combat info so that they can assist each other and be encouraged to continue to simultaneously make more sense over time.

I guess this means that combatants can use the simplified combat system to make a quick educated guess about whether they'll win?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 27, 2014, 09:37:43 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 27, 2014, 09:33:42 am

Quote from: devlog

Merged the in-play morale calculations with the world gen combat info so that they can assist each other and be encouraged to continue to simultaneously make more sense over time.

I guess this means that combatants can use the simplified combat system to make a quick educated guess about whether they'll win?

Maybe it is both ways? So we won't have a elf farmer dueling a dragon in world gen.

Toady, could you clarify that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 10:09:12 am

Predator prey interactions, neat, also more bug fixing, we're getting there.

 Since there only seem to be two native herbivores in the caverns (at least that are explictly said to be herbivores, if not in the raws) and everything else seems to be either carnivorous or omnivorous, I'm wondering how you will deal with omnivore vs omnivore interactions?

Also, would it be possible for a pack of crundles (which are carnivores btw) to hunt together and attack a Rutherer or Draltha? Basically, will we see pack hunting behavior in this version even if it's an emergent behavior?

I know we see pack behavior already in the form of a pack of dingoes or wolves attacking an adventurer, but I'm talking in the context of predator-prey interactions.

Crundles are smaller than a dwarf and Drunians and Rutherers are around Rhino sized, so a lone crundle would be flattened, but a pack of them could certainly do damage, think utahraptors vs sauropods.

Edit: corrected the dromaeosaurid species.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 27, 2014, 01:14:11 pm

Velociraptors were actually pretty small, about 15kg (the same mass as a large housecat). There is no evidence to show they ever tried to kill anything rhino sized. A better analogy would be wolves taking down bison and bull moose, though the size difference there is much less. If you're just so small, no amount of numbers will make a difference, since fitting enough muscle, teeth, and claws to do the job requires a larger frame. I could see crundles taking down elk birds (also herbivores btw), troglodytes, and anything approximately man-sized or smaller, but not dralthas or rutherers. There are plenty of cavern creatures man-sized or smaller for them to eat, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 27, 2014, 01:37:28 pm

I think crundles could be scavengers instead of predators, giving their size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 27, 2014, 01:41:14 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 27, 2014, 01:14:11 pm

Velociraptors were actually pretty small, about 15kg (the same mass as a large housecat).

15 pounds is a large housecat.  15 kilograms is more like a German shepherd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 27, 2014, 02:18:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 27, 2014, 01:41:14 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 27, 2014, 01:14:11 pm

Velociraptors were actually pretty small, about 15kg (the same mass as a large housecat).

15 pounds is a large housecat.  15 kilograms is more like a German shepherd.

Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Shepherd

German Shepherds are large sized dogs. The breed standard height at the withers is 60–65 cm (24–26 in) for males and 55–60 cm (22–24 in) for females. The weight standard is 30–40 kilograms (66–88 lb) for males and 22–32 kilograms (49–71 lb) for females.

Though you are correct about the cat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 27, 2014, 02:20:48 pm

Okay, a German shepherd puppy, same thing right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 02:27:24 pm

I wasn't sure whether elk birds were herbivorous or omnivorous as it doesn't really say.

As for the velociraptors, I was mixing the larger utahraptors (which are man sized btw) with their smaller cousins and yeah wolves are a better example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on January 27, 2014, 02:30:16 pm

Waving human for scale:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Dromie_scale.png)

I did not know they got so big o.o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 02:38:33 pm

Yea, I actually was thinking of the utahraptors but said velociraptor for whatever reason. I edited my post from earlier so that it makes better sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 27, 2014, 02:55:45 pm

Ummm... which makes me wonder if anyone has tried a Jurassic Park mod...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 03:01:45 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 27, 2014, 02:55:45 pm

Ummm... which makes me wonder if anyone has tried a Jurassic Park mod...

I know there is one person who was/is modding in all kinds of dinosaurs.

Edit: thread linkage, still active even. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123137.0

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 27, 2014, 03:22:50 pm

Point being, though, that crundles are just tiny. Try pitting 15 of them at once (on the same team) against a Draltha in the Arena. The draltha stomps each and every one of them because the size difference is just too great. Far more-so than wolves and bison, or wolves and grizzly bears (they do eat them sometimes).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 03:52:56 pm

I wasn't really sure just how small the crundles were though and their large groups made me think  of packs and thus my question about pack hunting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 27, 2014, 03:54:29 pm

Agree with the undercover Huge Jackman here, they would need to hunt in swarms, not packs to hunt down anything larger than an animal man from the caves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 27, 2014, 03:57:50 pm

Everybody understands what I was trying to ask though, right? Even if my example doesn't make much sense and I was thinking of the caverns at that moment and crundles were the first thing to come to mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 27, 2014, 04:47:18 pm

Yeah, I understood it, I think. I don't think Toady is explicitly planning to make social predators hunt together as a pack, though, since he hasn't mentioned it AFAIK. Seeing it as "emergent behavior" wherein a few individuals target the same prey item and give chase, who are then chased by the remainder of the members of the group because they want to stick together is entirely possible. That sort of behavior already occurs in goblin squads where the leader seeks out a target and the rest of the squad clusters around the leader.

Troglodytes are probably a good example of pack hunters in the caverns. They certainly love to invade your fortress and murder your dwarves in packs :P

Cave crawlers, jabberers, green devourers, and maybe really ambitious giant cave spiders are probably more likely candidates for predators of animals like rutherers. At least, my memory tells me those are all fairly hefty carnivores/omnivores.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 27, 2014, 07:56:45 pm

GCS probably eats nearly everything in the caverns that doesn't have supernatural powers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 27, 2014, 08:25:53 pm

Yes I understood too.. perhaps it was just a poor example, but a valid one nevertheless. But as Eric point out, Toady hasn't said anything about that kind of behavior specifically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Just Some Guy on January 27, 2014, 08:32:45 pm

A hypothetical that just crossed my mind.


Fifty twenty year old dwarves, twenty five male and twenty five female, are put locked in a chamber within the magma sea with seeds, picks, axes, booze, and other necessities and through the clever use of syndromes put in stasis for a hundred years. Once the chamber has been sealed and the inhabitants put into hibernation, all entrances to the fort are closed off and the dwarves not lucky enough to be chosen for the experiment are killed, either through magma or another syndrome. Also inside the chamber is a lever that will open a passage between the chamber and the rest of the fort, for use after the syndrome takes its course. The fort is then retired.

The fort is reclaimed a year or two before the dwarves in the chamber wake up. When they pull the lever and enter into the actual fort, what will they see? What about outside the fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on January 27, 2014, 08:52:06 pm

I have no idea what to make of Just Some Guy's question, but it does remind me of something I've been wondering about recently.

In retired forts, do the various denizens of the fort respect pathing while the fort is retired? That is, if I put a dwarf vampire into an oubliette, retired the fort, and then unretired the fort, would the vampire still be there? Would the same hold for an army of captured goblins held prisoner in a giant pit with smoothed walls (or a sealed off chamber)? Would a revealed circus destroy a retired fort from the inside even if it was isolated from the dwarven population by, say, some cast obsidian?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 28, 2014, 06:02:00 am

Quote from: Just Some Guy on January 27, 2014, 08:32:45 pm

A hypothetical that just crossed my mind.


Fifty twenty year old dwarves, twenty five male and twenty five female, are put locked in a chamber within the magma sea with seeds, picks, axes, booze, and other necessities and through the clever use of syndromes put in stasis for a hundred years. Once the chamber has been sealed and the inhabitants put into hibernation, all entrances to the fort are closed off and the dwarves not lucky enough to be chosen for the experiment are killed, either through magma or another syndrome. Also inside the chamber is a lever that will open a passage between the chamber and the rest of the fort, for use after the syndrome takes its course. The fort is then retired.

The fort is reclaimed a year or two before the dwarves in the chamber wake up. When they pull the lever and enter into the actual fort, what will they see? What about outside the fort?

This is !!SCIENCE!! material in its purest and most literal form right there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on January 28, 2014, 08:36:30 am

Seeing as the recent devblog update concerns lairs and night creature abductions, I was wondering how this behavior might play out on "civilized" spouse converters. It is 100% possible to create a civilization of "mono-gendered" spouse converters that survive and thrive in world-gen in the current release (As long as you define their Converted Spouse and set them to never be born the game generates them abstractly.) I was wondering if, when included, the abduction system would cause a [SPOUSE_CONVERTER] civ who declares war on a [SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGET] civ to spouse convert their prisoners?

I realize that changing the lair code doesn't really change the behavior or nature of night creatures as it stands, nor of spouse converters, but I'm curious as to how this might be used in mods and such further down the line.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 28, 2014, 10:10:24 am

Quote from: TastyMints on January 28, 2014, 08:36:30 am

Seeing as the recent devblog update concerns lairs and night creature abductions, I was wondering how this behavior might play out on "civilized" spouse converters. It is 100% possible to create a civilization of "mono-gendered" spouse converters that survive and thrive in world-gen in the current release (As long as you define their Converted Spouse and set them to never be born the game generates them abstractly.) I was wondering if, when included, the abduction system would cause a [SPOUSE_CONVERTER] civ who declares war on a [SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGET] civ to spouse convert their prisoners?

I realize that changing the lair code doesn't really change the behavior or nature of night creatures as it stands, nor of spouse converters, but I'm curious as to how this might be used in mods and such further down the line.

Judging from goblins and their children abduction thing, they would simply hate each other very much. And, as in Dwarf Mode, periodically send ambushes and sieges to loot your fort.

I can't wait for looting actually. When losing to a goblin siege no longer means literally everyone is slaughtered, and they actually take some of the damn wealth that attracted them in the first place. We have yielding now, and occupation; the steps to surrendering and plunder are already there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on January 28, 2014, 11:28:19 am

Quote

I can't wait for looting actually.

I can't wait for EVERYTHING in this release, actually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 28, 2014, 12:17:28 pm

Personally, I think Toady should just put night troll abductions into the game already.

Now that vehicle collisions have been fixed, does that mean the minecarts in the gravity-fed minecart autocannon will stack up to the ceiling?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 28, 2014, 12:18:18 pm

Quote from: Just Some Guy on January 27, 2014, 08:32:45 pm

A hypothetical that just crossed my mind.


Fifty twenty year old dwarves, twenty five male and twenty five female, are put locked in a chamber within the magma sea with seeds, picks, axes, booze, and other necessities and through the clever use of syndromes put in stasis for a hundred years. Once the chamber has been sealed and the inhabitants put into hibernation, all entrances to the fort are closed off and the dwarves not lucky enough to be chosen for the experiment are killed, either through magma or another syndrome. Also inside the chamber is a lever that will open a passage between the chamber and the rest of the fort, for use after the syndrome takes its course. The fort is then retired.

The fort is reclaimed a year or two before the dwarves in the chamber wake up. When they pull the lever and enter into the actual fort, what will they see? What about outside the fort?

In order for the experiment to work and for it to be true stasis, the syndrome would have to eliminate the need for food and drink. Also, I don't think there is a way to suspend the aging proccess, so you'd have to use young dwarves (or children even) to make sure they don't die of old age, or increase lifespan in the raws.

Bonus points if you do it in a freezing biome and the dwarves all have their own icy chambers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 28, 2014, 12:20:28 pm

Sure there's a way to suspend aging. The necromancer syndrome already does it. The only thing is, it's likely permanent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 28, 2014, 12:43:20 pm

Coudln't you just mod in a temporary syndrome then?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 28, 2014, 12:44:33 pm

What I mean is, I think if you remove the syndrome after they're far older than their natural lifespan, they just die.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 28, 2014, 01:04:15 pm

Because the game keep adding their age chronologically (I think), despite whatever it's physiologically age might be. For that kind of stuff you would need some kind of Snow White or Sleeping beauty syndrome that not only make them sleep, but also that makes the game engine not age them or make them special cases where the years they went in hibernation are not take into account towards their biological age.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 28, 2014, 01:05:20 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 28, 2014, 12:17:28 pm

Personally, I think Toady should just put night troll abductions into the game already.

The eternal tension between features and the release.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 28, 2014, 12:17:28 pm

Now that vehicle collisions have been fixed, does that mean the minecarts in the gravity-fed minecart autocannon will stack up to the ceiling?

I think the fix was most likely for one or more of these bugs (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5996), not a new stacking mechanic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 28, 2014, 01:18:34 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on January 28, 2014, 12:20:28 pm

Sure there's a way to suspend aging. The necromancer syndrome already does it. The only thing is, it's likely permanent.

Hm, Mephs Masterwork mod has tons of syndrome stuff, maybe he would know how to do this? Maybe some kind of reverse secret, I dunno.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lethosor on January 28, 2014, 02:01:56 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 28, 2014, 12:18:18 pm

In order for the experiment to work and for it to be true stasis, the syndrome would have to eliminate the need for food and drink. Also, I don't think there is a way to suspend the aging proccess, so you'd have to use young dwarves (or children even) to make sure they don't die of old age, or increase lifespan in the raws.

Quote from: Just Some Guy on January 27, 2014, 08:32:45 pm

Fifty twenty year old dwarves, twenty five male and twenty five female, are put locked in a chamber

Dwarves live to be 150-170 years old (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Dwarf/raw), and they'd only end up being 120 years old after 100 years. It would take a lot of careful management (or luck) to get 50 20-year-old dwarves, though, so increasing their lifespan would make it a lot easier to obtain dwarves that wouldn't die after 100 years.

One possible way to circumvent the eating/drinking problem would be to transform the dwarves into another creature or caste with [NO_EAT], [NO_DRINK], etc., or even add those tags to all dwarves (although the syndrome would still be necessary for hibernation).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 28, 2014, 02:07:26 pm

The syndrome can give them [NO_EAT] and [NO_DRINK]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 28, 2014, 02:36:41 pm

Why don't you leave that question for the actual release and find out what happens yourself? ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 28, 2014, 02:58:37 pm

I imagine there may be a problem with the syndrome being properly realized when the dwarves are offloaded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 28, 2014, 03:03:42 pm

Nah, they're stored just fine in the historical figure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 28, 2014, 03:05:26 pm

I agree with DarkDXZ, as much as we discuss about it, it will only be hypothetical until its tested in the new version.

Also, I since FBs can attack retired forts (I think), its entirely up to the RNG as to what they will find.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 28, 2014, 03:12:11 pm

But they need to be more than stored. You want the dwarves to wake up in the same spot they fall asleep, without consuming food or drink, and without producing any goods. As more of those are tracked, more attention is needed to make sure syndromes that prevent them are honored.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 28, 2014, 03:18:28 pm

Units are also stored if my reading of the save folders is correct.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 28, 2014, 03:21:44 pm

Toady, please release the new version ASAP, so people stop doing these futile questions!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 28, 2014, 03:22:50 pm

He's already releasing it ASAP :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 28, 2014, 03:40:14 pm

Lol thvaz.....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 28, 2014, 04:15:33 pm

Toady hasn't mentioned any changes to the way the game decides where creatures residing in a fortress will be placed in that site. I suspect that locking dwarves in a room underground with zero access will more than likely still result in them showing up above-ground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on January 28, 2014, 04:29:17 pm

Well for propper handling of this teh engine would have to to a pathing check. Much like "is there a open way to the map-edge?" for every creature. Also it would have to consider doors and such and the ability of the creature to use/destroy them.

It would be a tideous thing to go and code that for a Lone vampire but it would be possible. 

A transformation like the werebeast syndrom should work. No Eat, no drink and a predefined creature that is Imobile. The syndrom also should Render the transformed dorf unconcious. Fix that to a fooditem (apples?) and restrict the stockpile to the Hybernation Chamber.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 28, 2014, 04:49:04 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on January 28, 2014, 04:15:33 pm

Toady hasn't mentioned any changes to the way the game decides where creatures residing in a fortress will be placed in that site. I suspect that locking dwarves in a room underground with zero access will more than likely still result in them showing up above-ground.

I'm not sure either way.  During Fortress Mode gameplay (probably Adv. Mode too?) the game partitions the map into "connected components" so that it knows which tiles are pathable (via walking) from each other.  So it wouldn't be that hard to store component info for each creature when the map is offloaded, and only allow them to spawn in that same component. But maybe there's a compelling reason to let them wander the whole site.

I strongly doubt that many syndrome effects will get respected while the map is offloaded, though.  There can't be much commonality between the update functions for on-screen and off-screen creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on January 28, 2014, 05:01:57 pm

The way I understand things, the game doesn't really care much for connectivity when it comes to handling entities in an abstarct sense (i.e. all interactions are done at site level).

The "popping up to the surface" of followers when sleeping in the sewers/caves in adv mode thing is an aftereffect of that, I suppose.

Actual pathfinding only happens in-game I guess (I could be wrong).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 28, 2014, 06:40:00 pm

Quote from: Bandreus on January 28, 2014, 05:01:57 pm

The way I understand things, the game doesn't really care much for connectivity when it comes to handling entities in an abstarct sense (i.e. all interactions are done at site level).

The "popping up to the surface" of followers when sleeping in the sewers/caves in adv mode thing is an aftereffect of that, I suppose.

Actual pathfinding only happens in-game I guess (I could be wrong).

Yeah, that's how it works in the current release.  I was speculating about how the upcoming release might have changed that behavior.  Toady's been putting a lot of work into fortress retirement, so it's not impossible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on January 28, 2014, 07:15:08 pm

I dfhacked a fort into retirement in the current release once. When I went back there as an adventurer, everyone was standing exactly where they were when I retired, even holding the things they were hauling/using for jobs. It was kind of creepy actually. Then I died by stepping into the trapped hallway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on January 28, 2014, 10:11:26 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 28, 2014, 04:49:04 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on January 28, 2014, 04:15:33 pm

Toady hasn't mentioned any changes to the way the game decides where creatures residing in a fortress will be placed in that site. I suspect that locking dwarves in a room underground with zero access will more than likely still result in them showing up above-ground.

I'm not sure either way.  During Fortress Mode gameplay (probably Adv. Mode too?) the game partitions the map into "connected components" so that it knows which tiles are pathable (via walking) from each other.  So it wouldn't be that hard to store component info for each creature when the map is offloaded, and only allow them to spawn in that same component. But maybe there's a compelling reason to let them wander the whole site.

I strongly doubt that many syndrome effects will get respected while the map is offloaded, though.  There can't be much commonality between the update functions for on-screen and off-screen creatures.

Hmm. I suppose a simplified way of doing it would look kinda like what Hugo just said: keep all the creatures where they are when the site is offloaded, and when it is reloaded put them in that same place. The game doesnt even need to know what connected segment they were in (the set of all pathable tiles), just what tile they were (the one tile occupied by a creature) in and then it can build a pathable range for them when the terrain data gets loaded.
Then if you really wanted to go nuts and make sure only units that could move while the site was loaded can move in the abstract when the site is offloaded, check if they have a path to the surface/caverns before offloading the site, and if they do not have a path then check a flag that makes them ineligible for abstracted in-play movement until the site is loaded again. Then the minotaur you walled away in your basement wont be pillaging the countryside in your absence.

I fully expect that this is impossible in terms of code, but it looks nice on code-paper :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on January 29, 2014, 09:20:54 am

Retired dwarves need to be positioned at a reasonable location like a workshop or, especially important, the trade depot. If they can only be positioned at locations they can path to, that would double the complexity of placement. But maybe Toady thought of that and made it work right anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 29, 2014, 12:01:40 pm

Random thought here, I got to thinking about the new locomotion speed raws and realized that I don't think you have the speed raws for flight? Or you just didn't show us those? I remember you showing the speed raws for humans with all forms of locomotion other than flight. I'm sure you do have speed raws for flight, but just wondering here.

tl;dr
You did add speed raws for flight, right?

Also, for future modding reference, what's the conversion between whatever scale you are using for locomotion speed vs m/h or km/h?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 12:19:44 pm

Quote from: smjjames on January 29, 2014, 12:01:40 pm

Random thought here, I got to thinking about the new locomotion speed raws and realized that I don't think you have the speed raws for flight? Or you just didn't show us those? I remember you showing the speed raws for humans with all forms of locomotion other than flight. I'm sure you do have speed raws for flight, but just wondering here.

tl;dr
You did add speed raws for flight, right?

Yes.

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 09:38:17 pm

Quote from: Demonic Gophers

You used humans for your example, which have WALK, CLIMB, SWIM, and CRAWL gaits.  Will flying creatures have various FLY gaits that operate the same way?  Will creatures like snakes and fish lack WALK gaits, and be unable to stand up?
...

Yeah, there is FLY as well.  The issue with crawling animals hasn't yet been resolved to my satisfaction.  It has been a long-standing problem with them vs. the "grounded" flag.  It's a large refactor, and I haven't dealt with it.  The most annoying part is the issue of unit occupancy, since you'd want to have multiple snakes in a square while suffering only certain grounded penalties, and still have them use their crawling gait.  So it just needs to be redone.
...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 29, 2014, 12:31:28 pm

Oh it's already been asked, okay.

The conversion scale bit is still open for Toady One to answer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 12:49:20 pm

I rather doubt there's a conversion scale, to be honest. Even if minecart physics seem to have put a size onto tiles, Toady seems to prefer to keep this aspect more abstract for the time being.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on January 29, 2014, 03:15:24 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 12:49:20 pm

I rather doubt there's a conversion scale, to be honest. Even if minecart physics seem to have put a size onto tiles, Toady seems to prefer to keep this aspect more abstract for the time being.

Well, ticks themselves are rather abstract, I'm not sure if there's a consistent amount of ticks/turns in a day at all or if it's different in Fort mode vs adventure mode. If it's consistent, I guess we could do some calculations to measure the conversion rate or the relations (seeing as right now a lower speed value means faster).
May look into that, but it's just so much energy invested...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 03:25:27 pm

Can't recall whether this question has been covered already, so ...

What happens to an adventurer that retires in a previously retired player fortress from dwarf mode once you reclaim the fortress? Will he just stay at the site and hang around or maybe even become a member of the society? Does the adventurer's race make any difference here?


And also pointing towards dwarf and adventure mode interference:

Since I'm able to claim a site, does this also apply to fortresses? What kind of sites ar claimable?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 03:32:33 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on January 29, 2014, 03:15:24 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 12:49:20 pm

I rather doubt there's a conversion scale, to be honest. Even if minecart physics seem to have put a size onto tiles, Toady seems to prefer to keep this aspect more abstract for the time being.

Well, ticks themselves are rather abstract, I'm not sure if there's a consistent amount of ticks/turns in a day at all or if it's different in Fort mode vs adventure mode. If it's consistent, I guess we could do some calculations to measure the conversion rate or the relations (seeing as right now a lower speed value means faster).
May look into that, but it's just so much energy invested...

86400 ticks in a day in Adventure Mode and 1200 in Dwarf Fortress Mode, a scale difference of 72.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on January 29, 2014, 03:47:00 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 03:32:33 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on January 29, 2014, 03:15:24 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 12:49:20 pm

I rather doubt there's a conversion scale, to be honest. Even if minecart physics seem to have put a size onto tiles, Toady seems to prefer to keep this aspect more abstract for the time being.

Well, ticks themselves are rather abstract, I'm not sure if there's a consistent amount of ticks/turns in a day at all or if it's different in Fort mode vs adventure mode. If it's consistent, I guess we could do some calculations to measure the conversion rate or the relations (seeing as right now a lower speed value means faster).
May look into that, but it's just so much energy invested...

86400 ticks in a day in Adventure Mode and 1200 in Dwarf Fortress Mode, a scale difference of 72.

The time scale for fortress mode is really jarring. A dwarf going from his bedroom to workplace can take half a day or so. Dwarves only eat once every few days(taking a couple of hours to do so) and sleep about once a week. To top that off I don't know if there is a defined scale for the X,Y,Z levels which also seems rather abstract.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 03:52:27 pm

2,2,3 meters, I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:08:23 pm

Quote from: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 03:25:27 pm

What happens to an adventurer that retires in a previously retired player fortress from dwarf mode once you reclaim the fortress? Will he just stay at the site and hang around or maybe even become a member of the society? Does the adventurer's race make any difference here?

This is "unretiring," not "reclaiming," since the fort hasn't fallen to monsters:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-12-05

I also tested out retiring a dwarven adventurer in a retired fort and then unretiring the fort, and it basically worked out -- the adventurer was listed as a soldier without a squad, which I need to fix, and I need to tweak the items they are carrying, but otherwise they were a proper fortress citizen. If you hand your former adventurer an official position in the fort and then retire the fort and then unretire the adventurer, I guess you'd be controlling an official, but you wouldn't have any actual powers, since we don't have anything set up for that yet in adv mode. When I first started the adventure, I was expecting to have to walk from the main dwarven civ out to my retired fortress, but the game just started me in the retired fort. That kind of drives home that you are just being created out of thing air, but it makes as much sense as starting at any other inhabited dwarven site.

I think non-dwarven adventurers will be uncontrollable.  They might even be labeled as "Tame".

Quote from: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 03:25:27 pm

Since I'm able to claim a site, does this also apply to fortresses? What kind of sites ar claimable?

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will adventurers be able to reclaim abandoned fortresses for their Civ through capturing the main building, such as a keep or mead hall? When goblins capture a dwarf fortress, is the site map converted to a goblin fortress template and vice versa? How long does this take? Will players be able to embark on recently conquered sites?

Quote from: Ribs

What happens if you attack the leader of one of your retired fortresses? Can you claim it with your adventurer? Can you claim dwarven fortresses at all?
If so,

Will there be some variation there, or will the dwarves from retired fortresses always be the more loyal types who will try very hard to kill your adventurer before surrendering?

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?

I think the way it "works" now, you could claim one of your retired fortresses, but it wouldn't actually know how to have it change hands, since there is no power location (at least not in a way that is currently understood by the adventure part of the game).  Abandoned fortresses don't have people in them, so you'd have to bring a companion along, state a claim to them, and then not have it recognized because there is no power location.  You can kill whomever, but you can't obtain the civ-level positions.  If you kill a monarch, you'll end up with a replacement, if there's a claimant around, or a lack of decision making -- which doesn't matter so much for dwarves, since they don't attack anybody yet.  I haven't allowed adventurers to place a claim on an existing entity position (they can only form a new entity with a new site claim), but you'll definitely be able to do that when we get into the meat of succession wars later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 04:16:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:08:23 pm

Quote from: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 03:25:27 pm

What happens to an adventurer that retires in a previously retired player fortress from dwarf mode once you reclaim the fortress? Will he just stay at the site and hang around or maybe even become a member of the society? Does the adventurer's race make any difference here?

Just a note: this is "unretiring," not "reclaiming," since the fort hasn't fallen to monsters.

Thanks for clarifying. But yeah, that's what I meant.

As for my other question, it was obviously answered already but... to be honest, I'm not sure whether I fully get Toady's explantion.
Guess, I'll have to see how it works by myself... in the new release... which will be there... soon!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on January 29, 2014, 04:18:05 pm

I don't know how great a rewrite it would be, but the scale difference between Adv. and Fortress mode is really a great problem for the game. I think it will come the day when Toady will have to tackle this issue.

I think it could be done sensibly if Fortress mode had the same scale as adventure, but in real time, and we had some Fast Forward feature. The pace of the mode would greatly change, and balancing it would be hell, however. I imagine the ammount of rewriting would be enormous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:27:33 pm

Quote from: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 04:16:11 pm

Thanks for clarifying. But yeah, that's what I meant.

As for my other question, it was obviously answered already but... to be honest, I'm not sure whether I fully get Toady's explantion.
Guess, I'll have to see how it works by myself... in the new release... which will be there... soon!

In case you didn't see it, I edited in an answer to the first question, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 04:50:00 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:27:33 pm

Quote from: nasobema on January 29, 2014, 04:16:11 pm

Thanks for clarifying. But yeah, that's what I meant.

As for my other question, it was obviously answered already but... to be honest, I'm not sure whether I fully get Toady's explantion.
Guess, I'll have to see how it works by myself... in the new release... which will be there... soon!

In case you didn't see it, I edited in an answer to the first question, too.

Indeed, I saw it just now.
But hey, that's just amazing!
Needless to say that I cannot wait to play this...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 29, 2014, 04:56:24 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:08:23 pm

I think non-dwarven adventurers will be uncontrollable.  They might even be labeled as "Tame".

To be honest non-dwarven adventurers retiring to the fort should become a member of the fortress, and be able to do things. I think the sites already have intelligent non-entity beings in them, doing work and maybe even owning property. Toady had mentioned something about multi-racial forts early on while working on this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on January 29, 2014, 05:01:40 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 29, 2014, 04:56:24 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on January 29, 2014, 04:08:23 pm

I think non-dwarven adventurers will be uncontrollable.  They might even be labeled as "Tame".

To be honest non-dwarven adventurers retiring to the fort should become a member of the fortress, and be able to do things. I think the sites already have intelligent non-entity beings in them, doing work and maybe even owning property. Toady had mentioned something about multi-racial forts early on while working on this release.

They should, but they won't until the multiracial fortresses are actually worked on (what Toady mentioned was they haven't been worked on (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html)).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on January 29, 2014, 05:09:27 pm

If you reactivate a retired fortress, will it have retained the same stage of difficulty from when you left it? IE, will there be massive sieges and ambushes right off the bat?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 05:31:05 pm

Quote from: Spish on January 29, 2014, 05:09:27 pm

If you reactivate a retired fortress, will it have retained the same stage of difficulty from when you left it? IE, will there be massive sieges and ambushes right off the bat?

Difficulty is population, trade and value based.

Two of those are based entirely on things on-site and the third one I don't know.

So yes, it probably will.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 29, 2014, 08:57:00 pm

Quote from: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 05:31:05 pm

Quote from: Spish on January 29, 2014, 05:09:27 pm

If you reactivate a retired fortress, will it have retained the same stage of difficulty from when you left it? IE, will there be massive sieges and ambushes right off the bat?

Difficulty is population, trade and value based.

Two of those are based entirely on things on-site and the third one I don't know.

So yes, it probably will.

As far as I am aware value is on-site. So as Putnam said, yes, you can get sieged immediately.

As for Adventure-Dwarf mode crossovers, not any time soon. It would need a major readjustment of one or both modes, and would really mess with the balance: no one wants to play a real-time dwarf fort, everything would take as forever. Of course at it's current speed, Dwarves would be zooming around the map like drunken midgets on scooters, and the player would have no clue what was going on until he or she paused.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 29, 2014, 09:01:49 pm

I meant the first and third are on-site and the middle I don't know, that was my fault.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 29, 2014, 10:03:46 pm

Quote from: misko27 on January 29, 2014, 08:57:00 pm

no one wants to play a real-time dwarf fort

You underestimate the craziness of the player-base. Once we have better interaction with followers and are able to do jobs in adventure mode it's exactly what a lot of people will do. The time-skip idea has been discussed at length in several suggestion threads which make interesting reading.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 30, 2014, 12:29:21 am

Quote from: Toady One

Today I started merging all of the old dwarf mode acquaintance stuff with the new personal reputation system,

 Oooh, so does this mean that each of the dwarves will have their own personal reputation system? This may have been asked before and I'm not sure if the new personal reputation system was mentioned before

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 30, 2014, 01:06:54 am

Quote from: DG on January 29, 2014, 10:03:46 pm

Quote from: misko27 on January 29, 2014, 08:57:00 pm

no one wants to play a real-time dwarf fort

You underestimate the craziness of the player-base. Once we have better interaction with followers and are able to do jobs in adventure mode it's exactly what a lot of people will do. The time-skip idea has been discussed at length in several suggestion threads which make interesting reading.

Well that is different: That's making a settlement through an avatar.  But there are inherent limits to that personalization of your power; namely, you are no longer some strange non-physical culture-based hive-mind with telepathic control over dwarven bureaucracy and locked doors, with a penchant for obsessive control and omniscience.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on January 30, 2014, 01:49:33 am

Yeah, I've never liked the remote-controlled lockable doors but I think that's come up often in suggestions and discussions and has yet to budge much.

Fake edit: I just did a quick search for my own curiosity's sake and there's word-of-Toady from 2006.

Quote from: Toady One on October 21, 2006, 10:46:00 pm

I think forcing you to lock every door manually would be cumbersome (having dwarves need keys would be even worse).  It's not that I'm against the idea in principle, but it would make the game unreasonable difficult to use.

I don't know if I agree but I can understand the sentiment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 30, 2014, 01:55:48 am

IN future releases, would there ever be a way for bandits or gangs to incorporate or re-incorporate inot a town depending on the situations?

I am asking as I am curious about what ideas after this release would be. And at the social dynamics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on January 30, 2014, 07:39:14 am

Like for example joining with a town they used to harass in order to drive off a goblin force?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on January 30, 2014, 01:35:18 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on January 30, 2014, 07:39:14 am

Like for example joining with a town they used to harass in order to drive off a goblin force?

That is one. I am asking as there probably are historic situations where that has happened.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on January 30, 2014, 07:13:00 pm

Additionally, the current plan is that loyalists who are defeated when a site changes hands sometimes become bandits, and it would make sense if they returned to normal citizenship when and if the old rule was placed on the seat of power once more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on January 31, 2014, 04:47:44 am

I guess this is a good place to drop this: (https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/428996631942295552)

Quote

Lars Støttrup ‏@Trancecend  18h
@Bay12Games Any chance of a UI cleanup in the next version? IMO some game systems do similar things (thinking "i" vs "q"). Love DF!
 
Bay 12 Games
‏@Trancecend This one has dragged on long enough -- have to see what we get during bug fix releases.  UI to be hit by job priorities then.
1:02 PM - 30 Jan 2014

Who is excited? :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Thanks to Valtam, Footkerchief, mastahcheese, Knight Otu, Manveru Taurënér, MrWiggles, smjjames, Putnam, Trif, thvaz, Calathar, Bandreus, BlackFlyme, Witty, misko27, LordBaal, lethosor, and anybody else that helped to answer questions this time around.  If your question does not appear below, please have a look at the discussion right after you posted it -- it is likely that it was handled by one of these fine forumgoers.

There were some statements up there somewhere concerning fortress AI or how forts behave after retirement that seemed to suggest some people thought a lot was going on -- there isn't a lot going on.  The game doesn't run a fort mode while you aren't in control -- the human workers still don't perform jobs in their towns, and the forts aren't any different.

Quote from: smjjames

The other day I had an idea of making giant trees which are 100 z levels tall and 50 tiles wide, but are extremely rare. Is it possible to do this kind of thing? I'm sure the height and width of it would be doable, if extreme, but is it possible to use a population token like creatures have to control the rarity?

I haven't added any new frequency tokens.  Plants have a frequency token, but I don't remember if it is applied to trees.  I didn't change how it works if it does or doesn't.  The 48x48 map limitation is an odd constraint, especially for large trees.  The trees get crunched near the edges, but I tried to give them a bit of space by not placing trunks there so much.

Quote from: Anatoli

So how big are the squads we are talking about, and why would there be multiple leaders?
And exactly what kind of orders are we talking about? (I assume it has to far simply been "conquer that village," but still.)
PS: Also, are we talking about our own group, (why would we have other leaders?) or about the village garrison?

I think I lost a thread somewhere about the multiple leaders part.  I'm not sure what that is referring to.  The entity squads are limited to 20 right now, but that's just to get a name and be considered close to the position holder, rather than an army limitation.  I'm not sure if that'll be retained.  I think the dwarf ones are limited to 10 just because of the interface list size.  There aren't any interesting squad orders you can give right now, if you are talking about adventurer squads.  I mentioned follow/wait before, and that hasn't changed.

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Quote from: Novel Scoops

How will you avoid all the (mortal) adventurers loitering in taverns from dying of old age?

Quote from: Mopsy

Will NPCs that are born post-worldgen be able to start careers and gain skills in some way (without being the player character's companions)?

Yeah -- it's not complete at this point.  People don't seek out regular jobs or anything.  That's just beyond the scope of what we're attempting for this time.  The things that people can do can provide them with some development, but since we don't have active NPC heroes, we don't have that angle yet.  I'm not sure when we'll see regular workers being utilized, since we've already pushed the economic stuff down the road a few times.  The tavern/inn stuff will probably see traveling types and adventurer types activated to a reasonable extent.

Quote from: Witty

With the personality rewrite, will vampires hide their identity in a more complete manner? Such as fake group associations and the like?

I haven't done additional work on night creatures.

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Quote from: Mopsy

In the upcoming version human civilizations will apparently consist of clusters of city states in various tributary relationships. The only supreme lords will be the god impersonators and their successors. (Is that actually the case in the current version as well? I thought they had lawgivers as their standard civ rulers.)  Considering that, which entities will be responsible for the construction and garrisoning of the fortress sites that usually show up on the frontiers of human civs? Can fortress sites be claimed and fought over just like towns and hamlets? Can the goblins occupy them?

Quote from: smjjames

Are the elves and goblins going to build forts as well?  The ones goblins make are probably similar to humans, but I can see the elves forts looking more like a frontier fort made of wood.

The existing human fortress sites are one of the mysteries to be handled in the notes.  They indeed don't currently get constructed because of the lack of central authority.

I don't remember about the current version.  That lawgiver position can be inherited after an impersonator dies, but if they create it without god impersonators I wouldn't be completely surprised.

All goblin sites have fortress elements, so I don't have any plans for this time for them to do anything else.  No plans for elves either.  Hard to say what'll happen down the line.

Quote from: Eric Blank

will accusing vampires of being night creatures still result in an immediately lethal fight, and will peasants in the home still take part?

If we get caught sucking someone's blood and a witness escapes, will it immediately result in the civilization exiling us on pain of death or just start a rumor about us?

It's basically the same as far as the accusations go.  I still have a pass to go on vampire witness events, because I think a lot of it got screwed up in all the ruckus, but I anticipate there'll be just a tad of interest there.  Not sure exactly how it'll gel.  There aren't going to be any formal law actions in this release, so no exile for you or anything.

Quote from: Valtam

How are civilians reacting to an invading monster that happens to be their object of fervent adoration? I know this happens seldomly with dwarves, given that their usual spheres might be related to a few titans and creatures from deep below, and they'll often kneel before their appearance while those same twisted gods rip their heads and souls apart.

Also, is pilmigrage only considered with marriage and violent displacement in the next release? Or do you plan to enable bare-bones religious or political reasons to show up as well? Now that the personality rewrite is up, I was thinking about scenarios of moving to the town that has the temple of a preferred god or just because a peasant is "sick of it all" and packs up to a place with an agreeable government, and they seem valid and simple (not trying to shoehorn them as suggestions, mind you). Maybe not for this release, but in regard of both questions, it would be awesome to see a lot of ill-advised townspeople flocking to the outskirts of a ruined fortress or town, just because their megabeast of choice is nesting there for the time being.

There's nothing interesting going on with the religious stuff at this point.  It was definitely going to be a part of start scenarios, at which point there might be some all-around action.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

In the current version, there can quite a few difficulties in getting Dwarf civilisations to grow, especially when there are a lot of good-aligned mountains or on smaller maps. Larger maps, meanwhile, end up with large amounts of empty space. How much has this changed in the new version, especially with the new sites?

They have an easier time staying alive with the hill and deep sites as incubation areas.  The dwarven civs don't die nearly as often.  There's still a lot of empty space in larger maps -- that's probably not going to change since sites are expensive and the largest maps have 66000 tiles.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

This post raises one major question for me, which is: if a player adventurer kills a megabeast occupying a fort and makes a claim on the site, is the fort still reclaimable through fort mode? Will a reclamation party have to fight a hostile band of adventurers if they're an enemy of the dwarves' home civ? Can such a site claim generate hostility by itself?

The presence of moving armies on the world map during play also raises tactical and strategic concerns about the placement of forts. How do hostile civs target each other's sites for attack? Could an "outpost" fort placed between a metropolitan fort and a necromancer tower or dark fortress divert attacks away from the larger fort? Will attack frequency and strength be reflected by proximity? (apart from the 20-tile necromancer tower "attack radius")

If you actually make a successful claim on a site, to the point where your entity is linked to it as the dominant entity (by taking your unopposed self as a stated claimant to a power location), then the site will no longer be reclaimable by anybody.  That would be an invasion, which we don't have in fort mode at this time.

There's nothing interesting about the targeting at this point, and since human sites are the targets, your fort placement doesn't enter into it.  I haven't tried to do anything tactical or put much thought into the targeting because there are no army fights and no supplies/economics.  We're just starting with some stuff to get the ball rolling and it'll eventually make more sense.

Quote from: Ggobs

Have you ever world genned a city/town/hill fort/fortress that was completely inhabited by vampires?

Nah -- the general populations are always numerous and they don't get vampire effects.  It would take some very rare oddness with a small pop hf-only hamlet for it to happen.

Quote from: Wimopy

Will sites be abandoned/claimed by beasts/become reclaimable/get reclaimed by NPCs during time passed in Fort Mode? (Not due to player actions, of course)

They don't fight beasts, but they can go for empties.  There aren't enough mechanics active for forts to become abandoned or taken by monsters yet after world generation.

Quote from: LordBaal

It is possible to retire a fort to become and adventurer or start another fort planing to return to the retired fortres latter, and while playing the new adventurer/fortress, the first fort to succumb to invasion/destruction like it does in world gen?

Forts aren't targeted the same way human towns are at the moment, but that's the general idea.  Retiring a fort is giving it over to the forces of history.  As it stands for next time, you certainly aren't guaranteed to have everybody stay at your fort -- they can migrate to your new fort or run a reclaim on an empty NPC fort, etc.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will all sites be susceptible to beasties from above or below?

If they don't have a connection to below, they don't get attacked by those.  Deep site don't get attacked by upper creatures.

Quote from: metime00

when given the option to react to an attack and you decide to dodge, do you get to decide which direction you will dodge in?

When you are acting, there is a dodge away option that is different from "jump", and you move to an adjacent tile.  You get to select the destination.  It unbalances you and takes some time.  There is still a dodge roll when you are attacked, and if you narrowly fail that, you can dodge to a non-chosen square, and you can turn that off in your combat preferences (but then those failed rolls will result in you being hit instead).

Quote from: Bandreus

If we happen to reclaim a fort which fell to a FB or other MB, and if the beast happened to set its lair there, are the initial 7 to actually confront it? I.e. will the beast be there when the party arrives?

Calathar answered this, but it was a little farther down the thread so I just wanted to confirm that the beast will indeed be there.  I haven't done anything like what we had before with many squads of armed dwarves (that's all going to be up to start scenarios later), so you'll just have to be cautious until you can manage.

Quote from: Valtam

Toady, how do civilizations stablish their priorities for post worldgen town founding? Does it work the same as the worldgen process (like, looking for the right ecosystem/elevation/savagery/alignment)? If, for example, you somehow hunt down and scour wildlife at an untamed wilds area that is otherwise right for human thriving, does this turn the place into fair game for settlers to come in?

Yeah, it's the same function pretty much at this point.  I don't recall that you can actually change the savagery field of an map tile though.  It decreases during world gen, but that's an abstraction that isn't carried over.  I'm not quite sure how this'll play out in the future.  It needs the abstracted information, and it could probably just do a recalc based on wildlife population sums vs. their normal levels easily enough.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Will migrants still stop when the unit list reaches 3000, regardless of the population cap and number of dwarves, or has that changed now?

In the devlog you said roads are not expanded during gameplay yet. Is this completely put off for another release or do you think you will get around to it for this one?

If we retire a player fort, will dwarves (or invaders) add new buildings to it?

I haven't knowingly fixed any bugs in that regard.

I'm not doing anything with roads.

There are a few issues with new buildings in player forts -- the main one is that space isn't controlled the same way, so the game doesn't know how to handle it.  That's surmountable but it requires a concerted push exactly in that direction.  The second is that other cultures never take player forts, so far as I know, so you'd never be in that position anyway.  In any case, we have additions of architecture, but it's more something I'm frameworking and toying around with than full site growth.  We don't have any changes to the economic data so full scale site growth wouldn't work yet as the fixed pile of world gen furniture becomes more spread out, amongst other issues.

Quote from: Baffler

Will dwarves migrate to player made fortresses that have been retired? If so, can we set specific restrictions on the number of immigrants that are allowed?

It doesn't use the same mechanics -- there aren't regular population migrations moving around at this point.  That'll probably happen later with either start scenarios or market movements.  There are marriage migrants and other special cases.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Does that mean there will be demon civilizations in those depths of the world?

Or something.

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Quote from: crapabear

The 1/17 devlog entry seems to hint that these mysterious demon sites may be bringing new, randomly generated classes of items into our worlds. If that's the case, it sounds like a really exciting development with lots of implications, but I know it's something you don't want to spoil until after the release. So, without getting into specifics, I'd just like to know if it will be possible to see some of these grey-goo items finding their way onto trade caravans in fortress mode, or if we'll have to set out as an adventurer to get a taste of them.

Quote from: Footkerchief

I'm 90% sure that you'll be able to embark on top of a demon site in Fort Mode, and play with any items therein.

Quote from: Knight Otu

I wouldn't expect it. The demon sites seem to be visible by default, and you can't embark on such sites, like towers. You can embark on lairs, caves, and camps, I think, the sites that aren't visible by default.

If I remember Footkerchief's spoiled comment, he had a different sort of demon site in mind.  The outside ones aren't embarkable if they are visible, and their items would only become available in trade through bugs and other issues, which are common enough.  However, the outside ones have conditions upon which they become visible that are a little different than normal, so if you stay away from adv mode you'll probably find yourself embarking on them once in a rare while.  In any case, item-wise, I'm trying to keep them contained.  It actually is gray goo if they come out of their areas before they are ready, and they certainly aren't ready for prime-time yet, unless you like adjective soup.

Quote from: flabort

How many styles of player-designed defense systems will become obsolete with this release?

Most of it still probably works...  people can use magma and traps and stuff, at least.

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Quote from: Rinin_Rus

Will it be possible to jump from downward slope? Will walls upgraded with overhang be still unpassable? And which creatures (or parts of creatures) can jump and climb?

Quote from: Areyar

Are creature body plans and/attributes (cangrab, number of manipulators etc) factored into your current concept for (non-player) climbing?

If you are standing on the ground, including slopes, you can jump (you can also jump when clinging to something).  There are some odd conditions with overhangs -- I think they can negotiate an overhang one tile wide if the tile above is a wall and not a floor, since the game lets them advance their hold up the wall and around in that direction -- there's a missing case right now of being able to hold a thin ledge without a wall underneath (where you'd be hanging in the air down and to the side probably), which may or may not make it in depending on how much of a headache it is.

Raws aren't very interesting for jumping -- there is a CANNOT_JUMP tag.  Flesh balls have it, thankfully.  I haven't yet decided exactly on how climbing is going to be restricted.  Insects have to be able to do it, but they don't have grasps in game terms, and we want humanoid climbers to need free grasps.  At the same time, we don't want flesh balls to climb.  There will probably just be a special graspless climber tag or something, for now.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Is there a chance that goblins will jump over a one-tile gap and fail, or does it always succeed?

Jumping one tile succeeds if they don't collide with another jumper or something strange.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

Now that noise is a potentially important factor in sneaking, will NPCs respond to the noises produced by fighting? For instance, if an adventurer is assassinating a hapless lord in his bedroom, will other NPCs come to help when they hear fighting sounds or the intended victim calling for help?

Also, will monarchs and law-givers that die post-worldgen be entombed/mummified during play? And, do you plan to eventually allow the practice of mummification (if it is a practice) during Fort mode?

Camp guards are going to respond to such noises, for instance, but I don't think everybody is going to run to every noise.  I'm not really sure what the overall restriction should be at this stage.  It has to be at least enough to make the spontaneous insurrections interesting and a bit lively.

There's no handling of post-world-gen burial, and I don't have particular plans for how that is going to play out.

Quote from: Vattic

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

Water has that pushing effect in general, although I don't remember if it happens with falling water.  I suppose the best thing to do is fire up the arena with a climber and challenge the waterfall...  It changes my text from "in air" to "swimming" and it makes me moves slower, but it doesn't actually push me, and I still use my climbing gait/hold the whole time (so I'm not actually swimming).  I also tried dumping a whole water column on myself, and I was drowning briefly and moving very slowly, but it didn't push me.  Yeah, upon checking, flow pushing bits are just stored for horizontal directions (the thing controlling the water animation is also what does item/unit pushing for that kind of liquid).

Quote from: Broken

In a retired fortresses, will caged creatures remain where they where?

Yeah, this is the hope.  It's still a dev note, along with the preservation of some pet data that isn't in a readily save-able form.

Quote from: cybergon

What's the rewrite you dread the most? I mean that one part of the code you know you have to completely change sooner or later but wish you didn't have to.

An annoying thing is the planar/afterlife/etc. stuff that is basically like adding a 4th coordinate all over the place that isn't as straightforward as going from 2 to 3 coordinates, since the nature of the 4th coordinate can be mushy.  That should be painful, although there is a commensurate payoff for it.

Quote from: TalonisWolf

I figure that all units can climb/jump up, however, can they climb/jump back down?

The way pathing works, what may actually end up happening is goblins climb up and get stuck up there for your dwarves (preferably behind fortifications) to pick off, or for weapon traps to trick them into dodging off wall and falling (into magma, if possible).

Will dwarves be able to jump out of minecarts or through fire?

They do get a more limited set of options once they are up in something, since connected components still govern the majority of pathing.  There'll be a few safeguards in place to stop them from going completely braindead though and hopefully back to main areas of the map.

Critters that are riding on something don't know how to jump, I think.  Fire is just as respected as it ever was, so I suspect they'll be jumping through whatever.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

How much of an effect does the new dwarven personality system have on the way they work i.e. item quality?

There's nothing like that so far as I remember.

Quote from: HugoLuman

Will people in armor climb slower/get tired faster than unarmored climbers? How fast do creatures climb in general, compared to walking up stairs?

Climbing speed depends on the raws.  It's generally slower than walking, especially because initiating a hold on a surface is an extra move to get started.  Armor isn't particularly regarded any more than normal.

Quote from: PigtailLlama

Do caravans still bring barrels of blood & ichor? What is the intention for those anyways - Blood sausage/black pudding production in butcheries or kitchens?

I haven't changed the liquid trade goods...  I don't remember what the deal is there.  If there was any reason for it, it might have been fertilizer or something, since I remember considering bone meal for the same reason at the same time as it was being used for night troll/minotaur mills, but that was a while ago.

Quote from: flabort

Does a dwarf take whether he detests or has a phobia of a certain creature type into account when yielding or running away?

And how does he actually take it all into account? Are two sets of variables added up and compared, or is there more to it?

It doesn't use the phobia information, though if I remember phobias only ever apply to vermin so it wouldn't come up.

There's quite a bit going on, though the sums of strengths and percentage loss from each side are a main part of it, and those are simple numbers.  There is also the wound/etc. state of the dwarf, and amount of fear vs. mastering fear, which are governed by multiple personality facets (some dwarves simply don't get as afraid in the first place, and some feel fear but can handle it -- in adventure mode you can see which by what they say, and I may direct those statements into dwarf mode combat logs so you can get a measure of what's going on).

Quote from: Wimopy

Is it possible for a dwarf to panic and fight in that state, or will running always be the chosen option when broken by fear?

There are levels of dealing with it, but the top state is either running or cowering.  Some dwarves are capable of avoiding the flight state when their terror is maxed out if they have an outlier personality facet.  Whether or not they run or cower currently just depends on if they think they can get away, but there should probably be more to it.

Quote from: cybergon

When escalating combat from non-lethal to lethal, will both creatures simultaneously escalate combat or do they do this independently of what their opponent is trying to do?

The conflict stores the lethality state separately for the different sides (and just one state per side at this point), but effectively now they move together.  When there's more need to use it, it'll be there waiting.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

While you are working fixing the bugs from the personality rewrite and AI changes, have you implemented improvements to the military (besides climbing) or not yet? Are we now less likely to have trouble getting soldiers to shoot through fortifications?

The conflict system has changed, so I'm not sure all of what has happened, but some of the old annoying stuff will no doubt be there.  I haven't done more than I've said, generally.

Quote from: misko27

So a dwarf ran up a tree, does that mean one of the situations in which they climb includes running away? Will civilians do that too? When will they decide it's safe?

Yeah.  They have to wait for the conflict to be resolved, which happens a bit after nobody has taken direct combat action.  Theoretically they can be treed for a long time if somebody grumpy is hanging out nearby.

Quote from: Heph

Does that include breeding thus are the Spores gone for the Forts own animals? Will Males be aggressive to other Males say if you have territorial Animals? Hunter/prey relationships? Will pets be begging for food? Will cats knock over dwarven Keyboards?

There hasn't been any work on that sort of thing.

Quote from: Bandreus

Will we need to start a nobles cattle raising program in order to keep our local War Grizly Bear community fed? In other words, are carnivores going to actually need to keep themselves fed up appropriately just like grazers?

I haven't done anything with that for this time.  If I remember, a long time ago we had some strangeness with all of that, but cut it out, and I suspect it'll eventually be back.

Quote from: CLA

Will these animal-animal encounters be both in adventure mode and fortress mode? Would predators now enter adventure mode cities and prey on livestock?

Yeah, both modes.  There isn't anything happening with regular predators away from your adv camera in that mode, but accidents may happen as you are walking around.

Quote from: thvaz

Quote from: Footkerchief

Quote from: devlog

Merged the in-play morale calculations with the world gen combat info so that they can assist each other and be encouraged to continue to simultaneously make more sense over time.

I guess this means that combatants can use the simplified combat system to make a quick educated guess about whether they'll win?

Maybe it is both ways? So we won't have a elf farmer dueling a dragon in world gen.

Toady, could you clarify that?

World gen doesn't have access to existing map-based behaviors like running away -- all of that still needs to be programmed in manually as a specialized w.g. action.  For this particular case, the information flow as one way (from w.g. to play), but since they are merged now, and play is more front-and-center than w.g., any improvements to the strength estimations and morale calcs will flow backward now and it's the more likely way for it to work.  World gen actions/responses still need their own work, but as we put them in they'll be able to pick better ones.

Quote from: smjjames

Since there only seem to be two native herbivores in the caverns (at least that are explictly said to be herbivores, if not in the raws) and everything else seems to be either carnivorous or omnivorous, I'm wondering how you will deal with omnivore vs omnivore interactions?

Also, would it be possible for a pack of crundles (which are carnivores btw) to hunt together and attack a Rutherer or Draltha? Basically, will we see pack hunting behavior in this version even if it's an emergent behavior?

I know we see pack behavior already in the form of a pack of dingoes or wolves attacking an adventurer, but I'm talking in the context of predator-prey interactions.

The interactions don't have a whole food web of thought put into them at this point.  It's just the standard sort of fight-or-flight stuff it thought about vs. your dwarves.  Crundles don't have LARGE_PREDATOR, which makes underground creatures in particular much meaner, but adding it would cause them to attack all sorts of creatures in packs most likely.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

In retired forts, do the various denizens of the fort respect pathing while the fort is retired? That is, if I put a dwarf vampire into an oubliette, retired the fort, and then unretired the fort, would the vampire still be there? Would the same hold for an army of captured goblins held prisoner in a giant pit with smoothed walls (or a sealed off chamber)? Would a revealed circus destroy a retired fort from the inside even if it was isolated from the dwarven population by, say, some cast obsidian?

I'm trying to respect components and cages when visiting a retired fort or unretiring it, though a mixture of those actions might screw it up, and it doesn't understand that a given creature is trapped in a component if its AI comes up while the site is offloaded.  So a captured vampire dwarf might be selected for some kind of patrol duty or migration or AI reclaim, but if it isn't disturbed, it'll probably be where you left it.

There isn't any army fighting, so you don't have to worry about monsters vs. retired forts, but you aren't allowed to retire during sieges.  You might be able to cheaply retire when underground monsters are released as things stand.

Quote from: TastyMints

Seeing as the recent devblog update concerns lairs and night creature abductions, I was wondering how this behavior might play out on "civilized" spouse converters. It is 100% possible to create a civilization of "mono-gendered" spouse converters that survive and thrive in world-gen in the current release (As long as you define their Converted Spouse and set them to never be born the game generates them abstractly.) I was wondering if, when included, the abduction system would cause a [SPOUSE_CONVERTER] civ who declares war on a [SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGET] civ to spouse convert their prisoners?

It depends on how the abductions are initiated and how the conversion process works -- if it relies on abstractly feeding people ground-up beetles for a few years in a lair, it wouldn't be expected for stuff to suddenly extend out and work in other situations.  Ideally, any actor can choose any relevant action on their turn and make use of any approximate things that are lying around to meet their goals, but it's difficult to give them that kind of latitude in practice, especially as it concerns making the game run at any reasonable speed, and having entire civilizations make sensible amalgams from collections of random tags and data is even less feasible.  That's not to say that isn't the whole idea of the project, he he he.  It's just hard to do most of the time -- when you've got a population of prisoners, there are a zillion competing tags and individuals, and the results need to be crunched almost instantly, so I probably won't focus on making it understand what to do with an unexpected tag.  As the laws and ethics grow into a more sensible system, there might be more natural pipelines that spring up for shunting people off into that kind of activity though -- we'll have vampires leaders hustling large numbers of victims off as they do in world gen and all that sort of thing, and stuff might fall into place.  Hard to say in any particular case though.  I was going to do prisoner/slave transport from captured sites this time, but I pushed it off since we didn't have enough of the prisoner control stuff that was going to come in with the hero/thief roles, and because things needed pushing off.

Quote from: smjjames

Also, for future modding reference, what's the conversion between whatever scale you are using for locomotion speed vs m/h or km/h?

It hasn't been possible to have a uniform conversion -- to have the game be playable for human speeds with a sufficiently fast walking speed and a sufficiently different sprinting speed, critters like cheetahs had to be screwed over somewhat, at least in terms of what they can do at their peak.  I'll likely have a little chart that says how I'm handling the curve, but that isn't final yet.  I still need to convert some of the data I've collected and decide if I want more wiggle room for the fastest creatures (at the expense of humanoid speed).  It'd be possible to do something like double/triple move actions for the fastest creatures (I think minecarts get these at high speed), but I ran into trouble doing that quickly while respecting AI decisions/turns, so it's on hold (at the expense of possibly temporary speed data that needs to be unfolded later).  To ease that rewrite, I suspect I'll leave humanoid speeds as they are and just curve the fastest creatures sharply to be revisited later.

Quote from: Spish

If you reactivate a retired fortress, will it have retained the same stage of difficulty from when you left it? IE, will there be massive sieges and ambushes right off the bat?

Putnam mentioned that population and overall goods value would be the same, and that the open question is trade value (which is also a trigger).  As far as I can tell, the information retained on unretire is the same as for a reclaim, and the trade sums get reset, which controls beast attacks.  This would drop your trade rating back down to zero, which controls some of the sieges.  In reality, those numbers probably shouldn't be changed, but there's still quite a bit of dwarf-mode-specific information that isn't tracked for other sites and so doesn't pass through retire correctly, especially when it comes to production and other economic stuff (where other sites are completely deficient).

Quote from: smjjames

Oooh, so does this mean that each of the dwarves will have their own personal reputation system? This may have been asked before and I'm not sure if the new personal reputation system was mentioned before

They'll have that now, but that doesn't mean a lot of new stuff'll be going on with it this time.  There's more some stage-setting here as we wind down to avoid save compat problems later and all that if we decide to do something, and to keep everything in tune as the modes get more smeared.

Quote from: Zavvnao

IN future releases, would there ever be a way for bandits or gangs to incorporate or re-incorporate inot a town depending on the situations?

Yeah, that'll definitely be happening, especially with the bandits that were once town leaders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 31, 2014, 05:44:18 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady! :D
Now here's hoping for a February-March release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:47:59 pm

Thanks for answers Toady!

Every mention of the new demon shenanigans is just another ant in my pants as I wait for the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 31, 2014, 05:48:52 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:47:59 pm

Thanks for answers Toady!

Every mention of the new demon shenanigans is just another ant in my pants as I wait for the next release.

At this point your pants are an anthill, aren't they? ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:50:33 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 31, 2014, 05:48:52 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:47:59 pm

Thanks for answers Toady!

Every mention of the new demon shenanigans is just another ant in my pants as I wait for the next release.

At this point your pants are an anthill, aren't they? ;D

A veritable metropolis, yes. I think they just now built a little ant airport.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on January 31, 2014, 05:54:08 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:50:33 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on January 31, 2014, 05:48:52 pm

Quote from: monk12 on January 31, 2014, 05:47:59 pm

Thanks for answers Toady!

Every mention of the new demon shenanigans is just another ant in my pants as I wait for the next release.

At this point your pants are an anthill, aren't they? ;D

A veritable metropolis, yes. I think they just now built a little ant airport.

An antport?
Pretty sure they're connected to my pantsland. I mean what, all those Adventure Mode goodies just make me drool a river whenever I just get a brief thought of all the great things this version will bring us.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on January 31, 2014, 06:01:48 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Are there going to be any more DF Talks any time soon? I miss those.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 06:28:01 pm

I've been going around in circles so much with the dev topics that the idea of just talking about current events each episode led to a failed recording where we didn't cover new ground.  I've been hesitant to try again without a clean slate, and things have been very busy, so I've put it off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on January 31, 2014, 06:55:56 pm

When you say establishing player sites is expensive, do the civilisations have calculated wealth reserves and pay up for building new sites? How is site establishment cost dealt with?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on January 31, 2014, 06:57:55 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on January 31, 2014, 06:55:56 pm

When you say establishing player sites is expensive, do the civilisations have calculated wealth reserves and pay up for building new sites? How is site establishment cost dealt with?

I think he's talking computationally or storage-wise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 31, 2014, 08:15:45 pm

Thank you Toady!

So much information. Hype remains elevated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 31, 2014, 08:46:23 pm

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

If I remember Footkerchief's spoiled comment, he had a different sort of demon site in mind.  The outside ones aren't embarkable if they are visible, and their items would only become available in trade through bugs and other issues, which are common enough.  However, the outside ones have conditions upon which they become visible that are a little different than normal, so if you stay away from adv mode you'll probably find yourself embarking on them once in a rare while.  In any case, item-wise, I'm trying to keep them contained.  It actually is gray goo if they come out of their areas before they are ready, and they certainly aren't ready for prime-time yet, unless you like adjective soup.

I can't wait to see what this is all about.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Raws aren't very interesting for jumping -- there is a CANNOT_JUMP tag.  Flesh balls have it, thankfully.

A rubbery core would fix that right up.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Vattic

Will falling water have any impact on climbing?

Water has that pushing effect in general, although I don't remember if it happens with falling water.  I suppose the best thing to do is fire up the arena with a climber and challenge the waterfall...  It changes my text from "in air" to "swimming" and it makes me moves slower, but it doesn't actually push me, and I still use my climbing gait/hold the whole time (so I'm not actually swimming).  I also tried dumping a whole water column on myself, and I was drowning briefly and moving very slowly, but it didn't push me.  Yeah, upon checking, flow pushing bits are just stored for horizontal directions (the thing controlling the water animation is also what does item/unit pushing for that kind of liquid).

Falling magma also doesn't seem to have temperature effects. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4145)

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

There's quite a bit going on, though the sums of strengths and percentage loss from each side are a main part of it, and those are simple numbers.  There is also the wound/etc. state of the dwarf, and amount of fear vs. mastering fear, which are governed by multiple personality facets (some dwarves simply don't get as afraid in the first place, and some feel fear but can handle it -- in adventure mode you can see which by what they say, and I may direct those statements into dwarf mode combat logs so you can get a measure of what's going on).
[...]
There are levels of dealing with it, but the top state is either running or cowering.  Some dwarves are capable of avoiding the flight state when their terror is maxed out if they have an outlier personality facet.  Whether or not they run or cower currently just depends on if they think they can get away, but there should probably be more to it.

This sounds awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on January 31, 2014, 09:05:30 pm

Quote from: fricy on January 31, 2014, 04:47:44 am

I guess this is a good place to drop this: (https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/428996631942295552)

Quote

Lars Støttrup ‏@Trancecend  18h
@Bay12Games Any chance of a UI cleanup in the next version? IMO some game systems do similar things (thinking "i" vs "q"). Love DF!
 
Bay 12 Games
‏@Trancecend This one has dragged on long enough -- have to see what we get during bug fix releases.  UI to be hit by job priorities then.
1:02 PM - 30 Jan 2014

Who is excited? :)

The other updates and tweaks havent been given much fanfare, I wouldnt expect any UI changes from the bug fixes to much either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on January 31, 2014, 09:13:32 pm

Cheers for the reply.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on January 31, 2014, 09:36:01 pm

Quote from: Toady One (in response to a question about demon sites)

In any case, item-wise, I'm trying to keep them contained.  It actually is gray goo if they come out of their areas before they are ready, and they certainly aren't ready for prime-time yet, unless you like adjective soup.

Are you talking about the world devouring type of grey goo (as in this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo)) or are you using it as a metaphor in a different way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 10:04:13 pm

Yeah, that's the same stuff -- I use it for what happens if you just try to procedurally generate everything.  You've enabled the mechanics to take over and turn the world into a degenerate mush.  Right now the mush is contained in the new sites, but the game would be fundamentally broken if it were allowed to escape everywhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Little Kingpin on January 31, 2014, 10:09:29 pm

Will climbing affect dodging or blocking or any other means of avoiding attacks?

Also, will ranged attacks be affected by the direction of fire? Such as someone firing down a wall at a climber being less likely to hit than a archer firing perpendicular to the wall because of the smaller profile presented?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on January 31, 2014, 10:31:50 pm

I wondered about that actually, the Gray Goo thing threw me off. Very peculiar thing, those demon sites; Toady, you certainly have done a good job teasing us, for those and in general.

I wonder what those items are...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on January 31, 2014, 10:36:40 pm

Quote from: Little Kingpin on January 31, 2014, 10:09:29 pm

Also, will ranged attacks be affected by the direction of fire? Such as someone firing down a wall at a climber being less likely to hit than a archer firing perpendicular to the wall because of the smaller profile presented?

Ranged combat mechanics haven't been changed (beyond the bare necessities).  It'll be the same as the current release in this regard.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on February 01, 2014, 12:32:39 am

Cheers and thanks for the reply Toady.

Quote from: misko27 on January 31, 2014, 10:31:50 pm

I wondered about that actually, the Gray Goo thing threw me off. Very peculiar thing, those demon sites; Toady, you certainly have done a good job teasing us, for those and in general.

I wonder what those items are...

Various pointy objects with with few peaceful uses, no doubt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: VerdantSF on February 01, 2014, 12:41:06 am

So much awesome info.  Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 01, 2014, 01:09:36 am

Yay! Answers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Simca on February 01, 2014, 03:12:55 am

So I searched and didn't see anything obvious, so here is a question from me, a complete noob.

I really like Dragons, so I embarked on a Dragon's lair. I didn't even need the 'embark anywhere' mod to do it, which was neat, and there were SEVEN Dragons there! (It was an otherwise empty island in the middle of the ocean, so the Dragons were really the only ones who could reach it to settle there.)

However, none of the Dragons at the lair were tameable/trappable in Fortress mode because they were 'residents'. Has this been changed/resolved in any way? Can animal residents be trapped and then have their allegiances/residencies changed correctly when they are trapped now?

Thanks a ton! :)

P.S. I have no idea if this question requires a dev (Toady) response or can be answered by other users - I'm fine with an answer from any source, of course!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on February 01, 2014, 03:42:11 am

Thanks for the answers, Toady One! I can't wait to trick an elf into eating some adjective soup.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 01, 2014, 04:20:14 am

Quote from: Simca on February 01, 2014, 03:12:55 am

I really like Dragons, so I embarked on a Dragon's lair. I didn't even need the 'embark anywhere' mod to do it, which was neat, and there were SEVEN Dragons there! (It was an otherwise empty island in the middle of the ocean, so the Dragons were really the only ones who could reach it to settle there.)

However, none of the Dragons at the lair were tameable/trappable in Fortress mode because they were 'residents'. Has this been changed/resolved in any way? Can animal residents be trapped and then have their allegiances/residencies changed correctly when they are trapped now?

I don't think any relevant changes have been made.  What's stopping you from trapping the dragons?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tiresais on February 01, 2014, 05:03:47 am

Thanks for all your work Toady! Could you please give me one of the following options

1) force trader to turn up to trade depot, ignore all other jobs

2) failure to attend trade depot is punishable by removal of limbs one-by-one.

I mean I have a work around so far - giant spiders in caverns like ripping limbs off - but I just feel tat i'd be even more satisfying to see the sadness in his eyes as his fellow dwarves turn the crank and rip his arms off for leaving me with 1000 fine toys but no metal weapons...

I have 99 problems, and they're mostly related to job-ignoring :p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on February 01, 2014, 05:27:18 am

I can't wait til the next release. I got so many ideas for adventures and fortresses to build... But I have been reading so much about the next release that I can't stand going back to the latest release...

Any hints on when we can expect the next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 01, 2014, 06:57:12 am

Quote from: Rapozk on February 01, 2014, 05:27:18 am

I can't wait til the next release. I got so many ideas for adventures and fortresses to build... But I have been reading so much about the next release that I can't stand going back to the latest release...

Any hints on when we can expect the next release?

Most popular guesstimate now seems to be late February-mid March.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 01, 2014, 07:05:05 am

Quote from: Tiresais on February 01, 2014, 05:03:47 am

Thanks for all your work Toady! Could you please give me one of the following options

1) force trader to turn up to trade depot, ignore all other jobs

2) failure to attend trade depot is punishable by removal of limbs one-by-one.

I mean I have a work around so far - giant spiders in caverns like ripping limbs off - but I just feel tat i'd be even more satisfying to see the sadness in his eyes as his fellow dwarves turn the crank and rip his arms off for leaving me with 1000 fine toys but no metal weapons...

I have 99 problems, and they're mostly related to job-ignoring :p

Suggestions go in the suggestions section :p  Besides, you can just set it to anybody can trade if your usual trader is on break or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 01, 2014, 10:43:56 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 01, 2014, 04:20:14 am

Quote from: Simca on February 01, 2014, 03:12:55 am

I really like Dragons, so I embarked on a Dragon's lair. I didn't even need the 'embark anywhere' mod to do it, which was neat, and there were SEVEN Dragons there! (It was an otherwise empty island in the middle of the ocean, so the Dragons were really the only ones who could reach it to settle there.)

However, none of the Dragons at the lair were tameable/trappable in Fortress mode because they were 'residents'. Has this been changed/resolved in any way? Can animal residents be trapped and then have their allegiances/residencies changed correctly when they are trapped now?

I don't think any relevant changes have been made.  What's stopping you from trapping the dragons?

It's a very old mechanic. Residents of a site (the things that lived there before you embarked) are immune to the traps you put there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on February 01, 2014, 01:12:29 pm

Some comments, largely about potential interplay of game mechanics and realism, more than questions...

It would be interesting to see if, when army attacks require the army to be able to get to the map location, deep sites are vulnerable to attack via the underground roads once armies have taken their fortresses. It would also be interesting to see if they have builtin defenses such as shutting gates to those roads or intentionally causing caveins. (Such defenses could be used as a cop-out if there are technical difficulties getting such attacks to work; instead, when a fortress is taken the deep site road to it could be blocked off to explain to the player why no attacks can occur there. Just bouncing possibilities around in my head here.)

It would be interesting if, once you can change the savagery of a tile by wiping out enough of the animal population, killing enough non-savage creatures would change the savagery and cause savage creatures no longer to appear either. You could hand-wave that as a sort of food chain thing -- the savage predators don't have enough prey -- without ever actually adding a food-chain ecosystem mechanic.

If climbing speed and walking speed are set independently, the flip side is that we could have creatures like spiders that climb at least as fast they walk, while normal creatures climb slower than walking. Or, let's say monkeys in trees...

If I recall correct that I heard a while back that enemies can jump if they happen to see that the far ledge is within range, and can climb under similarly limited conditions, but cannot jump to a landing in a climbing position -- i.e. will not jump over a gap if the far ledge they'd have to land on is the side of a wall... then putting a moat full of water (which would have to be passed by jumping, for non-swimming creatures; use magma instead to block all but the fire creatures from the depths) around a standard one z high wall (which cannot be jumped onto the side of) might be a simpler alternative to attempting to set up walls too high to climb over or with an impassable overhang. And then we're back to the so-traditional-it's-stereotyped image of castles with moats around their walls. 8^) (Which, let's face it, worked in real life for a reason. It keeps ladders and seige engines at a greater distance from the walls, thereby boosting the walls' effectiveness.) It might be interesting to make jumping-onto-a-wall a special skill granted only by a raw tag, down the road, so that if such a mechanic is added it doesn't make all creatures into clones of Peter Parker by default, but rather respects the realism of moat-surrounded walls being virtually unclimbable.

I wonder if pathing additions/improvements, especially the whole accessible components thing, will ever fix the processing waste that occurs when animals keep trying to figure out if they can path through closed doors. (Ok, that's almost a question, and isn't about gameplay mechanics vs. realism... eh, whatever.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 01, 2014, 01:32:51 pm

Quote from: Tiresais on February 01, 2014, 05:03:47 am

Thanks for all your work Toady! Could you please give me one of the following options

1) force trader to turn up to trade depot, ignore all other jobs

2) failure to attend trade depot is punishable by removal of limbs one-by-one.

I mean I have a work around so far - giant spiders in caverns like ripping limbs off - but I just feel tat i'd be even more satisfying to see the sadness in his eyes as his fellow dwarves turn the crank and rip his arms off for leaving me with 1000 fine toys but no metal weapons...

I have 99 problems, and they're mostly related to job-ignoring :p

Job priorities is one of the all-time most popular suggestions.  It's slated to get worked on after the release. (https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/428996631942295552)

Quote from: Untelligent on February 01, 2014, 10:43:56 am

It's a very old mechanic. Residents of a site (the things that lived there before you embarked) are immune to the traps you put there.

Interesting.  Not sure if that's intentional -- might warrant a bug report.

Quote from: Cobbler89 on February 01, 2014, 01:12:29 pm

I wonder if pathing additions/improvements, especially the whole accessible components thing, will ever fix the processing waste that occurs when animals keep trying to figure out if they can path through closed doors. (Ok, that's almost a question, and isn't about gameplay mechanics vs. realism... eh, whatever.)

For what it's worth, this is on the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=797).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 01, 2014, 02:36:19 pm

Quote from: Tiresais on February 01, 2014, 05:03:47 am

I mean I have a work around so far - giant spiders in caverns like ripping limbs off - but I just feel tat i'd be even more satisfying to see the sadness in his eyes as his fellow dwarves turn the crank and rip his arms off for leaving me with 1000 fine toys but no metal weapons...

Dwarves consider torture unthinkable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 01, 2014, 02:51:15 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 01, 2014, 02:36:19 pm

Quote from: Tiresais on February 01, 2014, 05:03:47 am

I mean I have a work around so far - giant spiders in caverns like ripping limbs off - but I just feel tat i'd be even more satisfying to see the sadness in his eyes as his fellow dwarves turn the crank and rip his arms off for leaving me with 1000 fine toys but no metal weapons...

Dwarves consider torture unthinkable.

It's not torture if he dies in the end, is it? Think of it as capital punishment.
Besides, it's unthinkable, but quite enjoyable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 01, 2014, 02:54:59 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 01, 2014, 01:32:51 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 01, 2014, 10:43:56 am

It's a very old mechanic. Residents of a site (the things that lived there before you embarked) are immune to the traps you put there.

Interesting.  Not sure if that's intentional -- might warrant a bug report.

A Toady post on that behavior. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=19561.msg203803#msg203803) It's kind of an incomplete feature I guess. They should know about pre-existing traps, but not about newly-built ones, but since it seems residents have the same site knowledge as you right now, it might not be quite straightforward.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 01, 2014, 03:33:18 pm

Cool, then no report needed.  Might come up when Toady works on adventurer-made sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 01, 2014, 04:09:58 pm

As he did work on the reclaims of sites taken by megabeasts, maybe he solved this issue already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Starweaver396 on February 01, 2014, 08:52:58 pm

Will adventurers be able to spar with the new combat levels? It would be nice if you could train on the villagers without slaughtering a bunch of innocents.

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but it seems reasonable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on February 01, 2014, 09:23:34 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on February 01, 2014, 08:52:58 pm

Will adventurers be able to spar with the new combat levels? It would be nice if you could train on the villagers without slaughtering a bunch of innocents.

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but it seems reasonable.

IIRC, formal sparring won't be part of adventure mode for this release, but it will be possible to level up by non-lethally beating people. What happens when an adventurer aquires a training weapon by some means and uses it in this way(?) seems like an open question for now.

There will be bandits hanging around towns and villages just to mess with people now, so you can get your fight on without necessarily hurting innocent people, although there are consequences for killing them too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WanderingKid on February 02, 2014, 03:40:44 am

I just realized I never PTW'd this.  So, PTW.   :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on February 02, 2014, 04:42:07 am

Toady, will you make it so that dragons can breed in fortress mode, in the next release, without modding?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 02, 2014, 10:02:37 am

Quote from: Rapozk on February 02, 2014, 04:42:07 am

Toady, will you make it so that dragons can breed in fortress mode, in the next release, without modding?

I believe it's on hold until next time Toady works on pets:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1848408#msg1848408

Quote

Quote from: Lovechild

If I steal a dragon egg, will it hatch? And will the baby dragon think I'm its mom, or try to kill me?

Quote from: freeformschooler

I realize that we'll probably be able to raise dragons and rocs from eggs in Fortress mode, but will we be able to do so in ADVENTURE MODE? Since there will probably be horse riding, I don't think it's too far off.

Right now it won't hatch, but it could still turn out any way since I'm not finished yet.  But yeah, as more pet support goes in, various stuff is going to happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on February 02, 2014, 10:47:37 am

To what extent do you know, when you code something, that it is only a placeholder for the 'real' code to come later on down the line? What percentage of the game do you think will have to be rewritten, so far?

Are there any familiar features of the game that you expect will completely change or be removed in the future?

If your civ starts with no access to, say, native copper, but you build a fort that does, will the civ then have access after retirement? Would it be necessary to actually mine it, or to sell it? Would surface plants become available in trade or for embark for that civ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on February 02, 2014, 10:56:41 am

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on February 02, 2014, 10:47:37 am

Are there any familiar features of the game that you expect will completely change or be removed in the future?

Cave-in mechanisms comes to my mind first. Currently those are only placeholders.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 02, 2014, 10:58:06 am

Quote from: Buttery_Mess on February 02, 2014, 10:47:37 am

Are there any familiar features of the game that you expect will completely change or be removed in the future?

Tons:

• artifacts (and probably moods to a lesser extent)
• embarks -- 7 dwarves with no particular plan will become the exception, not the rule
• sieges and ambushes -- will cease to exist as specific hardcoded events, instead moving under the Army Arc umbrella
• ranged weapon mechanics like reloading
• parties -- needs more music etc, probably coming with inns/taverns
• merchants and their hardcoded assortment of guards and pack animals
• workshop buildings -- I think these are planned to become zones eventually

That's just off the top of my head.  Many if not most features have major changes planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 02, 2014, 11:10:50 am

I hope we get a release this month.  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 02, 2014, 12:29:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 02, 2014, 11:10:50 am

I hope we get a release this month.  :)

If Toady was to be given a cent every time that sentence has been said he would have twice the money he gets from donations.
That said, I too hope for that, but you can't really tell at this point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 02, 2014, 01:11:10 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on February 02, 2014, 12:29:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 02, 2014, 11:10:50 am

I hope we get a release this month.  :)

If Toady was to be given a cent every time that sentence has been said he would have twice the money he gets from donations.
That said, I too hope for that, but you can't really tell at this point.

Quote from: Threetoe

There really isn't a lot left before the next release comes out.

Quote from:  Toady One

Continuing to roll along.  It's roughly the same mixture of critters left, but the pile is quite a bit smaller now.

They are much more optimistic than they were in January's report.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 02, 2014, 01:35:54 pm

I guess you might be right after all.
It'll come when it's done, and we shall all be happy then!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 02, 2014, 02:15:37 pm

So recently (today, actually) I have read about the so-called Maarten Principle (http://joostdevblog.blogspot.nl/2014/02/the-maarten-principle-golden-rule-of.html) and I thought that it might be interesting to ask: do you think same (or at least similar) kind of thinking could be applied to DF's development and planning?

If the read's too long, here are a few images that quickly get the idea of The Maarten Principle across:
(http://www.proun-game.com/Oogst3D/BLOG/Maarten%20Principle%20-%20Tegeltje%201.gif)
(http://www.proun-game.com/Oogst3D/BLOG/Maarten%20Principle%20-%20Tegeltje%202.gif)
(http://www.proun-game.com/Oogst3D/BLOG/Maarten%20Principle%20-%20Tegeltje%203.gif)
(http://www.proun-game.com/Oogst3D/BLOG/Maarten%20Principle%20-%20Tegeltje%204.gif)


...Yes, Bay12 =/= Ronimo (that's even mentioned in the blog), but I still think that it may seem interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 02, 2014, 03:15:08 pm

Hofstadter's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law) also applies:

Quote from: Hofstadter's law

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 02, 2014, 04:45:29 pm

Accurately estimating how long a programming task takes is hard, but it's a trainable skill, not a doomed venture. It is possible to have some proficiency.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 03, 2014, 02:25:35 am

We must therefore construct a danger room to train said skill!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 03, 2014, 02:39:42 am

New Devlog

Quote

Did some final work on ambush positioning and random things like travel restrictions and timers vs. harassment activities. I guess the high point was when the line of sight and ambush placement code got scrambled and all of the bandits after the first got placed in the air on a line between the player and the hillside where the bandit commander was standing. Lots of subsequent thudding and bruises.

Sounds pretty exciting; A bandit commander ordering his troops around from a nearby hillside, smirking at the player, and perhaps even shooting with a crossbow while player is busy fighting the lower bandits.

Also: hilarious placement issues there. "Hey, you guys, jump into the air and levitate between me and that traveller! I SAID DO IT!!!"

I doubt bandit commanders will hang back though. They'll prob just charge in unless they are marksmen or archers. Ah well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on February 03, 2014, 03:30:23 pm

Waiting for the update feels more and more like Waiting for Godot. Even the first sentence summarizes it perfectly: "Nothing to be done".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 03, 2014, 07:19:49 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 03, 2014, 02:25:35 am

We must therefore construct a danger room to train said skill!

I don't think that poking Toady with auto-jab broomsticks will do the trick; he might get better at dodging and moving in armor, but we still won't know when the next release will be.

Unless you have a different design in mind...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 03, 2014, 07:42:22 pm

We don't want him to end up with a smashed fingernail and get an infection though. :D

Latest devlog, more bugfixing, tweaks, and fleshing out features. Good, good, one day closer to release, whenever that is. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on February 03, 2014, 08:28:36 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 03, 2014, 07:19:49 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 03, 2014, 02:25:35 am

We must therefore construct a danger room to train said skill!

I don't think that poking Toady with auto-jab broomsticks will do the trick; he might get better at dodging and moving in armor, but we still won't know when the next release will be.

Unless you have a different design in mind...

I'm thinking a lot of levers and doors connected to a dwarven calculator. He's presented a number he has to match. If Toady gets it through the right lever pulls, he gets a mug of coffee. If he gets it wrong or takes too long, he'll get a jab from a broomstick.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 04, 2014, 03:09:49 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 03, 2014, 08:28:36 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 03, 2014, 07:19:49 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 03, 2014, 02:25:35 am

We must therefore construct a danger room to train said skill!

I don't think that poking Toady with auto-jab broomsticks will do the trick; he might get better at dodging and moving in armor, but we still won't know when the next release will be.

Unless you have a different design in mind...

I'm thinking a lot of levers and doors connected to a dwarven calculator. He's presented a number he has to match. If Toady gets it through the right lever pulls, he gets a mug of coffee. If he gets it wrong or takes too long, he'll get a jab from a broomstick.

You know, I'm not quite sure how that is going to help. It's like sending your military to train in the danger room while there's a siege. Sure, they'll be good at fighting, but in the end it won't matter.

Also, I believe the skill mentioned was OUR skill at calculating time to release. I know! Everyone makes a guess, and whoever gets it wrong gets poked by sticks in neck-high water! Or has to pull one of two levers. One opens a door, the other floods the room with magma. Your choice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 02:28:26 pm

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
I once built a heavily trap lined walk-way spiraling  30Z up a Volcano, expecting invaders to eventually work their way down, while trying not to dodge off the single wide path...
Until the first Gobo died on the first trap, and the lot of them stopped and sat there

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on February 04, 2014, 02:31:15 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 02:28:26 pm

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
I once built a heavily trap lined walk-way spiraling  30Z up a Volcano, expecting invaders to eventually work their way down, while trying not to dodge off the single wide path...
Until the first Gobo died on the first trap, and the lot of them stopped and sat there

Was it the commander? I remember something about goblin squads hanging around near their commander, regardless of whether he's caged or dead or whatever, at least until they break and run. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on February 04, 2014, 02:40:41 pm

Will fortress starting scenarios be in the new release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 04, 2014, 02:47:59 pm

Quote from: MrWillsauce on February 04, 2014, 02:40:41 pm

Will fortress starting scenarios be in the new release?

No:

Quote from: https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/427949763753820160

Quote

@Bay12Games I know you probably won't even hear this... but what are the chances of no hard-coded waves of migrants for the next release?

@Pakislav No change this time, but with hill dwarves now, later we get fort surroundings and start scenarios, which'll include that option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on February 04, 2014, 02:49:03 pm

That's disappointing. I suppose we won't be getting more than 7 dwarves to a reclaim party either?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 04, 2014, 02:50:53 pm

Quote from: Shinziril on February 04, 2014, 02:31:15 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 02:28:26 pm

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
I once built a heavily trap lined walk-way spiraling  30Z up a Volcano, expecting invaders to eventually work their way down, while trying not to dodge off the single wide path...
Until the first Gobo died on the first trap, and the lot of them stopped and sat there

Was it the commander? I remember something about goblin squads hanging around near their commander, regardless of whether he's caged or dead or whatever, at least until they break and run.

Certainly it was the commander, but it only happens when caged traps are involved. There are no news or comments yet about invaders jumping traps, and better invading routes have been discussed in an earlier FotF, but I don't think they're there yet.

Also, Ninjago'd by Footkerchief.

Quote from: MrWillSauce

That's disappointing. I suppose we won't be getting more than 7 dwarves to a reclaim party either?

The idea of starting scenarios and the number of embarking dwarves is to make sense of the size and reason for your expedition, so it's a positive guess to say that when one of them gets implemented, the other one will follow suit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 04, 2014, 02:51:09 pm

Quote from: Shinziril on February 04, 2014, 02:31:15 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 02:28:26 pm

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
I once built a heavily trap lined walk-way spiraling  30Z up a Volcano, expecting invaders to eventually work their way down, while trying not to dodge off the single wide path...
Until the first Gobo died on the first trap, and the lot of them stopped and sat there

Was it the commander? I remember something about goblin squads hanging around near their commander, regardless of whether he's caged or dead or whatever, at least until they break and run. 

0001598: Enemy squads will never abandon their caged leader (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1598)

Quote from: MrWillsauce on February 04, 2014, 02:49:03 pm

That's disappointing. I suppose we won't be getting more than 7 dwarves to a reclaim party either?

Nope:

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Bandreus

If we happen to reclaim a fort which fell to a FB or other MB, and if the beast happened to set its lair there, are the initial 7 to actually confront it? I.e. will the beast be there when the party arrives?

Calathar answered this, but it was a little farther down the thread so I just wanted to confirm that the beast will indeed be there.  I haven't done anything like what we had before with many squads of armed dwarves (that's all going to be up to start scenarios later), so you'll just have to be cautious until you can manage.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on February 04, 2014, 02:53:56 pm

That is really disappointing. I wanted to do some real, hardcore Moria reclaim stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 04, 2014, 03:33:21 pm

I think there might be a DFhack script that lets you change the number and race of playable creatures you embark with. I couldn't tell you how to use it, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 04:33:02 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 04, 2014, 02:51:09 pm

Quote from: Shinziril on February 04, 2014, 02:31:15 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on February 04, 2014, 02:28:26 pm

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
I once built a heavily trap lined walk-way spiraling  30Z up a Volcano, expecting invaders to eventually work their way down, while trying not to dodge off the single wide path...
Until the first Gobo died on the first trap, and the lot of them stopped and sat there

Was it the commander? I remember something about goblin squads hanging around near their commander, regardless of whether he's caged or dead or whatever, at least until they break and run. 

0001598: Enemy squads will never abandon their caged leader (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1598)

There were no cages involved, just staggered weapon and stonefall traps.  I tried to keep the first post brief, but to expand I was able to gradually get some of them down past a few traps by repeatedly sending mechanics to try and work on the lower bridges. But they it seemed that each squad would only dodge past discovered traps until hitting a new one then stop.

Next time I will make a two wide path and stager the traps around corners so that they will path into them, but have a clear route all the way so they keep moving, and bracket the weapon traps with stone falls to encourage them to dodge poorly to doom.
_{Edit: forgot to close a quote block.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on February 04, 2014, 06:51:17 pm

What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff.

I've always wanted to play a cliffside fortress where the perilous terrain actually performed its role as a natural barrier. Invaders showing up on the site at the top of a cliff (despite that path being blocked as far as the world map is concerned) is quite the nuisance.
Edit: And on that note, do travelling armies respect the path of entry when arriving on a player's site?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 04, 2014, 07:37:48 pm

Quote from: Spish on February 04, 2014, 06:51:17 pm

What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff, which is especially annoying since it makes it very hard for a player to keep track of them through the Z-levels.

Suggestions go in the Suggestions forum, and changing the terrain isn't a good solution to an interface problem.  Displaying multiple z-levels at once (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30114.0) is the way to go.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on February 04, 2014, 08:32:06 pm

Perhaps I should edit that part out entirely then, since that was not the point of the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 04, 2014, 08:59:34 pm

I forgot to thank Toady for the answers as soon as the FotF came up, so thank you Toady.

However, this... This.
Are we betting on estimates again, dabbling release-guessers? It seems that late February-early March is the way to go, but "serious bug list" might hint otherwise.

Amped-up excitement aside, what's the worst that could happen with a recently baked release? Being unplayable? Or is there something even murkier, like PC-wide issues or something like that? Also, is the Windows release coupled by the Mac and Linux versions, or do these come just a bit later?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on February 04, 2014, 09:03:32 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Moving along through bits and pieces -- fixed a problem with the code that groups armies together when people walk off the map, homogenized some data between local and more abstracted site takeovers/reclaims, worked some with armies coming in from the edges and where they are placed, and fixed some more of that start-on-the-roof stuff. The list of feature items that is left is about half as long as it was ten days ago. There's the serious bug list after that, and then people can mess around with the rough cut (veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away).

My thought process went something like "Mm hmm, Mmm hmm, I didn't know about that roof stuff, Oh cool we can get a release soo- or maybe not".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 04, 2014, 09:11:39 pm

Quote from: misko27 on February 04, 2014, 09:03:32 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Moving along through bits and pieces -- fixed a problem with the code that groups armies together when people walk off the map, homogenized some data between local and more abstracted site takeovers/reclaims, worked some with armies coming in from the edges and where they are placed, and fixed some more of that start-on-the-roof stuff. The list of feature items that is left is about half as long as it was ten days ago. There's the serious bug list after that, and then people can mess around with the rough cut (veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away).

"Oh cool we can get a release soo- or maybe not"

I had the opposite thought. "Oh crap, release may be in less than 30 days."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 04, 2014, 09:32:35 pm

I think Toady just said "the release is soon!" but without committing to it because... yah know, Toady, deadlines, oil and water.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on February 04, 2014, 11:23:55 pm

Quote from: Valtam on February 04, 2014, 08:59:34 pm

Are we betting on estimates again, dabbling release-guessers? It seems that late February-early March is the way to go, but "serious bug list" might hint otherwise.

I'd guess that the remaining features will take 2-3 weeks, then a similar length of time for bug fixing.  I'd be surprised but not shocked if it was not in March. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on February 04, 2014, 11:25:32 pm

Nah, March seems likely. We can't assume ten days for the rest of the notes; but we can take that as a guess, since he's as likely to burn through what's left as to get stuck. (I hope.) Then, give two to three weeks for bugfixing...and we end up with a probable March release. I suspect the first really stable release won't come out until mid-April, though. Hold onto your hats, gentlemen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 05, 2014, 01:24:59 am

Aye, remaining features might not take long, but bugfixing most likely will. Especially since bugs breed bugs. Sometime March looks probable, and then a few weeks or months after that 'til a good stable version is achieved. Also,

Quote from: Toady One

(veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away)

this made me snort milk out my nose. Reality is now a cartoon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 05, 2014, 01:27:33 am

Get hype, men.
Going with the majority here and putting my bets on early-mid March.

Good thing that I don't play much in fortress mode (though this release might push me to do it, what with the reclaimable forts in which I can skip or at least partially omit the most boring phase), but I'm pretty sure that the adventure mode's going to be just as buggy as the fort mode.
And it's going to be bloody awesome, I can tell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 05, 2014, 02:45:59 am

We are all alpha-testers here. Finding bugs (and reporting them) is part of the fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on February 05, 2014, 03:21:46 am

Toady fullfils his predictions after all.

He said that the release would be in march. He just forgot to mention the year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 05, 2014, 03:54:03 am

He just needs to say "the release will be at midnight" and then suddenly his predictions become very easy to fulfill.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 04:23:36 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 05, 2014, 03:54:03 am

He just needs to say "the release will be at midnight" and then suddenly his predictions become very easy to fulfill.

10 more days, then serious bugs, then release. Which means February 14th - March 1st?

.............................

HFS, its about time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on February 05, 2014, 05:11:25 am

Are we getting close...? Excuse me, I gotta do a little dance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 05, 2014, 06:38:57 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE


Ahem...
Will reactions to simultaneous attacks happen separately or simultaneously? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm only a Dabbling Record Keeper.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 05, 2014, 07:15:07 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on February 05, 2014, 06:38:57 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 09:11:12 am

Pretty please?

I say April is the month

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:30:45 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Obvious troll is obvious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on February 05, 2014, 09:32:30 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:30:45 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Obvious troll is obvious.

Joking != trolling...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:40:56 am

Quote from: Dutchling on February 05, 2014, 09:32:30 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:30:45 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Obvious troll is obvious.

Joking != trolling...

I was also teasing him around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on February 05, 2014, 09:43:13 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:40:56 am

Quote from: Dutchling on February 05, 2014, 09:32:30 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 09:30:45 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Obvious troll is obvious.

Joking != trolling...

I was also teasing him around.

Well, I was just teasing you around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 10:11:04 am

No I WAS teasing my self around...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 05, 2014, 10:35:23 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Be mindful that if Toady is assassinated the code doesn't get released, so don't get any funny ideas to make your ideas come true :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 10:48:22 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 05, 2014, 10:35:23 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Be mindful that if Toady is assassinated the code doesn't get released, so don't get any funny ideas to make your ideas come true :P

Is that seriously a thing in his will?

(I say March 2014. March 16th for lulz; it's my little sister's birthday.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 10:51:46 am

Could it be?  Another April 1st release?

Quote from: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 10:48:22 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 05, 2014, 10:35:23 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Be mindful that if Toady is assassinated the code doesn't get released, so don't get any funny ideas to make your ideas come true :P

Is that seriously a thing in his will?

Quote from: Toady One on October 01, 2008, 07:49:14 am

Yeah, we've mentioned my untimely demise before, most recently because this town has lots of drunks and meth and some of the stupidest ass people that yell at you from vehicles as you might ever encounter (despite warnings from well-meaning people with misgivings about Texas, nothing ever happened down there, whereas up here in Silverdale I've been yelled at or had crap thrown at me or whatever no fewer than fifteen times while shopping, etc., even though I walked more down there), and the idea was to release everything.  I should amend that though -- if there are suspicions of foul play, and the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the death was related to getting the source released, then, well, no source then.  Yes, you will be punished for the wrongdoings of others, so pray for my safety!  No killing for the source!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 11:13:12 am

I warned about this and anybody with a barely working understanding of transdwarfntum mechanics could see, this release is pivotal for the rest of the life of the game, this is akin to the baby starting to talk or walk, from this point on it will learn faster, it will surprise us with new tricks everyday, it also become more complex and independent.

This release will be the first release of the rest of our lives :P

Given it's critical importance I don't care if Toady needs another whole year to release it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 11:19:17 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 10:51:46 am

Could it be?  Another April 1st release?

Quote from: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 10:48:22 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 05, 2014, 10:35:23 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 05, 2014, 06:25:49 am

I'm going to have to go against the grain here and stand by my original theory that there will not be a release. We already have the last version that will be made public. The dev log is just to tease everyone. :D

Be mindful that if Toady is assassinated the code doesn't get released, so don't get any funny ideas to make your ideas come true :P

Is that seriously a thing in his will?

Quote from: Toady One on October 01, 2008, 07:49:14 am

Yeah, we've mentioned my untimely demise before, most recently because this town has lots of drunks and meth and some of the stupidest ass people that yell at you from vehicles as you might ever encounter (despite warnings from well-meaning people with misgivings about Texas, nothing ever happened down there, whereas up here in Silverdale I've been yelled at or had crap thrown at me or whatever no fewer than fifteen times while shopping, etc., even though I walked more down there), and the idea was to release everything.  I should amend that though -- if there are suspicions of foul play, and the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the death was related to getting the source released, then, well, no source then.  Yes, you will be punished for the wrongdoings of others, so pray for my safety!  No killing for the source!

Quite dwarfy. No unfortunate accidents allowed!

@LordBaal: Hmmm, that's a decent analogy. It's definitely a major major release. I was here for the transition between DF2010 and DF2012, and this looks to be more game-changing than that. Retiring... fooooooooorts...  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 05, 2014, 11:41:05 am

Clearly we need a Commission on Undwarfly Activities to root out who's most likely to assassinate our glorious dev.

_{jk, of course. Heh, but that will is awesome. It's taking the Dev Team thinks of Everything to the next level.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 05, 2014, 12:44:06 pm

So, with a release with such colossal scope for bugs as this, are we dealing with ludicrous glitches, ascii blue sceens or hard drive melting for bug testing? I know toady has licked some impressive bugs in the devlogs, but i wonder what players have come up against in previous releases early versions.

DON'T PANIC

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 12:49:11 pm

Standard DF procedure, people find bugs, report them and then proceed to kill Elves in creative ways with the bug until its resolved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 05, 2014, 12:54:11 pm

10 days + 2 weeks, hmm. . . I could be getting a DF release for my birthday! (March 1st)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 05, 2014, 02:04:44 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 12:49:11 pm

Standard DF procedure, people find bugs, report them and then proceed to kill Elves in creative ways with the bug until its resolved.

Let's face it, it's not even about killing the Elves anymore, that's just tradition. No, it's about turning everything to your own advantage. It's about establishing dominance and showing the Elves that you don't even need to torture them anymore, you can burn wood into charcoal in front of them and they can't do a thing. It's about total domination and freedom.
Yes, that's the essence of it. Freedom. To do as you wish. To show that you can't be stopped. To show that no matter how many lives it takes, how many mountains must be mined and how much magma has to be pumped, you cannot be stopped.

Ah, who am I kidding, of course it's about killing things, mainly Elves and the trees they love.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 05, 2014, 02:27:00 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 05, 2014, 02:04:44 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 12:49:11 pm

Standard DF procedure, people find bugs, report them and then proceed to kill Elves in creative ways with the bug until its resolved.

Let's face it, it's not even about killing the Elves anymore, that's just tradition. No, it's about turning everything to your own advantage. It's about establishing dominance and showing the Elves that you don't even need to torture them anymore, you can burn wood into charcoal in front of them and they can't do a thing. It's about total domination and freedom.
Yes, that's the essence of it. Freedom. To do as you wish. To show that you can't be stopped. To show that no matter how many lives it takes, how many mountains must be mined and how much magma has to be pumped, you cannot be stopped.

Ah, who am I kidding, of course it's about killing things, mainly Elves and the trees they love.

Is this Breaking Dwarf, seasons 3 to 5?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 02:40:30 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 05, 2014, 02:04:44 pm

Ah, who am I kidding, of course it's about killing things, mainly Elves and the trees they love.

Which invites the question: what happens to a tree's occupants when the tree is chopped down?  Whatever it is, it can't be good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 02:53:14 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 02:40:30 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 05, 2014, 02:04:44 pm

Ah, who am I kidding, of course it's about killing things, mainly Elves and the trees they love.

Which invites the question: what happens to a tree's occupants when the tree is chopped down?  Whatever it is, it can't be good.

Cave-in mechanics, probably.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 05, 2014, 03:27:33 pm

Quote from: Lielac on February 05, 2014, 02:53:14 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 02:40:30 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 05, 2014, 02:04:44 pm

Ah, who am I kidding, of course it's about killing things, mainly Elves and the trees they love.

Which invites the question: what happens to a tree's occupants when the tree is chopped down?  Whatever it is, it can't be good.

Cave-in mechanics, probably.

Without the cave-in dust effect hopefully as that could get annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on February 05, 2014, 03:46:44 pm

Quote from: 09/08/2013 devlog

The multi-tile trees fall over now when chopped down by a dwarf. I went with having logs from the trunk segments fall down like projectiles, so you get a primitive sort of animation, and the tree doesn't go anywhere it shouldn't be able to. And critters get a chance to dodge out of the way if they end up in the way. You can choose the direction of the fall for larger trees by choosing which tile to chop, but for smaller trees, it'll just be away from wherever the woodcutter ends up, which you can only control indirectly at this point. I also messed around with the new personalities a bit and taught the new dwarven brain how to stand up again, which has been an ongoing issue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

I think I may get started with adventure mode, now that the world is working properly (at last). I may also create a small fortress, retire it, and bring in some adventurers, though it is likely they may get run over by elephants or hippos beforehand. I really hope we can have our human and elf adventurers work within the fortress without using hacks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on February 05, 2014, 05:51:05 pm

Gonna open up arena mode and test out the new combat mechanics. And if my computer hasn't blue screened by then, I'll try to gen a world and visit some of the new civ sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on February 05, 2014, 05:51:31 pm

Okay, everybody... I hate to be "that guy" but remember, Toady has to read through all these comments, and most of them are becoming seriously off-topic. I know we're all very, very excited (myself included), but let's try not to derail this thread like Spearbreakers. :P

Toady, you mentioned in the past FotF update that there may be a tag incoming for graspless insects that allows them to climb. What are the chances of you also making a tag to disable climbing, for creatures that have grasps, but can't climb for one reason or another? My reasoning behind it being there are some creatures that can pick things up, but don't have an anatomical structure that would permit them to climb, either by not having enough strength in their forelimbs, or lacking hind legs for the purpose. This might be mainly for modders, though, and I'm not sure if it would make it to your todo list.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on February 05, 2014, 06:11:31 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

Crank Megabeasts, SemiMegabeasts, Titans, Vampires, Were-beasts, Evil Interactions & clouds & rains , the works, all up to 999 and turn 'Reveal History' off in Advanced world gen.

I want the last vestiges of the civilized world to be running scared when my hero comes into the world, I think that will give her the busiest 'to do list' possible when it comes to quests. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 05, 2014, 06:16:31 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on February 05, 2014, 05:51:31 pm

Toady, you mentioned in the past FotF update that there may be a tag incoming for graspless insects that allows them to climb. What are the chances of you also making a tag to disable climbing, for creatures that have grasps, but can't climb for one reason or another? My reasoning behind it being there are some creatures that can pick things up, but don't have an anatomical structure that would permit them to climb, either by not having enough strength in their forelimbs, or lacking hind legs for the purpose. This might be mainly for modders, though, and I'm not sure if it would make it to your todo list.

As things stand, climbers need both a climbing gait and a grasp in their raws.  Toady was talking about adding a special tag to allow insects to climb without a grasp.  If you want a grasp but no climbing, you can remove the climbing gait from that creature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on February 05, 2014, 06:59:56 pm

how about a [IS_CLAWED] tag to solve certain problems with non-grasping creatures such as insects and felines?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 07:20:27 pm

Isn't more simple to employ a [CAN_CLIMB] tag and in the case of sentients that can't naturally climb, a assign the tag as long it has a rope with a hook or something equipped?

Or perhaps a [NATURAL_CLIMBER] for animals and climb an ability for sapients?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on February 06, 2014, 12:09:27 am

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 06, 2014, 12:17:52 am

Quote from: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 07:20:27 pm

Isn't more simple to employ a [CAN_CLIMB] tag and in the case of sentients that can't naturally climb, a assign the tag as long it has a rope with a hook or something equipped?

Or perhaps a [NATURAL_CLIMBER] for animals and climb an ability for sapients?

Nah; simpler to just roll that into the climb speed tag ([CLIMB_GAIT:X], or whatever it ends up being). No sense in defining them as a climber and then still needing a separate tag for their climb speed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 06, 2014, 12:21:16 am

We have the same for swimming, presently, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 06, 2014, 12:28:32 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

Probably try out the new adventure mechanics.  Either play an assassin, a non-lethal batman style crime fighter, or get involved with the human politics.

In the end it will just be me playing with politics though.  I'm looking forward to seeing if I can "play the world, not the character" using the current mechanics, and see what happens to a region filled with human settlements over the course of a few adventures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 06, 2014, 12:39:01 am

Start a colony using just adventure mode. Probably in a cave.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 06, 2014, 01:50:31 am

Injury morale? is that a new thing or is he just talking about the thoughts associated with injury?

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

Depending on how stable fort mode is. I'll probably start up a fresh adventurer (whether it's the modded armok or not) and check out the new dwarven and elven sites and screw around. I'm thinking of attempting to brachiate in the trees as an adventurer, lol.

Visiting the new goblin sites could be a bit more problematic, unless I roll a goblin adventurer.

I may go and mess around in the arena while I wait for Mayday's graphics pack to come out, though that shouldn't take more than a day or two.

The arena will become the next laboratory for science now that we have a wide range of variables to play around with. It'll be  awesome for modders too

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 06, 2014, 02:53:33 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

Mod. Mod. Mod some more. Mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 06, 2014, 09:52:35 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 06, 2014, 01:50:31 am

Injury morale? is that a new thing or is he just talking about the thoughts associated with injury?

I assume that's talking about creatures and people being more likely to flee after being injured, which will be new this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on February 06, 2014, 09:59:37 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 05, 2014, 05:10:14 pm

Alright, so what are you people going to do when the release comes out?

Spend a while just browsing Histories initially. After that I'll play some adventure mode. By this time I expect some bug fixing will have occured. I'll then familiarise myself with the updated Raws, and assuming Fort Mode is stable, take to it with an updated mod. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Torchy on February 06, 2014, 10:53:08 am

Quote

(veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away)

Am I the only person who read this and got really confused wondering what Poland has to do with Dwarf Fortress?

Like I was halfway to the FOTF thread here to ask what he was talking about when I was like, ohh okay.

 :-[


Read in that sense, though, "The Polish Phase" does sound very enigmatic. Kinda cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 06, 2014, 11:32:32 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 06, 2014, 10:53:08 am

Quote

(veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away)

Am I the only person who read this and got really confused wondering what Poland has to do with Dwarf Fortress?

Like I was halfway to the FOTF thread here to ask what he was talking about when I was like, ohh okay.

 :-[


Read in that sense, though, "The Polish Phase" does sound very enigmatic. Kinda cool.

Ah yes, Dwarf Fortress veterans don't even know the MEANING of the word "polish!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on February 06, 2014, 02:24:09 pm

Quote from: Spish on February 04, 2014, 06:51:17 pm

What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff.
-snip-

Stumbled across this while digging through old FotF replies, which somewhat answers your question. Emphasis on the boldened part ^^

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Quietust

Back in the old 2D versions, the "cliff face" was covered with a layer of "damaged" stone which couldn't be smoothed but could be dug away more quickly.
Will damaged stone be easier to climb? And if so, might the landscape generation be adjusted to create these again?

The whole idea of cliff faces and canyons is still waiting.  Climbing was the major obstacle to putting those back in the game, but we're still rampy right now.  I agree that most future cliff faces should use the damaged picture and be easier to climb.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 06, 2014, 04:13:00 pm

Quote from: monk12 on February 06, 2014, 11:32:32 am

Quote from: Torchy on February 06, 2014, 10:53:08 am

Quote

(veterans of releases should recall and share with others that there is no polish phase... that is some decades away)

Am I the only person who read this and got really confused wondering what Poland has to do with Dwarf Fortress?

Like I was halfway to the FOTF thread here to ask what he was talking about when I was like, ohh okay.

 :-[


Read in that sense, though, "The Polish Phase" does sound very enigmatic. Kinda cool.

Ah yes, Dwarf Fortress veterans don't even know the MEANING of the word "polish!"

COŚ TY POWIEDZIAŁ?
*ahem*

Sorry about that, but as a Pole I couldn't resist. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on February 07, 2014, 11:06:18 am

Quote from: Sizik on February 06, 2014, 12:09:27 am

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

To add to this, do dwarves use a pickaxe when climbing if they're equipped with one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 07, 2014, 11:14:39 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 07, 2014, 11:06:18 am

To add to this, do dwarves use a pickaxe when climbing if they're equipped with one?

Tool assisted climbing is not going to happen for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 07, 2014, 12:33:38 pm

As with everything encompassing reality (up to and including quantum mechanics and high energy particle accelerators) and beyond, is planed but not release date.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on February 07, 2014, 02:42:05 pm

but I like the fantasy aspects of the game for the silly stuff you cannot do in real life, wich s what I love about fantasy and reality being separate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: VerdantSF on February 07, 2014, 02:54:18 pm

Will dwarves have true differences in size?  Iirc, size currently doesn't work according to how it's displayed, but defaults to the species base size.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 07, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: VerdantSF on February 07, 2014, 02:54:18 pm

Will dwarves have true differences in size?  Iirc, size currently doesn't work according to how it's displayed, but defaults to the species base size.

They do have true differences in size, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I've seen variation when hack'd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 07, 2014, 03:04:47 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 07, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: VerdantSF on February 07, 2014, 02:54:18 pm

Will dwarves have true differences in size?  Iirc, size currently doesn't work according to how it's displayed, but defaults to the species base size.

They do have true differences in size, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I've seen variation when hack'd.

Yeah, might need more details than "Iirc".  Personal variation in size doesn't affect dwarves' ability to wield large weapons (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5812) (thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112093.0)) -- that might be what you're thinking of.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 07, 2014, 04:53:53 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on February 07, 2014, 11:14:39 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 07, 2014, 11:06:18 am

To add to this, do dwarves use a pickaxe when climbing if they're equipped with one?

Tool assisted climbing is not going to happen for this release.

A possible rephrasing: Can miners dig holes in walls while climbing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 07, 2014, 05:02:24 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 07, 2014, 04:53:53 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on February 07, 2014, 11:14:39 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 07, 2014, 11:06:18 am

To add to this, do dwarves use a pickaxe when climbing if they're equipped with one?

Tool assisted climbing is not going to happen for this release.

A possible rephrasing: Can miners dig holes in walls while climbing?

Full circle:

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 07, 2014, 11:06:18 am

Quote from: Sizik on February 06, 2014, 12:09:27 am

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

To add to this, do dwarves use a pickaxe when climbing if they're equipped with one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 07, 2014, 06:02:21 pm

My bad, I failed my Read skill check.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on February 07, 2014, 07:00:35 pm

Will having deep dwarf sites in your civ mean you can import and embark with goods harvested from lower cavern layers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 07, 2014, 11:09:43 pm

Sorry if this is the tiniest bit off-topic, but...

Will this release bring about a lower spawn rate of anthropomorphic animals?

It's seriously annoying when you're starving and that "e" looks mighty tasty, until you realize you just decapitated an eagle woman that you can't eat. Those things are way too common. Or maybe it's just the worlds I generate, I dunno. Either way, how often they're found crosses some of my weirdness boundaries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 08, 2014, 12:02:55 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on February 07, 2014, 11:09:43 pm

Sorry if this is the tiniest bit off-topic, but...

Will this release bring about a lower spawn rate of anthropomorphic animals?

It's seriously annoying when you're starving and that "e" looks mighty tasty, until you realize you just decapitated an eagle woman that you can't eat. Those things are way too common. Or maybe it's just the worlds I generate, I dunno. Either way, how often they're found crosses some of my weirdness boundaries.

1) No

2) I know for a fact there's a really handy mod for that, though I'm too lazy to link you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 08, 2014, 12:03:50 am

What, for butchering? That can't be modded.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 08, 2014, 12:06:32 am

Not butchering, lowering the spawn rate of animalmen. Like, somebody made a utility to go through and edit the raws quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 08, 2014, 01:18:44 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on February 07, 2014, 11:09:43 pm

It's seriously annoying when you're starving and that "e" looks mighty tasty, until you realize you just decapitated an eagle woman that you can't eat. Those things are way too common. Or maybe it's just the worlds I generate, I dunno. Either way, how often they're found crosses some of my weirdness boundaries.

It is weird isn't it?  There are all these humanoid creatures running around that act like (and are treated like) animals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 08, 2014, 01:50:47 am

Truly, as a last hurrah for this release, someone should go through in adventure mode and (as an elf) hunt at least 1 of every kind of furry in the game.

...wait, does the term apply to bird people and insect people?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 08, 2014, 01:52:03 am

This is probably obvious but... why an elf?  They're at peace with animals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 08, 2014, 01:54:29 am

Because they eat the flesh of those they kill in combat. At least, in theory. Currently ethics have no bearing on adventure mode, but there are ways around that...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 08, 2014, 08:04:19 am

In the Army arc will it be possible for combat to take place over more realistic timescales? I frequently hear about duels that last a season, for example. Is there any reason time couldn't slow down during combat, though having said that proper sieges could be troubling.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 08, 2014, 11:18:39 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 08, 2014, 08:04:19 am

In the Army arc will it be possible for combat to take place over more realistic timescales? I frequently hear about duels that a season, for example.

Armies marching through the map are now abstracted instead of non-existent, and that's one of many possible stepping stones for what you're asking for. The Army Arc, as it is, is happening right now, but it's completion date is uncertain for all of us. From what I've read, the combat code update has certain instances that provide less implausible situations at world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 08, 2014, 11:35:52 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 08, 2014, 08:04:19 am

In the Army arc will it be possible for combat to take place over more realistic timescales? I frequently hear about duels that a season, for example.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_4_transcript.html

Toady:   [...] The whole Dwarf Fortress time dilation is always going to be one of these big thorns in the side of the game. It's always going to be a huge problem to deal with. It's not a problem in adventure mode at all because adventure mode is moving at the slowest time possible in the game, so it's not a problem. [But] in dwarf mode we're always going to have to figure out a way to fudge things. If the wars are raging all over the place and, you know, over the course of month someone could sweep through an entire province or something then how does that figure in with the fact that you could maybe get your squad off the screen in a month. It's just sad, it's tragic sad, bad, and it's not going to work very well without all kinds of ... Like when you're playing a fortress it's just going to have to fake a lot of stuff. Not fake it, but just make the armies move slower on the world map too or something. So history is going to have these starts and stops, if you always play one mode you wouldn't notice but if you play between fort mode and then adventure mode and fort mode and adventure mode, there's going to be these strange dynamics going on that are caused by the fort molassesing the universe. It's okay, it's just one of those things ... because you can't go the other way and say 'I want fort mode to take as long as adventure mode' because then you'll never see summer, much less winter, because it would just take way too long for that stuff to happen. Right now [in] adventure mode if you just walk, if you're walking 'click click click'; you're going seventy two times slower than in fortress mode. So you would need to dilate the game seventy two times, which means that if you're used to a fort that lasts four years then you should get used to a fort that lasts one month for that same experience. That's crazy, that's not exactly a ...
Rainseeker:   This is all about fun, right?
Toady:   Yeah, it's all about fun. It's not fun for me, though. If we're talking about not having a good design but just having an easy to program design then it would be way easier to have everything work on the same timescale, because then I wouldn't have to worry about this stuff at all. However it's just not possible, you have to have dwarf mode be a lot faster than the other modes. I think adventure mode doesn't really suffer from the same problems because you don't care about time passing, if you want to pass to the next winter then you could just say 'sleep in this town for two months and just hang out here.' There's not a huge problem with that, you don't want the time to pass; if you walked to another town and back you don't want a year to have passed most of the time. Just the slower mode works there but with the dwarves, there are problems with that. Anyway, that's enough of that I guess.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anin on February 09, 2014, 02:53:27 am

this new update today sounds like a start I'd love to have.  immediately into the hell hole of combat, where you have to choose to fight or run to start an adventure.  sounds good even if it will be a rare moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 09, 2014, 02:56:32 am

Quote from: Anin on February 09, 2014, 02:53:27 am

this new update today sounds like a start I'd love to have.  immediately into the hell hole of combat, where you have to choose to fight or run to start an adventure.  sounds good even if it will be a rare moment.

I would run while screaming "I will have my revenge". And then I would be killed by a crossbow bolt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on February 09, 2014, 03:18:46 am

Happy birthday Scamps!

A really fantastic update today, I think. A question, though: In a previous update you mentioned that starting an adventurer gives you a little blurb about the local state of affairs now. Were you warned of the approaching goblins when starting the adventurer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on February 09, 2014, 04:34:17 am

(removed, moved to the Scamp birthday thread)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 09, 2014, 01:02:30 pm

Happy Birthday, Scamps! Don't choke on them things.

Hmm.. when he says he "wasn't happy with the amount of non-violent foot traffic throughout the world" I wonder if he means there's too much or not enough. "Tavern runs" sounds non-violent, but they're adventurer types and he got immediately ambushed by goblins. Either way is fine, I suppose. More movement in general is always good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 09, 2014, 02:22:09 pm

Not enough, since the rest of the devlog suggest that he added more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TalonisWolf on February 11, 2014, 12:02:43 am

Quote from: Keldane on February 09, 2014, 03:18:46 am

Happy birthday Scamps!

A really fantastic update today, I think. A question, though: In a previous update you mentioned that starting an adventurer gives you a little blurb about the local state of affairs now. Were you warned of the approaching goblins when starting the adventurer?

 If the above is true, will it accidentally reveal ambushes near where you start at first?

  Also, if a Dwarf and a Goblin bump into each other in mid-climb, will they engage in melee? If so, do they fall or are they still hanging onto the wall?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on February 11, 2014, 05:03:56 am

Quote

I've been working with people deciding to jump into fights they aren't involved in today, using all their opinions and reputations and personality facets and so on that are now knocking around in their heads -- even if it's just to run to a safer place.

Is it applicable to Fortress Mode? Will we see civilians behaving in intelligent ways when confronted with hostiles (such as engaging the enemy if they happened to be armed and they judge the target weak, or actually finding a safe place in the fortress to run to instead of running away stupidly into the wild)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on February 11, 2014, 09:55:00 am

Quote from: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 12:49:11 pm

Standard DF procedure, people find bugs, report them and then proceed to kill Elves in creative ways with the bug until its resolved.

Someone needs to sig this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 11, 2014, 12:41:06 pm

Thanks for the compliment my good men.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 11, 2014, 01:04:09 pm

Quote

...Then one of the guard's master's kids stabbed me in the back with a knife, so I guess it sort of worked all around.

So, then, are children still liable to jump into fights between much older adults at times? Does age factor into their decision making at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 11, 2014, 01:52:12 pm

Anybody else here who usually plays Dwarf Mode, but is interested in seeing what adventure mode looks like when the release comes out? It sounds like things are getting better in there very day.

What are people's general strategies for staying alive in terms of finding food in adventure mode? It could be useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on February 11, 2014, 02:39:25 pm

Quote

What are people's general strategies for staying alive in terms of finding food in adventure mode? It could be useful.

Licking blood and eating vomit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 11, 2014, 02:40:59 pm

Drinking blood and river-water, hunting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 11, 2014, 02:50:02 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 11, 2014, 01:52:12 pm

Anybody else here who usually plays Dwarf Mode, but is interested in seeing what adventure mode looks like when the release comes out? It sounds like things are getting better in there very day.

What are people's general strategies for staying alive in terms of finding food in adventure mode? It could be useful.

I go to a city and obtain a bag of 72 fisher berries, either by selling meat/bandit weapons, or just grabbing one since people seem OK with that at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anin on February 11, 2014, 02:59:07 pm

Quote from: tahujdt on February 11, 2014, 09:55:00 am

Quote from: LordBaal on February 05, 2014, 12:49:11 pm

Standard DF procedure, people find bugs, report them and then proceed to kill Elves in creative ways with the bug until its resolved.

Someone needs to sig this.

Totally am.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 11, 2014, 03:08:53 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 11, 2014, 01:52:12 pm

Anybody else here who usually plays Dwarf Mode, but is interested in seeing what adventure mode looks like when the release comes out? It sounds like things are getting better in there very day.

What are people's general strategies for staying alive in terms of finding food in adventure mode? It could be useful.

That question could be it's own entirely separate discussion. There are a LOT of ways to find edibles and drink.

Personally, I prefer to become some form of night creature to avoid eating, drinking and sleeping entirely. In the absence of that, butchering animals I kill and drinking river water/blood are preferable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 11, 2014, 03:36:55 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 11, 2014, 02:50:02 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on February 11, 2014, 01:52:12 pm

Anybody else here who usually plays Dwarf Mode, but is interested in seeing what adventure mode looks like when the release comes out? It sounds like things are getting better in there very day.

What are people's general strategies for staying alive in terms of finding food in adventure mode? It could be useful.

I go to a city and obtain a bag of 72 fisher berries, either by selling meat/bandit weapons, or just grabbing one since people seem OK with that at the moment.

Quote from: Erik Blank

hat question could be it's own entirely separate discussion. There are a LOT of ways to find edibles and drink.

Personally, I prefer to become some form of night creature to avoid eating, drinking and sleeping entirely. In the absence of that, butchering animals I kill and drinking river water/blood are preferable.

Bags of berries are already avaliable in many hamlets, and they weigh a lot, for what they're worth, but happen to be pretty useful until you're prepared to hunt your own meal. Also, soaking your clothes and body with blood is the best deal in terms of thirst quenching. From my experience: blood doesn't evaporate nor freeze at water's point, has negligible weight and as you progress in your adventure, it becomes readily avaliable more often. Rainfall overrides blood, but then again, water becomes essentialy infinite when this happens.

Toady, are human kids armed with standard-issue/boning knives like their peasant parents? Or are they able to grab avaliable weaponry if there's a hurry to defend themselves and their loved ones? Do Dwarven kids display this kind of behavior in Fort Mode, at least with biting and scratching when their personality allows them to fight?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sunday on February 11, 2014, 10:48:30 pm

Regarding the most recent dev log:

Maybe the companion was an animal rights activist?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 12, 2014, 09:53:17 am

Quote from: Sunday on February 11, 2014, 10:48:30 pm

Regarding the most recent dev log:

Maybe the companion was an animal rights activist?

It made me think of this devlog from a few weeks ago:

Quote from:  1/26/14 devlog

Spent some time watching hunters and fixing issues with them (in particular, when a hunter got multiple conflicts over time, it rarely had the animal end up on the hunter's side as well as not on the hunter's side... which was a sort of civil war bug that brain-locked everybody).

This kind of thing might be what Loyalty Cascade as we know it, has evolved into.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 12, 2014, 10:00:59 am

Or maybe hi was simply a "soab" that wanted Toady adventurer death to loot him...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Poldon on February 12, 2014, 10:12:52 am

Also regarding the devlog, this is what came to my mind while reading it, and I'm kinda sad Toady didn't think of it:

The Hunter stops suddenly, having led the adventurer into the middle of nowhere.
The Hunter looses a roaring laughter, fell and terrible. "I only hunt the most dangerous game!"

I wonder if he or she was a dwarf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 12, 2014, 01:02:07 pm

Pretty sure that was everyone's first thought, but unfortunately lying and subterfuge aren't really in the game yet (except for a very few set ways, like vampires). Of course you can still pretend, for RP porpoises.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 12, 2014, 01:08:29 pm

Quote from: smirk on February 12, 2014, 01:02:07 pm

Pretty sure that was everyone's first thought, but unfortunately lying and subterfuge aren't really in the game yet (except for a very few set ways, like vampires). Of course you can still pretend, for RP porpoises.

I read that as "Rocket-Propelled Porpoises"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 12, 2014, 01:15:23 pm

Well, if you're nearly blind the U.S space shuttle does sort of look like an orca...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 12, 2014, 02:21:49 pm

If you charge at someone, full speed, weapon drawn, will they perceive an attack before you are right next to them? What about NPC attacks, are they recognized before the enemy is in melee range?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 12, 2014, 04:19:18 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 12, 2014, 02:21:49 pm

If you charge at someone, full speed, weapon drawn, will they perceive an attack before you are right next to them? What about NPC attacks, are they recognized before the enemy is in melee range?

This seems to largely overlap with your previous question:

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: King Mir

If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?

When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?

Yeah, right now they get that information.  Eventually we'll have cause to be more picky about it, but we're more worried about people standing idiotically while you attack them.  I don't recall if the event is generated on the initiation or the strike.  That'll also determine how ranged attacks work.  It's probably on the strike.  This would give them extra information about the shooter since the incident doesn't yet have missing knowledge, but we'll get to fixing that at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KrEstoF on February 12, 2014, 06:54:42 pm

Toady...  that crossbowman that shot you five times was an elf, wasn't it?   :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 12, 2014, 07:08:13 pm

Elves? With crossbows?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 12, 2014, 07:11:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 12, 2014, 04:19:18 pm

Quote from: King Mir on February 12, 2014, 02:21:49 pm

If you charge at someone, full speed, weapon drawn, will they perceive an attack before you are right next to them? What about NPC attacks, are they recognized before the enemy is in melee range?

This seems to largely overlap with your previous question:

Quote from: Toady One on May 31, 2013, 02:35:27 am

Quote from: King Mir

If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?

When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?

Yeah, right now they get that information.  Eventually we'll have cause to be more picky about it, but we're more worried about people standing idiotically while you attack them.  I don't recall if the event is generated on the initiation or the strike.  That'll also determine how ranged attacks work.  It's probably on the strike.  This would give them extra information about the shooter since the incident doesn't yet have missing knowledge, but we'll get to fixing that at some point.

There's some overlap, but I want to know if there's a disparity with PC and NPC melee charges. Especially now that we're in the last stretch of changes. Also, Toady talked about how going around with your weapon drawn should eventually matter, and this seems like a case where it really should.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on February 13, 2014, 12:33:47 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 12, 2014, 07:08:13 pm

Elves? With crossbows?

Organic, free range crossbows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on February 13, 2014, 01:28:44 am

I dunno, I think an elf would walk into town, see a whole bunch of non-grown-dwellings and start slaughtering and eating people in the name of its forest gods so it wouldn't even stop to talk and join up with an adventurer.  Leastways, that's the impression I'm getting from the new version.   ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 13, 2014, 01:45:11 pm

Well, we currently only have evidence that village-village conflicts of this sort occur only within human civilizations, so the companion was probably a human from a different village. Technically could have been an elf born into human civilization, I suppose, but I'd assume they still drop all of their animal-loving elfyness and adopt only human traditions, so the cause would still be that he liked the animals more than Toady due to having a bone to pick with Toady's character's home town and having no relationship with the animals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 13, 2014, 02:18:18 pm

I REALLY hope that we see the similar kind of stuff between hill forts or between Elven towns. The human civs can't have all the fun with the new stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on February 13, 2014, 02:29:27 pm

Witnessing an elf sneak attack on a dwarf woodcutting site would be quite interesting indeed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on February 13, 2014, 02:31:18 pm

And I really hope to recreate this "bug" but with some context ranging from years long plotted revenge to simply being insane or a criminal looking for easy loot and anything in between, like turning over on you for money or simply a change of heart.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 14, 2014, 01:53:04 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 13, 2014, 02:29:27 pm

Witnessing an elf sneak attack on a dwarf woodcutting site would be quite interesting indeed.

I meant the conflict stuff between two dwarven sites or two elven sites, but yes interactions between two races would be good too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on February 14, 2014, 07:56:13 am

Ah the unforeseen consequences of interlinking so much. You think YOUR dialogue tree is expansive? Try this!
One hundred choices of dialogue, and not a black/white morality indicator in sight!

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW!?

Uh, there. Right there. I can't pronounce its name, but it's a goat twisted into the form of a toad reciting Hamlet while demonstrating advanced aerobics. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on February 14, 2014, 10:07:04 am

Not gonna properly green this since it's more along the lines of a suggestion, but:

With all of this new conversation stuff, will there be a way to view what people/places/events our character "knows" about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 14, 2014, 05:31:57 pm

(a usable and useful revision of the Q screen exactly along those lines is one of the big remaining critters, hopefully we'll get all the knowledge data we currently track there and at the fingertips)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 15, 2014, 06:38:06 am

In the next update, and in the general future, will it ever be possible to be robbed whilst on the road? Maybe just killed, then robbed, but being left alive would make it much more interesting.

Sorry if this has already been asked, or if it's so ridiculous no one but me would ask it  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tunio6538 on February 15, 2014, 07:51:37 am

1. Toady, will old saves be compatible with new release (especially fortress mode)? We could wait even longer for release with such feature - backward save compatibility.
2. While messing with combat code, have You changed anything with combat alerts? Will we be able to reduce their amount? Some of us would like, for example, see only "your companion/enemy has died", or "you missed/hit the target", ignoring the rest (like "your sword strike bruised enemy's skin!").
3. Have You adjusted job priorities by a chance? Those brokers spending whole time drinking and eating and no-job'ing are serious problems during caravan time. That also goes with dwarven medical care - one need to disable all other jobs on doctors to get them working on treating patients.
4. What would You like to do with Dwarf Fortress game in near future? On what new features of this game would You work?

Thank You in advance for all the answers :).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 15, 2014, 08:17:37 am

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on February 15, 2014, 06:38:06 am

In the next update, and in the general future, will it ever be possible to be robbed whilst on the road? Maybe just killed, then robbed, but being left alive would make it much more interesting.

Sorry this has already been asked, or if it's so ridiculous no one but me would ask it  :P

Not in the next version, but at some point in the future. The Thief Role (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html), while it is on the other side of the law, should provide all the necessary tools to do this - capture, being bound, surrendering to robbers...

Quote from: tunio6538 on February 15, 2014, 07:51:37 am

1. Toady, will old saves be compatible with new release (especially fortress mode)? We could wait even longer for release with such feature - backward save compatibility.
2. While messing with combat code, have You changed anything with combat alerts? Will we be able to reduce their amount? Some of us would like, for example, see only "your companion/enemy has died", or "you missed/hit the target", ignoring the rest (like "your sword strike bruised enemy's skin!").
3. Have You adjusted job priorities by a chance? Those brokers spending whole time drinking and eating and no-job'ing are serious problems during caravan time. That also goes with dwarven medical care - one need to disable all other jobs on doctors to get them working on treating patients.
4. What would You like to do with Dwarf Fortress game in near future? On what new features of this game would You work?

Thank You in advance for all the answers :).

1. No. Toady has said a few times that adding backwards compatibility for the new version would take too long for an already long development cycle.
3. There may be incidental changes due  to dwarf brain work, but not yet. Job priorities will however be one of the things that Toady will work on during/after the bugfix cycle following the release.
4. I'm pretty sure Toady hasn't decided yet, but candidates he mentioned include Starting Scenarios (will in-game hill dwarves), Taverns/Inns, and Thief Role work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 15, 2014, 09:56:46 am

Quote from: tunio6538 on February 15, 2014, 07:51:37 am

1. Toady, will old saves be compatible with new release (especially fortress mode)? We could wait even longer for release with such feature - backward save compatibility.
2. While messing with combat code, have You changed anything with combat alerts? Will we be able to reduce their amount? Some of us would like, for example, see only "your companion/enemy has died", or "you missed/hit the target", ignoring the rest (like "your sword strike bruised enemy's skin!").
3. Have You adjusted job priorities by a chance? Those brokers spending whole time drinking and eating and no-job'ing are serious problems during caravan time. That also goes with dwarven medical care - one need to disable all other jobs on doctors to get them working on treating patients.
4. What would You like to do with Dwarf Fortress game in near future? On what new features of this game would You work?

Thank You in advance for all the answers :).

1. No, there are WAY too many changes between this version and the next for backwards compatibility to work easily.

2. There may be some minor changes due to the new combat stuff, but I don't think he would have messed much with that, Maybe a few new ones related to the non-lethal combat, there wouldn't be any large sweeping changes.

3. As Knight Otu said, there may be some incidential changes or side effects from the dwarf brain work, but Toady One said that he wanted to tackle the job priorities stuff next I believe.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: adasdad on February 15, 2014, 12:35:16 pm

Will adventurers ever have abilities that are currently limited to dwarves? (using workshops, gathering plants, or even mining or construction)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on February 15, 2014, 12:38:56 pm

Quote from: adasdad on February 15, 2014, 12:35:16 pm

Will adventurers ever have abilities that are currently limited to dwarves? (using workshops, gathering plants, or even mining or construction)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

ADVENTURER SKILLS ARC: It's nice to have all those jobs and professions sitting around in the dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to do these things, especially those skills related to survival in the wilderness. Eventually you'll be able to place constructions, create a home and have your own site on the map.

Yep ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 15, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

When trade is being worked on, will it be affected by a civ's domesticated animals, such as fliers or beasts of burden?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 15, 2014, 03:53:58 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 15, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

When trade is being worked on, will it be affected by a civ's domesticated animals, such as fliers or beasts of burden?

They already are, aren't they? They still need the tags that allow them to be used in caravans and define them as 'beasts of burden'.

No telling what would happen with using fliers as caravan animals though, given their pathing problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 15, 2014, 04:16:46 pm

World gen trade, not dwarf mode caravans ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 15, 2014, 04:32:10 pm

Oh I see, misunderstood your question there.

The world gen trading will probably still use animals that have the neccesary tokens. The ridiculous weight that the animals haul will have to be dealt with first though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 15, 2014, 11:27:10 pm

Quote from: devlog

02/15/2014 Toady One So I did the conflict summaries, and then I continued working a bit with the emotional reactions of people that receive the summarized information (which is roughly the same as the emotions they get when they witness the events themselves). There have been a series of macabre experiments that'll be continuing into tomorrow, as I break various bad news items to people, sometimes having been the cause of them... I think if somebody has a relative killed in front of them, they can have six emotions that hit them simultaneously (horror/violent-death-witnessed, terror/in-combat, fear/death-injuries-witnessed, shock/unexpected-death-of-loved-one, grief/death-of-loved-one and rage/killer-of-loved-one-witnessed-during-act, as the game understands them, maybe more coming), which are then filtered through the personality/atts to see how they are amplified/suppressed/dealt with, and whether the person can react rationally or is impelled along for a bit. There'll be a running series of emotional outbursts verbalized so you can see it in action, hopefully moderated so that it isn't too overwhelming at the worst of times. Getting the conflict summaries connected to entity/culture/personal reputations is the big bridge to gap in terms of getting insurrections finished, and I'm still wrapping my head around it, since there's a ton of information for the game to process and it'll need to take a lot of non-harmful shortcuts to keep the processor safe.

The personality-based reactions sound awesome.  I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised that there's still a big chunk of work left on insurrections.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 15, 2014, 11:35:13 pm

Quote

There'll be a running series of emotional outbursts verbalized so you can see it in action

If I'm reading this correctly, this means that people will be all like "NO!" when they see their wife killed by a goblin in front of them and that will be visible in the combat logs?

Very sweet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:43:35 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Isn't the fourth dimension time?

Anyways, total immersion is a go!

I wonder how the stuff in the newest devlog will manefest in Fort Mode?....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 12:46:52 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:43:35 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Isn't the fourth dimension time?

We're talking spatial dimensions

like seriously nobody will seriously say time is "the fourth dimension" so much as "the only timelike dimension"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:51:49 am

Quote from: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 12:46:52 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:43:35 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Isn't the fourth dimension time?

We're talking spatial dimensions

like seriously nobody will seriously say time is "the fourth dimension" so much as "the only timelike dimension"

What would the fourth spatial direction be? Southup? Really though, the fourth spatial dimension would be getting into the area of hypercubes and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 12:53:15 am

You should read flatland.

In the context of DF, however, afterlives, elemental/astral/daedric/afterlife planes or what-have-you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on February 16, 2014, 07:34:42 am

Oh, Toady, do you realize what you have done?

The first thing i am gonna do in the new version is kill childs in fron of their parents to se how they react.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on February 16, 2014, 07:37:18 am

Quote from: Broken on February 16, 2014, 07:34:42 am

Oh, Toady, do you realize what you have done?

The first thing i am gonna do in the new version is kill childs in fron of their parents to se how they react.

It's a good thing emotions/reactions like described in Toady's update weren't implemented when [EXPUNGED] happened...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on February 16, 2014, 09:40:04 am

We... might need to replay that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on February 16, 2014, 01:08:36 pm

Are we going to be able to see the personalities and preferences of our adventurers like we can see the personalities of our dwarves?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CLA on February 16, 2014, 01:20:47 pm

I played an adventure mode session yesterday and at some point my hero got injured by an enraged wolverine; long story short, motor nerve damage in lower spine, ability to stand lost.
So that got me wondering:

How do legs influence climbing? Can you still climb if you can't control your legs anymore (motor nerve damage, amputation)?

Also, IIRC with the combat/speed rewrite, you can't just grasp an infinite amount of things in both your hands anymore, does that mean that someone currently climbing and say, getting shot at with arrows cannot use his shield, because it's not on his hand?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 16, 2014, 01:21:37 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 12:46:52 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:43:35 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Isn't the fourth dimension time?

We're talking spatial dimensions

like seriously nobody will seriously say time is "the fourth dimension" so much as "the only timelike dimension"

Regardless what theoretical physicists think of the fourth dimension as, I'm pretty sure Toady was just referring to time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 16, 2014, 01:28:48 pm

Quote from: Matoro on February 16, 2014, 01:08:36 pm

Are we going to be able to see the personalities and preferences of our adventurers like we can see the personalities of our dwarves?

ToadyOne in Dwarf Talk has talked about this, and he seems to waver back and forth. He feel players would be upset if the game took control away from you adventure as it tried to reflect its personality traits. He also feels that if players want to RP a character as however, they're perfectly able to as is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 02:12:54 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on February 16, 2014, 01:21:37 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 12:46:52 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 16, 2014, 12:43:35 am

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 15, 2014, 12:33:49 pm

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Isn't the fourth dimension time?

We're talking spatial dimensions

like seriously nobody will seriously say time is "the fourth dimension" so much as "the only timelike dimension"

Regardless what theoretical physicists think of the fourth dimension as, I'm pretty sure Toady was just referring to time.

...No, he was referring very specifically to other planes.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: cybergon

What's the rewrite you dread the most? I mean that one part of the code you know you have to completely change sooner or later but wish you didn't have to.

An annoying thing is the planar/afterlife/etc. stuff that is basically like adding a 4th coordinate all over the place that isn't as straightforward as going from 2 to 3 coordinates, since the nature of the 4th coordinate can be mushy.  That should be painful, although there is a commensurate payoff for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 16, 2014, 02:29:18 pm

Toady's academia stuff was mathematics. Of course he sees the 4th dimension as a spatial one. Physics, math... math's just purer (http://xkcd.com/435/).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on February 16, 2014, 02:36:11 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 02:12:54 pm

...No, he was referring very specifically to other planes.

"Hey, Chavez, how come they ain't killing us?"
"Because we're in the spirit world, asshole. They can't see us."

(And now that you've heard the one good line, there is no need whatsoever to actually watch that movie.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 16, 2014, 02:54:40 pm

*Looks the quote up.*

Why thank you. Now I have to watch the bloody thing!  >:(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 16, 2014, 06:02:25 pm

Hiya!

I can see that none of the REALLY major development goals, like being a wizard*, are coming around this release, but...

Will actions taken in adventure mode have historical impact more similar to worldgen history?

You know, like political actions or inciting war? It's getting a little boring that an adventurer's level of awesomeness is based on their notable kill list.

_{*Oh god, now I have to mod in LIT2. Hahahaha.}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 06:12:40 pm

Yes, that is literally the entire point of this next release :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 16, 2014, 06:17:47 pm

Oh, lol. There was so much stuff about climbing going on here that I thought that might be the next release's big thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 06:23:22 pm

Climbing was a necessary addition with the re-adding of elf sites which were necessary with the addition of in-play insurrections which were necessary so that stuff could continue to happen in the world during play which is necessary for the player to actually affect the world in meaningful ways that have historical impact.

Seriously, throw something new in this release at me and I can trace back its meaning to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 16, 2014, 08:08:05 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 06:23:22 pm

Climbing was a necessary addition with the re-adding of elf sites which were necessary with the addition of in-play insurrections which were necessary so that stuff could continue to happen in the world during play which is necessary for the player to actually affect the world in meaningful ways that have historical impact.

Seriously, throw something new in this release at me and I can trace back its meaning to that.

Proper tree grow-- Oh. Elf sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 16, 2014, 09:08:34 pm

Oh, alrighty then...

The dev page talks about "adventurer roles" like "thief" or "treasure hunter". Under the "thief" subsection is a sub-sub section about inns and taverns. Toady mentioned a lot of stuff about inns and taverns in the recent devlogs;

To what extent will inns/taverns be implemented, and what for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 16, 2014, 10:22:02 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on February 16, 2014, 09:08:34 pm

To what extent will inns/taverns be implemented, and what for?

There was an entire episode of DF Talk focusing on taverns. (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html)  It's planned to become a major part of Fortress Mode gameplay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 16, 2014, 10:32:47 pm

We have fake-ish taverns in the next release right?

OK I take everything back, the first thing I do in the new version is going to be walking into a tavern and punching someone.  Just to see what happens.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 16, 2014, 10:42:14 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 16, 2014, 10:32:47 pm

We have fake-ish taverns in the next release right?

OK I take everything back, the first thing I do in the new version is going to be walking into a tavern and punching someone.  Just to see what happens.

No fake taverns for Fort Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 16, 2014, 10:44:49 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 16, 2014, 10:32:47 pm

We have fake-ish taverns in the next release right?

OK I take everything back, the first thing I do in the new version is going to be walking into a tavern and punching someone.  Just to see what happens.

I call bar brawl! A loyalty cascade, as some people didn't like who you punched and others did, so it results in a seething mass of limbs. Much !!Fun!! had by all!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 16, 2014, 10:57:18 pm

Hahaha. Enigmatic Hat, I shall follow in thy footsteps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 16, 2014, 10:58:00 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on February 16, 2014, 10:44:49 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 16, 2014, 10:32:47 pm

We have fake-ish taverns in the next release right?

OK I take everything back, the first thing I do in the new version is going to be walking into a tavern and punching someone.  Just to see what happens.

I call bar brawl! A loyalty cascade, as some people didn't like who you punched and others did, so it results in a seething mass of limbs. Much !!Fun!! had by all!

Nah, no loyalty cascade. Bar brawls are totally intended behavior, so I doubt they'll be too buggy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 17, 2014, 12:14:57 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 16, 2014, 10:32:47 pm

We have fake-ish taverns in the next release right?

OK I take everything back, the first thing I do in the new version is going to be walking into a tavern and punching someone.  Just to see what happens.

Yeah the meadhalls are a combination townhall/tavern kind of thing. Toady One even has worldgen adventurers doing tavern runs. I don't know if we should just outright call them taverns or if they aren't true taverns just yet,

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 17, 2014, 01:07:57 am

(they are fake taverns because I haven't done anything with drinking or ordering drinks or food or staying in rooms)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 17, 2014, 06:11:42 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 17, 2014, 01:07:57 am

(they are fake taverns because I haven't done anything with drinking or ordering drinks or food or staying in rooms)

So they're just quest-in-a-boxes?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on February 17, 2014, 06:15:03 am

No drinking? Sad taverns seems like a better name than fake taverns :c

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Osmosis Jones on February 17, 2014, 06:50:28 am

Quote from: Dutchling on February 17, 2014, 06:15:03 am

No drinking? Sad taverns seems like a better name than fake taverns :c

There's nothing so lonesome, morbid, or drear... than to stand in a pub with no beer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1l40SUGabg) :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 17, 2014, 08:47:26 am

Meh, so long as I can punch people without becoming an entity enemy instantly and get quests all from the same place, this should be good. I mean, with booze they'd be better, but for now this kind of bar should do the trick.

Speaking of which, all this multi-layered political gameplay sounds like a precursor to the "Thief" role described on the dev page. This release is going to be epic.

Man, this feels like the day before Christmas when I was younger but for a few weeks on end.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on February 17, 2014, 03:36:27 pm

This update is certainly going to be one of the biggest, the way I'm looking at it. We've got people making up motivations and thought processes for their dwarves when they have anecdotes of irrational behavior. Now they might not need to, since after the release they'll already have irrational motivations we can potentially look up.

Things will probably be quite crazy here after the release as players try to figure out the !!SCIENCE!! behind personality and combat levels, like just how much you can poke an NPC without getting into lethal trouble. There will also be several blooper reels out of arena experiments involving jumping and climbing. Several worlds will be created and deleted just for reading Legends mode and getting a handle on the dynamics of civilization. And all the knowledge gleaned will be utilized for killing elves with magma, but this time more efficiently.

And then someone will find a way to unleash that demonic site gray goo stuff Toady mentioned.

Quote from: Tawarochir's sig

In other fantasy games, the priest kills the vampire. In Dwarf Fortress, the priest IS the vampire!

That's going to be fun whenever priests start giving quests to slay night creatures. Though I've already seen a text LP where a lord gave a quest to slay a vampire... he was wearing numerous decorations made from the bones of the victims, which kind of tipped off the adventurer as to whom the vampire was posing as.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 17, 2014, 03:43:49 pm

Haha. A Lord once gave me a quest to kill his own son, who dwelt in the dungeons. It was weird reporting the success  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 17, 2014, 04:11:55 pm

Quote from: Bronze Dog on February 17, 2014, 03:36:27 pm

Several worlds will be created and deleted just for reading Legends mode and getting a handle on the dynamics of civilization.

There's something really wistful about incoming world deletion, given how those tiny mischief makers will all have personalities and thoughts, colorful dreams and sketchy plans bound to be never known.

Such potential of things that will never be mindlessly slaughtered.

My first round of 2014 fortresses will be purposed to create bridges and outposts for my (hopefully) long-lived adventurers to eat-n'-go while they do their... Adventuring, I guess. Never before I've had such a burning desire to walk through an entirely huge world and meet its inhabitants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 17, 2014, 07:08:49 pm

How strongly tied do you wish dwarven sites to be to class? The Hill Dwarves are looking a bit like peasants,  the Fortress Dwarves are the mover's and shakers, and the Deep Dwarves are surely a interesting middle class. However, a war above or below could easily leave Hill or Deep sites as the safest locations, and if they're the focus of economic activity the class distribution could change quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 17, 2014, 09:14:33 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 17, 2014, 07:08:49 pm

How strongly tied do you wish dwarven sites to be to class? The Hill Dwarves are looking a bit like peasants,  the Fortress Dwarves are the mover's and shakers, and the Deep Dwarves are surely a interesting middle class. However, a war above or below could easily leave Hill or Deep sites as the safest locations, and if they're the focus of economic activity the class distribution could change quickly.

Hill dwarves are definitely lower-class:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

the hill dwarf settlements, just these ... they're either carved into the sides of existing hillside slopes, or they make their own mounds if they're in a flatter area, then they just grow some gardens, above and below and hang out and drink ... all the time and live in complete squalor.

And Toady's made a simply ridiculous amount of jokes about hill dwarves being somehow degraded.

Deep dwarves are... interesting:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:   Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker:   Exactly.
Capntastic:   But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:   Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:   They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:   Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:   Fleshy beards?
Toady:   Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker:   Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:   A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:   But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:   That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

I figure they're probably some sort of yeoman class, since the fortress denizens are pretty clearly high-class in comparison. Of course, the class system of dwarves don't quite line up with middle-age european ones, by the looks of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 17, 2014, 10:32:36 pm

Now that dwarves can have emotional breakdowns on seeing body parts from dead relatives, will this cause more !!FUN!! in fortress mode? Maybe we should bury those dead dwarves in Moltenchannels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on February 17, 2014, 10:38:33 pm

Concept art.

Judging by the fact that hill dwarves sound like dirty beard-hobbits, I pictured them like hoboes. Thing is, dwarves are already hoboes (scratching living off dirt, showering as little as possible, drinking booze whenever possible), so I decided they'd look like double hoboes, twice as many flies, a barrel of booze instead of a begging hat, etc. etc.

(http://i57.tinypic.com/o720sk.png)

The Deep Dwarf is designed to look funny in drawings.

(http://i59.tinypic.com/2dso0lc.png)

Also, Archmage, my guess would be that it would be best to either always put them in coffins or designate our hardcore military dwarves who don't care how dead someone is to throw their bodies in "the pile". "The pile" should be in a sealed room on a trapdoor system directly over a noble's bed, just in case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 17, 2014, 10:40:12 pm

So are people's emotional reactions to the deaths of others influenced by opinion, or just relationship status?  For example what if someone hears that their parent got killed, but they hated said parent?

Edit: quoted someone because I was too lazy to change the color myself, then forgot to erase the quote tag so it looked like my entire post was quoting Captain Archmage

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 17, 2014, 11:54:13 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 17, 2014, 09:14:33 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 17, 2014, 07:08:49 pm

How strongly tied do you wish dwarven sites to be to class? The Hill Dwarves are looking a bit like peasants,  the Fortress Dwarves are the mover's and shakers, and the Deep Dwarves are surely a interesting middle class. However, a war above or below could easily leave Hill or Deep sites as the safest locations, and if they're the focus of economic activity the class distribution could change quickly.

Hill dwarves are definitely lower-class:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

the hill dwarf settlements, just these ... they're either carved into the sides of existing hillside slopes, or they make their own mounds if they're in a flatter area, then they just grow some gardens, above and below and hang out and drink ... all the time and live in complete squalor.

And Toady's made a simply ridiculous amount of jokes about hill dwarves being somehow degraded.

Deep dwarves are... interesting:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_20_transcript.html

Capntastic:   So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:   Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker:   Exactly.
Capntastic:   But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:   Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:   They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:   Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:   Fleshy beards?
Toady:   Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker:   Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:   A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:   But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:   That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

I figure they're probably some sort of yeoman class, since the fortress denizens are pretty clearly high-class in comparison. Of course, the class system of dwarves don't quite line up with middle-age european ones, by the looks of it.

Hill Dwarves sound like hobbits, from the description, except drunker and more beard.

There are three types of Dwarf sites though right (in worldgen that is)? The hill sites, the deep dwarf sites, and the mountainhomes/mountainholds.

Quote

I led one party member into a room where rested a dead relative, and they fell to the ground crying... which is depressing.

Wow, immersive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anin on February 18, 2014, 03:10:32 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 17, 2014, 11:54:13 pm

Quote

I led one party member into a room where rested a dead relative, and they fell to the ground crying... which is depressing.

Wow, immersive.

Yeah, Seeing things like that just make me itch for the release more. >.<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on February 18, 2014, 03:24:23 am

Quote

And if you drop a tooth from a bar fight in a different room with some relatives, nobody will care, but if you later go and kill the former owner of the tooth, then you'll hear people cry out in the distance as long as they are still on the map, since they'll suddenly recognize the tooth as belonging to somebody deceased

I read this and then first thing i thought was: Nice, this could be used to transfer messages. You just need enough sacrifices.

i am a bad person. :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on February 18, 2014, 03:31:22 am

"Mum, I'm off to adventure!"
"I'm so terribly worried. Will you write to me every week, to let me know you're OK?"
"I'll do something even better! I'll just leave some of my hair here!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Satche on February 18, 2014, 04:24:49 am

People now react at the sight of friends' body parts. What if I enter a room, covered of the blood of a relative ? Or if I have a body part wielded/in inventory but I don't drop/throw it ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 18, 2014, 04:26:59 am

If someone smashes you into someone, killing that person, do you get the blame?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on February 18, 2014, 06:47:19 am

Quote from: Parisbre56 on February 18, 2014, 03:31:22 am

"Mum, I'm off to adventure!"
"I'm so terribly worried. Will you write to me every week, to let me know you're OK?"
"I'll do something even better! I'll just leave some of my hair here!"

Rah, while I was messing around in paint you beat me to the punchline.

(http://i60.tinypic.com/mto60n.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on February 18, 2014, 06:59:24 am

Quote from: Parisbre56 on February 18, 2014, 03:31:22 am

"Mum, I'm off to adventure!"
"I'm so terribly worried. Will you write to me every week, to let me know you're OK?"
"I'll do something even better! I'll just leave some of my hair here!"

Most certainly a theme in some fairy tales.

Except I distinctly remember it being a spoon, but a flock of hair would be just as symbolic. Especially since it already was something commonly left behind in an amulet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Satche on February 18, 2014, 07:55:09 am

(http://i60.tinypic.com/v58gg5.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HmH on February 18, 2014, 08:16:47 am

Does the emotional impact of seeing dead bodies scale with the amount of dead bodies seen? Is it a linear progression?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 18, 2014, 08:57:52 am

The AI of DF puts to shame the "Radiant AI" of the Elder Scrolls games..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on February 18, 2014, 09:49:29 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

The problem is, this can't happen, since all siegers(With a few exceptions, like generals and rulers) are created from scratch, not taken from world gen population.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 18, 2014, 09:56:04 am

Quote from: Broken on February 18, 2014, 09:49:29 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

The problem is, this can't happen, since all siegers(With a few exceptions, like generals and rulers) are created from scratch, not taken from world gen population.

At some point they are going to start taking from the world gen population. Not in this update though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:59:40 am

Quote from: Broken on February 18, 2014, 09:49:29 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

The problem is, this can't happen, since all siegers(With a few exceptions, like generals and rulers) are created from scratch, not taken from world gen population.

Right, forgot that :<

Oh well, a nice thing to look forward to in the future then perhaps ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 18, 2014, 10:17:54 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:59:40 am

Quote from: Broken on February 18, 2014, 09:49:29 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

The problem is, this can't happen, since all siegers(With a few exceptions, like generals and rulers) are created from scratch, not taken from world gen population.

Right, forgot that :<

Oh well, a nice thing to look forward to in the future then perhaps ^^

Wait, I don't know if this is true, but aren't survivors of sieges who make it off the map saved as historical figures and they can potentially come back? Still doesn't mean that they'll have relations.

Still a good question though as to whether that would affect their morale.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Clatch on February 18, 2014, 01:03:28 pm

The emotional responses to fallen comrads sound intriguing!  I wonder how this will roll during battle?  Will there will be a few other attributes that will start shifting dwarves from an extreme adrenaline rush to reflection as they tire out?  Moral is going to be a major player... I can see the new title tagline now, "Chapter III: Fun with PTSD!" :D

Pig poles with heads of Kobold thieves will be a pretty cheap deterrent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bralbaard on February 18, 2014, 02:28:04 pm

I wonder how people in adventurer mode will react if the zombified corpse of a relative crawls into their home. Would they recognize him/her?

Not going to green that, it will be much more fun to test that using proper science. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 18, 2014, 02:34:10 pm

Quote from: Bralbaard on February 18, 2014, 02:28:04 pm

I wonder how people in adventurer mode will react if the zombified corpse of a relative crawls into their home. Would they recognize him/her?

They already do. There's even a specific thought for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on February 18, 2014, 02:41:21 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 18, 2014, 08:57:52 am

The AI of DF puts to shame the "Radiant AI" of the Elder Scrolls games..

To be fair though, that doesn't take all that much. The Gothic series pretty much had the same as the Elder Scrolls, and that came out in 2001.

DF is pretty much in a league of its own - relatively few major game titles have really gone in for procedural generation and behaviour.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 18, 2014, 02:51:54 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 18, 2014, 02:34:10 pm

Quote from: Bralbaard on February 18, 2014, 02:28:04 pm

I wonder how people in adventurer mode will react if the zombified corpse of a relative crawls into their home. Would they recognize him/her?

They already do. There's even a specific thought for it.

Presumably you're referring to "has been attacked by own dead" from the string dump (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:String_dump), but does that thought work properly in Fortress Mode, let alone Adventure Mode?

Also, there's a powergoal:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

PowerGoal177, VERY FOUL, (Future): The foul vapors of the sewer cause the corpse of a discarded murder victim to arise. The zombie wanders back home. When the zombie sees her husband, her dead eyes flash in recognition, and she attacks, for it was he that murdered her!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 18, 2014, 03:08:41 pm

Quote from: Broken on February 18, 2014, 09:49:29 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on February 18, 2014, 09:11:58 am

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Siegers obviously have some slight emotion already now with the morale checks so this miiight obviously be possible, even though it might be a bit of a stretch. I tend to constantly underestimate to what extent awesome stuff like this is made possible though so thought I'd ask :P

The problem is, this can't happen, since all siegers(With a few exceptions, like generals and rulers) are created from scratch, not taken from world gen population.

This is no longer true in the next release:

Quote from: DF Talk 19

Toady: The main thing dwarf mode gets this time around is this world continuation stuff with succession happening and your civilization not just dying out while you're playing, or whatever happens now with your guys walking on the screen and dying of old age, or I think I may have put in the thing where they just don't show up at all anymore, but you'll actually have that. You'll also be getting armies that are real. So, all the things that we're talking about with evil lieutenants and villains and all this stuff in adventure mode also applies to dwarf mode in terms of who's actually going to be showing up; you'll get people showing up with a story and a reason now, instead of just, like, the yearly goblin attack or whatever. Although, you still won't be able to respond, which is the big thing with the hill dwarves and army stuff we'll get to later.
Rainseeker: Now, will there sometimes be fortresses that never experience a goblin attack, for instance?
Toady: That is going to be something that's a lot more common now, so if you want to be a fortress that's a fortress, then you'd have to embark on the frontier, more of a border where you'd be harassed. It'll tell you about what you're getting into so you don't have to guess, but if you want to go the other direction and place yourself right in the middle of where the dwarves currently are then you're just not going to have those kinds of problems unless you invite them on yourself by digging downward, or whatever. So it'll be possible to have more control over your starting political situation, and you'll still have people to trade with that you can mess with, so if you really want to invite fighting with the elves or something like that and you want to keep squashing their caravans under drawbridges or whatever you want to do, then that'll still invite trouble, although it could be that the trouble you invite doesn't affect you specifically. If you start a war with the elves you might not be the closest settlement to the eleven border in which case you'd start a fight with one of your poor other dwarven civilizations, or whatever; you'd get the elves to attack one of your other sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on February 18, 2014, 03:28:33 pm

With starting scenario's giving more purpose to forts, do you plan to expand the impact/role of the Expedition Leader etc? What do you think of manifesting fort mode players in the game world? After all, isn't a nature spirit just an Elvish equivalent of a Fortress Mode Player? As the world gets more detailed, things like unfortunate accidents(in their current form) will become more glaring and immersion breaking, but they're still too much fun/useful/difficult to get rid of. I know there are plans to eventually have adventurers gloriously, mortally and unomnisciently rule forts and so on, but it seems too important to reserve for that mode. Given that we currently play as Armok, perhaps players could be gods, though whether you'd only have influence in your sphere of control and/or competing with other gods would complicate matters. Could the game simply attempt to justify your actions in game, and let you see if you're happy with it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 18, 2014, 03:32:29 pm

 Toady One, can we have confirmation that siegers, aside from generals, will now come from the worldgen population rather than generated in the new version? There seems to be some confusion about whether or not that actually happens in the next version.

This ties directly into Manveru Taurënérs question.

Even if the goblins in the siege aren't directly related, seeing the corpses of comrades should have an effect now, maybe.

In one siege, when the siege had technically ended, there was this one goblin who decided to just charge right in anyway, but as soon as he saw the bodies in the traps, he was like 'oh shi...' and ran off.

Will kobold thieves now come from worldgen rather than being randomly generated as I think they are?

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 18, 2014, 03:28:33 pm

With starting scenario's giving more purpose to forts, do you plan to expand the impact/role of the Expedition Leader etc? What do you think of manifesting fort mode players in the game world? After all, isn't a nature spirit just an Elvish equivalent of a Fortress Mode Player? As the world gets more detailed, things like unfortunate accidents(in their current form) will become more glaring and immersion breaking, but they're still too much fun/useful/difficult to get rid of. I know there are plans to eventually have adventurers gloriously, mortally and unomnisciently rule forts and so on, but it seems too important to reserve for that mode. Given that we currently play as Armok, perhaps players could be gods, though whether you'd only have influence in your sphere of control and/or competing with other gods would complicate matters. Could the game simply attempt to justify your actions in game, and let you see if you're happy with it?

Starting scenarios aren't in yet I don't think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 18, 2014, 03:44:58 pm

Note, I'm not saying that the bulk of armies isn't generated from the undifferentiated population pool, but armies come from specific sites now. So I'm extrapolating that they could have more historic figures to bring along, especially if the site lead an invasion in the past.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on February 18, 2014, 04:46:56 pm

I'm assuming there hasn't been any mention of your companions becoming friends with each other, right? Because it would be fun to watch your whole group crumble (or fight harder) because one of the really popular members was killed by the enemy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hoveringdog on February 18, 2014, 08:42:19 pm

Quote from: Clatch on February 18, 2014, 01:03:28 pm

Pig poles with heads of Kobold thieves will be a pretty cheap deterrent.

I've long wondered if something like this might eventually happen with totems. Right now, they're useless except as cheap trade goods. But maybe someday they'll serve some use for frightening and/or antagonizing one's enemies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 19, 2014, 03:06:03 am

Will people freak out if you sell them the body parts of their dead relatives?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 19, 2014, 11:24:48 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 18, 2014, 03:32:29 pm

Toady One, can we have confirmation that siegers, aside from generals, will now come from the worldgen population rather than generated in the new version? There seems to be some confusion about whether or not that actually happens in the next version.

This ties directly into Manveru Taurënérs question.

Even if the goblins in the siege aren't directly related, seeing the corpses of comrades should have an effect now, maybe.

In one siege, when the siege had technically ended, there was this one goblin who decided to just charge right in anyway, but as soon as he saw the bodies in the traps, he was like 'oh shi...' and ran off.

Toady has stated that one of the fun things of having realized sites is that you can follow on the (abstract) trails of your enemies, claiming vengeance upon a fallen fort or something like that. So yes, the same purple-haired guys that jumped over the moat and broke your dwarves' spines are the ones coming from existing dark fortresses and, presumably, you can go there as an adventurer and pay them a visit.

Quote from: smjjames on February 18, 2014, 03:32:29 pm

Will kobold thieves now come from worldgen rather than being randomly generated as I think they are?

This might only happen if kobold sites are still on track for this release (haven't heard of them in a while, so it's doubtful). Taking into reason the existence of other (edit) sites, it would be reasonable to have them as well appearing from the historic pool. Always wanted to meet those legendary thieves that have been harassing markets since day 1, and maybe be able to locate the runt that stole the artifacts from the aforementioned fallen fortress.

Quote from: Novel Scoops on February 18, 2014, 03:28:33 pm

With starting scenario's giving more purpose to forts, do you plan to expand the impact/role of the Expedition Leader etc? What do you think of manifesting fort mode players in the game world? After all, isn't a nature spirit just an Elvish equivalent of a Fortress Mode Player? As the world gets more detailed, things like unfortunate accidents(in their current form) will become more glaring and immersion breaking, but they're still too much fun/useful/difficult to get rid of. I know there are plans to eventually have adventurers gloriously, mortally and unomnisciently rule forts and so on, but it seems too important to reserve for that mode. Given that we currently play as Armok, perhaps players could be gods, though whether you'd only have influence in your sphere of control and/or competing with other gods would complicate matters. Could the game simply attempt to justify your actions in game, and let you see if you're happy with it?

I've read that once starting scenarios get introduced, there will be a way to build a fortress with a group different from the ethereal Seven. Maybe a military expedition to the grim desert of horrors will have a different reason, ammount of dwarves and equipment than the few chubby guys willing to dig and frolick around the inner kingdom's lake, and their leaders will be suited to such tasks.

Aknowledging the presence of players hasn't been planned nor stated, and well, it just has to retain some elements of playability that make sense in the universe. It's planned to have gods as separate critters and entities, and maybe they'll enter the scene as soon as planes/4D make it to the game.

Nobody will say at any point "We're going to war against Aa's worshippers, because their god is an asshole covered in Cheetos and shame, plunging his minions from towers 120 stories high", but even unfortunate accidents will have their consequences covered in the deep, complex system, if they don't already have. Limiting the scope of what we can do would widely cut the appeal of this game. The personality rewrite is something I'm looking forward to experiment with, perhaps some kind of situations are easier or nearly impossible for certain individuals, but beyond that, I'm just as happy to have science and interactive simulation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 19, 2014, 05:33:51 pm

People will react to finding a murdered friend or family member, but will they be put off by just finding a corpse even if they have no idea who it was?

I'd be kind of freaked out by finding a head of a complete stranger in my house. So I'm wondering if find any corpse will bother a subject or if they just kind of take it at their leisure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 08:54:30 pm

Quote from: 02/19/2014 Toady One

Today's success was to have a crying mother spit on me and call me a murderer, so that's where we're at. Of course, people familiar with modding or magma crabs might guess that the first time she spit at me, the glob came out frozen and my murderous character, being handy with a sword, batted the saliva ice cube out of the park.

So, can you, the adventurer, also spit? I can see people weaponizing this or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:00:52 pm

(yep)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 19, 2014, 09:23:49 pm

Yeah, you could have weaponized spit in the current release if you wanted, via material breath attacks (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Syndrome#Breath_Attack_Types).  The grief-spitting might entail a new type of USAGE_HINT, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 09:29:06 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 08:54:30 pm

Quote from: 02/19/2014 Toady One

Today's success was to have a crying mother spit on me and call me a murderer, so that's where we're at. Of course, people familiar with modding or magma crabs might guess that the first time she spit at me, the glob came out frozen and my murderous character, being handy with a sword, batted the saliva ice cube out of the park.

So, can you, the adventurer, also spit? I can see people weaponizing this or something.

Quote from: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:00:52 pm

(yep)

You knew someone would ask didn't ya. :D Anyways, thanks for the quick response I suppouse, if anything needs to be thanked :D

I suppose that now that we can have secretions from specific tissues (or can we do that now???), we can make unicorns cry rainbows or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:34:45 pm

(Secretion by part is old, but, yeah, we have a new usage hint for negative social response, and secretions can take an optional argument at the end for exertion or extreme emotion)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 19, 2014, 09:36:26 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 09:29:06 pm

I suppose that now that we can have secretions from specific tissues (or can we do that now???), we can make unicorns cry rainbows or something.

A SECRETION could already target a particular tissue (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Creature_token#S), but the emotion/exertion triggers are new.

edit: ninja'd

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 10:12:42 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 19, 2014, 09:36:26 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 19, 2014, 09:29:06 pm

I suppose that now that we can have secretions from specific tissues (or can we do that now???), we can make unicorns cry rainbows or something.

A SECRETION could already target a particular tissue (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Creature_token#S), but the emotion/exertion triggers are new.

edit: ninja'd

Oh I see. I don't do a whole lot of modding, so I didn't really know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on February 19, 2014, 10:22:12 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:34:45 pm

(Secretion by part is old, but, yeah, we have a new usage hint for negative social response, and secretions can take an optional argument at the end for exertion or extreme emotion)

This can be interpreted in so many ways. The next few updates might take this a long way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 19, 2014, 10:30:50 pm

Oh crap, THAT mod.

Ahem.

So, who wants to make humans spit lava?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 19, 2014, 11:03:27 pm

Humans? Why the hell would humans be spitting lava? Lava's for dorfs!

And a new emotion-related usage hint sounds awesome. I can already imagine using it as a way to get grieving family members to transform into horrible monsters as opposed to transforming on certain moon phases. Or something like that. An entire species of civilized beings that go berserk when a family member dies. Keep them happy! :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on February 19, 2014, 11:12:50 pm

Emotion-based usage hints?

This is gonna be SOOOOOOOO good for the Isho... They can metamorphose based on psychological environment rather than symbiotic elimination of weakness...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on February 19, 2014, 11:16:48 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 19, 2014, 11:03:27 pm

Humans? Why the hell would humans be spitting lava? Lava's for dorfs!

And a new emotion-related usage hint sounds awesome. I can already imagine using it as a way to get grieving family members to transform into horrible monsters as opposed to transforming on certain moon phases. Or something like that. An entire species of civilized beings that go berserk when a family member dies. Keep them happy! :P

So no change really.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 19, 2014, 11:20:01 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:34:45 pm

(Secretion by part is old, but, yeah, we have a new usage hint for negative social response, and secretions can take an optional argument at the end for exertion or extreme emotion)

That is all very nice.

Raws final enough to see yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 19, 2014, 11:23:20 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 19, 2014, 11:20:01 pm

That is all very nice.

Raws final enough to see yet?

Do you mean all the new raws in general?  The usage hint and secretion condition sound pretty straightforward.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dazenith on February 19, 2014, 11:23:48 pm

Speaking of modding. I can't wait to mod the living daylights out of the next release. I want to make and maybe release my own unique mods. So much !!FUN!! and !!SCIENCE!! to be had.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 20, 2014, 12:51:31 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 19, 2014, 11:23:20 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 19, 2014, 11:20:01 pm

That is all very nice.

Raws final enough to see yet?

Do you mean all the new raws in general?  The usage hint and secretion condition sound pretty straightforward.

I didn't mean that, but I want it :P

The usage hint and secretion conditions may sound straightforward, but I don't want another Fortbent fiasco where my mods don't work within the first 8 hours of release.

(Though this DF update is way more difficult to update for...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 20, 2014, 02:05:55 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 19, 2014, 11:03:27 pm

Humans? Why the hell would humans be spitting lava? Lava's for dorfs!

And a new emotion-related usage hint sounds awesome. I can already imagine using it as a way to get grieving family members to transform into horrible monsters as opposed to transforming on certain moon phases. Or something like that. An entire species of civilized beings that go berserk when a family member dies. Keep them happy! :P

DF: Magical Girl Edition. Create supersoldiers by giving them lots of happiness and friendship!

Spoiler: DF: Magi Madoka Edition (click to show/hide)

Create and weaponize world-killing abominations by carefully timed traumatic episodes!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on February 20, 2014, 07:24:36 am

Oh that mental image.

"You murderer!"  *Spit*

*schwing!* "No, wench."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 20, 2014, 10:06:30 am

Quote

Of course, people familiar with modding or magma crabs might guess that the first time she spit at me, the glob came out frozen and my murderous character, being handy with a sword, batted the saliva ice cube out of the park.  After I fixed that, and some other stuff, it splattered on my toga.

YES. Frozen liquid globs was the first bug I submitted to the bug tracker, way back at the dawn of DF2010. So happy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 20, 2014, 10:15:25 am

Spat/Secreted/Whatever fluids will still freeze in some conditions right?

I've heard stories of people fooling around by spitting "ice" at each other in Siberia, though I guess at the distance we're talking about that would need some pretty damn low temp.

On a related note: If tears/sweat freeze, will they have a chance damage a unit in extreme cold?

Imagine that. Urist McMother sees the tooth of Urist McDeceasedBaby then bursts in tears. Tears which then freeze and damage her eyes.
Or
Tissue damage that can potentially lead to infection/frostbite when fighting in very, very cold areas/times.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on February 20, 2014, 10:45:10 am

Emotional Triggers + Transforms....

"You are making me angry... you won't like me when I'm angry."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on February 20, 2014, 10:50:04 am

If we're able to spit and sweat, does that mean that adventurers no longer need to make sure they have a supply of water, because they can just jump and and down a bunch, get sweaty, and drink their own sweat?  Or spit on themselves and then drink it?  Or have you taken this into consideration and caused sweat/spit to proportionally increase the adventurer's thirst?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on February 20, 2014, 11:41:32 am

that sounds intersting if you where playing as one of those creatures that spit something deadly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on February 20, 2014, 12:00:38 pm

I hope the dwarves/humans will sell barrels of kobold tears. When/if any barrels can be dumped as a liquid like water, I will fill a moat with the blood and tears of my enemies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 12:08:56 pm

Quote from: EmeraldWind on February 20, 2014, 10:45:10 am

Emotional Triggers + Transforms....

"You are making me angry... you won't like me when I'm angry."

Urist McBanner: "Ye're makin' meh engry, you won't like meh when I'm engry'

*TRANSFORM NOISE* *RHOARRR*

'URIST SMASH!'

I imagine this could also be useful for the DBZ mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 12:16:42 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 20, 2014, 10:15:25 am

Spat/Secreted/Whatever fluids will still freeze in some conditions right?

That behavior will be the same as in the current version.  Toady didn't change how temperature affects objects, he fixed a bug where the raws weren't being properly applied to the projectile's initial state (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=524).

Quote from: Gremdavel on February 20, 2014, 10:50:04 am

If we're able to spit and sweat, does that mean that adventurers no longer need to make sure they have a supply of water, because they can just jump and and down a bunch, get sweaty, and drink their own sweat?  Or spit on themselves and then drink it?  Or have you taken this into consideration and caused sweat/spit to proportionally increase the adventurer's thirst?

There are already similar exploits for blood etc, so it won't really change the equation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gremdavel on February 20, 2014, 12:30:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 12:16:42 pm

There are already similar exploits for blood etc, so it won't really change the equation.

True, although from my experience there's still some minimal effort and risk involved in the current state.  Spitting on yourself makes it exploitable to the point where it might merit immediate change in the mechanics (provided it was a simple enough change, of course, but only Toady knows how simple/complex that would be).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on February 20, 2014, 01:22:16 pm

Will tears of joy exist as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 01:27:07 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on February 20, 2014, 01:22:16 pm

Will tears of joy exist as well?

We've heard about a lot of specific triggers for negative emotional states, but none for happiness, so I'm assuming no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 20, 2014, 01:29:05 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on February 20, 2014, 12:30:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 12:16:42 pm

There are already similar exploits for blood etc, so it won't really change the equation.

True, although from my experience there's still some minimal effort and risk involved in the current state.  Spitting on yourself makes it exploitable to the point where it might merit immediate change in the mechanics (provided it was a simple enough change, of course, but only Toady knows how simple/complex that would be).

It's simple: drinking sweat/spit probably gets "No, that's disgusting" unless dehydrated, and perhaps you can't produce either fluid in that state.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 20, 2014, 03:09:48 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 01:27:07 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on February 20, 2014, 01:22:16 pm

Will tears of joy exist as well?

We've heard about a lot of specific triggers for negative emotional states, but none for happiness, so I'm assuming no.

Technically, Toady mentioned the secretion trigger as "extreme emotion", so I wouldn't necessarily discount it (and he wants to get to some kind of cheerier territory). On the other hand, people seem to interpret the negative social response usage hit rather too broadly as emotional usage hints in general.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on February 20, 2014, 03:21:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 20, 2014, 01:29:05 pm

Quote from: Gremdavel on February 20, 2014, 12:30:46 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 12:16:42 pm

There are already similar exploits for blood etc, so it won't really change the equation.

True, although from my experience there's still some minimal effort and risk involved in the current state.  Spitting on yourself makes it exploitable to the point where it might merit immediate change in the mechanics (provided it was a simple enough change, of course, but only Toady knows how simple/complex that would be).

It's simple: drinking sweat/spit probably gets "No, that's disgusting" unless dehydrated, and perhaps you can't produce either fluid in that state.

Urist McThirsty is extremely thirsty.  He needs to drink soon to avoid dying of dehydration.
Urist McThirsty happens upon a well and sheds tears of joy at his discovery.
Urist McThirsty dies of dehydration.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 20, 2014, 03:45:49 pm

Hmm, that is a good point... We lose water we excrete as sweat or tears. Or whatever... Logically that would prevent drinking your own sweat, tears, and blood from being exploited as a why to stave off dehydration, as in the best case scenario you'd only refund what water you lost, which doesn't work IRL obviously but is feasible in a game. Toady will handle those exploits whenever he feels like, I suppose. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 20, 2014, 03:48:48 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on February 20, 2014, 03:45:49 pm

Hmm, that is a good point... We lose water we excrete as sweat or tears. Or whatever... Logically that would prevent drinking your own sweat, tears, and blood from being exploited as a why to stave off dehydration, as in the best case scenario you'd only refund what water you lost, which doesn't work IRL obviously but is feasible in a game. Toady will handle those exploits whenever he feels like, I suppose. :P

This is Dwarf Fortress. Your statement relies entirely upon whose blood, sweat and tears you are drinking.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on February 20, 2014, 03:53:35 pm

Well, yeah, logically you can hydrate yourself by consuming fluids of other people/animals. Just not your own.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:19:45 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

Barding?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 20, 2014, 04:23:31 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:19:45 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

Barding?

Barding is armor for animals, especially horses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:28:52 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 20, 2014, 04:23:31 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:19:45 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

Barding?

Barding is armor for animals, especially horses.

Oh, I thought it had something to do with bards or no idea. Thanks for the info.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 20, 2014, 04:30:34 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

Quote from: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:19:45 pm

Barding?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barding

No changes there.  Use of mounts is on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html), so it might get some attention then.  However, armor and clothing is already a messy thing to implement for humanoids (determining body part coverage, etc).  Generalizing it to other body plans (quadrupeds, fliers, tentacled whatevers) is not low-hanging fruit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on February 20, 2014, 04:32:07 pm

Quote from: smjjames on February 20, 2014, 04:28:52 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on February 20, 2014, 04:23:31 pm

-snip-

Oh, I thought it had something to do with bards or no idea. Thanks for the info.

Glad I could help, but it looks like Footkerchief has ninja's me with Wikipedia.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on February 20, 2014, 04:52:16 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on February 20, 2014, 04:09:07 pm

Has there been any advancements on armoring up/barding creatures? I know that armor can be worn by creatures in Arena Testing, but cannot be put on them while in Dwarf and Adventurer mode...

I'd say it's safe to assume this will at the earliest be worked on around when mounts get implemented. However since the combat/speed split was a prerequisite for mounts and Toady did mention a while back doing some early tinkering with riding I guess that could be said to be an advancement towards that end? :P

From the last DFtalk in May:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Now this doesn't mean I've added in adventure mode mounts yet - there's probably some bug in the arena when you control a mounted adventurer or whatever but it's something we're, I don't know how far I'm gonna get with that but it's fun to, it was fun to control the mount. I created a horse with a person riding it and then another horse with a person riding it and then took control of one of the horses and then just kind of rode around and tried to get my person the best gallop I could to dismount the other person or whatever. It'd be a fun game by itself I guess, it's like controlling the horse. So that'll all be interesting when we get that done and it is probably going to be something that causes adventure mode mounts to happen sooner rather than later, but I'm trying not to add anything else this release because it's getting long in the tooth.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Exelixi on February 20, 2014, 05:33:40 pm

A few questions that may or may not have already been addressed about the coming release:

How difficult will it be to de-racialise sites? For instance, if I wanted to have a race that occupied goblinesque fortesses, but didn't want to have trolls or demonic leaders, how hard would that be to implement?

Will Adventure mode this time around take into consideration more things like civilisations' attitudes towards various acts, and as a subset of that, will cannibalistic races be able to nom nom nom sapients in adventure mode?

Finally, will more crafts, besides sharpening stones, be available in adventure mode this time round?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jacob/Lee on February 20, 2014, 06:47:10 pm

Don't forget the

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions limegreen[/color]bit. Toady likely skims the thread, ignoring most stuff that doesn't have green on it somewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 20, 2014, 06:47:54 pm

Quote from: Exelixi on February 20, 2014, 05:33:40 pm

A few questions that may or may not have already been addressed about the coming release:

How difficult will it be to de-racialise sites? For instance, if I wanted to have a race that occupied goblinesque fortesses, but didn't want to have trolls or demonic leaders, how hard would that be to implement?

Will Adventure mode this time around take into consideration more things like civilisations' attitudes towards various acts, and as a subset of that, will cannibalistic races be able to nom nom nom sapients in adventure mode?

Finally, will more crafts, besides sharpening stones, be available in adventure mode this time round?

If you want your questions to be answered by Toady, you need to highlight them green.

As for Adventurer Crafting. Thats still just sharpening stones. For now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on February 20, 2014, 07:14:20 pm

Quote from: Exelixi on February 20, 2014, 05:33:40 pm

A few questions that may or may not have already been addressed about the coming release:

How difficult will it be to de-racialise sites? For instance, if I wanted to have a race that occupied goblinesque fortesses, but didn't want to have trolls or demonic leaders, how hard would that be to implement?

I believe that what type of site you live in does not define what pets you have access to or whether you can have demonic leaders.

Pets depend on what pet tags the entity has, as well as which biomes the civilization lives in.

Creatures can deceive civilizations into making them leaders if the creature has a [POWER] token. I'm not sure if there are other factors though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 20, 2014, 11:03:13 pm

Quote from: Exelixi on February 20, 2014, 05:33:40 pm

How difficult will it be to de-racialise sites? For instance, if I wanted to have a race that occupied goblinesque fortesses, but didn't want to have trolls or demonic leaders, how hard would that be to implement?

Exactly as difficult as it is in this version: you're going to have to try to make, say, Dwarf dark fortresses act like Goblin dark fortresses. The site has nothing to do with position or pet behavior.

Quote

Will Adventure mode this time around take into consideration more things like civilisations' attitudes towards various acts, and as a subset of that, will cannibalistic races be able to nom nom nom sapients in adventure mode?

Haven't seen anything about that in the devlog, so I'm giving a tentative "no".

Quote

Finally, will more crafts, besides sharpening stones, be available in adventure mode this time round?

Not a word on that, so no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on February 21, 2014, 04:36:25 am

This isn't really a question per se, but the news section at the top still has the January '14 report up instead of the February one. :P
Update, please.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orodogoth on February 21, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 21, 2014, 04:51:51 pm

Quote from: Orodogoth on February 21, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

Ever?

Probably.
When?
When it becomes relevant to the development.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 21, 2014, 07:13:16 pm

Quote from: Orodogoth on February 21, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

Yes, that's probably possible in the next version.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-12-04

12/04/2013 Toady One
You can trade objects with pretty much anybody friendly now, without the requirement that you be in a store, and as long as they'll make out alright, they'll go for it. You can also give anybody anything. It should probably be restricted a bit, since people are more than happy to tear off their shoes for an equal value of food or whatever while they are standing in the mud, and so on, but it does let you give whatever to whomever, which'll help some of the dire equipment problems companions have until we have more time to do something better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on February 21, 2014, 08:29:02 pm

Quote from: Trif on February 21, 2014, 07:13:16 pm

Quote from: Orodogoth on February 21, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

Yes, that's probably possible in the next version.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-12-04

12/04/2013 Toady One
You can trade objects with pretty much anybody friendly now, without the requirement that you be in a store, and as long as they'll make out alright, they'll go for it. You can also give anybody anything. It should probably be restricted a bit, since people are more than happy to tear off their shoes for an equal value of food or whatever while they are standing in the mud, and so on, but it does let you give whatever to whomever, which'll help some of the dire equipment problems companions have until we have more time to do something better.

Being able to hold and being able to use, are different things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HmH on February 22, 2014, 12:00:31 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on February 21, 2014, 08:29:02 pm

Quote from: Trif on February 21, 2014, 07:13:16 pm

Quote from: Orodogoth on February 21, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

Yes, that's probably possible in the next version.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-12-04

12/04/2013 Toady One
You can trade objects with pretty much anybody friendly now, without the requirement that you be in a store, and as long as they'll make out alright, they'll go for it. You can also give anybody anything. It should probably be restricted a bit, since people are more than happy to tear off their shoes for an equal value of food or whatever while they are standing in the mud, and so on, but it does let you give whatever to whomever, which'll help some of the dire equipment problems companions have until we have more time to do something better.

Being able to hold and being able to use, are different things.

Wield a crutch in Adventure mode; you'll notice that your speed drops and your Crutch Walker skill grows. Therefore, holding a crutch automatically makes you use it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on February 22, 2014, 01:43:55 am

Quote from: HmH on February 22, 2014, 12:00:31 am

Wield a crutch in Adventure mode; you'll notice that your speed drops and your Crutch Walker skill grows. Therefore, holding a crutch automatically makes you use it.

But can you convince your allies to wield a crutch after they pick it up?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 22, 2014, 09:28:20 am

Quote from: Untelligent on February 22, 2014, 01:43:55 am

Quote from: HmH on February 22, 2014, 12:00:31 am

Wield a crutch in Adventure mode; you'll notice that your speed drops and your Crutch Walker skill grows. Therefore, holding a crutch automatically makes you use it.

But can you convince your allies to wield a crutch after they pick it up?

Toady said that this feature should help with the equipment problems. If you can't tell your companions to equip/wield stuff that you give them, there wouldn't be much of an improvement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on February 22, 2014, 11:48:00 am

I just hope being able to know the substance every object in the game is made out of is never taken out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 22, 2014, 02:47:20 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on February 22, 2014, 11:48:00 am

I just hope being able to know the substance every object in the game is made out of is never taken out.

I hope too, but I would like to see the *Giant Chinchilla Leather* be just *Leather* for interface organization. The specific type of a material should be only in the description.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 22, 2014, 02:54:06 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 22, 2014, 02:47:20 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on February 22, 2014, 11:48:00 am

I just hope being able to know the substance every object in the game is made out of is never taken out.

I hope too, but I would like to see the *Giant Chinchilla Leather* be just *Leather* for interface organization. The specific type of a material should be only in the description.

Maybe you could toggle between specific descriptions like *Giant Chinchilla leather* and generic ones like *Leather*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 22, 2014, 03:14:06 pm

Maybe you should only get a specific description if your character could tell the difference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 22, 2014, 04:08:48 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on February 22, 2014, 03:14:06 pm

Maybe you should only get a specific description if your character could tell the difference.

I thought about that, but this would only apply to adventurer mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on February 22, 2014, 07:18:37 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on February 22, 2014, 02:54:06 pm

Quote from: thvaz on February 22, 2014, 02:47:20 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on February 22, 2014, 11:48:00 am

I just hope being able to know the substance every object in the game is made out of is never taken out.

I hope too, but I would like to see the *Giant Chinchilla Leather* be just *Leather* for interface organization. The specific type of a material should be only in the description.

Maybe you could toggle between specific descriptions like *Giant Chinchilla leather* and generic ones like *Leather*

I know this isn't the place for suggestions, but I really like this idea.  Would let you choose leather when you don't care, and chinchilla leather when you really need it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on February 23, 2014, 05:01:16 am

Given that the player can singlehandedly 'liberate' or 'defend' a town from invaders does the history of a world recognize/describe this in a special?

Example 1:

On the Year 192 Urist Mcventurer singlehandedly defended Boatmurdered from Invasion

Example 2:

On the Year 193 Urist Mcventurer rallied the people of boatmurdered and drove off the goblins

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 23, 2014, 09:34:25 am

Quote from: nighzmarquls on February 23, 2014, 05:01:16 am

Given that the player can singlehandedly 'liberate' or 'defend' a town from invaders does the history of a world recognize/describe this in a special?

Example 1:

On the Year 192 Urist Mcventurer singlehandedly defended Boatmurdered from Invasion

Example 2:

On the Year 193 Urist Mcventurer rallied the people of boatmurdered and drove off the goblins

Important events will be recognized, but I doubt they'll account for your adventurer as the sole responsible. Maybe the name of your entity, with just 1 defender/attacker, or something like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on February 24, 2014, 08:49:52 am

Anyway, as you know, Boatmurdered was NEVER liberated,
except from itself ,
and its deep evilness,
and the spirit of Dodok Astlumash.

And it was from elephants, not goblins.

Elephants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 24, 2014, 12:06:55 pm

Quote from: Inarius on February 24, 2014, 08:49:52 am

Anyway, as you know, Boatmurdered was NEVER liberated,
except from itself ,
and its deep evilness,
and the spirit of Dodok Astlumash.

And it was from elephants, not goblins.

Elephants.

Oh dear God the elephants. *Shakes and cries in a corner for half an hour, rambling of how the elephants will kill us all*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rencini on February 24, 2014, 05:23:49 pm

Will adventurers be able to reproduce in the next release? How does it happen, if at all? Will we be able to play as the son/daughter of x adventurer if they manage to reproduce?* On a related note, will we be able to fast forward time once world gen is complete? Can our adventurers even marry next release?**

Moreover, happy birthday! This thread is one year old since February 15th, 2012!
*I can imagine legacy adventurer mode games. Brace yourself for much !FUN!
**Asking about kids and talking about adventurer legacy games, but I don't even know if they can have a spouse!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 24, 2014, 05:31:56 pm

Quote from: Rencini on February 24, 2014, 05:23:49 pm

Will adventurers be able to reproduce in the next release? How does it happen, if at all? Will we be able to play as the son/daughter of x adventurer if they manage to reproduce?* On a related note, will we be able to fast forward time once world gen is complete? Can our adventurers even marry next release?**

Nope, all adventurer companionship is still platonic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on February 24, 2014, 05:39:19 pm

Related to the most recent Dev post:

Will the faction AIs do anything on their own, especially based on player actions? For instance, if the player destroys much of an invading force will the AI then decide that it is safe to stage a rebellion to force them out entirely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on February 24, 2014, 05:44:54 pm

Yes and no.  If you retire an adventurer they will become an NPC and thus be able to marry and have kids.  However this is only because all historical figures can do that, not because there are any special new systems in place.  You won't be able to directly start a relationship or have kids as an adventurer, the AI will have to do it for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on February 24, 2014, 07:08:49 pm

Are there any positive interactions an adventurer can perform with a companion this release?

Staring vacantly off in the distance as my companion drops to his/her knees, overcome with tears at the sight of his/her hamlet in smouldering ruins seems kind of ... well, awkward.

The largest part of being a leader is getting your people back up after the blows are dealt, afterall. I'd hope to be able to give them a 'We'll get them for this, grrr' and put a reassuring hand and on them without the game recognizing it as combat and the party reacts to it as a mini civil war and all turns into murder. Is the game at that stage, coming next release after this, or ...?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on February 24, 2014, 11:10:41 pm

Quote from: Rencini on February 24, 2014, 05:23:49 pm

Moreover, happy birthday! This thread is one year old since February 15th, 2012!

Make it two years, since we're in 2014 now.

People lying to you in varying degrees, now that's pretty sweet and game-changing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: iceball3 on February 24, 2014, 11:32:23 pm

I got a few questions:
-With combat receiving all these recent changes, do you think at some point (not in this update) we will be seeing 'mental' skills, like liar, observer and intimidation affecting the flow of combat? For example, liar skill vs observer and judge of intent in terms of dealing with feints, bluffs, and the like?

-With the new "multi attack" option, will we see an option to commit an 'attack sequence' at some point?

-What sorts of other combat maneuvers would you like to see in the game, Toady?
The new update upcoming has me so excited~

EDIT: I may have to clarify - by 'attack sequence', i mean specific arrangements of actions such as the classic 'flurry of fists'
 or other martial maneuvers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 25, 2014, 12:23:22 am

Quote from: iceball3 on February 24, 2014, 11:32:23 pm

-With combat receiving all these recent changes, do you think at some point (not in this update) we will be seeing 'mental' skills, like liar, observer and intimidation affecting the flow of combat? For example, liar skill vs observer and judge of intent in terms of dealing with feints, bluffs, and the like?

Observer is already used, and you can expect the others to become relevant where reasonable:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Rainseeker:    So what is... How does the uh... What skills have you incorporated into this in the new stuff you do?
Toady:   There's no, there's no, if I remember, there's no new ones but the observer skill comes up a lot more. It used to... The observer skill used to give you... which is the sort of... it's called situational awareness in the code and it's just sort of for … for observing.
And a kind of paying attention to your surroundings and especially during a fight. And it used to just help you with being hit from the side and so you wouldn't get the 'hit you from the side' minus or whatever, and it also helped you judge when people were going to charge so you didn't get surprised by people's charges. But now it's used to give you for four or five little pieces of information about the attack, depending on how good the roll is, and that can really make a huge difference in your decision making so that skill became a lot more important. I haven't broken up parrying or anything like that, so there's not like 'defense with a sword' versus 'offense with a sword' - and I'm not going to do any kind of break ups of those skills until we get to the actual combat styles and techniques, in which case this is going to blossom into, you know, a hundred different things and you know, get rather out of control which is nice, for that part.

Quote from: iceball3 on February 24, 2014, 11:32:23 pm

-With the new "multi attack" option, will we see an option to commit an 'attack sequence' at some point?

-What sorts of other combat maneuvers would you like to see in the game, Toady?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Combat styles

    Combat styles involving weapons or natural attacks with associated stances and moves
    Ability to learn moves, etc. from others with whom you have a high enough reputation
    Certain moves may only be available as specific counters, while others might just be regular attacks
    Ability to create new moves/styles when highly skilled

Spoiler: DF talk segment on martial arts (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   Let's talk about martial arts. So I see that you have specific skills for fighting monsters, you have a skill for hand-on-hand combat against a dragon ...
Toady:   I'm not sure how specific it's going to be, but once we put in things like if you're fighting a giant who's way taller than you then it would make sense that if people have been doing that for centuries then they'd have strategies. I'm not sure what those are going to be specifically, if it just gives you a knowledge against a monster and a bonus then that would be the easiest way to do it, but it would be way more fun to have particular things that you can do, to jump up on them, or attack them when they're swinging down at you, people practicing strikes to hack a dragon in the head when it comes down to bite them or whatever. There might be stereotyped ways of doing that, although I don't think enough people fight dragons and survive to really learn that stuff ... it'd be kind of weird to see the training facilities with the giant cardboard dragons, people practicing against them ...
Rainseeker:   Well you never know when a dragon's going to show up ...
Toady:   The main thing with the martial arts is just fighting against other people, and 'martial arts' used in the most general sense, so it would include fencing, wrestling, boxing type stuff. So a simple example of martial art moves would just be something like boxing where you'd have people that are unskilled using their hands just throwing these punches where they just do their attack with the punch, and it might be that you can aim your shot - if someone has no skill at all and they're just fighting they can aim at someone's head - so when we put in aimed strikes you could throw a strike at the head, but then there would also be people who have some kind of skill in a particular randomly generated skill who might learn something like a left jab, and then the left jab would be more efficient, faster, have a longer range, than someone going all wild, and it would be better to learn those things. Then there's the idea of having different guards, just in a general sense perhaps, like you're holding your hands in front of your head ... It would be a really loose concept in general, because people generally aren't holding both of their hands to the left of their head, it doesn't need to get like that. Although we were thinking of having it so that you start with a general guard and you could move it higher or lower depending on ... like if you were fighting a dog or something it's not like you should be totally covering up the top of your head ... and then we were thinking ... there's this whole change of the combat flow thing where our overall goal is that if you stick a human in the arena and another human in the arena, and given them the same equipment and the same skills ... Right now if you play one and you assume control and you have those two guys fight each other you still basically do the roguelike thing where you press arrow arrow arrow and fight and you're flipping a coin to see if you're going to live. And there's sometimes when things dodge or when you fall over and you have to decide whether you're going to stand up or throw another strike or step back so that you can wait for the guy to come in so you can get a first strike on him, that kind of thing: so there's some skill involved that isn't just flipping the coins. But it's still the case that ultimately your chances aren't very good. I'm not saying that situation's necessarily going to change that much in terms of your survivability but we should at least make it more fun. You should be more survivable, you should at least be able to be more cautious about things, but basically what we're getting at is that you shouldn't just swing and then have the other person swing back, this is where we're getting at the idea of these reaction moments. So you could be standing there and someone could swing at you, but instead of how it is now where you press the button, it does the attack and then there's a delay of ten steps where you're recovering yourself so that you can attack again, when you attack it would start swinging an attack and then that attack is going to hit after five steps, and so during that time it could bust out and be like you see this incoming swing and you have a chance to react sometimes. So your reaction could be 'I want to try and block this thing' or 'I want to jump out of the way' or 'I'm going to try my little jujitsu move I've been practicing where I grab his wrist and twist him and get him on the ground', where you'd be balancing risks, balancing your skills and being more involved in the combat even though ultimately it's going to come down to some dice rolls still. Because there's that whole thing of if you've got an action game then you've got the player's skill as the determining fact - the player, the user of the program's skill - whereas if you've got an RPG it's more the character's skills that matter in the outcome of the combat and you just make some strategic decisions. The RPG part has to be respected a lot in this game, but you're going to be able to have more decisions to make. So if you end up doing something like someone throws a kick at your head and you have a high guard you'll have a chance to block it, but if you react to it you might be able to block the side of your head that it's coming toward, like how you actually have to be proactive if you want to stop someone from kicking you in the head. And you might then up with something like your left arm guarding the left side of your head ... we don't want to make it too complicated, but if your body is broken up into three zones or something, and your guard can just be general or you might be guarding one of those zones more than others but after you do a specific block or something for a time one of your grasping limbs might be blocking a particular side of your head just briefly. It's not something where you're going to be controlling yourself like a marionette but it's just going to be for text and the situation that it describes the announcements.
Captnastic:   'You raise your hand to block', 'you bring your shield down', that sort of stuff?
Toady:   Yeah, and it'll be talking about that in the announcements and it will also lead to situations, so if someone tries to kick you in the side of your head and you raise your arm to block it, it says that, but then if some kobold comes up with a dagger and tries to stab you in the gut then that left hand is not going to be available for your defence without a good reaction roll. So multiple opponents should be harder and you'll be strategically trying to get into situations where you're not surrounded. Even more than usual: right now they get bonuses to attack you but you're not really tied up the same way. So that should help a bit. For people who don't want to deal with that, especially if you're fighting people you know you can beat you can just have it do the thing it's going to do with them which is select the options for you, so if you get attacked it selects an option for you, so you can play it the same way if you want and it'll just have more interesting text for you to read. But you should also be able to make the decisions, and that should change things a lot. We have that advantage in a turn based environment to be able to let you interact more with what's going on and stop and think about things and so on, so we should take advantage of that. It should turn out pretty well, we just don't want to overcomplicate by having directional attacks on each part of the bodies ... but the zones thing is a little tricky too, if you're laying down you'd have your head zone and your body zone and your leg zone but they'd all be low on the ground. We're hoping that something like the zones could be used to do the thing with the giants too, where the giant's head zone is, when he's standing, is way out of reach for a typical person, and you might have attacks like a jab or some kind of sword strike that comes up that can only be used to hit the upper zones and then a person would be able to block that kind of attack by guarding their top zone from below ... not something that you have to set up in advance, you wouldn't be holding these weird guards when you're walking around, but it would be kind of a blocking event ... The things we're thinking about is like, we want to be able to do things like blocking head kicks or whatever in specific ways, so it would say what your arms are doing, but you don't want to walk around with ... When you see people fighting they're moving their arms, they might be holding their left arm near their head and their right arm near their body, but then they'll switch it up and they'll have the right arm near their head and the left arm near their body, and it would be really annoying to have to switch every turn to get that behaviour, it's like 'I want to do this and this and then step toward the guy, and we're still twenty feet away from each other, and then I want to do this and this ...' So there'd be just this general guard concept and that kind of specific blocking would be something that you'll only do when you're being attacked. Now there are exceptions to that, like if you want to hold both of your arms blocking the back of your head when you're running away or something ... you run away, you're being shot at, you hold both of your arms over the back of your head, maybe your arms will get shot instead of the back of your head ... It'd just be a funny and embarrassing way to go out, but you'd be able to say 'I want to do that'. That would be in an improved wrestling menu or something where you'd pick the limb and pick what you want to do with it, but we don't want to get too Twistery, we don't want to get too strange. It's unrealistic to have the arms act completely independent of each other, that's just not how it works; there's some independence but you don't want to have 'I want to punch him in the head with my right hand and simultaneously punch him in the gut with my left hand while I'm kicking him with both of my legs' ... It'd be kind of goofy. I guess when people are clapping ears, or whatever happens in the action movies, that would be an attack simultaneously, but it's not like those attacks are knocking anybody out, so you'd get severe minuses for your velocity if you're not putting your body into it, you're just swinging both of your arms at once and your whole body can't be used to increase the momentum in either direction so it ends up being wimpy. So we'll just account for that stuff, and we don't want it to be much more complicated to use than it is now, it's half just getting the text to be good and getting it so that multiple opponents are way more difficult: things like that. So it should be fun, it ultimately comes down to - because we've got character skill to account for - it still ultimately comes down to some coin flipping, but you can build your advantages and take advantage of things and take advantage of the AI making mistakes more than you could previously. We're not going to be satisfied with it until just creating two guys in an arena and having them fight is something that you'd want to do for fun sometimes. Right now you do it just to see them explode, or you're testing a mod, but it doesn't sell itself as a thing to do on its merits as a game. Hopefully when we're done with all the martial arts and guards that'll be a lot more fun, and you'll be able to do things like, when we get the mounts we'll probably allow mounts in the arena then too so you can test them out and have fun with that, learning how to use them.
Rainseeker:   How are you going to plan on improving the skills in adventure mode as far as martial arts is concerned. Are there going to be a lot of different martial arts skills or is there just one that you practice, or do you go to seek a trainer, or how are you planning ...
Toady:   We're thinking that you'd start with something ... they're probably going to be entity dependent to some extent. There are questions to be answered there. There are general martial art skills, and that's what we just have under skill striker, skill sword; the actual skill that there is in the game right now. And then you tack specific techniques on top of that that aren't part of becoming familiar with sword fighting necessarily but becoming familiar with the particular style of sword fighting, like fencing. The issues come up when you're like ... is a certain move in fencing the same as it would be in kendo, or are they related, are you just using different words for the same stuff, what are the actual differences ... That kind of question is basically going to be answered, that's what sword skill is, that's the commonality, and whether we break that up into more sections or not is an open question, we're probably not going to at first. That means that when you learn a combat style it would basically be an entity thing that would be a specific thing like kung fu or fencing or whatever, and that would be something that if you start as a fighter in an entity you would have some of that information, some of that skill already, some of the specific moves that you can use when you're fighting. Then it's a matter of ... there are a bunch of other skilled fighters in the entity and as you build your reputation just like people would be throwing free items and places to sleep and stuff like that at you and you'll be able to have people join up with you and go on little adventures with you if you have a good reputation because they trust you because you've been defending them against bandits and night creatures and all that kind of thing, then you can just have someone help you out, someone will want to teach you stuff, or you'll be sparring with people or whatever. It's not necessarily something that you're going to act out necessarily, it could just use the farming mechanism where you pass a season and just say 'I want to pass a season hanging out with these crazy mead hall guys and they can teach me about how to kill boars', or 'I want to hang out with these guys and learn how to box' or 'I want to hang out with these guys and learn how to fence' or 'learn how to do judo throws'. Then you'd increase your repertoire, you'd trade in your time and the years of your life for some more skills, and you could then practice them on people as well when you're actually fighting, and you could get better at them that way, but you won't learn new skills that way, unless you fight people long enough and then you suddenly realise 'I know how to do the eagle punch all of a sudden! I understand the deep mystery!' There could be things like that especially if we have universes that are move like Fist of the North Star, then that kind of thing would start to happen, but mostly we're thinking training with warriors and so on.
Rainseeker:   Cool.
Toady:   I don't remember if I put it up or not, but it would be funny if you learn enough stuff that you'd be able to create your own style and have it live on after you, you could teach it to other people and it'd be kind of cool to have your next guy, and there would be these guys that you were hanging out with in your previous game and they all know the punch that you named after yourself, it would be amusing. It should be pretty cool, and just trying to work that stuff into the fights and getting it so it all works together and isn't too annoying should be pretty cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 25, 2014, 02:51:55 am

Quote from: devlog

People can lie about their opinion of an entity and their initial reactions are moderated based on how afraid they are of the rulers, if it fits their personality.
...
Longest function of the day is moderate_private_opinion_of_entity_through_cultural_identity(), which filters an opinion through cultural rumors/reputation and personality to change an overt hate reaction into fear, for example, and then the public opinion function continues to morph that based on the audience, so they can swap from hate to fear to "all for it" before you hear them speak.

Oh man. Oh man. NPCs grow up so fast. Brings a tear to my eye.

How much of a low-hanging fruit would you consider multiple-person conversations to be? Will we be able to address large crowds in adv mode anytime soon, or is that slated to be covered by different mechanics entirely?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cycle on February 25, 2014, 05:23:18 am

Question:
With the new opinion facets in play, can we be expecting large scale retaliation from villagers in sites or even in dwarfs mode?
I could imagine what kind of hell it would brew if all my dwarfs started turning against my nobles.

Can't wait to see the new AI. So much  social !!SCIENCE!! to be done!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 25, 2014, 09:38:26 am

Quote from: smirk on February 25, 2014, 02:51:55 am

How much of a low-hanging fruit would you consider multiple-person conversations to be? Will we be able to address large crowds in adv mode anytime soon, or is that slated to be covered by different mechanics entirely?

Already implemented:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-02-20

02/15/2013 Toady One In our ongoing 'moments of restraint' boss rush, I'm currently up against the conversation engine. I've decided I pretty much have to get conversations out into regular play so that I can tell a room full of people that I just killed a goblin patrol, but I'm trying to avoid a completely monstrous overhaul. Bartering will remain an instanteous activity for instance -- pulling that out right now is unnecessary and would take a bit of time. It is a continuing process, but the result should be cool, and it'll allow you to spread news in a more satisfying fashion (rather than telling one person and having it magically spread around instantly, though they will still spread news after a time once they are offloaded). I should have an honest insurrection in place before long here.

02/20/2013 Toady One The new conversation approach is working out well enough. Each statement takes about as much time as a regular step, so if you find enough to talk about in some later release, you'd be able to chat until the sun goes down. This also means that conversations are susceptible to interruption, and each statement made by people you are talking to is a "move" they are making either simultaneously with their other actions (like walking and fighting) or instead of them. Incidents you are a part of or rumors that you hear now go into your head, and you can pass them along or bring them up with whoever you talk to. Right now these incidents include every time you strangle a wolf out in the woods, so I'll probably have to find a way to manage the lists according to how interesting they are. In any case, since you can now bring up the occupation and related events, it's a matter of adding some reactions and conversation options geared toward getting the ball rolling.

Quote from: Cycle on February 25, 2014, 05:23:18 am

Question:
With the new opinion facets in play, can we be expecting large scale retaliation from villagers in sites or even in dwarfs mode?
I could imagine what kind of hell it would brew if all my dwarfs started turning against my nobles.

There won't be Fortress Mode insurrections.  People can rebel in Adv. Mode by becoming bandits, joining the adventurer as a companion, or (I think) jumping into a fight that somebody else started.  I don't think a spontaneous uprising can happen yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 10:14:03 am

Quote from: smirk on February 25, 2014, 02:51:55 am

Quote from: devlog

People can lie about their opinion of an entity and their initial reactions are moderated based on how afraid they are of the rulers, if it fits their personality.
...
Longest function of the day is moderate_private_opinion_of_entity_through_cultural_identity(), which filters an opinion through cultural rumors/reputation and personality to change an overt hate reaction into fear, for example, and then the public opinion function continues to morph that based on the audience, so they can swap from hate to fear to "all for it" before you hear them speak.

Oh man. Oh man. NPCs grow up so fast. Brings a tear to my eye.

How much of a low-hanging fruit would you consider multiple-person conversations to be? Will we be able to address large crowds in adv mode anytime soon, or is that slated to be covered by different mechanics entirely?

Isn't that pretty much already in via merchants? I know it's not multiple individual conversations, but it's multiple people talking at the same time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 25, 2014, 10:54:04 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 10:14:03 am

Isn't that pretty much already in via merchants? I know it's not multiple individual conversations, but it's multiple people talking at the same time.

That's not really a good answer to that question. The multiple conversations bit is the core of the question, after all. Market banter is little more than hearing a capybara somewhere - neither actually expect a response - and is only a very narrow topic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on February 25, 2014, 12:21:10 pm

Yeah, there's a difference between being able to hear multiple conversations going on at once, and being able to have a single conversation with a room full of people ("Hail, peaceful villagers, I have slain the dragon!" "You're full of shit!" "No, here's his head!" "He's a hero!" "Free beer for the hero!" etc.) It's suggested by the first Footkerchief quote, but not settled, I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 06:24:45 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on February 25, 2014, 10:54:04 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 10:14:03 am

Isn't that pretty much already in via merchants? I know it's not multiple individual conversations, but it's multiple people talking at the same time.

That's not really a good answer to that question. The multiple conversations bit is the core of the question, after all. Market banter is little more than hearing a capybara somewhere - neither actually expect a response - and is only a very narrow topic.

Quote from: monk12 on February 25, 2014, 12:21:10 pm

Yeah, there's a difference between being able to hear multiple conversations going on at once, and being able to have a single conversation with a room full of people ("Hail, peaceful villagers, I have slain the dragon!" "You're full of shit!" "No, here's his head!" "He's a hero!" "Free beer for the hero!" etc.) It's suggested by the first Footkerchief quote, but not settled, I think.

I misread the question the first time, or maybe didn't read the whole question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 25, 2014, 06:30:59 pm

I would love to get to the "Free beer for the hero!" Stage  :P

Dear goodness, the flashes of Drunk Fortress in adventure mode  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on February 25, 2014, 06:45:31 pm

Now that your creation* can lie to you, how can you know anything is says is true anymore?

Nevermind that it's more or less established by now that the Toady's relationship to DF is basically the same as Ponder Stibbon's to Hex...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on February 25, 2014, 07:15:54 pm

Or doctor Bowmans relationship to HAL or Florence.

heh i am sure today has build in some LIE indicators like colorcoding the text. (Which would actually be awesome for consolers proffesional, Liers and such!)

Also you can test the Functions outside the Game-mode i am sure ... much like the Arena-mode. It helps if you see a Dorf and other sentient being as list of stats instead of actual individuals. You do then a boundary analyses (say at what point/score should the AI lie) and then you force a situation with the appropriate numbers to test if its behaves like intended. Hell i had a job which was essentialy testing blackboxed Software with only the designspecs.

It would be cool if the Lieing could be more generalized writing a few such long function seems somehow tedious. It would need a general notion thought about which information one should lie. Half of unified system seems to be done anyway if the NPCs can already consider your reputation and construct a Trust score.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on February 25, 2014, 07:26:43 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 25, 2014, 06:45:31 pm

Nevermind that it's more or less established by now that the Toady's relationship to DF is basically the same as Ponder Stibbon's to Hex...

Could we recreate Discworld on a DF computer?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: StrongAxe on February 25, 2014, 08:41:28 pm

Will adventurers be able to detect being lied to, or is that the reference to

Quote

I haven't incorporated the old dwarf-mode lying/etc. skills, though I imagine that'll come into play at some point when there's more time to play around with it.

_{Dev Log 2014-02-24 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2014-02-24)}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 08:56:03 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 25, 2014, 06:45:31 pm

Now that your creation* can lie to you, how can you know anything is says is true anymore?

Nevermind that it's more or less established by now that the Toady's relationship to DF is basically the same as Ponder Stibbon's to Hex...

I'm sure he has devtools that can look and see what is happening with the coding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on February 25, 2014, 11:36:13 pm

Any idea when we can get a DF2014 pre-release?  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 25, 2014, 11:41:00 pm

Quote from: Scotsmen on February 25, 2014, 11:36:13 pm

Any idea when we can get a DF2014 pre-release?  :P

Quote from: Capntastic on February 25, 2014, 08:44:40 pm

Toady did an advance bug-test copy a few years ago for an elite team of supersoldiers but I think he decided that it wasn't that beneficial in the long run.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on February 26, 2014, 12:27:09 am

To continue the line of thought I had in that thread, it's fairly accurate to call the initial release the early release given how much is changed in the minor updates immediately after. I mean we got minecarts in the little updates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 26, 2014, 12:30:15 am

Quote from: misko27 on February 26, 2014, 12:27:09 am

To continue the line of thought I had in that thread, it's fairly accurate to call the initial release the early release given how much is changed in the minor updates immediately after. I mean we got minecarts in the little updates.

And adventurer reactions, bogeymen, night creatures...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on February 26, 2014, 01:46:00 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 08:56:03 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 25, 2014, 06:45:31 pm

Now that your creation* can lie to you, how can you know anything is says is true anymore?

Nevermind that it's more or less established by now that the Toady's relationship to DF is basically the same as Ponder Stibbon's to Hex...

I'm sure he has devtools that can look and see what is happening with the coding.

Unless of course it can figure out how to manipulate the results... :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on February 27, 2014, 12:50:27 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 26, 2014, 01:46:00 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 25, 2014, 08:56:03 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on February 25, 2014, 06:45:31 pm

Now that your creation* can lie to you, how can you know anything is says is true anymore?

Nevermind that it's more or less established by now that the Toady's relationship to DF is basically the same as Ponder Stibbon's to Hex...

I'm sure he has devtools that can look and see what is happening with the coding.

Unless of course it can figure out how to manipulate the results... :P

I'm pretty sure that's not a deal yet, though I guess it's possible. Someone says the truth or lies when the code says he should be doing the opposite or something due to a bug. Maybe.
Damn, if the dwarves don't become SkyNet I don't know what will.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mason11987 on February 27, 2014, 01:22:53 pm

If it's something you already have made for your own purposes is there any possibility that you could share a schema of sorts for the .dat save files?  I'm hoping to utilize them for World Viewer as well as related tools, but painstaking research into the format of the saves files by others, though commendable is still very limited.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 27, 2014, 02:09:59 pm

Quote from: Mason11987 on February 27, 2014, 01:22:53 pm

If it's something you already have made for your own purposes is there any possibility that you could share a schema of sorts for the .dat save files?  I'm hoping to utilize them for World Viewer as well as related tools, but painstaking research into the format of the saves files by others, though commendable is still very limited.

Is this the research you mean? (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/User:Andux/Format_research/WORLD.DAT)  It's helpful to link these things since Toady may not know the state of the research.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nighzmarquls on February 27, 2014, 02:59:13 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on February 27, 2014, 12:50:27 pm

I'm pretty sure that's not a deal yet, though I guess it's possible. Someone says the truth or lies when the code says he should be doing the opposite or something due to a bug. Maybe.
Damn, if the dwarves don't become SkyNet I don't know what will.

I think there are honestly better contenders (http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=2099).

Just saying.

Honestly a lie is not all that impressive. Then again I hear they are opening up a Watson SDK, so maybe at some point in the next ten years toady might hook that up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Thanks to Putnam, Footkerchief, smjjames, Nasikabatrachus, Matoro, MrWiggles, monk12, Valtam, Knight Otu, Manveru Taurënér, Tawarochir, EnigmaticHat and all of the people I missed for helping out with questions.  If you don't see a response to your question, it was quite likely addressed right after you asked it, so please go and check!

Quote from: Little Kingpin

Will climbing affect dodging or blocking or any other means of avoiding attacks?

Yeah, dodging is affected pretty drastically.  Climbing requires a free grasp, so in that sense blocking is also restricted.

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

What happens when an adventurer aquires a training weapon by some means and uses it in this way(?)

Adventurers don't pull attacks with training weapons, and wooden swords and so on are still capable of lethal damage.  If I remember, when dwarves are pulling their shots in sparring, it helps prevent accidents to not have an edge, which is what the training weapons do, but they are still dangerous when used at full force.

Quote from: Buttery_Mess

To what extent do you know, when you code something, that it is only a placeholder for the 'real' code to come later on down the line? What percentage of the game do you think will have to be rewritten, so far?

If your civ starts with no access to, say, native copper, but you build a fort that does, will the civ then have access after retirement? Would it be necessary to actually mine it, or to sell it? Would surface plants become available in trade or for embark for that civ?

It happens quite often, though a lot of the release delays come from trying to not have it happen all the time.  I have no idea about percentages.  Footkerchief posted a healthy list of placeholder features.  I'm also not sure how to categorize 'real' -- 1.0?  There are always ideas to improve things, but it's good to push them down the line sometimes.  DF is an amorphous blobby critter.

I haven't gotten into the economy.  Right now it doesn't try to update entity information, but once sites start producing resources after world gen, it'll be crucial to handle that sort of thing.

Quote from: Gashcozokon

With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?

People that know about traps get to walk through them, if I remember.  They haven't otherwise been told they exist or that they have something to deal with.

Quote from: Spish

What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff.

I've always wanted to play a cliffside fortress where the perilous terrain actually performed its role as a natural barrier. Invaders showing up on the site at the top of a cliff (despite that path being blocked as far as the world map is concerned) is quite the nuisance.
Edit: And on that note, do travelling armies respect the path of entry when arriving on a player's site?

Manveru Taurënér addresses the ramp part, mentioning that I posted earlier that cliff faces will return and that we are in a better spot for that now with climbing in the game, but that it isn't done yet and won't be for this time.  Armies have some rudimentary path finding that respects certain obstacles (not rivers at all yet, since they have to be able to cross them), so mountains should be respected.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

Will reactions to simultaneous attacks happen separately or simultaneously? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm only a Dabbling Record Keeper.

Nothing is truly simultaneous in the game, in terms of the instant of final resolution.  That's a very difficult problem.  Many actions can be going on at the same time, but they still resolve separately, though things like active defenses can also be spread out over time and happen "simultaneously" in that sense.  So I suppose it depends on what you mean.

Quote from: Sizik

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

I don't think they'd know to do it, since the path component number of those areas is not set, and they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs.

Quote from: Vattic

Will having deep dwarf sites in your civ mean you can import and embark with goods harvested from lower cavern layers?

Deep dwarf sites don't go as deep as fortress sites, oddly enough, so the issue is more about fortress sites, and I don't recollect changing how that works.

Quote

Quote from: Keldane

In a previous update you mentioned that starting an adventurer gives you a little blurb about the local state of affairs now. Were you warned of the approaching goblins when starting the adventurer?

Quote from: TalonisWolf

If the above is true, will it accidentally reveal ambushes near where you start at first?

It warned me about the invasion, but it isn't nuanced enough to warn me about impending death.  It would have been a useful tidbit of information.

Quote from: TalonisWolf

Also, if a Dwarf and a Goblin bump into each other in mid-climb, will they engage in melee? If so, do they fall or are they still hanging onto the wall?

They can fight while they are climbing, and it doesn't make them fall automatically.

Quote from: Nopenope

Is [getting involved in existing conflicts] applicable to Fortress Mode? Will we see civilians behaving in intelligent ways when confronted with hostiles (such as engaging the enemy if they happened to be armed and they judge the target weak, or actually finding a safe place in the fortress to run to instead of running away stupidly into the wild)

Intelligent is a strong word to use around DF.  They use the same stuff as adventure mode, in any case, though the key situations where you'd get an interesting effect are less frequent.  I'm not quite sure what'll happen at this point since I haven't been back there while working on this insurrection stuff.

Quote

Quote from: Eric Blank

So, then, are children still liable to jump into fights between much older adults at times? Does age factor into their decision making at all?

Quote from: Valtam

Toady, are human kids armed with standard-issue/boning knives like their peasant parents? Or are they able to grab avaliable weaponry if there's a hurry to defend themselves and their loved ones? Do Dwarven kids display this kind of behavior in Fort Mode, at least with biting and scratching when their personality allows them to fight?

Children are still treated as adults for personality and equipment.  All that should change as they age, but it doesn't work that way at this point.  People aren't yet proactive about defending themselves with various ground objects.  That always seems like a feature I shouldn't announce when it happens though, since it would be funny.

Quote from: King Mir

If you charge at someone, full speed, weapon drawn, will they perceive an attack before you are right next to them? What about NPC attacks, are they recognized before the enemy is in melee range?
...
I want to know if there's a disparity with PC and NPC melee charges. Especially now that we're in the last stretch of changes. Also, Toady talked about how going around with your weapon drawn should eventually matter, and this seems like a case where it really should.

I still have to do inventory perception, but there'll be some reaction if they can see you.  That said, there is still a bit of a mind-meld that NPCs can do with each other once they intend to fight, assuming the target knows the person is there.  The sides of the conflict are separated memory-wise, but if they see somebody with hostile intentions, they can react, since a conflict exists.  I'm not sure if that'll change all that much, since a lot of the reactions are very reasonable, and I prefer it to mindlessness.  It's more about guessing if the player is acting like an invading army or other ill-intentioned actor, without the benefit of the game knowing if it is true or not, and there's associated trickiness with that.  Ideally that could all be homogenized with NPC-to-NPC reactions, but that will make NPCs much stupider unless the intention-detection system works very well.  There's always something glaring left over.  I do hope to make reactions to player actions "pretty good" over time, in any case, whether it takes over as the only system or not.  On the plus side, I don't think we'll have separated conflict-detection systems just for players, even for this time.  The NPC-to-NPC conflict detection augments their reactions, but any reaction that applies to you also applies to NPC-to-NPC reactions, so the only things special about you should be statuses anybody can have, like being a "stranger" (they shouldn't freak out if a known armed local guard walks by them, for instance, even though coming-at-me-with-weapon would be rated high as the guard moves into an adjacent tile).  Stealth is a little exotic for the player, since you don't have a vision cone, but that's a different kind of issue.

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1

In the next update, and in the general future, will it ever be possible to be robbed whilst on the road? Maybe just killed, then robbed, but being left alive would make it much more interesting.

Knight Otu mentioned that we're missing a lot of relevant stuff that comes from the thief role (and also the hero role where some thiefy bits are sitting under the assumption that they would happen first).  That said, the original bandit harassment that started this release off long ago was going to include robbery and also leaving people alive, so you might actually get what you want.  They stop you on the road now, yell at you and leave you alive, but they still need to ask for things and respond to rejection properly.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold

You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?

Most of the things are in the notes because we think they'd be fun to have in the game, and sort of constitute our "favorites" list by themselves, as opposed to the things we don't want to do.  I have trouble coming up with just one or a few favorites when it comes to pretty much anything, though surely some features rate differently than others.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

When [world gen] trade is being worked on, will it be affected by a civ's domesticated animals, such as fliers or beasts of burden?

Nothing has changed there, and I'm not sure what would change in the near-term since it is so abstracted.  Eventually what they have available could matter in terms of production rates and that sort of thing, or whether they have airborne trade routes and colonization or something.

Quote from: Matoro

Are we going to be able to see the personalities and preferences of our adventurers like we can see the personalities of our dwarves?

You don't really have those yet, and I'm not sure what's going to happen there, since it's a complicated problem and various decisions have to be made, and it also isn't that urgent or important at this point (since you can do what you want without restriction and it doesn't check your preferences for anything even if you have them).  I think it gives you some facets after retirement that relate to you having been an adventurer, but I haven't invested any time in that.

Quote from: CLA

How do legs influence climbing? Can you still climb if you can't control your legs anymore (motor nerve damage, amputation)?

Also, IIRC with the combat/speed rewrite, you can't just grasp an infinite amount of things in both your hands anymore, does that mean that someone currently climbing and say, getting shot at with arrows cannot use his shield, because it's not on his hand?

It doesn't let you climb from the grounded position, regardless of health.  That's a little odd since you can't slither over a wall and go down, even if it makes more sense as a restriction going up.  Critters with three or more legs that can still stand after suffering a loss are assessed the normal penalities they'd suffer as with their other speeds.  That isn't really ideal either, especially for flying.  Not sure when either'll change at this point.

Yeah, you need a free grasp to climb, but you are allowed to carry things in one hand (or n-1).

Quote from: EnigmaticHat

So are people's emotional reactions to the deaths of others influenced by opinion, or just relationship status?  For example what if someone hears that their parent got killed, but they hated said parent?

The opinion matters as well, though there isn't generally a rich history between relatives that would cause that kind of falling out.

Quote

Quote from: Satche

People now react at the sight of friends' body parts. What if I enter a room, covered of the blood of a relative ? Or if I have a body part wielded/in inventory but I don't drop/throw it ?

Quote from: Trif

Will people freak out if you sell them the body parts of their dead relatives?

They don't address coverings yet, though that'll be one of the things that comes up eventually since it is a recurring theme, and there's an off-chance this time.  They also don't check inventories for body parts, though that one will likely make it in this time.  With the checks for wielded weapons, it should be pretty natural.  They don't run every routine on items being sold to them -- there's a difficulty in that barter is still frozen in time (unlike conversations in general, which have been pulled out into game time), so the body reactions are more difficult to homogenize with existing reactions (like animal kills and so on).  I'm not sure how that'll turn out.  Right now they don't care.

Quote from: Lolfail0009

If someone smashes you into someone, killing that person, do you get the blame?

I'm pretty sure your character as a projectile would not be blamed.  What I don't remember is if it considers the attacker as an "archer", and what level of lethality that attack is considered if it is considered as having been "launched".  (check)  Nope.  It is a blameless projectile.

Quote from: HmH

Does the emotional impact of seeing dead bodies scale with the amount of dead bodies seen? Is it a linear progression?

There's the whole "getting used to conflict" thing, which is in flux.  There should end up being something.  It might squash the horror effect more immediately than the effects from seeing dead loved ones.

Quote

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Quote from: smjjames

Toady One, can we have confirmation that siegers, aside from generals, will now come from the worldgen population rather than generated in the new version? There seems to be some confusion about whether or not that actually happens in the next version.

Will kobold thieves now come from worldgen rather than being randomly generated as I think they are?

Yeah, assuming you can get a relation to come, it'll happen.  You get historical figures quite often with armies now since it tries to snatch up those people preferentially.  You'll get a horror reaction out of them from other bodies.  Body dumps at tactically sound times and so on can all come into play.

Hoping to not have any generated units, yeah, though we still have to consider thieves and necromancers since they aren't currently running around attacking towns and so on.  I'm not sure what'll happen there yet.

Quote from: EmeraldWind

People will react to finding a murdered friend or family member, but will they be put off by just finding a corpse even if they have no idea who it was?

Yeah, we've got horror and fear for the general corpse encounter.  Fewer emotions pile up, but they can still freak out, especially if they are sensitive to that sort of thing.

Quote from: Wimpy

Spat/Secreted/Whatever fluids will still freeze in some conditions right?

On a related note: If tears/sweat freeze, will they have a chance damage a unit in extreme cold?

I don't remember if any environmental temperature code is called on projectiles.  I think it is called on coverings, and then it would have the same effect as everything else, temperature-wise.  It has been long enough that I don't exactly remember what that means in terms of damaging people.

Quote from: GremDavel

If we're able to spit and sweat, does that mean that adventurers no longer need to make sure they have a supply of water, because they can just jump and and down a bunch, get sweaty, and drink their own sweat?  Or spit on themselves and then drink it?  Or have you taken this into consideration and caused sweat/spit to proportionally increase the adventurer's thirst?

I haven't addressed the spatter-drinking issues in general.  The recent additions certainly put more pressure on that sort of change.

Quote

Quote from: Paaaad

Will tears of joy exist as well?

Quote from: Knight Otu

Technically, Toady mentioned the secretion trigger as "extreme emotion", so I wouldn't necessarily discount it (and he wants to get to some kind of cheerier territory). On the other hand, people seem to interpret the negative social response usage hit rather too broadly as emotional usage hints in general.

Indeed, the important question is whether or not joy exists, and how much.  If it does exist in sufficient quantities, it will make people cry, since the extreme emotion trigger applies to anything that passes a threshold.  Joy being one of them depends on certain conversions for dwarf mode thoughts which are probably going to be quite diverse, but I'm not 100% sure what the final emotion list will be.  Does happiness rated at 100% bring tears of joy or just tears of great happiness?  I'm trying to choose the emotion words as precisely as I can, respecting the situation causing the emotion, but I think there'll be screw-ups, sloppiness and differing views there continuing forward, especially because certain words don't work as well when you consider both the causal situation and the strength of emotion.  I'm trying to restrict to situation as the primary determiner.

Yeah, there was an over-interpretation here of the negative social response hint -- it has to do with a creature's reaction to another creature, rather than the emotion levels in its head, and I just threw in a simple trigger for reaction since it is what I needed.  Depending on how the above stuff turns out, I might end up making broader interpretations true or not.  We'll see.

Quote from: Orodogoth

Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?

People brought up all the various sides of this -- you can give people crutches now, and if they have them in their hand it is fine, but they need to put them there and not in storage.  Equipping crutches is not something they currently think about.  This may or may not occur by the time we are done with the release.

Quote from: Mephansteras

Will the faction AIs do anything on their own, especially based on player actions? For instance, if the player destroys much of an invading force will the AI then decide that it is safe to stage a rebellion to force them out entirely?

We should have (partial) AI insurrections, yeah.  I'm pretty much sitting on top of that with the day's work, though the end of the month is always strange and shot-through with non-programming obligations.  Should have something soon, anyway.  Since the civilian perception of the weakness of their rulers is based on defiance against the entity forces, player action or at least presence is at the start of it all (since nobody else among the civilians acts on their own when they aren't in your loaded area, in the absence of an ongoing insurrection).  Once the perceived strength numbers are low enough, things will ignite and play out without the necessity of your future contributions, though lack of said contributions might doom them to failure at times, especially if their perception of strength does not line up with reality (it will come to realign as they fail).

Quote from: DVNO

Are there any positive interactions an adventurer can perform with a companion this release?

Nah, there's nothing interesting yet.  DF has always been unintentionally disrespectful of the power of friendship and family, using them instead as vectors for tantrum spirals and misery, and sometime in the future hopefully things will make more sense and DF will become more life-affirming.

Quote from: smirk

How much of a low-hanging fruit would you consider multiple-person conversations to be? Will we be able to address large crowds in adv mode anytime soon, or is that slated to be covered by different mechanics entirely?

Footkerchief had our quote, concerning what we were going for when we started, and the conversation infrastructure now supports many participants.  I haven't added a market-style yell out information option to the player's talking interface yet, but that would be all that is needed.  So far I've just been testing stuff by telling one person and letting them tell the others.  We'll probably have multi-person addresses for the release to facilitate mass order giving and recruitment, as much as anything.

Quote from: Mason11987

If it's something you already have made for your own purposes is there any possibility that you could share a schema of sorts for the .dat save files?

I don't have something like that prepared, and doing it from scratch and maintaining it would gobble up too much time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 27, 2014, 04:12:03 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on February 27, 2014, 04:18:31 pm

Thanks, Toady! Really looking forward to this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 27, 2014, 04:33:52 pm

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Toady. Much appreciated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on February 27, 2014, 04:35:23 pm

Thanks, Toady! :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on February 27, 2014, 04:44:17 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Intelligent is a strong word to use around DF.

Indeed.

Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on February 27, 2014, 05:21:12 pm

Much excite!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on February 27, 2014, 05:31:51 pm

Ahhh the release still looks so far away... :-[

Thanks for the answers anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gashcozokon on February 27, 2014, 06:09:58 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

You'll get a horror reaction out of them from other bodies.  Body dumps at tactically sound times and so on can all come into play.

-Sigged-

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lielac on February 27, 2014, 06:13:50 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on February 27, 2014, 06:09:58 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

You'll get a horror reaction out of them from other bodies.  Body dumps at tactically sound times and so on can all come into play.

-Sigged-

Hide in the rafters and drop the head of the mayor in the middle of a town meeting!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on February 27, 2014, 06:17:32 pm

will we be able to harvest dwarf tears?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on February 27, 2014, 06:19:46 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: DVNO

Are there any positive interactions an adventurer can perform with a companion this release?

Nah, there's nothing interesting yet.  DF has always been unintentionally disrespectful of the power of friendship and family, using them instead as vectors for tantrum spirals and misery, and sometime in the future hopefully things will make more sense and DF will become more life-affirming.

I really like this bit. The power of friendship = tantrum spirals! haha
Thank you Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sorg on February 27, 2014, 06:37:30 pm

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Intelligent is a strong word to use around DF.

-Sigged-

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Crimson Catsup on February 27, 2014, 07:22:03 pm

Thanks Toady!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on February 27, 2014, 07:40:05 pm

Cheers Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zarathustra30 on February 27, 2014, 09:35:36 pm

Now that you can no longer effectively block an absurd number of attacks each step, will danger rooms be effectively useless next release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on February 27, 2014, 09:44:31 pm

I'm just wondering if he fixed the "shaft of enlightenment", which is a far bigger boost in exp. I hope he doesn't fix it because that's really entertaining to pull off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Irist GuruNoob on February 27, 2014, 10:18:37 pm

Every one of these make me more anxious for the next release but also reaffirms it's still a ways off.

The wait is going to be well worth it from the sounds of things  :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PlayingGood on February 27, 2014, 11:13:32 pm

Mass recruitment sounds awesome.

Like yelling in a town, and all those yummy body shields come running :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 28, 2014, 12:48:38 am

"Here me, puny peasants! The time to strike is ni-"
The spinning raw halibut (♀) strikes Jormund Adventurerman in the head, bruising the skull and bruising the brain!
The recruit is knocked unconscious!
"Fresh Halibut! Get your fresh Halibut right here!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Little Kingpin on February 28, 2014, 01:56:09 am

Cool, thanks Toady!

Now, when you mention the perceived strength of occupiers vs. your attempts to kill them, does it just take into account the number/equipment/skill level of the remaining soldiers or does it factor in player events such as how many people witness the fights, or your reputation? For example, if your world-famous dragonslayer comes into town and promptly starts killing goblins, will it affect the perceived strength differently than an equally skilled adventurer the town has never heard of?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on February 28, 2014, 03:19:12 am

Quote from: Toady One

Footkerchief had our quote, concerning what we were going for when we started, and the conversation infrastructure now supports many participants.  I haven't added a market-style yell out information option to the player's talking interface yet, but that would be all that is needed.  So far I've just been testing stuff by telling one person and letting them tell the others.  We'll probably have multi-person addresses for the release to facilitate mass order giving and recruitment, as much as anything.

Brilliant, thank you! And Footkerchief, of course. Recruiting death squads bold heroes will hopefully get rather easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: jocke the beast on February 28, 2014, 06:54:41 am

Perhaps a stupid question but...

Would it be possible to read the Legend-mode while playing a Fortress-game  (without the workaround everyone uses now: copy region/abbandon fortress/enter Legend-mode/copy back region)? If not, why? (if we disregard the spoiler-effect alá finding vampires etc).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on February 28, 2014, 07:05:55 am

Quote from: jocke the beast on February 28, 2014, 06:54:41 am

Perhaps a stupid question but...

Would it be possible to read the Legend-mode while playing a Fortress-game  (without the workaround everyone uses now: copy region/abbandon fortress/enter Legend-mode/copy back region)? If not, why? (if we disregard the spoiler-effect alá finding vampires etc).

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

It's probably legitimate to have some kind of restricted mode, but being able to see everything would spoil stuff, including outside threats to your fortress, vampires and whatever else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 28, 2014, 09:11:52 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: Sizik

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

I don't think they'd know to do it, since the path component number of those areas is not set, and they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs.

Hm, what if the only way to get to a job site is by climbing (say, getting to the dining hall, unless thats not classed as a job)? will they path then?

To clarify, what I'm asking is, for example, if a dwarf wants to eat and the only way to get to the dininhg hall is to climb, will said dwarf climb?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on February 28, 2014, 10:20:59 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 28, 2014, 09:11:52 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: Sizik

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

I don't think they'd know to do it, since the path component number of those areas is not set, and they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs.

Hm, what if the only way to get to a job site is by climbing (say, getting to the dining hall, unless thats not classed as a job)? will they path then?

This seems pretty clear: "they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 28, 2014, 10:27:01 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 28, 2014, 10:20:59 am

Quote from: smjjames on February 28, 2014, 09:11:52 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: Sizik

Can Dwarves dig while climbing?

I don't think they'd know to do it, since the path component number of those areas is not set, and they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs.

Hm, what if the only way to get to a job site is by climbing (say, getting to the dining hall, unless thats not classed as a job)? will they path then?

This seems pretty clear: "they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs".

Yes, but will they en-route to a job? Or rather I'm asking is it possible to force them to.

Edited my question for clarification on what I'm trying to ask, thought it might have been clear what I was trying to say, plus I wasn't sure if the eat 'job' was considered the same thing as other job tasks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on February 28, 2014, 11:00:09 am

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: Mephansteras

Will the faction AIs do anything on their own, especially based on player actions? For instance, if the player destroys much of an invading force will the AI then decide that it is safe to stage a rebellion to force them out entirely?

We should have (partial) AI insurrections, yeah.  I'm pretty much sitting on top of that with the day's work, though the end of the month is always strange and shot-through with non-programming obligations.  Should have something soon, anyway.  Since the civilian perception of the weakness of their rulers is based on defiance against the entity forces, player action or at least presence is at the start of it all (since nobody else among the civilians acts on their own when they aren't in your loaded area, in the absence of an ongoing insurrection).  Once the perceived strength numbers are low enough, things will ignite and play out without the necessity of your future contributions, though lack of said contributions might doom them to failure at times, especially if their perception of strength does not line up with reality (it will come to realign as they fail).

Thanks for the answers, and for all of your work on the game.

Do factions exist in any meaningful way in Fortress play?

I can imagine a handful of immigrants coming to the Fortress from the Mountainhome who happen to be disaffected with the ruler (they'd be more willing to pull up stakes and leave).  Either off-screen world evolution, or even an ambush on the Dwarven caravan, could weaken the ruler in the eyes of that faction... perhaps enough to spark an insurrection.  The Fortress, being aligned with the ruler, would be put in the unenviable position of quelling such a rebellion.  Unless the ranking noble is of the rebelling faction, in which case everyone else would rebel against the Fortress.

I can see this adding a lot of additional Fun for those who intentionally pick weakened home civilizations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deboche on February 28, 2014, 11:05:19 am

Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on February 28, 2014, 11:12:38 am

Quote from: Deboche on February 28, 2014, 11:05:19 am

Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

That is... a VERY interesting question actually. However, Toady One said that being grounded (or prone) makes you not able to climb and isn't the mount considered grounded/prone? or maybe it's the rider? I don't remember exactly.

Although, can someone correct me here whether Toady One is using grounded in the same way as being prone?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 28, 2014, 12:41:19 pm

I don't think the mount would be considered prone, because that would mean that any ridden horse would be crawling on its belly instead of walking/running. Which would be silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on February 28, 2014, 01:34:59 pm

Cue goblins falling off of their voracious cave crawler mounts when they decide "across the cavern's ceiling" is the best route into the fortress.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 28, 2014, 02:03:23 pm

Quote from: Baffler on February 28, 2014, 01:34:59 pm

Cue goblins falling off of their voracious cave crawler mounts when they decide "across the cavern's ceiling" is the best route into the fortress.

Now that would be funnier than merely bringing them to a watery death! It's raining gobbos! Merry Goblinmas, everyone, and a Bloody New Year!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Mc Dwarf on February 28, 2014, 02:12:20 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on February 27, 2014, 06:17:32 pm

will we be able to harvest dwarf tears?

May I sig this?

Also,Will we be able to incite emotions with interactions in the next version? Like making some elves go beserk and attack something for you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on February 28, 2014, 02:13:05 pm

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on February 28, 2014, 02:12:20 pm

Quote from: GrizzleBridges on February 27, 2014, 06:17:32 pm

will we be able to harvest dwarf tears?

May I sig this?

Also,Will we be able to incite emotions with interactions in the next version? Like making some elves go beserk and attack something for you?

Hasn't gone in yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on February 28, 2014, 02:43:00 pm

Quote

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?

Quote from: smjjames

Toady One, can we have confirmation that siegers, aside from generals, will now come from the worldgen population rather than generated in the new version? There seems to be some confusion about whether or not that actually happens in the next version.

Will kobold thieves now come from worldgen rather than being randomly generated as I think they are?

Yeah, assuming you can get a relation to come, it'll happen.  You get historical figures quite often with armies now since it tries to snatch up those people preferentially.  You'll get a horror reaction out of them from other bodies.  Body dumps at tactically sound times and so on can all come into play.

Hoping to not have any generated units, yeah, though we still have to consider thieves and necromancers since they aren't currently running around attacking towns and so on.  I'm not sure what'll happen there yet.

So, piling up bodies on hatches, and releasing them simultaneously as your soldiers are charging is now a viable tactic. And they will also get hurt from the falling bodies, I guess. Very good...

Now that we got this, let us launch corpses in our catapults... less effective than firing rocks, if fired upon a colossus or similar. Much more effective against relatives of the dead...

I guess that wielding a human skull can now go as an acceptable alternative to a shield, although using the word "acceptable" may be slightly debatable. The fear factor produced from bashing the enemy skull with another skull shall give you an advantage.
 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on February 28, 2014, 03:46:39 pm

Would the killer of someone be disturbed by the corpse of his victim? For example, someone gives you a quest to kill his brother and then you recruit the quest giver and have him kill his own brother. Would he break down and start crying over what he has done?

What if the discovered body was a night creature? Would that make it more or less disturbing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Buttery_Mess on February 28, 2014, 03:57:38 pm

Thanks for the reply, Toadster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GrizzleBridges on February 28, 2014, 04:56:49 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on February 28, 2014, 02:43:00 pm

Now that we got this, let us launch corpses in our catapults... less effective than firing rocks, if fired upon a colossus or similar. Much more effective against relatives of the dead...

wasnt this a genuine tactic in medieval warfare, to catapult rotting corpses at the enemy? Im sure I read that somewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 28, 2014, 05:35:04 pm

Famously, the Mongols used it to spread the Black Plague. Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_RgNLI1rYY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on February 28, 2014, 05:59:14 pm

Yes, it was also used quite extensively to lob heads over the walls of Minas Tirith. Perhaps you saw the documentary about the event?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on February 28, 2014, 06:33:41 pm

The Romans were known to do the whole corpse-of-your-friends thing, as well as throwing rotting cow carcasses in with the hope of spreading disease.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 01, 2014, 05:24:44 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 28, 2014, 06:33:41 pm

The Romans were known to do the whole corpse-of-your-friends thing, as well as throwing rotting cow carcasses in with the hope of spreading disease.

Oh, how I can see that early form of biological warfare coming to DF's sieges some time.

Yeah. I think catapulting corpses and such is viable in the future, though maybe not this release. (But minecarts filled with corpses are good, so that'll have to do instead.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 01, 2014, 05:52:17 am

There are better things than corpses to catapult in DF. Corpses soaked in Forgotten Beast extract, for one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on March 01, 2014, 02:01:00 pm

Strategic body dumps...

Darn it, now I want to build the giant skull-avalanche machine from the LOtR movie.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 01, 2014, 02:35:44 pm

Will day dreams and/or absent-minded thought make it into the tavern arc? Will there be tradeoffs between work and play? Will starting scenario's reflect previous failures, say if you're attempting the tenth consecutive reclaim of a fort in as many years, or particularly irrational/insane settlement choices?color]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Timeless Bob on March 01, 2014, 03:10:56 pm

Quote from: DG on March 01, 2014, 05:52:17 am

There are better things than corpses to catapult in DF. Corpses soaked in Forgotten Beast extract, for one.

Or corpses who happen to be undead...  Perhaps a necromancer in full adamantium plate that menaces with spikes of slade?  Can you see it: necro gets launched over the battlefield, waving his little arms and all the dead rise before he smacks into the target area, his slade spikes making hash out of the general and his vangaurd...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 01, 2014, 03:14:07 pm

At that point you might as well strap him to a flaming rum barrel.  I mean if you've committed the sin of necromancy I guess the sin of wasting booze isn't too much worse.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 01, 2014, 03:34:25 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 01, 2014, 02:35:44 pm

Will day dreams and/or absent-minded thought make it into the tavern arc? Will there be tradeoffs between work and play?

As demonstrated by the upcoming release, it's hard to predict which features will get incidentally implemented.  However, the tavern arc will definitely include merrymaking, music, and carousing.
 

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 01, 2014, 02:35:44 pm

Will starting scenario's reflect previous failures, say if you're attempting the tenth consecutive reclaim of a fort in as many years, or particularly irrational/insane settlement choices?

The goal is for the scenarios to reflect the current state of the world as much as possible, including previous failures and the likelihood of success, so yeah:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Fortress Starting Scenarios
    Starting scenarios giving a back story for your fortress, often related to current world situation
        Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html

Threetoe:   Okay, so the next question: 'Are we likely to see the old 80-dwarf reclaim teams again anytime soon? I miss being able to command a huge military of dwarves to reclaim that legendary metal from the invaders, and a starting seven kitted out with bronze weapons just doesn't do it.'
Toady:   I don't remember why we got rid of that, because it was cool. I think the issue was more of a technical one, and a release-time one. This is me trying to remember stuff from years ago, but I think it was when the military screen changed and the whole military structure changed, and we started having to track all this extra information about the military; it became a pain to set up the reclaim squads right. It could just be something like that. I don't think we're against that because the start scenarios that we're doing for fort mode are going to have all kinds ... there could still be a core seven dwarves, if we want to stick with that out of a sense of tradition, but there are going to be scenarios where you start with a bunch of hill dwarves outside of your civilization, and starting with a larger military group - especially to reclaim a really dangerous fort - seems as cool to me as back when we had it before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on March 01, 2014, 09:36:30 pm

Uhh. I get a strong "No release this month guys" vibe from the report. It's probably more related to him wanting to avoid committing himself to a date, but I don't think so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 01, 2014, 10:23:51 pm

I don't mind waiting if it means as many yams as there are gibbons. Maybe we're on track for another April Fool's release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 01, 2014, 11:07:32 pm

Anyone mind explaining the yam/gibbon thing to my ignorant self?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 01, 2014, 11:11:08 pm

There are 8 different kinds of gibbon in Dwarf Fortress. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Gibbon)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on March 01, 2014, 11:16:17 pm

Isn't the siamang also a type of gibbon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 01, 2014, 11:37:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 01, 2014, 11:11:08 pm

There are 8 different kinds of gibbon in Dwarf Fortress. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Gibbon)

I thought that said goblin, not gibbon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smurfingtonthethird on March 01, 2014, 11:40:39 pm

Two questions:

Will neutral parties (like hunting trips, migrants to different forts, etc) pass through fortresses without any intent to make contact?

In the distant future, will there be sound to go with the game?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 01, 2014, 11:55:29 pm

There is sound, in the form of an Eb diminished chord followed by an A minor followed by an E minor...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 02, 2014, 12:38:37 am

And, of course, Soundsense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on March 02, 2014, 12:56:20 am

Quote from: DG on March 01, 2014, 10:23:51 pm

I don't mind waiting if it means as many yams as there are gibbons. Maybe we're on track for another April Fool's release.

DF April 1st:

• See update, squeal.
• Download
• Open File.
• Gibbons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 02, 2014, 01:00:38 am

Thanks for the answer on gibbons.

Also, Misko, terribly sorry. I just burned your stuff in Necrothreat. No hard feelings? :P

Whoops, sorry. Scratch the above. It's six in the morning and I mistook Misko for Meepo. *Facepalms*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 02, 2014, 01:50:34 am

Quote from: DG on March 01, 2014, 10:23:51 pm

I don't mind waiting if it means as many yams as there are gibbons. Maybe we're on track for another April Fool's release.

At this rate, even another April 1st doesn't seem happening any more.

Lessee... He's on the penultimate phase of development, no longer adding any new features, but fixing up the ones he started work on until they're in a releasable state.

Of these features, we know they consist of A) insurrections, which may be almost done, and B) NPC gardens and some new veggies. There may be other unfinished business, and finishing off each task may take anywhere from a few days to a week or three.

And then when all that's done there'll be a bugfix pass, in which the worst bugs and the low-hanging fruit are plucked until it's at least semi-playable.



Akin to economically viable fusion power, the Release always seems two months away. Fortunately, we're in a stage where the to-do list only shrinks, never growing. Last summer I cut down all the little trees -- most saplings, but one or two of which required a hacksaw -- between the barn and the garage, in about a 150- or 200-square-foot area, which had been growing there unharmed for ten or fifteen years. Cutting down one tree never felt like progress, but eventually, the task was done, the lot was clear. This feels analogous to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 02, 2014, 02:40:38 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 02, 2014, 01:50:34 am

Quote from: DG on March 01, 2014, 10:23:51 pm

I don't mind waiting if it means as many yams as there are gibbons. Maybe we're on track for another April Fool's release.

At this rate, even another April 1st doesn't seem happening any more.

Lessee... He's on the penultimate phase of development, no longer adding any new features, but fixing up the ones he started work on until they're in a releasable state.

Of these features, we know they consist of A) insurrections, which may be almost done, and B) NPC gardens and some new veggies. There may be other unfinished business, and finishing off each task may take anywhere from a few days to a week or three.

And then when all that's done there'll be a bugfix pass, in which the worst bugs and the low-hanging fruit are plucked until it's at least semi-playable.



Akin to economically viable fusion power, the Release always seems two months away. Fortunately, we're in a stage where the to-do list only shrinks, never growing. Last summer I cut down all the little trees -- most saplings, but one or two of which required a hacksaw -- between the barn and the garage, in about a 150- or 200-square-foot area, which had been growing there unharmed for ten or fifteen years. Cutting down one tree never felt like progress, but eventually, the task was done, the lot was clear. This feels analogous to that.

Tree murderer! This means war! :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 02, 2014, 03:50:05 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 02, 2014, 02:40:38 am

Quote from: Untelligent on March 02, 2014, 01:50:34 am

Akin to economically viable fusion power, the Release always seems two months away. Fortunately, we're in a stage where the to-do list only shrinks, never growing. Last summer I cut down all the little trees -- most saplings, but one or two of which required a hacksaw -- between the barn and the garage, in about a 150- or 200-square-foot area, which had been growing there unharmed for ten or fifteen years. Cutting down one tree never felt like progress, but eventually, the task was done, the lot was clear. This feels analogous to that.

Tree murderer! This means war! :'(

ELVES! RELEASE THE MAGMA!

*ahem*

I was expecting a new release this month. Now I am upset.  :(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on March 02, 2014, 06:15:33 am

Will there ever be wars between civilizations of the same race, like dwarven to dwarven war?

Will there every be ability to interact with more than one dwarven civilization, for instance, if I start a camp in another dwarven territory?

Will there every be ability to interact with more than one elven or human civilization if I start in the borderland between two civilizations or in a shared area?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 02, 2014, 06:44:48 am

Quote from: Rapozk on March 02, 2014, 06:15:33 am

Will there ever be wars between civilizations of the same race, like dwarven to dwarven war?

Will there every be ability to interact with more than one dwarven civilization, for instance, if I start a camp in another dwarven territory?

Will there every be ability to interact with more than one elven or human civilization if I start in the borderland between two civilizations or in a shared area?

Ever? Yes. The first is getting close, the second and third should happen naturally once caravans are actual entities.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on March 02, 2014, 11:27:51 am

Quote from: Rapozk on March 02, 2014, 06:15:33 am

Will there ever be wars between civilizations of the same race, like dwarven to dwarven war?

Since right now wars happen because of ethic differences, civilizations of same entity won't fight. They don't have reason to fight. You could, however, make multiple dwarf entitys with same creature but different ethics.

I guess the next release will change this, if civilizations start to understand claims and other geopolitical motives instead of just solving their ethic problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on March 02, 2014, 12:07:34 pm

I think there are fights between villages triggered by any sort of difference. There was a blog post talking about two villages fighting because one worshiped the God of life and the other the God of death.

Not sure if that counts as a war though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 02, 2014, 01:32:16 pm

Human villages fight with each other. Dwarven forts don't. Apparently dwarves are more tolerant of each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on March 02, 2014, 02:30:20 pm

Unless New Fortresses are the source of new tension if everyone is from different traditions. Dwarves have all that Earth and Tradition between them normally.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 02, 2014, 10:56:15 pm

Quote

I trust people like yams, in case they turn out to be the new gibbon.

I read this like it was a profession of how much Toady trusted people, and how he was once betrayed by a gibbon..?  Only now just got it, thanks to Putnam's explanation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 03, 2014, 01:11:51 am

New (and brief) devlog.

Spontaneous insurrections, hm, I guess like spreading rumors that the king is an evil, blade weed smoking, overlord (or some other sillyness) and getting the population to revolt?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 03, 2014, 06:03:06 am

Or killing half an occupying force and then moving on, leaving the townsfolk to reassess whether they think they can now take down the occupiers that you've softened up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 03, 2014, 10:08:30 am

Quote from: Toady (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-24)

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it.

Any word on this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 10:14:07 am

Quote from: Sizik on March 03, 2014, 10:08:30 am

Quote from: Toady (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-24)

The Power of Play talk went over well enough -- we should have a link once they post it.

Any word on this?

Quote from: https://twitter.com/Bay12Games/status/434454005624733696

They posted some photos on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/WINetwork ), but nothing about video yet.

Toady knows people are waiting for the videos.  I'm sure he'll link them in the devlog (or maybe on Twitter) as soon as they're available.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mipe on March 03, 2014, 11:47:58 am

As I was riding the train today and idly watching the ever changing scenery, at the sight of flooded plains I realized something: Dwarf Fortress does not appear to have something like seasonal flooding! That would be a major civilization building/wrecking feature (see Nile, Mesopotamia etc.). Embarking in flood plains would have a whole set of consequences - not only you likely have to deal with aquifer, you've got to protect yourself against floods! If the river overcomes its banks and finds its way into your fortress entrance... On the plus side, invaders would be disadvantaged.

On the minus (or plus, depending on your views) side, you'd deal with aquatic invaders... Oh, and dwarves could always use the opportunity to put that swimming skill to use.

Has seasonal/natural flooding been considered? Is there room for such a dynamic feature or are performance implications outweighting the benefits? While we're at it, what about other natural calamities that we've all experienced as of late (extreme snowstorms, ice-clad vegetation, major mudslides following heavy raining especially in deforested areas, major wildfires etc.)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 03, 2014, 11:51:26 am

I'm not sure, but didn't underground rivers flood?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 03, 2014, 11:52:45 am

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on March 01, 2014, 11:40:39 pm

Two questions:

Will neutral parties (like hunting trips, migrants to different forts, etc) pass through fortresses without any intent to make contact?

In the future, yeah this is probably planned, but considering how small embarks usually are, the chances would be low unless you're close to civilization or close to (or even on) a trade route.

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on March 03, 2014, 11:51:26 am

I'm not sure, but didn't underground rivers flood?

That was WAAAY back in the 2D version.

 Are you planning on having the Dwarven (I'm mostly thinking hill dwarves), Elven, and the Goblin civs fight among themselves like the human civs in this next release? If you aren't planning on having them fight among themselves in their own ways, is it possible to allow them to have village to village squabbles by adding in the token(s) needed for it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on March 03, 2014, 01:15:44 pm

Quote from: Mipe on March 03, 2014, 11:47:58 am

As I was riding the train today and idly watching the ever changing scenery, at the sight of flooded plains I realized something: Dwarf Fortress does not appear to have something like seasonal flooding! That would be a major civilization building/wrecking feature (see Nile, Mesopotamia etc.). Embarking in flood plains would have a whole set of consequences - not only you likely have to deal with aquifer, you've got to protect yourself against floods! If the river overcomes its banks and finds its way into your fortress entrance... On the plus side, invaders would be disadvantaged.

On the minus (or plus, depending on your views) side, you'd deal with aquatic invaders... Oh, and dwarves could always use the opportunity to put that swimming skill to use.

Has seasonal/natural flooding been considered? Is there room for such a dynamic feature or are performance implications outweighting the benefits? While we're at it, what about other natural calamities that we've all experienced as of late (extreme snowstorms, ice-clad vegetation, major mudslides following heavy raining especially in deforested areas, major wildfires etc.)?

I had a map some versions ago that actually had seasonal flooding due to some irregular thawing going from winter to spring (multiple biomes along the river). It was really rather neat, and since it was a desert I made the fortress Eqyptian themed.

Only problem is that my FPS died for a while every spring as the water flooded everywhere. Still, it was one of my more memorable forts and a lot of fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 03, 2014, 01:41:15 pm

I miss the underground rivers and seasonal flooding. And the chasms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 01:44:09 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2014, 01:41:15 pm

I miss the underground rivers and seasonal flooding. And the chasms.

Yeah, chasms and rivers were badass.  Hopefully those make it back in sometime.

Quote from: Mipe on March 03, 2014, 11:47:58 am

Has seasonal/natural flooding been considered? Is there room for such a dynamic feature or are performance implications outweighting the benefits? While we're at it, what about other natural calamities that we've all experienced as of late (extreme snowstorms, ice-clad vegetation, major mudslides following heavy raining especially in deforested areas, major wildfires etc.)?

Forest fires should work better in the upcoming version:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-07-14

I've got the elf sites up to where they need to be. The last thing I updated was the firest -- they affect trees differently now, tile-by-tile. They tend to burn off leaves and smaller branches and keep larger parts intact or dead-but-still-around, depending on the intensity of the overall fire, so all the grass usually goes with some blackened stumps/branches left behind. There are still tree chopping and the continuing raw entry as I mentioned, but I'll work those out as we go.

Extreme weather is a long-term goal:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

TERRAIN/WEATHER/SWIMMING/FLYING/BOATS: Boats of some kind might go in early to make different regions more accessible, but you won't be able to be a pirate or an undersea civ for quite a while. Rivers freeze with daily temperatures instead of seasonal temperatures. Realize river and ocean squares when you visit them (forcing town layouts to adapt). Realize interesting canyons and so on in such areas. Track hurricanes and other major storm/disasters, in-game and during world gen. Thunderstorms with lightning strikes (with corresponding lighting effects) and hail. Levels of rainfall. Eating snow, making snowballs and picking up hail during and after hail storms. Tornados with wind flows that push items, projectiles and creatures. Proper eclipse modeling. Tides, deep oceans and pearl-diving, etc. More intricate interplay between cliff faces, inner rivers and outer rivers, using Z coord and waterfalls.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 03, 2014, 01:50:27 pm

From what I've seen, Toady doesn't remove a feature unless he plans to put it back in bigger and better later (dwarf/elf/goblin sites in the upcoming-ish release, for instance). Seasonal flooding will very likely come back in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 03, 2014, 01:53:37 pm

Underground rivers may never come back. After the first 3d version he abandoned them in favour of cave lakes because it was very hard to hit them in a 3D axis.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 03, 2014, 01:58:32 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2014, 01:53:37 pm

Underground rivers may never come back. After the first 3d version he abandoned them in favour of cave lakes because it was very hard to hit them in a 3D axis.

Nah, there were underground rivers in the 3D versions (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Underground_river) up until DF2010. Multi-leveled, too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 02:33:10 pm

Here's the latest quote I could find on flooding:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.11

Certainly the fluid mechanics have improved over what they were in the original game where you had to deal with all kinds of buggy flood issues that completely ruined your fortress and that certainly made it harder. But there were also interesting flooding effects; like the seasonal floods that made farming more interesting, and there was more of a threat ... when you had to progress to the right, you had more of a threat from the underground than I think currently exists. So I am for bringing all those things back [...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 03, 2014, 04:24:21 pm

Quote from: Untelligent on March 03, 2014, 01:58:32 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 03, 2014, 01:53:37 pm

Underground rivers may never come back. After the first 3d version he abandoned them in favour of cave lakes because it was very hard to hit them in a 3D axis.

Nah, there were underground rivers in the 3D versions (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Underground_river) up until DF2010. Multi-leveled, too.

Indeed, they were quite spectacularly deadly. Damn giant olms always eating dwarves...

My understanding for their removal was that once caverns were realized, Toady didn't have time to spend making underground rivers, surface-accessible chasms, open pits, isolated cave lakes, etc. and the new caverns to play nice together. Hopefully it's not permanent, though, because the caverns as they are at the moment can get quite boring at times.

Toady, do you yet have a plan for how you're going to implement more complex subterranean features?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 03, 2014, 05:16:57 pm

Caverns need a higher density of cave creatures for adventuring, so you can't walk for RL hours and see all of one troglodyte.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 05:25:25 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on March 03, 2014, 05:16:57 pm

Caverns need a higher density of cave creatures for adventuring, so you can't walk for RL hours and see all of one troglodyte.

There's also a bug that prevents Fortress Mode invasions by the underground tribes. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3461)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 03, 2014, 05:37:38 pm

Someone recently posted in the LFR topic about getting invaded by an underground tribe, though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 03, 2014, 05:42:42 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on March 03, 2014, 05:16:57 pm

Caverns need a higher density of cave creatures for adventuring, so you can't walk for RL hours and see all of one troglodyte.

Its a bug that should be fixed in the next version (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6220).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 08:55:10 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 03, 2014, 05:37:38 pm

Someone recently posted in the LFR topic about getting invaded by an underground tribe, though...

This?

Quote from: Paranatural on February 25, 2014, 09:26:05 am

I remember reading where you said you were not sure if the Grum were working right...I got a grum ambush last night. Or was it specifically sieges you were talking about?

Not sure how much we can tell from an ambush in a mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 04, 2014, 05:18:37 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 03, 2014, 08:55:10 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 03, 2014, 05:37:38 pm

Someone recently posted in the LFR topic about getting invaded by an underground tribe, though...

This?

Quote from: Paranatural on February 25, 2014, 09:26:05 am

I remember reading where you said you were not sure if the Grum were working right...I got a grum ambush last night. Or was it specifically sieges you were talking about?

Not sure how much we can tell from an ambush in a mod.

Underground civilisations exist and they can, based on some of the mods I played a while ago, send an underground siege to your fortress. Default underground civilisations won't attack your fortress though, and modded underground entities don't build sites or send caravans to you underground.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 04, 2014, 09:25:52 pm

Quote from: devlog

Insurrections seem to be done. I spent time skulking around a mead hall, beheading the hated occupation soldiers that walked out the door and around the corner, and then I shared the good news with the locals. I didn't try to organize anything myself but instead just camped out in a nearby desert for a few days staring at my debugging tools. The rumors were widespread after a day, and a day after that an insurrection began. The revolt failed miserably and the civilians regained their respect of the occupiers' strength. The rebellion was actually badly outnumbered -- perhaps my character should feel some guilt at choosing such a poor place to instigate something, but that feeling isn't in the game, and the player feels less than other people anyway.

Most of yesterday I spent trying to be robbed by bandits, but they kept looking away from me and forgetting I was there cowering (yielding after they demanded it). Hopefully that'll be sorted out soon as well.

I really want to play this right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 04, 2014, 09:59:48 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 04, 2014, 09:25:52 pm

Quote from: devlog

Insurrections seem to be done. I spent time skulking around a mead hall, beheading the hated occupation soldiers that walked out the door and around the corner, and then I shared the good news with the locals. I didn't try to organize anything myself but instead just camped out in a nearby desert for a few days staring at my debugging tools. The rumors were widespread after a day, and a day after that an insurrection began. The revolt failed miserably and the civilians regained their respect of the occupiers' strength. The rebellion was actually badly outnumbered -- perhaps my character should feel some guilt at choosing such a poor place to instigate something, but that feeling isn't in the game, and the player feels less than other people anyway.

Most of yesterday I spent trying to be robbed by bandits, but they kept looking away from me and forgetting I was there cowering (yielding after they demanded it). Hopefully that'll be sorted out soon as well.

I really want to play this right now.

Me too, me too.

So, I guess now instead of bandit ambushes being a 'DIE!!' situation, it'll now be a SURRENDER OR DIE!!' situation. Telling your companions to surrender to the bandits is something else though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 04, 2014, 11:23:21 pm

Who knows, maybe the option to order your companions to surrender will be available, or maybe they'll surrender first or even ignore your orders.

Toady: is there already a mechanic similar to this in-play that we could invoke (affecting our party members) to avoid conflict?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 05, 2014, 09:47:21 am

Devlog reminds me of Skyrim's "I surrender!" exclamations in battle. People crouch down and pretend to move away. Until they heal, when they just attack again. Except with the player this time.
(Also, yielding, did not expect that for some reason from the player. I've rarely seen games where you can give up AFTER starting a fight, besides running away.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 05, 2014, 11:05:00 am

Quote from: Wimopy on March 05, 2014, 09:47:21 am

Devlog reminds me of Skyrim's "I surrender!" exclamations in battle. People crouch down and pretend to move away. Until they heal, when they just attack again. Except with the player this time.
(Also, yielding, did not expect that for some reason from the player. I've rarely seen games where you can give up AFTER starting a fight, besides running away.)

I agree that bandits should use the same logic before and after the start of hostilities to determine if fighting a good idea.  That should get rid of "Prepare to die! Don't kill me!" episodes.  But if someone massively underestimated a target, he/she should have some opportunity to apologize profusely and offer some kind of compensation (something short of total surrender).  I'm thinking of a punk who makes demands of a a lone villager who happened to have a bunch of buddies around the corner.

Of course, the attacked party is under no obligation to accept the attacker's terms.  Sleeping in the bed you made, and all that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kriby on March 05, 2014, 02:30:35 pm

Do reanimated body parts invoke the same emotional responses in NPCs as inert ones? If so, is there additional terror associated with their undeath?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 05, 2014, 04:36:07 pm

There is additional terror associated with undeath.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 05, 2014, 04:50:09 pm

Quote from: Kriby on March 05, 2014, 02:30:35 pm

Do reanimated body parts invoke the same emotional responses in NPCs as inert ones? If so, is there additional terror associated with their undeath?

There are souls in DF, and I assume that's where the feelings are stored and processed. Zombies do not have souls. Which leads to a more interesting question:
Will ghost express feelings of horror upon seeing dead loved ones? Do they even still have loved ones? Do ghosts have feelings at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 05, 2014, 05:25:20 pm

Speaking of which:
Do you/are you planning to make a meaningful distinction between a creature's "mind" and their "soul"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 05, 2014, 06:23:24 pm

Quote from: Sizik on March 05, 2014, 05:25:20 pm

Speaking of which:
Do you/are you planning to make a meaningful distinction between a creature's "mind" and their "soul"?

The current soul is a heterogeneous mix of personality, skills, and mental attributes, so arguably the distinction already exists.  Would "meaningful" mean like replacing a dwarf's personality while leaving their skills and mental attributes intact?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

I read recently (in this thread, just too tired to quote it) that the old type of reclaiming may come back, which basically was a military attack on a (mostly) empty fortress.

If this is to be true, will we be able to choose an ordinary reclaim with 7 dwarves, or to do an invasion? An invasion would give you less ability to choose civilian skills and items, but give you more military dwarves, for example.

With all the new updates, you could retire a fortress, which can later fall in enemy hands, will we be able to lead a invasion in order to reclaim that lost fortress, if we are still at war with that civilization?

If the answer to the above is yes, what would stop us to lead an invasion to any site controlled by a civ we are currently at war with, all it would need is that we start the game as the old reclaim version in a human city?

If I understand the recent development correctly, surrounding villages can succumb and be converted to villages of our own civ, in time...

If the answer to the above question is yes, then what would stop us from just doing an invasion/raid with an army, and later move on to another city?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 06, 2014, 01:09:16 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

I read recently (in this thread, just too tired to quote it) that the old type of reclaiming may come back, which basically was a military attack on a (mostly) empty fortress.

It may come back later.  It's not coming back in the upcoming release.

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

If this is to be true, will we be able to choose an ordinary reclaim with 7 dwarves, or to do an invasion? An invasion would give you less ability to choose civilian skills and items, but give you more military dwarves, for example.

With all the new updates, you could retire a fortress, which can later fall in enemy hands, will we be able to lead a invasion in order to reclaim that lost fortress, if we are still at war with that civilization?

If the answer to the above is yes, what would stop us to lead an invasion to any site controlled by a civ we are currently at war with, all it would need is that we start the game as the old reclaim version in a human city?

You won't be able to reclaim a site that is already controlled by another entity:

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

If you actually make a successful claim on a site, to the point where your entity is linked to it as the dominant entity (by taking your unopposed self as a stated claimant to a power location), then the site will no longer be reclaimable by anybody.  That would be an invasion, which we don't have in fort mode at this time.

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

If I understand the recent development correctly, surrounding villages can succumb and be converted to villages of our own civ, in time...

If the answer to the above question is yes, then what would stop us from just doing an invasion/raid with an army, and later move on to another city?

Taking control of villages only applies to Adventure Mode for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on March 06, 2014, 01:13:47 pm

With the technology limit, does that consider technology and capabilities of people such as the Romans, Inca, and ancient Maya?

I am asking as there where some interesting mega projects those people made. Imagine if there was a civ or civs that only lived during the pre-hitory of worldgen or during the only years to build ancient structures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 06, 2014, 01:30:56 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on March 06, 2014, 01:13:47 pm

With the technology limit, does that consider technology and capabilities of people such as the Romans, Inca, and ancient Maya?

I am asking as there where some interesting mega projects those people made. Imagine if there was a civ or civs that only lived during the pre-hitory of worldgen or during the only years to build ancient structures.

The so-called cutoff at 1400 is just a guideline -- there are exceptions on both sides of that line.  However, large engineering/architecture projects are 100% fair game, especially when dwarves are involved.  We already have pyramids, and there'll be other stuff like that later.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Toady:   Ruins have gone through a kind of degradation through the entire game. We used to have these pyramids and they'd have zombies wandering around on them, and you'd fight on the pyramid ... Or you'd go into these underground ruins that had these rooms that were kind of these random rooms and you'd fight zombies in them or whatever, and then we got rid of that, and then there were just kind of these ruined towns. And then ... you don't really see those anymore either. So, the positive side here is that the new development page has a section for treasure hunters, and that's when we're going to go back and make sure that we're getting the proper ruins from ...
Rainseeker:   (Indiana Jones theme)
Toady:   That's right, exactly. The proper ruins from older civilizations, and we're going to have to go through world generation and make sure that there are enough wars and famines and plagues and migrations and so on to make sure that there are nice isolated hidden ruins, then you'd be able to go into those.

This may happen in the nearish future:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Treasure Hunter
    Adventure sites
        Non-town sites need to created and used for various purposes in world generation (prisons, tombs, temples, mines, castles, etc.)
        These places should often fall into disuse (or not be active entity pop locations, as with a tomb)
        Old abandoned structures can be partially buried in available soil layers
        Sites should contain any appropriate items to their (possibly former) purpose
        World gen should utilize defunct sites and get them new inhabitants
        Existing town-style sites should be updated as possible (dwarf fortresses, etc.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf-fort sites reclaimable?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 06, 2014, 02:56:12 pm

That's probably on the to-do list. Ideally there'll be a whole bunch of scenarios for starting and/or reclaiming, and starts and reclaims will eventually be blended together.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 06, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf sites reclaimable?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_11_transcript.html

I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 03:04:10 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 06, 2014, 01:09:16 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

I read recently (in this thread, just too tired to quote it) that the old type of reclaiming may come back, which basically was a military attack on a (mostly) empty fortress.

It may come back later.  It's not coming back in the upcoming release.

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

If this is to be true, will we be able to choose an ordinary reclaim with 7 dwarves, or to do an invasion? An invasion would give you less ability to choose civilian skills and items, but give you more military dwarves, for example.

With all the new updates, you could retire a fortress, which can later fall in enemy hands, will we be able to lead a invasion in order to reclaim that lost fortress, if we are still at war with that civilization?

If the answer to the above is yes, what would stop us to lead an invasion to any site controlled by a civ we are currently at war with, all it would need is that we start the game as the old reclaim version in a human city?

You won't be able to reclaim a site that is already controlled by another entity:

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

If you actually make a successful claim on a site, to the point where your entity is linked to it as the dominant entity (by taking your unopposed self as a stated claimant to a power location), then the site will no longer be reclaimable by anybody.  That would be an invasion, which we don't have in fort mode at this time.

Quote from: Rapozk on March 06, 2014, 12:58:14 pm

If I understand the recent development correctly, surrounding villages can succumb and be converted to villages of our own civ, in time...

If the answer to the above question is yes, then what would stop us from just doing an invasion/raid with an army, and later move on to another city?

Taking control of villages only applies to Adventure Mode for now.

Yeah, it only applies to Adventure mode now, but all of those stuff would be easy to implement, or at least, seems easy to me... Is it somehow considered to get implemented, or have toady say that he is planning to never implement it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 06, 2014, 03:15:47 pm

That's what the Army Arc is about. Don't worry, it'll happen at least somewhat ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 06, 2014, 05:08:36 pm

Yeah, it's all slated for near-term development:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Fortress Starting Scenarios

    Starting scenarios giving a back story for your fortress, often related to current world situation
        Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
    Ability to bring extra dwarves along depending on scenario
    Entity populations surrounding your fortress in appropriate environments, both above and below ground
    Ability to move dwarves in and out of surroundings
    Relationship with surrounding dwarves
    Ability to trade/demand food in depot or similar place with surrounding dwarves
    Changes to caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario


 Military

    Dwarven armies
        Ability to send out fortress dwarves to lead larger groups of surrounding dwarves out around mid-level maps (or just go alone)
        Ability to send equipment and fortress dwarves out to train surrounding dwarves
        Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies
        Ability to set fires and select supplies to haul back when sacking a site
    Villain interactions
        Must adjust villains etc. to allow them to operate at dwarf mode time scale
        Make armies/beasts that attack fortress come from actual groups moving on world map
        Ability to fight other armies with your dwarven armies
            Larger armies should spread over multiple mid-level map squares
            Ability to create fortifications/lines/etc. instead of spreading haphazardly
            There are complications to be worked out if you can zoom in to battles and control them at the local level, concerning what happens to your fortress
            If you can zoom in, situations like being surrounded need to be respected and have the desired results regardless of what area is zoomed in on
        Allow villains to attempt to demand tribute from you
    Improved sieges
        Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
        More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
        Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
        Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
            Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
            Ability to build bridges/ramps
            Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
        Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
            For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
        Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Guylock on March 06, 2014, 07:21:54 pm

I don't know if anyone asked this but I will throw it out just in case.

In adventure mode, are we able to get married to other NPC's and have a family?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on March 06, 2014, 07:26:58 pm

Quote from: Guylock on March 06, 2014, 07:21:54 pm

I don't know if anyone asked this but I will throw it out just in case.

In adventure mode, can we get married to other NPC's and have a family?

I believe that this has already been answered with a no.

Edit: found what I was going to quote.

Quote from: Footkerchief on February 24, 2014, 05:31:56 pm

Quote from: Rencini on February 24, 2014, 05:23:49 pm

Will adventurers be able to reproduce in the next release? How does it happen, if at all? Will we be able to play as the son/daughter of x adventurer if they manage to reproduce?* On a related note, will we be able to fast forward time once world gen is complete? Can our adventurers even marry next release?**

Nope, all adventurer companionship is still platonic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on March 07, 2014, 12:02:10 am

Quote from: Sizik on March 05, 2014, 05:25:20 pm

Speaking of which:
Do you/are you planning to make a meaningful distinction between a creature's "mind" and their "soul"?

Dwarf Fortress is strictly dualistic, to facilitate stuff like going to the spirit realm or swapping consciousness with another creature. All mental type attributes are in the soul.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 07, 2014, 09:44:02 am

Why is this named Bay12Games?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on March 07, 2014, 09:50:57 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 07, 2014, 09:44:02 am

Why is this named Bay12Games?

Aliens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STWwK617vQ)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 07, 2014, 11:04:02 am

Quote from: Sizik on March 07, 2014, 09:50:57 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 07, 2014, 09:44:02 am

Why is this named Bay12Games?

Aliens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STWwK617vQ)

Should have done an image link with the History Channel guy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 07, 2014, 11:53:23 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 06, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf sites reclaimable?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_11_transcript.html

I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.

Haven't tried to do this (and it's probably impossible in the current version), but one thing I thought I might try someday is to have an embark site that overlaps partially with a city site.  A ways outside the city gate, an unassuming outcropping of rock houses a drawbridge and fortifications... which leads to a vast underground Dwarf Fortress.  Meanwhile, the city hums along not-quite-oblivious to your actions.  Then an army comes along to sack the city, forcing the Dwarves to seal up and miss out on caravans until the siege resolves itself (perhaps with some help from the frustrated Dwarves).

When the Army Arc, Caravan Arc, etc. are complete, do you foresee the player's fort getting involved in fights between third parties?  For example, armies crossing the area that are not aiming for your fort, but might end up causing problems anyway?  Caravans from besieged cities not arriving unless you send them an escort party, etc.?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on March 07, 2014, 01:00:36 pm

Will moss come back to abandoned fortresses? I really miss that part, lol

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 07, 2014, 01:11:32 pm

Quote from: Dirst on March 07, 2014, 11:53:23 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 06, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf sites reclaimable?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_11_transcript.html

I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.

Haven't tried to do this (and it's probably impossible in the current version), but one thing I thought I might try someday is to have an embark site that overlaps partially with a city site.  A ways outside the city gate, an unassuming outcropping of rock houses a drawbridge and fortifications... which leads to a vast underground Dwarf Fortress.  Meanwhile, the city hums along not-quite-oblivious to your actions.  Then an army comes along to sack the city, forcing the Dwarves to seal up and miss out on caravans until the siege resolves itself (perhaps with some help from the frustrated Dwarves).

When the Army Arc, Caravan Arc, etc. are complete, do you foresee the player's fort getting involved in fights between third parties?  For example, armies crossing the area that are not aiming for your fort, but might end up causing problems anyway?  Caravans from besieged cities not arriving unless you send them an escort party, etc.?

I can't find the specific quote I'm thinking of, but iirc Toady have stated that armies/travellers not specifically heading for your fortress will just  pass around it in most cases. The reason for this is the time difference between adventure mode/world gen and fortress mode. For example, in the time that it'd take a traveller to pass from one end of your embark to the other he could probably have done his whole journey a few times over if only he'd have gone around instead. That's not even considering if he were to "stay the night" when we get to inns, which in fortress time would probably mean staying the whole season. Any army deciding to move through your embark would be set back about a month at least by it, depending on how many of them you actually choose to load. And you'd only be able to load a fraction of them anyway. I've had armies numbering in tens of thousands in my world gens.

It's possible Toady might come up with some workaround by then I guess. Like for example giving any wanderer passing through a super speed boost afterwards or something, but it'd probably risk ending up very very weird :>

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_4_transcript.html

The whole Dwarf Fortress time dilation is always going to be one of these big thorns in the side of the game. It's always going to be a huge problem to deal with. It's not a problem in adventure mode at all because adventure mode is moving at the slowest time possible in the game, so it's not a problem. [But] in dwarf mode we're always going to have to figure out a way to fudge things. If the wars are raging all over the place and, you know, over the course of month someone could sweep through an entire province or something then how does that figure in with the fact that you could maybe get your squad off the screen in a month. It's just sad, it's tragic sad, bad, and it's not going to work very well without all kinds of ... Like when you're playing a fortress it's just going to have to fake a lot of stuff. Not fake it, but just make the armies move slower on the world map too or something. So history is going to have these starts and stops, if you always play one mode you wouldn't notice but if you play between fort mode and then adventure mode and fort mode and adventure mode, there's going to be these strange dynamics going on that are caused by the fort molassesing the universe. It's okay, it's just one of those things ... because you can't go the other way and say 'I want fort mode to take as long as adventure mode' because then you'll never see summer, much less winter, because it would just take way too long for that stuff to happen. Right now [in] adventure mode if you just walk, if you're walking 'click click click'; you're going seventy two times slower than in fortress mode. So you would need to dilate the game seventy two times, which means that if you're used to a fort that lasts four years then you should get used to a fort that lasts one month for that same experience. That's crazy, that's not exactly a ...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 07, 2014, 01:29:57 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on March 07, 2014, 01:00:36 pm

Will moss come back to abandoned fortresses? I really miss that part, lol

Yup:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   Is there more moss now, or is it still just general 'moss'?
Toady:   Oh, well moss could be done with this system ... it isn't right now, so we could do the mosses. Because moss ... you hardly ever see it. I think I forced it so that you see it in adventure mode when you go to the old shrines, then you get a lot more moss, but in the fortress I don't know that you get to see it that often. It still calls the code that makes moss grow in a fortress, but I think you have to somehow have hundreds of years pass.
Capntastic:   Yeah, I remember somebody posted a screenshot saying 'Yeah, I've been playing this fort for like twenty in game years, and I have a moss tile now.'
Toady:   Yeah, so that definitely needs a little bit of work, because I think moss can grow faster than that. But the grass system will work for anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 07, 2014, 02:04:12 pm

Technically Footkerchief's right. It's ALL slated for long term development. Literally anything you could think of besides things explicitly shot down like sewage, time travel, or synching fortress-non fortress time is slated for development at least implicitly. Every other suggestion brought up here or over to in the suggestions forum could easily and accurately be answered solely with an immediate "P; NT". It'd be pointless and somewhat obnoxious, but no less true. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 07, 2014, 05:57:55 pm

Is synchronizing fortress and adventurer mode time really shot down? Toady ever confirmed this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 07, 2014, 06:15:58 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 07, 2014, 05:57:55 pm

Is synchronizing fortress and adventurer mode time really shot down? Toady ever confirmed this?

Pretty much. This is what follows after the part I quoted a few posts back:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_4_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   This is all about fun, right?
Toady:   Yeah, it's all about fun. It's not fun for me, though. If we're talking about not having a good design but just having an easy to program design then it would be way easier to have everything work on the same timescale, because then I wouldn't have to worry about this stuff at all. However it's just not possible, you have to have dwarf mode be a lot faster than the other modes. I think adventure mode doesn't really suffer from the same problems because you don't care about time passing, if you want to pass to the next winter then you could just say 'sleep in this town for two months and just hang out here.' There's not a huge problem with that, you don't want the time to pass; if you walked to another town and back you don't want a year to have passed most of the time. Just the slower mode works there but with the dwarves, there are problems with that. Anyway, that's enough of that I guess.

I would be interested however in whether he's considered at least moving them somewhat closer together. Personally I feel Fortress mode time moves waaaay too fast, but I know the way I play is weird so my opinion isn't all that representative (my current fort is on its 5th year and I still haven't gotten past half-finished outer walls, some basic aboveground living spaces and the very first parts of the underground fortress).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 07, 2014, 07:56:16 pm

That IS weird. Mine's in year two, has Fortifications surrounding everything (Ballistae included!), quarters with beds/doors/cabinets for all, mines, forges, dining room. It even has the beginnings of a palace. Hanging over a volcano. Made of gold

Also, Dwarf time is too slow for me. I'm always waiting on sieges to test my defenses. I don't like the over use of cage/weapon traps, so my military always has !!FUN!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 07, 2014, 09:03:25 pm

One almost wonders why the speed isn't simply controllable like most everything else. Right now we have "pause" and "a a day every few seconds". Why not just make a toggle for it? Us types that'd prefer it if dwarves didn't just chug a barrel of booze every season or so could slow it down a bit. Your types that'd have it run as fast as computerly possible could do your thing. The "actual" timescale (that was just being sped up or slowed down with it) could be set to an approximation of adventurer mode time, which would seem like it would fix a lot of the issues with world-fort interactions and dwarves taking a year to walk down a hall. Then again, I have little to know idea how any of the code works, so I very well could be describing a thought Toady's already considered and thoroughly rejected for whatever reason...

Not to make it suggestion-y. I was just wondering why what seems to be the obvious solution hasn't been implemented,  not really whether it would be or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on March 07, 2014, 09:08:34 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 07, 2014, 09:03:25 pm

One almost wonders why the speed isn't simply controllable like most everything else. Right now we have "pause" and "a a day every few seconds". Why not just make a toggle for it? Us types that'd prefer it if dwarves didn't just chug a barrel of booze every season or so could slow it down a bit. Your types that'd have it run as fast as computerly possible could do your thing. The "actual" timescale (that was just being sped up or slowed down with it) could be set to an approximation of adventurer mode time, which would seem like it would fix a lot of the issues with world-fort interactions and dwarves taking a year to walk down a hall. Then again, I have little to know idea how any of the code works, so I very well could be describing a thought Toady's already considered and thoroughly rejected for whatever reason...

Not to make it suggestion-y. I was just wondering why what seems to be the obvious solution hasn't been implemented,  not really whether it would be or not.

It's already possible to set the maximum FPS under data/init/init.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 07, 2014, 09:22:03 pm

Quote from: Paaaad on March 07, 2014, 09:08:34 pm

It's already possible to set the maximum FPS under data/init/init.

That only changes how fast the game runs, not how fast the in-game time (calendar) runs compared to the rest of the game :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on March 07, 2014, 11:11:36 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 07, 2014, 09:03:25 pm

One almost wonders why the speed isn't simply controllable like most everything else. Right now we have "pause" and "a a day every few seconds". Why not just make a toggle for it? Us types that'd prefer it if dwarves didn't just chug a barrel of booze every season or so could slow it down a bit. Your types that'd have it run as fast as computerly possible could do your thing. The "actual" timescale (that was just being sped up or slowed down with it) could be set to an approximation of adventurer mode time, which would seem like it would fix a lot of the issues with world-fort interactions and dwarves taking a year to walk down a hall. Then again, I have little to know idea how any of the code works, so I very well could be describing a thought Toady's already considered and thoroughly rejected for whatever reason...

Not to make it suggestion-y. I was just wondering why what seems to be the obvious solution hasn't been implemented,  not really whether it would be or not.

The primary problem I can see is that the balance of how long it takes for the various urges to take place (hunger, sleep) are likely hard coded in the fortress mode loop, and this is going to create a lot of bugs in the legacy code that he'll have to go back and change into equally sliding variables depending on the time increments.

It's not impossible, but I imagine it's a very large time sink for a single option right now, especially when he's got his focus elsewhere.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 07, 2014, 11:23:14 pm

Quote from: Dirst on March 07, 2014, 11:53:23 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 06, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf sites reclaimable?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_11_transcript.html

I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.

Haven't tried to do this (and it's probably impossible in the current version), but one thing I thought I might try someday is to have an embark site that overlaps partially with a city site.  A ways outside the city gate, an unassuming outcropping of rock houses a drawbridge and fortifications... which leads to a vast underground Dwarf Fortress.  Meanwhile, the city hums along not-quite-oblivious to your actions.  Then an army comes along to sack the city, forcing the Dwarves to seal up and miss out on caravans until the siege resolves itself (perhaps with some help from the frustrated Dwarves).

When the Army Arc, Caravan Arc, etc. are complete, do you foresee the player's fort getting involved in fights between third parties?  For example, armies crossing the area that are not aiming for your fort, but might end up causing problems anyway?  Caravans from besieged cities not arriving unless you send them an escort party, etc.?

Well, it's impossible to embark on sites like cities in vanilla, but with DFhacks embark anywhere plugin, you can. Even then, it'd only be a small slice of the city.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on March 08, 2014, 01:36:40 am

On January 9th of this year the devblog post references a Necromancer who could not find any corpses because she was too busy camping out and teaching apprentices secrets of death. Will creatures and regions be capable of I_EFFECTs like ADD_SYNDROME, RESURRECT, and ANIMATE during world gen and off-loaded world progression? For example: Will corpses of historical figures who die in evil reanimation areas get back up and wander around, or out of, the region?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 08, 2014, 06:44:37 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 07, 2014, 02:04:12 pm

Technically Footkerchief's right. It's ALL slated for long term development. Literally anything you could think of besides things explicitly shot down like sewage, time travel, or synching fortress-non fortress time is slated for development at least implicitly. Every other suggestion brought up here or over to in the suggestions forum could easily and accurately be answered solely with an immediate "P; NT". It'd be pointless and somewhat obnoxious, but no less true. :)

Time travel is shot down? And i agree, though dwarven mining may be to blame you can accomplish waaaaayyyyy too much too quickly in Dwarf Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 08, 2014, 09:27:11 am

I don't understand the beef with time abstraction in fortress mode, are we living in some alternate reality where Populous never existed??  God games always abstract time and action, that's in the definition of the genre.  If stuff doesn't make sense you probably need to approach things from a more Armok/god-like perspective.  How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 08, 2014, 09:37:21 am

Quote from: hermes on March 08, 2014, 09:27:11 am

I don't understand the beef with time abstraction in fortress mode, are we living in some alternate reality where Populous never existed??  God games always abstract time and action, that's in the definition of the genre.  If stuff doesn't make sense you probably need to approach things from a more Armok/god-like perspective.  How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

I doubt most really have a beef with the time abstraction per se, but rather the consequences it has (and increasingly will have) on history progression and the surrounding world. Right now it's really only a minor nuisance at most but it's bound to get worse and worse as the game develops :>

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 08, 2014, 10:20:21 am

^^^ yeah, this is the main problem

Quote from: hermes on March 08, 2014, 09:27:11 am

How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

But when those actions are combined, things get silly (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2655).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 08, 2014, 11:52:29 am

I asked because there is many solutions to this time problem, though all of them wouldn't be trivial to be implemented.

One that could work was if the fortress mode used the same timescale of adventurer mode, but you could set the speed that time would pass (if you want to finish a bridge, you would just set set the speed to max while the dwarves worked at the bridge).

 It works well in Banished (although in Banished you always set the game speed to max because nothing interesting happens, ever)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 01:17:27 pm

Will the generic creature men (amphibian, reptile, rodent, and serpent men) going to be removed in favour of species specific ones?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 08, 2014, 02:10:00 pm

Quote from: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 01:17:27 pm

Will the generic creature men (amphibian, reptile, rodent, and serpent men) going to be removed in favour of species specific ones?

Doubt it and there are plenty of <insert random DF species>-men already. There are already species specific snakemen as well.

Also, you forgot the olmmen, batmen, and cave swallow-men.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 08, 2014, 04:54:18 pm

Quote from: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 01:17:27 pm

Will the generic creature men (amphibian, reptile, rodent, and serpent men) going to be removed in favour of species specific ones?

These underground animal men are in some vague ways different critters from the specific animal men, and are apparently supposed to be different from those (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2069500#msg2069500). There should be more differences as the time goes by - Toady has hinted that a possible origin for the "surface" animal men might get implemented sometime in order to reduce their number, for example.

Quote

Quote from: darkflagrance

Ratmen mysteriously vanished in the transition from 40d to DF 2010. Since you'll now be adding new creatures such as bees, maintaining the sameness of the creature raws between versions will no longer matter as much. Assuming the removal of ratmen was an oversight, does this mean we will see ratmen reintroduced in the next version of DF?

Removal of subterranean ratmen was intentional -- however, with the new amphibian/serpent/reptile men we were also supposed to get "rodent men" underground, with rat men being moved outside with the regular outdoor rats.  Since March of last year, I've had a half-finished raw file on my desktop that I always forget about that has many new animal people, but when I added panda men and capybara men I remembered it again, so we should have official subterranean rodent men in the next version, and perhaps others, as well as the next round of sponsored beasts and their allies.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TalonisWolf on March 08, 2014, 05:34:12 pm

 Thanks for answering my questions from before! But, of course, I now have even more...

How widespread will insurrections be? Will they be localized within a settlement, or throughout a civilization?

If a settlement frees itself from it's oppressors, does it become a new civilization?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on March 08, 2014, 06:25:22 pm

Quote from: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 01:17:27 pm

Will the generic creature men (amphibian, reptile, rodent, and serpent men) going to be removed in favour of species specific ones?

They actually used to be called frogmen, lizardmen, ratmen, and snakemen (and olm men) but they were changed to the more generic ones at some point, so probably not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 08, 2014, 07:19:11 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 08, 2014, 10:20:21 am

^^^ yeah, this is the main problem

Quote from: hermes on March 08, 2014, 09:27:11 am

How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

But when those actions are combined, things get silly (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2655).

That's a good example, but I'm still inclined to see it as more of a balance issue rather than a fundamental design flaw that needs an overhaul. If anything I think fortress mode borks things in the right direction... Time is 72x that of adventure mode, so dorfs get less done in the same amount of time, but as a collective they make something great.  Individual sacrifice where the product is greater than the sum of its parts.

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 08, 2014, 09:37:21 am

I doubt most really have a beef with the time abstraction per se, but rather the consequences it has (and increasingly will have) on history progression and the surrounding world. Right now it's really only a minor nuisance at most but it's bound to get worse and worse as the game develops :>

What kind of problems are going to get worse?

Quote from: thvaz on March 08, 2014, 11:52:29 am

I asked because there is many solutions to this time problem, though all of them wouldn't be trivial to be implemented.

One that could work was if the fortress mode used the same timescale of adventurer mode, but you could set the speed that time would pass (if you want to finish a bridge, you would just set set the speed to max while the dwarves worked at the bridge).

 It works well in Banished (although in Banished you always set the game speed to max because nothing interesting happens, ever)

Hehe, i guess that's the key point right there!  All construction takes ages where nothing particularly exciting happens.  Real time Sim City would be brutal.  I just can't take calls for real time fort mode seriously, as it is you already have to watch dorfs bring all the materials of a bridge to site and then watch them construct it... Now you want to see that same thing happen 72 times slower?  What great stories are going to come of it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 08, 2014, 07:26:21 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 08, 2014, 09:37:21 am

Quote from: hermes on March 08, 2014, 09:27:11 am

I don't understand the beef with time abstraction in fortress mode, are we living in some alternate reality where Populous never existed??  God games always abstract time and action, that's in the definition of the genre.  If stuff doesn't make sense you probably need to approach things from a more Armok/god-like perspective.  How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

I doubt most really have a beef with the time abstraction per se, but rather the consequences it has (and increasingly will have) on history progression and the surrounding world. Right now it's really only a minor nuisance at most but it's bound to get worse and worse as the game develops :>

Basically this. If the time differences make it more convenient to have travellers just detour around a fort, then it would follow that having them visit the eventual fort taverns will need this to be at least somewhat first. I also don't really care for the abstraction itself much, like with dwaves only drinking a few tons of water a few times a year,  but I acknowledge that's just personal preference thing.

Hermes brings up good points. It would definitely slow the game to a boring crawl without some way to speed everything back up. But at least anchoring it to adv mode time would seem like it would fix a lot of the coming (and current) problems like with travellers and bar patrons. I believe I recall Toady mentioning how staying the night at your fort would take a season, but it might have just been another forum poster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 08, 2014, 07:59:14 pm

"Plenty of loading up camp sites and pressing the dismemberment button to test it out."

Ooh, so he has an auto dismemberment button thing in his dev console? cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 08:22:19 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 08, 2014, 04:54:18 pm

Quote from: Vattic on March 08, 2014, 01:17:27 pm

Will the generic creature men (amphibian, reptile, rodent, and serpent men) going to be removed in favour of species specific ones?

These underground animal men are in some vague ways different critters from the specific animal men, and are apparently supposed to be different from those (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2069500#msg2069500). There should be more differences as the time goes by - Toady has hinted that a possible origin for the "surface" animal men might get implemented sometime in order to reduce their number, for example.

Quote from: Untelligent on March 08, 2014, 06:25:22 pm

They actually used to be called frogmen, lizardmen, ratmen, and snakemen (and olm men) but they were changed to the more generic ones at some point, so probably not.

Thanks for answering my question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on March 08, 2014, 08:25:20 pm

A dismemberment button? I can only imagine the many people who'd love to have access to such a button in fortress/adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 08, 2014, 08:25:36 pm

Quote from: hermes on March 08, 2014, 07:19:11 pm

...

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 08, 2014, 09:37:21 am

I doubt most really have a beef with the time abstraction per se, but rather the consequences it has (and increasingly will have) on history progression and the surrounding world. Right now it's really only a minor nuisance at most but it's bound to get worse and worse as the game develops :>

What kind of problems are going to get worse?
...

For example, as have been mentioned all visitors to our future taverns will be forced to stay for close to a season at least, factoring in all the time it'll take to move across the embark, time spent in the tavern, eating/drinking/sleeping at least once etc. This isn't necessarily an issue just from the perspective of fortress mode, but taking the rest of the world in account this could seriously affect the outcome of various events when important historical figures literally are removed from the world scene for a season or more.

Another thing that is already somewhat of an issue is werecreature transformation, and any future features following the same mold of being linked to dates or recurring events. As it is now they only transform for a few moments before turning back, rarely having the time to actually do anything. You could argue that it's simply a matter of increasing the time they are transformed in fortress mode, but with how fast a month passes you'd then end up having werecreature citizens spending most of their time in their transformed state.

The by far biggest hurdle however is when we eventually get to sending out our own armies etc. With how long simply moving around the embark takes, just having your militia gather up and make it off the map could take several seasons. For cases such as being asked to send help to another besieged fortress (which would be an asap kind of deal), this simply wouldn't work without silly fixes such as teleporting them off map as soon as the order is made. Pretty much any interaction with the outside world that from a story perspective needs to be quick would need cheap fixes like that. There's probably ways to solve most of these issues but as Toady have said, it's a lot of extra work to "fudge things". And it might end up making legend mode quite messy for those who like that as its own game mode.

Our fortresses will pretty much always be stuck in a time dilation field, bending things out of shape every time we need to interact with the outside.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 08, 2014, 09:16:27 pm

New dev post!

Can we rob people too? I'm thinking since the mechanics are in place you'd just tell them you were robbing them, and then they'd start following the hard-coded procedure or resisting.

Also, I feel it's gonna be fun messing with robbers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 08, 2014, 10:09:28 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 08, 2014, 09:16:27 pm

New dev post!

Can we rob people too? I'm thinking since the mechanics are in place you'd just tell them you were robbing them, and then they'd start following the hard-coded procedure or resisting.

Also, I feel it's gonna be fun messing with robbers.

Well, probably very indirectly. You can demand folks to yield, but ToadyOne hasn't really touched upon the Thieving Role for adventure mode yet, which greatly implies that NPCs can't be robbed by the player yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Genoraven on March 09, 2014, 12:11:45 am

I've never been so excited with the prospect of being mugged before! =D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Meansdarling on March 09, 2014, 12:29:37 am

It seems so much better dieing when you know the people watching are talking about it afterward. Sort of an impromptu wake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 09, 2014, 04:51:41 am

Do robbers have a single, hard-coded way to surround a player and do things or is there some variation between their tactics (as in, how they arrange themselves, what they talk about, when they start demanding, etc.

Relatedly, do robbers take into account their own numbers when choosing targets and how to approach them? Can a player potentially unnerve them by being a famous monster slayer within the civ?

Can onlookers (I'm thinking mainly of guards and similarly skilled individuals) decide to stop the robbery even if the player yields?

Sorry for the multiple questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on March 09, 2014, 09:25:44 am

If you know someone is a bandit, or you just make a guess when someone is acting fishy and you attack them, will outsiders recognize you or them as the "bad guy"? Will you be the one they register as a hostile to the civilization or the bandits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 09, 2014, 10:27:09 am

The bandits are going to harass the npcs too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 09, 2014, 01:51:38 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on March 09, 2014, 04:51:41 am

Do robbers have a single, hard-coded way to surround a player and do things or is there some variation between their tactics?

Given how Toady said "If you start to comply, it continues on with the steps of the robbery", I'm almost positive that there's a single, hard-coded way to rob a player. My reasoning behind this is that Toady tends to mention when he integrates random courses of events - it's just the way he does things. More importantly, robberies only have one way they could happen:

1. Apprehend player
2. Get player to yield
3. Get player to hand over items
4. Rob player
5. Finish

Of course, they would deviate from this "standard robbery" if the player didn't cooperate, and one of your steps could easily become
3. Murderize the heck out of player
- which, as you noticed, became Toady's #5 in his devlog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 09, 2014, 01:57:38 pm

I think Wimopy may have been talking primarily about how they approach the player (spatial positioning, small talk, etc).  That's where variation would be the most interesting, since it's the player's chance to recognize and avoid the situation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on March 09, 2014, 02:18:49 pm

Quote

Their leader made small talk as two others surrounded me.

Do all people have the potential to do smalltalk when they meet you or is this something reserved for important people or bandits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 09, 2014, 02:38:48 pm

Quote from: TalonisWolf on March 08, 2014, 05:34:12 pm

Thanks for answering my questions from before! But, of course, I now have even more...

How widespread will insurrections be? Will they be localized within a settlement, or throughout a civilization?

If a settlement frees itself from it's oppressors, does it become a new civilization?

I think this would be a great thing to see in Legends mode.

In 193, in the Conflict of Beers at Urgentweeping, The Questing of Handkerchiefs broke away from Restingspikes to become a new civilization.

If anyone can make a Whiskey Rebellion actually succeed, it would be Dwarves.  Which leads me to a question for Toady:

Will a fortress be able to secede from its parent civilization?  Would this be under player control, or need to result from a factional conflict?

This should lead to a near-instant siege from the parent civ when and if it does happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 09, 2014, 03:19:35 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 09, 2014, 01:57:38 pm

I think Wimopy may have been talking primarily about how they approach the player (spatial positioning, small talk, etc).  That's where variation would be the most interesting, since it's the player's chance to recognize and avoid the situation.

Just as a confirmation, this was what I was talking about. I'll edit the question to clarify that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 09, 2014, 03:48:44 pm

Quote from: TalonisWolf on March 08, 2014, 05:34:12 pm

How widespread will insurrections be? Will they be localized within a settlement, or throughout a civilization?

Occupations happen on a settlement-by-settlement basis, so insurrections also have that constrant.

Quote from: TalonisWolf on March 08, 2014, 05:34:12 pm

If a settlement frees itself from it's oppressors, does it become a new civilization?

If your adventurer conquers the keep or mead hall, your adventurer's entity takes over the site.  If you drive out the occupiers without taking the power location, I think it reverts to the pre-occupation government.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WarRoot on March 09, 2014, 04:11:15 pm

Am I the only one who got confused by the opening of the two latest dev logs? (Thought the rodent one was going to be about DF and the robbed one to be RL)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 09, 2014, 04:28:31 pm

Quote from: WarRoot on March 09, 2014, 04:11:15 pm

Am I the only one who got confused by the opening of the two latest dev logs? (Thought the rodent one was going to be about DF and the robbed one to be RL)

For the first couple sentences, yeah. lol

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 09, 2014, 04:46:21 pm

Quote from: WarRoot on March 09, 2014, 04:11:15 pm

Am I the only one who got confused by the opening of the two latest dev logs? (Thought the rodent one was going to be about DF and the robbed one to be RL)

Guilty as charged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: palu on March 09, 2014, 07:26:56 pm

Quote from: WarRoot on March 09, 2014, 04:11:15 pm

Am I the only one who got confused by the opening of the two latest dev logs? (Thought the rodent one was going to be about DF and the robbed one to be RL)

No, I thought that too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 10, 2014, 10:00:26 am

Quote from: palu on March 09, 2014, 07:26:56 pm

Quote from: WarRoot on March 09, 2014, 04:11:15 pm

Am I the only one who got confused by the opening of the two latest dev logs? (Thought the rodent one was going to be about DF and the robbed one to be RL)

No, I thought that too.

I didn't really think that for the rodent one but had to do a double take while reading the robbery one because I thought for a sec he meant real life, though the wording was wierd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Atomic Chicken on March 10, 2014, 10:23:17 am

What happens to stolen items once the bandits/you leave the map? Can they be tracked and reclaimed? Can the items end up outside the bandits' possession (in shops or camps, for example)?

Also, what qualifies as a "valuable" item for stealing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 10, 2014, 10:29:45 am

Quote from: Atomic Chicken on March 10, 2014, 10:23:17 am

What happens to stolen items once the bandits/you leave the map? Can they be tracked and reclaimed? Can the items end up outside the bandits' possession (in shops or camps, for example)?

Also, what qualifies as a "valuable" item for stealing?

Now this just wants me to try and make an artifact in a fort, retire said fort, get an adventurer to pick up said artifact, get himself robbed by bandits and then see where that things ends up. Possibly even reclaim it and return it to the fort.

Yup, I think I know what I'll be doing in DF2014. Not that I didn't have any plans for it already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on March 10, 2014, 12:59:59 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 10, 2014, 10:29:45 am

Quote from: Atomic Chicken on March 10, 2014, 10:23:17 am

What happens to stolen items once the bandits/you leave the map? Can they be tracked and reclaimed? Can the items end up outside the bandits' possession (in shops or camps, for example)?

Also, what qualifies as a "valuable" item for stealing?

Now this just wants me to try and make an artifact in a fort, retire said fort, get an adventurer to pick up said artifact, get himself robbed by bandits and then see where that things ends up. Possibly even reclaim it and return it to the fort.

Yup, I think I know what I'll be doing in DF2014. Not that I didn't have any plans for it already.

For easy following, I'm pretty sure you can mod it to be syndrome-inducing, then you just follow the trail of whatever its effect is.

Then again, I'm quite sure goods don't move much post-world gen. Still valid main question, though. Can you find it on the robber? Does he sell it in the town? Does it vanish?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on March 10, 2014, 02:08:35 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on March 09, 2014, 02:18:49 pm

Quote

Their leader made small talk as two others surrounded me.

Do all people have the potential to do smalltalk when they meet you or is this something reserved for important people or bandits?

Heheh, I'm thinking that ANYONE who's tries to make smalltalk needs an axe to the forehead as the initial reply.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on March 10, 2014, 06:38:39 pm

Toady: Dang it, why won't anyone rob me? (not a real quote)

I find it funny that even when Toady finally gets robbed... they still don't actually rob him.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Gashcozokon on March 10, 2014, 06:49:00 pm

Two Minecart related questions:

Will it be possible to designate a hauling stop [for trading] or some such. Attaching it to a Depot for purposes of bringing goods out from the depths of your Fort?

Will Invaders/Hostiles/Mischievous/etc creatures interact with [Push/Ride] a Minecart  they can path to?
I realize path finding wouldn't necessarily be able to tell if the route was safe or where it went, but I can think of plenty of instances for both case where you would(n't) want un-friendlies riding your rails.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 10, 2014, 09:26:18 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on March 10, 2014, 06:49:00 pm

Two Minecart related questions:

Will it be possible to designate a hauling stop [for trading] or some such. Attaching it to a Depot for purposes of bringing goods out from the depths of your Fort?

Will Invaders/Hostiles/Mischievous/etc creatures interact with [Push/Ride] a Minecart  they can path to?
I realize path finding wouldn't necessarily be able to tell if the route was safe or where it went, but I can think of plenty of instances for both case where you would(n't) want un-friendlies riding your rails.

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 11, 2014, 10:35:22 am

Salt coming up in the tavern arc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 11, 2014, 12:08:18 pm

Salt as in the flavoring?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 11, 2014, 01:10:08 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 11, 2014, 10:35:22 am

Salt coming up in the tavern arc?

It's really too early to tell what will definitely come in with tavern work, but I do imagine that improved meals, including condiments, flavorings, as well as recipes, have a very good chance of being included. Food preservation might be there as well, but likely has less of a chance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 11, 2014, 01:25:06 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 11, 2014, 01:10:08 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 11, 2014, 10:35:22 am

Salt coming up in the tavern arc?

It's really too early to tell what will definitely come in with tavern work, but I do imagine that improved meals, including condiments, flavorings, as well as recipes, have a very good chance of being included. Food preservation might be there as well, but likely has less of a chance.

Eh, it wouldn't make much sense to include salt and not do food preservation at the same time. That's a much more important point to it than the much later flavoring aspect. Anyway, I wouldn't say the food revamp/expansion will necessarily be worked into with the tavern stuff. It is sort of feature creep territory, so it's a toss-up I'd say ^^

Somewhat relevant quote for those interested:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript.html

Because if things are left alone they'll rot because that's what happens, but I don't remember how strongly I fought rot when I went to do the towns, so it's possible that you could have eternal meat and in that case that's kind of strange, because we should get to salting stuff, and making cooked stuff last a little bit longer, what other weird things people do ... use sugar to preserve fruit or something, is that right? We've got a lot to do there, should be intriguing to add the salt based industries, and mine your salt and then I guess you grind it down or something. That's what the internet is for, it's so I don't have to know anything. It'll be alright.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 10, 2014, 09:26:18 pm

Quote from: Gashcozokon on March 10, 2014, 06:49:00 pm

Two Minecart related questions:

Will it be possible to designate a hauling stop [for trading] or some such. Attaching it to a Depot for purposes of bringing goods out from the depths of your Fort?

Will Invaders/Hostiles/Mischievous/etc creatures interact with [Push/Ride] a Minecart  they can path to?
I realize path finding wouldn't necessarily be able to tell if the route was safe or where it went, but I can think of plenty of instances for both case where you would(n't) want un-friendlies riding your rails.

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0)

So that's a "No", then? /amusement

Do we as adventurers have the option to rob people?

What speed will Fort mode dwarves default to?
I'm imagining a horde of dwarves zooming through the halls at full tilt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on March 11, 2014, 02:49:42 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

Do we as adventurers have the option to rob people?

Thus far, that's pretty much what adventure mode has been all about. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 11, 2014, 03:42:10 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

So that's a "No", then? /amusement

It just needed to be disguised a little better, like the rest of us do with our suggestion questions.  ;D But it still wouldn't get much of an answer, such as with the "Salt?" one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 11, 2014, 04:00:49 pm

Quote from: cephalo on March 11, 2014, 02:49:42 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

Do we as adventurers have the option to rob people?

Thus far, that's pretty much what adventure mode has been all about. :)

I guess the specific question is: once an NPC yields, can we demand that they drop their belongings?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on March 11, 2014, 04:03:47 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 11, 2014, 04:00:49 pm

Quote from: cephalo on March 11, 2014, 02:49:42 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

Do we as adventurers have the option to rob people?

Thus far, that's pretty much what adventure mode has been all about. :)

I guess the specific question is: once an NPC yields, can we demand that they drop their belongings?

As a follow-up to that: If they do drop their belongings, and we don't grab all of them, will they pick them back up? Or is there some risk other NPCs will walk by and grab them? Also, how are cloths/armor handled in this case?

Relatedly, do Robbers ever demand that you give up your spiffy *<=Steel Chain Mail=>*?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on March 11, 2014, 04:47:54 pm

Will unfriendly locals (i.e. goblins) be able to oppress adventurers in a similar fashion?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 12, 2014, 05:13:36 am

Will adventurers be able to create/claim lairs to store stolen treasure in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 12, 2014, 09:09:13 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 12, 2014, 05:13:36 am

Will adventurers be able to create/claim lairs to store stolen treasure in?

You can claim sites that you "liberate," but it won't have any special regard for items you leave there.  Eventually you'll be able to set up a base of operations:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Basic Adventure Mode Skills

    Wood use
        Ground debris/sticks/underbrush
        Ability to chop down tree using appropriate tool
        Ability to make simple wooden weapons and ammunition
        Ability to use logs to make constructions
        Site recognition for saving adventurer-made sites (will require entity pops first, see below)
        Ability to name site
    Digging and stone constructions
        Ability to dig out soil tiles
        Buried boulders in some soils
        Ability to pull up surface boulders
        Ability to make rough stone constructions

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 12, 2014, 12:10:13 pm

Quote from: DG on March 11, 2014, 03:42:10 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

So that's a "No", then? /amusement

It just needed to be disguised a little better, like the rest of us do with our suggestion questions.  ;D But it still wouldn't get much of an answer, such as with the "Salt?" one.

This all over  :P.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 12, 2014, 12:40:38 pm

Do you have any plans for "mercy killing" one of your allies after they suffer something like severe nerve damage? Without becoming hostile to their civ or the rest of your allies of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on March 12, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

What will happen when we kill livestock?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 12, 2014, 02:00:03 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on March 12, 2014, 12:40:38 pm

Do you have any plans for "mercy killing" one of your allies after they suffer something like severe nerve damage? Without becoming hostile to their civ or the rest of your allies of course.

Euthanasia has come up:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.4

Toady:   [...] when you make an organization there's ... the two ways to think about it are, does my organization ... is the game going to try to guess what you're doing? It's like 'Well, they've killed their seventeenth person so obviously this is an organization bent on randomly killing people', or is it something that ... what will probably end up happening because the computer can never really be smart enough to tell, is that you just say what you're about, and if you completely violate the principles of what you're about then it'll probably start trying to come up with something on its own, it'd be like 'Well, you're supposed to be wandering around and helping the sick, but you keep killing them' and eventually it would decide that you're actually some kind of weird euthanasia organization or something. But that's all kind of wishful thinking; not the content that I just mentioned but just the ability that it would be able to do anything like that, but it's ...
Rainseeker:   'Hey man, I'm just preventing an epidemic, okay?'
Toady:   It's true, it's going to be dangerous when there are plagues, you'll have some difficult decisions to make. [...]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 12, 2014, 02:50:32 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on March 12, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

What will happen when we kill livestock?

As I understand it, it will be considerably less of a violent uprising. You will almost certainly degrade their opinion of you, but probably not to the point where they instantly attack you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 12, 2014, 02:52:58 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 12, 2014, 02:50:32 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on March 12, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

What will happen when we kill livestock?

As I understand it, it will be considerably less of a violent uprising. You will almost certainly degrade their opinion of you, but probably not to the point where they instantly attack you.

It shouldn't make you an enemy of the entire civ, which is what happens currently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 12, 2014, 06:29:30 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 12, 2014, 02:00:03 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on March 12, 2014, 12:40:38 pm

Do you have any plans for "mercy killing" one of your allies after they suffer something like severe nerve damage? Without becoming hostile to their civ or the rest of your allies of course.

Euthanasia has come up:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_16_transcript.html#16.4

Toady:   [...] when you make an organization there's ... the two ways to think about it are, does my organization ... is the game going to try to guess what you're doing? It's like 'Well, they've killed their seventeenth person so obviously this is an organization bent on randomly killing people', or is it something that ... what will probably end up happening because the computer can never really be smart enough to tell, is that you just say what you're about, and if you completely violate the principles of what you're about then it'll probably start trying to come up with something on its own, it'd be like 'Well, you're supposed to be wandering around and helping the sick, but you keep killing them' and eventually it would decide that you're actually some kind of weird euthanasia organization or something. But that's all kind of wishful thinking; not the content that I just mentioned but just the ability that it would be able to do anything like that, but it's ...
Rainseeker:   'Hey man, I'm just preventing an epidemic, okay?'
Toady:   It's true, it's going to be dangerous when there are plagues, you'll have some difficult decisions to make. [...]

I hope they would at least protest this "mercy killing" just because they aren't useful for the player anymore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on March 12, 2014, 07:35:25 pm

Is there going to be a DF meetup in the semi-near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on March 12, 2014, 09:06:18 pm

Quote from: Starweaver396 on March 11, 2014, 01:38:06 pm

snip

What speed will Fort mode dwarves default to?
I'm imagining a horde of dwarves zooming through the halls at full tilt.

The dwarves are actually slower in Dwarf mode than adventurers are, so if there's a problem like that I'd imagine they'd just be like petrified to an adventurer's eye. In all likelihood they'll act just like normal people do in towns, and just kind of stand around talking about their family's marriage history.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 12, 2014, 09:22:40 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

SSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 09:24:36 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

Working fine for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Boozebeard on March 12, 2014, 09:25:49 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 12, 2014, 06:29:30 pm

I hope they would at least protest this "mercy killing" just because they aren't useful for the player anymore.

If they're crippled and in extreme pain I could possibly imagine some individuals wanting to be put out of their misery. I'd imagine the personality traits may apply to it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait

Such as, if they have low optimism and low perseverance, they'd be more likely to accept the mercy killing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 12, 2014, 09:30:49 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

It wasn't working for me but now its back up and nothing has changed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 12, 2014, 09:33:16 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on March 12, 2014, 09:30:49 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

It wasn't working for me but now its back up and nothing has changed.

Dammit. The release heard you both talking about it, and now it's run away to hide in its room. Come back, Release-chan! We love you!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 12, 2014, 09:36:24 pm

Quote from: My Name is Immaterial on March 12, 2014, 02:50:32 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on March 12, 2014, 01:29:09 pm

What will happen when we kill livestock?

As I understand it, it will be considerably less of a violent uprising. You will almost certainly degrade their opinion of you, but probably not to the point where they instantly attack you.

I understand differently. If seen, you still become an enemy, but the other livestock won't attack you, and if you visit another town you might outrun rumors of your crime. Attacking you is still the only way guards respond to you as a criminal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 09:41:31 pm

Quote from: Boozebeard on March 12, 2014, 09:25:49 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 12, 2014, 06:29:30 pm

I hope they would at least protest this "mercy killing" just because they aren't useful for the player anymore.

If they're crippled and in extreme pain I could possibly imagine some individuals wanting to be put out of their misery. I'd imagine the personality traits may apply to it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait

Such as, if they have low optimism and low perseverance, they'd be more likely to accept the mercy killing.

Optimism appears to be gone; next version's personality traits are the following:

Code: [Select]

LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY
ANGER_PROPENSITY
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY
GREED
IMMODERATION
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD
FRIENDLINESS
POLITENESS
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE
VANITY
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST
CLOSEMINDED
TOLERANT
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS
ALTRUISM
DUTIFULNESS
THOUGHTLESSNESS
ORDERLINESS
TRUST
GREGARIOUSNESS
ASSERTIVENESS
ACTIVITY_LEVEL
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING
IMAGINATION
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED

Unless that's all changed too...

Have the raws changed much in the last 4 months?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 12, 2014, 09:43:41 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 12, 2014, 09:33:16 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on March 12, 2014, 09:30:49 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 12, 2014, 09:15:52 pm

The front page is not responding. Maybe a release or devlog is coming out soon?

It wasn't working for me but now its back up and nothing has changed.

Dammit. The release heard you both talking about it, and now it's run away to hide in its room. Come back, Release-chan! We love you!

The release is a ground hog that was so scared of it's shadow that it decided it wouldn't come out for the year at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 12, 2014, 09:51:42 pm

Quote from: MrWillsauce on March 12, 2014, 07:35:25 pm

Is there going to be a DF meetup in the semi-near future?

Historically (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82212.0), meetups have been announced and organized via forum threads.  There's no current thread, so it's safe to assume no plans.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 12, 2014, 10:02:08 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 07, 2014, 01:29:57 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on March 07, 2014, 01:00:36 pm

Will moss come back to abandoned fortresses? I really miss that part, lol

Yup:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   Is there more moss now, or is it still just general 'moss'?
Toady:   Oh, well moss could be done with this system ... it isn't right now, so we could do the mosses. Because moss ... you hardly ever see it. I think I forced it so that you see it in adventure mode when you go to the old shrines, then you get a lot more moss, but in the fortress I don't know that you get to see it that often. It still calls the code that makes moss grow in a fortress, but I think you have to somehow have hundreds of years pass.
Capntastic:   Yeah, I remember somebody posted a screenshot saying 'Yeah, I've been playing this fort for like twenty in game years, and I have a moss tile now.'
Toady:   Yeah, so that definitely needs a little bit of work, because I think moss can grow faster than that. But the grass system will work for anything.

In addition to the above answer, moss came up a while back:

Quote from: Toady One on October 29, 2013, 09:38:17 pm

Quote from: smjjames

In a similar line of thought, will we be seeing epiphytes in DF? If not now, eventually? Also I'm referring to things like bromeliads and some orchids. Although having moss and lichen growing on trees would be neat and would just be a description and perhaps a tile change rather than a full blown plant with complete raws. So, moss and lichen on trees would be doable in a shorter timeframe.

MrWiggles brought up moss being in the game in a specific case, and vines are clearly necessary for a credible general fantasy game.  The existing moss is just a tile flag, but it would probably work better in conjunction with a fully realized raw definition and then we could just use the existing framework for grass, so memory wouldn't be much affected (and at the same time, you could then pick some/harvest some and have it work right).  I'm not sure when I'll get to vines...  at some point there'll have to be giant dwarf-eating flowers and stuff too.

Quote from: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 09:41:31 pm

Have the raws changed much in the last 4 months?

Here's a start -- did you have particular aspects of the game in mind?

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=136790.msg5050208#msg5050208

Hopefully I can also get the finalized garden plant objects together [in March] as well [...]

Quote from: Toady One on February 19, 2014, 09:34:45 pm

(Secretion by part is old, but, yeah, we have a new usage hint for negative social response, and secretions can take an optional argument at the end for exertion or extreme emotion)

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Raws aren't very interesting for jumping -- there is a CANNOT_JUMP tag.  Flesh balls have it, thankfully.  I haven't yet decided exactly on how climbing is going to be restricted.  Insects have to be able to do it, but they don't have grasps in game terms, and we want humanoid climbers to need free grasps.  At the same time, we don't want flesh balls to climb.  There will probably just be a special graspless climber tag or something, for now.
[...]
Climbing speed depends on the raws.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:09 am

All of the humans are independent if they don't have a tribute relationship.  There is no civilization leader, unless there's a god impersonator (or successor -- I don't remember if vamps can create their own position or need to act through a god successor).  Gobs are similar, though they are generally saddled with a demon.  The other civs are subject to their entity definitions, so that dwarves and elves in their main civs find such arrangements more unthinkable, though dwarves or elves that have moved to human civs can become local leaders of human-style sites.  It shouldn't be so clear-cut with the dwarves and elves, but it'll be a bit before we sort that out.  If a dwarf group breaks off from the main dwarves, they'll probably establish analogous entity positions in their new entity, since that's how they live, but there's also room to define some wiggle room into the raw file.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 10:31:53 pm

Hmm... the usage hint shouldn't be difficult to figure out on release (I.E it'll be in the file changes), climbing is done with gaits AFAIK, the entity stuff seems as current (with VARIABLE_POSITIONS and all), secretion hint shouldn't be necessary to know yet.

So basically just garden plants and (more importantly) changes from what has been seen earlier for the new version.

Are garden plant raws final enough to show us (with the implication I mean explicit meaning of plz show) and have there been any raws from the new version changed since October 2013?

My compilation of new raws is from there, so seeing if any of it is out-of-date is important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 13, 2014, 09:03:48 am

Quote from: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 09:41:31 pm

Quote from: Boozebeard on March 12, 2014, 09:25:49 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 12, 2014, 06:29:30 pm

I hope they would at least protest this "mercy killing" just because they aren't useful for the player anymore.

If they're crippled and in extreme pain I could possibly imagine some individuals wanting to be put out of their misery. I'd imagine the personality traits may apply to it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait

Such as, if they have low optimism and low perseverance, they'd be more likely to accept the mercy killing.

Optimism appears to be gone; next version's personality traits are the following:

Code: [Select]

LOVE_PROPENSITY
HATE_PROPENSITY
ENVY_PROPENSITY
CHEER_PROPENSITY
DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY
ANGER_PROPENSITY
ANXIETY_PROPENSITY
LUST_PROPENSITY
STRESS_VULNERABILITY
GREED
IMMODERATION
VIOLENT
PERSEVERENCE
WASTEFULNESS
DISCORD
FRIENDLINESS
POLITENESS
DISDAIN_ADVICE
BRAVERY
CONFIDENCE
VANITY
AMBITION
GRATITUDE
IMMODESTY
HUMOR
VENGEFUL
PRIDE
CRUELTY
SINGLEMINDED
HOPEFUL
CURIOUS
BASHFUL
PRIVACY
PERFECTIONIST
CLOSEMINDED
TOLERANT
EMOTIONALLY_OBSESSIVE
SWAYED_BY_EMOTIONS
ALTRUISM
DUTIFULNESS
THOUGHTLESSNESS
ORDERLINESS
TRUST
GREGARIOUSNESS
ASSERTIVENESS
ACTIVITY_LEVEL
EXCITEMENT_SEEKING
IMAGINATION
ABSTRACT_INCLINED
ART_INCLINED

Unless that's all changed too...

Have the raws changed much in the last 4 months?

I can see a number of those affecting a creature's "final wishes."  Maybe Perfectionist and Depression_Propensity increase the desire for death, Hopeful and Perseverance decrease it, and Dutifulness works either way depending on whether the person is capable of work or not.  I can see some players getting touchy about the whole subject, so we'd probably have the option to turn it off.

Edit: Forgot that "entity" is a term-of-art in Dwarf Fortress.  I was referring to a specific (intelligent) creature's final wishes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 13, 2014, 09:08:31 am

What do you mean by entity? Entity in DF pretty much always refers to groups of intelligent people, such as a civilization of humans or a bandit gang.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 13, 2014, 09:19:55 am

Quote from: Putnam on March 13, 2014, 09:08:31 am

What do you mean by entity? Entity in DF pretty much always refers to groups of intelligent people, such as a civilization of humans or a bandit gang.

Sorry, fixed the terminology in the post.  Although I can imagine that entities' ethics play some role in these decisions, that's not what I was talking about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 13, 2014, 09:55:33 am

Quote from: Putnam on March 12, 2014, 09:41:31 pm

Quote from: Boozebeard on March 12, 2014, 09:25:49 pm

If they're crippled and in extreme pain I could possibly imagine some individuals wanting to be put out of their misery. I'd imagine the personality traits may apply to it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait

Such as, if they have low optimism and low perseverance, they'd be more likely to accept the mercy killing.

Optimism appears to be gone; next version's personality traits are the following:

Code: [Select]

...
CHEER_PROPENSITY
...


Optimism is CHEERFULNESS, and CHEER_PROPENSITY is in there. I think the only personality traits that are really gone is COOPERATION, which turned into a value, and EMOTIONALITY, which was kind of a problem child and oddity, in that it was both awareness of ones emotions and display of them, but mostly the former. The others at least have some sort of equivalent. I made a list trying to map the old traits to the new ones back when Toady first posted the new traits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: golemgunk on March 13, 2014, 08:04:36 pm

Now that people are having emotional responses to things in play, does that mean that people can go insane (as in berserk, melancholy, raving mad) in adventure mode? Have the mechanics of insanity changed at all with the new personality stuff?

Reading today's devlog, I was imagining what kind of responses people would have if so many just suddenly dropped dead around them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 14, 2014, 02:19:20 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 13, 2014, 09:55:33 am

Optimism is CHEERFULNESS, and CHEER_PROPENSITY is in there.

Optimists don't have to be cheerful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 14, 2014, 03:27:55 am

Damn Toady, release it already.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWillsauce on March 14, 2014, 03:34:31 am

Urist Adventurer doesn't really care about anything anymore.

I guess I'll raid this dungeon or whatever. Or not, who cares?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 14, 2014, 06:25:46 am

Quote from: DG on March 14, 2014, 02:19:20 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 13, 2014, 09:55:33 am

Optimism is CHEERFULNESS, and CHEER_PROPENSITY is in there.

Optimists don't have to be cheerful.

See the wiki page about personality traits (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Personality_trait):

CHEERFULNESS (Optimism)

91 - 100 often feels filled with joy 76 - 90 can be very happy and optimistic 61 - 75 is often cheerful 25 - 39 is rarely happy or enthusiastic 10 - 24 is a pessimist 0 - 9 is never optimistic or enthusiastic about anything

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 14, 2014, 07:06:54 am

I disagree with Toady's opinion and/or choice of terminolgy in that case, but it's no big deal. Anyway, I'm sorry for misconstruing your post for supposition rather than DF fact.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on March 14, 2014, 08:27:37 am

I want this genocide button.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: imlovinit on March 14, 2014, 08:36:55 am

Do you think the debug mode (the mode that you use to run around the world and cause mayhem) will be playable? Cause that sounds like tons of fun to me at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 14, 2014, 08:49:30 am

Quote from: DG on March 14, 2014, 07:06:54 am

I disagree with Toady's opinion and/or choice of terminolgy in that case, but it's no big deal. Anyway, I'm sorry for misconstruing your post for supposition rather than DF fact.

No worries. If I hadn't checked the wiki in the first place, I'd probably have said that optimism wasn't in the game in the first place. And who knows how cheer works in the next version - in that way, my post may well be premature.

Quote from: imlovinit on March 14, 2014, 08:36:55 am

Do you think the debug mode (the mode that you use to run around the world and cause mayhem) will be playable? Cause that sounds like tons of fun to me at least.

No. Toady never leaves those in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 14, 2014, 09:29:54 am

Exciting to see some big-ticket features getting finished in the dev log.

Quote from: twentytentacles on March 13, 2014, 08:04:36 pm

Now that people are having emotional responses to things in play, does that mean that people can go insane (as in berserk, melancholy, raving mad) in adventure mode? Have the mechanics of insanity changed at all with the new personality stuff?

Fortress Mode insanity is an old placeholder.  It would take some work to align it with the new personalities, and I think if Toady were to work on it at all, he'd rather revamp insanity entirely (which we'd hear about).  So I doubt it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on March 14, 2014, 10:49:44 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 14, 2014, 09:29:54 am

Fortress Mode insanity is an old placeholder.

All of Fortress Mode is an old placeholder?  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 14, 2014, 12:10:47 pm

Quote from: Dirst on March 14, 2014, 10:49:44 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 14, 2014, 09:29:54 am

Fortress Mode insanity is an old placeholder.

All of Fortress Mode is an old placeholder?  ;)

aaaaah I see what you did there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on March 15, 2014, 07:31:18 am

With the new conversation/speaking system in place, will we be soon seeing inanimate items emitting noise on their own, or when used?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2014, 10:20:44 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on March 15, 2014, 07:31:18 am

With the new conversation/speaking system in place, will we be soon seeing inanimate items emitting noise on their own, or when used?

As with many suggestions, it's a good idea but not planned to get implemented at a particular time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 15, 2014, 11:12:09 am

Instrument use is planned in the tavern arc, so that's sort of a particular time. Emitting noise on their own is not explicitly planned, as far as I'm aware.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 15, 2014, 06:50:20 pm

I'll commit suicide if there isn't a release before 1st of June.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 15, 2014, 07:08:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 15, 2014, 06:50:20 pm

I'll commit suicide if there isn't a release before 1st of June.

Don't try to blackmail toady, now. It'll be out when it's out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WanderingKid on March 15, 2014, 07:52:37 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2014, 07:08:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 15, 2014, 06:50:20 pm

I'll commit suicide if there isn't a release before 1st of June.

Don't try to blackmail toady, now. It'll be out when it's out.

Now we know it'll probably release right about June 15th... because he can.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 15, 2014, 08:02:54 pm

Quote from: WanderingKid on March 15, 2014, 07:52:37 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2014, 07:08:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 15, 2014, 06:50:20 pm

I'll commit suicide if there isn't a release before 1st of June.

Don't try to blackmail toady, now. It'll be out when it's out.

Now we know it'll probably release right about June 15th... because he can.  ;)

June 2nd...Because he can!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 15, 2014, 08:46:10 pm

Quote from: King Mir on March 15, 2014, 11:12:09 am

Instrument use is planned in the tavern arc, so that's sort of a particular time. Emitting noise on their own is not explicitly planned, as far as I'm aware.

Oh yeah, true.  I was only thinking of like talking swords and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on March 15, 2014, 09:11:47 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on March 15, 2014, 08:02:54 pm

Quote from: WanderingKid on March 15, 2014, 07:52:37 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on March 15, 2014, 07:08:45 pm

Quote from: Inarius on March 15, 2014, 06:50:20 pm

I'll commit suicide if there isn't a release before 1st of June.

Don't try to blackmail toady, now. It'll be out when it's out.

Now we know it'll probably release right about June 15th... because he can.  ;)

June 2nd...Because he can!

Before 2016...because he can!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 16, 2014, 06:15:16 am

Quote from: Toady

Devlog stuff.

Wait, so different civs of the same race can have differing ethics now? When did that go in? Does it pertain to sites too? O.o :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 16, 2014, 06:53:30 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 16, 2014, 06:15:16 am

Quote from: Toady

Devlog stuff.

Wait, so different civs of the same race can have differing ethics now? When did that go in? Does it pertain to sites too? O.o :D

I'm not sure I read it as that a civ has variant ethics at each of its sites.  I read it as saying that a civ with the ethic to war with itself will do so if one of its sites antagonizes the other.  For humans simply having different particulars (hated leader, differing religion, failed trade caravans) is enough.  For dwarves the bar is higher, they need pearl-harbor moments such as seiges.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 16, 2014, 08:27:44 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 16, 2014, 06:15:16 am

Quote from: Toady

Devlog stuff.

Wait, so different civs of the same race can have differing ethics now? When did that go in? Does it pertain to sites too? O.o :D

Technically, years ago. The mechanics are in the game for civilizations to have differing ethics from their default template, but there are no mechanics making it happen. But I'm pretty sure that catenate is right - the ethics simply determine how  messed up the situation has to be for intra-civilization conflicts to occur.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 16, 2014, 04:00:46 pm

Quote from: catenate on March 16, 2014, 06:53:30 am

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 16, 2014, 06:15:16 am

Quote from: Toady

Devlog stuff.

Wait, so different civs of the same race can have differing ethics now? When did that go in? Does it pertain to sites too? O.o :D

I'm not sure I read it as that a civ has variant ethics at each of its sites.  I read it as saying that a civ with the ethic to war with itself will do so if one of its sites antagonizes the other.  For humans simply having different particulars (hated leader, differing religion, failed trade caravans) is enough.  For dwarves the bar is higher, they need pearl-harbor moments such as seiges.

I wonder if leaders with "dreams of ruling the world" ambitions will siege their own civ's sites regardless of civilization wide ethics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on March 16, 2014, 10:24:13 pm

Any chance of a pre-release? :D I have been so hyped for the last 5 months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on March 17, 2014, 07:43:17 am

All DF versions so far have been pre-releases, the actual release is planned sometime in 2035. If Toady "accidentally" uploaded the current game as is, it would be hilariously broken and unplayable. I guess a lot of his time is spent rewriting things and fixing stuff so it becomes only broken.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on March 17, 2014, 08:14:51 am

Quote from: Scotsmen on March 16, 2014, 10:24:13 pm

Any chance of a pre-release? :D I have been so hyped for the last 5 months.

Look at the version number. Every release so far has been a pre-release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on March 17, 2014, 10:19:47 am

Quote from: Scotsmen on March 16, 2014, 10:24:13 pm

Any chance of a pre-release? :D I have been so hyped for the last 5 months.

There is no thing like "pre-release". It is perpetual alpha.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 17, 2014, 08:45:47 pm

So the new devlog clearly means that the elite military dwarves who become refugees when we abandon our forts will become bandits and plague legend mode, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 17, 2014, 08:46:21 pm

Quote from: devlog

03/17/2014 Toady One I handled the things I wanted to do with refugee to bandit conversions, and included things like having bandits work out of ruins and caves. I also worked with conflict resolution a bit more and got some more stranded armies to find their ways home.

Bandit camps in ruins?  Argh I need to play this already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darklord92 on March 17, 2014, 09:00:45 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I handled the things I wanted to do with refugee to bandit conversions, and included things like having bandits work out of ruins and caves. I also worked with conflict resolution a bit more and got some more stranded armies to find their ways home.

With the inclusion of bandits working out of abandoned sites, and wandering armies. Will we see the movement of bandits away from their camps or lairs to harass towns and roads, while we can sneak in and raid their stuff before they return?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 17, 2014, 09:46:58 pm

Will refugee populations from occupied towns sometimes turn into bandit gangs?

In addition to our newfound ability to make people cry, will we have any means to comfort them or make people happy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 17, 2014, 09:57:32 pm

Quote from: darklord92 on March 17, 2014, 09:00:45 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I handled the things I wanted to do with refugee to bandit conversions, and included things like having bandits work out of ruins and caves. I also worked with conflict resolution a bit more and got some more stranded armies to find their ways home.

With the inclusion of bandits working out of abandoned sites, and wandering armies. Will we see the movement of bandits away from their camps or lairs to harass towns and roads, while we can sneak in and raid their stuff before they return?

That should be a yes. While they might never be entirely empty, but if you can catch a bandit group away from camp you should be able to get to their site with just a token presence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TheSaberTooth on March 17, 2014, 10:29:10 pm

I'm curious, Will a civ, say a goblin one, attack a human settlement, sparking a war between the two nations, if they aren't already at war?

(Unsure if this has been asked before)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 18, 2014, 12:22:19 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 17, 2014, 09:46:58 pm

Will refugee populations from occupied towns sometimes turn into bandit gangs?

Yes:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-12-12

Note that taking over a site doesn't necessarily involve killing everybody in the main structure -- the upcoming plan is that if they yield, they can become regular citizens of the new entity, or if they run (or are sent away), they'll become bandits (taking their old entity and its site claim with them).

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 17, 2014, 09:46:58 pm

In addition to our newfound ability to make people cry, will we have any means to comfort them or make people happy?

Not yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 18, 2014, 02:19:49 am

Bandits forced out of an invaded entity will be different in any way from other bandits? They will become more like of a freedom fighter group or will harass everyone like regular bandits?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CharonM72 on March 18, 2014, 02:38:52 am

Given that there will be substantially more developed non-human sites in the next version, will the Sites and Roads Legends mode map export include them now?

I'd like to know that for future reference in making my map maker. Sorry if it's been asked before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 18, 2014, 05:05:10 am

I support the last demand. I like the site maps (but if goblin cities are all in volume, 3D maps will be hard to make, and same thing for Dwarf Fortresses, I'm afraid...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 18, 2014, 08:25:19 am

Today I dreamed I was playing the next version for the first time. I was an adventurer in a small town and the starting scenario text said me it was accosted by bandits led by a werewolf. Then I woke up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 18, 2014, 08:43:15 am

Quote from: CharonM72 on March 18, 2014, 02:38:52 am

Given that there will be substantially more developed non-human sites in the next version, will the Sites and Roads Legends mode map export include them now?

I'd like to know that for future reference in making my map maker. Sorry if it's been asked before.

Quote from: Inarius on March 18, 2014, 05:05:10 am

I support the last demand. I like the site maps (but if goblin cities are all in volume, 3D maps will be hard to make, and same thing for Dwarf Fortresses, I'm afraid...)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that several of the new sites won't be exportable on account of being too 3D. I suppose hill sites, and forest retreats might be exportable depending on how their zoning works, but the goblin towers and dwarf fortresses are likely not designed in a way that supports single-image maps. Deep sites might or might not have the same problem, and I am a bit sceptical about forest retreats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CharonM72 on March 18, 2014, 08:47:29 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 18, 2014, 08:43:15 am

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that several of the new sites won't be exportable on account of being too 3D. I suppose hill sites, and forest retreats might be exportable depending on how their zoning works, but the goblin towers and dwarf fortresses are likely not designed in a way that supports single-image maps. Deep sites might or might not have the same problem, and I am a bit sceptical about forest retreats.

For my purposes I only need the ones that are visible on the surface, so as long as there's some kind of demarcation at least, that'd be really useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 18, 2014, 01:36:32 pm

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 17, 2014, 08:45:47 pm

So the new devlog clearly means that the elite military dwarves who become refugees when we abandon our forts will become bandits and plague legend mode, right?

I would say possibly, but not necessarily. It's a potential possibility, but from Toady's wording, not every refugee will become a bandit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 18, 2014, 01:57:22 pm

I can smell the progress... no idea when the release will be though.  Argh.  Things are getting done every day at least.

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 17, 2014, 08:45:47 pm

So the new devlog clearly means that the elite military dwarves who become refugees when we abandon our forts will become bandits and plague legend mode, right?

Quote from: december 17 2013 devlog

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ), many of the citizens decide it is worth it to leave. There'd normally be refugees with regular wars as well, but we don't have large-scale regular wars and related economic/agricultural hardship etc. yet, so I didn't bother with anything there at this point. In any case, the groups look for a safe spot to head for, often ending up together in a camp outside of a nearby non-hostile market town. Having historical figures going to live with their relatives will also be a possibility.

Becoming a bandit is one of multiple options refugees have at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 18, 2014, 02:33:32 pm

I'm slowly beginning to hate hearing "it should be out in 2-3 months".

It's like we're a pig, ridden by Toady, holding the new release on a stick in front of our nose. It's literally just that.
I am a patient man (when it comes to games, anyway), but Toady is really putting our trust to the test here, I feel.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 18, 2014, 02:37:34 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 18, 2014, 02:33:32 pm

I'm slowly beginning to hate hearing "it should be out in 2-3 months".

It's like we're a pig, ridden by Toady, holding the new release on a stick in front of our nose. It's literally just that.
I am a patient man (when it comes to games, anyway), but Toady is really putting our trust to the test here, I feel.

Meh, the end result should be worth it. Better to have said trust, and gain, than have no trust and therefore have no gain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 18, 2014, 02:38:15 pm

The long cycle is already hurting donations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 18, 2014, 02:39:36 pm

I noticed. I think they've halved, or something similar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 18, 2014, 02:43:28 pm

Don't get me wrong, this release is getting me as excited as the next person here, but the sheer amount of waiting is just killing me right now.
At this point every day is just raising the pole for the development cycle length record.

I mean, how many days has it been without a release? We beat the previous record holder release in December, and that was almost 4 months ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 18, 2014, 02:45:07 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 18, 2014, 02:43:28 pm

Don't get me wrong, this release is getting me as excited as the next person here, but the sheer amount of waiting is just killing me right now.
At this point every day is just raising the pole for the development cycle length record.

I mean, how many days has it been without a release? We beat the previous record holder release in December, and that was almost 4 months ago.

here's a running tally (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+since+2012+06+04)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 18, 2014, 02:48:36 pm

February was a bad month and January was a good month, but as a whole no, the long cycle is not hurting donations.  For the entire release cycle they've stayed within the 3000-5000 range, with a few months that went over, and only 2 that went under.  The yearly amount last year is also perfectly normal for a year with no release.

Then when he releases, there's going to be a MASSIVE month for donations, followed by a period of increased donations, as usual.  Click around on the announcements subforum if you don't believe me, this is all following exactly the same patterns it has for years.  In fact we've been slowly gaining people so donations have become higher relative to the early years of DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 18, 2014, 03:24:13 pm

Toady keeps adding new features to this day. I love all the features, but there isn't a way to breaking them into various short releases? I think he didn't even started the bugfixing phase.

I am usually a supporter of his way of doing things, but I think he needs to rethink these long release cycles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on March 18, 2014, 03:35:11 pm

Um. No. We're in the bugtesting and cleaning phase. Right now. There hasn't been a feature added that hasn't been related to making sure that this release is playable with all the features intended for well over a month now. He's in the crunch stretch of pulling together all the features he's created over the length of this dev release. Anything that actually looks exciting and new right now in the dev log is actually the culmination of work that's taken over a year of prep work to actually pull off, and is actually it finally coming together as he wanted it to in the past.

It might not be coming out fast enough for some, but it never actually does. If he releases it before he does this phase there will be an equal number on the other side who will complain that it doesn't feel polished enough for a release and that he should have kept working on it for another couple of months instead of releasing it and trying to fix the bugs.

Edit: I will agree that he didn't have to spend as long as he did on certain things, but at this point he might as well tie it all together and move on from here. The eggs are already broken so he might as well finish the omelette.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on March 18, 2014, 03:40:35 pm

There should be another bugfixing phase immediately following the release too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 18, 2014, 03:47:58 pm

And it's not like he's intending for it to go this long between releases. He said that about the 2010 release that he never wanted another release cycle to take that long, he just isn't all that good at making it happen. After all, the initial release estimate for this release was march last year iirc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 18, 2014, 03:48:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 18, 2014, 03:24:13 pm

Toady keeps adding new features to this day. I love all the features, but there isn't a way to breaking them into various short releases? I think he didn't even started the bugfixing phase.

Quote from: Willfor on March 18, 2014, 03:35:11 pm

Um. No. We're in the bugtesting and cleaning phase. Right now. There hasn't been a feature added that hasn't been related to making sure that this release is playable with all the features intended for well over a month now. He's in the crunch stretch of pulling together all the features he's created over the length of this dev release. Anything that actually looks exciting and new right now in the dev log is actually the culmination of work that's taken over a year of prep work to actually pull off, and is actually it finally coming together as he wanted it to in the past.

Nope, we haven't gotten to the bug-fixing phase yet:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=136790.msg5050208#msg5050208

Insurrections are winding down, leaving us with an even more paltry grab-bag of random features to complete before we get on to bug fixing and the release (and then more bug fixing).

Some incidental bugs are getting fixed, but the focus is still on finishing the features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on March 18, 2014, 04:07:52 pm

Goddamn it. Okay. My point remains though that non-essential features are not being added.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on March 18, 2014, 04:12:43 pm

After this update, would you work on Badits sometimes becomming privateers or mercenaries?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 18, 2014, 04:18:27 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on March 18, 2014, 04:12:43 pm

After this update, would you work on Badits sometimes becomming privateers or mercenaries?

I predict ToadyOne answer will be, "Sounds good, but no time line."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 18, 2014, 04:32:48 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on March 18, 2014, 01:57:22 pm

I can smell the progress... no idea when the release will be though.  Argh.  Things are getting done every day at least.

Quote from: darkflagrance on March 17, 2014, 08:45:47 pm

So the new devlog clearly means that the elite military dwarves who become refugees when we abandon our forts will become bandits and plague legend mode, right?

Quote from: december 17 2013 devlog

If a site gets a rumor that a force of critters is coming to eat them or torture them for fun (checking the ethics of the invading civ), many of the citizens decide it is worth it to leave. There'd normally be refugees with regular wars as well, but we don't have large-scale regular wars and related economic/agricultural hardship etc. yet, so I didn't bother with anything there at this point. In any case, the groups look for a safe spot to head for, often ending up together in a camp outside of a nearby non-hostile market town. Having historical figures going to live with their relatives will also be a possibility.

Becoming a bandit is one of multiple options refugees have at the moment.

It's unclear whether player abandoned fort pops will act in the same way as legend pops in this instance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 18, 2014, 11:17:37 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 18, 2014, 02:33:32 pm

It's like we're a pig, ridden by Toady, holding the new release on a stick in front of our nose. It's literally just that.
I am a patient man (when it comes to games, anyway), but Toady is really putting our trust to the test here, I feel.

I don't feel that way. Literally or allegorically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tahujdt on March 19, 2014, 01:12:06 am

Random Guy: "If Toady  doesn't release by June 1st, I will commit suicide."
Toady One: "Bye!"

Just my random neuron firing for the evening.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on March 19, 2014, 03:01:49 am

"Random guy" was me :p It was a joke, actually (i hope you understood it), alluding to the neverending quite long time between two releases.
Anyway, and to reply to Willfor, the issue is that programming is like cave-in. You can't just add things alone, sometimes it's a whole part of the game that you have to change, and it takes a lot of time (but, later, it will be much quicker to add new features to the game which would take a lot more time if it hadn't been change before).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 19, 2014, 08:18:02 am

People, please, get a grip of yourselves. We have waited for way longer than a year, a few months more will not hurt, are more than worthy and you all know it. I said it a thousand times (well, I'm exaggerating), this will be the most important release, a whole dynamic world that will function as the bones of this creature, from this point on DW stops being a snapshot taken from a fantastic world to become an fully interactive live feed video of it. After this I suspect the speed at which awesome features are added will only increase, as simply putting muscles over those bones. It might not be perfect, but amidst a huge storm filled with lighting and thundering, inside his apartment surrounded by Tesla coils spiking with arcs of energy Toady, dressed in a white lab coat will finally be able to scream to the heavens "IT'S ALIVE!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!"

I think I previously compared it to a kid starting to talk and walk, being the pivotal skills needed for everything else the child will do, from playing and dancing to working and fighting, if you rather that analogy over the Frankenstein one.

Logically, given the importance and amount of work involved in this I think that in fact we are getting a really fast release. Keep in mind Toady is coding alone and he's working with a code that has over 10 years in the making. I'm a coder, and sometimes I can't handle code made by myself just a weeks ago even despite the best practices in code documentation and commenting.

Now, let us be at peace meanwhile this baby is finished, the waiting is completely worth, be it a few months or another year. We are talking about the most important update to date (and might I dare say of it's whole history, surpassing past and future updates) of the most complex, complete, detailed, and in my humble opinion, the best computer game in the history of mankind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on March 19, 2014, 01:31:44 pm

I dunno, all that hype is usually a prelude to disappointment. He's only a human after all-and one who subsists largely on soda, at that. (No offense ^_^)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on March 19, 2014, 04:08:58 pm

Quote from: DG on March 18, 2014, 11:17:37 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 18, 2014, 02:33:32 pm

It's like we're a pig, ridden by Toady, holding the new release on a stick in front of our nose. It's literally just that.
I am a patient man (when it comes to games, anyway), but Toady is really putting our trust to the test here, I feel.

I don't feel that way. Literally or allegorically.

I understand what he means. Toady can takes the time he wants but the thing is, we've been led (through early estimates and a lot of wishful thinking) to believe that it was right around the corner. For a whole year. There are people who still think the release is imminent. People have died waiting for the release. Hell, I am not sure I will make it through that release.

It's much better for one's peace of mind to accept the fact that it's not coming out. After all, the game is pretty awesome as it is right now and I still enjoy it a lot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 19, 2014, 04:16:12 pm

Quote from: Nopenope on March 19, 2014, 04:08:58 pm

Quote from: DG on March 18, 2014, 11:17:37 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 18, 2014, 02:33:32 pm

It's like we're a pig, ridden by Toady, holding the new release on a stick in front of our nose. It's literally just that.
I am a patient man (when it comes to games, anyway), but Toady is really putting our trust to the test here, I feel.

I don't feel that way. Literally or allegorically.

I understand what he means. Toady can takes the time he wants but the thing is, we've been led (through early estimates and a lot of wishful thinking) to believe that it was right around the corner. For a whole year. There are people who still think the release is imminent. People have died waiting for the release. Hell, I am not sure I will make it through that release.

It's much better for one's peace of mind to accept the fact that it's not coming out. After all, the game is pretty awesome as it is right now and I still enjoy it a lot.

It is coming out, eventually. It's on "Valve-time" as they say. But really, people ought to enjoy the current release while they wait.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 19, 2014, 04:57:40 pm

I have stopped caring, and I think I'm actually going to stop reading the blog so I can be pleasantly surprised when the new version comes out, and completely hype-free.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 19, 2014, 05:07:25 pm

Until you actually pay cash for Dwarf Fortress (instead of, say, donating knowing full well the game is free), please don't complain about what you're "owed."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 19, 2014, 05:10:23 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2014, 05:07:25 pm

Until you actually pay cash for Dwarf Fortress (instead of, say, donating knowing full well the game is free), please don't complain about what you're "owed."

+1

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on March 19, 2014, 05:28:37 pm

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 19, 2014, 05:07:25 pm

Until you actually pay cash for Dwarf Fortress (instead of, say, donating knowing full well the game is free), please don't complain about what you're "owed."

Gotta support this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on March 19, 2014, 05:37:24 pm

Nobody said we were owed a release. You can only stay excited about something for so long, is all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on March 19, 2014, 06:50:58 pm

Imagine walking around in adventure mode and getting the message, "You smell the scent of rotten flesh on the wind."

I love that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on March 19, 2014, 06:54:11 pm

EmeraldWind is referring to the devlog that Toady just posted (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/), where he also writes that there are exactly six things left to do before bugfixing begins. Anyone still willing to explain to us how the new version is "always 2-3 months away" and will not be released anytime ever?

I'm no elf, but I definitely smell the new version. Does that mean DF 2014 is undead?  :o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on March 19, 2014, 07:04:52 pm

I wonder if how an animal smells/how smelly it is is governed by raws now.


Six finalizations can take a month or so to finish, though. It's always at least a month away, until it's released. :P
and you damn well better be hyped for it; you know dwarf fortress releases are never less than the dev logs promise!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 19, 2014, 08:48:42 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on March 19, 2014, 06:54:11 pm

EmeraldWind is referring to the devlog that Toady just posted (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/), where he also writes that there are exactly six things left to do before bugfixing begins. Anyone still willing to explain to us how the new version is "always 2-3 months away" and will not be released anytime ever?

I'm no elf, but I definitely smell the new version. Does that mean DF 2014 is undead?  :o

One month ago it was about 10 things. Some people thought the release was imminent by then. I'm not saying Toady is taking too long because he is lazy or because we are owed something; it is because I think it may be bad for the game and the community in the long run.

Anyway, I loved the devlog of today. Smells and smelling as a game mechanic isn't something many games offer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 19, 2014, 08:53:43 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 19, 2014, 08:48:42 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on March 19, 2014, 06:54:11 pm

EmeraldWind is referring to the devlog that Toady just posted (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/), where he also writes that there are exactly six things left to do before bugfixing begins. Anyone still willing to explain to us how the new version is "always 2-3 months away" and will not be released anytime ever?

I'm no elf, but I definitely smell the new version. Does that mean DF 2014 is undead?  :o

One month ago it was about 10 things.

No it wasn't. It was "about half done". Today was the first time there's been an exact value in the list since 2010. This is probably what you're talking about:

Quote from: Devlog 2-04-14

The list of feature items that is left is about half as long as it was ten days ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 19, 2014, 09:01:47 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 19, 2014, 08:53:43 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 19, 2014, 08:48:42 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on March 19, 2014, 06:54:11 pm

EmeraldWind is referring to the devlog that Toady just posted (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/), where he also writes that there are exactly six things left to do before bugfixing begins. Anyone still willing to explain to us how the new version is "always 2-3 months away" and will not be released anytime ever?

I'm no elf, but I definitely smell the new version. Does that mean DF 2014 is undead?  :o

One month ago it was about 10 things.

No it wasn't. It was "about half done". Today was the first time there's been an exact value in the list since 2010. This is probably what you're talking about:

Quote from: Devlog 2-04-14

The list of feature items that is left is about half as long as it was ten days ago.

Yeah, you are right. Doesn't change the rest of what I said, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 19, 2014, 11:37:04 pm

So six things done, and then we can get a release, right?

Bugs are part of the Dwarf Fortress experience.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 20, 2014, 12:52:01 am

Whoo, six more finalization stuff before release!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 20, 2014, 01:00:25 am

That one sentence alone really builds my hype up again.
All aboard the DF2014 hype train!

Of course we don't know how much time it'll take for him to finalize those six things (it may be two days or another two weeks) and then there's still the actual bughunting and fixing phase.
But it's much better knowing that we are actually close to the release now and the "2-3 months away" jokes can finally stop. (hopefully at least)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 20, 2014, 03:54:51 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 20, 2014, 01:00:25 am

That one sentence alone really builds my hype up again.
All aboard the DF2014 hype train!

Of course we don't know how much time it'll take for him to finalize those six things (it may be two days or another two weeks) and then there's still the actual bughunting and fixing phase.
But it's much better knowing that we are actually close to the release now and the "2-3 months away" jokes can finally stop. (hopefully at least)

CHOO CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

The bughunting phase is always an endeavor, but still, bring it on!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 20, 2014, 05:25:57 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 19, 2014, 07:04:52 pm

I wonder if how an animal smells/how smelly it is is governed by raws now.

How else would it be governed? I guess zombie smell could be hardcoded, but otherwise...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HmH on March 20, 2014, 05:52:21 am

Will creatures be able to smell things in Fortress mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 20, 2014, 06:13:43 am

Quote from: HmH on March 20, 2014, 05:52:21 am

Will creatures be able to smell things in Fortress mode?

Will the ability to smell be used by Hunters to track prey better, and/or be affected by skills?[/b]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 20, 2014, 06:59:51 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 20, 2014, 05:25:57 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 19, 2014, 07:04:52 pm

I wonder if how an animal smells/how smelly it is is governed by raws now.

How else would it be governed? I guess zombie smell could be hardcoded, but otherwise...

Sense of smell will be governed by raws for sure, but for smelliness, I kinda doubt it. It sounds like there are just two categories: rotten (i.e. has the rotting tissue flag) and normal (everything else).

Quote from: HmH on March 20, 2014, 05:52:21 am

Will creatures be able to smell things in Fortress mode?

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 20, 2014, 06:13:43 am

Will the ability to smell be used by Hunters to track prey better, and/or be affected by skills?[/b]

Fortress Mode doesn't have line-of-sight -- all creatures are omniscient about each other's location on the map.  So smell won't give them any new information.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 07:20:46 am

For what I can gather Footkerchief is rightish, Toady says: "There's no blood-houndy types of scent trails yet (though there are the other kinds of trails)"

By trails I think it would be sort of like "you smell food, rotten flesh" or things like that, instead of "two humans and a goblin went by here two hours ago, the humans where arguing, I sense some kind of sexual tension between them. And the goblin was injure." "I told you he got a good nose".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 20, 2014, 07:28:02 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 07:20:46 am

For what I can gather Footkerchief is rightish, Toady says: "There's no blood-houndy types of scent trails yet (though there are the other kinds of trails)"

By trails I think it would be sort of like "you smell food, rotten flesh" or things like that, instead of "two humans and a goblin went by here two hours ago, the humans where arguing, I sense some kind of sexual tension between them. And the goblin was injure." "I told you he got a good nose".

I think what he really meant was that scents are only carried by the wind right now, so if a thing isn't there its smell wouldn't be there either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on March 20, 2014, 07:30:49 am

I don't know about anyone else, but if smelling is a skill you can train, then I'd feel sorry for the Legendary Smeller that wanders into an unwashed town.
 :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kent_Lang on March 20, 2014, 01:26:15 pm

I must ask - I haven't been able to follow the development very well so what is in the next release? Is it stuff that's for adventure mode only? My favorite mode is Dwarf mode so I'm on the fence whenever I should be really excited yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on March 20, 2014, 01:29:28 pm

Again: There's plenty of new features that affect both, and things done in one mode affect the other much more. Trees are now multi-tile, personalities and personal interactions have been rewritten, and you will be able to retire (instead of abandon) fortresses, if you so choose, making them into NPC settlements.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 20, 2014, 01:33:36 pm

Quote from: Kent_Lang on March 20, 2014, 01:26:15 pm

I must ask - I haven't been able to follow the development very well so what is in the next release? Is it stuff that's for adventure mode only? My favorite mode is Dwarf mode so I'm on the fence whenever I should be really excited yet.

Here's a fan-compiled changelog. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit)  Features marked with an asterisk (*) pertain to Fortress Mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 01:57:25 pm

The main feature is that the world will be completely dynamic during play that goes hand to hand with the retirement and retirement of fortress that allow you to appreciate this up close with an adventurer.

So while you play a fortress things will change in the whole world. You could leave your fortress to become an adventurer, trail all the world and if survive go to retire in the very same fortress you started (if survived) and retake the fortress mode there. Or at least that's the plan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 20, 2014, 02:14:07 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 20, 2014, 06:59:51 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 20, 2014, 05:25:57 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on March 19, 2014, 07:04:52 pm

I wonder if how an animal smells/how smelly it is is governed by raws now.

How else would it be governed? I guess zombie smell could be hardcoded, but otherwise...

Sense of smell will be governed by raws for sure, but for smelliness, I kinda doubt it. It sounds like there are just two categories: rotten (i.e. has the rotting tissue flag) and normal (everything else).

Yeah, my post was mainly aimed at the sense of smell thing, since we only know about zombies being particularly smelly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 20, 2014, 03:15:19 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 01:57:25 pm

The main feature is that the world will be completely dynamic during play that goes hand to hand with the retirement and retirement of fortress that allow you to appreciate this up close with an adventurer.

So while you play a fortress things will change in the whole world. You could leave your fortress to become an adventurer, trail all the world and if survive go to retire in the very same fortress you started (if survived) and retake the fortress mode there. Or at least that's the plan.

The world won't be completely dynamic - many things that happen in world gen will still not happen after it. Basicly we will have born/death cycles. Night creatures won't harass villagers, people won't defile temples and get cursed, adventurers won't hunt dangerous creatures, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 03:53:58 pm

Micro stuff may not be yet, however the macro will be, including (if I'm not wrong) real armies besieging your fort, heirs taking thrones and wars as well, things most important to the fortress player, meanwhile an adventurer getting cursed on the other side of the world wont matter that much (for the time being).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 20, 2014, 04:30:58 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 03:53:58 pm

Micro stuff may not be yet, however the macro will be, including (if I'm not wrong) real armies besieging your fort, heirs taking thrones and wars as well, things most important to the fortress player, meanwhile an adventurer getting cursed on the other side of the world wont matter that much (for the time being).

There are sucession stuff, people traveling between vilages and towns to marry and assume positions, new settlements being founded. I think settlements can be conquered, but I don't think new wars will be declared after world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 20, 2014, 04:43:45 pm

Quote from: thvaz on March 20, 2014, 04:30:58 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 20, 2014, 03:53:58 pm

Micro stuff may not be yet, however the macro will be, including (if I'm not wrong) real armies besieging your fort, heirs taking thrones and wars as well, things most important to the fortress player, meanwhile an adventurer getting cursed on the other side of the world wont matter that much (for the time being).

There are sucession stuff, people traveling between vilages and towns to marry and assume positions, new settlements being founded. I think settlements can be conquered, but I don't think new wars will be declared after world gen.

There's been no real changes to fort mode sieges. The last change, and I cant remember if it was during this dev cycle, or the last, is that Seigers were pulled from actual population counts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 07:19:45 am

That's what I meant by "real armies". Now they must come from somewhere instead of just spawn.

Quote from: thvaz on March 20, 2014, 04:30:58 pm

I don't think new wars will be declared after world gen.

I'm pretty sure, but you could be right.

Oh Great Toady! Maker of everything that's good to play, Lord of the Bits and Tamer of the Wildest Felines, could you in your infinite wisdom about the universe you have created for us, tell us if in the next release of your greatest work of all, new wars will be declared after world generation stops?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 21, 2014, 09:06:41 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 07:19:45 am

Oh Great Toady! Maker of everything that's good to play, Lord of the Bits and Tamer of the Wildest Felines, could you in your infinite wisdom about the universe you have created for us, tell us if in the next release of your greatest work of all, new wars will be declared after world generation stops?

This is embarrassing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on March 21, 2014, 09:58:19 am

On topic of sort-of-wars, how do goblin leaders decide when and whom to raid?

I mean, do their thought processes go as "Our relationship with this village is terrible, let's raid it if we can." or "It's been a long time without a raid and too many goblins hang out around the tower. Let's pick some target."?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 21, 2014, 10:48:48 am

Quote from: Jiharo on March 21, 2014, 09:58:19 am

On topic of sort-of-wars, how do goblin leaders decide when and whom to raid?

I mean, do their thought processes go as "Our relationship with this village is terrible, let's raid it if we can." or "It's been a long time without a raid and too many goblins hang out around the tower. Let's pick some target."?

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

The presence of moving armies on the world map during play also raises tactical and strategic concerns about the placement of forts. How do hostile civs target each other's sites for attack? Could an "outpost" fort placed between a metropolitan fort and a necromancer tower or dark fortress divert attacks away from the larger fort? Will attack frequency and strength be reflected by proximity? (apart from the 20-tile necromancer tower "attack radius")

There's nothing interesting about the targeting at this point, and since human sites are the targets, your fort placement doesn't enter into it.  I haven't tried to do anything tactical or put much thought into the targeting because there are no army fights and no supplies/economics.  We're just starting with some stuff to get the ball rolling and it'll eventually make more sense.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on March 21, 2014, 10:52:17 am

Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 21, 2014, 11:01:55 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 21, 2014, 09:06:41 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 07:19:45 am

Oh Great Toady! Maker of everything that's good to play, Lord of the Bits and Tamer of the Wildest Felines, could you in your infinite wisdom about the universe you have created for us, tell us if in the next release of your greatest work of all, new wars will be declared after world generation stops?

This is embarrassing.

He says it in a silly and slightly embarrassing way, yes, but he does have a good question: Will new wars be declared after the initial worldgen stops.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 21, 2014, 12:10:27 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 21, 2014, 09:06:41 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 07:19:45 am

Oh Great Toady! Maker of everything that's good to play, Lord of the Bits and Tamer of the Wildest Felines, could you in your infinite wisdom about the universe you have created for us, tell us if in the next release of your greatest work of all, new wars will be declared after world generation stops?

This is embarrassing.

This is amusing, and tame.  Have you never consulted the Internet Oracle?  LordBaal is unlikely to be ZOTted, and Toady is unlikely to demand that LordBaal personally lead the charge against the goblins' new scratchy and hissy cat-a-pult.  Other than that, the quest for answers about the mysteries of dwarven lives does have similarities. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 04:01:19 pm

Bah Footkerchief! Your lack of faith and respect on the Toady shall not pass unattended for long, for his rage and vengefulness are bound by no limits beyond those of the 32 bits! Beware!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 21, 2014, 04:47:41 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 04:01:19 pm

Bah Footkerchief! Your lack of faith and respect on the Toady shall not pass unattended for long, for his rage and vengefulness are bound by no limits beyond those of the 32 bits! Beware!

This, however, is embarrassing.

"Let us maintain our chill composure."

Also, respect Footkerchief.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 21, 2014, 04:51:33 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 04:01:19 pm

Bah Footkerchief! Your lack of faith and respect on the Toady shall not pass unattended for long, for his rage and vengefulness are bound by no limits beyond those of the 32 bits! Beware!

And the single core.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on March 21, 2014, 05:32:50 pm

Quote from: catenate on March 21, 2014, 04:47:41 pm

Also, respect Footkerchief.

Inb4 Footkerchiev heresy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 21, 2014, 06:14:50 pm

 ;D
Hehehehe that's what happens when I have too much free time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 22, 2014, 10:27:49 am

I personally have a good deal of respect for Footkerchief. More for Toady, of course, and while it seems very much like me to worship him in jest... I don't think this is the thread for it. We could make a thread for it, though, I suppose... lol

And now, less off-topic.
Will there be tags to make creatures easier/harder/impossible to smell? (such as [STRONG_ODOR], [WEAK_ODOR], [NOT_SMELLABLE], for creatures such as dogs, lions, and the "amethyst man", respectively)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 22, 2014, 02:22:52 pm

There's isn't one already? Meh, I think about taking a laugh or two from Toady and anyone reading the question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Shinziril on March 22, 2014, 06:19:19 pm

Quote from: Toady One

there are giant mushrooms now that seem to work their way into everything

I suspect that's realistic, if unhelpful.  Perhaps there needs to be code for tree-chopping (or mushroom-chopping, as it were) to keep the trade routes clear.  I'm sure Toady will figure something out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 22, 2014, 06:33:22 pm

I remember when Toady first implemented the tunnels that I tried several times to reach different moutainhomes just by walking through them, but there were always some problem with them that made them impassable, usually related to bridges. It was fun though, as they were populated by underground denizens. I hope he fixes them this time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 22, 2014, 06:47:32 pm

Quote from: Shinziril on March 22, 2014, 06:19:19 pm

Quote from: Toady One

there are giant mushrooms now that seem to work their way into everything

I suspect that's realistic, if unhelpful.  Perhaps there needs to be code for tree-chopping (or mushroom-chopping, as it were) to keep the trade routes clear.  I'm sure Toady will figure something out.

I suspect he is running into that problem.

Hope he fixes the thing with subterranean tree density just increasing and increasing because it'll end up choked with subterranean trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 22, 2014, 06:52:11 pm

I like this thread. The suggestions are so subtle  ;D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on March 22, 2014, 07:16:00 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Recent update stuff

So does this mean that brokers will actually do their job when requested now instead of waiting till the last moment?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 22, 2014, 08:28:57 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on March 22, 2014, 07:16:00 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Recent update stuff

So does this mean that brokers will actually do their job when requested now instead of waiting till the last moment?

If you mean this, it's referring to the spawning of brokers in world sites, and has no bearing on Fortress Mode brokers:

Quote from: devlog

Tunnel trade runs haven't been going smoothly, but I found an old buried error in the 3D map code that was causing all the cave dragons and water to sneak into the central fortress up-down column, and various other problems besides, so that's good, anyway. I also had to play with world gen a bit to get brokers to show up at all since it wasn't doing unimportant positions for sites (as it makes too many functionary historical figures throughout history that way). Map bugs are always time-consuming (more-so because there are giant mushrooms now that seem to work their way into everything), but we should be getting away from them as we move past this item, since none of the other issues involve maps. I have to have a successful depot run first though. Back to it!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on March 22, 2014, 08:29:48 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on March 22, 2014, 07:16:00 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Recent update stuff

So does this mean that brokers will actually do their job when requested now instead of waiting till the last moment?

That is a job priorities thing, which is not in for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on March 22, 2014, 10:07:22 pm

Anyone got a clue on how smelling will be observed?

Will it be like a message, i.e.

"You smell a rotting corpse!"

or will it be an active thing, like you hit a button to see what you smell, or perhaps there would be a tile tinge based on smells?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on March 22, 2014, 10:31:58 pm

Tile tinges will make the map messy so probably not  that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 23, 2014, 05:41:41 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on March 22, 2014, 10:07:22 pm

Anyone got a clue on how smelling will be observed?

Will it be like a message, i.e.

"You smell a rotting corpse!"

or will it be an active thing, like you hit a button to see what you smell, or perhaps there would be a tile tinge based on smells?

I'm pretty certain it'll be text only for now. Once there are scent-based trails, I guess there'll be an option to switch to a scent-based display, similar to the sound display while sneaking. Perhaps there'll be some sort of ! or S tile to notify that you smell something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 23, 2014, 08:08:58 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on March 22, 2014, 10:07:22 pm

Anyone got a clue on how smelling will be observed?

Will it be like a message, i.e.

"You smell a rotting corpse!"

or will it be an active thing, like you hit a button to see what you smell, or perhaps there would be a tile tinge based on smells?

The rotting elf corpse wafts the cheesemaker in the face and the severed part sails off in an arc!
Urist McCheesemaker has been struck down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on March 23, 2014, 10:29:27 am

I got the impression that smelled creatures will be seen on the map just like seen creatures, except that they'll appear in the gray part of the map.

Quote from: Talvieno on March 23, 2014, 08:08:58 am

The rotting elf corpse wafts the cheesemaker in the face and the severed part sails off in an arc!
Urist McCheesemaker has been struck down.

You'd think being a cheesemaker would make him used to foul smells.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 23, 2014, 12:50:33 pm

Also in relation to the tunnels, will there be soldiers stationed along the length, or enemies polluting it (Bandits, goblins, kobolds, etc.). Or will there simply be an uninhabited tunnel?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 23, 2014, 01:17:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Pretty sure that a strong no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 23, 2014, 02:02:43 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2014, 01:17:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Pretty sure that a strong no.

Leaving, on the other hand.... Either way, the depot run seems to be an adventure mode test given everything Toady said - he was talking about brokers missing from worldgen fortresses, and using a dwarven adventurer to do the depot run. I'm not quite sure what the depot run would be, to be honest, though. Going from fortress depot to fortress depot via deep site depots and making sure each is reachable and ready to trade, I guess?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 02:05:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2014, 01:17:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Pretty sure that a strong no.

I thought they did sometimes. Maybe I'm thinking of the liason? The caravans do leave via the underground if you give them that option.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 23, 2014, 02:34:27 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 02:05:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2014, 01:17:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Pretty sure that a strong no.

I thought they did sometimes. Maybe I'm thinking of the liason? The caravans do leave via the underground if you give them that option.

I've never seen anything besides hostile creatures come in from the caverns, ever. You can force caravans through the caverns, though, and it can be an interesting and fun way to get rid of any forgotten beasts you have down there, if you have way for them to get that far... and a method of keeping said forgotten beast occupied until the caravan arrives.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 02:52:10 pm

I might have had a liason arrive in the first cavern level once, but I'm not 100% sure on that. They have left via the caverns a number of times though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 24, 2014, 12:53:14 am

Long devlog is long.
And it's looking glorious. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 24, 2014, 01:20:49 am

Now I'm wondering if the gremlin calling for help was a general feature, or a specific tool gremlins have to lure travelers off the path.

...but I don't actually want Toady to answer that because not knowing is more fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 24, 2014, 01:55:23 am

Re: devlog: really excited to see the beginnings of a richer Adv. Mode experience.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Plancky on March 24, 2014, 02:29:09 am

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 02:05:05 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 23, 2014, 01:17:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 23, 2014, 01:01:00 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 23, 2014, 12:46:58 pm

“I have to do a successful depot run first” with regards to the latest devlog, does that mean dwarven traders will now come through caverns or tunnels to our fortresses?

Don't they already do that sometimes? At least the packanimal part of the caravan, not sure about the wagons.

Pretty sure that a strong no.

I thought they did sometimes. Maybe I'm thinking of the liason? The caravans do leave via the underground if you give them that option.

I have had elven caravans leave through the 1st level of the cavern before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 24, 2014, 02:34:17 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 24, 2014, 01:55:23 am

Re: devlog: really excited to see the beginnings of a richer Adv. Mode experience.

Especially now that the caverns stay populated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 24, 2014, 03:17:20 am

Oh ho, so the old promises in the Gorlak prefstrings may be nearing fruition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 24, 2014, 03:36:27 am

Quote from: DG on March 24, 2014, 03:17:20 am

Oh ho, so the old promises in the Gorlak prefstrings may be nearing fruition.

It didn't sound like the conversation was particularly stimulating, guidance is another matter entirely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 24, 2014, 04:46:39 am

Will travelers use the tunnels to travel between the dwarven sites as they use the above ground roads?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Johuotar on March 24, 2014, 07:04:51 am

Well the new devpost was pretty cool, adventuring underground has always been matter with potential. Its nice to have it more fleshed out. This is becoming quite large release now, whats its been, well over a year atleast from the last release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 24, 2014, 07:54:54 am

That dev log almost turned this Monday into something as awesome as a Friday.

My white-hot passion for Mondays will become a little dull... for this particular Monday only.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 24, 2014, 07:55:49 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 24, 2014, 07:54:54 am

That dev log almost turned this Monday into something as awesome as a Friday.

That's getting sigged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 24, 2014, 08:06:13 am

Great devlog post.  *reenters pensive trance*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 24, 2014, 11:52:15 am

Quote from: smjjames on March 24, 2014, 03:36:27 am

Quote from: DG on March 24, 2014, 03:17:20 am

Oh ho, so the old promises in the Gorlak prefstrings may be nearing fruition.

It didn't sound like the conversation was particularly stimulating, guidance is another matter entirely.

Similarly Uninitiated!

   [PREFSTRING:impressive tusks] [PREFSTRING:stimulating conversation] [PREFSTRING:helpful guidance]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 24, 2014, 12:54:52 pm

Quote from: Johuotar on March 24, 2014, 07:04:51 am

Well the new devpost was pretty cool, adventuring underground has always been matter with potential. Its nice to have it more fleshed out. This is becoming quite large release now, whats its been, well over a year atleast from the last release.

1 year, 9 months, 20 days.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 24, 2014, 12:58:30 pm

But how many hours, minutes and seconds?
Edit: About 6:57:13.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Bastard of France on March 24, 2014, 04:04:42 pm

Nice to see someone is keeping count

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: My Name is Immaterial on March 24, 2014, 04:15:46 pm

It's a simple calculation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on March 24, 2014, 05:37:11 pm

Toady, In a devlog a while ago you mentioned that large creatures look ridiculous on a single tile compared to the new multi tile trees.  How do you intend to implement multi tile creatures, if ever, for example for a collosus will we have four Cs in a square or something like that?  or is this the kind of thing that is in the unimaginably distant future and hasn't been decided?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 24, 2014, 05:57:09 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 05:37:11 pm

Toady, In a devlog a while ago you mentioned that large creatures look ridiculous on a single tile compared to the new multi tile trees.  How do you intend to implement multi tile creatures, if ever, for example for a collosus will we have four Cs in a square or something like that?  or is this the kind of thing that is in the unimaginably distant future and hasn't been decided?

Yeah, that's almost definitely too far away for Toady to have decided already. He'd probably want to avoid the block of Cs, though, I imagine, to prevent people from thinking it's four creatures, but whether that's possible at the time is another question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 24, 2014, 06:16:44 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on March 24, 2014, 05:57:09 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 05:37:11 pm

Toady, In a devlog a while ago you mentioned that large creatures look ridiculous on a single tile compared to the new multi tile trees.  How do you intend to implement multi tile creatures, if ever, for example for a collosus will we have four Cs in a square or something like that?  or is this the kind of thing that is in the unimaginably distant future and hasn't been decided?

Yeah, that's almost definitely too far away for Toady to have decided already. He'd probably want to avoid the block of Cs, though, I imagine, to prevent people from thinking it's four creatures, but whether that's possible at the time is another question.

The fundamental reason this question may be never solved is because of the way pathfinding works within the game. I recall Toady saying that multitile creatures could need a complete rewriting of the pathfinding to work properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 24, 2014, 06:53:09 pm

I think we can be fairly certain a complete pathfinding rewrite is coming at some point regardless. There are a lot more planned features than just multi-tile creatures that needs it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 24, 2014, 07:06:21 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 05:37:11 pm

Toady, In a devlog a while ago you mentioned that large creatures look ridiculous on a single tile compared to the new multi tile trees.  How do you intend to implement multi tile creatures, if ever, for example for a collosus will we have four Cs in a square or something like that?  or is this the kind of thing that is in the unimaginably distant future and hasn't been decided?

It's not planned for anytime soon:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   Right. Well, I have a technical question here; 'How exactly long, wide and tall is a tile in Dwarf Fortress? Are they cubes?'; this is from Lonewolf.
Toady:   What the traditional answer is [is] that they're not so big that a dwarf doesn't have to crawl under another dwarf to get through a corridor but at the same time they're big enough to hold a thousand dragons as long as nine hundred and ninety nine of them are lying down. On the other hand it's a serious question because so much would ride on giving an answer; that's why I haven't so far. Because the second that you give an answer the game becomes constricted and you need things to make more sense; suddenly everything needs to make sense. I'm not ready to do that; I think there's something to be said for it - something to be said for nailing that down - but it would really kind of invite things like multi-tile creatures and stuff that I'm just not ready to do. There are some good things about multi-tile creatures; I think they'd be kind of cool. But path finding would need to be changed heavily, and there'd be other issues with them. Would they be too easy to kill for example by hiding off somewhere that they can't get to and shooting at them or whatever; so they'd need to be smart enough to avoid situations like that which might be difficult. So that's kind of one of the main problems - the large creatures - why I haven't established a number yet.

[...]

Capntastic:   Will you be able to climb things in the future, like climb a dragon and punch its brain?
Toady:   There's the issue with ... It's a question of multi-tile creatures partially - which is a difficult problem - but just the fact that there's the wrestling, and even without multi-tile creatures you've got things like groundhogs that can currently jump up and bite your eyes. That's one of the problems I'm having when I was doing my groundhog tests: twenty versus a guy with a knife, who wins? If the groundhog problem is solved, which it needs to be solved - not for this release most likely but at some point - then that means that that same thing will happen to you when you're fighting a giant creature. I think it would be cool to jump up on things, beyond just Shadow of the Colossus it's a common thing in Ray Harryhausen stuff and so on. So with the large creatures I think it'd be really cool to jump up on them and climb them and swing from them and so on. It wouldn't be as dramatic visually of course as Shadow of the Colossus but it certainly would be a lot of fun.

An older quote:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=1788.msg28203#msg28203

Just having a chase routine isn't sufficient -- if the multi-tile creature chases something and manages to get around a corner, it'll then be stuck or have some very rudimentary routines to try to get out, which would be anticlimactic.  I prefer the large creatures to have brains (or at least potential brains) than extra tiles.  The main issue is path finding and how it currently handles it via connected component numberings, which really only work perfectly for creatures that move like dwarves now.  Other creatures currently work mostly okay with them, but multi-tile creatures wouldn't work at all.  I don't think it would be impossible to change this, but I don't have and have not seen any feasible ideas for handling the issue.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on March 24, 2014, 08:04:34 pm

That devlog was amazing. I feel like I must have kicked a puppy in a past life or something, to earn the punishment of living in a world where I'm not already playing this game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on March 24, 2014, 08:29:49 pm

wow thanks for all the quick answers.. I feel obliged to ask another question then, perhaps an easier one though:
when sieges are made more "interesting" and enemies can tunnel in, etc, will previously invulnerable structures (like walls) be vulnerable and if so, will the material they're made of actually have an effect on what kind of punishment they can withstand and/or for how long?  (i.e. a wooden wall lasts less time than a steel one, or a wooden wall can be destroyed with a copper axe or a troll's fists, but not a steel one?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 24, 2014, 08:52:19 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 08:29:49 pm

wow thanks for all the quick answers.. I feel obliged to ask another question then, perhaps an easier one though:
when sieges are made more "interesting" and enemies can tunnel in, etc, will previously invulnerable structures (like walls) be vulnerable and if so, will the material they're made of actually have an effect on what kind of punishment they can withstand and/or for how long?  (i.e. a wooden wall lasts less time than a steel one, or a wooden wall can be destroyed with a copper axe or a troll's fists, but not a steel one?)

Yea, that's totally planned in form or another. No time line of course, when it'll be implemented.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 24, 2014, 08:52:51 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 08:29:49 pm

wow thanks for all the quick answers.. I feel obliged to ask another question then, perhaps an easier one though:
when sieges are made more "interesting" and enemies can tunnel in, etc, will previously invulnerable structures (like walls) be vulnerable and if so, will the material they're made of actually have an effect on what kind of punishment they can withstand and/or for how long?  (i.e. a wooden wall lasts less time than a steel one, or a wooden wall can be destroyed with a copper axe or a troll's fists, but not a steel one?)

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Threetoe:   Next question is from MrWillsauce: To what extent will invaders be able to dig? Will they only be able to dig through certain z-levels, or through certain types of stone, or will certain types of invaders be able to dig to different extents?
Toady:   Well, it's hard to say exactly what's gonna happen. They should be able to affect a siege upon you that can invade a fort that is, you know, where you've just shut your doors or something silly like that and that's supposed to save you from everybody.
Threetoe:   Or throw up a brick wall or something.
Toady:   Yeah. Just something like that. Just not very impressive. At the same time it'd be very silly if the invaders could come and just sort of dig out your whole map and dig down giant like, turn your whole fortress into a quarry or whatever. And I definitely think that different races would end up having different abilities. If you got invaded by dwarves I think expecting your fortress to have new tunnels would be a very fair thing to expect. And goblins too, for that matter. The way they're shaping up they have kind of a underground tunnely nature to them whereas humans should have some things they could try to do but wouldn't necessarily involve a lot of tunneling unless you've kind of restricted yourself to the soil layers. It is odd in the sense that the timeframe is so fast that you could have a siege that lasts a whole year and in that time there could be some digging done even in real life but it's...I mean, I'm mindful of people that don't want their fortresses utterly destroyed by digging, but yeah the whole brick wall thing is just silly so...Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean we're not going to have them like making a weird sort of swiss cheese pattern out of your fortress but, if they don't cheat, and they don't know where your fortress is, they are gonna have to do a kind of exploratory tunnels all around your entrance, or whatever. So yeah, we'll have to see how that turns out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on March 24, 2014, 10:42:41 pm

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 08:29:49 pm

wow thanks for all the quick answers.. I feel obliged to ask another question then, perhaps an easier one though:
when sieges are made more "interesting" and enemies can tunnel in, etc, will previously invulnerable structures (like walls) be vulnerable and if so, will the material they're made of actually have an effect on what kind of punishment they can withstand and/or for how long?  (i.e. a wooden wall lasts less time than a steel one, or a wooden wall can be destroyed with a copper axe or a troll's fists, but not a steel one?)

Actually, there are no quotes in any Fortress Talks regarding wall vulnerability, at least none I could find. Footkerchief's answering quote is more related to digging (which is already acknowledged in the question) than to material hardness. It would be expected to have material differences between kinds of walls, as we will have (in a kind of partial way) with climbers, what with climbing smooth walls vs. rough ones. That way, siege weapons for invading armies would make sense. Also:

Quote from: Dev_Single

Req529, CONSTRUCTION WEAR, (Future): Constructions don't wear down in the same way that regular smoothed walls do.
[...]
Req554, WALLS VERSUS MAGMA, (Future): Constructed and non-constructed walls should be subject to magma. It can't just melt stone though, or the whole map will be affected (since magma currently generates its own heat).

Also, Power Goals, because they're fun.

Quote from: Dev_Single

PowerGoal5, SIEGE POWER, (Future): Your armies totally obliterate and overcome the strength of a fortified position with the power of siegecraft.
[...]
PowerGoal173, THEY ARE SENSITIVE CREATURES, (Future): The goblin child taunts the troll child on account of the troll child's large and lardy appearance. The vicious jibes continue until the troll begins to cry, but the goblin child is still not satisfied and continues poking fun. The troll child is eventually driven to anger and hurls the goblin child against a wall, breaking both the wall and the goblin.

But still, nothing really clear related to material hardness and endurance against stuff thrown at it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on March 24, 2014, 11:01:10 pm

Quote from: Valtam on March 24, 2014, 10:42:41 pm

But still, nothing really clear related to material hardness and endurance against stuff thrown at it.

aha well maybe this one will get to toady.  I had listened to the most recent DF talk (and heard that part )  but that doesn't relate at all to different material strengths, just a vague mention that walls wont be completely invincible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 25, 2014, 05:40:48 am

Quote from: neblime on March 24, 2014, 11:01:10 pm

Quote from: Valtam on March 24, 2014, 10:42:41 pm

But still, nothing really clear related to material hardness and endurance against stuff thrown at it.

aha well maybe this one will get to toady.  I had listened to the most recent DF talk (and heard that part )  but that doesn't relate at all to different material strengths, just a vague mention that walls wont be completely invincible.

Far from everything planned is listed or talked about, doesn't mean it won't happen. Personally to think that this isn't set in stone to happen already is downright silly, considering the amount of detail going into everything else in the game :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 25, 2014, 07:00:19 am

It's only logical to assume that once we get to that bridge materials will determinate the amount of damage a wall can take, or the amount of time it will hold against a ram or whatever. I expect something simple like the already implemented digging time required for soil and rock could probably do.

We'll have to wait for a few more years to see.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on March 25, 2014, 09:30:56 am

Has "time-travel", e.g playing during the times of world gen,  been ruled out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on March 25, 2014, 09:45:10 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 25, 2014, 09:30:56 am

Has "time-travel", e.g playing during the times of world gen,  been ruled out?

Strictly speaking, you (as opposed to player character) can "travel back in time" even in the current version, by generating the world using the same parameters and seed and stopping simulation earlier or picking lesser value of 'End Year'.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on March 25, 2014, 09:53:58 am

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 25, 2014, 09:30:56 am

Has "time-travel", e.g playing during the times of world gen,  been ruled out?

Yes.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_2_transcript.html

As far as timescale goes, it's hard to say again, mostly because things can work in Dwarf Fortress in a couple of ways. You either work at the timescale moving forward as slow as adventure mode and dwarf mode speed - it can go any speed as long as it's moving forward - or you can pause time. Going backward or anything like that is basically impossible without just scrapping and abstracting or whatever so, if you're talking about weird time-travel type stuff it's basically going to be impossible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 27, 2014, 06:23:52 am

I guess that we're down to 4 items now, right?
Late April-early May release looming over the horizon...Hopefully.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on March 27, 2014, 06:51:10 am

Stop torturing yourself, DD.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 27, 2014, 06:58:22 am

Quote from: DG on March 27, 2014, 06:51:10 am

Stop torturing yourself, DD.

I'm not torturing myself.
I'm just really hyped and getting slightly impatient (also bored).

Also apparently I'm DD now. 'Kay then. *shrug*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 27, 2014, 07:00:53 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 27, 2014, 06:58:22 am

Quote from: DG on March 27, 2014, 06:51:10 am

Stop torturing yourself, DD.

I'm not torturing myself.
I'm just really hyped and getting slightly impatient (also bored).

Also apparently I'm DD now. 'Kay then. *shrug*

Hey, it beats something like "D-Dizzy".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 27, 2014, 07:05:27 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 27, 2014, 07:00:53 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 27, 2014, 06:58:22 am

Quote from: DG on March 27, 2014, 06:51:10 am

Stop torturing yourself, DD.

I'm not torturing myself.
I'm just really hyped and getting slightly impatient (also bored).

Also apparently I'm DD now. 'Kay then. *shrug*

Hey, it beats something like "D-Dizzy".

Probably.
Still, I'm kinda used to people calling me Dark, but whatever, different places, different people, different standards, yadda yadda.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 27, 2014, 07:34:36 am

That seems too soon, really. I still standing on early June as the nearest estimated. I don't care, is worth waiting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 27, 2014, 08:01:54 am

Well, the debugging phase won't take too long (hopefully), since Toady will only be ironing out the most outrageous and gamebreaking bugs, leaving the rest for smaller releases soon after.
Plus he has already fixed a bunch when adding the new features, so...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 27, 2014, 08:42:55 am

Great feature about the liasons bringing news of the outside world.

I would suggest however that not only them, but every merchant should bring the news, related to their places of origin and civilizations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 27, 2014, 09:26:32 am

That would be supreme if he's able to put it there for this release. I sense a question coming.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on March 27, 2014, 09:27:26 am

This seems like a step after this release would then be using the rumors and and new to your advantage some how.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on March 27, 2014, 10:41:56 am

What possibilities will we have in Fort Mode to gather information about the outside world? Liaisons, merchants, immigrants, etc - who will tell us stuff?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on March 27, 2014, 11:16:55 am

Quote from: Helgoland on March 27, 2014, 10:41:56 am

What possibilities will we have in Fort Mode to gather information about the outside world? Liaisons, merchants, immigrants, etc - who will tell us stuff?

If I remember correctly, Toady told that (c)ivilizations-screen in fortress mode will show much more stuff about outside world than it does now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on March 27, 2014, 11:38:49 am

Quote from: Matoro on March 27, 2014, 11:16:55 am

Quote from: Helgoland on March 27, 2014, 10:41:56 am

What possibilities will we have in Fort Mode to gather information about the outside world? Liaisons, merchants, immigrants, etc - who will tell us stuff?

If I remember correctly, Toady told that (c)ivilizations-screen in fortress mode will show much more stuff about outside world than it does now.

But how will we aquire that information? It might just magically show up, but somehow I doubt that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 27, 2014, 03:06:11 pm

Quote from: Helgoland on March 27, 2014, 10:41:56 am

What possibilities will we have in Fort Mode to gather information about the outside world? Liaisons, merchants, immigrants, etc - who will tell us stuff?

It can be safely assumed that this would apply to any visitors who are willing to talk to you:

Quote

Rainseeker:   Is the goal to have news get to you, so you can be aware that this might happen to you in the next year or two, that there's been a dragon that's being laying waste to the countryside and it might come by?
Toady:   It has to update you somehow, and it's got to mesh in with what we're hoping to do with your own armies eventually, which means showing you some kind of world map or of the surroundings or whatever that you're going to be able to use to order your armies. We haven't thought about it too much but if it's going to give you, like, a snapshot of the world as you currently understand it and then the next time a merchant comes you get to update your snapshot or whatever ... then it can give you the same paragraph or a related paragraph that it gives you at the beginning of adventure mode, so that it would tell you about what's going on a little bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sinistar on March 28, 2014, 02:05:04 am

I apologize if this was discussed already, but I do not really follow this thread, I only read FotF replies made by Toady. So anyone feel free to provide an answer should they have one.

Toady! With deep sites/hill settlements becoming a thing, official positions being more realistically held, armies slowly running around and liaisons spreading information, in which arc or at what point do you foresee migrant rework is coming? Right now, it's still to easy to flood your fortress with new arrivals relatively early on if you only let your original 7 be moderately productive. When will migrants start acknowledging that while your fort has beautiful smooth interior walls and decently big meeting hall, so does other (NPC) forts, i.e., when will more than a raw fortress wealth vs. death-per-year-count be taken into account when game decides to send migrants? And when do hill dwarfs come into play?
Note, I'm not asking you about some fixed timescale, just your opinion or rather vision on this thing. Thanks!

(also - yay, my first FotF question!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 28, 2014, 10:00:09 am

Quote from: Sinistar on March 28, 2014, 02:05:04 am

I apologize if this was discussed already, but I do not really follow this thread, I only read FotF replies made by Toady. So anyone feel free to provide an answer should they have one.

Toady! With deep sites/hill settlements becoming a thing, official positions being more realistically held, armies slowly running around and liaisons spreading information, in which arc or at what point do you foresee migrant rework is coming? Right now, it's still to easy to flood your fortress with new arrivals relatively early on if you only let your original 7 be moderately productive. When will migrants start acknowledging that while your fort has beautiful smooth interior walls and decently big meeting hall, so does other (NPC) forts, i.e., when will more than a raw fortress wealth vs. death-per-year-count be taken into account when game decides to send migrants? And when do hill dwarfs come into play?
Note, I'm not asking you about some fixed timescale, just your opinion or rather vision on this thing. Thanks!

(also - yay, my first FotF question!)

The game actually already takes the value of your fortress and death-per-year into account. If you do poorly enough, you'll receive a "no migrants this season" message. It isn't absolute, however, and, in addition, the first two migrant waves are hard-coded. From the third wave and beyond, the number of migrants you receive is loosely correlated to the two variables you mentioned.

As far as I know, hill dwarves will exist in the next version, but you won't get to interact with them in any meaningful way during Fortress Mode until the version after. Toady indirectly answers it here:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

I suspect when we get to the deep dwarves under-outside of your fortress map (which'll very likely happen at the same time that the hill dwarves matter, and that's not too far away), the game will come to understand how to use the tunnels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 28, 2014, 11:13:07 am

He's asking when/if anything beyond those two points are going to be taking into account. For example, a fortress that might be quite rich and has no deaths but is still not a desirable place because something else, like being surrounded by swamps full of zombies or something like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uronym on March 28, 2014, 11:42:18 am

Or when we will be able to tell the migrants that we are not yet ready for them, despite having the best dining hall in the world.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 28, 2014, 11:46:54 am

Or perhaps limit the number at a time and possibly limit the number of children. Also, I've noticed that a lot of the time (in my long running fort at least), the children are bugged since they actually have adult ages, but are still children until their next birthday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jiharo on March 28, 2014, 12:08:37 pm

Quote from: Sinistar on March 28, 2014, 02:05:04 am

...

Not really an answer but seems sort of relevant:

Quote from: DF Talk

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...your fortress in general is a place where the population is increasing.

So, if you add things like hill dwarves, it's not just going to be population increases from like seven dwarves to twenty dwarves to forty dwarves, where you still ultimately aren't a player in the world, to where you'd actually be developing hill dwarf populations up into the thousands and that would make you, within the population of the world - which has cities that don't get bigger than eight thousand or so right now - you would be able to draw a military that could have an impact on the world and you could change your goal to, like, 'I want to destroy the goblin civilization finally'. I'm not sure if the difficulty increases necessarily, but the scope of the challenges increases as you get a larger population, and that would become probably the main measure of the challenges. That seems like a gamey thing, but it's also kind of a natural result of the simulation; it is a little strange that your seven dwarves automatically attract so much attention, you know, why do they become the capital almost inevitably if you're working hard, when everyone else should be working hard too and there's a preexisting capital, right, so why does it get replaced? That's one of the big concessions to gaminess that exists in the current version, even, and it's always going to be like that, where the simulation doesn't actually control what's going on, you do have to think about it as a game, ultimately, because people have to play it. I think that the point that those guys brought up is an important one, that we are going to have a lot of the game progression mechanics things, but it should all flow naturally through the simulation, to the point where it doesn't really disturb it at all, for people who are just playing to see a story or to build something.

Explosive attraction of player's fortress to migrants also seems to be partially caused by the fact that there's such a small number of them starting out. We don't know yet how big are the groups that AI uses for foundation of new sites yet. It is probably safe to think that when we get to the starting scenarios with bigger beginning population, migration system will see some changes.

Quote from: DF Talk

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There could still be a core seven dwarves, if we want to stick with that out of a sense of tradition, but there are going to be scenarios where you start with a bunch of hill dwarves outside of your civilization, and starting with a larger military group - especially to reclaim a really dangerous fort - seems as cool to me as back when we had it before.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 28, 2014, 01:21:34 pm

A mostly hypothetical question. On the next release what's going to happen if the dwarfs go the dinosaur way and get extinct and you try to embark on a fortress? Probably the same thing that happens in the current release (I don't really know what happens in the current release under that circumstances). But as now the world is starting to wake up, could it be possible for the dwarves from one last fort funded by you and then retired to repopulate the world with more dwarves while you go and play as an adventurer? Or no new places get colonized after world gen right now?
I know, it's a whimsical question, I just happen to be bored and waiting for the clock to go home right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 28, 2014, 01:28:09 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on March 28, 2014, 01:21:34 pm

A mostly hypothetical question. On the next release what's going to happen if the dwarfs go the dinosaur way and get extinct and you try to embark on a fortress? Probably the same thing that happens in the current release (I don't really know what happens in the current release under that circumstances). But as know the world is starting to wake up, could it be possible for the dwarves from one last fort funded by you and then retired while you go and play as an adventurer, or no new places get colonized after world gen right now?
I know, it's a whimsical question, I just happen to be bored and waiting for the clock to go home right now.

If all dwarves go extinct, it just aborts the worldgen and tries again unless you have other races set to be fortress playable. I think anyway.

Toady one has said that you can embark on NPC forts, including abandoned ones, so yes you can embark on the ruins of an NPC fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 28, 2014, 01:49:30 pm

Quote from: smjjames on March 28, 2014, 01:28:09 pm

If all dwarves go extinct, it just aborts the worldgen and tries again unless you have other races set to be fortress playable. I think anyway.

Nah, the game allows dwarves to go extinct. It just makes sure that a fortress-playable civ exists at the start by default.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 28, 2014, 02:10:36 pm

Edited the question because the last part was spelled like a drunken 5 years old idiot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 28, 2014, 08:13:32 pm

This has probably already been asked, but due to endless frustration while building an aboveground fort, I must know the answer.

Will the bug where dwarves stand on top of the wall they're trying to build be fixed any time soon?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 28, 2014, 08:34:34 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 28, 2014, 08:13:32 pm

Will the bug where dwarves stand on top of the wall they're trying to build be fixed any time soon?

There's almost never a timeline for fixing specific bugs.  Here's the bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5991) -- you can monitor it to see any activity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 28, 2014, 08:50:33 pm

Will the "anything born in the fort doesn't grow to full size" bug only affect the current fort, all player forts, or all forts in general...?

The new release will undoubtedly be awesome, but I'll probably wait until whenever that particular bug is squashed to try it out...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 28, 2014, 08:52:01 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on March 28, 2014, 08:50:33 pm

Will the "anything born in the fort doesn't grow to full size" bug only affect the current fort, all player forts, or all forts in general...?

The new release will undoubtedly be awesome, but I'll probably wait until whenever that particular bug is squashed to try it out...

There is a DFHack script that fixes that bug currently, but I don't know when the bug will be truly fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 28, 2014, 09:29:13 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 28, 2014, 08:34:34 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 28, 2014, 08:13:32 pm

Will the bug where dwarves stand on top of the wall they're trying to build be fixed any time soon?

There's almost never a timeline for fixing specific bugs.  Here's the bug report (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5991) -- you can monitor it to see any activity.

That's a shame. Thanks for the link.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on March 28, 2014, 11:40:07 pm

I thought ToadyOne made improvement on dorf logic where they stand for when doing constructs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 29, 2014, 08:09:08 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 28, 2014, 11:40:07 pm

I thought ToadyOne made improvement on dorf logic where they stand for when doing constructs?

Yeah, they no longer wall themselves into places from which they can't get out. Sadly, this brought about the bug I'm complaining about.

It's not really that big, either, just a bit of job cancellation spam. But I hate it all the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 29, 2014, 09:07:36 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 29, 2014, 08:09:08 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 28, 2014, 11:40:07 pm

I thought ToadyOne made improvement on dorf logic where they stand for when doing constructs?

Yeah, they no longer wall themselves into places from which they can't get out. Sadly, this brought about the bug I'm complaining about.

It's not really that big, either, just a bit of job cancellation spam. But I hate it all the same.

Deleting said unbuilt wall's task and then re-creating it usually fixes it. Just select, hit x, and then place a new one down.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 29, 2014, 09:15:06 am

That tends to always happen when you either directly build on a ramp, or build in a spot where there's a downward ramp immediately next to where you're building, and the dorf tries to build the wall from the ramp. For that reason, you should always either remove the ramps before making the wall, or make them all restricted traffic.
I learned this from making a 20 level high tapered and curved wall. Well, it's supposed to be 25, but it's not finished.
Also, once a dwarf tries to make the wall from the wrong spot, it will never try to make it from anywhere else, so once they get stuck, you have to re-designate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on March 29, 2014, 09:23:33 am

Japa explained it better - just redesignate. It can also happen from just building a straight wall, though. I've had it happen on rare occasions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 29, 2014, 10:18:06 am

Especially if there are lots of dwarves building the wall at once.

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 29, 2014, 08:09:08 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on March 28, 2014, 11:40:07 pm

I thought ToadyOne made improvement on dorf logic where they stand for when doing constructs?

Yeah, they no longer wall themselves into places from which they can't get out. Sadly, this brought about the bug I'm complaining about.

It's not really that big, either, just a bit of job cancellation spam. But I hate it all the same.

I've had dwarves wall themselves in a few times, usually happens by accident when there are lots of dwarves building since they still think it's ok to build on the inside portion and not realize that it's about to get closed off completely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rip0k on March 29, 2014, 04:16:26 pm

Seems to me that it happens when they drop the material on that spot and go somewhere. Afterwards they cannot resume to build cos' when they pick designated material they stand on the place to build it and block it with themselves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 30, 2014, 08:12:19 am

Wait a second... so now a dwarf can't wall himself at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on March 30, 2014, 08:15:40 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 30, 2014, 08:12:19 am

Wait a second... so now a dwarf can't wall himself at all?

I'm sure they'll find a way, somehow

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2014, 08:16:54 am

Quote from: Witty on March 30, 2014, 08:15:40 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 30, 2014, 08:12:19 am

Wait a second... so now a dwarf can't wall himself at all?

I'm sure they'll find a way, somehow

Can I sig this? (This thread, and indeed the whole forum, is getting far too sig-worthy...)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on March 30, 2014, 09:01:44 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on March 30, 2014, 08:16:54 am

Quote from: Witty on March 30, 2014, 08:15:40 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 30, 2014, 08:12:19 am

Wait a second... so now a dwarf can't wall himself at all?

I'm sure they'll find a way, somehow

Can I sig this? (This thread, and indeed the whole forum, is getting far too sig-worthy...)

Sure

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Starwing on March 30, 2014, 05:21:43 pm

Lets say we make Necromancer Adventurer, claim site for ourselves and then retire him there. Will there be necromancer sieges in fortress mode if we embark too close to that site?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 30, 2014, 07:52:10 pm

That new plant list is amazing! I really love how international it is. The world is going to feel so much bigger if some villages grow tomatillos and some have chicory instead of the same prickle berries and strawberries everywhere.

Are there going to be new underground plants or mushrooms?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 30, 2014, 08:36:26 pm

I was going to ask if we lost the fantasy plants, then I realized that it said "list of new plants" instead of "new list of plants".  Hello there significant word order.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillerClowns on March 30, 2014, 09:37:46 pm

Great list. Shame there's no agave, but I'm sure the modders will deal with that. And on a related and dwarfy note:

How many of the new plants will dwarves be able to brew?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on March 30, 2014, 10:19:40 pm

Quote from: New plant list

hemp (Cannabis sativa)

(http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2014/1/7/its-happening-ron-paul-gif.gif)

Will our dwarves ever get to blaze it all day erryday?

Less flippantly, now that there will be more millable grains available, will we be able to do more things with flours, like making real bread?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 30, 2014, 10:35:09 pm

No, those are elves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on March 30, 2014, 10:39:27 pm

That'd be unpleasant, since sativa ain't the one you smoke. Trust me, I'm from Washington.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on March 30, 2014, 10:59:11 pm

Quote from: Putnam on March 30, 2014, 10:39:27 pm

That'd be unpleasant, since sativa ain't the one you smoke. Trust me, I'm from Washington.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_sativa) says otherwise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Oh hey, theres cotton in the list.

*reads list more*

Durian!

*reads more*

Grapes, Dwarven Chardonnay anyone?

*reads more*

Papyrus reeds, cool.

*reads more*

Lots of fruits I've never heard of, or seen before.

 A couple questions:

Some of the new plants such as cotton, hemp (yes the fibers of marjuana were used), flax, and jute suggest new textiles, so, is it true that we will have new fabrics?

I see papyrus in there, will we be able to make paper right now? Though I guess modders could incorporate Papyrus into some sort of reaction recipe and make paper out of that. It does suggest being able to make paper later on.

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

Now that we have that smell thing, I don't suppose Durian will have that intense smell that it has? Never smelled it myself in real life though, but I've heard of it.

Edit: I notice that coconuts aren't in, yet you mentioned them in a devlog last july, what happened to those?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

I'm not really understanding the name choices here.

Goya is called "bitter melon", which is more a description than a name and not something I've ever heard it called, while starfruit is called "carambola" which is not as cool a name and also something I've never heard it called in English.  What is the naming convention here? Whatever it is, it makes no sense.

Also, I'm a bit surprised cacao didn't make the cut, since coffee and tea were in without their mechanics.

What kind of thought process went into choosing plants for inclusion? What about the names you chose to call them in DF?

Quote from: Putnam on March 30, 2014, 10:39:27 pm

That'd be unpleasant, since sativa ain't the one you smoke. Trust me, I'm from Washington.

It's not the only one you smoke, but you can definitely smoke it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on March 31, 2014, 12:09:21 am

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Some of the new plants such as cotton, hemp (yes the fibers of marjuana were used), flax, and jute suggest new textiles, so, is it true that we will have new fabrics?

I see papyrus in there, will we be able to make paper right now? Though I guess modders could incorporate Papyrus into some sort of reaction recipe and make paper out of that. It does suggest being able to make paper later on.

Whatever can be plugged into a current production method is probably reasonable to expect. Undone things in the devlog (coffee, tea, tapioca) imply new cooking methods that would need to be added.

Quote

Edit: I notice that coconuts aren't in, yet you mentioned them in a devlog last july, what happened to those?

The wood template for the current palm tree (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Palm) is based on the red/coconut palm, so coconuts likely got added there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 31, 2014, 12:57:28 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

Also, I'm a bit surprised cacao didn't make the cut, since coffee and tea were in without their mechanics.

Cacao is already in the game, as a tree in broadleaf and tropical forests.  Unfortunately, I had to change it from a tree to a shrub in my mod, to make its (mod-added) cacao pods harvestable.

Could we have cacao as a shrub instead of a plant, so we can harvest cacao pods from it, without modding the basic plant type to be a shrub, and therefore harvestable?  OR, are trees now harvestable [EDIT: as a source of food or other material, not just wood] (as another example, coconuts from palms?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 31, 2014, 01:02:45 am

Trees are harvestable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 31, 2014, 01:38:18 am

Quote from: Japa on March 31, 2014, 01:02:45 am

Trees are harvestable.

Were they before 0.34?  I seem to remember having a problem designating a product of harvesting a tree.  If they were not harvestable before 0.34, then I just didn't check again when 0.34 came out.  If they were harvestable before 0.34, then I just completely dropped the ball.

EDIT: Actually, for my purposes, the wiki disagrees with you:

Quote

Trees are currently not a source of food or other material, so it is not possible to harvest mangoes, maple syrup, nuts, rubber, etc.^v0.34.11

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on March 31, 2014, 01:47:33 am

I meant that they're harvestable in DF2014

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on March 31, 2014, 01:52:31 am

Quote from: Japa on March 31, 2014, 01:47:33 am

I meant that they're harvestable in DF2014

This is great!  My mod won't need to change cacao's type of plant, when I update it to DF2014.  Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on March 31, 2014, 05:32:09 am

Maybe there will be more dwarfy plants next. or Elfy ones also.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on March 31, 2014, 05:46:50 am

That plant list looks really promising and if Toady doesn't utilize it to its full potential, I'm sure modders will.
What are we left with in regards to the finalizations anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on March 31, 2014, 06:09:24 am

Will there be any 'fantasy' plants added as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CharonM72 on March 31, 2014, 06:12:11 am

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Now that we have that smell thing, I don't suppose Durian will have that intense smell that it has? Never smelled it myself in real life though, but I've heard of it.

I've lived in China for more than a year. One of my coworkers (and for a short time, roommate) used to bring durian into work and microwave it to eat for lunch. Fortunately I was in a different room, but my other workers wouldn't stop complaining about the intense smell that you could smell even in the hallway.

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

Goya is called "bitter melon", which is more a description than a name and not something I've ever heard it called, while starfruit is called "carambola" which is not as cool a name and also something I've never heard it called in English.  What is the naming convention here? Whatever it is, it makes no sense.

Again having lived in China, I've never seen or heard of it called "goya"; "bitter melon" predominates as the translation at least there (and it's a direct cognate with the Chinese 苦瓜). My girlfriend is Hakka and her family often uses it in cooking (I'm not a fan though, haha).
I agree about the starfruit though. Never heard of "carambola".

EDIT: I also had a question: This list adds 132 new plant species, making the number of varieties over 6 times greater. Given how complicated food/drink/textile/etc. production already is, how will players (especially novices) be able to figure out just what plant does what? What will prevent players from throwing a tantrum themselves due to the sheer scope of different flora?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 31, 2014, 06:18:18 am

Quote from: CharonM72 on March 31, 2014, 06:12:11 am

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Now that we have that smell thing, I don't suppose Durian will have that intense smell that it has? Never smelled it myself in real life though, but I've heard of it.

I've lived in China for more than a year. One of my coworkers (and for a short time, roommate) used to bring durian into work and microwave it to eat for lunch. Fortunately I was in a different room, but my other workers wouldn't stop complaining about the intense smell that you could smell even in the hallway.

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

Goya is called "bitter melon", which is more a description than a name and not something I've ever heard it called, while starfruit is called "carambola" which is not as cool a name and also something I've never heard it called in English.  What is the naming convention here? Whatever it is, it makes no sense.

Again having lived in China, I've never seen or heard of it called "goya"; "bitter melon" predominates as the translation at least there (and it's a direct cognate with the Chinese 苦瓜). My girlfriend is Hakka and her family often uses it in cooking (I'm not a fan though, haha).
I agree about the starfruit though. Never heard of "carambola".

It is in its scientific name.  Carambola also is the name its is known in many countries.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dorf on March 31, 2014, 06:39:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on March 31, 2014, 06:18:18 am

Quote from: CharonM72 on March 31, 2014, 06:12:11 am

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

Goya is called "bitter melon", which is more a description than a name and not something I've ever heard it called, while starfruit is called "carambola" which is not as cool a name and also something I've never heard it called in English.  What is the naming convention here? Whatever it is, it makes no sense.

Again having lived in China, I've never seen or heard of it called "goya"; "bitter melon" predominates as the translation at least there (and it's a direct cognate with the Chinese 苦瓜). My girlfriend is Hakka and her family often uses it in cooking (I'm not a fan though, haha).
I agree about the starfruit though. Never heard of "carambola".

It is in its scientific name.  Carambola also is the name its is known in many countries.

I live in central EU where we use "carambola" and "bitter melon" variant of the names, and have never heard of the other variants.
Either way, it probably doesn't matter that much, since most people have never heard of many plants in DF and will likely have to research them regardless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 31, 2014, 06:53:19 am

Quote from: Helgoland on March 31, 2014, 06:09:24 am

Will there be any 'fantasy' plants added as well?

Quote from: Trif on March 30, 2014, 07:52:10 pm

Are there going to be new underground plants or mushrooms?

Toady has mentioned a few times that only real plants will be new for this release. Not sure about real-world mushrooms - there might be some among the garden plants/flowers Toady has mentioned, as those don't seem to be on the list?

Quote from: DarkDXZ on March 31, 2014, 05:46:50 am

That plant list looks really promising and if Toady doesn't utilize it to its full potential, I'm sure modders will.
What are we left with in regards to the finalizations anyway?

Adventure mode information screen, villagers acknowledging god/vampire rulers, and guard/intruder checks. Then the pre-release bugfixing.

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Some of the new plants such as cotton, hemp (yes the fibers of marjuana were used), flax, and jute suggest new textiles, so, is it true that we will have new fabrics?

I see papyrus in there, will we be able to make paper right now? Though I guess modders could incorporate Papyrus into some sort of reaction recipe and make paper out of that. It does suggest being able to make paper later on.

In general, if the industry already exists, then the new plants will likely be used accordingly, otherwise likely not (see Toady's mention of lacking coffee and tea drinks). So, the textile plants should be usable for textiles, but papyrus shouldn't.

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Now that we have that smell thing, I don't suppose Durian will have that intense smell that it has? Never smelled it myself in real life though, but I've heard of it.

We've only heard of creatures smelling, and we've been told that ambient smells aren't in (or at least mostly).

Quote from: smjjames on March 30, 2014, 11:36:44 pm

Edit: I notice that coconuts aren't in, yet you mentioned them in a devlog last july, what happened to those?

As mentioned earlier, the existing palms are the cocos palms. Everyone should remember that we have a good number of real-world trees (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Tree) already.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 31, 2014, 07:22:30 am

Well, in theory you could make coffee and tea in a brewery. The strong flavor of a Dwarven Irish coffee for sure would become the sensation among tree-hugging hippies, humans, demons and anything between. Dwarfbucks sprawling all over the world now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on March 31, 2014, 07:40:15 am

With the addition of plants used in paper-making, will the types of paper made from animal skin also be an option?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 31, 2014, 08:22:29 am

Quote from: Starwing on March 30, 2014, 05:21:43 pm

Lets say we make Necromancer Adventurer, claim site for ourselves and then retire him there. Will there be necromancer sieges in fortress mode if we embark too close to that site?

Necromancer sieges require that the necromancer gather zombies and build their tower, and that's still a worldgen-only thing.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on March 30, 2014, 10:19:40 pm

Will our dwarves ever get to blaze it all day erryday?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Bloat43, THINGS TO SMOKE, (Future): Things to smoke, pipes, smoke circle events and so on.

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 12:07:22 am

Goya is called "bitter melon", which is more a description than a name and not something I've ever heard it called, while starfruit is called "carambola" which is not as cool a name and also something I've never heard it called in English.  What is the naming convention here? Whatever it is, it makes no sense.

"Bitter melon" is a label often seen at Chinese restaurants, FWIW.

Quote from: PigtailLlama on March 31, 2014, 07:40:15 am

With the addition of plants used in paper-making, will the types of paper made from animal skin also be an option?

Not yet, but it's planned:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Core100, NEW LANGUAGE ITEMS, (Future): Parchment, vellum and their buddies then books, songs, poems... all for your entertainment (and horror, if there are random poems). Requires Core99.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on March 31, 2014, 10:09:47 am

What is long yam, and does it go well with long pork?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 31, 2014, 11:19:56 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 31, 2014, 10:09:47 am

What is long yam, and does it go well with long pork?

Let me google that for you will ya? (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=long+yan+fruit)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 11:55:20 am

Quote from: LordBaal on March 31, 2014, 11:19:56 am

Quote from: PTTG?? on March 31, 2014, 10:09:47 am

What is long yam, and does it go well with long pork?

Let me google that for you will ya? (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=long+yan+fruit)

Good job being sanctimonious and then getting it wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioscorea_opposita
A longan is totally unrelated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 31, 2014, 12:33:56 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on March 31, 2014, 11:55:20 am

Good job being sanctimonious and then getting it wrong.

Thanks a lot! It's not an easy job and most of the time it goes by unappreciated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 31, 2014, 12:45:20 pm

If you want smell something rotten try Ginkgo. Ever wondered why in Europe and America primarily  male trees are "planted"? Its the smell of the female trees fruit when they rippen. These fruits/seeds produce Butyric Acid among other things.

I noticed that toady only added "useful" plants (leaving Woad and madder out which were a mayor source of blue & Red dye in the middleages). We dont have mayor "cultural flowers" like roses or tulips with this update.

The List is a very good start though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on March 31, 2014, 12:55:52 pm

How did you say "Major" as "Mayor" twice?  :P

And also, I think it's Canadis Chincera (Approximate spelling, can't remember exactly what it's called) that has, in its female form, an interesting smell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on March 31, 2014, 01:38:07 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on March 31, 2014, 12:55:52 pm

How did you say "Major" as "Mayor" twice?  :P

Maybe speaks Spanish? That was a common mistake among the Hispanic folks back home.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on March 31, 2014, 01:42:29 pm

If it weren't for Th4DwArfY1 I shouldn't had noticed, being spanish speaking myself. Yes, it's a common mistake to make.

I'm wondering if we are going to be able to do more flours with some of the new plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on March 31, 2014, 01:44:00 pm

most likely...a lot of those plants on that list were fiber bearing and flour friendly plants. And cotton...which is a nice source of fabric

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillerClowns on March 31, 2014, 02:01:23 pm

I don't know about all the people eager to see cannabis put to non-clothing use. I mean, can you imagine how weird the dwarves might start acting? It'd be reefer madness! They might completely forget they watched their children die at the hands of vicious goblin raiders because they've just eaten a meal in, like, a totally awesome dining room...

...oh, wait...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on March 31, 2014, 02:07:39 pm

Heh i am German. It just happens that the plug-in for the spellchecking accepts both. So yeah, just a little mixup.

Canabis has some other uses as well. You can make paper and buildingmaterial from it too. Hemp-ropes are pretty resilient and from the sap you can make resins.

A few of those plants would also produce oil iirc.   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on March 31, 2014, 02:19:08 pm

Hmm... Something tells me that we'll be seeing this a lot from hash-growing forts:
Your fortress has succumbed to starvation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BenLubar on March 31, 2014, 02:30:52 pm

Will we ever see toryridbadydi'u (lojban for "Dwarf Fortress") or any other non-English Dwarf Fortress? Putting UI strings into editable files would go a long way towards this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on March 31, 2014, 02:46:31 pm

Quote from: BenLubar on March 31, 2014, 02:30:52 pm

Will we ever see toryridbadydi'u (lojban for "Dwarf Fortress") or any other non-English Dwarf Fortress? Putting UI strings into editable files would go a long way towards this.

The modding comunity has done some steps here:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108721.0

Note that this allows to traslate strings, but grammar is hardcoded, so any translation will be clunky at best.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on March 31, 2014, 02:57:48 pm

Quote from: BenLubar on March 31, 2014, 02:30:52 pm

Will we ever see toryridbadydi'u (lojban for "Dwarf Fortress") or any other non-English Dwarf Fortress? Putting UI strings into editable files would go a long way towards this.

There are plans (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) for translation support:

Quote

Core54, TRANSLATION SUPPORT, (Future): Announcements and other interface text needs to come out of the game and be placed in an editable format to support any potential translators, though current font implementations restrict this process at the moment if non-ASCII characters are to be involved.

It's unlikely that Toady himself will provide translations, even fan-created ones, though, since he has little ability to gauge their accuracy and quality. Those would have to be distributed by sites like the DFFD.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Thanks to Trif, Footkerchief, Putnam, Knight Otu, Matoro, Parisbre56, King Mir, smjjames, Eric Blank, Manveru Taurënér, BlackFlyme, metime00, MrWiggles, My Name is Immaterial, Talvieno, thvaz, Valtam and the various missed individuals for helping out with questions this time.  A few were answered later on, after other questions were asked, so you might have to poke around, but I think pretty much everything was addressed in one way or another, so please check after your question if you don't see it below!

Quote from: Little Kingpin

Now, when you mention the perceived strength of occupiers vs. your attempts to kill them, does it just take into account the number/equipment/skill level of the remaining soldiers or does it factor in player events such as how many people witness the fights, or your reputation? For example, if your world-famous dragonslayer comes into town and promptly starts killing goblins, will it affect the perceived strength differently than an equally skilled adventurer the town has never heard of?

The civilians don't take your reputation into consideration when making raw strength calculations, though it'll help with recruiting, assuming you have such a reputation with the culture in question.

Quote from: smjjames

Hm, what if the only way to get to a job site is by climbing (say, getting to the dining hall, unless thats not classed as a job)? will they path then?

To clarify, what I'm asking is, for example, if a dwarf wants to eat and the only way to get to the dininhg hall is to climb, will said dwarf climb?

I could only do non-path-component-number pathing in limited circumstances -- generally circumstances like combat where the distances can be reasonably controlled without degrading the outcome much.  I still don't have a good angle on solving the general problem.

Quote from: Dirst

Do factions exist in any meaningful way in Fortress play?

I don't think so.  There aren't insurrections or guilds or religions or anything there yet, though since it's all the same person-to-person reaction code between modes, it's possible something could happen between migrants from different sites with a history.  I'm not really sure, though dwarves don't attack other dwarf sites of the same civ so the histories won't be too violent most of the time.

Quote from: Deboche

Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

Yeah.  Jumping mounts, maybe, too...  though I'm not really sure what happens code-wise currently when a mount becomes a projectile (which is how jumping works).  The rider may detach, which'll be funny until it is fixed.

Quote from: Parisbre56

Would the killer of someone be disturbed by the corpse of his victim? For example, someone gives you a quest to kill his brother and then you recruit the quest giver and have him kill his own brother. Would he break down and start crying over what he has done?

What if the discovered body was a night creature? Would that make it more or less disturbing?

Yeah, he'd experience all the same troubles.  The game sort of needs adrenalin or something now.  It does get reasonably strange sometimes, how immediately reflective people get in large combats.

I don't think the creature type/interaction status of a body makes a difference at this point.

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird

Will neutral parties (like hunting trips, migrants to different forts, etc) pass through fortresses without any intent to make contact?

In the distant future, will there be sound to go with the game?

Nobody passes through at this point, and the time-dilation thing encourages them not to do so.

Technically speaking, there's a dev item for sound, though if you play WWI Medic, you'll find that you want the future to be as distant as possible.

Quote from: Sizik

Any word on [Power of Play video]?

Nope.  I'm not sure what happened.  I just sent another email and we'll see if there's more information, hopefully.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, do you yet have a plan for how you're going to implement more complex subterranean features?

I'm not sure when I'm next going to work on it, and when I get there it'll likely unfold as usual.  We have potential underground features sitting around in various text files, and there'll be some angle we're taking that directs what we work on (aboveground features, underground civs, underground animal people, treasure hunter, etc.).  I guess it's the same as everything.  Some basic stuff like underground rivers, stalacgtmites and so on count toward v1 numbering, anyway.

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Quote from: smjjames

So, I guess now instead of bandit ambushes being a 'DIE!!' situation, it'll now be a SURRENDER OR DIE!!' situation. Telling your companions to surrender to the bandits is something else though...

Quote from: Eric Blank

Who knows, maybe the option to order your companions to surrender will be available, or maybe they'll surrender first or even ignore your orders.

Toady: is there already a mechanic similar to this in-play that we could invoke (affecting our party members) to avoid conflict?

Companions can surrender first, and your own surrender is an implicit order for them.  You can also try to get a hostile opponent to stop fighting without surrendering, but they generally need a reason to accept that once a fight has begun (like things not going their way).

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Quote from: Kriby

Do reanimated body parts invoke the same emotional responses in NPCs as inert ones? If so, is there additional terror associated with their undeath?

Quote from: Eric Blank

There is additional terror associated with undeath.

What was the existing thought...  being attacked by undead?  I don't remember if there's one for just seeing the undead.  There are lots of steps in the process, and it's going to be inconsistent for a while, but yeah, we're trying to make distinctions.

Quote from: Dutchling

Will ghost express feelings of horror upon seeing dead loved ones? Do they even still have loved ones? Do ghosts have feelings at all?

The ghosts remember all their loved ones -- certain kinds of ghosts have always focused on relations (or grudges).  They still have their "soul", but they don't have their body.  That said, I don't recall if they have an exception for emotions.  Their lack of eyes should stop them from crying.

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Quote from: Sizik

Do you/are you planning to make a meaningful distinction between a creature's "mind" and their "soul"?

Quote from: Footkerchief

The current soul is a heterogeneous mix of personality, skills, and mental attributes, so arguably the distinction already exists.  Would "meaningful" mean like replacing a dwarf's personality while leaving their skills and mental attributes intact?

Quote from: metime00

Dwarf Fortress is strictly dualistic, to facilitate stuff like going to the spirit realm or swapping consciousness with another creature. All mental type attributes are in the soul.

Yeah, the basic idea from here is just to mess with the system we have vs. interactions as well as generated metaphysics.  Code-wise, hopefully the objects themselves don't need to be changed too much.  We have a collection of souls in each critter (only one is used now), and the souls store all the mental/personality atts.  The generated metaphysics on top of that could be one of those systems that classifies, say, certain personality facets or all of the skills etc. into one named part of the soul, and the others into another named part of the soul, and then the generated magic systems and death and all that could respect those distinctions (so that, for example, all skills could be lost on death, or parts of the personality could change).  The next world would have a new system to explore.  The difficult part is probably doing AI for it, and respecting it in the abstracted parts of the game like world gen.  That's sort of the distant plan, anyway.  I don't know if you had some other thing in mind.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf-fort sites reclaimable?

Manveru had a DF Talk quote where we mentioned reclaiming a ruined castle would be fine, and I'm still fine with that.  The main difficulty is that some of the sites are very large (up to 17x17) or that they can cross world map square boundaries (which probably isn't an issue, I just haven't dealt with it yet).  Dirst mentioned partial reclaims on a portion of a larger site, and there is already a "subordinate site" framework for that (which happens for instance when you embark over a cave, the cave becomes subordinate), but that framework doesn't handle everything yet, so I suspect there'll be some growing pains there.  For instance, the humans might come to reclaim their ruined 17x17 town after you already have a site that occupies a small part of it...  leading to who-knows-what, but not necessarily good-fun rather than crashy-not-fun.

Quote from: Dirst

When the Army Arc, Caravan Arc, etc. are complete, do you foresee the player's fort getting involved in fights between third parties?  For example, armies crossing the area that are not aiming for your fort, but might end up causing problems anyway?  Caravans from besieged cities not arriving unless you send them an escort party, etc.?

Yeah, certainly.  You can already get collections of refugees lingering outside of your fortress, and if you had hill dwarves, they could already banditize and start harassing those communities.  Depending on hill dwarves being attached to your fort, which seems like a nearer term thing given all that has been discussed, this shouldn't be too far away.  Your fort itself is a strange space and a little more particular to work with, but it'll also be involved.  And yeah, once caravans are moving on the map, they'll be subject to the full array of world troubles, and so on with everything else.  Hopefully when we start to rewrite diplomacy we can really start to have some interesting interactions where you might be brokering agreements rather than just dealing one-to-one with everybody.  At first it'll probably just be policing barfights in your tavern or something though.

Quote from: TastyMints

On January 9th of this year the devblog post references a Necromancer who could not find any corpses because she was too busy camping out and teaching apprentices secrets of death. Will creatures and regions be capable of I_EFFECTs like ADD_SYNDROME, RESURRECT, and ANIMATE during world gen and off-loaded world progression? For example: Will corpses of historical figures who die in evil reanimation areas get back up and wander around, or out of, the region?

I haven't changed how that works, so I'm assuming it doesn't work if it doesn't work in the old version.  Ideally it'd make sense, but since world gen is abstracted, everything needs to be re-coded there, so individual effects don't tend to get attention until I use them in vanilla.

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Quote from: darkflagrance

Can we rob people too?

Quote from: thvaz

The bandits are going to harass the npcs too?

Quote from: Starweaver396

Do we as adventurers have the option to rob people?

Quote from: Footkerchief

I guess the specific question is: once an NPC yields, can we demand that they drop their belongings?

Yeah, though one works strictly as a conversation (yours) and one is a conversation plus activity (theirs), so there could be different issues that come up as people try it out.

Quote from: Mephansteras

If they do drop their belongings, and we don't grab all of them, will they pick them back up? Or is there some risk other NPCs will walk by and grab them? Also, how are cloths/armor handled in this case?

Relatedly, do Robbers ever demand that you give up your spiffy *<=Steel Chain Mail=>*?

Unfortunately, no, they still completely lack this sort of broad awareness.  It'll happen at some point, and that'll be a healthy and game-making moment, though they'll screw it up for a long time, no doubt.

Robbers do not ask for clothes.  When I have time I could have them check the layering, but it was a bit squicky having them ask for everything.  I was still going to have them steal your shoes, but since the shoes have the same name on either foot, that was also confusing, since you might take off the wrong one and get beat up.  It'd be better to have them ask for both (or oddly specifying the foot), but I just decided to cut my time losses for now.

Quote from: Wimopy

Do robbers have a single, hard-coded way to surround a player and do things or is there some variation between their tactics (as in, how they arrange themselves, what they talk about, when they start demanding, etc.

Relatedly, do robbers take into account their own numbers when choosing targets and how to approach them? Can a player potentially unnerve them by being a famous monster slayer within the civ?

Can onlookers (I'm thinking mainly of guards and similarly skilled individuals) decide to stop the robbery even if the player yields?

The bandits are just hanging out loosely, generally, and the others will come up to some square around you while one of them is talking.  It's one script, but since one bandit can be closer or farther away, and small talk is frequent and has varying forms, you might not catch it if you aren't careful.  The fact that bandits are armed unit types is a big clue.  Adventure mode really needs to scrap the unit type concept for something else, eventually, but it is tricky.

Numbers and rep matter.  An issue with reputation is that it doesn't carry easily to bandits, though, since they don't live in town and they don't currently have a lot of vectors for information transfer other than losing a fight they shouldn't have picked.

The guards aren't quite interested in comprehensive justice yet.  That'll be a thief role thing.  They are just kind of town-to-town thugs for now.

Quote from: metime00

If you know someone is a bandit, or you just make a guess when someone is acting fishy and you attack them, will outsiders recognize you or them as the "bad guy"? Will you be the one they register as a hostile to the civilization or the bandits?

Locals know who their neighbors are.  Generally, conflicts between strangers aren't something the civilians find offensive (scary, yes), though you'll likely catch a general reputation from the witnessed event, and if you are fighting off bandits, that can be good, provoked or not.  If you guess incorrectly and attack a civilian, that's a different matter.  If you mean outsiders like other travelers that witness the event, they care just as little or even less if that's possible, unless they are related to the bandits or something.

Quote from: Parisbre56

Do all people have the potential to do smalltalk when they meet you or is this something reserved for important people or bandits?

Everybody can do it...  even the wren men out in the woods seem to say hello and goodbye to each other.

Quote from: Dirst

Will a fortress be able to secede from its parent civilization?  Would this be under player control, or need to result from a factional conflict?

You can sort of do that when you refuse to become a barony, but there still aren't repercussions.  We won't get into that until start scenarios, outside settlements and your own map armies start coming into play.

Quote from: Atomic Chicken

What happens to stolen items once the bandits/you leave the map? Can they be tracked and reclaimed? Can the items end up outside the bandits' possession (in shops or camps, for example)?

Also, what qualifies as a "valuable" item for stealing?

Everything is tracked as far as inventory goes, so you can go get stuff back even if it is offloaded, but it starts to lose the thread after that.  The economy/caravan stuff will help with that somewhat, but I imagine it'll be difficult to deal with all of the orphaned items, especially the less interesting ones.  I'm trying to remember what they stole...  certain item types above a certain numeric value threshold perhaps.

Quote from: Starweaver396

What speed will Fort mode dwarves default to?

They use "walk", which is the same as the normal speed, though they run and so on like everybody else when closing with foes, etc.

Quote from: Spish

Will unfriendly locals (i.e. goblins) be able to oppress adventurers in a similar fashion?

It'll probably still just be hostility by the time we get to the release.  When you are robbed, you can continue along, and locals at a gob site should stop you from intruding.  If they understood their space a bit better, they could start smaller and amplify, but it doesn't do that now.  They can't detain you either, which is the key thing.  We'll have to wait for the thief role for that.

Quote from: MrWillsauce

Is there going to be a DF meetup in the semi-near future?

There isn't anything scheduled.  The ones in the past were organized by other people, and that has become more difficult now that attendance is a little too large for a restaurant's back area.

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Quote from: Putnam

Are garden plant raws final enough to show us (with the implication I mean explicit meaning of plz show) and have there been any raws from the new version changed since October 2013?

Quote from: Talvieno

Will there be tags to make creatures easier/harder/impossible to smell? (such as [STRONG_ODOR], [WEAK_ODOR], [NOT_SMELLABLE], for creatures such as dogs, lions, and the "amethyst man", respectively)

There's some smell stuff, yeah, and aside from some seed-within-growth stuff I may or may not do, the garden raws are ready.  I'll post it all here once I confirm the initial test is happy.  I still need to run them through their production chains in a fort to see how many stupid mistakes I made.  I'll be able to post here Wednesday unless something goes wrong.

Quote from: darkflagrance

So the new devlog clearly means that the elite military dwarves who become refugees when we abandon our forts will become bandits and plague legend mode, right?

They'll plague more than legend mode.  If their leader is a jerk, they might rob your adventurer.  Or they could go off and reclaim a site, or just hang out by an existing site for a while.  They should also be able to migrate into a new fort, at least after they get settled...  though if they've converted to bandit status they might not become migrants.  I haven't tried that out.

Quote from: thvaz

Bandits forced out of an invaded entity will be different in any way from other bandits? They will become more like of a freedom fighter group or will harass everyone like regular bandits?

It depends on the personality of the leader right now.

Quote from: CharonM72

Given that there will be substantially more developed non-human sites in the next version, will the Sites and Roads Legends mode map export include them now?

I know the hill dwarves and elf sites show up, as do the surface gob parts.  People mentioned that the other ones are too 3D, but it does do a sort of half-assed export for them when you export their site maps.  I'm not sure how that'll be changed -- it just does a nested square thing now to give an idea about industrial vs. living zoning now that is not very helpful.

Quote from: LordBaal

[will] new wars will be declared after world generation stops?

Yeah, it does that part in the same way as world gen, and hopefully they'll continue to make more sense together.

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1

Also in relation to the tunnels, will there be soldiers stationed along the length, or enemies polluting it (Bandits, goblins, kobolds, etc.). Or will there simply be an uninhabited tunnel?

The soldiers stick to the entrances at this point.  You can find critters, but no civilized presences, along the length.  At some point we'll do the underground animal people more justice, but animal people in general are completely underdeveloped.

Quote from: thvaz

Will travelers use the tunnels to travel between the dwarven sites as they use the above ground roads?

Hmm, I don't think they do, but it's an easy change now.  I don't remember if I had a note or not, but I'll double-check.

Quote from: neblime

when sieges are made more "interesting" and enemies can tunnel in, etc, will previously invulnerable structures (like walls) be vulnerable and if so, will the material they're made of actually have an effect on what kind of punishment they can withstand and/or for how long?  (i.e. a wooden wall lasts less time than a steel one, or a wooden wall can be destroyed with a copper axe or a troll's fists, but not a steel one?)

Material strength will eventually matter.  There is some weird ancient thing about wooden vs. other doors that was already in, which had to do with building destroyer ranking, but I have no idea if that is still meaningful.

Quote from: Helgoland

What possibilities will we have in Fort Mode to gather information about the outside world? Liaisons, merchants, immigrants, etc - who will tell us stuff?

Right now it's just the diplomat/liaison, since they had a handy pop-up screen available.  I was going to do it for traders, but they'd have no additional information beyond what their diplomats bring and the trade screen was a little more annoying to work with, so I bailed to save time.  Eventually there should be lots of options, including your own hill/deep communities and so on.

Quote from: Sinistar

Right now, it's still to easy to flood your fortress with new arrivals relatively early on if you only let your original 7 be moderately productive. When will migrants start acknowledging that while your fort has beautiful smooth interior walls and decently big meeting hall, so does other (NPC) forts, i.e., when will more than a raw fortress wealth vs. death-per-year-count be taken into account when game decides to send migrants? And when do hill dwarfs come into play?
Note, I'm not asking you about some fixed timescale, just your opinion or rather vision on this thing. Thanks!

I'm not quite sure what's going to happen, since outside hill dwarf populations are going to completely change the dynamics of migration.  There has to be some initial "freshness" to your site, since you'll never get enough people to build it up otherwise, so it can't just compare you to existing established sites.  There are lots of reasons people go out to the frontier though, so that shouldn't be a problem to tune up.  I can't really speculate, though, until the start scenario and hill dwarf stuff is in.  It'll be quite disruptive.

Quote from: LordBaal

On the next release what's going to happen if the dwarfs go the dinosaur way and get extinct and you try to embark on a fortress? Probably the same thing that happens in the current release (I don't really know what happens in the current release under that circumstances). But as now the world is starting to wake up, could it be possible for the dwarves from one last fort funded by you and then retired to repopulate the world with more dwarves while you go and play as an adventurer? Or no new places get colonized after world gen right now?

Yeah, I don't remember what happens either.  But assuming you are allowed to make an initial fortress, and retire it, then yeah, it should go off and reclaim ruined sites and create new places (though that last part depends on site cap stuff).  It would be a time-consuming process, since populations don't increase very quickly.

Quote from: KillerClowns

How many of the new plants will dwarves be able to brew?

Lots of them.  Of course, one of the main outstanding issues is that in real life there are all sorts of drinks you can make with a single plant, depending on what you do, and the current system isn't built around that.  It just has one per plant.  So some of the drinks will be arbitrary, until we finally get to all the recipeish stuff.  Possibly tavern arc-y, depending on how that turns out.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

Now that there will be more millable grains available, will we be able to do more things with flours, like making real bread?

I haven't extended the existing mechanics there.

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.

Quote from: Cruxador

What kind of thought process went into choosing plants for inclusion? What about the names you chose to call them in DF?

There were various lists of plants that were commonly cultivated, and I went through a bunch of them.  I tried to stay away from recent cultivars, and I'm not sure how that's going to evolve, concerning things like the various squashes, peppers, and all that.  I was probably a little too strict or just misinformed in cutting out certain plants, and I don't have a well-defined cut-off year there.  As far as tech trees go, maybe that'll be one of the things to go into world gen and beyond eventually (so you can make lemons and pumpkins and orange carrots).  Hard to say whether we'd have the real-world hybrids or new ones or whatever, and then there'll be generated plants to figure into that.  Just a mess, but hopefully it'll work out.

When they had multiple names, I often used the first name used on wikipedia (which I think accounts for the ones you mentioned -- carambola and bitter melon), though I also tried to stay away from Earth place names when possible.  If I remember, and there's a lot of competition, long yam was the most made-up name I used, since it was down in a later paragraph as a suggested translation of the Japanese name.  I went with that instead of nagaimo since I wanted it to be grouped with the other yams verbally.  In any case, it's apparently from the thread that a lot of the various names are used depending on where people live, etc., so I'm just going to leave them unless something clear comes up.

Quote from: CharonM72

This list adds 132 new plant species, making the number of varieties over 6 times greater. Given how complicated food/drink/textile/etc. production already is, how will players (especially novices) be able to figure out just what plant does what? What will prevent players from throwing a tantrum themselves due to the sheer scope of different flora?

I haven't exactly been useful in any of the many aspects of the game in that respect.  If it seems to be even worse than the other stuff during testing (haven't loaded them up a fort to test production yet, though the raws are doneish), something basic may be done, but I'm not sure yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on March 31, 2014, 07:08:17 pm

Thanks for the answers, Toady! Really looking forward to the next release!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dirkdragonslayer on March 31, 2014, 07:13:16 pm

Seeing as we will be able to rob people, along with new plants, does that mean I can force some unlucky peasant to drop his silk shorts, so I may run off with them while throwing assorted fruits at his house? Also, will their gear change how they respond to burglary, like, will the peasant with a knife or a guard in full chain mail resist more often than one without?

Well, I'm super psyched for this upcoming update, and maybe being evil will be more interesting in adventure mode, other than running around in the forest for days like some sort of wild-man, constantly being pursued by local authorities/boogeymen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on March 31, 2014, 07:22:00 pm

Thanks Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: H.P. Urist on March 31, 2014, 07:53:21 pm

Derpada Derr!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on March 31, 2014, 08:55:36 pm

If I raided the human caravan, and their civ starts sending sieges, will they besiege the closet site of my civ, my fort, or potentially both?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on March 31, 2014, 09:03:14 pm

Thank you, Toady!

All this talk about edge cases with secessions, projectile mounts and emotional responses sounds like there'll be lots of fun bugs to find. Exciting!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on March 31, 2014, 09:09:43 pm

Cool, thanks for the answers, Toady.  I hope some of the original plants remain in some form within the game... being sentimental but they are just as important as the names of dwarves IMO.  I can't imagine a world without purple plump helmets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 09:18:29 pm

The underground plants are safe for a good long while.  It's more the surface stuff that is in danger, since some of those were just made with real-world stuff in mind before I knew what I was going to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on March 31, 2014, 09:27:09 pm

Thanks for the replies Toady. I am even more eager for the next version now.

I had a little hope that you would do an April 1st release again, but it seems there still a lot to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on March 31, 2014, 10:00:02 pm

Hopefully we at least keep valley herbs in some form, or we're going to be forever in suspense as to what the golden salve does.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spiderking50 on March 31, 2014, 10:01:10 pm

Can you explain hill dwarves a little more holistically? What exactly will they do and what will their relation to your fortress be? Will they actually be on site (i.e. on your fort screen) or just an invisible force that sorta matters? Will they be attacked by armies and that cause problems? Will they wander on and off screen and just be just uncontrollable dwarves? What do they do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 31, 2014, 10:14:59 pm

Quote from: Spiderking50 on March 31, 2014, 10:01:10 pm

Can you explain hill dwarves a little more holistically? What exactly will they do and what will their relation to your fortress be? Will they actually be on site (i.e. on your fort screen) or just an invisible force that sorta matters? Will they be attacked by armies and that cause problems? Will they wander on and off screen and just be just uncontrollable dwarves? What do they do?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   I'm sorry, for those of us that don't know what you mean, what are hill dwarves?
Toady:   Hill dwarves ... The main idea is that if you want to have an army arc and you want to be able to compete at the numbers that other civilizations are putting out there, and if you want to actually go on the offensive especially - because you can lock up your fortress and trap people and do horrible siege things to them and magma and later when we have moving fortresses I don't even want to know what people are going to grind the poor attacking armies into - but if you want to go on the offensive and you hope to actually make your mark on the world then you're going to need more dwarves than fifty or sixty or seventy dwarves, and this is where hill dwarves come in. Now hill dwarves, it's not just to say that you have a bunch of dwarves living just in hills, like their copies of hobbits or something, but it's just meaning that they're outside your fortress, either in the wilderness or they've colonised the underground lairs that you've got, you could make deeper colonies of dwarves as well. And that might be related to getting extra mining, it might be related to just getting extra farming, or they could totally just be subsisting by themselves. But the idea would be that you could send out dwarves from your fortress, you can arm them, you can train them and you can send them out to cause trouble. At the same time they'd be able to come to your fortress and trade, probably mostly food and other things like that, so you can do some exports that way without having to wait a long time for a caravan; if you want to do it. Like I was saying, this is only really required for a fort that wants to be an expansionist military rather than a strictly defensive dwarf military setup. At the same time that we're adding hill dwarves we'll probably - if they're not already in - we'll be adding the fortress embark scenarios, so that you can say 'We have three hundred dwarves left to go found a fortress out in the wild' or, whatever 'to go found a fortress on the border with the goblin kingdom'; then you'd have dwarves inside your fortress and you'd have dwarves outside your fortress. It totally changes the relationship with migrants and how many dwarves you have, so it's a big deal. But that's not to say that the old gameplay system wouldn't also be preserved where you can start with a small number of dwarves and have a different sort, or a smaller kind of operation going on, rather than one where you're worried about playing more of this world strategic game. But if you want to play the world strategic game, which is part of what the army arc is about and part of what having a world map is about - it's so underused in dwarf mode - then you need more numbers, and you can't just have them all on the map, it's just not practical, as we've seen with the frames per second that we get. The alternatives are like having ever dwarf count for twenty dwarves or something, but we just didn't want to do it that way, especially with it how it has to match in with adventure mode, and how adventure mode actually has all the people all over the place. So your fortress would have more sprawl to it itself.
Rainseeker:   Are you thinking that you'd allow dwarves to train, or you could set up training that happens off the map, basically?
Toady:   Yeah, and it could be all kinds of things. You basically have representatives from your fortress sent out to the ... kind of in the way we were talking about, as the player you're in control of the official capacities of the dwarves, it would give you that position over a whole population that you have even less control over, all these hill dwarves. I don't know if you have to take care of you hill dwarves, maybe they'll leave, maybe they'll just attack, try and get new people in charge of the main fortress. We've kind of put you in the position of being a noble from the beginning in a way, and then when you become a barony you would be a baron over your barony of hill dwarves, so taxing the hill dwarves might be a big theme, going out and taxing your poor hill dwarves. We don't want to get too far off topic, I guess, not that we ever had a problem with that before, but it's just I don't want to talk about something I haven't completely ... well, that never stopped me either, but let me just say that Zach and I have not one hundred percent worked this out, but that's the idea with hill dwarves, and that's the justification for hill dwarves, and no, you're not going to have to have hill dwarves.

[...]

Rainseeker:   So let's recall what the purpose of the other dwarven sites are. The hill dwarves are supposed to supplement your kingdom, so to speak, correct?
Toady:   Yeah, yeah, they function ... or they will function, see there's an issue now with just how much you can do in fortress mode with hill dwarf settlements because they're not your hill dwarf settlements yet, we don't have that linkage tightly established yet, but it will be. Then that will give you a much higher number of dwarves to work with, though they can't all be on screen. Because the whole issue is if you want to have a strategic impact on the world and have a political impact on the world you just need a bunch of warm, fat, drunk bodies to get that business done, and you can't do that with two hundred dwarves. But you can't have a thousand, two thousand dwarves running around on screen or the game will ... not run. So you've got hill dwarves to supplement things, or to form like the bulk of your military for example, of your unskilled military. Your dwarves will still be like the equivalent of your, say, knights or whatever and your sergeants, your leaders.. for your military; they'll be the ones that know what they're doing. And then you'll have a bunch of drunks.
Capntastic:   So the hill dwarves are basically a conduit for your fortress to interact with the rest of the world?
Toady:   Yeah, yeah, at least in that way ... I think there will be places for your dwarves to also have direct impact, but when it comes to military stuff, and certain trade things, you're going to have to act through intermediate sites just because of the sheer numbers behind it. The deep sites are ... they act in a similar fashion for underground business, but they're also ... we haven't really planned that exactly how strange they're going to be, but they supplement your food, that kind of thing, if you don't want to farm, you can trade with them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smurfingtonthethird on March 31, 2014, 10:21:22 pm

Do vegetables and plants shmush if they are thrown at people, or walls or things?

Do people in battles break down in tears mid-fight should they kill a relative or an old friend?

We'll never know what golden salve does, EnigmaticHat. We'll never know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on March 31, 2014, 10:29:14 pm

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on March 31, 2014, 10:21:22 pm

Do vegetables and plants shmush if they are thrown at people, or walls or things?

Nope.  Projectile impacts are the same as in the current version.  Items getting damaged (in the same way that creatures do) will be a big change when it comes.

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on March 31, 2014, 10:21:22 pm

Do people in battles break down in tears mid-fight should they kill a relative or an old friend?

They can, yes:

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56

Would the killer of someone be disturbed by the corpse of his victim? For example, someone gives you a quest to kill his brother and then you recruit the quest giver and have him kill his own brother. Would he break down and start crying over what he has done?

Yeah, he'd experience all the same troubles.  The game sort of needs adrenalin or something now.  It does get reasonably strange sometimes, how immediately reflective people get in large combats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on March 31, 2014, 10:38:34 pm

Now that wars can start (and stop I assume) out of worldgen, can player adventurers directly cause them?  can you become affiliated with an entity to an extent where your actions could be considered a reason for war with that entity? (say i'm good friends of a dwarf civilization and I go kill some elves in another civ, is there any circumstance in which this will cause anger with the dwarf civ?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

No really, I'd really like to see things like longland grass and whip vines stay in! Clearly though, we'll have a lot of choice for aboveground crops. We'll need to build some greenhouses.......

Are we going to be able to order rough gems from caravans in the next release? Any changes to the caravan mechanics (i.e. more than four items of each kind can be brought).

That would help keep things stocked up for crystal glass and so on.

Are we going to see material-based mandates go back in anytime soon, or are you going to be reworking that system?

Also to be honest, it would be great to have a release tomorrow on the anniversary of DF2010. Even if it is completely crawling with bugs. Some of us had to water soil to get farms to grow in those days!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 31, 2014, 11:26:11 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

Also to be honest, it would be great to have a release tomorrow on the anniversary of DF2010. Even if it is completely crawling with bugs. Some of us had to water soil to get farms to grow in those days!

An anniversary release would be kinda nice, but honestly I would want Toady to make the game playable first.
As long as it's before 2015.

I hope it's before 2015.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 11:31:07 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 31, 2014, 11:26:11 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

Also to be honest, it would be great to have a release tomorrow on the anniversary of DF2010. Even if it is completely crawling with bugs. Some of us had to water soil to get farms to grow in those days!

An anniversary release would be kinda nice, but honestly I would want Toady to make the game playable first.
As long as it's before 2015.

I hope it's before 2015.

Given the day it is going to be, we’ll probably be hearing about the Xbox One version of Dwarf Fortress, and the Tavern DLC.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on March 31, 2014, 11:52:26 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 11:31:07 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on March 31, 2014, 11:26:11 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

Also to be honest, it would be great to have a release tomorrow on the anniversary of DF2010. Even if it is completely crawling with bugs. Some of us had to water soil to get farms to grow in those days!

An anniversary release would be kinda nice, but honestly I would want Toady to make the game playable first.
As long as it's before 2015.

I hope it's before 2015.

Given the day it is going to be, we’ll probably be hearing about the Xbox One version of Dwarf Fortress, and the Tavern DLC.

That made me laugh more than it should have :-[...

Now I want to know what DF would be like on an Xbox. There's not a lot of buttons, so Toady would have to make the interface even more unintuitive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: darkflagrance on April 01, 2014, 12:00:58 am

Can't wait to start a fort in a world where dwarves are extinct and repopulate the world. Has Toady mentioned if we can pass legends mode to skip centuries after we retire a fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 01, 2014, 01:05:28 am

Thanks for the wall of text, as always!

With all these real-world plants going in, will they have more realistic growth times (plant in spring, harvest late summer/fall, etc.)? Or are you sticking to the 'one crop every season' plan for now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on April 01, 2014, 01:09:08 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

Are we going to see material-based mandates go back in anytime soon, or are you going to be reworking that system?

Urist McBaron mandates bismuthine items! Urist McMayor mandates slade furniture!

Yeah, I think it'll need some reworking. It will probably be handled when Toady starts rewriting fortress economy and nobles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 01, 2014, 02:10:49 am

Quote

Quote from: Deboche
Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

Yeah.  Jumping mounts, maybe, too...  though I'm not really sure what happens code-wise currently when a mount becomes a projectile (which is how jumping works).  The rider may detach, which'll be funny until it is fixed.

Does this mean that an adventurer also becomes a projectile when jumping? Is it possible to jump at an enemy and damage them and would you take damage from the impact? Is it possible to lodge yourself or your mount in bits of enemies, and if so, how do you dislodge yourself? If damage and lodging is possible but unintended, can you leave it in as a "feature" for at least a few versions?

(I only ask because corpse-shurikens and fluffy-wambler-throwing are time-honored tactics for many adventurers. But if you could throw yourself or your mount by jumping, the results may be rather amusing (and lethal) in the combat logs. I'm assuming human adventurers are considered blunt weapons with a large impact area.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 02:28:59 am

There's a way to set up army formations and move the units all together, keeping that formation? like in some rts games. If not, i suggest it! also for enemy armies

Some times ago someone told me which the game will become a 4x like game (that's why i thought about army formations and large battles).. is this still true? if yes, in which game mode? Fortress or legend?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 01, 2014, 03:54:53 am

Quote from: smirk on April 01, 2014, 01:05:28 am

Thanks for the wall of text, as always!

With all these real-world plants going in, will they have more realistic growth times (plant in spring, harvest late summer/fall, etc.)? Or are you sticking to the 'one crop every season' plan for now?

He just added new content, if he changed (or planned on changing) how farming worked  in Fort Mode, he probably would have said something.

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 02:28:59 am

There's a way to set up army formations and move the units all together, keeping that formation? like in some rts games. If not, i suggest it! also for enemy armies

Some times ago someone told me which the game will become a 4x like game (that's why i thought about army formations and large battles).. is this still true? if yes, in which game mode? Fortress or legend?

'
First! Welcome to the Forum!

Second, if you want your questions to be viewed by Toadyone, they needed to be denoted in green.

Third! Its planned but no time line. It was going to go in during the 2010 Dwarf Release I wanna say... Maybe not for Siegers but defiantly for Fort Armies.

Also, Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game, and due to its age, where its either planned, or been suggested at one point. Though hardly ever suggested once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 01, 2014, 03:57:26 am

Quote from: sambojin on April 01, 2014, 02:10:49 am

Quote

Quote from: Deboche
Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

Yeah.  Jumping mounts, maybe, too...  though I'm not really sure what happens code-wise currently when a mount becomes a projectile (which is how jumping works).  The rider may detach, which'll be funny until it is fixed.

Does this mean that an adventurer also becomes a projectile when jumping? Is it possible to jump at an enemy and damage them and would you take damage from the impact? Is it possible to lodge yourself or your mount in bits of enemies, and if so, how do you dislodge yourself? If damage and lodging is possible but unintended, can you leave it in as a "feature" for at least a few versions?

(I only ask because corpse-shurikens and fluffy-wambler-throwing are time-honored tactics for many adventurers. But if you could throw yourself or your mount by jumping, the results may be rather amusing (and lethal) in the combat logs. I'm assuming human adventurers are considered blunt weapons with a large impact area.)

That is the greatest idea. I'm definitely making an adventurer who kills his foes by jumping at them.

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 02:28:59 am

There's a way to set up army formations and move the units all together, keeping that formation? like in some rts games. If not, i suggest it! also for enemy armies

Some times ago someone told me which the game will become a 4x like game (that's why i thought about army formations and large battles).. is this still true? if yes, in which game mode? Fortress or legend?

I think I recall something like that being said, but that's not in now almost definitely not happening in DF2014.

Edit: MrWiggles beat me to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 01, 2014, 04:18:22 am

It happen to be one of the rare questions I asked myself.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.0  This is the dev goals for the 2010 release, and in the squad sub section they're crossed out.

I found the link to my question regarding them being crossed out, but its super funky page...

So here it is.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.235;wap2

Just search for my user name, and you'll find it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 05:56:23 am

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 01, 2014, 03:54:53 am

Quote from: smirk on April 01, 2014, 01:05:28 am

Thanks for the wall of text, as always!

With all these real-world plants going in, will they have more realistic growth times (plant in spring, harvest late summer/fall, etc.)? Or are you sticking to the 'one crop every season' plan for now?

He just added new content, if he changed (or planned on changing) how farming worked  in Fort Mode, he probably would have said something.

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 02:28:59 am

There's a way to set up army formations and move the units all together, keeping that formation? like in some rts games. If not, i suggest it! also for enemy armies

Some times ago someone told me which the game will become a 4x like game (that's why i thought about army formations and large battles).. is this still true? if yes, in which game mode? Fortress or legend?

'
First! Welcome to the Forum!

Second, if you want your questions to be viewed by Toadyone, they needed to be denoted in green.

Third! Its planned but no time line. It was going to go in during the 2010 Dwarf Release I wanna say... Maybe not for Siegers but defiantly for Fort Armies.

Also, Dwarf Fortress is the kind of game, and due to its age, where its either planned, or been suggested at one point. Though hardly ever suggested once.

Thanks for the reply! I'll use green color in future (can i ask more than one question at separate times?).. anyway i meant adventurers mode, not legend. I also haven't understood a thing (i'm not english skilled :P): are you talking about only of army formations? While the "4x" evolution of the game? Even here there's nothing planned?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: chevil on April 01, 2014, 06:04:47 am

If I abandon my fort then you mentioned that my military dwarves may become bandits if the leader is a jerk. How does the game decide who will become the leader? Is it the squad leader or does the leader skill or personality matter in the selection process?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 01, 2014, 09:05:11 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on March 31, 2014, 10:43:51 pm

Are we going to see material-based mandates go back in anytime soon, or are you going to be reworking that system?

Material-based mandates may get reinstated when this is done:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Workshop Material Use and Specific Object Construction
    Ability to specify material used in jobs
    Ability to order the construction of a specific item or decoration of item in complete detail

However, mandates are still a placeholder feature in many ways -- they don't currently reflect the economic situation and the official's personality/mood as much as they should.  So it's all subject to change.

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 05:56:23 am

I also haven't understood a thing (i'm not english skilled :P): are you talking about only of army formations? While the "4x" evolution of the game? Even here there's nothing planned?

To me, 4X implies certain fixed goals and win conditions.  DF won't have those.  It does aim to support many aspects of 4X gameplay, if that's the kind of fortress the player wants to have.

It's unclear whether the game will ever have tech trees:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2281409#msg2281409

It's possible to get sort of tech-treey with it, but I haven't done anything like that, and it's not set up to point to certain positions or to have positions confer any abilities on their own.  The larger questions surrounding knowledge and technology have not been resolved.

You might be interested in the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) to see what's planned.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: cephalo on April 01, 2014, 09:24:04 am

Quote from: hermes on March 31, 2014, 09:09:43 pm

Cool, thanks for the answers, Toady.  I hope some of the original plants remain in some form within the game... being sentimental but they are just as important as the names of dwarves IMO.  I can't imagine a world without purple plump helmets.

I second this sentiment. Don't forget that there is a bit of cultural heritage within the game that will always add to the fun. Like wearing mismatched shoes!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kriby on April 01, 2014, 09:44:28 am

Thanks for the reply Toady! :)

Villagers are gonna be such wrecks when the necromancer adventurers roll in.

Yes - Your brother is dead.
Yes - His body has been twisted and desecrated into a shambling monster.
Yes - That twisted corpse of your brother is about to mindlessly rip you apart.

>:D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on April 01, 2014, 10:09:25 am

Will wooden blocks finally get stored properly? What about large gems?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 01, 2014, 10:34:38 am

Quote from: Paaaad on April 01, 2014, 10:09:25 am

Will wooden blocks finally get stored properly? What about large gems?

Maybe that'll get touched on during the bugfixing phase? Gemstone artifacts other than crafts would also apply.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 01, 2014, 10:45:06 am

I really liked the fact that any creature with [can_speak] will have something to say now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on April 01, 2014, 11:00:35 am

Apologies. for the elsewhere amply discussed suggestion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 01, 2014, 11:02:45 am

Quote from: Paaaad on April 01, 2014, 10:09:25 am

Will wooden blocks finally get stored properly? What about large gems?

Wooden blocks were supposedly fixed in 0.31.22. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=439)  If you have a save that reproduces the problem in 0.34.11, contact me (or another manager) to get the report reopened.

The report for gems is here. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4430)  In general, it's safe to assume that bugs haven't been fixed unless Toady mentioned them.

Quote from: Areyar on April 01, 2014, 11:00:35 am

On pathing:
(a bit suggestion-y, but it is also a question about feasability)

Would player-defining   (limited number of waypoints) paths  between say two specified burrows/zones/workshops/jobs help in the climbing/jumping pathfinding problem?
I was thinking of dwarves learning these routes from being guided by a manager, then (perhaps even optimising the defined route in a limited way and) sharing/updating the new route by way of gossipping about it and/or sharing it with the manager or other dwarves.
In essense creating a small library of 'shortcuts' to cut short the pathfinding algorithm.

As with many suggestions, this already has a thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24615.0).  There are also several threads on path caching:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24790.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=74846.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=65905.0

Please ensure that any feasibility discussion goes in an existing Suggestions thread, and doesn't derail this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Melting Sky on April 01, 2014, 02:11:09 pm

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on March 31, 2014, 10:21:22 pm

We'll never know what golden salve does, EnigmaticHat. We'll never know.

It's the dwarven equivalent of the philosopher's stone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Melting Sky on April 01, 2014, 02:32:08 pm

Hill dwarves sound like they are basically one layer of abstraction above fortress mode dwarves. The way Toady One describes how they will come into play suggests that perhaps war will also be handled at this higher level abstraction? Basically what I am asking is will attacks on enemy sites happen in a fortress mode style setting where individual creatures duke it out and interact with the terrain in a very detailed manner or will an attack be more abstracted, happening "behind the scenes" where the forces that fight each other basically compare their strengths and produce the battles results using more generalized rules?

My second question concerns immigration. When it comes to immigration, is the selection of dwarves that arrive determined randomly aside for the fact that the number of immigrants is set by how much wealth your fort has produced over the last year or are other things taken into accounts such as size and proximity of parent civilization?

Are there any future plans to incorporate into immigration the work that is currently being done on group entities and their various reputations and inclinations to make it more dynamic? Will personal attributes like a dwarf's social standing, personality and conditions in his current home etc. ever play a roll in determining if he decides to emigrate to the frontier? For instance will adventurous, outgoing dwarves be more likely to immigrate than cautious, nervous ones. Will dwarves who live in a poverty ridden, beleaguered city, beset with constant invasions from a nearby necromancer tower be more likely to leave and immigrate to our fortresses than those who are living it up in our gold clad capital city etc.? Or conversely, if our fortress is a war ridden, lawless hell hole would it tend to attract violent criminals, military dwarves and similarly motivated individuals rather than cautious, peaceful and urban dwarves?


I've done a lot of reading on the subject of hill dwarves but haven't seen this discussed. If this question has already been answered I apologize.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 01, 2014, 03:48:28 pm

They will most likely be handled the second way, since the site(s) would be "unloaded" in fortress mod. In adventure mode I don't know but it seems possible for you to run into the middle of a war if you are really (un)lucky, in which case I guess you could see the individual entities duking it out in specific ways, else the game will just create it based on some data "just" (or at least sort of) like it does now during world gen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 01, 2014, 05:53:26 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 01, 2014, 09:05:11 am

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 05:56:23 am

I also haven't understood a thing (i'm not english skilled :P): are you talking about only of army formations? While the "4x" evolution of the game? Even here there's nothing planned?

Probably Toady should make that an init file option while it is broken......

No sign of a monthly dev report yet either.

Quote from: thvaz on April 01, 2014, 10:45:06 am

I really liked the fact that any creature with [can_speak] will have something to say now.

It would be great if they would write diaries or something.

This is a horse leather diary for the year 1051 by [NAME], a tigerman.

1st Granite 1051: Got up, found dwarves building a fortress in this neighbourhood. Getting out of here before things get worse.

2nd Granite 1051: Finally reached the forest. It is quite calm, though there are trumpeting noises coming from nearby. I wonder what is making them?

The diary is covered in tigerman blood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on April 01, 2014, 08:34:51 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 01, 2014, 11:02:45 am

Quote from: Paaaad on April 01, 2014, 10:09:25 am

Will wooden blocks finally get stored properly? What about large gems?

Wooden blocks were supposedly fixed in 0.31.22. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=439)  If you have a save that reproduces the problem in 0.34.11, contact me (or another manager) to get the report reopened.

*Vows to check my .31.25 game for the issue, feeling slightly embarrassed.*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 01, 2014, 09:58:09 pm

Quote from: Spitzkrug on April 01, 2014, 05:56:23 am

Thanks for the reply! I'll use green color in future (can i ask more than one question at separate times?).. anyway i meant adventurers mode, not legend. I also haven't understood a thing (i'm not english skilled :P): are you talking about only of army formations? While the "4x" evolution of the game? Even here there's nothing planned?

Their wouldnt ever really be a 4X kinda game play found in Dwarf Fortress. At least not as an explicit goal. You might be able to play DF in sometime in the distant future when, whats been loftily called "Kingdom Mode", where you manage a kingdom. Nothing been terribly said about this mode, other then ToadyOne and ThreeToes thinks it cool and natural extension to manage a kingdom.

And ToadyOne has talked about arbitrarily stopped WorldGen, take over any Historical Figures and taking over any responsibility they may have.

So, in this distant, maybe post v1.0 future, you might be able to get a a really shitty 4X feel if you start playing from like the first 10 years into WorldGen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 04:05:11 am

Then Dwarf Fortress would eventually become the first RPG/Management/Sim like/4X/Hack'n slash game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 02, 2014, 05:20:37 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 04:05:11 am

Then Dwarf Fortress would eventually become the first RPG/Management/Sim like/4X/Hack'n slash game.

RPG/Adventure/RTS...

Now all we need to do is shove FPS in there somewhere and we're good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 02, 2014, 05:23:42 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 02, 2014, 05:20:37 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 04:05:11 am

Then Dwarf Fortress would eventually become the first RPG/Management/Sim like/4X/Hack'n slash game.

RPG/Adventure/RTS...

Now all we need to do is shove FPS in there somewhere and we're good.

Wasn't the original Slaves to Armok first person?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 02, 2014, 05:39:11 am

I would need to dig it up from the depths of my hard drive to make sure, but I'm pretty sure it's in a weird not-quite-top-down-ish something.
It's not first person, because you can see more than just your hands, but it's also not traditional 3rd person, because the camera isn't behind your head. I've seen it in other games occasionally. It's got a name, but I can't think of what that name is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 02, 2014, 08:40:14 am

If it's not looking through the eyes of the character, it's third-person.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 02, 2014, 09:21:31 am

and everything is already an fps due to the lowest common denominator controlling the market and controlling big companies. Dwarf Fortress has no need to follow that trend.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 02, 2014, 09:25:14 am

It was a joke about DF being all kind of games at the same time... FPS aren't so bad, some are quite awesome. I don't play them much online but I like the campaigns and such. I'm mainly a strategy games guy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 02, 2014, 09:43:04 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 02, 2014, 05:23:42 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 02, 2014, 05:20:37 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 04:05:11 am

Then Dwarf Fortress would eventually become the first RPG/Management/Sim like/4X/Hack'n slash game.

RPG/Adventure/RTS...

Now all we need to do is shove FPS in there somewhere and we're good.

Wasn't the original Slaves to Armok first person?

It was first and third, depending on how you wanted to play. The third person camera had a weird angle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 10:01:48 am

I'd like a lot a 3D-Dwarf Fortress, seen from the eyes of UristMcFPS.
The trees in 3D with ASCII...^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 02, 2014, 11:12:57 am

Hill dwarves sound great.

Quote from: J.R.R. Toadykien

In a hole in the ground, there lived a dwarf. A nasty hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell; dry, and sandy, with nothing to sit down on...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 02, 2014, 11:26:54 am

Quote

In a hole in the ground there lived a dwarf. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a dwarf fortress, and that means magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 02, 2014, 11:58:17 am

 

Quote from: Talvieno on April 02, 2014, 11:26:54 am

Quote

In a hole in the ground there lived a dwarf. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a dwarf fortress, and that means magma.

:D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on April 02, 2014, 12:24:25 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on April 02, 2014, 11:26:54 am

Quote

In a hole in the ground there lived a dwarf. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a dwarf fortress, and that means magma.

Sigged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 02, 2014, 02:33:15 pm

And Baal, I know that, don't worry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

Here is the followup on raws:

Critters:

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind
[ODOR_STRING:wet dog hair] <-- optional, displays race name (not caste name) if you don't provide a string
[LOW_LIGHT_VISION:100] bonus percentage, cannot penalize yet, default is zero, just throw in 10000 to make it perfect


Garden plants (the file names probably aren't entirely accurate with respect to what is in them):

Garden (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)
Crops (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt)

There's still some messiness with exactly how seeds are going to work -- the new brew-from-fruit job takes any growth and gives back drink and seeds, using the mats you provide in the normal reaction way, but other actions like eating aren't reactions, so they have to go with the growth flag GROWTH_HAS_SEEDS.  There are also some discomforts w/ whole plants vs. their growths that aren't entirely resolved.  This is what I'm working with, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 02, 2014, 03:24:26 pm

Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.... please excuse me while I piss like an excited dog.

Ok, so it's a simple enough system to be just brilliant. So, we'll get an announcement whenever we smell something funny and/or new? And it's going to be labeled with whatever thing is emanating the odor like "you smell a zombie" or do we get more vague hints like "you smell rotten meat" which could be whatever between just bad food up to a zombie titan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:25:34 pm

He he he, it's not that exciting.  The flower blooming times are all the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MaximumZero on April 02, 2014, 03:28:34 pm

Any thought toward new materials from the plants, like being able to make linen from flax, or burlap from jute?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on April 02, 2014, 03:30:27 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greater or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind

Shouldn't that be "odor_level greater or equal to smell_trigger detects"? If you have a good (low) SMELL_TRIGGER, then you require only a small amount of odor to detect a creature, so if a creature's odor level is greater than your trigger level, then you detect the smelly creature, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:31:38 pm

Ah, yeah.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 02, 2014, 03:36:41 pm

Thank you, Toady! You're pure awesome. I'm excited - going to look at the new raws now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mopsy on April 02, 2014, 03:38:52 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:31:38 pm

Ah, yeah.

Mopsy rescues DF 2014 from odor bug perdition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 02, 2014, 03:39:06 pm

Is there something about the strength of the odor ? Okay, the smell can be good or bad, but is there a raw for the force of the smell (the distance from where it can be smelt with a normal nose ?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on April 02, 2014, 03:41:57 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

Here is the followup on raws:

Critters:

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind

Do members of a race all get the same SMELL_TRIGGER, or is it individualized? Can it be improved? (Since it can in real life.)
Is it going to be affected by genetics?
Is the detection going to be randomized in any way besides the wind?

What affects the ODOR_LEVEL? (Not sure if I missed that somewhere.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 02, 2014, 03:45:13 pm

Thanks Toady!

I want a release.

The smell system allow for detection of corpses and carrion? I'm asking not with undead in mind, but with normal corpses and miasma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 02, 2014, 03:46:59 pm

Quote from: Mopsy on April 02, 2014, 03:38:52 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:31:38 pm

Ah, yeah.

Mopsy rescues DF 2014 from odor bug perdition.

No doubt a inspiring tale of bravery for the annals of our beloved game.

It's exciting news because well, at this point anything regarding this release is just pumping out the expectations.

I'm asking basically the same. Do we get a clue of what we are smelling or do we get precise info? I think that being an entity tag it's bound to be the latter. It may be obvious but recently I've been kind of slow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 02, 2014, 04:03:04 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on April 02, 2014, 03:41:57 pm

Do members of a race all get the same SMELL_TRIGGER, or is it individualized? Can it be improved? (Since it can in real life.)
Is it going to be affected by genetics?
[...]

What affects the ODOR_LEVEL?

ODOR_LEVEL is assigned to a creature type in the raws.  At most, you can make it caste-specific.  The only way to alter an individual's ODOR_LEVEL would be via a syndrome.  That means no genetic component (remember, this is a quick and dirty system).

Quote from: thvaz on April 02, 2014, 03:45:13 pm

The smell system allow for detection of corpses and carrion? I'm asking not with undead in mind, but with normal corpses and miasma.

The devlog's specific mention of "animated corpses" (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-03-19) suggests that only creatures will emit smells, not items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Anatoli on April 02, 2014, 04:04:19 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 02, 2014, 04:03:04 pm

Quote from: Anatoli on April 02, 2014, 03:41:57 pm

Do members of a race all get the same SMELL_TRIGGER, or is it individualized? Can it be improved? (Since it can in real life.)
Is it going to be affected by genetics?
[...]

What affects the ODOR_LEVEL?

ODOR_LEVEL is assigned to a creature type in the raws.  At most, you can make it caste-specific.  The only way to alter an individual's ODOR_LEVEL would be via a syndrome.  That means no genetic component (remember, this is a quick and dirty system).

Okay, thanks. I'm not a modder, so I wasn't entirely sure how that worked.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on April 02, 2014, 04:07:02 pm

Click link

Ctrl+F

"Papaver Somniferum"

Cant find....

Toady, for Gods sake, if you don't let me create a fortress-like poppy farm, I might do it in real life, would you like that? Would you?

On a more serious note: Papaver Somniferum has high-protein seeds... and thousands of small seeds, its grown in many places for the seeds alone, to be used in cooking. Will there be anyway to properly mod plants that you grow for the seeds alone (of course wheat and rye would come in here too)? Like making a custom workshops that "uses" the fruit and produces only seeds.


Edit:
While reading more properly, it seems like this is already in, or am I mistaken? Seems to me like this is the case of both peanuts and peas, am I right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 02, 2014, 04:17:17 pm

Quote from: Rapozk on April 02, 2014, 04:07:02 pm

Will there be anyway to properly mod plants that you grow for the seeds alone (of course wheat and rye would come in here too)? Like making a custom workshops that "uses" the fruit and produces only seeds.

Wheat and rye are already in the crops file. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt)  It would be easy to create a poppy-seed version:

Code: [Select]

[PLANT:RYE] Secale cereale
[...]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:MILL:PLANT_POWDER_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:rye flour]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:WHITE]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:7:0:1]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:20]
[EDIBLE_VERMIN]
[EDIBLE_COOKED]
[PREFIX:NONE]
[MILL:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:MILL]
[...]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SEED:SEED_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:1]
[EDIBLE_VERMIN]
[EDIBLE_COOKED]
[SEED:rye seed:rye seeds:0:0:1:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:SEED]


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on April 02, 2014, 04:22:49 pm

I noticed after I posted, thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 02, 2014, 04:26:18 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

Here is the followup on raws:

Critters:

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind
[ODOR_STRING:wet dog hair] <-- optional, displays race name (not caste name) if you don't provide a string
[LOW_LIGHT_VISION:100] bonus percentage, cannot penalize yet, default is zero, just throw in 10000 to make it perfect


Garden plants (the file names probably aren't entirely accurate with respect to what is in them):

Garden (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)
Crops (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt)

Beetroot whiskey sounds better than beetroot wine IMO. Although according to wiki, Beetroot can be made into wine.

Maize beer, aka Moonshine right? :) Though that's probably the highly purified version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 02, 2014, 04:33:01 pm

Are there any plans to sort these new crops into some kind of cultural groups or similar, and will these in that case be constructed randomly or based on the real world? (possibly also inluding livestock at some point)

Having every civ have access to all crops will obviously be a bit much even with taking biome restrictions into account, although I get that we might have to live with that for this release at least. In the long run though some more diversity would of course be more interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MisterB777 on April 02, 2014, 04:37:39 pm

Thanks, Toady, I've been hoping to see those raws!

Oh the stews and roasts that will be created in my fortresses... :)  In looking through the raws for the new plants, I don't see any of them with this tag (the rocknuts->rocknut paste->rocknut oil reaction):

[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:PRESS_LIQUID_MAT:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:OIL]

So, does this mean that the oil process is changing, or just that the new plants just aren't there yet?  Just curious if they are finalized for this release, or if I'm missing something else?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Glanzor on April 02, 2014, 04:46:34 pm

Toady, you implied that the new realistic plants will replace the old ones in the upcoming version. Will that include unusual plants like sun berries and silver barbs, that don't really have a real life equivalent? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 02, 2014, 05:38:30 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

Here is the followup on raws:

Critters:

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind
[ODOR_STRING:wet dog hair] <-- optional, displays race name (not caste name) if you don't provide a string
[LOW_LIGHT_VISION:100] bonus percentage, cannot penalize yet, default is zero, just throw in 10000 to make it perfect

Does this mean we can smell which dwarves have not taken a bath recently?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 02, 2014, 05:48:28 pm

Looks like smell is entirely controlled by raws, so bathing might not affect their smell at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on April 02, 2014, 06:37:11 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 02, 2014, 05:48:28 pm

Looks like smell is entirely controlled by raws, so bathing might not affect their smell at all.

Does seem like it from what I can see. Dwarves just have that natural scent. Of rock. And death. But mostly rock.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 02, 2014, 06:56:05 pm

Quote from: Glanzor on April 02, 2014, 04:46:34 pm

Toady, you implied that the new realistic plants will replace the old ones in the upcoming version. Will that include unusual plants like sun berries and silver barbs, that don't really have a real life equivalent? 

He basically said that it's up in the air in the response to my question which is pretty much what you're asking. Sun Berries already have their association with the elves, not to mention the best brew around, so those will probably stay.

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xazo-Tak on April 02, 2014, 07:02:38 pm

I hear that the cave-in system will undergo large improvements.
Does this mean that creatures will be able to "attack" the ground? Perhaps a change encompassing mining?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 02, 2014, 07:10:34 pm

Quote from: Xazo-Tak on April 02, 2014, 07:02:38 pm

I hear that the cave-in system will undergo large improvements.
Does this mean that creatures will be able to "attack" the ground? Perhaps a change encompassing mining?

I haven't heard anything about changes to the cave-in system in the next version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spish on April 02, 2014, 07:12:32 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 02, 2014, 03:45:13 pm

The smell system allow for detection of corpses and carrion? I'm asking not with undead in mind, but with normal corpses and miasma.

And on that note, would a discerning nose be able to pick up the scent of blood?

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 02, 2014, 04:03:04 pm

The devlog's specific mention of "animated corpses" (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-03-19) suggests that only creatures will emit smells, not items.

Okay, like from an injured creature or whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mattychan on April 02, 2014, 07:21:45 pm

Oh man I can only imagine the fun to be had in the new release. Hunters running around smelling stuff, just to jump onto a wall and climb it. I had a great new idea for a race too, I have been working on it the last few days. I'm so excited

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 02, 2014, 07:43:10 pm

Would Chia seeds be included in garden plants?

They have been used in history for food before, so maybe after scavenging around in a dry area, you make use of what grows naturally as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hans Lemurson on April 02, 2014, 07:56:19 pm

With the addition of many new real-world plants, Isn't this going to create a huge issue with the number of "different kinds of things"?  For example, in making cloth there are already 2 plant fibers, 3 wools, and up to 5 different silks.  Each kind of cloth gets listed separately as do garments made from them, taking up a great amount of space in item lists.  (And don't get me started on the infinity of Leather types...)  Add Cotton and Flax and now you have even more "Kinds of things".

Lists will no longer become useful or convenient ways of displaying information:
-It is one thing to see that you have 700 fruit. 
-It is quite another when you have
20 apples
14 pears
21 sun berries
8 prickle berries
17 nectarines
25 peaches
25 wolf peaches
25 tomatoes
5 lemons
14 oranges
6 grapefruit
6 grapes
42 white grapes
13 mangoes
3 papayas
2 bananas
2 plantains
1 durian
8 strawberries
19 pomegranates
7 watermelons
3 cantaloupes
3 musk melons
4 honeydews
6 plums
12 cherries
8 holly-leafed cherries
4 pawpaws
18 fisher berries
19 salmon berries
7 gooseberries
5 kiwis
45 kumquats
18 dates
33 acai berries
87 blueberries
23 cranberries
23 lingenberries
3 quinces
5 pineapples
4 pineapple quinces
10 juniper berries
8 bell peppers
9 chili peppers
36 loquats
24 passionfruit
(yes it adds up to 700.)
(But were we adding number or weight?  A discussion for another time and place...)

What happens when you can make
fruit salad,
fruit pie,
fruit smoothie,
fruit sorbet,
fruit jam,
fruit jelly,
fruit preserve,
fruit conserve,
fruit marmalade?

This quickly turns inventory management into an NxM problem, the magnitude of which I'm sure you can appreciate.

Or, for just a simpler and more mundane task, what if your task was to go to the fruit store and collect 100 fruit?  If you do it the quick and dirty way of always grabbing everything from the top of the list and work your way down, then you will be grabbing an awful lot of Apples and Pears to the neglect of everything else.  And if you do carefully choose your fruit, you're making a huge number of relatively meaningless decisions.

Also what happens when the time comes to spawn a piece of fruit into existence?  Are you going to have to navigate through 6 pages of fruit to find the specific type you want? 

What about if you have to set rules about which kinds of fruit are ok to brew, and which are ok to bake into pies?

Anyways my point is that increasing the number of different "Kinds of things" one has to deal with can degrade the usability and playability of the game.

Now for the question: How will the game, whose primary interface comprises of lists, handle the great increase in number of individual entries resulting from so many new plants.  Leather is already unmanageable, what will happen to seeds?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GM-X on April 02, 2014, 08:09:26 pm

Quote from: misko27 on April 02, 2014, 06:37:11 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 02, 2014, 05:48:28 pm

Looks like smell is entirely controlled by raws, so bathing might not affect their smell at all.

Does seem like it from what I can see. Dwarves just have that natural scent. Of rock. And death. But mostly rock.

LMAO!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Charey Wolf on April 02, 2014, 08:26:26 pm

Is it possible to give plants attack flags?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Crimson Catsup on April 02, 2014, 08:37:52 pm

Quote from: Charey Wolf on April 02, 2014, 08:26:26 pm

Is it possible to give plants attack flags?

I like where this thought is going.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

With the addition of many real-world plants, and plant products, will there be any way to hang a revamped cooking industry on the improved culinary palette? For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus. There's also oats, and fruits, so breakfast muesli is also a possible product. Are there any plans to revamp the food preparation reaction to include a wider variety of possible food products, based on the source ingredients?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 02, 2014, 08:54:55 pm

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on April 02, 2014, 07:56:19 pm

-snip-

While the variety of kind of leathers you rant about annoy me, you most probably won't have one item of everything in your fortress, ever. You have this kind of problem with meat too (you have one kind of meat for every animal) and it is never a hassle to keep count of your meat.

Someday Toady will have to do something to organize these lists, however.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 02, 2014, 08:59:02 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus.

Do you mean hommus? If I recall correctly, humus is a type of organic soil...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 02, 2014, 09:00:46 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 02, 2014, 08:54:55 pm

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on April 02, 2014, 07:56:19 pm

-snip-

While the variety of kind of leathers you rant about annoy me, you most probably won't have one item of everything in your fortress, ever. You have this kind of problem with meat too (you have one kind of meat for every animal) and it is never a hassle to keep count of your meat.

Someday Toady will have to do something to organize these lists, however.

As with the present, when you look at the overall stats screen, it will probably list total "meat," "plants," "fish," and "prepared meals."

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 02, 2014, 08:59:02 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus.

Do you mean hommus? If I recall correctly, humus is a type of organic soil...

Humus is soil, but hummus is the food. It's the difference of an em.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 02, 2014, 10:31:33 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

-snip-

Brilliant, raws!

...hmm. None of these have GROWDUR tokens. And every single one has [SPRING][SUMMER][AUTUMN][WINTER]. Assuming these are finalized raws, the seasonal crops (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61293.0) mod will need some serious updating. Are these finalized raws, or still subject to revision? It's not an important problem by any means; just wondering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 02, 2014, 11:13:24 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 02, 2014, 04:26:18 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

Here is the followup on raws:

Critters:

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck
[ODOR_LEVEL:50] how stinky are you?  zero = odorless, default is 50, smell_trigger greaterless than or equal to odor_level detects w/ wind
[ODOR_STRING:wet dog hair] <-- optional, displays race name (not caste name) if you don't provide a string
[LOW_LIGHT_VISION:100] bonus percentage, cannot penalize yet, default is zero, just throw in 10000 to make it perfect


Garden plants (the file names probably aren't entirely accurate with respect to what is in them):

Garden (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)
Crops (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt)

Beetroot whiskey sounds better than beetroot wine IMO. Although according to wiki, Beetroot can be made into wine.

Maize beer, aka Moonshine right? :) Though that's probably the highly purified version.

Moonshine literally means "illegal liquor". I think you're thinking of corn whiskey, which was the most popular moonshine back in the day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 02, 2014, 11:39:28 pm

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on April 02, 2014, 07:56:19 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With the addition of many new real-world plants, Isn't this going to create a huge issue with the number of "different kinds of things"?  For example, in making cloth there are already 2 plant fibers, 3 wools, and up to 5 different silks.  Each kind of cloth gets listed separately as do garments made from them, taking up a great amount of space in item lists.  (And don't get me started on the infinity of Leather types...)  Add Cotton and Flax and now you have even more "Kinds of things".

Lists will no longer become useful or convenient ways of displaying information:
-It is one thing to see that you have 700 fruit. 
-It is quite another when you have
20 apples
14 pears
21 sun berries
8 prickle berries
17 nectarines
25 peaches
25 wolf peaches
25 tomatoes
5 lemons
14 oranges
6 grapefruit
6 grapes
42 white grapes
13 mangoes
3 papayas
2 bananas
2 plantains
1 durian
8 strawberries
19 pomegranates
7 watermelons
3 cantaloupes
3 musk melons
4 honeydews
6 plums
12 cherries
8 holly-leafed cherries
4 pawpaws
18 fisher berries
19 salmon berries
7 gooseberries
5 kiwis
45 kumquats
18 dates
33 acai berries
87 blueberries
23 cranberries
23 lingenberries
3 quinces
5 pineapples
4 pineapple quinces
10 juniper berries
8 bell peppers
9 chili peppers
36 loquats
24 passionfruit
(yes it adds up to 700.)
(But were we adding number or weight?  A discussion for another time and place...)

What happens when you can make
fruit salad,
fruit pie,
fruit smoothie,
fruit sorbet,
fruit jam,
fruit jelly,
fruit preserve,
fruit conserve,
fruit marmalade?

This quickly turns inventory management into an NxM problem, the magnitude of which I'm sure you can appreciate.

Or, for just a simpler and more mundane task, what if your task was to go to the fruit store and collect 100 fruit?  If you do it the quick and dirty way of always grabbing everything from the top of the list and work your way down, then you will be grabbing an awful lot of Apples and Pears to the neglect of everything else.  And if you do carefully choose your fruit, you're making a huge number of relatively meaningless decisions.

Also what happens when the time comes to spawn a piece of fruit into existence?  Are you going to have to navigate through 6 pages of fruit to find the specific type you want? 

What about if you have to set rules about which kinds of fruit are ok to brew, and which are ok to bake into pies?

Anyways my point is that increasing the number of different "Kinds of things" one has to deal with can degrade the usability and playability of the game.

Now for the question: How will the game, whose primary interface comprises of lists, handle the great increase in number of individual entries resulting from so many new plants.  Leather is already unmanageable, what will happen to seeds?

He's aware of the problem, Hans. He answered a question about it in his last FOTF just the other day:

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: CharonM72

This list adds 132 new plant species, making the number of varieties over 6 times greater. Given how complicated food/drink/textile/etc. production already is, how will players (especially novices) be able to figure out just what plant does what? What will prevent players from throwing a tantrum themselves due to the sheer scope of different flora?

I haven't exactly been useful in any of the many aspects of the game in that respect.  If it seems to be even worse than the other stuff during testing (haven't loaded them up a fort to test production yet, though the raws are doneish), something basic may be done, but I'm not sure yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 02, 2014, 11:53:08 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

With the addition of many real-world plants, and plant products, will there be any way to hang a revamped cooking industry on the improved culinary palette? For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus. There's also oats, and fruits, so breakfast muesli is also a possible product. Are there any plans to revamp the food preparation reaction to include a wider variety of possible food products, based on the source ingredients?

Actually ToadyOne plans to make cooking even worse. He plants to reduce all booze to just one thing called Liquor, and all food, both raw and cooked to just Foodstuffs.

>.>
<.<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xazo-Tak on April 02, 2014, 11:56:53 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 02, 2014, 07:10:34 pm

Quote from: Xazo-Tak on April 02, 2014, 07:02:38 pm

I hear that the cave-in system will undergo large improvements.
Does this mean that creatures will be able to "attack" the ground? Perhaps a change encompassing mining?

I haven't heard anything about changes to the cave-in system in the next version.

Not the next version, but the current cave-in system is supposedly a placeholder.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 03, 2014, 12:07:39 am

Quote from: Xazo-Tak on April 02, 2014, 07:02:38 pm

I hear that the cave-in system will undergo large improvements.
Does this mean that creatures will be able to "attack" the ground? Perhaps a change encompassing mining?

Cave-in improvements, as Toady has discussed them, have concerned what happens after a tile is removed, not the process of the tile's removal.  However, it's fair game for creatures to damage structural tiles through whatever means -- the dev page has "ability to dig" (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) for siegers, which could end up including digging techniques other than traditional mining.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 02, 2014, 05:38:30 pm

Does this mean we can smell which dwarves have not taken a bath recently?

Quote from: Spish on April 02, 2014, 07:12:32 pm

And on that note, would a discerning nose be able to pick up the scent of blood? [...] like from an injured creature or whatever.

ODOR_LEVEL is intended as a simplistic system.  It's not going to incorporate any complex modifiers yet.

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 02, 2014, 07:43:10 pm

Would Chia seeds be included in garden plants?

Toady posted a list of garden plants, and chia seeds don't seem to be in it.

Quote from: Charey Wolf on April 02, 2014, 08:26:26 pm

Is it possible to give plants attack flags?

Nope.

Quote from: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

With the addition of many real-world plants, and plant products, will there be any way to hang a revamped cooking industry on the improved culinary palette? For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus. There's also oats, and fruits, so breakfast muesli is also a possible product. Are there any plans to revamp the food preparation reaction to include a wider variety of possible food products, based on the source ingredients?

Recipes are on the dev page, but they won't be in the upcoming release:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Thief
    [...]
    Inns, taverns and dens
        Taverns/inns
            [...]
            Recipes/drink quality

Quote from: smirk on April 02, 2014, 10:31:33 pm

...hmm. None of these have GROWDUR tokens. And every single one has [SPRING][SUMMER][AUTUMN][WINTER]. Assuming these are finalized raws, the seasonal crops (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61293.0) mod will need some serious updating. Are these finalized raws, or still subject to revision? It's not an important problem by any means; just wondering.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-03-30

The list of new plants has more or less settled.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 12:11:07 am

"More or less" here meaning (I assume) "we're done for now, we're moving on until we get a release out".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 03, 2014, 12:15:17 am

Hm.  I read it as there still being some possibility of change before release.  It would be strange for Toady to say that any feature is "more or less settled" for all time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 12:26:19 am

Well, I never said for all time. Heck, the implication was "with a possibility of change in the version immediately after".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Will it (soon or eventually) be possible to give plants or plant products
either a "happy" flag or an "euphoria" flag (beyond the happiness
provided by eating something a particular dwarf likes)?

For example from the THC in hemp+flour biscuits (ie hash brownies),
or the theobromine in cacao-seed products.  I think we can already make
that theobromine harmful to dogs through a syndrome.  On that note:

Would a syndrome be the best way to approach happiness?  Or, would it
be possible to give such foods (as opposed to drinks) the alcohol tag,
so they prevent an unhappy thought in dwarves the way alcohol does?

I'd be happy to have hemp especially provoke whatever strange mood
he codes behind the scenes for "euphoria". ;)

Could we in some kind of way relabel certain combinations of ingredients
with a recipe name?

So, if you do create a "hemp biscuit" with flour you could name it "hash brownies",
and the game would call future prepared meals (with any amount of hemp and flour)
that in the expanded summary screen.

Sorry if parts of this feel close to the edge of a suggestion.  I'm more curious
what tools we'll get with this release to mod in some of these effects.
For example, I think we could obviously mod in quite a variety of recipes,
and make them available for reactions in the kitchen, but I think I like
better the retroactive naming of a list of ingredients.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:09:33 am

Okay, seriously? No way there's going to be enough THC in cannabis sativa not specifically designed to have it to get you even a buzz from the brownies. Yeesh.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:15:42 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:09:33 am

Okay, seriously? No way there's going to be enough THC in cannabis sativa not specifically designed to have it to get you even a buzz from the brownies. Yeesh.

Yeah, but you know cannabis indica is only a mod away.  At least the "happy" still stands,
if if you're uncomfortable with the idea of stoned dwarves.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:18:09 am

They're drunk all the time anyway, so whatever.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Will it (soon or eventually) be possible to give plants or plant products
either a "happy" flag or an "euphoria" flag (beyond the happiness
provided by eating something a particular dwarf likes)?

For example from the THC in hemp+flour biscuits (ie hash brownies),
or the theobromine in cacao-seed products.

Depends on what part of the plant is used to create the food. Hemp seeds don't have THC in them, or at least not enough for it to matter. The part of the plant that generates the most THC is the flower buds. I happen to recall smokeables being mentioned in the devblog and older FotF posts so in a future update you might very well get what you're referring to or at least the ability to mod it into the game.

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Would a syndrome be the best way to approach happiness?  Or, would it
be possible to give such foods (as opposed to drinks) the alcohol tag,
so they prevent an unhappy thought in dwarves the way alcohol does?

I'd be happy to have hemp especially provoke whatever strange mood
he codes behind the scenes for "euphoria". ;)

Hemp generally refers to the fibrous materials extracted from the body and stem of a cannabis plant. In modern times "Hemp" is a generalized term to refer to strains of cannabis that have been bred specifically to generate a lower amount of THC than other varieties. More than 100 years ago and the distinction is pretty much null. Europeans grew cannabis for centuries and very likely smoked it. Up until about a century ago it grew wild almost everywhere on the American continent which is why it garnered the term "Weed."

In reference to your question about syndromes I'm afraid I don't quite know. I am unaware as to whether syndromes can effect the emotion system so I think that's a good question for Toady: Will it be possible for syndromes to cause specific emotions in creatures?

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Could we in some kind of way relabel certain combinations of ingredients
with a recipe name?

So, if you do create a "hemp biscuit" with flour you could name it "hash brownies",
and the game would call future prepared meals (with any amount of hemp and flour)
that in the expanded summary screen.

Sorry if parts of this feel close to the edge of a suggestion.  I'm more curious
what tools we'll get with this release to mod in some of these effects.
For example, I think we could obviously mod in quite a variety of recipes,
and make them available for reactions in the kitchen, but I think I like
better the retroactive naming of a list of ingredients.

As far as the production of food in the game goes you can have the kitchen or brewery have a custom reaction that turns specific kinds of items into other items. I'm sure the day the release comes out somebody will make "That Weed Mod." It wouldn't be that hard really, just add a harvestable "bud" much in the same vein as quarry bush leaves and allow it to be cooked into a hash cake or something. You could make the food item cause dizziness and have a high value so it makes dwarves happy when they eat it but dizziness causes them to drop things and cancel jobs due to losing the job item which turns into a real pain. I mean that's if you REALLY want your dwarves stoned. Personally I think being stoned is more of a hobbit activity myself and since dwarves are constantly drunk anyway I doubt they would bother.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 03, 2014, 02:22:18 am

Quote

How will the game, whose primary interface comprises of lists, handle the great increase in number of individual entries resulting from so many new plants.  Leather is already unmanageable, what will happen to seeds?

I support this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: ZZmage on April 03, 2014, 02:52:39 am

I love the directions this release seems to be going in.

Maybe a way to make a race dependent on something not just alcohol  so caffeine dependent humans. ;D

If the siegers want to break fortifications, maybe they need Sappers.  ;D "WE'VE GOT EXPLOSIVES"

I bow to the toady one who stands on high playing track 3.  :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 03, 2014, 03:30:31 am

Quote from: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

Personally I think being stoned is more of a hobbit activity myself

That would explain why they are so mellow and sociable there in the Shire,
daily reprovision their extensive pantries, and don't adventure.

Quote from: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

You could make the food item cause dizziness and have a high value so it makes dwarves happy
when they eat it but dizziness causes them to drop things and cancel jobs due to losing the job item
which turns into a real pain.

Or maybe make them party more and work less, if that's possible.  Either way,
I agree it's probably more fun to talk about then deal with as an overseer.

Ast Oner cancels job: too high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 03, 2014, 05:06:31 am

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 03:30:31 am

Quote from: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

Personally I think being stoned is more of a hobbit activity myself

That would explain why they are so mellow and sociable there in the Shire,
daily reprovision their extensive pantries, and don't adventure.

Quote from: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

You could make the food item cause dizziness and have a high value so it makes dwarves happy
when they eat it but dizziness causes them to drop things and cancel jobs due to losing the job item
which turns into a real pain.

Or maybe make them party more and work less, if that's possible.  Either way,
I agree it's probably more fun to talk about then deal with as an overseer.

Ast Oner cancels job: too high.

The new hit single from UristMan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYsTmIzjkw&feature=kp):

"I was gonna pull the lever to close the bridge, but then I got high.  I was gonna drop them in the spike trap ditch, but then I got high. The goblins got in my for-tress and I know why-y! Because I got high, because I got high, because I got hiiigh!"

I can totally see this being a very good drug awareness message. :D LOL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: superbob on April 03, 2014, 05:51:52 am

Will watermelons explode on impact?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 03, 2014, 06:04:12 am

Quote from: superbob on April 03, 2014, 05:51:52 am

Will watermelons explode on impact launch?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 03, 2014, 06:16:18 am

More apt question:

Will multi-component/multi-layer objects be able to rupture under pressure, releasing the concealed contents?

Take for instance, an egg-- Theoretically, it has a hard, but brittle shell surrounding a liquid center. Throw the egg at something, it splatters on impact, releasing the liquid all over the place.

This could have profound implications with both fruit items, and animal product items, especially for use in warfare. It could also have some interesting consequences if it carries over to animals/creatures that have nasty innards. Exploding gas filled enemies, for example.

The benign "exploding watermelon" would "Just work" if item rupturing in general was implemented. The weaponization potential is large.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 03, 2014, 06:22:38 am

Quote from: wierd on April 03, 2014, 06:16:18 am

More apt question:

Will multi-component/multi-layer objects be able to rupture under pressure, releasing the concealed contents?

Take for instance, an egg-- Theoretically, it has a hard, but brittle shell surrounding a liquid center. Throw the egg at something, it splatters on impact, releasing the liquid all over the place.

This could have profound implications with both fruit items, and animal product items, especially for use in warfare. It could also have some interesting consequences if it carries over to animals/creatures that have nasty innards. Exploding gas filled enemies, for example.

The benign "exploding watermelon" would "Just work" if item rupturing in general was implemented. The weaponization potential is large.

Is it bad that "realistic brain splatter" was the first phrase that popped into my mind after reading this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 03, 2014, 06:34:47 am

No, In terms of dwarf fortress gameplay, that is a perfectly normal reaction. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Magistrum on April 03, 2014, 06:36:04 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 03, 2014, 06:22:38 am

Is it bad that "realistic brain splatter" was the first phrase that popped into my mind after reading this?

In bay12 standards? It's only the natural thing to think man.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 03, 2014, 06:39:23 am

Most excellent! Gore for all! 0:)

Are plants able to be harvested at different stages in their growth cycle? Can a plant have multiple products produced from gathering them this way?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 03, 2014, 06:46:36 am

As we are getting to the 666th page, a question concerning demons :

Will we see eventually plants (exotic forms?) growing in the level under lava, and will the demons and FB have any odor and smell ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Coaldiamond on April 03, 2014, 07:59:47 am

I noticed a discrepancy in the crop raws. It's probably a copy-paste issue. Oats have the prefstring "beer" but lack the corresponding tags to make any drinks. May I suggest "florets" as a new prefstring?

This was the first problem I noticed, not sure if there are more problematic raws.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 03, 2014, 09:06:33 am

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Will it (soon or eventually) be possible to give plants or plant products
either a "happy" flag or an "euphoria" flag (beyond the happiness
provided by eating something a particular dwarf likes)?
[...]
Would a syndrome be the best way to approach happiness?  Or, would it
be possible to give such foods (as opposed to drinks) the alcohol tag,
so they prevent an unhappy thought in dwarves the way alcohol does?

The effects of intoxicants, including alcohol, will be expanded later:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg419465#msg419465

Quote from: penguinofhonor

TL;DR: Alcohol and drugs should be weak poisons, poison effects should be created for them should be usable by creatures, poisons should be turned into general substances and allow positive effects as well as negative.

Yeah, I alluded to this in my dev notes on the 2nd -- poison effects are already just "creature interaction syndromes" on the material.  That I don't have ingestion yet is the main barrier to doing alcohol, and as I add in positive effects, everything else would work out (of course there'd need to be AI and jobs and so on to use things for whatever purpose).  The framework is in place, it just needs to be used for more things.  It can also be extended to things that have nothing to do with materials, though for that change a bit more would have to be done to syndrome indices.  I think I mentioned "gaze" attacks there, though at some point you have to worry about a proper extension to the full "magic" framework, which is something to be more careful about.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2009.html#2009-02-02

I decided to take a detour into poison land today. The framework should be easily extended to other material effects and to some non-material effects on creatures as well later on (for instance, alcohol effects or ointments that do whatever, as well as auras around creatures, 'gaze attacks', etc etc), but for now, I'm going to go with contact/injected/inhaled poisons that cause syndromes in affected classes of creatures involving pain, swelling, oozing wounds, bruising, blisters, numbness, paralysis, fever, bleeding, coughing/vomiting blood, nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness, necrosis, impaired vision, drowsiness and dizziness as a starter set, with some possible extensions as they arise. If it makes sense, you'll be able to move those effects around from the initial site (for say contact or injection) to body parts by category/function (so you could have something cause headaches, for example, or make the gums bleed... one of the wikipedia snakes had that... not my fault).

Quote from: catenate on April 03, 2014, 01:03:40 am

Could we in some kind of way relabel certain combinations of ingredients
with a recipe name?

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 03, 2014, 12:07:39 am

Recipes are on the dev page, but they won't be in the upcoming release:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Adventurer Role: Thief
    [...]
    Inns, taverns and dens
        Taverns/inns
            [...]
            Recipes/drink quality

Quote from: TastyMints on April 03, 2014, 01:36:08 am

In reference to your question about syndromes I'm afraid I don't quite know. I am unaware as to whether syndromes can effect the emotion system so I think that's a good question for Toady: Will it be possible for syndromes to cause specific emotions in creatures?

Not yet, but it's fair game for later, e.g. love potions and stuff.

Quote from: superbob on April 03, 2014, 05:51:52 am

Will watermelons explode on impact?

Quote from: wierd on April 03, 2014, 06:16:18 am

Will multi-component/multi-layer objects be able to rupture under pressure, releasing the concealed contents?

Quote from: Footkerchief on March 31, 2014, 10:29:14 pm

Quote from: smurfingtonthethird on March 31, 2014, 10:21:22 pm

Do vegetables and plants shmush if they are thrown at people, or walls or things?

Nope.  Projectile impacts are the same as in the current version.  Items getting damaged (in the same way that creatures do) will be a big change when it comes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 03, 2014, 09:25:38 am

Quote from: Inarius on April 03, 2014, 06:46:36 am

As we are getting to the 666th page, a question concerning demons :

Will we see eventually plants (exotic forms?) growing in the level under lava, and will the demons and FB have any odor and smell ?

It's on page 400 for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 03, 2014, 09:49:03 am

You have a higher post count per page? Speaking of which, I know it might no be the right part of the forum, but someone can point me to a thread or post where it's said how to unsucribe from a thread on this forums? I tried looking everywhere but haven't seen it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 03, 2014, 09:54:19 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 03, 2014, 09:49:03 am

You have a higher post count per page? Speaking of which, I know it might no be the right part of the forum, but someone can point me to a thread or post where it's said how to unsucribe from a thread on this forums? I tried looking everywhere but haven't seen it.

If you mean from the new replies to your posts/updated topics, I don't think it can be done.
If you mean e-mail notifications, just select the unnotify button which should be near the reply button.

EDIT: And you can change posts per page in Profile -> Look and Layout. You should check all the settings in your profile, some are very useful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 03, 2014, 10:03:39 am

Yeah I meant the first one, well, it was just curiosity. On trees, will the smelly hippies get angry if you try to trade them fruits from trees now or if you harvest too much fruit from trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 03, 2014, 10:09:16 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 03, 2014, 10:03:39 am

Yeah I meant the first one, well, it was just curiosity. On trees, will the smelly hippies get angry if you try to trade them fruits from trees now or if you harvest too much fruit from trees?

Harvesting fruit doesn't harm the trees, it's just the harvesting wood part that they complain about.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 03, 2014, 10:16:16 am

Maple syrup, dragons blood ink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_blood), gum arabic, and pine rosin/tar on the other hand.....

:D

"it's redroot dye, honest!" ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 11:11:33 am

I never got why they consider mushrooms trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 11:31:57 am

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 11:11:33 am

I never got why they consider mushrooms trees.

A lack of molecular biologists, perhaps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 12:12:23 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 11:31:57 am

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 11:11:33 am

I never got why they consider mushrooms trees.

A lack of molecular biologists, perhaps?

Could be. Elves don't seem to be all that bright in general.

Case in point:
Wood > furnace > coal > smelter > smelt iron > repeat > forge > forge iron bars > pickaxe > mine rock
"We love rocks! We know for certain you didn't harm any trees to obtain it. Give us all your mugs!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 12:23:59 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 12:12:23 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 11:31:57 am

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 11:11:33 am

I never got why they consider mushrooms trees.

A lack of molecular biologists, perhaps?

Could be. Elves don't seem to be all that bright in general.

Case in point:
Wood > furnace > coal > smelter > smelt iron > repeat > forge > forge iron bars > pickaxe > mine rock
"We love rocks! We know for certain you didn't harm any trees to obtain it. Give us all your mugs!"

Everyone knows that pickaxes and anvils grow on underground tree mushrooms. Dwarves are saying that, and dwarves never lie, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 03, 2014, 12:26:01 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 12:23:59 pm

Everyone knows that pickaxes and anvils grow on underground tree mushrooms. Dwarves are saying that, and dwarves never lie, right?

You know, didn't Toady mention that you can grow some really weird stuff on trees now or something?
If so, the idea of anvils and pickaxes growing on trees is not to be taken lightly around here... :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on April 03, 2014, 01:00:25 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 03, 2014, 12:26:01 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 12:23:59 pm

Everyone knows that pickaxes and anvils grow on underground tree mushrooms. Dwarves are saying that, and dwarves never lie, right?

You know, didn't Toady mention that you can grow some really weird stuff on trees now or something?
If so, the idea of anvils and pickaxes growing on trees is not to be taken lightly around here... :P

Being able to mod trees to grow virtually anything as a fruit would be awesome. Jewel trees! Battle axe trees!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 03, 2014, 01:09:35 pm

KILLER BEE TREES

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:19:46 pm

I'd already made a mod that makes trees drop stones that are on fire (fireball trees), like, 5 months ago.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 03, 2014, 01:26:44 pm

Quote from: Matoro on April 03, 2014, 01:00:25 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 03, 2014, 12:26:01 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 12:23:59 pm

Everyone knows that pickaxes and anvils grow on underground tree mushrooms. Dwarves are saying that, and dwarves never lie, right?

You know, didn't Toady mention that you can grow some really weird stuff on trees now or something?
If so, the idea of anvils and pickaxes growing on trees is not to be taken lightly around here... :P

Being able to mod trees to grow virtually anything as a fruit would be awesome. Jewel trees! Battle axe trees!

I can already imagine that in a sci-fi Dwarf Fortress, you wouldn't craft items. You would grow them on specialized trees. :P
Also this probably explains how elves get their wooden weaponry without being total hypocrites about the whole thing.

WHO SAID MONEY DOESN'T GROW ON TREES?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 03, 2014, 01:39:14 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:19:46 pm

I'd already made a mod that makes trees drop stones that are on fire (fireball trees), like, 5 months ago.

So? You have to cut down trees to make that happen. In the near future, one could get flaming fruit without having to cut down the whole tree!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 03, 2014, 01:48:56 pm

I meant for the next version, of course, jeez.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 03, 2014, 01:51:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress is the only game that people can mod without having played it yet. :P
(I know Toady gave us a peek at the raws and all, but still)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 03, 2014, 01:53:08 pm

Well, we'll have to wait for the next version to come out before we can test those raws, but from what we've seen, some of this early mod stuff should work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 03, 2014, 02:00:38 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 02, 2014, 08:59:02 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 02, 2014, 08:41:38 pm

For instance, I noticed that you included chickpeas; many regional dishes are made with chickpea, such as humus.

Do you mean hommus? If I recall correctly, humus is a type of organic soil...

The spelling is pretty diverse depending on where you are becuase the name come from Arabian. 

Quote

Up until about a century ago it grew wild almost everywhere on the American continent which is why it garnered the term "Weed."

Canabis/Hemp were a big in Europe too, the origin pinpointed atm to the Ural (mountainrange in Rusia). The tracked Human influence on the plant is even older then many and most crops we have including wheat.

If you look at the closest relative of Hemp, hop, you will see that it always had also medical uses, even for a real long time. Also THC isnt the only canaboid in those plants there is a whole bunch of them with differing strengths and uses. Hop mainly makes sleepy which is good for medical hop but breed out of brewers hop. (it was btw. introduced to keep the beer drinkable for a longer time since it keeps bacteria away).

Same goes for hemp. Improving THC in modern times (by a thousandfold) is well ... modern. You wouldnt even feel buzzed with a breed from the 70s - 90s, on a doze that would get you mile high nowadays since we breed so much more potent variations. A general feeling of floatiness and happyness? Sure you would get that even with a variant from 500 AD .

Some (unpopular not well supported) theories suggest that Shamans started agriculture to make booze to keep the general populatian away from the good stuff. Simpy because you cant let everyone have prophetic visions etc.The slight buzz and loss of inhibition by alcohol was preferable back then. Also you can make booze of literal grass seeds (thansk to the starch) while Hemp is a much less common thus available plant.

They and other religious groups (most likely) didnt smoke joints though, they often used it like incense or in the forms of oils etc with other plants that enhanced the effects. Also the used more of it.

Not for cannabis but for some middle eastern drugs the bible even has recipes on various hallicinugenics (source (http://www.neurobrainstorm.com/2014/01/psychoactive-plants-in-bible.html)).   

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 03, 2014, 02:42:20 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 03, 2014, 01:09:35 pm

KILLER BEE TREES

Reminds me of an old Draw Your Adventures post.

(http://i57.tinypic.com/258728m.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Quietust on April 03, 2014, 04:27:10 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 03, 2014, 06:39:23 am

Most excellent! Gore for all! 0:)

Are plants able to be harvested at different stages in their growth cycle? Can a plant have multiple products produced from gathering them this way?

The raws posted for the artichoke suggest that this will probably be the case - the HEART growth has [GROWTH_TIMING:0:59999], and the FLOWERS growth has [GROWTH_TIMING:60000:119999], which would simulate the edible heart turning into an edible flower (which is what actually happens).

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 12:23:59 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 12:12:23 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 03, 2014, 11:31:57 am

Quote from: Talvieno on April 03, 2014, 11:11:33 am

I never got why they consider mushrooms trees.

A lack of molecular biologists, perhaps?

Could be. Elves don't seem to be all that bright in general.

Case in point:
Wood > furnace > coal > smelter > smelt iron > repeat > forge > forge iron bars > pickaxe > mine rock
"We love rocks! We know for certain you didn't harm any trees to obtain it. Give us all your mugs!"

Everyone knows that pickaxes and anvils grow on underground tree mushrooms. Dwarves are saying that, and dwarves never lie, right?

As far as the Elves are concerned, you powered your furnaces with either coke or magma, and they're perfectly fine with that (even in the old 2D versions, Elves were explicitly offended by charcoal and didn't care about coke smelted from bituminous coal, even though you used charcoal at some point to start the production line).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on April 03, 2014, 04:31:55 pm

Damnit and quietust takes the 10K! *sighs* Congratuluations man!  ;D


I guess every crop/gardenplant is still single tile?

Personly i would like to see some real vines for wine beans and stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 03, 2014, 07:59:59 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 03, 2014, 04:31:55 pm

Damnit and quietust takes the 10K! *sighs* Congratuluations man!  ;D


I guess every crop/gardenplant is still single tile?

Personly i would like to see some real vines for wine beans and stuff.

Ah, but only I will have reply number 10002!

To answer your question, Toady has said nothing about multi-tile plants (only trees) so it would be a safe bet. I don't think it's possible to have multi-tile growths on trees either, sadly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 03, 2014, 11:07:38 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 03, 2014, 07:59:59 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 03, 2014, 04:31:55 pm

Damnit and quietust takes the 10K! *sighs* Congratuluations man!  ;D


I guess every crop/gardenplant is still single tile?

Personly i would like to see some real vines for wine beans and stuff.

Ah, but only I will have reply number 10002!

To answer your question, Toady has said nothing about multi-tile plants (only trees) so it would be a safe bet. I don't think it's possible to have multi-tile growths on trees either, sadly.

True, but the new tree growth/dimension variables are in the raws. Theoretically you could make a tree with a 1-tile height and canopy spread of 2-3 tiles, mess around with branch density, give it fruit (grapes or somesuch) and call it a bush/vine. Not sure how well it'll work, and it wouldn't be dwarf-plantable, but it's one of the first things I'm planning on trying with the new version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 03, 2014, 11:35:26 pm

You could probably make underbrush and scrub that way. Not every bush has a cultivated version in the real world, after all. In fact, most don't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Matoro on April 04, 2014, 01:23:36 am

When submerged to magma, will trees properly catch fire? Right now they just sit there, in magma lake.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 04, 2014, 01:34:30 am

Quote from: Matoro on April 04, 2014, 01:23:36 am

When submerged to magma, will trees properly catch fire? Right now they just sit there, in magma lake.

They should:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-07-14

The last thing I updated was the firest -- they affect trees differently now, tile-by-tile. They tend to burn off leaves and smaller branches and keep larger parts intact or dead-but-still-around, depending on the intensity of the overall fire, so all the grass usually goes with some blackened stumps/branches left behind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 04, 2014, 01:42:14 am

Quote from: Matoro on April 04, 2014, 01:23:36 am

When submerged to magma, will trees properly catch fire? Right now they just sit there, in magma lake.

 What about the bug with trees growing while submerged in 7/7 water? This bug specifically: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=457 With multi-tile trees, this bug will become even more annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 04, 2014, 01:49:53 am

Quote from: smirk on April 03, 2014, 11:07:38 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 03, 2014, 07:59:59 pm

Quote from: Heph on April 03, 2014, 04:31:55 pm

Damnit and quietust takes the 10K! *sighs* Congratuluations man!  ;D


I guess every crop/gardenplant is still single tile?

Personly i would like to see some real vines for wine beans and stuff.

Ah, but only I will have reply number 10002 and 10008!

To answer your question, Toady has said nothing about multi-tile plants (only trees) so it would be a safe bet. I don't think it's possible to have multi-tile growths on trees either, sadly.

True, but the new tree growth/dimension variables are in the raws. Theoretically you could make a tree with a 1-tile height and canopy spread of 2-3 tiles, mess around with branch density, give it fruit (grapes or somesuch) and call it a bush/vine. Not sure how well it'll work, and it wouldn't be dwarf-plantable, but it's one of the first things I'm planning on trying with the new version.

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 03, 2014, 11:35:26 pm

You could probably make underbrush and scrub that way. Not every bush has a cultivated version in the real world, after all. In fact, most don't.

That's a fantastic idea! Bracken, anyone? Giant blackberry bushes?

They'll probably make everything "heavily forested" though, which might be annoying. I do want to see saguaro ribs in the new version - them cacti gonna be so cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 04, 2014, 02:33:38 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 03, 2014, 11:35:26 pm

You could probably make underbrush and scrub that way. Not every bush has a cultivated version in the real world, after all. In fact, most don't.

That's the plan! The trick, I think, will be balancing underbrush-types vs top-story types so you don't end up with 'forests' that are more scrub than trees. Although even that would be accurate for certain biomes...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 04, 2014, 02:43:55 am

The possibilities are insane stark raving mad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 04, 2014, 04:06:22 am

How will trees hold up against magma? Will they burn away completely, or will there be some charred remains?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 04, 2014, 04:58:03 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 04, 2014, 04:06:22 am

How will trees hold up against magma? Will they burn away completely, or will there be some charred remains?

From up page:

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 04, 2014, 01:34:30 am

Quote from: Matoro on April 04, 2014, 01:23:36 am

When submerged to magma, will trees properly catch fire? Right now they just sit there, in magma lake.

They should:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-07-14

The last thing I updated was the firest -- they affect trees differently now, tile-by-tile. They tend to burn off leaves and smaller branches and keep larger parts intact or dead-but-still-around, depending on the intensity of the overall fire, so all the grass usually goes with some blackened stumps/branches left behind.

Now my own question:

You mention vampire guards in the April report.  How are they different from the vampire cultists in the current version?  Do they likewise go on killing sprees when their master is unmasked?  Do the killing sprees on master unmasking still happen, or do the cultists only become hostile to the player at that point?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 04, 2014, 05:37:09 am

Oh. Derp. I did actually read that, but apparently my memory is awful.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on April 04, 2014, 10:53:08 am

Question about enemy sieges, i thought i remembered reading that the enemy will finally be able to actually challenge your fortress instead of sitting outside until everyone gets bored unless you open willingfully a path to your fort.

But looking into the development list
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

I noticed that the whole Siege improvement subsection

Quote

Improved sieges

    Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
    More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
    Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
    Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
        Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
        Ability to build bridges/ramps
        Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
    Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
        For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
    Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Wasn't actually in blue ( the color for " Done, Next Release " )
Does that mean that the development list is not up to date or that the siege improvements are in development but will not be in the next release ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 10:56:33 am

Quote from: Robsoie on April 04, 2014, 10:53:08 am

Question about enemy sieges, i thought i remembered reading that the enemy will finally be able to actually challenge your fortress instead of sitting outside until everyone gets bored unless you open willingfully a path to your fort.

But looking into the development list
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

I noticed that the whole Siege improvement subsection

Quote

Improved sieges

    Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
    More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
    Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
    Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
        Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
        Ability to build bridges/ramps
        Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
    Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
        For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
    Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Wasn't actually in blue ( the color for " Done, Next Release " )
Does that mean that the development list is not up to date or that the siege improvements are in development but will not be in the next release ?

The only things done that could be called siege improvements afaik is enemy climbing and jumping (climbing is noted in the middle there). It will give them at least some means to bypass your walls until you update your designs accordingly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 04, 2014, 11:04:08 am

Siege engines, boats... I drool over those possibilities, I hope to be able to play them before 2020.

I will set sail on a juggernaut impulsed by a charcoal (even if it can run on coal, it will be charcoal) thrown by slave elves chained on the engine room into the engine (and an elve will be thrown in there every once in a while to mix it up), it will also have huge masts and sails made from the biggest trees I can find (hopefully a former elven site tree) AND a deck of slave oars-elves just for the sake of it and a backup if we run out of charcoal or elves, it will have dozens of cannons even if I had to modd'em in. It will run on elven hate and spew hellish fire against it's enemies! And will be the jewel of my fleet!

Speaking of which. Eventually the other races will be open to play with them, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 11:29:03 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 04, 2014, 11:04:08 am

Siege engines, boats... I drool over those possibilities, I hope to be able to play them before 2020.

I think and hope siege engines might not be thaaat far off. Purely speculating here, I'd say after this release we'll see taverns, probably also straying into cooking and music, along with more elaborated hill dwarves and fortress visitors. After that I'd wager at the thief role getting tackled, including crime and punishment in adventure mode as well as in fortress mode. After that we'd have improved mechanics either along with or right before improved sieges, unless the economics system is decided to be revamped before these.

None of those releases should be as large as this one as long as feature creep doesn't strike too hard. Then again there are several other rewrites and additions sneaking about atm such as the farming rewrite, mounts, further adventurer skills, starting scenarios and fortress mode off-site army engagements, all begging to be wrapped up as well. I'm optimistic we'll see them before 2020 anyway :D

Boats I'd assume to be a later prospect, possibly waiting until after the fluid rewrite among other things.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 11:32:49 am

Now that the movement system has been overhauled, will a tile having items/furniture make a meaningful difference in movement? I've always found it strange how you can easily walk straight through large cabinets/tables/chairs/ect. without having to do a any real maneuvering, or how you can walk over a tile which which has 10, 20, 50, or even 100 unplaced mechanisms or toys and not be at risk of tripping or hurting your feet at all.

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on April 04, 2014, 11:48:09 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 10:56:33 am

The only things done that could be called siege improvements afaik is enemy climbing and jumping (climbing is noted in the middle there). It will give them at least some means to bypass your walls until you update your designs accordingly.

Thanks, that's already much better than the "sit and do nothing" behaviour of the current sieges unless you intentionally build an opening (usually full of trap) so something will actually happen during those "sieges".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 11:57:37 am

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 11:32:49 am

Now that the movement system has been overhauled, will a tile having items/furniture make a meaningful difference in movement? I've always found it strange how you can easily walk straight through large cabinets/tables/chairs/ect. without having to do a any real maneuvering, or how you can walk over a tile which which has 10, 20, 50, or even 100 unplaced mechanisms or toys and not be at risk of tripping or hurting your feet at all.

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

For the speed thing I'm fairly sure nothing has been done, it hadn't at the time of this FotF reply anyway after the initial movement overhaul and I'm sure it would've been mentioned if anything had been done since (although it was quite a while back).

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Scandles

Will the Dwarfs and other races have bush-clearing abilities, asides from harvesting and trampling, e.g a machete, i.e hacking the vegetative things hindering their progress into little bits?

I haven't gotten to any movement speed issues.  The more those matter, the more likely it is you'd have the ability to deal with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 04, 2014, 12:44:21 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 11:32:49 am

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

No idea if Toady One has made town guards wear town uniforms, but since the adventurer is considered a free agent, it's totally optional. Although on a battlefield it would be helpful.

We already have entity symbols for various governments, so I could see a heraldic-like system where each group has their own coat of arms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deboche on April 04, 2014, 02:07:14 pm

Sorry if this has been asked before but...

Will it be possible to put traps on walls to hit climbers? And would it be possible to make an unscalable wall by making a platform forcing the invaders to grab on to it from below as such:

XXXX
     X
     X
     X
g g X    side view, g are goblins, X is wall

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 04, 2014, 02:17:40 pm

We can't install traps into walls yet. Traps involving stuff coming out of a hole in the wall, now that is another story.

That wall arrangement should work as far as preventing them from climbing. However, it also creates a blind spot where your marksdwarves can't shoot them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 02:21:57 pm

Just need to build a moat as well and he should be good for most stuff (save those few that'll go into water).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 02:24:38 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 04, 2014, 12:44:21 pm

No idea if Toady One has made town guards wear town uniforms, but since the adventurer is considered a free agent, it's totally optional. Although on a battlefield it would be helpful.

Do adventurers count as free agents? I don't remember reading anything that said they are treated differently when it comes to being in the guard in the dev logs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 04, 2014, 02:50:44 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 02:24:38 pm

Do adventurers count as free agents? I don't remember reading anything that said they are treated differently when it comes to being in the guard in the dev logs.

I don't think an adventurer can join someone else's guard organization.  They can lead a squad of their own -- maybe that's what you're thinking of?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nopenope on April 04, 2014, 03:21:48 pm

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 04, 2014, 03:28:09 pm

Quote from: Nopenope on April 04, 2014, 03:21:48 pm

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

Massive info-dump on taverns, enjoy ^^

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_12_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   So what will be happening in these taverns? If I walk into a tavern in adventure mode what will I see, versus in dwarf fortress mode, what would happen?
Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...
Menendez:   (banjo backing)
Toady:   ... and I don't if the kids show up at the bars and use their toys ... We want to get toys and instruments in but I'm not sure the toys ... like their little mini-forges, I don't know if you go to the bar for that, maybe you do if you're a dwarf.
Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there. So that kind of thing for them in particular, just dwarves from your fortress coming in, it's really just going to be an activation of music and like I said story telling. I don't know if there's going to be a particular service industry, like people serving drinks to your own dwarves, if they just go to the stockpile and grab some stuff, they don't pay for it or anything, just hang out and it's just an extension of the meeting hall/dining hall concept for them. Where it gets more interesting is when you involve people that aren't economically a part of your fortress, then you've got people that you'll actually be able to charge for drinks, charge for staying, if you want to: it might not be something you want to do to a diplomat, but it might the dwarven way of doing things. I haven't quite decided about that particular one. But you've also got merchants coming in, and depending on the location of your fortress you might also have travellers showing up or bandits showing up. There's nothing that says that the bandits don't hang out at a dwarven tavern and then move on, because there's plenty of them just lingering around, and also if you build your fortress out in the wilds they're more likely to be the closest people. This might be the time when we start making adventurer type people and mercenary type people move around a little bit and in that case you'd have some additional visitors there as well. I know in the first release which is going to predate the tavern release there's going to be people moving between towns and villages, going to markets and so on, and depending on the location of your fortress you could bump into some people's associated movements like that, although jamming your fortress in between the villages and towns ... that's a little tight. It'd be kind of funny, but it's a strange location for a dwarf fortress.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) You can't tell me where to build!
Toady:   There's a whole other large issue that's coming up before the army stuff which is the dwarves that live around your fortress, these sort of either hill dwarves or dwarves that live deep in the mountains that you're not specifically controlling, and they would also be really good candidates for not just your own local markets and stuff, but showing up and hanging out at your establishment.
Rainseeker:   Right, right. How do you feel about perhaps goblins showing up to drink and party?
Toady:   It's perfectly fine ... The way things work now goblins are not these slavering, evil, one hundred percent creatures, as we might have talked about before: you've got goblins integrating a bit into human towns ... it should be less so in places like elven forests and so on, but if there are goblins living in a human town, a few goblins, or there's goblins as part of a bandit group then they could show up. We had dismissed the specific idea of saying 'No goblins allowed in my inn', I don't know if it's a bit reminiscent of some stuff we don't want to drag into the game, but you should be able to eject people you don't want. We were thinking that if you've got people coming eventually to your fortress, say you have a reputation for having really good whiskey or something - we could add booze quality as one of the things we were thinking about adding - so you've got a reputation as a place that has good whiskey and you might get more travellers that way, and you might eventually have more well-to-do people showing up, and that might be involved with the gambling that we were considering adding too. Then you might ... I don't know if you have to kick all the bandits out of the tavern and then have a bouncer or something. If you've got a bunch of bandits showing up ... it might be a little more random until we get to all the personality rewrites, but we do already have the anger personality and so on, so if there's going to be more bar fights from bandits you might not want to have them around if you're trying to get some more well-to-do people to show up at your place.
Rainseeker:   Throw down some good tips, come on.
Toady:   I guess people who do bar fights, they might catch a case and go to the hammerer, you never know. So you could finally start hammering elves, just at your leisure maybe; picking them out, dragging them up on false charges and hammering them all. You want to be a little careful talking about this stuff, you're not necessarily turning Dwarf Fortress into Diner Dash or anything, because it seems a little weird, right? But when you've got merchants and diplomats coming, they don't have to eat or drink while they're there and you can't even offer them anything, it kind of fits into that. There's the option of perhaps having mercenaries stick around in your fortress, we thought about that a bit, you might be able to hire them and put them into squads ... you might not be able to change all their weapons, and you wouldn't have armor for them necessarily that fits, but it seems like a reasonable thing for people that don't want to focus on that; they just want to have some of those guys around. You'd probably just get the money right back from the drinking and gambling immediately. We were originally thinking about doing just adventure mode taverns and inns, and then we remembered ... there was this suggestion around 2008 or something on the forum for dwarf mode inns. I don't remember if we had talked about it at all before then, or if that was just a random suggestion that popped up back then ... So we saw taverns and inns on the dev page and we were like 'Okay, let's do dwarf mode inns too', so it's a little strange. It's certainly one of those things that popped out on the release list when we put that up, because we hadn't talked about it very much; that's the reason we're talking about it now. So basically you've got more interesting people visiting your fortress and you might be able to convince them to stick around.
Ollieh:   (musical interlude)
Capntastic:   So how do you feel the interface will be for setting these places up and keeping them supplied with cool stuff?
Toady:   I think the hub of the inn and tavern ... whatever you want to set up, because we want it to be open-ended and have some options there ... The hub is the meeting hall/dining room, I don't know if they're going to all become one type of building now, just a place for people to meet up that may or may not have tables and chairs and ...
Rainseeker:   Counters! We must have counters.
Toady:   ... counters, that's right, and whatever other furniture decides to come up. So that's going to be the hub of it, and then even if it's just a little counter where someone goes in to check into their inn, like if you wanted to set up something that was more like just a hotel type inn rather than having a big hall with tables and games and booze ... So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.
Rainseeker:   I think the neat thing about what you're choosing to do here is that you're allowing it to be more grey, because there were enemies and then there were friends, but now there are people that are customers or are visiting that might be annoying that you want to kick out but are not per se trying to kill you.
Capntastic:   I think that the important thing will be to keep the mechanics in line with what's already there, instead of making it like it's its own minigame within a game within a game.
Toady:   It's all going in with ... There's going to be nothing wrong with having your tavern meeting hall, your dwarves decide to throw a party there, there happens to be a merchant there; that's actually part of the idea, to have your dwarves around those people so that one of your dwarves could challenge a visiting merchant to a Tacticus game or something and that was one of the main things we were planning to explore with that, these interrelationships and also just the games themselves. We were thinking, well, if you've got a dwarf and an outsider playing a game you should be able to pop in and control the dwarf and just pop up a little game screen and play with some games. The starting point for that was adventure mode, because of course going in a tavern and just rolling dice or playing a little game of some kind is a perfectly reasonable thing for an adventurer to do. The problem with adventure mode mechanics sometimes is that they don't make it into dwarf mode until way later, like with the combat reports where that kind of fighting was going on but you couldn't read the text of what actually happened until recently. The idea this time is to get the dice games and card games and board games - or whatever we end up adding first - into both modes at the same time, so that you'd be able to control your dwarves playing against the outsiders, and perhaps if your dwarves are playing with each other you'd be able to pick one of them to jump into. I'm not quite as certain about that but it might be required just to give you the opportunity to do this very much. If two people are playing a game at a table in a meeting hall then they're going to be playing that game for a certain amount of time, like several days in dwarf mode the way it works, or at least a couple of days ...
Rainseeker:   A very addictive game.
Toady:   So it'll probably just pop up a little notification in the top left corner, one of those little letters or something, just letting you know that you can jump into something if you want, and then you'd be able to pop in and play the game in frozen time, so no time passes while you're resolving it, and then when you leave the game would either adjourn or they'd continue sitting at that table for the same amount of time they would have, so that it doesn't feel like there's any meta-gaming going on that way. I mean jumping into someone's head and playing a game for them is already kind of meta-gaming, so it's not that big a deal. You could, if one of your gambling addict dwarves decides to gamble away your anvil or something, then maybe you can jump in there and win the game for him.
Rainseeker:   Oh please, oh please let that be real.
Toady:   It's one of the things we wrote down where we were like 'Do we want to do this? Is that too painful?' and well, you know, it might be too fun to avoid. But you don't want to totally annoy the player into quitting your game, but to some extent that stuff's funny.
Capntastic:   Losing is fun!
Toady:   That's right. Especially when ... it's all ... I don't know what I was going to say, it's alright.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) Och, you are banned from playing cards!
Toady:   It should be entertaining, and it's good - even independent of all the visitors - giving the dwarves something finally to do with those instruments they've had for years just sitting there. And it's like there's all these attributes, like musicality ...
Capntastic:   Musicality, and kinetic sense.
Toady:   Yeah, all that stuff that they don't use at all, like musicality: there's zero use for it ... and also the language abilities don't get used that much and we can have people telling ... it would be cool, like the historical information sometimes it gives you on engravings, you can have a dwarf say 'Now I will tell you of the story of the time that I carved cheese pictures in my room' or something, and they'll sit there ...
Capntastic:   Gather round.
Toady:   So you have these really funny dwarf parties where ... more like the way, it'll probably use the same stuff - that was the point - of the military stuff where it says exactly what they're doing during their training exercises and that kind of thing. You know you'd have these activities that pop up at parties, like there's a storytelling activity going on, or there's a musical activity and then people can join in as participants in different ways, and just kind of hang out in the meeting hall doing this different stuff, and the same with the games that they play.
Rainseeker:   Could you perhaps listen to the story? Like with the game, you could just jump in and listen to it?
Toady:   You'd certainly be able to see what the story is about. If it's randomly generating the dude talking ... I threatened at one point to do a poetry generator, I've threatened these things, and if it comes down to it now it seems early because we haven't done the grammar rewrites and the things that I wanted to do with that stuff, so it might not happen immediately. Before I play too much with language I wanted to get through those things, but if it's just ...
Rainseeker:   The dwarves from Nantucket will have to wait.
Capntastic:   Tread lightly.
Toady:   It rhymes with bucket.
Rainseeker:   It does rhyme with bucket.
Toady:   And buckets are really important in Dwarf Fortress.
Rainseeker:   They are, you need them to build wells.
Toady:   That's right ... You should be able to see what they're about, even if it isn't giving you the blow-by-blow, and there are things it can do, like if he's retelling the story of a war, he can talk about ... you know we've got the different list of events that happened and the storyteller might highlight a particular duel from that war, just mention it or whatever ... So you'll get some information, I doubt we'll be jumping too far off the deep end on that one right now, and what else ... singing, and dancing ... what else do people do to entertain themselves? I don't know if they're going to be putting on plays...
Capntastic:   Boasting.
Toady:   Yeah, just talking all kinds of crap.
Rainseeker:   That would be kind of cool, have them lying about stuff they've done, they tell a story but it's actually a lie.
Toady:   Yeah we can finally use those personality traits, those lying skills, and their creativity. And they could make up fake stories, it's not boasting, it's just telling a funny story or whatever. So it should be cool; one of the main things of that release is just getting your dwarves in there and not just having these stand around and talk parties. There's a place for that, but not in a dwarf fortress ... and they don't even have drinks, they're just sitting there talking to each other, I guess they've all just really close friends talking about old times and doddering around or something. But not anymore.
Capntastic:   There need to be procedurally generated mixed drinks and dare drinks.
Toady:   We had those old recipes, then they disappeared. I don't know very much about any of that stuff, despite having spent nine years as a student in college, but certainly people get into their booze and dwarves should be the rule rather than the exception there.
Capntastic:   Oh yeah.
Toady:   So yeah, I imagine there'll be some learning about that. But certainly drink quality, like I mentioned before, with the reputation of your fortress resting on that perhaps. Even if you don't make the best swords you probably have the best whiskey in the whole world.
Rainseeker:   Can you allow us to craft our own microbrews, like invent a drink?
Toady:   I guess that's what the Capn was referring to too, right? It kind of relies on this whole recipe idea we had before that you'd be able to take not just the number of different food items you're putting in, and then it says 'this is made of minced this and minced that and minced water and minced air and whatever else you can mince in Dwarf Fortress'; just running with that but that actually having named recipes is not that difficult, it's just something that ... The structures for it in a basic way were in the game at one point and they disappeared, I still have these trade tabs for recipes that aren't used for anything, so I'm not sure quite when I'm getting to that, because it's the kind of thing you could end up throwing in, you know? But certainly drink quality is going in.
Ollieh:   (musical interlude)
Toady:   It's kind of a weird thing, there are all kinds of avenues that come out of taverns, like can you hire people, can you hire just soldiers or if your dwarves are all busy mining can you hire a cook, or hire a human to clean up all the forgotten beast blood that's tracked around ... well, you'd be hiring a series of humans to clean up the forgotten beast blood.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) Och, there goes another one!
Toady:   It's certainly up for considering. We tried to think of all the different visitors that you can expect, and there's a lot of humans just kind of wandering around when they get their towns destroyed, and they live in the hills, so they could come and be some use to you. But we're not sure, and it would rely on ... You get a lot of migrants yourself, but in those fortresses that don't get a lot of migrants, or especially when migrants start changing over to something that actually has to migrate and come to your fortress then you might find that there are more other types of critters visiting. It doesn't mean you need to keep them, it doesn't mean you need to even welcome them, and if you don't have a tavern established you might not have to worry about this stuff, because I can definitely see the side of people that just want to have their dwarves without dealing with all this riffraff. So it's something that's only going to happen if you really encourage it to happen for the most part, although there are things like refugee crises that already happen in the game, but the guys just kind of go off into the wilderness and then re-establish sites in world generation, but if world generation is over they're just hanging out, and those situations might be thrust onto your fortress.
Rainseeker:   You have your seven dwarves and then three hundred people show up. You're like 'Uhhh ...'
Capntastic:   'Where's the food?'
Toady:   There have to be reasonable limits and constraints, but ... You've got to worry about, you know, if you're allowing bandits to come to your tavern and there's only seven dwarves. Maybe they stay in line just because they don't know if there are traps and levers that a dwarf could pull. Especially when you're going into a tunnel in the earth you should be on your best behaviour, maybe they just come there to drink and gamble and stuff, although I imagine there'll be people building outdoor establishments, like big green glass casinos and stuff. It'll be interesting to see what happens, it shouldn't take too much dwarf power to help out your guests; you'd probably be responsible for serving them drinks. Maybe that means that goblets will finally be used for something too, but I'm not sure. Because right now what would serving a drink look like? They go a stockpile and grab a barrel and just pour it down the guest's throat and then bring it back to the stockpile. It's a dwarf bar, that's not far off I imagine. But maybe there'll actually be a point to making all those goblets now, you just stack them in your bar.
Rainseeker:   I guess I assumed that the dwarf always took an actual mug with him or something; it just doesn't work that way huh? He just goes and sticks his head in the barrel and takes a drink?
Toady:   Chugalug right out of the barrel, yeah. I guess you can imagine that there's a tap, but ...
Rainseeker:   I want a barrel like that, full of beer.
Toady:   It should be fascinating, it should be really fascinating. Ever since we put it up on the dev page we're like 'Dwarf mode inns are fascinating', it's just weird. But we're looking forward to it. The hill dwarves is a big thing later, we're not really sure how that's going to work into it, because the hill dwarves are army arc material, but that'll probably change the character of them a lot, especially if you have a lot of hill dwarves.

There's even more info in the DFtalks if you want, but linking all of it would be a bit much (I think you'll find it easier to read in the actual transcript, the link is in the quote). As for the other questions, it's been hinted that Taverns are a strong candidate for the next cycle after this release, as soon as all the bugfixing and the promised fortress mode work priority overhaul is done that is. So that'd be timeline of it I guess, Toady doesn't seem to keen on doing more specific date estimates.

The development cycle shouldn't be anywhere near as long as this one hopefully. Toady has stated that he doesn't want them to take this long and will surely try even harder to keep it short in the near future I'd imagine. How long the Tavern stuff actually takes we'll most likely have to just wait and see. There are a lot of related features so it depends on how much more than just the taverns will go in along with it.

The stuff in the dev page should give some estimate:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Inns, taverns and dens

Taverns/inns
Lay out the basic area/furniture and entertain dwarves/guests
Fortress guests include hill dwarves, merchants, diplomats, adventurers, mercenaries, bandits, travelers, etc.
Musical instrument use, dancing, storytelling, etc.
Set prices/activities
Recipes/drink quality
Games
Dwarves can gamble with outsiders
Rooms rentable to outsiders
Reputation tracked
Tie-ins with fortress justice if things go badly

Adv mode taverns/inns
Some of these places shadier with shadier individuals

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on April 04, 2014, 03:35:48 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on April 04, 2014, 11:32:49 am

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

They currently do, whenever you look at the clothes (usually helmets and armor) of town guards, they'll tend to have their civilization or entity symbol embroidered on them. Sometimes is not as easy, but there should be some kind of quick way to check it out, as soon as it turns relevant.

Quote from: Nopenope

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

Though there's no actual Tavern Arc in the Dev_Single (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) page (which is where I assume you got your doubts about the existence of that specific arc), you might also take that the avaliable development list is outdated and inaccurate, in terms of Toady's ongoing plan.

The Tavern Arc, as we've heard, meshes a lot of stuff from the Diplomacy Arc, the Crime and Punishment Arc and a lot more. It might allow your fortress to have foreign denizens and floating populations, it will be a source of valuable information and rumours as well, it might help the economy and also provide entertainment for and by idle dwarves. Expect drunk fights, adventurers gathering, thievery and, why not, a disease vector.

Arcs, as they're being developed right now, are not lineal and self-contained, rather branching themselves while overlapping their checks and goals.

Also, see Manveru's ninja post.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 04, 2014, 03:41:25 pm

Are there any significant changes to the Legends mode in this release? What's going to be tracked in there now for us lore people to look forward to?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 07:07:35 pm

Quote

Quote from: Deboche
Will creatures be able to ride a creature that can climb? And would they keep use of both hands in that situation?

Yeah.  Jumping mounts, maybe, too...  though I'm not really sure what happens code-wise currently when a mount becomes a projectile (which is how jumping works).  The rider may detach, which'll be funny until it is fixed.

Does this mean that an adventurer also becomes a projectile when jumping? Is it possible to jump at an enemy and damage them and would you take damage from the impact? Is it possible to lodge yourself or your mount in bits of enemies, and if so, how do you dislodge yourself? If damage and lodging is possible but unintended, can you leave it in as a "feature" for at least a few versions? Is a quick combat log of jumping-into-something a possibility for us as a sneak-peak, assuming damage does occur from a moving projectile? (or is it like siege projectile? ie: not really damaging).

(I only ask because corpse-shurikens and fluffy-wambler-throwing are time-honored tactics for many adventurers. But if you could throw yourself or your mount by jumping, the results may be rather amusing (and lethal) in the combat logs. I'm assuming human adventurers are considered blunt weapons with a large impact area.)


edit: I green'ified it, because it turns out that after some thought about it, I actually do want to know. It may highlight possible bugs, things that are happening in the code, or potential future hilarity for us to look forward to. Even if ourselves or mounts become "siege projectile'd", some jumps might be fun (wall-splat-parkour style).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2014, 07:34:23 pm

Adventurers are units exactly like every other unit. Yes, they become projectiles when jumping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Nasikabatrachus on April 04, 2014, 07:41:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 04, 2014, 07:34:23 pm

Adventurers are units exactly like every other unit. Yes, they become projectiles when jumping.

So. Who's going to mod in Arrow-Man adventurers first?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 07:46:47 pm

Does this have the implications that I'm thinking of? Damage being caused on impact? Standard "blunt weapon" damage? And does jumping into a wall have the same effect it does on crossbow bolts/siege ammunition? You fall down with no damage? When do you stop being a projectile and go back to your normal damage-able self? (I probably have a massive misunderstanding of the background code in this).

(won't green'ify this, but it could be relevant for certain tactics or modding options for creatures/enemies)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2014, 07:51:21 pm

It'll be the same code as unit projectiles, not item projectiles. Huge difference. Unit projectiles have a blue background. You can see them whenever a creature goes unconscious in midair or is hit/thrown particularly hard by another creature that is (usually) much larger than it (though a sufficiently high strength--and by that I mean in the hundreds of thousands--can suffice)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 07:57:21 pm

Cheers. Explains some slight lack of effectiveness in Goblin Golfing when playing as a giant with a warhammer in any case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 04, 2014, 07:59:17 pm

All this talk about jumpers as projectiles made me think: wouldn't it be fun to have a poisonous snake bow or an enraged badger catapult? And would they go through fortifications? Actually...


Can jumping living creatures pass through fortifications?
Any plans for weapons or interactions that can shoot/create living creatures? Like a giant cave spider releasing its young to attack an adventurer for example or a catapult that shoots dangerous magical creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 04, 2014, 08:01:58 pm

1. No. I'm pretty sure units don't go through fortifications even while being projectiles.
2. There are item sprays that release vermin now, so you can have something like that, even if the vermin are "clouds" of vermin and braindead at that. Still, clouds of spiderlings coming at you? Yeeeesh.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on April 04, 2014, 08:28:38 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 04, 2014, 08:01:58 pm

1. No. I'm pretty sure units don't go through fortifications even while being projectiles.
...

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 04, 2014, 07:59:17 pm

All this talk about jumpers as projectiles made me think: wouldn't it be fun to have a poisonous snake bow or an enraged badger catapult? And would they go through fortifications?

Can jumping living creatures pass through fortifications?
[color] ...

Unit projectiles (living creatures) DO pass through fortifications (I tested using DFHack). You can also verify this using a minecart crash setup to fling a living creature through fortifications. If jumping turns a unit into a projectile, then jumping at a fortification may get you lodged in the fortification, or even to the other side. I doubt the AI would deliberately do this though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 08:40:30 pm

Can said unit be damaged normally (is there actually a fortification bonus vs ranged when inside the fortification), can it fire a crossbow normally, and will it re-stock ammo, drink and eat from a stockpile placed beside it?

(yeah, this isn't really a FotF question, I'm getting a bit silly with them. But turret-emplacement dwarves sounds too good to not ask about. Might be !!science!! time)

edit: never mind. Dwarves only pick up something on the tile they're on. Damn! We were so close....... Needs a natural, infinite ammo weapon and can't have to eat or drink. GCS wall turret? The !!science!! just got horribly difficult.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 04, 2014, 09:45:44 pm

Quote from: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 08:40:30 pm

Can said unit be damaged normally (is there actually a fortification bonus vs ranged when inside the fortification), can it fire a crossbow normally, and will it re-stock ammo, drink and eat from a stockpile placed beside it?

(yeah, this isn't really a FotF question, I'm getting a bit silly with them. But turret-emplacement dwarves sounds too good to not ask about. Might be !!science!! time)

edit: never mind. Dwarves only pick up something on the tile they're on. Damn! We were so close....... Needs a natural, infinite ammo weapon and can't have to eat or drink. GCS wall turret? The !!science!! just got horribly difficult.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2163

Items dropped above fortifications fall inside them. So you could feed them and give them ammo. You could even design a minecart system to do it automatically. As long as you don't mind some message spam and a dwarf that can do nothing else but sit there.

And projectiles stop before entering fortifications so they should be safe, as long as the enemy is far away.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Fortification#Bugs

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on April 04, 2014, 10:20:48 pm

The Future of the Fortress looks brighter and brighter. Giant aerial body-slam-explode! attacks and fortification stockpiles. Can't wait.

So many things to do on release, modded or not.
(I'll never post in this thread again. Until I do)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deboche on April 05, 2014, 02:34:05 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 04, 2014, 02:17:40 pm

We can't install traps into walls yet. Traps involving stuff coming out of a hole in the wall, now that is another story.

That wall arrangement should work as far as preventing them from climbing. However, it also creates a blind spot where your marksdwarves can't shoot them.

Yes or make a step where they have to walk and have traps there. It would create the blind spot but you could make any level of the wall a fortification and have marksdwarves shoot through that. Or even shoot water through it. Or that other liquid that exists in the game.

Does anybody know if we can drop rocks or other items on climbing gobbos with dump? I'm assuming some form of this will be possible when properly rolling stone fall traps get made.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deon on April 05, 2014, 05:50:37 am

Damn it, I got a dream tonight that the new version is released and I need to make a mod ASAP. Then I woke up and the magic disappeared...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 05, 2014, 06:25:06 am

Quote from: Deon on April 05, 2014, 05:50:37 am

Damn it, I got a dream tonight that the new version is released and I need to make a mod ASAP. Then I woke up and the magic disappeared...

I had a dream where I was flying over an ocean for some reason. There were also snakes. In comparison, dreams about DF would make sense, and for that I envy you.

Title: Re: Dreams of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 05, 2014, 07:15:24 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 05, 2014, 06:25:06 am

Quote from: Deon on April 05, 2014, 05:50:37 am

Damn it, I got a dream tonight that the new version is released and I need to make a mod ASAP. Then I woke up and the magic disappeared...

I had a dream where I was flying over an ocean for some reason. There were also snakes. In comparison, dreams about DF would make sense, and for that I envy you.

I had a dream I was being chased by human-like creatures that have no sternums, but can completely open up their skeletons, ripping their skin and everything. I'm jealous of both of your dreams, but at least I now know what I'm modding in when the release comes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 05, 2014, 07:23:51 am

I had a dream in February that the new version came out (and its number was 0.50) and I got really excited about it. (I was at school in that dream so I was using my phone for it)

Then I woke up and got really angry that it didn't actually happen. :C
Brain, stop teasing me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 05, 2014, 09:34:27 am

I am happy I am not alone in DF-related dreams.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist_McSwitzer on April 05, 2014, 05:27:24 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 05, 2014, 09:34:27 am

I am happy I am not alone in DF-related dreams.

If DF ever gets a full release (20-30 years, lol) while my giggle-stick is still working, I'm going to impregnate my wife and call our child Urist. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 05, 2014, 05:29:42 pm

Quote from: Urist_McSwitzer on April 05, 2014, 05:27:24 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 05, 2014, 09:34:27 am

I am happy I am not alone in DF-related dreams.

If DF ever gets a full release (20-30 years, lol) while my giggle-stick is still working, I'm going to impregnate my wife and call our child Urist.

0_o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 05, 2014, 05:42:18 pm

Alright, so just one or two more things left? Lets not go for any extended bugfixing this time please? It sounds like there aren't really crashes going on......

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 05, 2014, 05:55:53 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 05, 2014, 05:42:18 pm

Alright, so just one or two more things left? Lets not go for any extended bugfixing this time please? It sounds like there aren't really crashes going on......

Three - the info screen, vampire/deity guards, and intruder check things. Bugfixing will take as long as it needs for the game to be (vaguely) playable - I don't think Toady has run many extended tests beyond his current focus yet, and he'll at least want to try to avoid things like the sleep bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 05, 2014, 07:14:05 pm

Quote from: Urist_McSwitzer on April 05, 2014, 05:27:24 pm

If DF ever gets a full release (20-30 years, lol) while my giggle-stick is still working, I'm going to impregnate my wife and call our child Urist.

Oh my god, that's horrific and I love it. Can I sig it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 05, 2014, 07:20:13 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 05, 2014, 07:14:05 pm

Quote from: Urist_McSwitzer on April 05, 2014, 05:27:24 pm

If DF ever gets a full release (20-30 years, lol) while my giggle-stick is still working, I'm going to impregnate my wife and call our child Urist.

Oh my god, that's horrific and I love it. Can I sig it?

Oh dear goodness...just realised...the child would be called Urist McSwitzer the Second....
WHAT PARENT WOULD DO THAT TO THEIR CHILD?!?!?!
:P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 05, 2014, 09:17:22 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 05, 2014, 05:42:18 pm

Alright, so just one or two more things left? Lets not go for any extended bugfixing this time please? It sounds like there aren't really crashes going on......

This time? Which time was there before?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 05, 2014, 11:29:23 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 05, 2014, 09:17:22 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 05, 2014, 05:42:18 pm

All right, so just one or two more things left? Let's not go for any extended bugfixing this time please? It sounds like there aren't really crashes going on......

This time? Which time was there before?

I imagine he means the time before previous releases.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: finka on April 06, 2014, 09:16:46 am

Another small typo in the garden raws: the caper should have plural name "caper bushes", not "caper bushs".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 06, 2014, 07:27:28 pm

Shouldn't the pineapple 'tree' be more like 'shrub' since the plant isn't actually tree sized? Unless you don't have a category set for smaller plants or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 06, 2014, 07:52:05 pm

So far as I can see, many plants have an [EDIBLE_VERMIN] tag. Why are they classified as vermin?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 06, 2014, 08:01:28 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on April 06, 2014, 07:52:05 pm

So far as I can see, many plants have an [EDIBLE_VERMIN] tag. Why are they classified as vermin?

I was wondering about that as well, I think it may have to do with them being eatable by vermin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 06, 2014, 08:09:07 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 06, 2014, 07:27:28 pm

Shouldn't the pineapple 'tree' be more like 'shrub' since the plant isn't actually tree sized? Unless you don't have a category set for smaller plants or something.

Thats just a catagory, not just descrtive. You can define shrubs with with "tree" mechanics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 06, 2014, 08:27:44 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 06, 2014, 08:01:28 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on April 06, 2014, 07:52:05 pm

So far as I can see, many plants have an [EDIBLE_VERMIN] tag. Why are they classified as vermin?

I was wondering about that as well, I think it may have to do with them being eatable by vermin.

Yes. (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Material_definition_token)  It's a material definition tag that's been around for a while.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 06, 2014, 09:22:49 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 05, 2014, 11:29:23 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 05, 2014, 09:17:22 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 05, 2014, 05:42:18 pm

All right, so just one or two more things left? Let's not go for any extended bugfixing this time please? It sounds like there aren't really crashes going on......

This time? Which time was there before?

I imagine he means the time before previous releases.

When DF2010 came out, there were a lot of legendary-level bugs, but some of us played it anyway. It was really part of the experience to find bugged out maps and explore them. Those who were bothered by the bugs kept playing 40d for a while.

I noticed the new drinks seem to be “beer” or “wine”, which are just fermented. Does that mean we’re going to be facing a distilling process to get whisky, vodka, brandy, and so on sooner than later?

I hope we can still get Swamp Whisky in the upcoming release. Major Failure will never feel the same again if it is not. It is part of this game’s history!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 06, 2014, 11:32:55 pm

@captianarchmage: There are a few ciders as well, which are fermented anyhow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 07, 2014, 02:07:29 am

Actually, there is also double distillation, like for Cognac (which is one of the most famous Brandy).
But yeah, i would really like some *bronze alembic* or some ☼steel condensator☼.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 07, 2014, 02:40:29 am

I wonder if we'll ever get an adventure mode quest where some dude tells you to go find his alembic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zan Oltaridor on April 07, 2014, 06:20:08 am

Can someone give me a brief list of the features that are included in the upcoming update? There is so much i read, and i dont really know what comes now in this update, and whats planned. Im a bit confused :D Would be much appreciated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2014, 08:25:59 am

Quote from: Zan Oltaridor on April 07, 2014, 06:20:08 am

Can someone give me a brief list of the features that are included in the upcoming update? There is so much i read, and i dont really know what comes now in this update, and whats planned. Im a bit confused :D Would be much appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/preview?sle=true

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2014, 08:28:30 am

Quote from: smirk on April 02, 2014, 10:31:33 pm

Are these finalized raws, or still subject to revision?

If it wasn't answered before, it definitely has been now:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-04-06

[...] everything continues to be subject to change [...]

Quote from: MisterB777 on April 02, 2014, 04:37:39 pm

Oh the stews and roasts that will be created in my fortresses... :)  In looking through the raws for the new plants, I don't see any of them with this tag (the rocknuts->rocknut paste->rocknut oil reaction):

[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:PRESS_LIQUID_MAT:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:OIL]

So, does this mean that the oil process is changing, or just that the new plants just aren't there yet?  Just curious if they are finalized for this release, or if I'm missing something else?

Some of the new crops have oils now (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_crops.txt) (Toady just updated the files).  Still no oils for the garden plants (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt) e.g. peanuts, but that may still change.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 07, 2014, 09:48:15 am

whoof--- Durian wine? Yeowza.

I guess that's one way to keep the elven diplomats away... The smell would be horrendous!

OTOH, adding a speed boosting and sleep depriving syndrome to coffee products could have real applications now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 07, 2014, 10:02:09 am

Quote from: wierd on April 07, 2014, 09:48:15 am

whoof--- Durian wine? Yeowza.
I guess that's one way to keep the elven diplomats away... The smell would be horrendous!

But if you keep them away, then how are you supposed to dump them naked in a pit with zombie whales? What would be the whole point of the game then? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 07, 2014, 11:14:39 am

What would you say to us suggesting more realistic, more specific biomes, rather than "ANY_TEMPERATE" and "ANY_TROPICAL" for most of the new trees? I noticed the new "desert lime" is the only exception, with:
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TROPICAL][BIOME:SAVANNA_TROPICAL][BIOME:SHRUBLAND_TROPICAL]
Are you planning on specifying more specific biome sets for all fruit trees? Most fruit trees don't do well in swamplands/marshlands/wetlands (inundating their roots with that much water eventually kills them), and I'm not entirely sure if you took that into account. Desert lime would be the most immediately obvious to exclude wetter biomes for, I suppose, but some of the other tree types have difficulty with it too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2014, 12:07:32 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on April 07, 2014, 11:14:39 am

What would you say to us suggesting more realistic, more specific biomes, rather than "ANY_TEMPERATE" and "ANY_TROPICAL" for most of the new trees?

In general, community contributions to the raws are useful to the extent that they're 1) well organized and 2) reliably sourced. Uristocrat headed up a similar effort to gather information about material density (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0) -- those values eventually made it into the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 07, 2014, 12:56:05 pm

I'm surprised there was only one post (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg5147818;topicseen#msg5147818) on GROWDUR missing completely, so far. I've been modding all my crops to have 3-season growdurs (for game balance, since food production is so easy) and all 4 season tags to simulate winter wheat etc. The idea is to plant each field only once per year and that the growth time is longer (3 seasons so there's 1 season to harvest/plant in). With all these new varieties, it would be better to organize winter varieties as a new crops too, though, if/when seasonality data is incorporated.

I was wondering about how will seeds, e.g. the new grains work? Does milling still produce a seed, or do you actually (realistically) mill the seeds for flour, and have to keep some to be able to plant the next crop? ... but then I noticed the comments in the raws:

Quote

*** ear is threshed to spikelets, milled down to flour

So apparently threshing will get more use. I guess it's still open whether it's the threshing or milling phase that will "produce" the seed stock for the next crop cycle. The first would be more realistic IMO (the most realistic being that there wouldn't be separate "seeds" and "grains"), but it's still an improvement regardless.

Another observation related to seeds/the new plants is that most new trees have GROWTH_HAS_SEED in the fruit growth; the exceptions have [GROWTH:SEED] or [GROWTH:NUT] sections, i.e. the final growth is just the seed or nut without any separate fruit around it. No crops have growths referring to seed production, so I guess they still produce seeds in the traditional manner, i.e. when eaten raw(?!), brewing or threshing (see above). An acceptable abstractions that dwarves never use up all the grains, I guess... unless they're cooking. However, many garden plants, e.g. artichokes, beets and cabbages are still missing any indication (that I can see) about where their seeds will appear from. Possibly if the last GROWTH is FLOWERS,  then after the GROWTH_TIMING on the flower ends (120k unnamed units it'll automatically produce a seed. I'd guess the units are ticks, since that would mean a fairly reasonable 0.3 years, with some extra time (until 200k) to harvest FRUITs, PODs etc., which apparently usually drop off after their GROWTH_TIMING ends. And presumably they rot or potentially freeze after that. Apparently tubers are not growths, but instead are the structural plant part, much like all crops are now.

Edit: This post originally (when first writing/before this edit) had 2 greened questions, but I reread Toady's update and he mentions he's still missing some variables, so I'm going to assume that either that's what's going on in the garden/crop files, or that my speculation regarding crop seed and garden plants' flowers is close to the truth :). So I did a bit of a fairly extensive rewrite to the post so it's more about my observations on the raws.

P.S. I also just realized that I hope there will be some improvement to the planting interface on farm plots, or that list is going to be loooong especially with crops, potentially also with gardens (assuming they'll have a different "building", but be otherwise similar). E.g. a filter to only show plants which you have seeds of, or only plants that are capable of growing in that biome/season.

P.P.S. Hemp with raw+cooked -edible seeds, seed paste, press cakes, oil, flour (TIL this), and thread-processable leaves! One-stop shopping for all your (non-booze) farming needs. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 07, 2014, 01:29:43 pm

Some of the crops are actually rootcrops or are tubers, carrot being one example, there are potatoes, and beets are a rootcrop as well. The seeds just aren't in the edible portion itself.

There is a good deal of uncompleted raws, for example, he has all of the new wood types the same color as that hasn't been researched

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 07, 2014, 01:36:49 pm

In the same vein, "polishing" grain for things like sake' should some day make an appearance. The polishing process is not optional for clear, pure sake. It removes many undesirable sheath proteins and fatty acids from the outer skin of the rice grain, which improves the flavor and clarity of the finished sake.

That is definately a job for a miller.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 07, 2014, 02:12:06 pm

Darn now I hunger for warm sake and sushi, thanks a lot wierd.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillerClowns on April 07, 2014, 02:22:56 pm

Two questions.

With the sheer number of new mundane crops overcrowding them, alignment-related plants (sun berries, sliver barbs, glumprongs, feather trees) threaten to become obscenely rare. Are there any plans to give alignment crops priority and/or expand the number of alignment crops that exist to increase the odds of getting something fantastic while embarking in such unusual areas?

To what extent will odors respect obstacles? Can you smell a creature that has a wall between you and it, provided there is open air above? And conversely, will it be possible to smell a creature on the other side of a solid wall with no gap for the odor to flow through? (I ask because dwarves panicking due to smelling creatures on the other side of a solid seal seems like a Day 1 bug waiting to happen.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 07, 2014, 02:52:48 pm

Quote from: KillerClowns on April 07, 2014, 02:22:56 pm

Two questions.

With the sheer number of new mundane crops overcrowding them, alignment-related plants (sun berries, sliver barbs, glumprongs, feather trees) threaten to become obscenely rare. Are there any plans to give alignment crops priority and/or expand the number of alignment crops that exist to increase the odds of getting something fantastic while embarking in such unusual areas?
...

This was answered to some extent in the last FotF reply. At first glance the answer might be mistakenly assumed to not include the non-alignment plants, but the bolded part makes it quite clear.

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.'

Since we'll be getting sphere biomes instead of the current evil/good ones at some point, I'm assuming we'll then see a random assortment of sphere+plant with magical effects corresponding to the sphere. I agree we wouldn't really lose anything by removing the current premade ones, and some of them could end up being replicated to the letter with a procedural. You just might have to settle for sun fruit/nuts/bulbs/tubers/wines/leaves/etc in some worlds over the current berries (and it could easily be set so that sun plants always produce sunshine liquor as well) :P

As for the rarity, I don't see how they'd be overcrowded in the places they actually grow. It's not like all crops will grow wild in every biome, some of them might not even grow wild at all. Outside the magical places they grow though they obviously should be rare, to give an incentive to actually settle the place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2014, 02:57:19 pm

^^^ That also addresses this question:

Quote from: Glanzor on April 02, 2014, 04:46:34 pm

Toady, you implied that the new realistic plants will replace the old ones in the upcoming version. Will that include unusual plants like sun berries and silver barbs, that don't really have a real life equivalent? 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 07, 2014, 03:10:48 pm

Quote from: Snaake on April 07, 2014, 12:56:05 pm

E.g. a filter to only show plants which you have seeds of, or only plants that are capable of growing in that biome/season.

I think that the list of plants for outside plots already filters by biome.  My current fort is half one biome and half another (I forget which ones at the moment), and I can only plant whip vine seeds (or, actually, any outdoor plants at all) in surface farm plots in what looks like one of the biomes.  There could of course be another cause I'm missing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 07, 2014, 05:54:23 pm

Quote from: catenate on April 07, 2014, 03:10:48 pm

Quote from: Snaake on April 07, 2014, 12:56:05 pm

E.g. a filter to only show plants which you have seeds of, or only plants that are capable of growing in that biome/season.

I think that the list of plants for outside plots already filters by biome.  My current fort is half one biome and half another (I forget which ones at the moment), and I can only plant whip vine seeds (or, actually, any outdoor plants at all) in surface farm plots in what looks like one of the biomes.  There could of course be another cause I'm missing.

I didn't know that it filters already, if it does, possibly since all farmable (have seeds) surface plants are just NOT_FREEZING and either DRY or WET, so it's rare to see the filter at work. Actually, it should only filter out whip vine/sliver barb/sun berry if you're not in a savage/evil/good biome, so it seems like you may have a mod that you've forgotten about? Since whip vine is [DRY][SAVAGE][BIOME:NOT_FREEZING], if you can plant whip vine, you should be able to plant all the other DRY plants too, since the lack of a SAVAGE tag is not the same as a NOT_SAVAGE tag AFAIK.

On another look, the new plant_crops.txt does improve things in that several plants are restricted to e.g. dry tropical savanna and/or grassland, and 1 each to dry tropical broadleaf forest and any tropical wetland (buckwheat and papyrus respectively). However, the majority still fall into either any_temperate, any_tropical, or not_freezing, and so as an extreme example, if you have a (fairly easy to find) embark with tropical savanna and tropical grassland, you'd have 23 possible crops by my count. Temperate climates get 14 crops, and non-tropical/temperate, NOT_FREEZING climates (taiga+tundra?) get 4: barley, alfalfa, rye and red spinach. Currently there are 8 farmable non-alignment surface crops. So most of the time there's going to be a significantly higher amount of crops.

I'm hopeful that at least garden plants will be in a separate list due to possibly being planted in garden plots instead of farm plots, but we'll see.

Interesting observations on garden plant biomes: caper bushes can grow in any desert or grassland; lentils and potatos in not_freezing; cranberries, bilberries and blueberries in any temperate, tundra and taiga.
Notes on tree biomes: the first 75% of the file are all tropical trees, with desert lime the only exception to any_tropical; the rest (from almonds) are any_temperate, with only bayberries as any_temperate+taiga. Another interesting fact is that they're only max trunk height 1, too, but might have heavy branches around them, so apparently they're a heavy, bushy sort of tree. For comparison, other max trunk heights range from 2-8, with 3, 2, 5 and 8 being fairly common (in that order).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 07, 2014, 06:18:36 pm

Unless it's a mountain.

You can't plant ANY aboveground crops on a mountain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 07, 2014, 06:42:17 pm

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on April 07, 2014, 06:18:36 pm

Unless it's a mountain.

You can't plant ANY aboveground crops on a mountain.

True, but at least if you're referring to the whip vine case, those shouldn't be possible on mountains either, so the filter still wouldn't be working properly, and/or he has modded plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 07, 2014, 06:46:19 pm

Maybe some original plants Toady made up should stay in the game?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 07, 2014, 08:59:12 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 07, 2014, 06:46:19 pm

Maybe some original plants Toady made up should stay in the game?

zznone of the fictional plants ae leaving aytme soon. Not even DF soon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Graebeard on April 07, 2014, 10:10:09 pm

Toady,

How do you feel about the increasingly significant role open source software is coming to play in the DF galaxy?  Have you considered making things easier for third party developers?

There's an interesting comparison here to Android.  Android is open source at its core, but more an more core functionality is migrating to closed source ancillary components.  The opposite seems true of DF: DF is closed source at its core (which decision is not the subject of this question) but ancillary components like DFHack (https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack), Stonesense (https://github.com/DFHack/stonesense), Overseer (https://github.com/thewonderidiot/Overseer), Dwarf Therapist (https://code.google.com/p/dwarftherapist/), Lazy Newb Paxen (OSS?), and more recent work I'm unfamiliar with are explicitly or defacto open source.

Is this a state of affairs you approve of?  Tolerate?  Wish were different?  Does this balance of closed and open source provide for optimal creative control and third party collaboration?  Have you given any thought to making third party interfaces with core DF easier?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 07, 2014, 11:46:58 pm

Quote from: Graebeard on April 07, 2014, 10:10:09 pm

Lazy Newb Paxen (OSS?)

This one's kinda interesting - the LNP GUI is definitely FOSS (GPL3 iirc); all the configuration/collection that goes into the packs is similarly open; and we just sorta assume that for the bits that are unclear we can redistribute it. 

I'm pretty sure that the most potentially-problematic part is that DF can be redistributed if none of the accompanying files are modified, and the pack has different init settings and Phoebus graphics installed by default.  An argument can be made that this is not unusual or in the latter case replacing instead of changing the files... but it's potentially dodgy. 

Is this kind of change a problem?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 07, 2014, 11:58:19 pm

Quote from: Graebeard on April 07, 2014, 10:10:09 pm

How do you feel about the increasingly significant role open source software is coming to play in the DF galaxy?  Have you considered making things easier for third party developers?

Toady has made several extensive posts on the topic.  They're some years old, but still very relevant:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg237594#msg237594
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21806.msg238694#msg238694

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Script on April 08, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Any chance of seeing 64-bit versions of DF in the near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 08, 2014, 09:30:01 am

Quote from: The Script on April 08, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Any chance of seeing 64-bit versions of DF in the near future?

From what I've read, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 08, 2014, 10:11:17 am

Quote from: The Script on April 08, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Any chance of seeing 64-bit versions of DF in the near future?

Timeline is uncertain as usual, but Toady has phrased it as a question of 'when', not 'if' (my emphasis):

Quote from: Toady One on March 13, 2012, 01:27:34 am

Quote from: PTTG??

Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.

I have no idea what this would do both with my stuff and with some of my libraries.  I'm not eager to introduce a bunch of strange bugs.  When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 08, 2014, 10:22:01 am

Quote from: The Script on April 08, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Any chance of seeing 64-bit versions of DF in the near future?

When the memory use gets so large 64-bit is essential to keep the game going, it will need to go in. Likely this memory barrier will be hit during future worldgens unless serious optimisations have taken place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ramaraunt on April 08, 2014, 10:34:46 am

This was asked already, but can you give us an updated guestamate on the release date?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarf4Explosives on April 08, 2014, 11:02:38 am

Can trees can be made out of more than one material?

To clarify, can the center of a multi-tile plant consist of a different material than the outer parts?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 08, 2014, 11:08:41 am

Quote from: Ramaraunt on April 08, 2014, 10:34:46 am

This was asked already, but can you give us an updated guestamate on the release date?

Every attempt at an estimate has gone wrong. There's no reason to think further estimates are closer to the truth.

Quote from: Dwarf4Explosives on April 08, 2014, 11:02:38 am

Can trees can be made out of more than one material?

To clarify, can the center of a multi-tile plant consist of a different material than the outer parts?

Given the raws as they stand in the devlog, no. There is only one tag to apply the main tree material, so there is no bark yet, for example.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 08, 2014, 11:10:47 am

But you can of course have different materials for the growths: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)

Code: [Select]

[PLANT:BEET] beta vulgaris
[...]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:LEAF:STRUCTURAL_PLANT_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL:GREEN]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:2:0:0]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:FLOWER:STRUCTURAL_PLANT_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL:GREEN]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:2:0:0]
[...]
[GROWTH:LEAVES]
[GROWTH_NAME:beet leaf:beet leaves]
[GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:LEAF]
[GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
[GROWTH_PRINT:0:7:2:0:0:ALL:1]
[GROWTH:FLOWERS]
[GROWTH_NAME:beet flower spike:STP]
[GROWTH_ITEM:PLANT_GROWTH:NONE:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:FLOWER]
[GROWTH_DENSITY:1000]
[GROWTH_TIMING:60000:119999]
[GROWTH_PRINT:5:5:2:0:0:60000:119999:2]


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 08, 2014, 11:13:35 am

Quote from: Dwarf4Explosives on April 08, 2014, 11:02:38 am

Can trees can be made out of more than one material?

To clarify, can the center of a multi-tile plant consist of a different material than the outer parts?

I'm not sure whether or not it can be done, but if it can, it is probably set somewhere in those templates:

Code: [Select]

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STRUCTURAL:STRUCTURAL_PLANT_TEMPLATE] [BASIC_MAT:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL] [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:WOOD:WOOD_TEMPLATE]Better green your question so that Toady sees it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 08, 2014, 11:39:32 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 08, 2014, 11:10:47 am

But you can of course have different materials for the growths: (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/plant_garden.txt)
...

Which got me thinking, it might be possible to add e.g. cork in a bit of a roundabout way, by adding "bark clumps" as either "fruit" or maybe some other type of growth. Then it could either be harvestable or it could have the GROWTH_DROPS_OFF(_NO_CLOUD) tag.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 08, 2014, 01:39:00 pm

pedanticism:

LAA is not the same thing as 64bit.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

LAA means that the application can use a full 32bit memory address space all to itself (4gb), when normally in 32bit world it would have to share a 32bit space with the OS and pals. (so, usually around 2gb, with another 2gb reserved for virtual memory address pools (global), and various memory address based operations/services/drivers.)

64bit native means that the application can (theoretically anyway) allocate memory from the global 64bit memory space. (16TB max, iirc.)  Currently, no cpus on the (consumer) market are able to address the FULL 64bit memory space, at least none that I am aware of. (The RAM controllers in the CPUs just arent up to it right now, and rightly so-- consumer boards would need insane numbers of DIMM slots to have 16TB of RAM installed, using current density modules.) However, the CPU should be able to address the extended area with virtual memory, if it really came down to it. On something like Linux, one could get some REAL enhancements with 64bit versions of DF and ZRAM swap. (Then DF would technically have had parts of it pushed into "swap", but still also be in RAM, just compressed with zlib. DF's memory structures are highly repetitious, so they should compress REALLY well), allowing more to fit in the same physical ram.)

64bit native DF on linux would rock something fierce.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 08, 2014, 02:58:51 pm

Quote from: Ramaraunt on April 08, 2014, 10:34:46 am

This was asked already, but can you give us an updated guestamate on the release date?

The reply is "no". It will be released when all the things will be implemented + bug resolution.

But it's probably before the 1th of July. Unless it's not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 08, 2014, 07:51:02 pm

How fast is world generation right now? Is it slower or faster than in 0.31.11? Talking about “time to generate 1000 years of history on a medium map”.

I’ve noticed that on small maps (the step below medium), when you generate long histories the place gets cluttered out with tombs and necromancer towers. I tried to generate 10,000 years of history on a small map, and after 1500 years the map was getting so completely cluttered out with towers and tombs I aborted. It would be great to have longer histories possible once more - at least to get the nice 1050 years default history - but really to do so, the worldgen needs to run faster.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 08, 2014, 07:57:58 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 08, 2014, 02:58:51 pm

Quote from: Ramaraunt on April 08, 2014, 10:34:46 am

This was asked already, but can you give us an updated guestamate on the release date?

The reply is "no". It will be released when all the things will be implemented + bug resolution.

But it's probably before the 1th of July. Unless it's not.

I give it 15th of April (SUPER OPTIMISTIC) to 1st of September (FLOODING HAPPENED OH CRAP)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on April 08, 2014, 08:09:33 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 08, 2014, 07:57:58 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 08, 2014, 02:58:51 pm

Quote from: Ramaraunt on April 08, 2014, 10:34:46 am

This was asked already, but can you give us an updated guestamate on the release date?

The reply is "no". It will be released when all the things will be implemented + bug resolution.

But it's probably before the 1th of July. Unless it's not.

I give it 15th of April (SUPER OPTIMISTIC) to 1st of September (FLOODING HAPPENED OH CRAP)

15th of April happens to be next tuesday, so that's slightly impossible even under high optimism standards. I would stretch my aim to the 26th of April, just because. Everything under the 1st of September sounds all right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 08, 2014, 10:18:12 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 07, 2014, 09:48:15 am

whoof--- Durian wine? Yeowza.

I guess that's one way to keep the elven diplomats away... The smell would be horrendous!

I have long wondered, for the purposes of making a novelty drink, what the market for such items as wine brewed from durians, jalepenoes, and/or green coffee would be like.

I have one friend at work who said they'd try the durian wine, but asked what a durian was after. The mention of the jalepeno wine brought on a story of when he distilled some sugar water in chem class (Because anything sweetened can be fermented or distilled) and shared it with his friends, and it apparently didn't end well. I haven't mentioned the coffee wine yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: zwei on April 09, 2014, 03:58:46 am

I dont know whether it was answered and asked before, but

I did not find preexisting "fantasy" plants in new raw - for example longland grass or rope reed. Where they phased out in favor of real species?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 09, 2014, 04:19:24 am

Quote from: zwei on April 09, 2014, 03:58:46 am

I dont know whether it was answered and asked before, but

I did not find preexisting "fantasy" plants in new raw - for example longland grass or rope reed. Where they phased out in favor of real species?

This was asked and answered in the last set of Q&A. They aren't gone yet, but will likely disappear eventually to be replaced by randomly generated plants.

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 09, 2014, 11:03:59 am

The fictional plants just need a little love, IMHO.

The above quote is mostly about the "McNugget" like feel they have, which is mostly caused by their not having been refined and purified as ideas.

Natural plants have this refinement built in-- Things like the mythological silliness behind mandrake roots, et al.

Toady is busy bashing his brains in on logic problems, loop execution optimisations, bug hunting, etc. All too often, this precludes taking time to sit and daydream about fantastical components of his game.

I suspect that it is this time constraint issue in regard to spending the time to refine the fantastical elements into beautifully complex abstractions on which "cultural" things can hang that is the real motivator for him to scrap them.

Personally, I think things like plump helmets, sunberries, and such already HAVE cultural significance--- They have significance here in our forum community. We have each tried to envision these plants as best we could from the limited information available, and a wealth of community stories have been crafted, (of various levels of quality, which I wont elaborate on) which when taken together, could be used to flesh out these crops, if one were to take the time to do so.

At the end of the day though, it is toady at the wheel. If toady decides to axe sunberries and pals, I fully expect the mod community to do the fleshing, just because of this community cultural growth those crops have produced.

There aren't that many of these "original plants", after all.  The new raw structure has been (mostly) finalized for herbaceous plants. Some real-world biome evaluation for plant morphology and some inventiveness, and we can have a new-raws compliant "original plants" mod. Probably a great many to pick from.

Who knows, if the community distilled versions are of good enough quality, toady might decide to incorporate them.  Again, I think the real issue is the time and energy needed for that distillation and refinement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 09, 2014, 12:26:52 pm

Quote from: zwei on April 09, 2014, 03:58:46 am

I dont know whether it was answered and asked before, but

I did not find preexisting "fantasy" plants in new raw - for example longland grass or rope reed. Where they phased out in favor of real species?

Also note that those raws are new files. The old plants would continue to reside in their old files, plant_standard and plant_grasses.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 09, 2014, 12:49:15 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 09, 2014, 11:03:59 am

The fictional plants just need a little love, IMHO.

The above quote is mostly about the "McNugget" like feel they have, which is mostly caused by their not having been refined and purified as ideas.

Natural plants have this refinement built in-- Things like the mythological silliness behind mandrake roots, et al.

Toady is busy bashing his brains in on logic problems, loop execution optimisations, bug hunting, etc. All too often, this precludes taking time to sit and daydream about fantastical components of his game.

I suspect that it is this time constraint issue in regard to spending the time to refine the fantastical elements into beautifully complex abstractions on which "cultural" things can hang that is the real motivator for him to scrap them.

Personally, I think things like plump helmets, sunberries, and such already HAVE cultural significance--- They have significance here in our forum community. We have each tried to envision these plants as best we could from the limited information available, and a wealth of community stories have been crafted, (of various levels of quality, which I wont elaborate on) which when taken together, could be used to flesh out these crops, if one were to take the time to do so.

At the end of the day though, it is toady at the wheel. If toady decides to axe sunberries and pals, I fully expect the mod community to do the fleshing, just because of this community cultural growth those crops have produced.

There aren't that many of these "original plants", after all.  The new raw structure has been (mostly) finalized for herbaceous plants. Some real-world biome evaluation for plant morphology and some inventiveness, and we can have a new-raws compliant "original plants" mod. Probably a great many to pick from.

Who knows, if the community distilled versions are of good enough quality, toady might decide to incorporate them.  Again, I think the real issue is the time and energy needed for that distillation and refinement.

I don't think time constraints have much to do with it really. It's fairly obvious looking at Toady's approach to much of the game as well as his answers in the DFtalks etc that he has a really big thing for procedurally generated content and much prefer that over premade stock fantasy. While there has to be some stock features to help ground the whole thing and not make it all a big confusing random mess I'd say a good balance has been struck so far at least.

The underground plants at least seems to sit fairly safe, as they should, and they're really the ones with most of any cultural value so far. Sun berries might be attributed some sure, but the rest? They really don't add much more than an unfamiliar name. Setting up a simple system to throw in a reasonable amount of random plants to take their place, possibly with a few minor magical effects to spice them up definitely sounds like a better idea to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 09, 2014, 01:21:16 pm

Sun berries at least have their association with the elves and being the best brew around. They also have a hint of magical properties that could be expanded on later.

Probably the only made up surface plant that would stay (aside from the trees) are sun berries.

Maybe late on when we have light sources, sun berry oil could be an ingredient in some sort of light producing substance. Though bioluminescent fungi would be more likely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 09, 2014, 01:25:09 pm

For 100% procedural generation plants, making/defining a small set of parameters to apply for the biome type, based on statistical distributions of realworld plant morphologies could work-- (EG, "70% of realworld desert plants are of X morphology, 10% of Y, 5% of Z, 5% of A, 2% of B, and 3% of C"-- then have the computer pick a classification for basic morphology type based on target biome, then based on this initial decision, pick some other features, again based on statistical spreads-- EG, Some percentage of type Y morphology has Q type flowers, which would define # of seeds produced, etc.)

Applying that to the "original plants" would make a good trial and testcase for the procedural generator's quality.

Total scrapping of those crops just seems kinda wasteful; they could be useful as testbeds for a procedural generator.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 09, 2014, 02:13:56 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 09, 2014, 01:21:16 pm

Sun berries at least have their association with the elves and being the best brew around. They also have a hint of magical properties that could be expanded on later.

Probably the only made up surface plant that would stay (aside from the trees) are sun berries.

Maybe late on when we have light sources, sun berry oil could be an ingredient in some sort of light producing substance. Though bioluminescent fungi would be more likely.

Yeah, but one could just as well have the game create a suitable random replacement to grow in the type of biomes elves like to settle. If one necessarily wanted to preserve the light aspect to it one could just have it create a sun/moon/glow/etc berry/fruit/root/etc equivalent :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 09, 2014, 03:05:13 pm

True. Another way to make them more 'real' is to give them latinized names, but it's really difficult for a RNG to give a beliveable latin name and I doubt Toady One has the time or desire to teach DF how to properly use latin.

Then again, the latin names aren't going to show up ingame.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 09, 2014, 03:20:29 pm

I'm not sure of that.

Look at the way "Game of Species" produce name of species.
There are two genders for the name of plants, and the adjective follows the gender of the name.

with some luck, you should even give regional names to your plants :)


Cassida Carnosa should be the best name for Plump Helmet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 09, 2014, 04:25:24 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 09, 2014, 01:21:16 pm

Sun berries at least have their association with the elves and being the best brew around. They also have a hint of magical properties that could be expanded on later.

Probably the only made up surface plant that would stay (aside from the trees) are sun berries.

Maybe late on when we have light sources, sun berry oil could be an ingredient in some sort of light producing substance. Though bioluminescent fungi would be more likely.

Looking through the list, all the current surface plants have some kind of strong community association; I don’t really see any need for them to go. Kobold bulbs, for example, produce gnomeblight and that’s something which may be useful in the future. Muck roots produce swamp whisky, which Major Failure liked in Boatmurdered.

A lot of the “new" plants were included by modders, though this time they are more complex since Toady has added plant anatomy. That they are now official means pretty much everyone will have them if they play DF2014, unless of course players mod them out.

Also, few days, no devlog update.

Has the dictionary been updated at all for the coming release?

If it has, we’ll need a new mod to restore the words removed since DF2012.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 09, 2014, 07:51:09 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 09, 2014, 03:20:29 pm

I'm not sure of that.

Look at the way "Game of Species" produce name of species.
There are two genders for the name of plants, and the adjective follows the gender of the name.

with some luck, you should even give regional names to your plants :)


Cassida Carnosa should be the best name for Plump Helmet.

You mean this place right? http://www.speciesgame.com/ The thing is that the latin name isn't likely to be shown ingame.

Also, two genders for the species name of plants? I'm confused here and suspect a slight language barrier in getting what you're trying to say accross. That and I'm not familiar with the latin naming procedure for plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 09, 2014, 08:55:53 pm

Latin has gendered nouns and gendered verbs, similar to spanish (which inherited them from latin).

EG, "Latino" vs "Latina", where former is masculine, and latter is feminine.

Proper combinatorics for the gender of the names is important to conserve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DeKaFu on April 09, 2014, 08:56:59 pm

It should be noted, in the real world, "latin" names (actually binomial names) are actually a hodgepodge of latin, greek, star wars references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(trilobite)) and stuff that doesn't actually correctly translate to anything because the person who named it wasn't very good at any of the above.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 09, 2014, 11:42:45 pm

Quote from: DeKaFu on April 09, 2014, 08:56:59 pm

It should be noted, in the real world, "latin" names (actually binomial names) are actually a hodgepodge of latin, greek, star wars references (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(trilobite)) and stuff that doesn't actually correctly translate to anything because the person who named it wasn't very good at any of the above.

Don't forget Harry Potter and the Mangled Faux Latin.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 10, 2014, 09:34:38 am

Quote from: wierd on April 09, 2014, 01:25:09 pm

For 100% procedural generation plants, making/defining a small set of parameters to apply for the biome type, based on statistical distributions of realworld plant morphologies could work-- (EG, "70% of realworld desert plants are of X morphology, 10% of Y, 5% of Z, 5% of A, 2% of B, and 3% of C"-- then have the computer pick a classification for basic morphology type based on target biome, then based on this initial decision, pick some other features, again based on statistical spreads-- EG, Some percentage of type Y morphology has Q type flowers, which would define # of seeds produced, etc.)

Applying that to the "original plants" would make a good trial and testcase for the procedural generator's quality.

Total scrapping of those crops just seems kinda wasteful; they could be useful as testbeds for a procedural generator.

This can be taken a step further, where different characteristics are correlated with each other.  Producing correlated random numbers involves Cholesky decompositions and other arcane math tricks, but Toady actually speaks math so that's not the barrier.  The barrier would be coming up with a reasonable matrix (most likely a community effort like the materials properties mentioned above).

With procedurally generated creatures, having no idea what to expect is part of the fun.  But with procedurally generated plants (with which in-game civilizations have centuries or millennia of experience), will there be a way for the player to get an idea of what a plant is, its farming requirements, products, etc.?

It would be a shame for Urist McFarmer to spend a couple seasons tending Moonstone Bushes to feed the fortress, only to find out there are no edible parts.

Edit: grammar

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 10, 2014, 09:45:15 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 10, 2014, 09:34:38 am

With procedurally generated creatures, having no idea what to expect is part of the fun.  But with procedurally generated plants (with which in-game civilizations have centuries or millennia of experience), will there be a way for the player to get an idea of what a plant is, its farming requirements, products, etc.?

That's the eventual plan, yes.  Toady has often mentioned the need to explain randomly generated creatures/plants/minerals/whatever:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1943773#msg1943773

Random minerals should be fun.  Even the current stock minerals can be a bit confusing, and random minerals might add to that further, so further exposition of what minerals can be used for and so on might be necessary there.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Threetoe:   Okay, this next question is from James, he asks 'Will you ever begin to include randomized main races, or will the player interactable races always be limited to token dwarves, elves, goblins and humans? And a smattering of chimera tribes' ... the animal people.
Toady:   Is that what he means by the smattering of ... I don't know how to say these words, is it chimera? Yeah, it must be the animal people. Unless you meant something else.
Threetoe:   Yeah, we could always just call the animal people something else, other than turtle man, we could make it some other name and still be a turtle man.
Toady:   I think it's always been in the plan to have randomized main races, it was up on the old dev pages, I don't remember if it made it anywhere on the new dev pages or not? I think it might actually be there. Maybe not. It would be the last one, because doing randomized civilizations is an extra step beyond randomized monsters. Because we've kind of been easing in, we have the forgotten beasts now, we've got the titans, those are randomized. We have some of the underworld creatures randomized and we wanted to ease in to having some of the regular kind of monsters in the woods and stuff, randomizing those with a few extra night creature entries at some point and then kind of ease in to having some randomized regular creatures and then finally adding in randomized civilization creatures. The problem with randomized civilization creatures is there needs to be a lot of exposition or you're just going to be completely confused about what's going on, but it would definitely be an option, I think there would be a slider or something for how strange you want your world to be because we definitely think having dwarves and elves and goblins is cool for a lot of people just to kind of understand what's going on without having to do a lot of extra reading.

[...]

Threetoe:   Alright, so the next one is from Eric, he asks, “Have you considered creating random materials in the game so civilizations and players could perform experiments on the materials to determine their properties? Given the structure of the raws it seems like it could be pretty easy to create random metals in world creation.”
Toady:   So there already are random materials in the game, just not the type Eric wanted. There's the rain, can be a random material ...
Threetoe:   Oh that's right, yeah.
Toady:   When it rains some kind of ... And mists, the mists are also defined as a random material.
Threetoe:   We just need a a solid now ...
Toady:   Yeah, we just need a solid ... there can be solids if it gets cold and the mist freezes I guess, or if it snows ... I don't remember if it can snow slime or not, but it might not be able to, but if it could then that would be a random material. The important point is that these random materials are raw files, they are generated just like raw files, then it just kind of puts them in with your other text files and pretends to load them, it actually goes through and processes the text file and everything. So it is just a matter of will and time and interface, etcetera; all of the game making pieces of it but not the technical framework for getting things like random metals in the game. And avoiding the kind of gray sludge problem where it's like does your world turn into mush if everyone is walking around with like akabarite shields or whatever. You're like, 'What is that?!'
Threetoe:   Yeah, it's the same problem as the randomized monsters, it's like when you see the name, and every time you play the game it's a new monster with a completely different thing you never get used to it.
Toady:   We just have to overcome exposition and then we'll be all over that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 10, 2014, 12:08:03 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 10, 2014, 09:45:15 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 10, 2014, 09:34:38 am

With procedurally generated creatures, having no idea what to expect is part of the fun.  But with procedurally generated plants (with which in-game civilizations have centuries or millennia of experience), will there be a way for the player to get an idea of what a plant is, its farming requirements, products, etc.?

That's the eventual plan, yes.  Toady has often mentioned the need to explain randomly generated creatures/plants/minerals/whatever:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1943773#msg1943773

Random minerals should be fun.  Even the current stock minerals can be a bit confusing, and random minerals might add to that further, so further exposition of what minerals can be used for and so on might be necessary there.

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Threetoe:   Okay, this next question is from James, he asks 'Will you ever begin to include randomized main races, or will the player interactable races always be limited to token dwarves, elves, goblins and humans? And a smattering of chimera tribes' ... the animal people.
Toady:   Is that what he means by the smattering of ... I don't know how to say these words, is it chimera? Yeah, it must be the animal people. Unless you meant something else.
Threetoe:   Yeah, we could always just call the animal people something else, other than turtle man, we could make it some other name and still be a turtle man.
Toady:   I think it's always been in the plan to have randomized main races, it was up on the old dev pages, I don't remember if it made it anywhere on the new dev pages or not? I think it might actually be there. Maybe not. It would be the last one, because doing randomized civilizations is an extra step beyond randomized monsters. Because we've kind of been easing in, we have the forgotten beasts now, we've got the titans, those are randomized. We have some of the underworld creatures randomized and we wanted to ease in to having some of the regular kind of monsters in the woods and stuff, randomizing those with a few extra night creature entries at some point and then kind of ease in to having some randomized regular creatures and then finally adding in randomized civilization creatures. The problem with randomized civilization creatures is there needs to be a lot of exposition or you're just going to be completely confused about what's going on, but it would definitely be an option, I think there would be a slider or something for how strange you want your world to be because we definitely think having dwarves and elves and goblins is cool for a lot of people just to kind of understand what's going on without having to do a lot of extra reading.

[...]

Threetoe:   Alright, so the next one is from Eric, he asks, “Have you considered creating random materials in the game so civilizations and players could perform experiments on the materials to determine their properties? Given the structure of the raws it seems like it could be pretty easy to create random metals in world creation.”
Toady:   So there already are random materials in the game, just not the type Eric wanted. There's the rain, can be a random material ...
Threetoe:   Oh that's right, yeah.
Toady:   When it rains some kind of ... And mists, the mists are also defined as a random material.
Threetoe:   We just need a a solid now ...
Toady:   Yeah, we just need a solid ... there can be solids if it gets cold and the mist freezes I guess, or if it snows ... I don't remember if it can snow slime or not, but it might not be able to, but if it could then that would be a random material. The important point is that these random materials are raw files, they are generated just like raw files, then it just kind of puts them in with your other text files and pretends to load them, it actually goes through and processes the text file and everything. So it is just a matter of will and time and interface, etcetera; all of the game making pieces of it but not the technical framework for getting things like random metals in the game. And avoiding the kind of gray sludge problem where it's like does your world turn into mush if everyone is walking around with like akabarite shields or whatever. You're like, 'What is that?!'
Threetoe:   Yeah, it's the same problem as the randomized monsters, it's like when you see the name, and every time you play the game it's a new monster with a completely different thing you never get used to it.
Toady:   We just have to overcome exposition and then we'll be all over that.

Oh, excellent.  If the randomly generated stuff comes from pseudo-raw files, then the exposition can just be parsed from the raws (possibly with some context courtesy of the Legends).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 12:51:12 pm

I'm weary of random material/plants until something along the lines of knowledge/research is introduced. Awesome nevertheless.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 10, 2014, 12:58:01 pm

If it werent for all the paywalls everywhere for anything even remotely scientifically significant, i would happily start looking into statistical spreads on botanical morphologies as they relate to biome types.

Sadly, Elsevier and pals make that basically impossible. (and people wonder why our culture is gravitating toward anti-science biases. hah.)

Strike that, looks like there is a very comprehensive list of plant species that can be freely browsed. (http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/)
However, the data is NOT in a big-data processing friendly format. Will require significant effort to process.

Will also require outside datasets to determine biome coverage statistics (how commonly found are the plants listed, etc.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on April 10, 2014, 12:59:20 pm

Will there be a limited vision cone for players?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on April 10, 2014, 01:10:49 pm

Quote from: magmaholic on April 10, 2014, 12:59:20 pm

Will there be a limited vision cone for players?

No:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_9_transcript_2.html

Toady:   [...] Then there's the whole thief mechanics, I haven't played a lot of those Thief games so I'm not up on the technology there ... a lot of it is about which way are they looking, like vision arcs, and that's something that I'm not comfortable with as a concept in general, I don't like it when you're walking around and you can only see half the screen, because that's not how it works, or at least if you were paranoid enough in a fantasy game you have to worry about getting attacked you'd be like 'step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder, step forward, look over my shoulder' so it should just show you everything. But when you're sneaking you shouldn't be able to ... when someone's sneaking at least if it's you or if the target of the sneaking is not the player, then there should be things like vision arcs so that you can have a guard walking down a hallway and then you can run down the hallway behind him ... There are going to be visions arcs then, but they just don't apply to you, I don't want to put them in for you ... Someone should be able to do that to you too theoretically, like you're walking down a hallway and then they can run up behind and either attack you or run down the hallway, but if we put in vision arcs strictly then you'll constantly have to stop and be paranoid about looking over your shoulder, and as realistic as that might be it would not be fun.
Capntastic:   Just have it tied to the perception ability or whatever ...
Toady:   Yeah, it'll just end up having to be something like that where its non directional for the adventurer only. For everybody else the guard might stop and look over his shoulder, but he's not going to be doing it all the time and you can sneak by, and then you'd be able to sneak into places, and it should be super entertaining. That's just another one of those weird little conflicts, the same way adventurers having emotions and stuff is one of those weird little flicks ... It should be pretty fun, and being hunted down should be fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 10, 2014, 03:19:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 12:51:12 pm

I'm weary of random material/plants until something along the lines of knowledge/research is introduced. Awesome nevertheless.

I'm sorry abut being such a grammar nazi, but I just can't bare errors like this. I would of stayed silent, but this was just too unseamly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 03:44:38 pm

Quote from: Snaake on April 10, 2014, 03:19:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 12:51:12 pm

I'm weary of random material/plants until something along the lines of knowledge/research is introduced. Awesome nevertheless.

I'm sorry abut being such a grammar nazi, but I just can't bare errors like this. I would of stayed silent, but this was just too unseamly.

I'm sorry, did you mean unseemly?

(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/od4f8db3b6.png)

Hehehe actually, don't mind it, I'm a fond grammar nazi in my own language too. Do you mind telling me the mistake I made? It's the weary when I should have used wary? I just realized that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 10, 2014, 03:45:43 pm

I think he was joking. He also said "Would of."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 03:47:05 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 12:58:01 pm

If it werent for all the paywalls everywhere for anything even remotely scientifically significant, i would happily start looking into statistical spreads on botanical morphologies as they relate to biome types.

Sadly, Elsevier and pals make that basically impossible. (and people wonder why our culture is gravitating toward anti-science biases. hah.)

Strike that, looks like there is a very comprehensive list of plant species that can be freely browsed. (http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/)
However, the data is NOT in a big-data processing friendly format. Will require significant effort to process.

Will also require outside datasets to determine biome coverage statistics (how commonly found are the plants listed, etc.)

http://eol.org/ Will also be of help, lots of information in there.

Edit: LOTS of data for Pineapple for example. http://eol.org/pages/1126520/data Including links to other databases.

Not suitable as a christmas tree product is included in there, lol....... However, it seems to be in agreement that it is not a viable wood producing plant.

Flower color green though?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 10, 2014, 03:48:32 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 03:44:38 pm

Quote from: Snaake on April 10, 2014, 03:19:03 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 10, 2014, 12:51:12 pm

I'm weary of random material/plants until something along the lines of knowledge/research is introduced. Awesome nevertheless.

I'm sorry abut being such a grammar nazi, but I just can't bare errors like this. I would of stayed silent, but this was just too unseamly.

I'm sorry, did you mean unseemly?

(http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/od4f8db3b6.png)

Hehehe actually, don't mind it, I'm a fond grammar nazi in my own language too. Do you mind telling me the mistake I made?

Honestly, I don't know what grammar mistake he was alluding to in your post. He was definitely doing so in a playful manner, as "bare" and "would of" are both (relatively) obvious mistakes in English.

FAKEEDIT: Oh hai ninjas

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarf4Explosives on April 10, 2014, 04:01:58 pm

Also, "abut".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 10, 2014, 04:10:53 pm

Wary is what was meant.

Anyway, that followed Muphry's Law like clockwork.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 04:13:47 pm

Few more examples:

http://eol.org/pages/2508593/data Guava (includes some numbers on wood density, which is VERY useful)

http://eol.org/pages/1154718/data Cassava. Although the data seems primarily from the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) and what the heck USDA, green flowers?

Some things may have to be double checked, but in general the data should be reliable and there should be more than one set of data in there or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 10, 2014, 04:26:12 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 10, 2014, 04:10:53 pm

Wary is what was meant.

Anyway, that followed Muphry's Law like clockwork.

Aaaah, I thought he was just sick of the discussion and phrased it oddly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Snaake on April 10, 2014, 04:33:11 pm

Congratulations to Lordbaal, Th4DwArfY1 (had to copy-paste that...), monk12, and Dwarf4Explosives for spotting all of my mistakes, which were intended to be obvious, and obviously intentional. Also to Putnam for getting the joke, such as it was, and to Lordbaal for spotting his own mistake. :)

My apologies for the sidetrack, let's rerail this thread:
■...═▲══
..■.═▲══
....■▲══
....═▲■═
There we go!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 10, 2014, 04:50:48 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 03:47:05 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 12:58:01 pm

If it werent for all the paywalls everywhere for anything even remotely scientifically significant, i would happily start looking into statistical spreads on botanical morphologies as they relate to biome types.

Sadly, Elsevier and pals make that basically impossible. (and people wonder why our culture is gravitating toward anti-science biases. hah.)

Strike that, looks like there is a very comprehensive list of plant species that can be freely browsed. (http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/)
However, the data is NOT in a big-data processing friendly format. Will require significant effort to process.

Will also require outside datasets to determine biome coverage statistics (how commonly found are the plants listed, etc.)

http://eol.org/ Will also be of help, lots of information in there.

Edit: LOTS of data for Pineapple for example. http://eol.org/pages/1126520/data Including links to other databases.

Not suitable as a christmas tree product is included in there, lol....... However, it seems to be in agreement that it is not a viable wood producing plant.

Flower color green though?

This looks like an excellent starting point.  The data are either unrestricted or under an attribution-only license, so there's no problem with using it in a game.  An API is in the works, but for now someone with an account can download the data a chunk at a time with careful queries, maybe division-by-division.  A passing knowledge of botany would make sure nothing gets missed.

The only problem I see is that my spot-checking didn't give any indication of whether the plant is suitable for dye production.  Since this is DF, we can assume anything edible can be brewed  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 05:25:04 pm

Well, whether something is capable of producing dye probably isn't high on USDA's priority list.

I tried to look at some things that are on the list that MIGHT produce dye.

http://eol.org/pages/1278046/data Carrots for some reason don't have the data stuff in, though maybe its because it's domesticated carrots in general and as the overview image shows, they come in many colors. Carotene is a well known pigment which is used by other plants. Don't know how viable of a dye it is though.

http://eol.org/pages/38372/overview Blueberries. Well, um, the specific one that Toady One is using don't seem to be in there on first glance and the Vaccinium genus itself is huge. I did do a quick look in google for blueberry dye and there are ways to make a purple dye from it. Edit: Found it http://eol.org/pages/5251339/overview It really only has the wiki info though.

As for dyes, there are LOTS and LOTS of natural dyes out there, we just have to look.

*idea comes while looking around*
Hey Toady One and modders, any chance of making vampires allergic to garlic? Of course though, since they aren't your standard vampire (don't take damage from sunlight, cave adaption is another thing enturely), we could choose not to use that vampire stereotype.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 10, 2014, 05:26:56 pm

yeah shouldn't be too hard

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 10, 2014, 05:42:27 pm

I really liked the idea of randomized vampires...I hoped we could have vampires with random strenghts and weakness, and some false ones too...so the vulnerability to some substance wouldn't be more than a gossip, and players would fill their fortress with that substance in the hope of catching vampires...to discover later that they aren't affected at all by it. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on April 10, 2014, 06:02:21 pm

Speaking of vampires: are Werecreature moon-phases (as in, when they're active) random or always at full moon? Also is the moon cycle tied to months or (like on Earth) not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 10, 2014, 06:07:22 pm

Quote from: Dutchling on April 10, 2014, 06:02:21 pm

Speaking of vampires: are Werecreature moon-phases (as in, when they're active) random or always at full moon? Also is the moon cycle tied to months or (like on Earth) not?

Current version? Always full moon, exactly one month per moon cycle AFAIK.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.

(http://www.elmhurst.edu/~ksagarin/color/indigo.gif)

The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 10, 2014, 06:12:55 pm

I’ve been looking back through the devlogs (we haven’t seen one recently, actually, since the 6th and so that’s a bit longer than average).

Tunnels: So according to the devlogs they are back in (AW YEAH). If we embark over a tunnel will the tunnel be open or sealed at the map edges?

To be honest the tunnel should just be open in that case, and traders should come through it once we’ve dug down and have a depot accessible from there. Like really, just have them spawn in the tunnel rather than on the surface. In that scenario you do not have a depot accessible from underground you probably deserve to get yelled at by the outpost liason - given that choice why would you force dwarves to take a long journey beneath that HORRIFIC EXPANSE OF OPEN SKY?!

Quote from: thvaz on April 10, 2014, 05:42:27 pm

I really liked the idea of randomized vampires...I hoped we could have vampires with random strenghts and weakness, and some false ones too...so the vulnerability to some substance wouldn't be more than a gossip, and players would fill their fortress with that substance in the hope of catching vampires...to discover later that they aren't affected at all by it. :)

As it is vampires and werebeasts don’t have weaknesses to any specific material for reasons not associated with the physics. However, they do have a weakness from lack of blood or alcohol and they slow down because of it.

Really vampires should be able to preferentially feed from blood in barrels, which, in the absence of a local production method, would require us to buy blood from caravans.

Quote from: Dutchling on April 10, 2014, 06:02:21 pm

Speaking of vampires: are Werecreature moon-phases (as in, when they're active) random or always at full moon? Also is the moon cycle tied to months or (like on Earth) not?

The randomly-generated werecreatures always transform at full moon and not during any other lunar phase, but the tags allow other creatures to transform at a certain lunar phase. There are 13 lunar months in a year, and the full moons in each month will fall on the same day each year.

Edit: Here are your full moon dates from the dwarf fortress wiki. They are the same for each year.

Quote

25th granite
23rd slate
21st felsite
19th hematite
17th malachite
15th galena
13th limestone
11th sandstone
8th timber
6th moonstone
4th opal
2nd obsidian
28th obsidian

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on April 10, 2014, 08:27:04 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Spoiler: dyes (click to show/hide)

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.

(http://www.elmhurst.edu/~ksagarin/color/indigo.gif)

The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

You also have lichen based purple dyes. I remember reading that they were used with royal purple to cut down on cost. Can't say I had much interest before, but have since doing research for an unfinished dye expansion mod. I'd strongly suggest the Bechtold Handbook of Natural Colorants if you've not read it already.

Talk of light-fastness makes me wonder if we'll see sun-bleached clothing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 10, 2014, 10:59:32 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 10, 2014, 06:12:55 pm

would require us to buy blood from caravans.

Buying blood in barrels is ridiculous so I'd be surprised if that bug isn't fazed out eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 11:29:36 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 10, 2014, 06:12:55 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 10, 2014, 05:42:27 pm

I really liked the idea of randomized vampires...I hoped we could have vampires with random strenghts and weakness, and some false ones too...so the vulnerability to some substance wouldn't be more than a gossip, and players would fill their fortress with that substance in the hope of catching vampires...to discover later that they aren't affected at all by it. :)

As it is vampires and werebeasts don’t have weaknesses to any specific material for reasons not associated with the physics. However, they do have a weakness from lack of blood or alcohol and they slow down because of it.

Actually, if you ask around in adventure mode, they'll say that the werebeast has a weakness to some sort of metal. Not that it helps you any in fort mode since unless you got to know the werebeasts in the neghborhood before founding the fort, you're not going to know what the weakness is anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Maolagin on April 10, 2014, 11:56:00 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 12:58:01 pm

If it werent for all the paywalls everywhere for anything even remotely scientifically significant, i would happily start looking into statistical spreads on botanical morphologies as they relate to biome types.

Sadly, Elsevier and pals make that basically impossible. (and people wonder why our culture is gravitating toward anti-science biases. hah.)

Strike that, looks like there is a very comprehensive list of plant species that can be freely browsed. (http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/)
However, the data is NOT in a big-data processing friendly format. Will require significant effort to process.

Will also require outside datasets to determine biome coverage statistics (how commonly found are the plants listed, etc.)

According to the docs, theplantlist.org provides CSV file downloads (http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/help/#namesbyfamily). They are per-family, but it wouldn't be too hard to crawl the site and fetch them all.

E.g.: http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/browse/A/Posidoniaceae/Posidoniaceae.csv

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 11, 2014, 03:46:26 am

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.

(http://www.elmhurst.edu/~ksagarin/color/indigo.gif)

The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine. :D

Memories....of GCSE chemistry...coming back with frightening force.
*Shudders*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 11, 2014, 07:27:23 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 10, 2014, 05:42:27 pm

I really liked the idea of randomized vampires...I hoped we could have vampires with random strenghts and weakness, and some false ones too...so the vulnerability to some substance wouldn't be more than a gossip, and players would fill their fortress with that substance in the hope of catching vampires...to discover later that they aren't affected at all by it. :)

It will happen sooner or later, of course. In the meantime,  there are ways to mod different vampire and were types into the game. Not the misinformation, though.

Quote from: smjjames on April 10, 2014, 11:29:36 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 10, 2014, 06:12:55 pm

As it is vampires and werebeasts don’t have weaknesses to any specific material for reasons not associated with the physics. However, they do have a weakness from lack of blood or alcohol and they slow down because of it.

Actually, if you ask around in adventure mode, they'll say that the werebeast has a weakness to some sort of metal. Not that it helps you any in fort mode since unless you got to know the werebeasts in the neghborhood before founding the fort, you're not going to know what the weakness is anyway.

Exactly. And the vanilla vampires get a blanket damage reduction.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 11, 2014, 08:33:32 am

I would like to have an option where you only have werewolves, classic vampires (if such definition can be agreed upon) and regular zombies that can be killed by smashing their heads/decapitation instead of dealing with reanimated hair and skin and such. I mean, "classical" monsters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 11, 2014, 09:04:15 am

Quote from: Vattic on April 10, 2014, 08:27:04 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Spoiler: dyes (click to show/hide)

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.

(http://www.elmhurst.edu/~ksagarin/color/indigo.gif)

The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

You also have lichen based purple dyes. I remember reading that they were used with royal purple to cut down on cost. Can't say I had much interest before, but have since doing research for an unfinished dye expansion mod. I'd strongly suggest the Bechtold Handbook of Natural Colorants if you've not read it already.

Talk of light-fastness makes me wonder if we'll see sun-bleached clothing.

There are also some lichen based greens, yellows and browns that have good qualities, which if I recall correctly, were the primary dyes used to make traditional tartans. (in combination with indigo from woad)

Interestingly, a good quality true black is also a very difficult color to produce using only antique dyestuffs. Things like iron gall black will heavily damage plant fibers with time, because they remain caustic in their final forms. Most recipes I have seen for "black" does not actually produce black, but instead produce dark browns. (Tannin based for the most part.)

One shouldn't overlook tree based dyes though, given the context of this game. :D

Osage orange heartwood and root skin makes a very enduring and brilliant yellow. Logwood produces a blue-violet dye (of somewhat tempermental character; IIRC, it isnt all that lightfast) and exotic reds can be made from dragon's blood acacia sap.

(I expect elves to REALLY hate the color purple. Made either from boiling their beloved trees, or from boiling poor innocent little ocean snails. I expect them to really like indigo blue, tannin based browns (from leaves and acorn hulls), and lichen based yellows, because they are atrocity and cruelty free. I would laugh very hard if at some point in the game's development they can have compounding bad thoughts from the kinds of dyestuffs used-- say when presented with cochineal red (made from crushed up cochineal bugs, has a somewhat 'pink'/fuscia tone), Dragon's Blood red (made from tree sap), Tyrian purple (made from snails), Logwood violet (made from trees), osage orange yellow (made from trees), and Prussian blue (synthetic dyestuff, typically made in the late dark ages by burning bloodmeal in a hermetically sealed saggar with iron slag powder) on a tie-dyed shirt. :D Send them a whole shipment of the things as a tribute offering to start a war. Bonus points if undyed elven-sourced cloth was used.)

If toady ever implements that kind of political chain reaction from traded commodities -vs- racial ethics, I will totally make "extra elven un-friendly" textile exports a high priority.



LordBaal:

Come on now, and miss out on craziness like "asian vampires"?! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnxEzCkR6TI&t=74m14s)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 09:04:35 am

Only werewolves? Come on, as silly as wererabbits and weresheep are, you can't deny how awesome a were-elephant or were-rhino would be.

I suppose you'd want werewolves to be vulnerable to silver every single time? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 11, 2014, 09:17:06 am

Personally, I want for the were, vamp, and zombie curses to not be mutually exclusive.

Can you imagine a vampire were giant zombie sponge?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 11, 2014, 09:26:00 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 09:04:35 am

Only werewolves? Come on, as silly as wererabbits and weresheep are, you can't deny how awesome a were-elephant or were-rhino would be.
I suppose you'd want werewolves to be vulnerable to silver every single time? :P

Yeah, perhaps, I don't know. Maybe I'm just too "old school" or whatever it could be called. Of course I would only like it as an option (a easy one as I'm lazy, like the one for moods or invasions), I can't deny the awesomeness of other werecreatures and the tastes of my fellow players...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: verdigriss on April 11, 2014, 10:23:10 am

I'm with LordBaal on this.  It's neither funny nor cool to have a naked man stagger into your fortress with an announcement, only to have him morph into a sheep.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 10:30:37 am

Quote from: verdigriss on April 11, 2014, 10:23:10 am

I'm with LordBaal on this.  It's neither funny nor cool to have a naked man stagger into your fortress with an announcement, only to have him morph into a sheep.

I do mean silly in both the silly ridiculous (all the way to facepalm ridiculous) and silly hilarious ways. And yeah, I agree that a were-sheep looks pretty ridiculous. Were-Bighorn Sheep though, would at least not look ridiculous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on April 11, 2014, 10:32:11 am

What if it were sufficient that were-creatures were guaranteed to be vulnerable to some metal that is in the materials list for weapons, but only trial and error would find out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 10:33:11 am

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 10:36:48 am

The rumor thing in the next version might accomplish that as they could easily be false rumors.

Quote from: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 10:33:11 am

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

Maybe firing bolts or arrows of different materials at the werebeast and run away if neccesary? Though given how OP those are already, you might get a kill with a copper bolt anyway if the thing wasn't vulnerable to copper. Also, equipping some cannon fodder peasant with some weapon and sending them at the werebeast would work. Still the possibility of a lucky crit though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 11, 2014, 11:00:47 am

Well I think weresheep would look a lot more like beastmen from warhammer than a cute cotton animal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 11:01:48 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 10:36:48 am

The rumor thing in the next version might accomplish that as they could easily be false rumors.

Quote from: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 10:33:11 am

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

Maybe firing bolts or arrows of different materials at the werebeast and run away if neccesary? Though given how OP those are already, you might get a kill with a copper bolt anyway if the thing wasn't vulnerable to copper. Also, equipping some cannon fodder peasant with some weapon and sending them at the werebeast would work. Still the possibility of a lucky crit though.

It depends on how vulnerabilities show up in combat logs.

"The copper bolt pierces the right upper arm and lodges into the wound.  The wound immediately festers with infection!"

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

I'm fine with a few familiar faces among the fantasy creatures alongside procedurally created ones so long as there is a way for the player to get information about them.  Less-than-perfectly-reliable info is fine, but crawling through Legends mode with a fine-toothed comb is not.  As mentioned above for plants, all of this stuff comes from (procedurally generated) raws, so parsing it is doable and sounds like it's on the to-do list.  I mean, more specifically on the to-do list than just "everything" is on the to-do list.

Eventually, DF players will build an in-game Large Hardon Collider that beats the real one to finding new physics.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 11:08:31 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 11:01:48 am

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

In adventure mode? I seriously doubt it. In fort mode, you can either manipulate a mood to use that material (and hope you at least get an edged weapon) or edit the raws so that you can make weapons out of metals that are normally unuseable for weapons.

Of course though, each individual werebeast is vulnerable to a different metal, I don't think the same metal vulnerability applies for the whole werebeast species in DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 11, 2014, 11:15:18 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 11, 2014, 11:00:47 am

Well I think weresheep would look a lot more like beastmen from warhammer than a cute cotton animal.

Yeah, weres in DF aren't "now you're a sheep," they're "now you're a half man half sheep monstrosity." Even the goofier ones are probably pretty horrifying to behold considering they're normally innocuous or cute critters twisted into a bloodthirsty mockery of humanity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 11, 2014, 11:16:39 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 11:01:48 am

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2329044;topicseen#msg2329044

Quote from: G-Flex

If weaknesses to odd materials start coming into play (weremeerkats weak to silver, evil regions populated by blistered giant rabbits weak to gold, demons weak to nothing but other demon bones, etc.), then would that open the possibility of broader material selection in fortress mode? Obviously right now there's no sense to making gold swords and hammers, but if you've got the possibility of things like an outbreak of lycanthropy where they're actually necessary due to material weakness, it starts making more sense to be able to do that.

Yeah, if it came up that we started tormenting people with esoteric stuff, we'd need to start having reasonable ways to get at counter measures.

An interesting related discussion:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928;topicseen#msg1578928

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Toady, where do you see the ability of players to affect AI behavior?  Will we see something that goes more towards having the ability to directly script dwarven AI to use certain items or take certain actions using some logic operations or a rudimentary scripting ability?  Or do you see this as being more a matter of dwarves having to somehow learn how and when to properly perform actions or use items from the properties they have in the raws alone?  While I'm obviously interested in the effects this can have, I'm also interested in what sort of game design philosophy you have about what level of control you want players to be exerting over their dwarves.

At the extreme end of the potion/material discussion, out beyond what maybe anybody was asking for, I'm absolutely against having to master some sort of scripting language just to get dwarves to poison their weapons.  At the same time, it'll be difficult to get dwarves to use certain exotic syndrome-causing materials in a reasonable way that satisfies a player, especially one using potion mods.  Maybe it'll end up being usage hints in the raws and classifications in-play for use in the military etc. with some sensible defaults.  Ideally they'd be able to handle it like food, water and alcohol (to the extent those aren't broken), and perhaps those would be brought into the same system.  For more exotic actions and random weirdness, maybe there are cases in the mods where you'd really want to write some kind of script down, especially for a non-dwarven mod race that does something or other, but that level of support is pretty hard to prioritize when I don't really need or want it for dwarves.

On the other hand, writing from the perspective that every command the player gives will be credited to fortress position holders, if an appropriate official were to order that a liquid, with usage hints/whatever in the raws, will now be used for something entirely outside those bounds (like coating a weapon with syrup), that action might be anything from brilliant to quirky to wasteful to tyrannical to suicidal, depending on the situation.  The dwarves aren't currently capable of judging their officials and it's a very difficult problem most of the time.  If a randomly-generated creature has a weakness to syrup, maybe coating the weapons with syrup is simply a practical strategy, and in that case syrup wouldn't have the "weapon coating" usage hint in the raws.  That coating action is entirely up to player ingenuity, much like ordering the creation of a complicated machine, and it's a reasonable thing to allow.

Manually ordering a dwarf to perform a specific series of actions that can't be presaged in the raws/code might be the only way to save your fort and might be a reasonably orderable action made by some official, but that kind of power can degrade the atmosphere we want to build.  It's going to depend on the specific cases, but for the sake of guiding discussion on a wide range of future topics, I think it's best that the player feels that a dwarf's autonomy is being respected.  The thing that makes dwarf mode not strictly a hands-off simulation is that you are allowed to compromise dwarves' autonomy if they hold fortress positions, to the extent that you are selecting actions that fall within their position's purview.  If an order typically makes it feel like the dwarves are being controlled like marionettes, forced to do things against their will, etc., the order should probably be altered or removed.  Presently, there are a ton of things that dwarves don't care about that they should care about, but this is the overall idea.

Also:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Workshop Material Use and Specific Object Construction
    Ability to specify material used in jobs

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 11:22:12 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 11, 2014, 11:08:31 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 11:01:48 am

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

In adventure mode? I seriously doubt it. In fort mode, you can either manipulate a mood to use that material (and hope you at least get an edged weapon) or edit the raws so that you can make weapons out of metals that are normally unuseable for weapons.

Of course though, each individual werebeast is vulnerable to a different metal, I don't think the same metal vulnerability applies for the whole werebeast species in DF.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, a bit unclearly.  Once the fortress discovers that weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, the overseer browbeats the weaponsmith into making something out of an "inappropriate" material.  And it's no help against weretigers that need, say, golden weapons.

Note that these weapons would be absolutely crappy in general combat, meaning keeping a watchful eye over squad equipment.  And Urist McImpractical who has a preference for zinc...

Looks like Footkerchief has a really good answer to my original question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on April 11, 2014, 11:34:37 am

I always mod in lead as an ammo material, because I seem to be cursed to embark on massive galena deposits. Due to the hardness, in DF lead crossbow bolts have an effect like a sort of long range mace, causing bruises and blunt trauma rather than cuts and stuck-ins, and are a bit useless against armour, but are perfect for hunters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 11, 2014, 01:29:30 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on April 11, 2014, 11:34:37 am

I always mod in lead as an ammo material, because I seem to be cursed to embark on massive galena deposits. Due to the hardness, in DF lead crossbow bolts have an effect like a sort of long range mace, causing bruises and blunt trauma rather than cuts and stuck-ins, and are a bit useless against armour, but are perfect for hunters.

Until everyone goes mad for led poisoning from the meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 11, 2014, 02:26:14 pm

Am I the only one here that feels like the next devlog is going to be about how Toady finished the remaining 4 items and that now he's going to be doing the cleanup? I mean, unless there have been some RL issues in the way (or said items being really f*cking tough to deal with) at this point he's gotta be done...
Maybe I'm just going insane stark raving mad from all this waiting, but lately I've been getting dreams of the new version actually coming out (twice or thrice now, so that's not just a random one-off thing).

Or I'm just an impatient little brat who'd kill to get this release out right now and you should stop paying attention to me. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 11, 2014, 02:38:23 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 11, 2014, 02:26:14 pm

Or I'm just an impatient little brat who'd kill to get this release out right now and you should stop paying attention to me. :P

As a rule with only a few exceptions, everyone would like to play every playable release as soon as is possible, and everyone wants there to be more of them.  I would imagine Toady wants there to be more releases.  But, the features he adds are major, and he gives himself scope to do the big ones right.  So, we could have more, and more trivial releases, or deal with the waiting for big ones.  Now, even though I'm not an adventure-mode player, I appreciate the scale of what he's putting in adventure mode, and do hope that it will eventually greatly change the world around the fortress, to give the fortress a wider role than merely trade and suffering semi-random, semi-provoked invasions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 11, 2014, 02:43:27 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 11, 2014, 02:26:14 pm

Am I the only one here that feels like the next devlog is going to be about how Toady finished the remaining 4 items and that now he's going to be doing the cleanup? I mean, unless there have been some RL issues in the way (or said items being really f*cking tough to deal with) at this point he's gotta be done...
Maybe I'm just going insane stark raving mad from all this waiting, but lately I've been getting dreams of the new version actually coming out (twice or thrice now, so that's not just a random one-off thing).

Or I'm just an impatient little brat who'd kill to get this release out right now and you should stop paying attention to me. :P

To be honest if the game crashes five minutes in, I'm fine with that. There will be a bugfix update out and I will be able to enjoy five minutes of seeing the game as it has become.

Based on the devlogs there weren't really crashes going on; it would be hard to get around the map otherwise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 11, 2014, 03:14:09 pm

Quote from: catenate on April 11, 2014, 02:38:23 pm

As a rule with only a few exceptions, everyone would like to play every playable release as soon as is possible, and everyone wants there to be more of them.  I would imagine Toady wants there to be more releases.  But, the features he adds are major, and he gives himself scope to do the big ones right.  So, we could have more, and more trivial releases, or deal with the waiting for big ones.  Now, even though I'm not an adventure-mode player, I appreciate the scale of what he's putting in adventure mode, and do hope that it will eventually greatly change the world around the fortress, to give the fortress a wider role than merely trade and suffering semi-random, semi-provoked invasions.

Big features don't necessitate year-plus release cycles, unless you try to add a half-dozen big features in one go.  In hindsight, the release was overambitious from its inception (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-06-06), and other features kept creeping in (non-human sites, multi-tile trees, camps, stealth, etc).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on April 11, 2014, 03:53:24 pm

Does the rising hunger for more processing power make you look towards multi-core/GPU support yet?
Or will it require more drastic FPS jumps towards heck?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 04:17:34 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 11, 2014, 03:14:09 pm

Quote from: catenate on April 11, 2014, 02:38:23 pm

As a rule with only a few exceptions, everyone would like to play every playable release as soon as is possible, and everyone wants there to be more of them.  I would imagine Toady wants there to be more releases.  But, the features he adds are major, and he gives himself scope to do the big ones right.  So, we could have more, and more trivial releases, or deal with the waiting for big ones.  Now, even though I'm not an adventure-mode player, I appreciate the scale of what he's putting in adventure mode, and do hope that it will eventually greatly change the world around the fortress, to give the fortress a wider role than merely trade and suffering semi-random, semi-provoked invasions.

Big features don't necessitate year-plus release cycles, unless you try to add a half-dozen big features in one go.  In hindsight, the release was overambitious from its inception (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-06-06), and other features kept creeping in (non-human sites, multi-tile trees, camps, stealth, etc).

I think a reminder should be made that this release is not indicative of Toady's usual development cycles and is, in fact, exceptionally long by a wide margin.

Quote from: magmaholic on April 11, 2014, 03:53:24 pm

Does the rising hunger for more processing power make you look towards multi-core/GPU support yet?
Or will it require more drastic FPS jumps towards heck?

I can run the game at 10000 FPS early-game on this computer and at a consistent 100-500 (that doesn't seem consistent, but we're talking orders of magnitude here, where that's the same as the difference between 5 and 1) for a few years of fort on my less powerful, 5-year-old computer. It's not that big a deal yet and next version makes it almost moot, since you can retire a fort and leave it to its own devices when the FPS gets too unbearable (and then invade it as a dragon or something and see how you fare... oh man that's a really good idea).

Not to mention that multithreading will give you an approximately 0 gain in FPS.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 11, 2014, 04:28:47 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 11, 2014, 11:16:39 am

An interesting related discussion:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1578928;topicseen#msg1578928

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Toady, where do you see the ability of players to affect AI behavior?  Will we see something that goes more towards having the ability to directly script dwarven AI to use certain items or take certain actions using some logic operations or a rudimentary scripting ability?  Or do you see this as being more a matter of dwarves having to somehow learn how and when to properly perform actions or use items from the properties they have in the raws alone?  While I'm obviously interested in the effects this can have, I'm also interested in what sort of game design philosophy you have about what level of control you want players to be exerting over their dwarves.

At the extreme end of the potion/material discussion, out beyond what maybe anybody was asking for, I'm absolutely against having to master some sort of scripting language just to get dwarves to poison their weapons.  At the same time, it'll be difficult to get dwarves to use certain exotic syndrome-causing materials in a reasonable way that satisfies a player, especially one using potion mods.  Maybe it'll end up being usage hints in the raws and classifications in-play for use in the military etc. with some sensible defaults.  Ideally they'd be able to handle it like food, water and alcohol (to the extent those aren't broken), and perhaps those would be brought into the same system.  For more exotic actions and random weirdness, maybe there are cases in the mods where you'd really want to write some kind of script down, especially for a non-dwarven mod race that does something or other, but that level of support is pretty hard to prioritize when I don't really need or want it for dwarves.

On the other hand, writing from the perspective that every command the player gives will be credited to fortress position holders, if an appropriate official were to order that a liquid, with usage hints/whatever in the raws, will now be used for something entirely outside those bounds (like coating a weapon with syrup), that action might be anything from brilliant to quirky to wasteful to tyrannical to suicidal, depending on the situation.  The dwarves aren't currently capable of judging their officials and it's a very difficult problem most of the time.  If a randomly-generated creature has a weakness to syrup, maybe coating the weapons with syrup is simply a practical strategy, and in that case syrup wouldn't have the "weapon coating" usage hint in the raws.  That coating action is entirely up to player ingenuity, much like ordering the creation of a complicated machine, and it's a reasonable thing to allow.

Manually ordering a dwarf to perform a specific series of actions that can't be presaged in the raws/code might be the only way to save your fort and might be a reasonably orderable action made by some official, but that kind of power can degrade the atmosphere we want to build.  It's going to depend on the specific cases, but for the sake of guiding discussion on a wide range of future topics, I think it's best that the player feels that a dwarf's autonomy is being respected.  The thing that makes dwarf mode not strictly a hands-off simulation is that you are allowed to compromise dwarves' autonomy if they hold fortress positions, to the extent that you are selecting actions that fall within their position's purview.  If an order typically makes it feel like the dwarves are being controlled like marionettes, forced to do things against their will, etc., the order should probably be altered or removed.  Presently, there are a ton of things that dwarves don't care about that they should care about, but this is the overall idea.

When this mechanic appears in the game, the baroness is going to mandate silver maces dipped in golden salve.  Because she can.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 11, 2014, 06:16:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 04:17:34 pm

I think a reminder should be made that this release is not indicative of Toady's usual development cycles and is, in fact, exceptionally long by a wide margin.

It's exceptional with regard to number of releases, but it's the norm with regard to time spent.  Since DF's first release, 66% of the time has been spent in just four abnormally long release cycles:

Code: (ruby) [Select]

long_release_days = [
  Date.new(2007, 1, 18) ... Date.new(2007, 10, 29), # 0.27.169.32a
  Date.new(2008, 9, 8) ... Date.new(2010, 4, 1),    # 0.31.01
  Date.new(2011, 3, 28) ... Date.new(2012, 2, 14),  # 0.34.01
  Date.new(2012, 6, 4) .. Date.today,               # upcoming
].map{|r| r.to_a.size}.sum
total_days = (Date.new(2006, 8, 6) .. Date.today).to_a.size
long_release_days.to_f / total_days                 # 0.6607270135424091


Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 11, 2014, 06:44:39 pm

And 36% of that time has been waiting for this release, which is still a pretty wide margin. Yes, it's not unusual to be waiting for the big releases, but this one is still the longest (no pressure, no sarcasm).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 12, 2014, 02:29:01 am

Toady, at this level of development if you don't post a devlog saying at least "nothing to report, still going on" our expectations raise to unmanageable levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 12, 2014, 03:50:40 am

Hehe, I second that!  And I empathise DarkDXZ, I get the impression everyone is going mad in their own way around here.  I'm trying to appreciate the situation though, it's great watching everyone else bursting with anticipation. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 12, 2014, 06:07:09 am

For six days, the dev log lay silent.  On the seventh day, Toady released DF2014 and saw it was riddled with bugs good.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 12, 2014, 06:08:55 am

Let the bloody lily-hopper do his thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on April 12, 2014, 08:45:59 am

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on April 12, 2014, 06:07:09 am

For six days, the dev log lay silent.  On the seventh day, Toady released DF2014 and saw it was riddled with bugs good.

Oh, screw you.  :P I scroll down to the end of the thread, see this post, check the log, and get my hopes dashed.

I hope you're happy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PTTG?? on April 12, 2014, 11:16:04 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 12, 2014, 06:08:55 am

Let the bloody lily-hopper do his thing.

I think I need to clean my glasses...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 12, 2014, 11:23:29 am

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on April 12, 2014, 06:07:09 am

For six days, the dev log lay silent.  On the seventh day, Toady released DF2014 and saw it was riddled with bugs good.

It isn’t yet the seventh day since the devlog was released. That’s tomorrow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 12, 2014, 12:22:38 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 12, 2014, 11:23:29 am

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on April 12, 2014, 06:07:09 am

For six days, the dev log lay silent.  On the seventh day, Toady released DF2014 and saw it was riddled with bugs good.

It isn’t yet the seventh day since the devlog was released. That’s tomorrow.

Yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on April 12, 2014, 01:28:45 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on April 11, 2014, 11:34:37 am

I always mod in lead as an ammo material, because I seem to be cursed to embark on massive galena deposits. Due to the hardness, in DF lead crossbow bolts have an effect like a sort of long range mace, causing bruises and blunt trauma rather than cuts and stuck-ins, and are a bit useless against armour, but are perfect for hunters.

I'd think it'd be better if you could use such metals as decoration or as "enhancements" to existing weapons and armor. Lead without a doubt would make for a good metal to create counterweights and cores in weapons, i.e. a mace or hammer with a lead core would hit harder and be heavier than a mace purely made of a single non-lead metal. Such techniques could be introduced through the weaponsmith or armor skill according to skill and the materials that are available.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 12, 2014, 01:55:24 pm

Quote from: PigtailLlama on April 12, 2014, 01:28:45 pm

I'd think it'd be better if you could use such metals as decoration or as "enhancements" to existing weapons and armor. Lead without a doubt would make for a good metal to create counterweights and cores in weapons, i.e. a mace or hammer with a lead core would hit harder and be heavier than a mace purely made of a single non-lead metal. Such techniques could be introduced through the weaponsmith or armor skill according to skill and the materials that are available.

Toady has discussed this before:

Quote from: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg1012311;topicseen#msg1012311

Quote from: Footkerchief

Quote from: diefortheswarm

If you wanted to make an adamantine hammer,  you could make a hollow adamantine shell and fill it with molten lead.  This would be a very effective weapon!  Will we be able to do anything like this in the foreseeable future?

I could have sworn this exact idea came up before, but I couldn't find much.  Anyway, it basically depends on whether/when Toady implements a system for multi-component or multi-material items. <quote about multi-material items>

Yeah, I remember it coming up before as well, at least as somebody's offhand remark, and yeah, we need some more backing in the code but it's definitely something that dwarves would want to do, assuming they don't have some weird ethics regarding mixing adamantine with stuff.  I think at some point there was a rule against improving adamantine items or improving with adamantine, but that might be long gone.

There are also numerous Suggestions threads on the topic, like this one (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73149.0).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 12, 2014, 07:16:24 pm

New devlog! At long last...
That one sounds heartwarming. It's like DF is getting a children's story potential...on top of all that gruesome and nasty stuff. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 12, 2014, 07:17:46 pm

...
...

THERE'S HUGGING NOW?!

yessssss

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 12, 2014, 07:30:13 pm

Bug prediction:

(http://i.imgur.com/xdr284H.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on April 12, 2014, 07:40:31 pm

I can see that being slightly deadly depending on what you're covered in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 12, 2014, 08:35:40 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 12, 2014, 07:17:46 pm

...
...

THERE'S HUGGING NOW?!

yessssss

But no release.......

Quote

an unrelated drunk at the other side of the room shouted the daughter's name and then ran over and hugged me while the father and daughter stood in place crying tears of joy. It's fixed now.

I don’t really see how this is a “bug”. Key word: drunk 8) . I think this should stay in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 12, 2014, 08:37:51 pm

Quote from: Willfor on April 12, 2014, 07:30:13 pm

Bug prediction:

(http://i.imgur.com/xdr284H.png)

Don't forget a third panel, since the daughter will now be wired up to have several reactions to her daddy searing in front of her.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on April 12, 2014, 08:39:37 pm

I wonder if adventurers can give hugs rather than just receive them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on April 12, 2014, 09:17:06 pm

I think the more important question to ask is: Do elves hug trees now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on April 12, 2014, 09:34:16 pm

Quote from: catenate on April 12, 2014, 08:37:51 pm

Quote from: Willfor on April 12, 2014, 07:30:13 pm

Bug prediction:

(http://i.imgur.com/xdr284H.png)

Don't forget a third panel, since the daughter will now be wired up to have several reactions to her daddy searing in front of her.

Don't forget the tears immediately transitioning to steam and scalding everyone near melting away their fat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silicoid on April 13, 2014, 02:18:42 am

I do hope Toady adds a hugging command, with a civilization's reaction to hugging definable by the raws.

i.e [HUGGING:PUNISHABLE_BY_DEATH]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DeusMortem on April 13, 2014, 04:31:07 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 12, 2014, 02:29:01 am

Toady, at this level of development if you don't post a devlog saying at least "nothing to report, still going on" our expectations raise to unmanageable levels.

installed the devlog as my startpage ... didnt help though XD

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 13, 2014, 04:51:47 am

Quote from: Silicoid on April 13, 2014, 02:18:42 am

[HUGGING:PUNISHABLE_BY_DEATH]

Ohhh, I need that on a shirt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 06:23:36 am

Reminds me of this (http://www.yourguidetolive.com/article.php?a=dangersofhugging) joke page.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 13, 2014, 09:35:40 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on April 12, 2014, 09:17:06 pm

I think the more important question to ask is: Do elves hug trees now?

In case this is a serious question: no.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 13, 2014, 11:38:08 am

I know there's some burning elves joke in there, I just can't make it out right now. Don't know what's wrong today.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 13, 2014, 11:59:49 am

*wants to know what reactions to hugging "evil" races will have...

Seriously, UristMcAdventurer storms into the goblin occupied human village, marches right up the goblin commander, and hugs him.

No warnings. No reason to hug-- they dont even know each other.

What does the goblin do?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 13, 2014, 12:00:44 pm

stab

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 13, 2014, 12:06:37 pm

(stab)

LOL! We can only hope!

With the new "multiple emotional reactions to witnessing events" code in force, all kinds of madness could happen from the villagers witnessing this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on April 13, 2014, 12:19:31 pm

Seems Toady is wanting to run the gamut of emotional reactions, wonder what will be next.

Hope there's a confusion reaction, that range from mild confusion ("what was that?") to full blown mind meltdown ("but-wha-but tha-I don't even-"). It would probably be hard to figure out when that would apply in a logical fashion though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 13, 2014, 04:25:17 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 13, 2014, 09:35:40 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on April 12, 2014, 09:17:06 pm

I think the more important question to ask is: Do elves hug trees now?

In case this is a serious question: no.

Lies, Footkerchief!
I shall create a tree person race with an adventure mode playable tag, do everything for the elves, and suddenly the elves hug the trees.

Quote from: Hypothetical Situation

__________________________
|You saved us! Thank you! *hug*|
|   _____________           
|  |Any time, friend.|
|  |
e♣

LIES! ALL LIES!

Tawarochir has gone stark raving mad!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on April 13, 2014, 04:58:07 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

I... it... this is... crazy talk.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 05:12:43 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 13, 2014, 04:58:07 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

I... it... this is... crazy talk.

Why not? You could mod in a race of classic evil sci-fi robots that are trying to kill everybody. And then you'd be all like *hug* "I love you mister robot! I want us to be friends!" and the robot will be all like "DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" *beep boop sparks* and then its head will explode from the confusion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 13, 2014, 06:19:43 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 05:12:43 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 13, 2014, 04:58:07 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

I... it... this is... crazy talk.

Why not? You could mod in a race of classic evil sci-fi robots that are trying to kill everybody. And then you'd be all like *hug* "I love you mister robot! I want us to be friends!" and the robot will be all like "DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" *beep boop sparks* and then its head will explode from the confusion.

As long the exploding head shrouds elves in deathly shrapnel I'm in for it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 13, 2014, 06:55:54 pm

The end of the Developement log seemed like the end of a comedy show or movie with what he described happen.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 13, 2014, 08:12:13 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on April 13, 2014, 06:55:54 pm

The end of the Developement log seemed like the end of a comedy show or movie with what he described happen.

I’m thinking, how are these even bugs? It is not that uncommon for drunks to behave like that. i.e. Lets get to the release :D.

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

Defeating monsters by befriending them? A few of us are thinking Monster, meet Lava. Lava, meet Monster. It would be helpful to be able to tame more monsters in fortress mode though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 13, 2014, 08:47:27 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 05:12:43 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 13, 2014, 04:58:07 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 13, 2014, 04:41:04 pm

Next step is making monsters that can be defeated by befriending them.

I... it... this is... crazy talk.

Why not? You could mod in a race of classic evil sci-fi robots that are trying to kill everybody. And then you'd be all like *hug* "I love you mister robot! I want us to be friends!" and the robot will be all like "DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" *beep boop sparks* and then its head will explode from the confusion.

More like a loyalty cascade in which the robots must kill all friends of humans.  And now it is one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dwarf_reform on April 13, 2014, 10:14:18 pm

I checked through the (probably outdated!) dev roadmap page and didn't see a section for "Legends" mode plans, so I was wondering:

 Is it possible, in the future, to add what would amount to a "high scores" page to Legends, or filters/searches for any other interesting bits? Like sorting entities by total kills, longest lived, shortest life, most destructive war, basically anything else brag-worthy?

Sorry if this has been answered or asked in the past 600+ pages haha :) Legends are so interesting, just hoping for an easy way to find the most interesting of it all easily :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 13, 2014, 10:34:40 pm

Quote from: dwarf_reform on April 13, 2014, 10:14:18 pm

Is it possible, in the future, to add what would amount to a "high scores" page to Legends, or filters/searches for any other interesting bits? Like sorting entities by total kills, longest lived, shortest life, most destructive war, basically anything else brag-worthy?

Sorry if this has been answered or asked in the past 600+ pages haha :) Legends are so interesting, just hoping for an easy way to find the most interesting of it all easily :)

There's a built-in Legends export tool (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Legends#Exporting_information_from_Legends_Mode), and there are community-made tools (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Legends#Legends_Utilities) for processing the exported information.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 14, 2014, 01:04:54 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 13, 2014, 10:34:40 pm

Quote from: dwarf_reform on April 13, 2014, 10:14:18 pm

Is it possible, in the future, to add what would amount to a "high scores" page to Legends, or filters/searches for any other interesting bits? Like sorting entities by total kills, longest lived, shortest life, most destructive war, basically anything else brag-worthy?

Sorry if this has been answered or asked in the past 600+ pages haha :) Legends are so interesting, just hoping for an easy way to find the most interesting of it all easily :)

There's a built-in Legends export tool (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Legends#Exporting_information_from_Legends_Mode), and there are community-made tools (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Legends#Legends_Utilities) for processing the exported information.

Note that Legends Viewer (one of the linked processing/viewing tools) can indeed sort units by just about anything, display most destructive wars, filter based on criteria, etc.  It's awesome. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 14, 2014, 01:56:34 am

I think the release should be put off for just a few more months so that the hug code can co-opted by the wrestling code which would allow our superhumanly strong adventurers to give spine breaking bear hugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 14, 2014, 01:57:37 am

Quote from: DG on April 14, 2014, 01:56:34 am

I think the release should be put off for just a few more months

Do not prolong our suffering.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on April 14, 2014, 05:09:48 am

Quote from: DG on April 14, 2014, 01:56:34 am

I think the release should be put off for just a few more months so that the hug code can co-opted by the wrestling code which would allow our superhumanly strong adventurers to give spine breaking bear hugs.

I feel like that would take Toady two days tops if he wanted to do it...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sadrice on April 14, 2014, 09:26:14 am

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.


The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

Dyeing and dye chemistry is also a hobby of mine, and as we speak I am procrastinating on working on my organic chemistry term paper on the synthesis and properties of 6,6' dibromoindigo (Tyrian Purple), so I feel I have a bit to contribute.
Long winded organic chemistry spoilered:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you are incorrectly describing the dyeing process used for indigo, although I suppose there could be more than one process.  The process I have read for inidigoid dyes is to make them soluble not by using a strong base to break them into monomers, but to use a reducing agent (ammonia or zinc in european indigo, bacterially generated H2 in Japanese indigo, lead or tin (language is ambiguous, both work) in Tyrian Purple) to protonate the carbonyl to a carboxyl, giving you leucoindigo, which is colorless and soluble:
Part of the reason for indigo's extreme insolubility and intense absorption at such a long wavelength given it's small conjugated system is that the carbonyl oxygen and the amine's H of the two monomers hydrogen bond, locking the molecule into a rigidly planar shape and interfering with potential hydrogen bonding with a solvent (you mentioned this in your comment, I know), and reducing the carbonyl to a carboxyl makes it impossible for the molecule to hydrogen bond in a satisfactorily planar way, so conjugation is broken, color is lost, and solvation in water is vastly improved.Since conjugation is so stabilizing, leucoindigo is not stable on contact with oxygen, and will immediately convert back to indigo upon removal from the dye bath, but at this point it has penetrated the fiber and is now indelibly fixed.

For more information about dibromoindigo chemistry and history, and a brief but informative survey of indigoid chemistry, my current favorite is probably "Tyrian Purple: 6, 6’-Dibromoindigo and Related Compounds" by Chris Cooksey in Molecules, 2001 (http://www.mdpi.org/molecules/papers/60900736.pdf).  Cooksey also happens to be my favorite author about Orchil (http://www.chriscooksey.demon.co.uk/lichen/index.htm), despite his website being about as user friendly as dwarf fortress.

As for other purples, another commenter mentioned lichen purples used to extend dibromoindigo dyes.  He was referring to orchil, which is a deep reddish magenta dye produced by soaking certain lichens in ammonia (traditionally obtained from stale urine) for several months with frequent incorporation of oxygen. Orchil is a substantive dye, meaning it does not require a metal salt as a mordant, rather it directly bonds to the fiber.  This makes it somewhat selective in fiber, only bonding well to protein based fibers like wool and silk, as well as leather, feathers, and to a lesser extent bone, but due to the strong bond it is very washfast.  Unfortunately, it is not light fast, and is known for fading dramatically with excessive exposure.  It was used to extend Tyrian purple as it is much cheaper, has a similar color, is intense and solid (Tyrian purple had a tendency to be blotchy), and the lightfast Tyrian purple would help disguise the fading of the orchil.

True orchil is made from Rocella tinctoria, but any number of lichens can be used to produce similar dyes, which have been called cudbear, litmus, and a handful of other things.  I have actually made purple dye from at least 3 species, Umbillicaria spp., Evernia prunastri, and a Xanthoparmelia.  I got an intense blood-magenta from Umbillicaria, a not very saturated delicate gem tone violet from Evernia, which has since faded to nearly grey, and a slightly dirty/brownish rose from the Xanthoparmelia.  Here's a photo of a few dye samples, spoilered for size:
[/size]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The three socks at top are Umbillicaria, and closely approximate the color of both true Orchil and Tyrian purple (it was more of a wine red with magenta hues than a true purple, and was sometimes described as "ox blood").
The sock underneath is Evernia, heavily faded.  It was never all that saturated, but it was better.  The Umbillicaria is the same age, and while the fabric is heavily worn and holes are developing, the color is essentially as good as new.  Of course, these are socks, so they don't get as much sun as would, say, a hat. 
The rosey purple yarn sample on the white bone is from Xanthoparmelia treated with ammonia, while the yellow sample on the dark brown rib is also Xanthoparmelia, but boiled in water with alum mordanted wool.  Excess boiling gives more of a green brown tinge. 
The bones were soaked in a tannin solution prepared from oak galls, and the brown rib is just that, while the glossy blue/black scapula was subjected to a further treatment with an iron mordant (I used rust and vinegar).

Of course, the colors look much better in person in full sun than in my kitchen on a cell phone camera.
(http://i.imgur.com/phLlyFX.jpg)

Quote from: wierd on April 11, 2014, 09:04:15 am

(I expect elves to REALLY hate the color purple. Made either from boiling their beloved trees, or from boiling poor innocent little ocean snails. I expect them to really like indigo blue, tannin based browns (from leaves and acorn hulls), and lichen based yellows, because they are atrocity and cruelty free.

So actually, with orchil, you can get good lichen based purples for the elves, as well as various reds and even a pale baby blue from Xanthoria (treat it like an orchil dye, but exposure to UV soon after removal from dye bath changes it from rose pink to pale blue), though they won't be extraordinarily lightfast  Since they only work on protein fibers, you won't be able to dye elven rope reed, but it really seems that they ought to prefer wool or spider silk, nonviolently harvested from beloved animal companions.  However, lichen dyes are usually by no means elf friendly.  Rock lichens tend to provide more intense dyes so are the most used, but are the slowest growing and harvesting usually means scraping the rock clean of lichen.  Overharvesting of dye lichens was typical wherever they were widely used, and the decline in abundance of dye species with overharvesting was noted even in ancient times (I'll have to look for the citation to that, but I know I read it somewhere).  I actually had an old hippie lady who was a mushroom dye enthusiast give me a very angry lecture on Destroying the Environment and Murdering Innocent Lichens and pretty much shun me from her table after I tried to show her my spiffy purple socks (this was at a mushroom fair, and she was an elf if I've ever met one).

You can produce elf friendly lichen purples, by using tree growing species and gathering them from the ground or from fallen dead branches (I do this because it is a lot less work than scraping rocks, aside from being less destructive).  Unfortunately, this limits the intensity of color that you can achieve.  In my dye samples shown, the first and most intense one was rock growing, while the other, less saturated (and lightfast) were quick growing bark dwellers.  You can get some pretty good yellows from found lichens, though.  Usnea will give various yellows potentially ranging from clear golden to sherbertey orange when boiled gently in water with optional alum mordant (overheating tends to brown the colors), and Xanthoparmelia gives a nice green-gold with a pleasant sheen and softness when treated the same (as opposed to the rose purple from the ammonia method).

To finally actually get to a more or less relevant topic, here are the colors you can achieve from plants currently in the game, with sources for most colors:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

TL;DR: most of the dyes available are some variant of yellow-beige-orange with alum and green-grey with iron, which is pretty typical of any given sampling of plants (that's by far the most common category of vegetable dye).  The brightest yellows are probably from pomegranate husks, mango leaves, and chicory, with alum for all of those, the best green is probably from Chicory with iron, but I know you can get a good green from fennel greens with iron, so I might have to look into relatives of fennel, like carrot greens with iron.  The best orangey color is probably from persimmon, but it's not very bright.  Perhaps carrots or carotenoid rich yams might be made to work.  With a good red, orange could be made from a bright yellow, but aside from beets, I can't think of any in the real world plants we currently have on hand.  Blues can be gotten from black beans, if those can be included under the category of string bean (same species), but we don't have any indigotin sources in game yet, and I think our only good blue is dimple cups.  Purples can be gotten from beets, which doesn't work well, or from lichens which haven't been added, or snails which haven't been added.


Banana sap (and presumably Abaca) - brownish to reddish, from tannins.  The Fe'i banana is apparently used for a reddish dye.  One source suggested it is useful as a mordant for other dyes, which is typical of tannins, though of course they also contribute their own color.

Coffee - browns, from tannins

Guava - pale rosey brown with alum or no mordant, slate grey with iron mordant (as with any iron mordant, this will be destructive to protein based fibers, making them scratchy and brittle) [source (http://www.scribd.com/doc/151225927/Dyeing-of-Silk-Using-Vegetable-Dyes-and-Study-on-the-Effects-of-Mordants-on-the-Dyeing-Properties)]

Rambutan - can be used to dye fiber a sunny yellow, using alum I assume [source (http://weftshop.com/2012/02/04/natural-dye-adventure/)].  Iron will give greys or greens.  "Young shoots are used to dye yellow silk to green. A dye     called ayer banyar, made from rambutan leaves and fruits     and combined with other ingredients, is used for dyeing red     silk black." [source (http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_208_2004-12-16.html)]

Tea - has been popularly used to make reddish browns, especially for making paper look old.  Iron mordant will give dark greys

Avocado - beige yellow from fruit skins, beige rose from pits, no mordant [source (http://www.medievaltextiles.org/reprintGayleavacadopear.pdf)] or pale rose pink, no mordant [source (http://ruthsinger.com/2013/10/01/natural-dye-avocado/)]

Pomegranate fruit husk and pith - beige brown unmordanted, intense mustard yellow with alum [source (http://www.folkfibers.com/blogs/news/7363630-natural-dyes-pomegranates)], as usual with yellow dyes, darker greys can be achieved with iron, at the possible expense of fabric softness

Cherry bark, also apple, apricot, peach, plum, and any other fruit tree in the rose family - creamy yellow to rose pink with alum or no mordant [source (http://treadgentlyontheearth.blogspot.com/2014/04/longing-for-leaves.html)], greys and grey greens from iron

Persimmons (unripe fruit) - somewhat brownish earth toned rose [source (http://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=118)] probably grey with iron

Walnut - a very deep intense chocolatey brown, very wash and light fast [source (http://blog.knottygnome.com/2013/08/nuts.html)]  This dye was widely used because it fixes very well to most fibers and has the benefit of being somewhat toxic, so it inhibits insect damage (though not at all dangerous to wear)

Black Beans (not mentioned, but a cultivar of Phaseolus vulgaris) - a nice strong blue, like a slightly less intense indigo, alum mordant [source] (http://dye-lot.blogspot.com/2012/03/black-beans.html)

Beets - magenta red, more or less what you would expect from the color of beet juices, mordanted with vinegar.  Color can be adjusted by varying pH, but the solution must be acidic for the dye to bind to the fiber. [source (http://colourcottage.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/berry-vegetable-dyeing-1/)] Presumably you could also vary the color by starting with differently colored beet cultivars.  I have my doubts as to the light fastness of this dye, as according to wikipedia, betanin, the primarily pigment molecule, "degrades when subjected to light, heat, and oxygen" [source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betanin)]

Carrots - I don't know about orange carrots, I don't think it works well, but apparently purple carrots give a very nicely colored purple dye [source (http://notjustnat.blogspot.com/2012/02/dyeing-seriously-natural-way.html)], but I have strong suspicions about wash and lightfastness

Chicory - mustard yellow (alum), yellow-green (copper), bright yellow (tin), forest green (iron), creamy biege (no mordant).  There are reports of a blue dye from the leaves, but this seems to be untrue. [source (http://www.richters.com/show.cgi?page=QandA/Aromatic/20000907-2.html)]

Onions - give a nice warm orange yellow from the skins

That's all the new plants, I haven't looked through the old plant list, but I know it has some worth mentioning, like an intense yellow from mango leaves and deep browns and blacks from oaks.  I'm sure I missed lots of stuff too.

I've been thinking I should go to the suggestions subforum and start or revive a thread on dyes, if anyone is interested.

Also, since linseed and it's oil has been added, all we need for oil paints is a job to mix powdered pigment with oil (we might want to conveniently ignore any other binders or additives that might be desired in real paint, and maybe ignore the necessary boiling of the linseed oil (or maybe not)), and a job to paint something.  I know there have been lots of suggestion threads about paints, I might go pick one to necro.

Also, the sizes of text throughout my comment got all screwed up, and I can't seem to fix it by just selecting it all and setting it to a size.  Anyone know how to make that work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 14, 2014, 09:59:33 am

my eyes are bleeding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 14, 2014, 12:18:47 pm

traditional reds in europe are from beets and madder, usually fixed with an alum mordant. the red coats that were used by the british were dyed wool, dyed with madder.

logwood was the "cheap and easy" source of violet. (madder overdyed with indigo from woad was not a particularly pretty thing, and was prone to blotching.)

from north america, you can use hopi red amaranth, and cocheneal (sp?) beetles.

a synthetic blue can be made by sintering bloodmeal and iron filings together in a sealed ceramic crucible. (prussian blue). this wasnt discovered until late in the game, as far as dye chemistry is concerned however. another blue is pthalo blue, which is made from copper, but that's pretty damned modern.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 14, 2014, 02:46:01 pm

Speaking of dyes, When converting from a color token to the nearest display color, does the game use the default RGB values for the comparison, or does it check the ones defined in colors.txt? Basically, can the displayed color of dyed/colored objects change based on the user's color palette?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 14, 2014, 04:58:30 pm

Let's see, what do we have to work with...

Animal training: Check
Hugging: Check
Beard, and lots of it: Check

 :o

I will henceforth be adventuring as Urist "Grizzly" McAdams.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on April 14, 2014, 05:53:51 pm

Quote from: Sadrice on April 14, 2014, 09:26:14 am

Quote from: wierd on April 10, 2014, 06:10:03 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.


The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

Dyeing and dye chemistry is also a hobby of mine, and as we speak I am procrastinating on working on my organic chemistry term paper on the synthesis and properties of 6,6' dibromoindigo (Tyrian Purple), so I feel I have a bit to contribute.
Long winded organic chemistry spoilered:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you are incorrectly describing the dyeing process used for indigo, although I suppose there could be more than one process.  The process I have read for inidigoid dyes is to make them soluble not by using a strong base to break them into monomers, but to use a reducing agent (ammonia or zinc in european indigo, bacterially generated H2 in Japanese indigo, lead or tin (language is ambiguous, both work) in Tyrian Purple) to protonate the carbonyl to a carboxyl, giving you leucoindigo, which is colorless and soluble:
Part of the reason for indigo's extreme insolubility and intense absorption at such a long wavelength given it's small conjugated system is that the carbonyl oxygen and the amine's H of the two monomers hydrogen bond, locking the molecule into a rigidly planar shape and interfering with potential hydrogen bonding with a solvent (you mentioned this in your comment, I know), and reducing the carbonyl to a carboxyl makes it impossible for the molecule to hydrogen bond in a satisfactorily planar way, so conjugation is broken, color is lost, and solvation in water is vastly improved.Since conjugation is so stabilizing, leucoindigo is not stable on contact with oxygen, and will immediately convert back to indigo upon removal from the dye bath, but at this point it has penetrated the fiber and is now indelibly fixed.

For more information about dibromoindigo chemistry and history, and a brief but informative survey of indigoid chemistry, my current favorite is probably "Tyrian Purple: 6, 6’-Dibromoindigo and Related Compounds" by Chris Cooksey in Molecules, 2001 (http://www.mdpi.org/molecules/papers/60900736.pdf).  Cooksey also happens to be my favorite author about Orchil (http://www.chriscooksey.demon.co.uk/lichen/index.htm), despite his website being about as user friendly as dwarf fortress.

As for other purples, another commenter mentioned lichen purples used to extend dibromoindigo dyes.  He was referring to orchil, which is a deep reddish magenta dye produced by soaking certain lichens in ammonia (traditionally obtained from stale urine) for several months with frequent incorporation of oxygen. Orchil is a substantive dye, meaning it does not require a metal salt as a mordant, rather it directly bonds to the fiber.  This makes it somewhat selective in fiber, only bonding well to protein based fibers like wool and silk, as well as leather, feathers, and to a lesser extent bone, but due to the strong bond it is very washfast.  Unfortunately, it is not light fast, and is known for fading dramatically with excessive exposure.  It was used to extend Tyrian purple as it is much cheaper, has a similar color, is intense and solid (Tyrian purple had a tendency to be blotchy), and the lightfast Tyrian purple would help disguise the fading of the orchil.

True orchil is made from Rocella tinctoria, but any number of lichens can be used to produce similar dyes, which have been called cudbear, litmus, and a handful of other things.  I have actually made purple dye from at least 3 species, Umbillicaria spp., Evernia prunastri, and a Xanthoparmelia.  I got an intense blood-magenta from Umbillicaria, a not very saturated delicate gem tone violet from Evernia, which has since faded to nearly grey, and a slightly dirty/brownish rose from the Xanthoparmelia.  Here's a photo of a few dye samples, spoilered for size:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The three socks at top are Umbillicaria, and closely approximate the color of both true Orchil and Tyrian purple (it was more of a wine red with magenta hues than a true purple, and was sometimes described as "ox blood").
The sock underneath is Evernia, heavily faded.  It was never all that saturated, but it was better.  The Umbillicaria is the same age, and while the fabric is heavily worn and holes are developing, the color is essentially as good as new.  Of course, these are socks, so they don't get as much sun as would, say, a hat. 
The rosey purple yarn sample on the white bone is from Xanthoparmelia treated with ammonia, while the yellow sample on the dark brown rib is also Xanthoparmelia, but boiled in water with alum mordanted wool.  Excess boiling gives more of a green brown tinge. 
The bones were soaked in a tannin solution prepared from oak galls, and the brown rib is just that, while the glossy blue/black scapula was subjected to a further treatment with an iron mordant (I used rust and vinegar).

Of course, the colors look much better in person in full sun than in my kitchen on a cell phone camera.
(http://i.imgur.com/phLlyFX.jpg)

Quote from: wierd on April 11, 2014, 09:04:15 am

(I expect elves to REALLY hate the color purple. Made either from boiling their beloved trees, or from boiling poor innocent little ocean snails. I expect them to really like indigo blue, tannin based browns (from leaves and acorn hulls), and lichen based yellows, because they are atrocity and cruelty free.

So actually, with orchil, you can get good lichen based purples for the elves, as well as various reds and even a pale baby blue from Xanthoria (treat it like an orchil dye, but exposure to UV soon after removal from dye bath changes it from rose pink to pale blue), though they won't be extraordinarily lightfast  Since they only work on protein fibers, you won't be able to dye elven rope reed, but it really seems that they ought to prefer wool or spider silk, nonviolently harvested from beloved animal companions.  However, lichen dyes are usually by no means elf friendly.  Rock lichens tend to provide more intense dyes so are the most used, but are the slowest growing and harvesting usually means scraping the rock clean of lichen.  Overharvesting of dye lichens was typical wherever they were widely used, and the decline in abundance of dye species with overharvesting was noted even in ancient times (I'll have to look for the citation to that, but I know I read it somewhere).  I actually had an old hippie lady who was a mushroom dye enthusiast give me a very angry lecture on Destroying the Environment and Murdering Innocent Lichens and pretty much shun me from her table after I tried to show her my spiffy purple socks (this was at a mushroom fair, and she was an elf if I've ever met one).

You can produce elf friendly lichen purples, by using tree growing species and gathering them from the ground or from fallen dead branches (I do this because it is a lot less work than scraping rocks, aside from being less destructive).  Unfortunately, this limits the intensity of color that you can achieve.  In my dye samples shown, the first and most intense one was rock growing, while the other, less saturated (and lightfast) were quick growing bark dwellers.  You can get some pretty good yellows from found lichens, though.  Usnea will give various yellows potentially ranging from clear golden to sherbertey orange when boiled gently in water with optional alum mordant (overheating tends to brown the colors), and Xanthoparmelia gives a nice green-gold with a pleasant sheen and softness when treated the same (as opposed to the rose purple from the ammonia method).

To finally actually get to a more or less relevant topic, here are the colors you can achieve from plants currently in the game, with sources for most colors:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

TL;DR: most of the dyes available are some variant of yellow-beige-orange with alum and green-grey with iron, which is pretty typical of any given sampling of plants (that's by far the most common category of vegetable dye).  The brightest yellows are probably from pomegranate husks, mango leaves, and chicory, with alum for all of those, the best green is probably from Chicory with iron, but I know you can get a good green from fennel greens with iron, so I might have to look into relatives of fennel, like carrot greens with iron.  The best orangey color is probably from persimmon, but it's not very bright.  Perhaps carrots or carotenoid rich yams might be made to work.  With a good red, orange could be made from a bright yellow, but aside from beets, I can't think of any in the real world plants we currently have on hand.  Blues can be gotten from black beans, if those can be included under the category of string bean (same species), but we don't have any indigotin sources in game yet, and I think our only good blue is dimple cups.  Purples can be gotten from beets, which doesn't work well, or from lichens which haven't been added, or snails which haven't been added.


Banana sap (and presumably Abaca) - brownish to reddish, from tannins.  The Fe'i banana is apparently used for a reddish dye.  One source suggested it is useful as a mordant for other dyes, which is typical of tannins, though of course they also contribute their own color.

Coffee - browns, from tannins

Guava - pale rosey brown with alum or no mordant, slate grey with iron mordant (as with any iron mordant, this will be destructive to protein based fibers, making them scratchy and brittle) [source (http://www.scribd.com/doc/151225927/Dyeing-of-Silk-Using-Vegetable-Dyes-and-Study-on-the-Effects-of-Mordants-on-the-Dyeing-Properties)]

Rambutan - can be used to dye fiber a sunny yellow, using alum I assume [source (http://weftshop.com/2012/02/04/natural-dye-adventure/)].  Iron will give greys or greens.  "Young shoots are used to dye yellow silk to green. A dye     called ayer banyar, made from rambutan leaves and fruits     and combined with other ingredients, is used for dyeing red     silk black." [source (http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_208_2004-12-16.html)]

Tea - has been popularly used to make reddish browns, especially for making paper look old.  Iron mordant will give dark greys

Avocado - beige yellow from fruit skins, beige rose from pits, no mordant [source (http://www.medievaltextiles.org/reprintGayleavacadopear.pdf)] or pale rose pink, no mordant [source (http://ruthsinger.com/2013/10/01/natural-dye-avocado/)]

Pomegranate fruit husk and pith - beige brown unmordanted, intense mustard yellow with alum [source (http://www.folkfibers.com/blogs/news/7363630-natural-dyes-pomegranates)], as usual with yellow dyes, darker greys can be achieved with iron, at the possible expense of fabric softness

Cherry bark, also apple, apricot, peach, plum, and any other fruit tree in the rose family - creamy yellow to rose pink with alum or no mordant [source (http://treadgentlyontheearth.blogspot.com/2014/04/longing-for-leaves.html)], greys and grey greens from iron

Persimmons (unripe fruit) - somewhat brownish earth toned rose [source (http://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=118)] probably grey with iron

Walnut - a very deep intense chocolatey brown, very wash and light fast [source (http://blog.knottygnome.com/2013/08/nuts.html)]  This dye was widely used because it fixes very well to most fibers and has the benefit of being somewhat toxic, so it inhibits insect damage (though not at all dangerous to wear)

Black Beans (not mentioned, but a cultivar of Phaseolus vulgaris) - a nice strong blue, like a slightly less intense indigo, alum mordant [source] (http://dye-lot.blogspot.com/2012/03/black-beans.html)

Beets - magenta red, more or less what you would expect from the color of beet juices, mordanted with vinegar.  Color can be adjusted by varying pH, but the solution must be acidic for the dye to bind to the fiber. [source (http://colourcottage.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/berry-vegetable-dyeing-1/)] Presumably you could also vary the color by starting with differently colored beet cultivars.  I have my doubts as to the light fastness of this dye, as according to wikipedia, betanin, the primarily pigment molecule, "degrades when subjected to light, heat, and oxygen" [source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betanin)]

Carrots - I don't know about orange carrots, I don't think it works well, but apparently purple carrots give a very nicely colored purple dye [source (http://notjustnat.blogspot.com/2012/02/dyeing-seriously-natural-way.html)], but I have strong suspicions about wash and lightfastness

Chicory - mustard yellow (alum), yellow-green (copper), bright yellow (tin), forest green (iron), creamy biege (no mordant).  There are reports of a blue dye from the leaves, but this seems to be untrue. [source (http://www.richters.com/show.cgi?page=QandA/Aromatic/20000907-2.html)]

Onions - give a nice warm orange yellow from the skins

That's all the new plants, I haven't looked through the old plant list, but I know it has some worth mentioning, like an intense yellow from mango leaves and deep browns and blacks from oaks.  I'm sure I missed lots of stuff too.

I've been thinking I should go to the suggestions subforum and start or revive a thread on dyes, if anyone is interested.

Also, since linseed and it's oil has been added, all we need for oil paints is a job to mix powdered pigment with oil (we might want to conveniently ignore any other binders or additives that might be desired in real paint, and maybe ignore the necessary boiling of the linseed oil (or maybe not)), and a job to paint something.  I know there have been lots of suggestion threads about paints, I might go pick one to necro.

Also, the sizes of text throughout my comment got all screwed up, and I can't seem to fix it by just selecting it all and setting it to a size.  Anyone know how to make that work?

I stripped all the font and size tags using regular expressions which makes it more readable. A very interesting post. I've been tempted to make a suggestion thread, but decided I didn't know enough to merit it. I guess the question is how simplified the system should be. For my planned mod I was just going to have it so you mix dyes before applying them instead of applying multiple dyes, and similar for mordants. This was mostly to have it work within the current dye system, but also to make it simpler to use. There is a lot of scope for complexity. With smells being added to the game having the leather and dye district stink would be nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on April 14, 2014, 07:42:27 pm

Quote from: Log of Truth

Toady One Ah, sorry about that, I was... delayed.

Anyone else think of Gandalf (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoxmrRAW-SA)?  *hits F5 10 more times*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 14, 2014, 08:35:00 pm

My bad about prussian blue synthesis--

should be this, for the original diesbach process.

Quote

Prussian blue was manufactured first in Germany by a color maker named
  Diesbach. The process included heating equal amounts of saltpeter (KNO.3)
  and potassium tartrate in a red-hot crucible. Dry powdered cattle blood
  was added and the mixture was heated to an incadescence then washed with
  water and treated with a solution of alum [K.2SO.4; Al.2(So.4).3 x24H.2O]
  and ferrous sulfate. A green precipitate was formed which turned blue with
  the addition of hydrochloric acid.

This was in the early 1700s, btw.

The reagents involved SHOULD be available to dwarves in fairly copious abundance. Potasium tartrate (The diesbach process does not look like it will be adversely impacted by the use of potassium bistartrate instead of real potassium tartrate) is also known as "Wine diamonds" and also as "tartar", and is commonly found in wine casks and bottles.

A process to refine pure tartaric acid from this (tartar) was known as early as 800AD, according to wikipedia.

Similarly, the synthesis of muriatic acid (HCl) and tincture of vitriol (sulfuric acid) were known in the target timeperiod as well. Muriatic acid is derived from heating table salt in sulfuric acid, and bubbling the resulting gas through distilled water.  Other than the non-obviousness of producing a complex blue pigment from the reduced iron and hydrocyanic acids produced by burning bloodmeal via this process, there isn't a technical reason why dwarven alchemists could not produce it.

One caveat of allowing it to be produced by an alchemist, is that it is also the foundation of one of the earliest forms of photography; the cyanotype process. (VERY SLOW exposure. requires very bright light, and absolutely motionless subjects. Produces a "Negative" image.)

The use as a photosensitizer for photographic medium only came about because of already existing work surrounding the emerging field of modern chemistry at that time, however-- so it is unlikely that dwarven alchemists would make the connection between potassium prussiate, light exposure, and the production of iron hexaferrocyanate (prussian blue) on exposure to an iron salt and oxygen necessary for the cyanotype process to occur. (IIRC, the deguerrotype, using mercury vapor development on sensitized glass panes, was known before the cyanotype process was invented.) As such, that little tidbit can probably be safely ignored. :D


It would *FINALLY* give a practical use for all those barrels of blood those stupid human merchants keep shipping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 14, 2014, 09:53:27 pm

Quote from: hermes on April 14, 2014, 07:42:27 pm

Anyone else think of Gandalf?

"A release is never late, nor is it early; it arrives precisely when I mean it to."
       --Definitely not ToadyOne

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Verdant_Squire on April 15, 2014, 10:36:22 am

Now that town guards have actual, important tasks, will we be unable to go to random forts and recruit all the guards? If so, will we be able to recruit actual warriors in taverns to make up for this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 15, 2014, 11:28:55 am

That line of thinking is making me think how situations like the Hunger Games or Dangan Ronpa could be set up for some reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on April 15, 2014, 04:22:27 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on April 15, 2014, 10:36:22 am

Now that town guards have actual, important tasks, will we be unable to go to random forts and recruit all the guards? If so, will we be able to recruit actual warriors in taverns to make up for this?

Warriors in fake taverns is in for this release.  I don't know about guards resisting recruitment if they have duties.  In past versions, any leadership position stopped dwarves from joining up.

On the topic of the latest dev-log, is that the last of the 6 items before debugging?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 15, 2014, 08:47:04 pm

So, how does dialogue work now? You said that you obliterated the current speech system in favor of something else; you said you didn't like dialogue trees, either. What is the current decision about conversation?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 15, 2014, 09:20:06 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on April 15, 2014, 04:22:27 pm

On the topic of the latest dev-log, is that the last of the 6 items before debugging?

Quote from: 2014-03-19 devlog

In terms of these finalizations I've been doing, there are six left:

• Doing a test run with a dwarven adventurer from depot to depot through a tunnel,
• the liaison commenting on the world situation in dwarf mode,
• that information screen I mentioned in the FotF thread not too long ago,
• the plant list,
• some checks with guards/intruder, and
• some sort of nod to vampires/gods ruling civilizations (since it gets stranger and stranger for them to be there without any comment at all).

Then we'll have a steaming pile of game that needs to be debugged and otherwise made playable.

That's certainly the message I read!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HmH on April 15, 2014, 11:52:32 pm

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on April 14, 2014, 09:53:27 pm

"A release is never late, nor is it early; it arrives precisely when I mean it to."
       --Definitely not ToadyOne

Sigged.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 16, 2014, 11:01:54 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on April 15, 2014, 08:47:04 pm

So, how does dialogue work now? You said that you obliterated the current speech system in favor of something else; you said you didn't like dialogue trees, either. What is the current decision about conversation?

Toady talked about the workings of the new conversation system in DF Talk, spoilered below. I know there are a few more places where he's talked about the system, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

Rainseeker:    So, it seems like Dwarf Fortress is getting to the point where you can talk to NPCs, and characters, and interact with them, and coerce them into punching goblins with you! How is that going to work?
Toady:    Yeah, it's a party, it's a party where you have goblin-beating time with your little friends and drunks.
Capntastic:    And everybody's invited! (laughter)
Toady:    Yeah they're not friendly, so we don't feel sorry for the goblins. And we've got drunks back in little fake taverns again so you can kind of get the right people for the job. So you can talk to people, and, and people, there's, the overall situation with the town which is something you can become aware of by talking to them. And when you talk to them now, it works the same way, the same sort of clunky, K, move over the cursor thing, and press enter. But then you get a topic list which is, you can do the kind of things you did before, where you greet people. And when you greet them now it gives you, instead of popping you to a screen where it gives you a list of options and sort of the summary of what's been said, it gives you a list of options but more like you're attacking somebody. Like, like there's a list of options and you still see all of the surroundings. And you select an option, and then it gives you an action, again analogous to moving or attacking, and then when your action's time has ran out, the timer for it, you will say what you wanted to say and it pops up in the announcement queue.
Rainseeker:    It's because you're attacking them psychologically?
Toady:    Yes, this is all psychological warfare now. And they'll say something back, if they understand the context of the conversation that they're in. And so they, on their turn, if they don't have something more important to do (like running off and fighting or something), then they will look at the conversations there and decide what to say to who, and what to talk about then initiate an action of their own and it will come back to the, to the announcement log. Now, to make this not totally annoying, when you talk to somebody, you go into a kind of a waiting mode, so that you anticipate that you're going to be replied to, and then it just waits for the reply to come in. So you don't have to like, press period a bunch of times to wait for the guy to say something.
Rainseeker:    Especially if he's very slow-witted.
Toady:    Yes, yes or if he's, but it runs a timer carefully though so if the guy's off doing something else it won't wait forever and lock up the game. At least, hopefully it works right. So they'll reply for you and that creates the context for the conversation. It kind of operates in pairs for the most part where you say something and then the reply is expected, and then the conversation goes back to being neutral again, where no one's in the driver's seat and the next person to talk kind of creates another pair of things that is said. And that can change the context of the conversation. And when someone says something it assigns numbers, so that it will put a little 1 next to what they said, and then it will go, 1 will appear on them, so that you can see who said what. So if you're in a crowd and someone shouts something, it'll pop up and you can see what they said or who said it. And kind of keep control of who's saying what in the conversation that way. Also when you talk to people you can look back at the log of what's been said and it shows you automatically what's been said so that you don't get lost. And so you can bring the conversation, you can say "what's going on now?" and they'll tell you about an occupation, or if an army is coming, or other things that have happened, like they heard there was a fist fight where a bunch of goblins got beat to death or whatever.
Toady:    So they tell you about these things and then you, when you're in the context of talking about the insurrection, that's when you can drop a line about, well hey let's go do something about this. And right now the bar to entry, just to keep the game going, the bar to entry's pretty low, (laughter) in terms of hey let's go do something about this and then you, you can get a companion. And the companion, like before, they just travel around with you and all that kind of thing. But now it's an agreement is formed, where there's some understanding that underlies every single thing about companionship in the game now about why they're with you, and kind of how long they're going to be with you, and then they can use that information to decide whether or not you're actually furthering this common goal, you know if you just want to wander off out of town with someone who's supposed to be helping you with the insurrection that companionship isn't going to last very long and the person will probably just leave while you sleep or whatever.

 And that's probably all going to be in with the release. I mean, a lot of that already is in, but I haven't made the companions leave yet, but that's very likely to go in so you can't abuse your privileges. But there's also standard companionships, the bar is good for things like that. These fake bars. I just need to aggregate where to find these people so I put them in these fake taverns, this isn't the tavern release by any stretch of the imagination but there are drunks and mercenary type adventurer people. And all the scouts and monster hunter type people from world gen all hang out in these fake taverns now, just sitting there. And so you can go and talk to them. So you can have people travel with you in the standard, lead me to glory and death type way, in which case they don't have a very high standard for continuing the partnership. I mean guess I could make them get bored if you don't do anything for a week or something and then split.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 16, 2014, 11:27:24 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 16, 2014, 11:01:54 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on April 15, 2014, 08:47:04 pm

So, how does dialogue work now? You said that you obliterated the current speech system in favor of something else; you said you didn't like dialogue trees, either. What is the current decision about conversation?

Toady talked about the workings of the new conversation system in DF Talk, spoilered below. I know there are a few more places where he's talked about the system, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote

Rainseeker:    So, it seems like Dwarf Fortress is getting to the point where you can talk to NPCs, and characters, and interact with them, and coerce them into punching goblins with you! How is that going to work?
Toady:    Yeah, it's a party, it's a party where you have goblin-beating time with your little friends and drunks.
Capntastic:    And everybody's invited! (laughter)
Toady:    Yeah they're not friendly, so we don't feel sorry for the goblins. And we've got drunks back in little fake taverns again so you can kind of get the right people for the job. So you can talk to people, and, and people, there's, the overall situation with the town which is something you can become aware of by talking to them. And when you talk to them now, it works the same way, the same sort of clunky, K, move over the cursor thing, and press enter. But then you get a topic list which is, you can do the kind of things you did before, where you greet people. And when you greet them now it gives you, instead of popping you to a screen where it gives you a list of options and sort of the summary of what's been said, it gives you a list of options but more like you're attacking somebody. Like, like there's a list of options and you still see all of the surroundings. And you select an option, and then it gives you an action, again analogous to moving or attacking, and then when your action's time has ran out, the timer for it, you will say what you wanted to say and it pops up in the announcement queue.
Rainseeker:    It's because you're attacking them psychologically?
Toady:    Yes, this is all psychological warfare now. And they'll say something back, if they understand the context of the conversation that they're in. And so they, on their turn, if they don't have something more important to do (like running off and fighting or something), then they will look at the conversations there and decide what to say to who, and what to talk about then initiate an action of their own and it will come back to the, to the announcement log. Now, to make this not totally annoying, when you talk to somebody, you go into a kind of a waiting mode, so that you anticipate that you're going to be replied to, and then it just waits for the reply to come in. So you don't have to like, press period a bunch of times to wait for the guy to say something.
Rainseeker:    Especially if he's very slow-witted.
Toady:    Yes, yes or if he's, but it runs a timer carefully though so if the guy's off doing something else it won't wait forever and lock up the game. At least, hopefully it works right. So they'll reply for you and that creates the context for the conversation. It kind of operates in pairs for the most part where you say something and then the reply is expected, and then the conversation goes back to being neutral again, where no one's in the driver's seat and the next person to talk kind of creates another pair of things that is said. And that can change the context of the conversation. And when someone says something it assigns numbers, so that it will put a little 1 next to what they said, and then it will go, 1 will appear on them, so that you can see who said what. So if you're in a crowd and someone shouts something, it'll pop up and you can see what they said or who said it. And kind of keep control of who's saying what in the conversation that way. Also when you talk to people you can look back at the log of what's been said and it shows you automatically what's been said so that you don't get lost. And so you can bring the conversation, you can say "what's going on now?" and they'll tell you about an occupation, or if an army is coming, or other things that have happened, like they heard there was a fist fight where a bunch of goblins got beat to death or whatever.
Toady:    So they tell you about these things and then you, when you're in the context of talking about the insurrection, that's when you can drop a line about, well hey let's go do something about this. And right now the bar to entry, just to keep the game going, the bar to entry's pretty low, (laughter) in terms of hey let's go do something about this and then you, you can get a companion. And the companion, like before, they just travel around with you and all that kind of thing. But now it's an agreement is formed, where there's some understanding that underlies every single thing about companionship in the game now about why they're with you, and kind of how long they're going to be with you, and then they can use that information to decide whether or not you're actually furthering this common goal, you know if you just want to wander off out of town with someone who's supposed to be helping you with the insurrection that companionship isn't going to last very long and the person will probably just leave while you sleep or whatever.

 And that's probably all going to be in with the release. I mean, a lot of that already is in, but I haven't made the companions leave yet, but that's very likely to go in so you can't abuse your privileges. But there's also standard companionships, the bar is good for things like that. These fake bars. I just need to aggregate where to find these people so I put them in these fake taverns, this isn't the tavern release by any stretch of the imagination but there are drunks and mercenary type adventurer people. And all the scouts and monster hunter type people from world gen all hang out in these fake taverns now, just sitting there. And so you can go and talk to them. So you can have people travel with you in the standard, lead me to glory and death type way, in which case they don't have a very high standard for continuing the partnership. I mean guess I could make them get bored if you don't do anything for a week or something and then split.

He has also talked about it in some FotF Q&As and devlog posts. You'll have to hunt down the relevant FotF replies as they are scattered about. I'm sure footkerchief, our local quote wizard, can find the ones that answer your question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 16, 2014, 11:28:32 am

Footkerchief can summon relevant quotes with his/her/xer/their middle-click button.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 16, 2014, 03:30:06 pm

Gentlemen. Ladies. And other odd people among us.
This is it.

The time we have all been waiting for.
The time. What is the time? It's hard to fully explain its true meaning, but one thing I can tell you know that counting it is a moot point in this strange place that is Bay12 Forums.
For we have waited nearly 2 years for this very moment, and we may wait for even longer. Who knows? I don't, but what I do know is that this wait will be very worth it, I kid you not.

Time is the ultimate test of patience and willpower, and unfortunately not all of us could withstand this test, which is why we're not the same group as we were many months back. I myself only arrived relatively soon, and many of you did after and before me, and many more will. Many have also left, and many will leave. That is a natural course and we cannot stop it.

What can we do then?
Wait.
"Is that it?", you may ask.
The answer is simple - "Yes.".

As sad as it sounds, this seemingly simple task was indeed a tough one for many of us, myself included, and some of us were bested by it, and that defeat could manifest itself in various forms - some were frustrated. Others had dreams of things they wished for but could not get them. Others have left.
And they are not to blame. Patience is a virtue indeed and not everyone was gifted with it, and they cannot stand against the never-ending flow of time.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. But you kept waiting, and waiting. And you did not stop waiting.
And those who were unbroken by time, are reading this post here on this day, and I salute you.

For soon, we shall enter a new era.

The fabled era of the new release - of the unknown, of !!SCIENCE!!, of !!FUN!! and of great written and unwritten tales.
The era that shall be on the mouths of our peoples, future and present. We are on the border of two releases - one current and one new. We do not know what awaits us past that border, and we have nothing but ourselves to bring to it.
But we are not afraid to cross that border, for we have crossed many such borders in the past, and we will cross many more borders in the future. For there are no borders that we cannot cross, as long as we keep hoping and never give up.
And I beg - let the living not lose hope ever. For even if hope is our only treasure left, it is our most precious treasure and we should protect it at all cost. Because with hope and will there are no barriers that cannot be broken, and with no barriers, there is no such thing as "impossible".

I have witnessed many great releases in the past - I've seen the rise of Minecraft, the dawn of Terraria and all of its major breakthroughs, I've been there when Mann VS Machine was unveiled, and I've seen many more.
But none of those were quite as impressive as this is going to be...

So come. Let us venture into the deep, dark depths of this new, great release. Together. For we have been waiting for it together, and we shall enter it together. As one!
Now go. Enjoy DF2012 while you still can. For when the new release hits the main page, all you will be left with will be you, DF2014 and hope. Fulfilled hope.
Your wishes are soon to be granted, and that is all thanks to you.


*phew*
_{That was fun to write. (inb4 modders coming in and saying that they have their pre-emptively updated mods to bring along to DF2014)}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 16, 2014, 03:34:09 pm

DF2014 is annoying to update for; I definitely don't have anything updated fully yet, though the DBZ mod is about halfway there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 05:17:54 pm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/16/dwarf-fortress-the-detailed-roguelike-thats-easy-to-play/#more-201633

Rock Paper Shotgun did a great piece on Dwarf fortress. They want to help bring more people in. This is great.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 16, 2014, 05:33:52 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 05:17:54 pm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/16/dwarf-fortress-the-detailed-roguelike-thats-easy-to-play/#more-201633

Rock Paper Shotgun did a great piece on Dwarf fortress. They want to help bring more people in. This is great.

YES! MORE EXPOSURE TO THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURE MODE! PURGE THE FORTRESS SCUM!
*ahem*

Go on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on April 16, 2014, 05:54:58 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 05:17:54 pm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/16/dwarf-fortress-the-detailed-roguelike-thats-easy-to-play/#more-201633

Rock Paper Shotgun did a great piece on Dwarf fortress. They want to help bring more people in. This is great.

It always helps DF that it is so, memorable. It really creates such an endless stream of amazing things that nearly everyone who really gets into becomes a proselytizer.

I will admit surprise at the use of "Easy-to-Play", but I'll take it. We really should keep up efforts to ease the transition for folks; without the wiki I would have dad many more problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on April 16, 2014, 05:58:19 pm

I raised an eyebrow at 'easy to learn' as well, but I suppose for Adventure mode that's actually pretty true. Fortress mode is where the UI really starts to get in the way of learning the game.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 16, 2014, 06:58:15 pm

I started when I was 14. At the time, it was hard. I don't know whether it would be now or not, but I have a feeling that it is still much harder than most other games.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 16, 2014, 08:21:47 pm

Dwarf Fortress was easier for me to learn than Nethack. Having all the keyboard commands you could potentially use displayed on the screen helped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on April 16, 2014, 09:56:26 pm

DF was not as impenetrable as its reputation for me, but while I have learned it, I have not mastered it. still don't know how minecarts work, but I've built a perfectly functional fort around my inability to use it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 16, 2014, 10:22:58 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on April 16, 2014, 09:56:26 pm

DF was not as impenetrable as its reputation for me, but while I have learned it, I have not mastered it. still don't know how minecarts work, but I've built a perfectly functional fort around my inability to use it.

My problem is military. I just can't get a grip on it.
My few successful attempts at getting a squad together usually lead to me trying to build training facilities.
Which lead to using up all my miner's efforts, all my mechanisms, basically every single hand in the fort is diverted to a simple coinstar, even the trader guy (yeah, haven't figured out stacksplitting macros yet), and I run out of food because the farmers decide to quit farming in favor of jumping in and out of the incomplete coinstar pit for no reason.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on April 17, 2014, 01:08:57 am

If you're asking for someone to give you reasons to play DF, you probably shouldn't be playing DF yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 17, 2014, 11:01:26 am

I started when I was 13. I mostly stuck to adventure mode, whacking goblins with big sticks, until one day I started reading about traps on the wiki and decided it would be !!FUN!! to have goblins get kicked into pits full of wooden spikes instead.

Of course, I embarked on a serene island the time I tried that, meaning I was safe from the gobbos. Skewering unicorns isn't as fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Talvieno on April 17, 2014, 07:18:25 pm

edit: misread something. disregard this.

edit edit: I still stand behind what I said, though: This game is beautiful and you're doing an amazing job. We love you, Toady. Keep up the incredible work. :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 18, 2014, 03:39:00 am

I have no idea when I started. Possibly 40d, but I'm thinking sooner. That was... oh my, six years ago, roughly. That means... around the age of 12-13, too.
I played adventure mode too, but Fortress Mode wasn't THAT hard to get into. I recall surviving a siege or two as well. It's not really the controls you need to learn, much more what to prioritise, how to plan ahead, etc., I think. You can pretty much figure out with the UI how to do what, but what you most likely need a guide for is which of those things you actually should do.

You know, like, everyone can figure out how to build walls, dig tunnels and create farm plots, but how to create farms inside the tunnels that are protected by walls and then get the farm to produce enough food before winter/the first siege and to actually be able to trade in the autumn is a different thing entirely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 18, 2014, 05:04:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At fourteen, I lost myself to the darkness.
At fourteen, I became an Overseer.

If the change between DF2014 and .34 is even close to how big the one from .31 to .34 was, this will be exponentially excellent.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on April 18, 2014, 06:00:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a positive stereotype or negative stereotype. Anyway, please don't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 18, 2014, 06:32:51 am

Quote from: Henny on April 18, 2014, 06:00:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a positive stereotype or negative stereotype. Anyway, please don't.

I was thinking of asking how he meant that as well at first, but decided not to (especially since in my case that stereotype is definitely true). But yeah, people do seem to easily get all emotional when it comes to stereotypes regardless of what kind, so it's probably best to not go there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 18, 2014, 08:33:46 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 18, 2014, 06:32:51 am

Quote from: Henny on April 18, 2014, 06:00:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a positive stereotype or negative stereotype. Anyway, please don't.

I was thinking of asking how he meant that as well at first, but decided not to (especially since in my case that stereotype is definitely true). But yeah, people do seem to easily get all emotional when it comes to stereotypes regardless of what kind, so it's probably best to not go there.

Go to some places in the internet, usually comment sections about Dwarf Fortress, and you will understand what I meant. Some say, or joke, that only people with Asperger's can learn Dwarf Fortress. Which obviously isn't true. I meant no offense to people with Aspergers and I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 18, 2014, 09:08:52 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 18, 2014, 05:04:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At fourteen, I lost myself to the darkness.
At fourteen, I became an Overseer.

If the change between DF2014 and .34 is even close to how big the one from .31 to .34 was, this will be exponentially excellent.

It's much, much larger. Larger than 0.28 to 0.31, even, at least on gameplay levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 18, 2014, 10:35:58 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 18, 2014, 09:08:52 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 18, 2014, 05:04:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At fourteen, I lost myself to the darkness.
At fourteen, I became an Overseer.

If the change between DF2014 and .34 is even close to how big the one from .31 to .34 was, this will be exponentially excellent.

It's much, much larger. Larger than 0.28 to 0.31, even, at least on gameplay levels.

... for Adventure mode.  Adding Z levels in Fort mode, for example, seems a bigger gameplay change to me than anything I have heard of for Fort mode for DF2014.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 18, 2014, 10:46:14 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 18, 2014, 08:33:46 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 18, 2014, 06:32:51 am

Quote from: Henny on April 18, 2014, 06:00:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a positive stereotype or negative stereotype. Anyway, please don't.

I was thinking of asking how he meant that as well at first, but decided not to (especially since in my case that stereotype is definitely true). But yeah, people do seem to easily get all emotional when it comes to stereotypes regardless of what kind, so it's probably best to not go there.

Go to some places in the internet, usually comment sections about Dwarf Fortress, and you will understand what I meant. Some say, or joke, that only people with Asperger's can learn Dwarf Fortress. Which obviously isn't true. I meant no offense to people with Aspergers and I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

you're true. Asperger are too light-headed for DF.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 18, 2014, 10:50:26 am

Quote from: catenate on April 18, 2014, 10:35:58 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 18, 2014, 09:08:52 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 18, 2014, 05:04:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At fourteen, I lost myself to the darkness.
At fourteen, I became an Overseer.

If the change between DF2014 and .34 is even close to how big the one from .31 to .34 was, this will be exponentially excellent.

It's much, much larger. Larger than 0.28 to 0.31, even, at least on gameplay levels.

... for Adventure mode.  Adding Z levels in Fort mode, for example, seems a bigger gameplay change to me than anything I have heard of for Fort mode for DF2014.

"0.28 to 0.31" refers to 0.28.181.40d and 0.31.01, respectively (AKA the big release of 2010).  Z-levels were added earlier (between 0.23.130.23a and 0.27.169.32a), so Putnam wasn't making the claim that there's a gameplay change bigger than Z-levels. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 18, 2014, 10:57:16 am

Again, multi-tile trees, nearby hill dwarf settlement, and a personality rewrite sound like pretty big Fort Mode changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 18, 2014, 10:58:35 am

And anyway, a dynamic world after worldgen during gameplay alone is far more complex and big than Z-levels. Now add all the other things being added and boom, you have the most important (and longest) release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 18, 2014, 11:03:41 am

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 18, 2014, 10:50:26 am

Quote from: catenate on April 18, 2014, 10:35:58 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 18, 2014, 09:08:52 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 18, 2014, 05:04:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At fourteen, I lost myself to the darkness.
At fourteen, I became an Overseer.

If the change between DF2014 and .34 is even close to how big the one from .31 to .34 was, this will be exponentially excellent.

It's much, much larger. Larger than 0.28 to 0.31, even, at least on gameplay levels.

... for Adventure mode.  Adding Z levels in Fort mode, for example, seems a bigger gameplay change to me than anything I have heard of for Fort mode for DF2014.

"0.28 to 0.31" refers to 0.28.181.40d and 0.31.01, respectively (AKA the big release of 2010).  Z-levels were added earlier (between 0.23.130.23a and 0.27.169.32a), so Putnam wasn't making the claim that there's a gameplay change bigger than Z-levels.

Fair enough, I was unsure on the timing of Z-levels.

My larger point was that, from what I've read about what's being developed, people shouldn't expect that DF2014 will feel like it has two years worth of Fort mode changes.  As opposed to Adventure-mode players, who may expect a much more interesting experience.  Again, I do look forward to the larger, activated world in Adventure mode making its liveliness felt in Fort mode in a future release.  For example, by being able to interact with it in Fort mode in some abstracted way, beyond just hearing about it in comments by a trade liaison.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 18, 2014, 11:04:57 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 18, 2014, 10:57:16 am

Again, multi-tile trees, nearby hill dwarf settlement, and a personality rewrite sound like pretty big Fort Mode changes.

Hill dwarves settlements won't have any effect on fortresses in the next release. This is for further releases. Despite the many changes, gameplay on fortress mode won't change that much, though I don't agree Toady focus was on adventure mode - the focus of this release is the world, it just happens adventure mode interacts more with it for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 18, 2014, 11:12:37 am

Isn't fort retirement a big change though? (and NPC fort reclamation)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 18, 2014, 11:15:16 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 18, 2014, 10:57:16 am

Again, multi-tile trees, nearby hill dwarf settlement, and a personality rewrite sound like pretty big Fort Mode changes.

The big trees should look cool, at least.  Can you "mine" them, and make tree houses?  Can you chop them down and cut them up for hundreds of logs?  Do they grow an inordinate number of fruits, out on their long high branches?

Doesn't look like the hill dwarves affect gameplay in this release.  Looking forward to actually interacting with the hill dwarf settlement, for example having them change migration, trade, army arc.  So that's really not much of a change for Fort players (EDIT: in this release).

I am looking forward to wrangling the rebrained dwarves.  This seems like the biggest change for Fort players (EDIT: in this release).

Fort retirement may be a change to when you can play a fort, and you can muck it up with an adventurer, but it doesn't really necessarily affect a fort's industrial web, how it's laid out, what the dwarves do while you oversee them, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 18, 2014, 11:18:10 am

Quote from: catenate on April 18, 2014, 11:15:16 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 18, 2014, 10:57:16 am

Again, multi-tile trees, nearby hill dwarf settlement, and a personality rewrite sound like pretty big Fort Mode changes.

The big trees should look cool, at least.  Can you "mine" them, and make tree houses?  Can you chop them down and cut them up for hundreds of logs?  Do they grow an inordinate number of fruits, out on their long high branches?

Only if you're playing as the Na'vi or the Sky People :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 18, 2014, 12:01:09 pm

Should mention that I'm looking forward to dealing with climbing and jumping enemies, to make Fort defenses a bit more interesting.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 18, 2014, 12:32:56 pm

Same. My current system of walls, tunnels and fortifications becomes rather obsolete.

Well, time to improvise!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 18, 2014, 12:36:06 pm

This sure will shake up the defense meta a fair bit, won't it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 18, 2014, 12:44:49 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 18, 2014, 10:46:14 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 18, 2014, 08:33:46 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 18, 2014, 06:32:51 am

Quote from: Henny on April 18, 2014, 06:00:53 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 16, 2014, 06:45:57 pm

Dwarf Fortress IS easy to play. Fortress and Adventure Mode. I first played it when I was 25 yo, while studying and working, and I only needed the "How to Survive your First Winter" tutorial in the wiki. I am far from being a genius, I have no Asperger's, and I hadn't (and still haven't) a lot of free time. What is needed to learn Dwarf Fortress? You have to want. It is certainly not a game that will play itself for you.

I'm not sure whether that's supposed to be a positive stereotype or negative stereotype. Anyway, please don't.

I was thinking of asking how he meant that as well at first, but decided not to (especially since in my case that stereotype is definitely true). But yeah, people do seem to easily get all emotional when it comes to stereotypes regardless of what kind, so it's probably best to not go there.

Go to some places in the internet, usually comment sections about Dwarf Fortress, and you will understand what I meant. Some say, or joke, that only people with Asperger's can learn Dwarf Fortress. Which obviously isn't true. I meant no offense to people with Aspergers and I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

you're true. Asperger are too light-headed for DF.

What's that supposed to mean inarius? I have aspergers and I found the game as difficult as anybody else here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MisterB777 on April 18, 2014, 12:53:39 pm

Yeah, climbing, jumping and multi-tile trees will be, for me at least, a major Fort Mode change.  Annnnd, in that vein, I searched all over for this and didn't find it, so will go ahead and ask (even though climbing has been covered ad nauseum):

Will we (or invaders) be able to climb up the side of furniture items that act as "walls" like Statues, Windows, Floodgates or Wall Grates?  Subquestion:  will building destroyers (trolls) be able to climb a wall and bust through an adjacent Window/Wall Grate or other blocking structure, thus making their way into the fortress proper?

My thinking is that, right now, flyers (Titans and FBs, specifically) don't break windows in walls if they can't land next to them.  But, if they can suddenly land on a wall..... that has serious implications for fort design.  Implications would be even more fun if climbers could do so as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 18, 2014, 01:02:46 pm

We really don't need a derail about Asperger syndrome in the FotF thread.  Please stop now instead of forcing Toady to delete posts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 18, 2014, 01:16:33 pm

Sorry if I missed this info elsewhere, but

What level of control do you foresee the player having over multi-tile trees?  Can the branches be trimmed topiary-style?  Can multi-tile plants be guided to grow in certain directions?  Can anything be built in or on them, like a little platform for a marksdwarf?

These techniques sound more elven than dwarven, but elves are planned as a far-future vanilla "fort" race.  Though it would probably take a dwarf to build a wood furnace in the branches of a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on April 18, 2014, 03:45:54 pm

What do you intend for the nuts and bolts of conversations?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on April 18, 2014, 09:39:27 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on April 18, 2014, 03:45:54 pm

What do you intend for the nuts and bolts of conversations?

Hmmm, well - True and false information will be the nuts and bolts of the new conversation system, which is an expansion on the old conversation system, which relied on raw information.("to the north is Whipshield, I would not go there, it is a place of great evil. Elf McElf was eaten by Megabeasts there." Geo information + evil biome information + local Legends information and voilà.)

Also, Caste is a major mechanic on conversations. Peasants, Knights, cave creatures, and Nobles will all react to a same situation differently according to the role they play.

And personality will play into it ... Most goblins don't like it when you burn down their villages, but maybe one with particularly low empathy and a lot of grudges actually likes what you've done to his friends, and strikes up a temporary partnership so he'll/she'll become the leader in the fallout of your murder-page.

There's probably hundreds more systems influencing the conversation system i'm not thinking of, and I bet people will add more. But I think those are the major "nuts & bolts" in play.

Did my answer help? The question was a bit vague.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 18, 2014, 11:19:04 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 18, 2014, 01:02:46 pm

We really don't need a derail about Asperger syndrome in the FotF thread.  Please stop now instead of forcing Toady to delete posts.

Hey, I'm not the one who brought it up, and I was responding to inarius's potential insult.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 18, 2014, 11:28:01 pm

Don't do that, either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 19, 2014, 12:05:27 am

I'll drop the topic.....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on April 19, 2014, 07:27:59 am

The first time I played Dwarf Fortress, I got my view stuck on the wrong Z-level when migrants arrived and didn't know how to navigate back to my fort, or even what exactly had happened. I guess a tutorial would have helped then, rather than purely reading the wiki like I did. On the other hand, it's not as hard as its reputation suggests, I think.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lord Shonus on April 19, 2014, 10:30:13 am

That was my only difficulty. I was unaware that the game was in 3D, and couldn't understand why my little smily faces kept disappearing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 19, 2014, 10:48:46 am

Quote

What's that supposed to mean inarius? I have aspergers and I found the game as difficult as anybody else here.

Sorry for that misunderstanding. The first statement about this subject was a joke in form of "cliché" about Asperger (as it was said before in the thread, many people say that DF is a game for Asperger because of its great complexity and in relation to the capacity of Asperger to master very complex things easily, compared to non-Asperger), so I was replying by another joke cliché (alluding to the fact that even for them the game was too complex).

No offense about Aspis.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on April 19, 2014, 12:07:48 pm

Moving on.

If you rescue an orphan, or if by some chance the parents that request your help die while you're at the goblin tower, is that child going to be embraced in someone's family, or at least going to be accepted in the community?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on April 19, 2014, 12:49:31 pm

Quote from: Authority2 on April 19, 2014, 07:27:59 am

The first time I played Dwarf Fortress, I got my view stuck on the wrong Z-level when migrants arrived and didn't know how to navigate back to my fort, or even what exactly had happened. I guess a tutorial would have helped then, rather than purely reading the wiki like I did. On the other hand, it's not as hard as its reputation suggests, I think.

On my first fort ever, I figured out (eventually) that there were Z-levels, different layers, but couldn't figure out how to navigate between them. But I did figure out that using the U screen and zooming to a dwarf would bring me to the level they were on, so as long as they were on the level I wanted to go to I could navigate.
I didn't find < and > until two forts later. :P
I've got more experience than that now.

Maybe this should go in suggestions, but will there be a minor interface change to make < and > more visible in fort mode in the near future? Any interface changes in the near future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on April 19, 2014, 01:24:47 pm

Quote from: flabort on April 19, 2014, 12:49:31 pm

Quote from: Authority2 on April 19, 2014, 07:27:59 am

The first time I played Dwarf Fortress, I got my view stuck on the wrong Z-level when migrants arrived and didn't know how to navigate back to my fort, or even what exactly had happened. I guess a tutorial would have helped then, rather than purely reading the wiki like I did. On the other hand, it's not as hard as its reputation suggests, I think.

On my first fort ever, I figured out (eventually) that there were Z-levels, different layers, but couldn't figure out how to navigate between them. But I did figure out that using the U screen and zooming to a dwarf would bring me to the level they were on, so as long as they were on the level I wanted to go to I could navigate.
I didn't find < and > until two forts later. :P
I've got more experience than that now.

Maybe this should go in suggestions, but will there be a minor interface change to make < and > more visible in fort mode in the near future? Any interface changes in the near future?

Same experience when started playing: I WAS aware that the game was 3D, but playing on a laptop with a non-US keyboard made finding < and > NOT trivial. Also: most computers sold nowadays are laptops, missing the numeric keyboards, and the + and - signs are not near each other on them to say the least... So navigating the secondary menus is a bit of a nightmare until you figure out how to remap the keys.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 19, 2014, 01:26:59 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 18, 2014, 01:16:33 pm

What level of control do you foresee the player having over multi-tile trees?  Can the branches be trimmed topiary-style?  Can multi-tile plants be guided to grow in certain directions?  Can anything be built in or on them, like a little platform for a marksdwarf?

No trimming:

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Quote from: Belvita

With the new multi-tile trees, will the physics cause the entire tree to fall down on the dwarf due to a missing base, or will the woodcutter cut branches/small bits off at a time? Basically, like cave-ins with removed supports, except it's a tree.

If the tree loses its base in some odd way, then the cave-in mechanics trigger the collapse.  The woodcutter does not operate tile by tile, but rather on the tree from where they are standing.  I haven't related the cave-in to tree toppling, and I'm not really sure if that's how it should work or not, since the circumstances are already strange when it happens (mostly partial branch drops from fire).  Trees can't currently be pruned.

You can prevent them from growing in certain directions with walls etc:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote from: smjjames

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Trees start at one tile and they grow from there, so issues with blockage and all that haven't really changed.

Quote from: flabort on April 19, 2014, 12:49:31 pm

Maybe this should go in suggestions, but will there be a minor interface change to make < and > more visible in fort mode in the near future? Any interface changes in the near future?

There are many interface changes on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html).  Those are the ones that are planned.  And yeah, it's a suggestion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 19, 2014, 05:38:50 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 19, 2014, 01:26:59 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 18, 2014, 01:16:33 pm

What level of control do you foresee the player having over multi-tile trees?  Can the branches be trimmed topiary-style?  Can multi-tile plants be guided to grow in certain directions?  Can anything be built in or on them, like a little platform for a marksdwarf?

No trimming:

Quote from: Toady One on September 30, 2013, 05:57:18 am

Quote from: Belvita

With the new multi-tile trees, will the physics cause the entire tree to fall down on the dwarf due to a missing base, or will the woodcutter cut branches/small bits off at a time? Basically, like cave-ins with removed supports, except it's a tree.

If the tree loses its base in some odd way, then the cave-in mechanics trigger the collapse.  The woodcutter does not operate tile by tile, but rather on the tree from where they are standing.  I haven't related the cave-in to tree toppling, and I'm not really sure if that's how it should work or not, since the circumstances are already strange when it happens (mostly partial branch drops from fire).  Trees can't currently be pruned.

You can prevent them from growing in certain directions with walls etc:

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote from: smjjames

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

Trees start at one tile and they grow from there, so issues with blockage and all that haven't really changed.

Quote from: flabort on April 19, 2014, 12:49:31 pm

Maybe this should go in suggestions, but will there be a minor interface change to make < and > more visible in fort mode in the near future? Any interface changes in the near future?

There are many interface changes on the dev page (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html).  Those are the ones that are planned.  And yeah, it's a suggestion.

And the Interface get changes to it, with every major release. The interface is not wholly static.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nomoetoe on April 19, 2014, 09:19:33 pm

Will people able to notice when your doing something like necromancy? I find it a bit odd when I raise dozens of corpses and no one nearby knowing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 20, 2014, 10:01:19 pm

Ooh, just about to get to the bug fixing phase, or the bug pile as Toady called it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on April 21, 2014, 04:25:07 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 20, 2014, 10:01:19 pm

Ooh, just about to get to the bug fixing phase, or the bug pile as Toady called it.

Pray to Armok, because it is only chance in few years your "favourite" bug could be actually fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 04:55:30 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 21, 2014, 04:25:07 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 20, 2014, 10:01:19 pm

Ooh, just about to get to the bug fixing phase, or the bug pile as Toady called it.

Pray to Armok, because it is only chance in few years your "favourite" bug could be actually fixed.

That bugfixing phase is still a bit off. First it'll just be the most obvious and critical new bugs, then post-release we'll get more newer bugs as they're discovered, then we'll start seeing older bugs get mixed in, possibly along with the job priorization rewrite.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on April 21, 2014, 08:28:56 am

Will retired adventurers be treated the same as normal histfigs?  Will they be able to set off into the wilds, become necromancers, marry, ascend to positions etc?

I'm mostly wondering if I'll be waylaid by a past adventurer who has become a bandit or if he might lead an attack on my fort or something hehe

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:22:42 am

Quote from: neblime on April 21, 2014, 08:28:56 am

Will retired adventurers be treated the same as normal histfigs?  Will they be able to set off into the wilds, become necromancers, marry, ascend to positions etc?

I'm mostly wondering if I'll be waylaid by a past adventurer who has become a bandit or if he might lead an attack on my fort or something hehe

As far as I know the game doesn't make any difference between retired adventurers and other historical figures, so anything a historical figure can do, a retired adventurer should also be able to do. A quick search only gave me this, which is a bit too specific, but I'm sure someone more quote-skilled can find more ;P

Quote from: Toady One on February 28, 2013, 04:57:30 am

Quote from: Eric Blank

Toady, if you could clarify: since retired adventurers become members of the civilization they retire in and are historical figures, does that mean they have a chance to be paired off to a marriage partner, move to their partner's town (or their partner to theirs) and raise children, just like any other historical figure?

Yeah, that's how the situation stands at this point.  I don't recollect placing any specific barriers for them.  It's the kind of thing that people might want to have some control over, but there's currently no mechanic in place to give you any control over their behavior.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2012, 08:41:07 am

Quote from: Putnam

Can adventurers become "villains" for fortress mode?

There are a few pathways right now, although not nearly enough.  Right now I think you'd need to do something like retire in a human town, and perhaps ascend to a leadership position, then you could siege your fort.  It might pull you up just for being a citizen as it stands, actually.  But we don't have things like banditry post world gen yet, outside of the harassment of non-player towns.  If your adventurer becomes a vampire and retires at a dwarf site, they could come to your fort and prey on your citizens.  They'd come with an alias too, so you'd probably have to pick them out by lingering gear or wounds or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 21, 2014, 09:32:03 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:22:42 am

I'm sure someone more quote-skilled can find more

Read that as Footkerchief can find more. His search fu abilities regarding Toady and DF in general are truly awesome. He's the dragoon searcher.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:54:45 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 21, 2014, 09:32:03 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:22:42 am

I'm sure someone more quote-skilled can find more

Read that as Footkerchief can find more. His search fu abilities regarding Toady and DF in general are truly awesome. He's the dragoon searcher.

Yeah, the winking smiley was aimed at him kind of. His memory must be quite something (that or he's got a secret perfectly organized document of every DF related info ever posted for easy quote finding) ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 21, 2014, 04:25:07 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 20, 2014, 10:01:19 pm

Ooh, just about to get to the bug fixing phase, or the bug pile as Toady called it.

Pray to Armok, because it is only chance in few years your "favourite" bug could be actually fixed.

Don't be so pessimistic about it. A good deal of bugs will no longer exist, maybe your 'favorite' bug will no longer exist.

However, one should expect lots of new ones as well, especially with an upgrade this massive.


In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 21, 2014, 10:26:58 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:54:45 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 21, 2014, 09:32:03 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:22:42 am

I'm sure someone more quote-skilled can find more

Read that as Footkerchief can find more. His search fu abilities regarding Toady and DF in general are truly awesome. He's the dragoon searcher.

Yeah, the winking smiley was aimed at him kind of. His memory must be quite something (that or he's got a secret perfectly organized document of every DF related info ever posted for easy quote finding) ^^

I'm willing to bet on the latter, honestly, but wouldn't be surprised either way.
Meanwhile, HYPE INTENSIFIES!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 21, 2014, 10:39:50 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

You can grab onto tiles during a jump or fall. Whether it works for what you want I can't say, though:

Quote from: Devlog, 10/16/2012

You can grab hold of tiles in flight now, either after a jump or a fall. The success rate depends on how fast you are going, and I'm sure it'll depend on attributes and any relevant skills, although I'm not sure I've got a relevant skill named yet. I managed to jump between two far apart branches of a tree, then between trees, and I jumped along a rough wall, which seems like it should be quite dangerous.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:44:03 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 21, 2014, 10:39:50 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

You can grab onto tiles during a jump or fall. Whether it works for what you want I can't say, though:

Quote from: Devlog, 10/16/2012

You can grab hold of tiles in flight now, either after a jump or a fall. The success rate depends on how fast you are going, and I'm sure it'll depend on attributes and any relevant skills, although I'm not sure I've got a relevant skill named yet. I managed to jump between two far apart branches of a tree, then between trees, and I jumped along a rough wall, which seems like it should be quite dangerous.

Actually, looks like that quote answers my question. I had heard of the grabbing tiles bit, but I guess I was thinking of branches as an item rather than a tile.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on April 21, 2014, 10:50:01 am

I don't have a document.  If I did, it'd be publicly viewable on the wiki or something.

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 21, 2014, 09:22:42 am

Quote from: neblime on April 21, 2014, 08:28:56 am

Will retired adventurers be treated the same as normal histfigs?  Will they be able to set off into the wilds, become necromancers, marry, ascend to positions etc?

I'm mostly wondering if I'll be waylaid by a past adventurer who has become a bandit or if he might lead an attack on my fort or something hehe

As far as I know the game doesn't make any difference between retired adventurers and other historical figures, so anything a historical figure can do, a retired adventurer should also be able to do. A quick search only gave me this, which is a bit too specific, but I'm sure someone more quote-skilled can find more ;P

[Toad-quotes]

I'd add that NPCs only become necromancers during world gen, so retired adventurers won't do that.  I found some slightly more general information in DF Talk, concerning the commonality between adventurers and historical figures:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Rainseeker:   What happens if you retire in a village after you're infected?
Toady:   I don't think there's a check for it, and I think you know, score, you just happen to cure yourself, or something. Now, I'm not a hundred percent sure. For all I know, it just saves it and then it's just Oh, you're still infected, or whatever. I haven't tried it, so it's hard to say because it applies some healing, but it doesn't get rid of your scars, so it keeps some wound information, 'cause all the scars are just wounds that have a flag on them that says it's a scar.
Rainseeker:   Yeah.
Toady:   So it may or may not. So it's one of those things where it just depends on what I put when I put the 'replaced person in town' function or whatever. Yeah, I really don't remember. You know, ideally it would carry through all the effects, but I know it doesn't do that, 'cause it doesn't kill a lot of people that are waiting to die.
Rainseeker:   So we're still not at a place yet where we can take over historical figures, right?
Toady:   Yeah, that's correct. We're not at a place where we can do that. I mean, there's nothing stopping it, right? Because when you unretire an adventurer you're just taking control of a historical figure. So there's nothing technical about stopping it. There are just conceptual problems about, what happens when you take over the king of this or the king of that. It's just silly, I guess, 'cause they don't recognize your authority or anything. So it's kind of goofy that you can do that. But, yeah. It's one of those things where - I mean, I'm sure we've talked about this in the past, where it's like there's paying somewhat service to that. There's doing some kind of worldgen parameter where you can set it that it can't be done, so you don't feel tempted to sort of spoil your game by making all the bad things in the world jump off cliffs and then go hit play, or whatever. So there's some small concerns and missing swathes of content, but there aren't huge barriers to doing that.
Rainseeker:   I suppose an easy way out would be to suddenly, if you're the king, have your advisors declare that you're possessed and that you're no longer acting like the king and you are now dethroned, so you could leave and people would recognize you as the former king of such-and-such.
Toady:   I guess it would be one of those things where there's also, even if you choose to take control of a peasant there'd also have to be a thing where it's like, 'And your family doesn't recognize you and they think of you as a stranger now,' or something because you'd be possessed, because you would talk to them like strangers or whatever. Or not strangers, 'cause the people in your starting town, at least, know your name and know who you are and they greet you a little differently already, but they wouldn't recognize you as a family member, because the traditional adventurers don't have family members so I didn't have a reason to put that in. So, it stacks up, and it becomes a non-priority item until we add something, you know? Something that makes it matter, 'cause what is the point of taking over a historical figure, if all of the historical things about it don't matter yet?
Rainseeker:   Yeah, yeah. And the interesting thing, too, I think - or I was thinking about earlier today - would be to be able to have a lineage, a succession. For adventures, you know. You get married, you have a child, and you take over his line again. Maybe you could have some training that you could give your child, and then he gets some bonuses or something.
Toady:   Yeah, the elements that - I think there's four or so elements that we decided broadly make that up and that's all in the development notes for the pre-version 1 stuff. So that's all going to go in sometime. We just have to get through the various hurdles of getting a spouse, and doing the time-forward motion, and stuff like that. And we've gotten quite a bit further with that now. I mean, your retired adventurers can already get married now.
Rainseeker:   Oh.
Toady:   They can go off and just act like regular people and all retired adventurers are single. (laughter)
Toady:   It's probably one of those times where people are going to want to put in options for how they act when they retire, or whatever. Run over to the goblins and get married or whatever.
Rainseeker:   (laughs) Get married to a goblin chick, yeah.
Toady:   Like, don't do that.
Rainseeker:   Goblin women.
Toady:   It's unclear how much control there's going to be or what's going to happen. Right now, it's all just, wing it. It's just, like, you become a historical figure. You can go move to a dwarf fortress and - if you're a dwarven adventurer, you'll move to a dwarf fortress, and next time one is played, become a citizen of your fortress, and then when you retire your fortress you'll be able to unretire your adventurer from your retired fortress and leave. And then when someone unretires the fortress, then that guy will be gone off wherever he's going and then he'll migrate back.
Rainseeker:   Now does he keep all the skills he might have had during play on Dwarf Fortress, or...?
Toady:   Yeah. Yeah, he keeps everything. He'll probably just drop a sack. I don't remember how it works, if he just drops all of his items or whatever, because dwarven citizens don't carry backpacks filled with meat or whatever. Goblin heads or whatever weird things people put in their backpacks in Adventure Mode. But the skills are the same. The name's the same, the wounds, the scars are the same. Everything that's tracked on a unit is tracked, everything that gets saved is saved, there's just no difference between adventurers and dwarves.
Rainseeker:   So right now it would be a good strategy - interesting strategy, at least, if not good, but if you wanted to increase your adventurer's skills, to just straight out take him to Dwarf Fortress, retire him, play Dwarf Fortress for a while. Build him, you know, have him train, and then take him back over.
Toady:   Yeah, throw the adventurer in the danger room, and you could pretend that was his time with the monk learning the ways of dodging spears or whatever, and then unretire him, and... yeah. Yeah. That all works. It'll be interesting to see what people come up with, and what absoulutely bizarre and stupid situations come out of it.

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 21, 2014, 10:39:50 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

You can grab onto tiles during a jump or fall. Whether it works for what you want I can't say, though:

Quote from: Devlog, 10/16/2012

You can grab hold of tiles in flight now, either after a jump or a fall. The success rate depends on how fast you are going, and I'm sure it'll depend on attributes and any relevant skills, although I'm not sure I've got a relevant skill named yet. I managed to jump between two far apart branches of a tree, then between trees, and I jumped along a rough wall, which seems like it should be quite dangerous.

Notably, that move is for player characters only:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-01-18

I mentioned in the last FotF reply that non-player climbing and jumping were still open questions and that I'd have to try them out before I knew how much we'd have this time around. That was today's project, and it looks we'll be having them both. This includes dwarf mode, so you might have to rethink certain defensive decisions you've been making. I haven't done anything with the strategic thinking of critters, but if they get within about 20 tiles of a target, they can formulate paths that include climbs and horizontal jumps through one air tile to a walkable tile, and they'll also use these forms of movement in limited non-combat situations. Longer jumps aren't yet possible for them, since it is harder to code running starts into the pathing routine, and they don't understand how to jump and then hang onto surface. It's a weakness you can exploit, but they still hop around and cause trouble enough to delight and entertain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on April 21, 2014, 11:57:45 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 21, 2014, 10:39:50 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

You can grab onto tiles during a jump or fall. Whether it works for what you want I can't say, though:

Quote from: Devlog, 10/16/2012

You can grab hold of tiles in flight now, either after a jump or a fall. The success rate depends on how fast you are going, and I'm sure it'll depend on attributes and any relevant skills, although I'm not sure I've got a relevant skill named yet. I managed to jump between two far apart branches of a tree, then between trees, and I jumped along a rough wall, which seems like it should be quite dangerous.

Wait a second! So now we'll have to trim the trees near the walls, or otherwise goblin armies can climb them and jump into our fort? Awesome! :)

So far the only crittres that could step up/down between z levels were titans. With the new jumping/climbing AI will we see goblins/humans/hippies jumping down into our courtyards from now on, is it only horizontal jumping for now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 12:58:09 pm

Quote from: fricy on April 21, 2014, 11:57:45 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 21, 2014, 10:39:50 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 10:21:21 am

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

You can grab onto tiles during a jump or fall. Whether it works for what you want I can't say, though:

Quote from: Devlog, 10/16/2012

You can grab hold of tiles in flight now, either after a jump or a fall. The success rate depends on how fast you are going, and I'm sure it'll depend on attributes and any relevant skills, although I'm not sure I've got a relevant skill named yet. I managed to jump between two far apart branches of a tree, then between trees, and I jumped along a rough wall, which seems like it should be quite dangerous.

Wait a second! So now we'll have to trim the trees near the walls, or otherwise goblin armies can climb them and jump into our fort? Awesome! :)

So far the only crittres that could step up/down between z levels were titans. With the new jumping/climbing AI will we see goblins/humans/hippies jumping down into our courtyards from now on, is it only horizontal jumping for now?

Uh, I don't think non-flying titans and FBs can do that.

I believe it's only horizontal jumping right now. Not sure if the AI can do that to jump down a level.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on April 21, 2014, 01:22:21 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 12:58:09 pm

Uh, I don't think non-flying titans and FBs can do that.

My third fort could testify that titans can do that. Oh, the fun when I discovered that they don't drown either. :D
On the other hand FBs can't step across z levels, or at least I've never seen one that could.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 02:05:15 pm

Quote from: fricy on April 21, 2014, 01:22:21 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 21, 2014, 12:58:09 pm

Uh, I don't think non-flying titans and FBs can do that.

My third fort could testify that titans can do that. Oh, the fun when I discovered that they don't drown either. :D
On the other hand FBs can't step across z levels, or at least I've never seen one that could.

Are you absolutely sure it wasn't a flying Titan?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 21, 2014, 03:22:31 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on April 21, 2014, 10:50:01 am

I don't have a document.  If I did, it'd be publicly viewable on the wiki or something.

Then you need to donate your brain to science after you die. (Note I didn't say !!SCIENCE!!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 21, 2014, 06:00:41 pm

Apologies if this has actually been asked already, but a quick search didn't reveal anything:

Can item-clouds contain vermin? If so, is it possible for the vermin to be alive?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Magistrum on April 21, 2014, 06:06:02 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 21, 2014, 06:00:41 pm

Can item-clouds contain vermin? If so, is it possible for the vermin to be alive?

Apparently not, I remember toady saying it's not possible to make those clouds out of living things, but that it's possible to make a special item that becomes a creature or something like that, through modding... Modders are messed up.

But I may be wrong, or didn't get what you mean, can someone back me up?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 21, 2014, 06:11:07 pm

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_21_transcript.html

Toady: Oh, apples are definitely lethal. And uh, so what that led to though, especially during Fall, when all of the leaves fall of the trees, is it led to these, a couple things, it led to item clouds, which are, kind of like a, they're stored like a breath attack or a mist. But they're a cloud of small items, and then when they land on the ground they turn into an item spatter. So, so we can start thinking about, at least it's another way to think about a lot of small objects, like broken glass or lots of little caltrops, or coins for that matter, but lots of other stuff. And there's information lost as usual, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to, you know, not wanting to track the specific information about the little object when it comes down to that level. And yeah, stuff like that becomes more feasible because the feet interact with spatter of all kinds so you could definitely see some of that stuff happening. And yeah, of course I have no idea when, but it's all on the table with the new, the new storage system makes interesting things possible. I think you can already mod in item cloud breath or whatever, like if you wanna make a modded creature breathe little daggers at people you could add a little dagger like the carving knives from the tool raws. You could make them breathe forks at people or something.
Capntastic:    I wanna give somebody a honey breath. Or a bee breath, even better.
Rainseeker:    Yeah!
Toady:    Yeah, you can't breathe monsters yet, but you could add an item that's analogous to a monster or something, like a little figurine of a bee that you breathe at people or something. Then add another reaction that makes them come to life. I don't know what people manage to, people manage to do a lot of things. But creatures and interacting with, and making things from scratch and stuff are still , if I remember. I'm kind of out of touch, but uh, that's still feasible. You could probably do something there.

I'm not sure if Toady's quite right there, since vermin can be created in reactions (however braindead they are), but I don't know if item clouds are going to allow all the same items as reactions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 21, 2014, 07:05:26 pm

I am just hoping the general item locking and AI rewrite code fixes a number of annoying bugs without introducing more. Fixing the locking on items will (most likely) fix things like the beekeeper bug, and some of the issues with getting water, etc.

I am thinking that the jumping mechanic can probably be circumvented with parapets. (basically, overhang the topmost section of wall out, and away from the current section of wall by 1 tile distance with a constructed fortification.)

You know, something like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]


Z0
██████████
██████████
████O═════
████║┼┼┼┼┼
████║┼┼┼┼┼
████║┼┼┼┼┼

Z1
░░░░░░░░░░
░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
░░░▒O═════
░░░▒║░░░░░
░░░▒║░░░░░
░░░▒║░░░░░

Z2
░░░░░░░░░░
░░░#######
░░░#┼┼┼┼┼┼
░░░#┼░░░░░
░░░#┼░░░░░
░░░#┼░░░░░

Z3
░░░░░░░░░░
░░░┼┼┼┼┼┼┼
░░░┼O═════
░░░┼║░░░░░
░░░┼║░░░░░
░░░┼║░░░░░


KEY:
┼ (Constructed Floor)
# (Constructed Fortification)
░ (Empty Space)
▒ (Empty Space, Shadow)
█ (Dirt, Grass, etc)

The fortifications overhang on the outside of the main wall, making it harder to climb up the wall. In the floor above this, the wall resumes, making the only place reachable by a horizontal jump being "outside the wall", "On top of the fortifications". 

It may be necessary to build a double parapet, making the "horizontal jump landing pad" be 2 tiles wide, with the second parapet preventing climbers. The distance at the top is too far for horizontal jumpers.

Another possible method would be to place statues on the floortiles created by the fortifications on the level above, making the tiles unpathable, and simultaneously adding value to the fortress.

Needs experimental testing. I intend to do exactly that after the release hits.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 21, 2014, 07:54:06 pm

Quote from: David The Master on April 21, 2014, 06:06:02 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 21, 2014, 06:00:41 pm

Can item-clouds contain vermin? If so, is it possible for the vermin to be alive?

Apparently not, I remember toady saying it's not possible to make those clouds out of living things, but that it's possible to make a special item that becomes a creature or something like that, through modding... Modders are messed up.

But I may be wrong, or didn't get what you mean, can someone back me up?

To the best of my knowledge the only way to create new creatures from scratch is with DFhack, if you exclude making glorified zombies of limbs that fall off a creature you transform into.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 0rion on April 22, 2014, 06:06:13 am

Multi-tiles trees bother me; Multi-tiles buildings (bridges, workshops, depot, ...) are represented by several tiles put next to each other. And that fits to buildings.

But trees are something different as their ASCII representation is like ♣, ♠, ¶, ...
Following the same logic as for buildings, multi-tiles trees should be something like :
♣♣
♣♣
which is weird.

So my question is :
How multi-tiles trees are going to be represented in ASCII ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 22, 2014, 06:18:30 am

Quote from: 0rion on April 22, 2014, 06:06:13 am

Multi-tiles trees bother me; Multi-tiles buildings (bridges, workshops, depot, ...) are represented by several tiles put next to each other. And that fits to buildings.

But trees are something different as their ASCII representation is like ♣, ♠, ¶, ...
Following the same logic as for buildings, multi-tiles trees should be something like :
♣♣
♣♣
which is weird.

So my question is :
How multi-tiles trees are going to be represented in ASCII ?

Toady posted images of them (quuite) some time ago, and now they are BIG, with trunk, branch (of varying thicknesses) and leaves tiles (=, -, o etc.), instead of just those tiny one-square images.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 22, 2014, 07:21:17 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 06:18:30 am

Quote from: 0rion on April 22, 2014, 06:06:13 am

Multi-tiles trees bother me; Multi-tiles buildings (bridges, workshops, depot, ...) are represented by several tiles put next to each other. And that fits to buildings.

But trees are something different as their ASCII representation is like ♣, ♠, ¶, ...
Following the same logic as for buildings, multi-tiles trees should be something like :
♣♣
♣♣
which is weird.

So my question is :
How multi-tiles trees are going to be represented in ASCII ?

Toady posted images of them (quuite) some time ago, and now they are BIG, with trunk, branch (of varying thicknesses) and leaves tiles (=, -, o etc.), instead of just those tiny one-square images.

This is one set of the images Toad posted:
1 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_1.png) 2 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_2.png) 3 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_3.png) 4 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_4.png) 5 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_5.png) 6 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_6.png) 7 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_7.png) 8 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/imgs/trees_river_8.png)
Keep in mind those images are about 1 and a half years old, and only includes one style of tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on April 22, 2014, 07:50:11 am

Here's another set on the DFMA: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on April 22, 2014, 08:55:36 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 22, 2014, 07:50:11 am

Here's another set on the DFMA: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

That's ... impressively realistic!
So there's multi-tile trunks as well. And the leaf-zone looks very much interwoven, just like a real forest.
I really wonder how that's going to work out when you fell such trees.

And I suppose, we have differences in the type of trees? Here we have apparently broad-leaf forest but what about conifers? Saguaros? Mushrooms?

For sure, it'll be a challenge for tile-set developers!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 09:11:53 am

Quote from: nasobema on April 22, 2014, 08:55:36 am

Quote from: Sizik on April 22, 2014, 07:50:11 am

Here's another set on the DFMA: http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope

That's ... impressively realistic!
So there's multi-tile trunks as well. And the leaf-zone looks very much interwoven, just like a real forest.
I really wonder how that's going to work out when you fell such trees.

And I suppose, we have differences in the type of trees? Here we have apparently broad-leaf forest but what about conifers? Saguaros? Mushrooms?

For sure, it'll be a challenge for tile-set developers!

Ah, I saw a 3x3 tree trunk in there.  This requires a dwarf to tunnel under it and carve an up/down staircase right through the middle of it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: 0rion on April 22, 2014, 09:16:28 am

Just awesome ! I had not understood it was this realistic, I was thinking about some big tree (like a box of 2x2x2)...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2014, 09:51:27 am

I for one welcome, yet dread, the arrival of all these big-ass trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 10:11:45 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2014, 09:51:27 am

I for one welcome, yet dread, the arrival of our new big-ass trees overlords.

FFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rose on April 22, 2014, 10:20:34 am

I just know I'm going to have a fun time making them all work in Stonesense and isoworld.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 22, 2014, 11:48:28 am

With taller trees, I think there should be an increase in the speed at which Dwarves build constructions, because it takes them years to build anything as tall as those trees

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 22, 2014, 12:16:47 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 22, 2014, 11:48:28 am

With taller trees, I think there should be an increase in the speed at which Dwarves build constructions, because it takes them years to build anything as tall as those trees

Those trees take years to grow (at least that's what I think, I remember Toady mentioning somewhere that trees grow slowly), so if you think about it, it's kind of realistic.
You could probably build much faster then a tree grows, assuming you aren't using a single dwarf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 12:35:05 pm

On the other hand now we get much more wood per tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 22, 2014, 01:41:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Dreams of a distant future having a giant beast come to your fort, moving through the forest and knocking over said tall trees like they were twigs *drool*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 22, 2014, 02:01:29 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 22, 2014, 01:41:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Dreams of a distant future having a giant beast come to your fort, moving through the forest and knocking over said tall trees like they were twigs *drool*

In the grim, dark future, there is only (d)war(f)...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 02:16:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 02:01:29 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 22, 2014, 01:41:47 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Dreams of a distant future having a giant beast come to your fort, moving through the forest and knocking over said tall trees like they were twigs *drool*

In the grim, dark future, there is only (d)war(f)...

And socks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 02:31:56 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Just wondering if the multi-tile creatures will appear before a more detailed GUI.


☻☻    ²
 ☻ ☻ E☻ ²²
☻ ²   ☻²

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 02:45:51 pm

For the tallness I expect their symbol to appear across as many z levels as necesary, for thickness they probably will be just as wagons, squares, rounds, lines or whatever. Dunno if another GUI is ever going to be used.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 03:50:44 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 02:31:56 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Just wondering if the multi-tile creatures will appear before a more detailed GUI.


☻☻    ²
 ☻ ☻ E☻ ²²
☻ ²   ☻²

Doubtful. GUI changes are probably a bit easier than that, y'know?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 04:23:38 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 03:50:44 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 02:31:56 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 22, 2014, 01:18:44 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 22, 2014, 01:02:15 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 22, 2014, 09:44:03 am

Truly awesome, I however fear now the trees are too big, or at least I feel they are too big. Or I'm just presenting resistance to change?

There was attention given to hight. Trees can be very tall: think rain forests. As discussed in DF talk, the tallest real life trees would be about 30 tiles tall. I don't know if those made it in.

But the tall trees to present a disparity with single tile creatures. A giraffe isn't going to be able to reach any branches, and a dragon will look the same size as a dwarf next to those trees.

To me that's an issue of multi-tile creatures (or lack thereof) rather than a tree problem.

Just wondering if the multi-tile creatures will appear before a more detailed GUI.


☻☻    ²
 ☻ ☻ E☻ ²²
☻ ²   ☻²

Doubtful. GUI changes are probably a bit easier than that, y'know?

Not to wander off into Suggestionland, I can see using X*Y tiles in a graphics set in a straightforward manner.  The issue would be what to do with the Page 437 characters in vanilla.  In my Marksdwarf-meets-his-doom example, the elephant symbol was simply stretched into a 2x2.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 04:31:04 pm

Graphics aren't the issue for multi-tile creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 22, 2014, 05:40:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 04:31:04 pm

Graphics aren't the issue for multi-tile creatures.

The biggest problem AFAIK is pathfinding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MrWiggles on April 22, 2014, 06:46:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 22, 2014, 05:40:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 04:31:04 pm

Graphics aren't the issue for multi-tile creatures.

The biggest problem AFAIK is pathfinding.

nopes. Well, its the explotations.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 22, 2014, 07:06:21 pm

Quote from: MrWiggles on April 22, 2014, 06:46:39 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 22, 2014, 05:40:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 04:31:04 pm

Graphics aren't the issue for multi-tile creatures.

The biggest problem AFAIK is pathfinding.

nopes. Well, its the explotations.

I don't think Toady is concerned with the exploitation by the players. The issue is how the pathfinding's calculations work inside the game, currently it doesn't/can't process impassable tiles related to size of the creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 10:55:45 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 22, 2014, 04:31:04 pm

Graphics aren't the issue for multi-tile creatures.

I was aware that pathing was the current bottleneck, was just wondering what a multitile creature would actually look like.  A real kludge would be to allow exactly two sizes: 1x1 and 3x3 using wagon pathing.  I doubt Toady will take the easy way out, and do pathing properly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2014, 11:59:07 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 10:55:45 pm

I doubt Toady will take the easy way out, and instead do pathing properly.

I assume that's what you meant?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on April 23, 2014, 02:55:31 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 09:11:53 am

Ah, I saw a 3x3 tree trunk in there.  This requires a dwarf to tunnel under it and carve an up/down staircase right through the middle of it.

How elvish ... although cutting the heart of a tree also sounds like the opposite.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 23, 2014, 03:07:00 am

Quote from: nasobema on April 23, 2014, 02:55:31 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 09:11:53 am

Ah, I saw a 3x3 tree trunk in there.  This requires a dwarf to tunnel under it and carve an up/down staircase right through the middle of it.

How elvish ... although cutting the heart of a tree also sounds like the opposite.

Well, heartwood is already dead, so I don't see why they'd really mind.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on April 23, 2014, 04:12:41 am

These slow-growing large trees might require careful stewardship to ensure a sustainable and steady supply of wood, which is worryingly elvish.

Alternatively, if we can cut them down using a speeding minecart full of giant serrated steel discs, then dwarvishness will be resumed!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 23, 2014, 04:14:43 am

Sustainable wood harvest is quite dwarfy, because Elves are against harvesting wood in the first place, unless done through their cheaty magic methods.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Skuggen on April 23, 2014, 05:05:30 am

Maybe we can breed wagons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 23, 2014, 05:07:42 am

Quote from: Skuggen on April 23, 2014, 05:05:30 am

Maybe we can breed wagons.

I swear, if this ends up like the damned mermaid farms...
I'll take twenty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 23, 2014, 05:26:41 am

If wagons dont immediately scuttle themselves without having animals hitched, (a requirement for them behaving like normal animals), then wagonmancy and were-wagons will finally become things in the mod community. (There has already been testing-- but wagonized creatures "die" instantly.)

We might finally witness the dwarven version of Cristine, barreling down that dirt road, and brutally crushing all those elven traders in their hippy caravan.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 07:22:24 am

Don't know about you, but I have this feeling about tons of lumberjack dwarves being crushed to death by those evil trees while chopping them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 23, 2014, 09:18:28 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on April 22, 2014, 11:59:07 pm

Quote from: Dirst on April 22, 2014, 10:55:45 pm

I doubt Toady will take the easy way out, and instead do pathing properly.

I assume that's what you meant?

Yes, that's what I meant.

And carving a staircase into the middle of a tree is definitely dwarven.  Since the bark looks like smoothed walls, we might even be able to carve fortifications into the trunks and make the trees into anti-elf bunkers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 09:50:23 am

A hidden back entrance to a fort perhaps?
Or hidden storages on a forest.
Or home for all sort of creatures.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 23, 2014, 09:53:44 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 09:50:23 am

A hidden back entrance to a fort perhaps?
Or hidden storages on a forest.
Or home for all sort of creatures.

Like this one in Golden Gate Park?
(http://media.nbcbayarea.com/images/654*491/tree27.JPG)
Apparently it's the back way into Silicon Valley.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 09:57:38 am

I am so making an adventurer dwarf who lives inside a fortified tree and fights elves for a living. Just need a way to live underground as well... probably up/down staircase through the roots.

Then I just hope I don't get an enemy with firebreath or something similar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on April 23, 2014, 10:03:51 am

Quote from: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 09:57:38 am

probably up/down staircase through the roots.

Hmmm, do the trees have roots at all, already?

edit:
Just found out that they actually do.
Toady posted some raws recently, where we can clearly see something about branches, trunks and roots:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[TRUNK_PERIOD:10]
   [HEAVY_BRANCH_DENSITY:0]
   [BRANCH_DENSITY:0]
   [MAX_TRUNK_HEIGHT:5]
   [TRUNK_BRANCHING:0]
   [MAX_TRUNK_DIAMETER:1]
   [TRUNK_WIDTH_PERIOD:200]
   [ROOT_DENSITY:5]
   [ROOT_RADIUS:3]

At least, it's in the raws, though it may not be fully implemented like a few other things...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 23, 2014, 10:08:45 am

Quote from: nasobema on April 23, 2014, 10:03:51 am

Quote from: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 09:57:38 am

probably up/down staircase through the roots.

Hmmm, do the trees have roots at all, already?

I don't think so.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 10:14:51 am

Quote from: Toady

So I guess, actually most tree roots don't actually go very deep underground at all. There are a few exceptions and we've got parameters now that let you kind of set what the roots do for your trees. I don't remember if it's oaks, one of them has a big tap root or something, but even then the tap root doesn't kind of go down through, you know, fifty tiles of granite or whatever. *laughs* At the same time it's a cool image, right? To have roots coming down into the cavern.

I really don't know, that's from the May 23, 2013 DF Talk. I recall something more recent about it but I'm not sure if it was on this thread or what. I believe there are going to be roots in this release, out of a hunch based on a possible fake/wrong memory. I guess we need to wait for our master librarian to answer this.

Oh! Also I think there's something about roots (or naming parts of the tree like X trunk, X root's.. and such).

Edit after serious search:

Yes there is, or it seems. Regarding the question, made by Caldfir on February 17, 2013

Quote from: Caldfir on February 17, 2013, 01:42:59 am

How deep do you plan on having tree roots get?  Are they planned for this release? If not, do trees (for now) just end at the surface with nothing beneath but soil?

Toady answered:

Quote from: Toady One on February 17, 2013, 07:27:00 am

Fortunately my father has a background in botany, and we talked that out before I even checked that stuff out online, since he was curious about what I was working on.  I don't remember if it was in any of my older notes, but I know it is for this version.  They might not spread far enough depending on memory concerns, and they might not intermingle right, and any number of interesting things might not happen.

So it seems we indeed are getting roots, or that was the plan at that moment. The image here (http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-11402-trees_slope) is from 2012 and you can see from the sideview that they don't have roots, but as that is from before the above quote I'm confident we will have them.

2nd edit:
In fact, on the raws for trees Toady put on the devlog on April 6th we find:

Code: [Select]

[ROOT_DENSITY:5]
[ROOT_RADIUS:3]So yes, it seems roots are 100% in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 23, 2014, 10:33:42 am

Oh his dad has a background in botany? That's cool.

As for the tree that has the deep tap roots, I think it might be the palm tree? Or maybe pine trees, I dunno. I'll wiki it really quick.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Visus Draconis on April 23, 2014, 10:43:41 am

Here's a question that's been in the back of my head for a while now:

Since we're now getting growths for plants (fruits, flowers) are there any plans for growths on creatures? Say, egg sacks that burst open to spawn a creature, or chest-burster like monsters that grow in a hapless dwarf before exploding out of his/her body?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 23, 2014, 10:51:34 am

While the wiki articles don't say how deep Oak tree roots get, but the pages say they have deep tap roots. Conifer trees in general have a deep taproot.

However, if you're looking for REALLY deep taproots, look at plants living in deserts and arid regions. Take this Mesquite tree for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopis_velutina , which has the taproot extending 50 feet or more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 10:56:53 am

Also Banana trees aren't trees at all, just big ass plants/perennial herbs... whatdoyouknow...!! The lack of real wood disqualifies them as trees.

And Visus.... that's really... disturbing. But I don't know. Isn't that possible already with mods? But don't worry if isn't, since I'm sure that many eager mods will read that can of worms you just opened and try if not on the current version then on this so much awaited one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 23, 2014, 11:00:53 am

Pineapple plants are as much a tree as banana plants are.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 11:16:29 am

Yeah, I'm just kind of shocked, I have ate them all my life and see them up close even owned ones for f#$!" sake and called banana (and wholeheartedly believed them) trees... this change everything, I don't know what to believe, what's true and what's a lie? More importantly, I'll never trust on a plant again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 23, 2014, 01:43:16 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 10:56:53 am

And Visus.... that's really... disturbing. But I don't know. Isn't that possible already with mods? But don't worry if isn't, since I'm sure that many eager mods will read that can of worms you just opened and try if not on the current version then on this so much awaited one.

I actually made a parasitic wasp creature that reproduces by laying eggs in large animals. Like people. Still very buggy; currently the best I've come up with is transforming the victim into the "offspring" of the wasp, which neither kills the victim in a spectacularly cruel manner nor creates a new creature. I've had problems getting creatures spawned from parts that fall off and are resurrected/reanimated not wanting to get along with their parents (the wasp that stung the victim that they emerge from)

A way to produce entirely new creatures by having them emerge from body parts would be awesome for this purpose. Currently there is no way to get new bodyparts on a creature except to transform them into another creature/caste that has the desired body parts. We just can't have proper evil parasitic monsters yet  :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 23, 2014, 01:47:27 pm

....Are you seriously asking for more evil in Dwarf Fortress?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 23, 2014, 02:01:46 pm

Well, yeah. What are we going to do without extra evil to stomp on?

It would also, perhaps, allow for cloning/duplication interactions or asexual reproduction, like for cave blobs and other living creatures that don't have male and female castes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 23, 2014, 02:15:01 pm

What are we going to do without more evil to stomp on? For crying out loud, man, you're missing the point! When evil runs out, just stomp on the squishier good stuff. What do you think elves were coded for?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 23, 2014, 02:31:18 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on April 23, 2014, 02:15:01 pm

What are we going to do without more evil to stomp on? For crying out loud, man, you're missing the point! When evil runs out, just stomp on the squishier good stuff. What do you think elves were coded for?

Bringing us wood, juicy berries and fluffy animals to trade for? ^_^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 02:54:09 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 23, 2014, 02:31:18 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on April 23, 2014, 02:15:01 pm

What are we going to do without more evil to stomp on? For crying out loud, man, you're missing the point! When evil runs out, just stomp on the squishier good stuff. What do you think elves were coded for?

Bringing us wood, juicy berries and fluffy animals to trade for? ^_^

Or rather, waging war with and performing extremely !!SCIENTIFIC!! experiments on them if you *accidentally* offer them something made of wood?

Quote from: nasobema on April 23, 2014, 10:03:51 am

Quote from: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 09:57:38 am

probably up/down staircase through the roots.

Hmmm, do the trees have roots at all, already?

Gonna add that the up/down stairs through the roots just meant that I'd make stairs down into the earth and mine a home there. No matter if there are actual roots.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 23, 2014, 01:43:16 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 10:56:53 am

And Visus.... that's really... disturbing. But I don't know. Isn't that possible already with mods? But don't worry if isn't, since I'm sure that many eager mods will read that can of worms you just opened and try if not on the current version then on this so much awaited one.

I actually made a parasitic wasp creature that reproduces by laying eggs in large animals. Like people. Still very buggy; currently the best I've come up with is transforming the victim into the "offspring" of the wasp, which neither kills the victim in a spectacularly cruel manner nor creates a new creature. I've had problems getting creatures spawned from parts that fall off and are resurrected/reanimated not wanting to get along with their parents (the wasp that stung the victim that they emerge from)

A way to produce entirely new creatures by having them emerge from body parts would be awesome for this purpose. Currently there is no way to get new bodyparts on a creature except to transform them into another creature/caste that has the desired body parts. We just can't have proper evil parasitic monsters yet 

Would it be possible with the upcoming version to turn the victim of stings into trees made of meat that produce the offspring for the wasp? Pretty sure the producing offspring part is possible, dunno about turning the victim into a tree. Offspring loyalty still questionable...
No idea really, never tried modding. Seems like there's far more possibilities than I thought at first, maybe I might look into it some day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 03:07:20 pm

Yeah, you lost me at trees made of meat...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BlackFlyme on April 23, 2014, 03:17:12 pm

Unless how transformations work has been changed, you can only transform creatures into other creatures. You would have to settle for making a custom 'meat tree' creature.

Creating offspring is possible in a sort of way, but in the current version they will either behave like mindless zombies or retain their spawner's loyalties, depending on how they are set up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 23, 2014, 03:19:29 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on April 23, 2014, 02:54:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 23, 2014, 01:43:16 pm

I actually made a parasitic wasp creature that reproduces by laying eggs in large animals. Like people. Still very buggy; currently the best I've come up with is transforming the victim into the "offspring" of the wasp, which neither kills the victim in a spectacularly cruel manner nor creates a new creature. I've had problems getting creatures spawned from parts that fall off and are resurrected/reanimated not wanting to get along with their parents (the wasp that stung the victim that they emerge from)

A way to produce entirely new creatures by having them emerge from body parts would be awesome for this purpose. Currently there is no way to get new bodyparts on a creature except to transform them into another creature/caste that has the desired body parts. We just can't have proper evil parasitic monsters yet  :'(

[/spoiler]
Would it be possible with the upcoming version to turn the victim of stings into trees made of meat that produce the offspring for the wasp? Pretty sure the producing offspring part is possible, dunno about turning the victim into a tree. Offspring loyalty still questionable...
No idea really, never tried modding. Seems like there's far more possibilities than I thought at first, maybe I might look into it some day.

Uhh... no. :o
There is no way to turn a creature into a plant, made of meat or not, and I highly doubt the new version is going to have one, somehow. Even then, the fruit the tree produces would not be valid targets for reanimation/resurrection because they're just inanimate food stuff rather than corpses/body parts of a living creature. If you mean turning them into a creature called a tree or something with body parts that rot and fall off to be resurrected, that's exactly what I tried, the offspring most certainly do not get along with their mum.

Technically, DFhack can do practically everything we want. But resorting to DFhack for everything is silly, especially for those of us who don't have a damn clue how to write a script.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 23, 2014, 05:20:10 pm

Which now pitches me headlong down the rabbit hole of plant  growth allegiances.

I imagine throwing an orange into the tree it grew from, "killing" said orange, and watching as all of the orange trees, oranges and orange products descend into a loyalty cascade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 23, 2014, 06:07:34 pm

Appropos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9bbxNV7QY8)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 23, 2014, 08:14:54 pm

Spoiler: Oz (click to show/hide)

Anyone else ever notice that the scarecrow is holding a gun when they're off to the witch's castle?

Can't wait until we can get fruit-chucking in adventure mode, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on April 24, 2014, 06:24:15 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 23, 2014, 08:14:54 pm

Spoiler: Oz (click to show/hide)

Anyone else ever notice that the scarecrow is holding a gun when they're off to the witch's castle?

Can't wait until we can get fruit-chucking in adventure mode, though.

I notice that it is specifically a revolver

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 24, 2014, 06:52:38 am

Quote from: Neonivek on April 24, 2014, 06:24:15 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 23, 2014, 08:14:54 pm

Spoiler: Oz (click to show/hide)

Anyone else ever notice that the scarecrow is holding a gun when they're off to the witch's castle?

Can't wait until we can get fruit-chucking in adventure mode, though.

I notice that it is specifically a revolver

Well, taking into consideration the neighborhood they are walking around, where even the fucking trees are more than capable to slap you, it makes sense he's lock and loaded. Wouldn't you do the same?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 24, 2014, 07:16:58 am

Well too bad, seems like the biggest problem is allegiances. The trees made of meat part is interesting. I was thinking of a way to gruesomely kill them while making them produce fruits.

Also, Do trees still grow randomly, or do their seeds need to be planted/left outside now? Or is it a mix of the two?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 24, 2014, 08:00:34 am

Quote from: Wimopy on April 24, 2014, 07:16:58 am

Well too bad, seems like the biggest problem is allegiances. The trees made of meat part is interesting. I was thinking of a way to gruesomely kill them while making them produce fruits.

Also, Do trees still grow randomly, or do their seeds need to be planted/left outside now? Or is it a mix of the two?

I'm pretty sure that Toady said that trees will not yet grow from seeds, but I can't find it right now. I do know that planting trees is not in yet, at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

Well, at least for me meat trees make sense in evil biomes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 09:07:26 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

Well, at least for me meat trees make sense in evil biomes.

You should be able to make trees that have inedible meat or bodyparts or something as fruit in evil biomes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 24, 2014, 09:18:10 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 09:07:26 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

Well, at least for me meat trees make sense in evil biomes.

You should be able to make trees that have inedible meat or bodyparts or something as fruit in evil biomes.

I can definitely see an evil-biome tree with eyes on it or something, a big brother to the staring eyeballs grass.

But there's no particular reason the fruit needs to be inedible, though it should probably be inedible raw.

"Mmmmm... Urist, you make the best ≡staring tree roast≡ known to the Mountainhome!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 24, 2014, 09:23:26 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 24, 2014, 09:18:10 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 09:07:26 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

Well, at least for me meat trees make sense in evil biomes.

You should be able to make trees that have inedible meat or bodyparts or something as fruit in evil biomes.

I can definitely see an evil-biome tree with eyes on it or something, a big brother to the staring eyeballs grass.

But there's no particular reason the fruit needs to be inedible, though it should probably be inedible raw.

"Mmmmm... Urist, you make the best ≡staring tree roast≡ known to the Mountainhome!"

"Rakust! Stop cooking the elf third finger left hands, we need them for planting!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 09:28:18 am

Lol.....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 24, 2014, 09:32:07 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

Well, at least for me meat trees make sense in evil biomes.

Especially considering we already have wormy tendrils there. I've pretty much already added tentacle trees to my mod - even if they're not able to thrash about yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on April 24, 2014, 09:54:50 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on April 24, 2014, 09:32:07 am

added tentacle trees to my mod - even if they're not able to thrash about yet.

Spaghetti breakfast by the tentacle tree
Whomped by a willow hanging intestinally
I love evil biomes
Raising twisted rhizomes
Reanimating and killing me with parts of me

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 24, 2014, 10:18:45 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

I've pretty much already added tentacle trees to my mod

I've seen enough dwarftai to know where this is going ......

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 24, 2014, 10:35:05 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 24, 2014, 10:18:45 am

Quote from: RNunes on April 24, 2014, 09:03:47 am

I've pretty much already added tentacle trees to my mod

I've seen enough dwarftai to know where this is going ......

Well, shame on you, 'cause it isn't.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Visus Draconis on April 24, 2014, 11:47:26 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 09:07:26 am

You should be able to make trees that have inedible meat or bodyparts or something as fruit in evil biomes.

Quote from: Dirst on April 24, 2014, 09:18:10 am

I can definitely see an evil-biome tree with eyes on it or something, a big brother to the staring eyeballs grass.

But there's no particular reason the fruit needs to be inedible, though it should probably be inedible raw.

"Mmmmm... Urist, you make the best ≡staring tree roast≡ known to the Mountainhome!"

Actually, that's one of the mods I'm thinking of making after the new version comes out: plants both fantastic and mundane (using Dwarf Chocolate as a base). Imagine entering an evil biome and suddenly coming across a grove of purplish, leafless trees, their trunks studded with curious warty growths.

And then they open and reveal they're eyeballs that endlessly stare. Stare, but never see.

Quote from: LordBaal on April 23, 2014, 10:56:53 am

And Visus.... that's really... disturbing. But I don't know. Isn't that possible already with mods? But don't worry if isn't, since I'm sure that many eager mods will read that can of worms you just opened and try if not on the current version then on this so much awaited one.

Why, thank you! :D

Sadly, Eric Blank's right: the closest we can get is transforming the infected creature into another one of the vector creatures. I simply thought of the idea because with growths now available to plants, perhaps we could see a similar mechanic applied to creatures.

It needn't be used for body horror: I can see making a plant-animal that grows fruit on its skin, or something (although maybe that can be done with the current version by making the planimals' fruits a shearable product).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 24, 2014, 11:51:39 am

I haven't seen any carnivorous plant or anything like cannibal trees, yet...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 01:28:30 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 24, 2014, 11:51:39 am

I haven't seen any carnivorous plant or anything like cannibal trees, yet...

Wouldn't cannibal trees technically eat other trees?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: KillerClowns on April 24, 2014, 01:39:56 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 01:28:30 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 24, 2014, 11:51:39 am

I haven't seen any carnivorous plant or anything like cannibal trees, yet...

Wouldn't cannibal trees technically eat other trees?

"As a symbol of apology for our recent over-logging, and our intent to live in harmony with nature from this point forth, we would like to offer the elven forests these saplings..."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 24, 2014, 01:41:12 pm

Quote from: KillerClowns on April 24, 2014, 01:39:56 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 01:28:30 pm

Quote from: Inarius on April 24, 2014, 11:51:39 am

I haven't seen any carnivorous plant or anything like cannibal trees, yet...

Wouldn't cannibal trees technically eat other trees?

"As a symbol of apology for our recent over-logging, and our intent to live in harmony with nature from this point forth, we would like to offer the elven forests these saplings..."

:D
That's going in my sig text, simply because it made me laugh out loud.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 24, 2014, 03:20:25 pm

Ah, the age-old tradition of gifting elves objects that are likely to kill them or that which they love most.

Personally, I would like to offer them meat harvested from the most hard-to-reach fruit trees of the evil regions. Tastes like the sapient meat they love and comes from a tree which they adore. Yet it is also cursed, turning the one who eats it into a thrall, maybe even granting fire breath, for the added hint of suffering by burning down their precious woods...

Yeah. Too bad a syndrome-inducing fruit isn't likely to end up turning an elf champion swordsman into instant destruction. Or is it?

Also, would a fruit growth made of sentient meat count as meat or fruit for eating purposes?
To be honest, I'm not even sure if that's an FotF question or for some other place. Judging by the tree raws, such 'food' would be classified as a growth, but be made of meat. Reminds me of cloth cookies. They're cookies, but made of inedible material.
You could of course bake them into cookies and then they'd prob be edible, but I think the question stands.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 24, 2014, 03:32:31 pm

It'll count as meat if it's a meat item and a fruit if it's a plant growth item; not only that, but it'll also count as animal meat if it has [IMPLIES_ANIMAL_KILL]. Plant growths can be MEAT items just as they can be PLANT_GROWTH items or WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SWORD items.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on April 24, 2014, 04:05:28 pm

Quote

    Wouldn't cannibal trees technically eat other trees?

THAT'S hilarious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 06:44:19 pm

The final bugfixing and cleanup phase has now begun. :D In all seriousness though, it'll probably take at least a month to get through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 24, 2014, 06:48:13 pm

You never know... Toady might get bored doing bugfixing, and decide to just release anyway. He's openly stated that he prefers adding features over fixing bugs or polishing up code.

As long as the compiled forms are mostly stable, i dont think he will put excessive efforts in to ensure stability or code sanity. a few weeks I can definitely see, but months? i doubt it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 24, 2014, 06:53:00 pm

Inevitably he will come across some bugs that take a day or two to fix, but I'd imagine most of it may disappear quite quickly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 24, 2014, 07:19:53 pm

Besides, bugs appear quite rapidly when 100's of people are playing at once. It would make finding them easier.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 07:23:03 pm

He wants to at least make sure that it's at least as playable as the current version, or in Toadys own words, "getting it up to a state where it isn't an utter and fundamental degradation of the currently released version".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on April 24, 2014, 07:30:53 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 24, 2014, 07:19:53 pm

Besides, bugs appear quite rapidly when 100's of people are playing at once. It would make finding them easier.

Yes, and the current cleanup phase is the "I already know about eight million of these bugs, let's fix the worst of them so I don't just hear people complaining about the bugs I already know about." Once he's squashed most of those he'll let the playerbase find the rest of them, and fix them as they come up.


That said, Monday is my birthday, and I know what present I would like...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 24, 2014, 08:03:56 pm

I'm confused: What does "potter off" mean here? Do they turn invisible and start wandering into locked corridors? Do they turn into elves, and start planting trees? Do they stiffen up and make like fungiwood?  Do they go fill a "chamber pot" with fertilizer? Do they leave the mortal coil, and insist on being buried? Do they wander aimlessness like a ceramics major just out of college?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 08:16:05 pm

I assume he means that they sort of stop in the middle of what they are doing for no apparent reason and just wander off.

I wonder what 'certain jobs' he is talking about though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 24, 2014, 08:20:26 pm

Probably mining and woodcutting, given the context ("between" certain jobs likely meaning that these are jobs done in quick succession).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 24, 2014, 08:30:57 pm

Yeah, I noticed it during mining -- they just bail and wander away.  No clue what's going on yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 24, 2014, 08:38:30 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 24, 2014, 08:30:57 pm

Yeah, I noticed it during mining -- they just bail and wander away.  No clue what's going on yet.

No cancel messages? Or maybe the 'on break' counter or threshold was set too high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Magistrum on April 24, 2014, 08:40:50 pm

Quote from: King Mir on April 24, 2014, 08:03:56 pm

I'm confused: What does "potter off" mean here? Do they turn invisible and start wandering into locked corridors? Do they turn into elves, and start planting trees? Do they stiffen up and make like fungiwood?  Do they go fill a "chamber pot" with fertilizer? Do they leave the mortal coil, and insist on being buried? Do they wander aimlessness like a ceramics major just out of college?

Quote from: Toady One on April 24, 2014, 08:30:57 pm

Yeah, I noticed it during mining -- they just bail and wander away.  No clue what's going on yet.

I'll ignore it all and just settle that they will stop during mining and woodcutting to make a ☼Statue☼ of themselves chopping down a tree or mining down a wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 25, 2014, 01:20:53 am

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

Some have lasted two weeks, some have been two months.
You can't really say how long this one is gonna be, plus according to devblogs Toady has been fixing some bugs already when implementing the new features..

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:33:08 am

Amend that to "one has lasted two weeks, one has been two months".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 03:05:13 am

Toady looks pretty pessimistic. I would say 2-3 months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Skuggen on April 25, 2014, 03:12:04 am

It would depend on the length of the bug list, of course, but it can be very hard to accurately estimate how long it will take to fix a bug, unless you already know exactly what the problem is.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 25, 2014, 03:25:20 am

Guess we should just stop making estimates now and hope we get it fairly soon.
We don't know how many bugs are on that list, what bugs are on that list, how complex they are and fixing one bug might spawn another two, so...

Yeah, guess we just wait now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on April 25, 2014, 06:55:06 am

yay! bugfixing!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on April 25, 2014, 07:32:38 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 24, 2014, 08:30:57 pm

Yeah, I noticed it during mining -- they just bail and wander away.  No clue what's going on yet.

I was running a hermit fort and my hermit would keep running off a few steps towards the meeting area in between almost every job before the next one kicked in. Even after I removed the zone, she'd head towards her office or her bedroom - it was really getting in the way of productivity. I didn't know that was a bug, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 25, 2014, 07:36:56 am

Quote from: Authority2 on April 25, 2014, 07:32:38 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 24, 2014, 08:30:57 pm

Yeah, I noticed it during mining -- they just bail and wander away.  No clue what's going on yet.

I was running a hermit fort and my hermit would keep running off a few steps towards the meeting area in between almost every job before the next one kicked in. Even after I removed the zone, she'd head towards her office or her bedroom - it was really getting in the way of productivity. I didn't know that was a bug, though.

Edit: On second thought, I agree with reality.auditor, it might not be the same bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on April 25, 2014, 07:40:15 am

Quote from: Authority2 on April 25, 2014, 07:32:38 am

I was running a hermit fort and my hermit would keep running off a few steps towards the meeting area in between almost every job before the next one kicked in. Even after I removed the zone, she'd head towards her office or her bedroom - it was really getting in the way of productivity. I didn't know that was a bug, though.

That one was not bug (probably, you never can be sure with DF). Maybe your dwarf is very uncertain of his own decisions (some personality facet governs it, I don't remember which one). Toady's bug seems like either completely new issue or code accidentally started to check undecidendess between identical jobs, not only different jobs. Of course, I may be completely off the mark, as obviously I do not have access to DF code...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 25, 2014, 07:45:35 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 25, 2014, 07:40:15 am

Quote from: Authority2 on April 25, 2014, 07:32:38 am

I was running a hermit fort and my hermit would keep running off a few steps towards the meeting area in between almost every job before the next one kicked in. Even after I removed the zone, she'd head towards her office or her bedroom - it was really getting in the way of productivity. I didn't know that was a bug, though.

That one was not bug (probably, you never can be sure with DF). Maybe your dwarf is very uncertain of his own decisions (some personality facet governs it, I don't remember which one). Toady's bug seems like either completely new issue or code accidentally started to check undecidendess between identical jobs, not only different jobs. Of course, I may be completely off the mark, as obviously I do not have access to DF code...

Yeah, sounds like they just stop doing the job and wander off instead of the one Authority2 is seeing. Also, completely new dwarf brain.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on April 25, 2014, 08:32:28 am

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

There's better numbers than that available I think. 0.34, 0.31, 0.28, and 0.27 I presume all had bug-fixing phases, that could be used as data points in estimating how long this one will be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 25, 2014, 08:35:52 am

Quote from: King Mir on April 25, 2014, 08:32:28 am

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

There's better numbers than that available I think. 0.34, 0.31, 0.28, and 0.27 I presume all had bug-fixing phases, that could be used as data points in estimating how long this one will be.

*hissing* Ready... sssoon...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 25, 2014, 08:47:46 am

You can try to calculate it, but given the nature of the programming work you could be way off (shorter or longer than expected). There's no one that can say he'll take a week or 3 months. As mentioned he had fixed quite a few bugs while working and his goal is to make this release at least as playable as current version, that could mean a rather short trip by bugfixing avenue. However the nature and amount of bugs is unknown to us thus we don't have any data to work on a equation.

I stick with my early to mid June date out of a hunch and nothing more. Anyway I can feel the hype rising.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on April 25, 2014, 08:48:58 am

Why would you want to fell the hype? It's a beautiful thing!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yes, I know you meant feel 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 25, 2014, 09:22:09 am

No I didn't... that edit on the post was for something completely unrelated...
>.>

<.<

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 25, 2014, 10:51:12 am

Is there a typo in the growth prints for the leaves in the new plant files? They all seem to have tile 7 (•) for their picked tile, rather than tile 6 (♠) that you've posted for mango and maple leaves. Or was that a deliberate change?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:06:48 pm

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

The longest one ever is 0.31.01, with two months. 0.34.01 was two weeks, which is not at least a month. 0.27.169.32a looks to be about 3 days, so your "at least a month" is the opposite of right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on April 25, 2014, 01:34:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:06:48 pm

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

The longest one ever is 0.31.01, with two months. 0.34.01 was two weeks, which is not at least a month. 0.27.169.32a looks to be about 3 days, so your "at least a month" is the opposite of right.

he actually said "usually" so his statement is accurate

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 25, 2014, 01:37:15 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:06:48 pm

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

The longest one ever is 0.31.01, with two months. 0.34.01 was two weeks, which is not at least a month. 0.27.169.32a looks to be about 3 days, so your "at least a month" is the opposite of right.

A few more data points (0.31.x had a few semi-major releases) - 0.31.13, which introduced town sprawl, seems to have had a bugfix phase of about two weeks. 0.31.17, which introduced night creatures, bandits, and outdoor fortifications, was about 10 days to two weeks, and 0.31.19, which introduced pottery, grazing, starvation, beekeeping, and egg-laying, also seems to have been about 10 days to two weeks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:57:54 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on April 25, 2014, 01:34:35 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 01:06:48 pm

Quote from: Kappas on April 25, 2014, 01:06:02 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 25, 2014, 12:05:37 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 24, 2014, 10:26:07 pm

So... are we in the bugfixing phase, or is the issues file a different thing?

That to me sounds like the bugfixing phase. (also optimizations and whatnot...)
Now is the time, people!

So, early-mid May release anyone? :D
OH BOY, I AM SO HYPED NOW, I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT!

Dude, I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but usually the bug fixing phase has taken several weeks at least a month, especially after longer development cycles.

The longest one ever is 0.31.01, with two months. 0.34.01 was two weeks, which is not at least a month. 0.27.169.32a looks to be about 3 days, so your "at least a month" is the opposite of right.

he actually said "usually" so his statement is accurate

One out of three is not usually. If you include the majorish updates that I'm aware of off the top of my head, that's one out of 7.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Magistrum on April 25, 2014, 02:00:04 pm

But keep in mind that this release took two years, we have many more bugs. Toady probably will ignore most of them, release the game after a month(seriously, it can take up to a month this time...)  and fix things slowly from there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 25, 2014, 02:22:37 pm

Quote from: David The Master on April 25, 2014, 02:00:04 pm

But keep in mind that this release took two years, we have many more bugs. Toady probably will ignore most of them, release the game after a month(seriously, it can take up to a month this time...)  and fix things slowly from there.

Of course it can. I don't think anyone denies that. But the claim was that the bugfixing phase usually takes that long, when it usually doesn't. I do think we should consider that it can last a month or longer this time, but it's not quite a foregone conclusion.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on April 25, 2014, 02:34:45 pm

I think people are very bored to spend this much time arguing over such a small thing...it will take as long as it does...I would imagine thats at least a month...and frankly would prefer he fix it + some older nagging bugs...but we shall see

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 25, 2014, 02:43:07 pm

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this arguing. We are hyped to the T and thus we need something to get busy while waiting for our fix...

While at it, Pi Is Exactly 3.
(http://31.media.tumblr.com/75353f93679da40afb3ce04450bf0221/tumblr_mmu6gm2TSA1rtr3kno1_500.png)

Discuss....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on April 25, 2014, 03:00:56 pm

It's a shame it had to come to that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on April 25, 2014, 03:02:02 pm

I have to say this part:

Quote

...getting it up to a state where it isn't an utter and fundamental degradation of the currently released version. There are crashes, optimizations that need doing, dwarves that seem to potter off without thinking in between certain jobs, and all manner of other trouble.

was interpreted by me less as "Ooo final step!" then as "Ooo, that sounds bad". For one he is going to want to be damned sure any bugs that would require breaking save-compatibility to fix are squashed.

Which is good for me personally actually. I hope it's delayed to the summer, or at least post-SATs.

Quote from: LordBaal on April 25, 2014, 02:43:07 pm

There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this arguing. We are hyped to the T and thus we need something to get busy while waiting for our fix...

While at it, Pi Is Exactly 3.
(http://31.media.tumblr.com/75353f93679da40afb3ce04450bf0221/tumblr_mmu6gm2TSA1rtr3kno1_500.png)

Discuss....

3. (3+3+3)/9*1+2=3. Half-life Pi confirmed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 25, 2014, 04:15:23 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on April 25, 2014, 02:34:45 pm

I think people are very bored to spend this much time arguing over such a small thing...it will take as long as it does...I would imagine thats at least a month...and frankly would prefer he fix it + some older nagging bugs...but we shall see

Maybe it will keep everyone occupied until the release takes them by surprise.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 04:53:04 pm

The last devlog killed all the expectation I had for a release in the next weeks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 05:22:33 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 04:53:04 pm

The last devlog killed all the expectation I had for a release in the next weeks.

How? Was your expectation of debug time somehow different than the one the devlog put forward?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on April 25, 2014, 05:32:59 pm

If you ask me, we'll end up with DF2014 by the first week of may, or, if we're really lucky, the end of April.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mipe on April 25, 2014, 05:41:18 pm

You do realize we're talking issues, right? Crashes, gamebreaking bugs and stuff?

We'll be lucky if it gets done this summer...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 05:46:32 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 05:22:33 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 04:53:04 pm

The last devlog killed all the expectation I had for a release in the next weeks.

How? Was your expectation of debug time somehow different than the one the devlog put forward?

I was expecting something positive like "Well guys, there only some bugs left. I will do some cleaning and make a release soon. It will be fun, he he he"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on April 25, 2014, 10:34:44 pm

And then the release drops and everyone's all excited and tries it out, has some fun, waits until the round of bug fixing and low hanging fruit is done over the next few months, then gets bored and starts hyping themselves up for the next major release 2-3 years away... -.-

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 10:36:23 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on April 25, 2014, 10:34:44 pm

And then the release drops and everyone's all excited and tries it out, has some fun, waits until the round of bug fixing and low hanging fruit is done over the next few months, then gets bored and starts hyping themselves up for the next major release 2-3 years away... -.-

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on April 25, 2014, 10:39:29 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 10:36:23 pm

Quote from: Uristsonsonson on April 25, 2014, 10:34:44 pm

And then the release drops and everyone's all excited and tries it out, has some fun, waits until the round of bug fixing and low hanging fruit is done over the next few months, then gets bored and starts hyping themselves up for the next major release 2-3 years away... -.-

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html

I don't understand. What about it? :S

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 10:41:16 pm

Content updates to note are 0.34.08, 0.34.06, 0.31.19, 0.31.17 and 0.31.13. Look at the time those took.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on April 25, 2014, 11:40:29 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on April 25, 2014, 02:43:07 pm

While at it, Pi Is Exactly 3.

It will be when magic gets implemented and wizards can alter universal and mathematical constants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dwarfu on April 26, 2014, 04:27:57 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 25, 2014, 05:46:32 pm

It will be fun, he he he"

Ahahaha!  Nailed it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on April 26, 2014, 04:38:57 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 25, 2014, 10:41:16 pm

Content updates to note are 0.34.08, 0.34.06, 0.31.19, 0.31.17 and 0.31.13. Look at the time those took.

So?
I seen you already tried to "prove" that major releases do not take that long. Reality says otherwise. In fact, I would be not surprised if next major release would beat current record. For certain it will not be short.

Quote from: Untelligent on April 25, 2014, 11:40:29 pm

It will be when magic gets implemented and wizards can alter universal and mathematical constants.

And then everyone will die horribly (or not horribly, some of these are so fast you will not feel anything) as soon as first magic user uses his powers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lethosor on April 26, 2014, 06:58:22 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on April 26, 2014, 04:38:57 am

I seen you already tried to "prove" that major releases do not take that long. Reality says otherwise. In fact, I would be not surprised if next major release would beat current record. For certain it will not be short.

It's true that major releases take a long time (this release has already set a new record, taking longer than 0.31) - Putnam was saying that the bugfixing period before a major release (which we're currently in) has never taken over a month.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 26, 2014, 07:35:55 am

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 26, 2014, 08:31:46 am

At this point Toady could literally release it at any time.
Whether that would be a good idea is up to him, of course.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on April 26, 2014, 08:37:09 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on April 26, 2014, 08:31:46 am

At this point Toady could literally release it at any time.
Whether that would be a good idea is up to him, of course.

That's a comforting thought.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 26, 2014, 08:58:14 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 26, 2014, 07:35:55 am

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 26, 2014, 11:11:57 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 26, 2014, 08:58:14 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 26, 2014, 07:35:55 am

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

Yes, but you have to consider that there are various levels of abstraction and different things get computed depending on where you are. Worldgen is the uppermost level of abstraction. As you get closer to your adventurer, more things are calculated, for example whether or not there is someone talking with the leader of the site or where the various patrols in it are. Of course, not all things that happen in worldgen happen in adventure/fort mode, but this is offset by the fact that they have to be computed in greater detail because you are there (EDIT: or rather, you have the potential to be there), witnessing those events unfold.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 26, 2014, 01:14:58 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on April 26, 2014, 11:11:57 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 26, 2014, 08:58:14 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 26, 2014, 07:35:55 am

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

Yes, but you have to consider that there are various levels of abstraction and different things get computed depending on where you are. Worldgen is the uppermost level of abstraction. As you get closer to your adventurer, more things are calculated, for example whether or not there is someone talking with the leader of the site or where the various patrols in it are. Of course, not all things that happen in worldgen happen in adventure/fort mode, but this is offset by the fact that they have to be computed in greater detail because you are there (EDIT: or rather, you have the potential to be there), witnessing those events unfold.

I understand that there are rings of abstraction around an adventurer or fortress.  What I meant was that changing purely static areas into worldgen-level-abstract areas shouldn't tax the computer too much.  Although having a thing cross an abstraction layer boundary is obviously nontrivial, this already happens in adventure mode.  My guess is that making abstraction layer changes happen in fortress mode is the challenge.

Edit: Meant "shouldn't" not "should".  I hate those typos that change the meaning of the sentence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 26, 2014, 01:17:44 pm

Worldgen abstraction takes 20 seconds for an entire year when the world is very active and the world is large. 20 seconds over an FPS-limited hour and 7 minutes is barely noticeable at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 26, 2014, 01:24:14 pm

Quote

a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material, so a single reaction can produce different item types depending on the incoming reagent's material. I'm not sure how useful that is overall, but it could cut down on some clutter.

Is the syntax for that final enough to release it (the syntax, that is)? And if so... can you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Guylock on April 27, 2014, 02:41:04 pm

I look forward to this.
I always like games like this that are alive. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 28, 2014, 07:53:56 am

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 08:33:48 am

It's time to..
(http://allennance.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/gethyped_feature.jpg)

Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 28, 2014, 08:57:50 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 08:33:48 am

Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

These feature is already in the game.  All you need to do is re-gen your world enough times, and you'll get exactly what you were looking for.  The state-space for DF is on the large side, so it might take a while.  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 09:01:14 am

:P hahaha

I ask because it could be interesting to recreate for example, an start scenario from Warhammer Fantasy Battles and play as either an adventurer or a dwarf fort.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 28, 2014, 09:05:00 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 08:33:48 am

Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

That's Future Future (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) material:

Quote

EDITORS: Draw your own region maps, create your own towns, creatures, items, start situations, etc. For example, you could create Earth at various time periods (or an amalgamation of various time periods).

Quote

Toady:   Yeah, yeah. Then you'd be able to ... you could recruit half of them or whatever, and then you'd have this really interesting party of people that you understood and that the game understood how you understood, to some extent; it'd be awesome. That kind of thing would mix nicely with a world editor or whatever, just being able to create the kind of characters that you want, for people that want to reenact their favorite book or whatever, when we get to that. Because I mean it's the kind of thing that's just kind of sitting there waiting to be done, right? A site map editor or a world map editor that's better than the one we've got, and the reason I haven't done that or I haven't moved towards that at all is because I'm not sure what the character editor would be like or things like that, putting together the world that way; and because the world's changing so much it would just kind of be another anchor on the game making it slower to develop because you'd have to go back and look at the editor. But we're going to reach a certain point, when we start thinking about things like this, where it becomes very natural to add an editor that would already be tied into the intent of retirement, so it wouldn't actually be an anchor on the game because I'd have to change it anyway. If the editors ... Right now there's a name editor for naming your fortress and so that name editor always has to be kept up to date anyway, so that name editor can be used in the editing, in the actual world editing, so there's no loss there in terms of having a world editor. But the characters are different, like having a historical figure editor right now is a pretty heavy cost, but it wouldn't necessarily be, anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 09:05:39 am

Given how complex and interconnected the historical part is, I don't see such an editor for that being feaseable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 28, 2014, 09:13:57 am

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 09:05:39 am

Given how complex and interconnected the historical part is, I don't see such an editor for that being feaseable.

It would definitely be tough. At the very least, it'd need some kind of auto-complete for things you didn't touch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 09:15:16 am

It its complex because of world gen I think. I sense that starting scenarios, no matter how complex you make them, will pale in detail and complexity over procedurally/naturally made by the game, unless you spend a lot of time or somehow a lot of people work on it.

If you think about it, for the basics you don't need "all that much". Things like a world and local map editor seems fairly easy to do (now, to do them fool proof it's another thing). Next would be being able to create civilizations, factions and their respective characteristics and stances against each other (including assigning places/local maps/areas/regions to them) and lastly being able to create nobles, family trees and other special characters would allow you to outline almost any scenario you could think off.

Now, being able to write the history behind all that could be "easy" but bothersome, probably you would need to create whole lines of characters and depict their actions and how they killed/helped/conquered/fathered each other and so on. I mean, it could be just text if you want to, because "getting there" the old way would be simply impossible.

Dunno, I'm just bored and hyped.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 28, 2014, 10:25:22 am

Quote from: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 09:15:16 am

It its complex because of world gen I think. I sense that starting scenarios, no matter how complex you make them, will pale in detail and complexity over procedurally/naturally made by the game, unless you spend a lot of time or somehow a lot of people work on it.

If you think about it, for the basics you don't need "all that much". Things like a world and local map editor seems fairly easy to do (now, to do them fool proof it's another thing). Next would be being able to create civilizations, factions and their respective characteristics and stances against each other (including assigning places/local maps/areas/regions to them) and lastly being able to create nobles, family trees and other special characters would allow you to outline almost any scenario you could think off.

Now, being able to write the history behind all that could be "easy" but bothersome, probably you would need to create whole lines of characters and depict their actions and how they killed/helped/conquered/fathered each other and so on. I mean, it could be just text if you want to, because "getting there" the old way would be simply impossible.

Dunno, I'm just bored and hyped.

Yeah, I think doing worldgen by hand is a bit tedious.  But it should be possible to set up the initial stuff and let the world spin.  It might even be possible to put constraints on the worldgen (Human Civ England and Human Civ France at war >=25% of time, >3 Elf Civs in year 100, >2 Elf Civs in year 500, etc.) but that would have dependencies on all the same things as the editor, so it will be a long way off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 28, 2014, 10:39:41 am

I hope so, that's the kind of stuff one expects from an activated world... however it's a very fine question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 10:49:54 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

 If you take some eggs from a dragons nest in adventurer mode and bring it to a fortress, will they still hatch? Assuming your dwarves don't make omlettes out of them between retiring the adventurer and taking control of the fort again.

If so, then baby Dragonlets! :D  People might mod them to grow up faster rather than taking a thousand years to grow to full size if they do this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 12:08:37 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 10:49:54 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

 If you take some eggs from a dragons nest in adventurer mode and bring it to a fortress, will they still hatch? Assuming your dwarves don't make omlettes out of them between retiring the adventurer and taking control of the fort again.

If so, then baby Dragonlets! :D  People might mod them to grow up faster rather than taking a thousand years to grow to full size if they do this.

Don't you have to mod dragons currently to ever get them to hatch at all outside of world gen? I doubt Toady have strayed into fixing small issues like that since it's not really related to anything in the soon to come release more than general worldiness. Might be something that'd get sorted in the post-release fixing period though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 04:05:12 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 12:08:37 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 10:49:54 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

 If you take some eggs from a dragons nest in adventurer mode and bring it to a fortress, will they still hatch? Assuming your dwarves don't make omlettes out of them between retiring the adventurer and taking control of the fort again.

If so, then baby Dragonlets! :D  People might mod them to grow up faster rather than taking a thousand years to grow to full size if they do this.

Don't you have to mod dragons currently to ever get them to hatch at all outside of world gen? I doubt Toady have strayed into fixing small issues like that since it's not really related to anything in the soon to come release more than general worldiness. Might be something that'd get sorted in the post-release fixing period though.

That was before he activated the world though, so we don't really know what will happen with the eggs for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 04:38:22 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 12:08:37 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 10:49:54 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

 If you take some eggs from a dragons nest in adventurer mode and bring it to a fortress, will they still hatch? Assuming your dwarves don't make omlettes out of them between retiring the adventurer and taking control of the fort again.

If so, then baby Dragonlets! :D  People might mod them to grow up faster rather than taking a thousand years to grow to full size if they do this.

Don't you have to mod dragons currently to ever get them to hatch at all outside of world gen? I doubt Toady have strayed into fixing small issues like that since it's not really related to anything in the soon to come release more than general worldiness. Might be something that'd get sorted in the post-release fixing period though.

I just know that every couple months someone finds a dragon egg and comes to the adventure mode forums asking what they can do with it.  Maybe that's dropped off, I haven't been by the adventure mode forums much recently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on April 28, 2014, 04:44:00 pm

I'd be rather surprised if found eggs hatch in the next version, to be honest. I don't recall any specific mention that Toady looked at eggs, and the new births that are getting scheduled are likely to always be live units for now, and not items. Besides, found eggs would be outside nest boxes, which I think are still the only way to hatch eggs, so those found eggs would need new mechanics to be able to hatch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 04:53:17 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 04:05:12 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 12:08:37 pm

Quote from: smjjames on April 28, 2014, 10:49:54 am

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on April 28, 2014, 10:26:25 am

In the next release will eggs hatch in adventure mode?  Specifically those dragon eggs people keep finding.

 If you take some eggs from a dragons nest in adventurer mode and bring it to a fortress, will they still hatch? Assuming your dwarves don't make omlettes out of them between retiring the adventurer and taking control of the fort again.

If so, then baby Dragonlets! :D  People might mod them to grow up faster rather than taking a thousand years to grow to full size if they do this.

Don't you have to mod dragons currently to ever get them to hatch at all outside of world gen? I doubt Toady have strayed into fixing small issues like that since it's not really related to anything in the soon to come release more than general worldiness. Might be something that'd get sorted in the post-release fixing period though.

That was before he activated the world though, so we don't really know what will happen with the eggs for sure.

Activating the world isn't really a flip of a switch that just makes things work in new ways. Unless he specifically changed eggs and/or dragons there won't be anything new with them, since the issue isn't so much with lack of an activated world as with eggs being very much unfinished overall. They'll obviously be sorted at some point, but I doubt Toady has taken the time to fix that particular tiny detail out of nowhere when he had a hundred vastly bigger prospects to deal with. I'd love to be wrong though of course, but to me expecting that kind of change doesn't make sense.

Fixing eggs certainly has a somewhat higher prio now though. It wouldn't surprise me if it got touched upon when Kobolds get sorted (hopefully in one of the smaller releases following bugfixing, since it should've been in this release to start with).

Ninjaed by Knight Otu it seems ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on April 28, 2014, 05:35:28 pm

Now that the release is just in the debugging stage (to make it playable).......

With this release having taken nearly two years so far, do you think future release cycles will be shorter or could we see long intervals of 6 months to 2 years again in the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on April 28, 2014, 05:53:54 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 28, 2014, 05:35:28 pm

Now that the release is just in the debugging stage (to make it playable).......

With this release having taken nearly two years so far, do you think future release cycles will be shorter or could we see long intervals of 6 months to 2 years again in the future?

I'd assume it's the same as with every other long release cycle. He doesn't want them to take that long and hopes to do better, but will most likely slip back into massive releases every now and then anyway. Personally I don't really mind, since it's still the same amount of content that gets done over the same time ish. Then again I'm kind of weird xP

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 28, 2014, 06:10:58 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on April 28, 2014, 05:35:28 pm

Now that the release is just in the debugging stage (to make it playable).......

With this release having taken nearly two years so far, do you think future release cycles will be shorter or could we see long intervals of 6 months to 2 years again in the future?

Quote from: Twitter

My previous estimates have been trash.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 28, 2014, 06:25:43 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 28, 2014, 06:10:58 pm

Quote from: Twitter

My previous estimates have been trash.

Oh man, I keep forgetting bay12 has a twitter account. Here's the full quote: "My previous estimates have been trash. There's a long list of issues to work through, and I'll keep posting logs on the main page." That was four days ago, and no logs yet, so I'm betting bugfixing will take a while. A month might be optimistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on April 28, 2014, 06:42:56 pm

There IS a log. Press refresh.

Reading about footage of Scamps and then the thing about "animals talking to him less" briefly made me wonder where I could find that footage of Scamps talking. But then I figured out what it really meant.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on April 28, 2014, 09:16:33 pm

Graah! He must've posted that right around the time I did. Ah well, progress is good. Wonder what the "filming and audio recording" is about?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 28, 2014, 09:34:11 pm

It involves scamps so it must be adorable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on April 28, 2014, 11:50:12 pm

"20 or so issues" - wonder if that's a lot, but chances are the list may very well contain over nine thousand two hundred issues (of varying complexity and importance) for all I know...

Also guys, it's totally a promotional video for a Scamps-related Kickstarter project. :I

I HEREBY CLAIM MYSELF THE KING OF PAGE 700 AND THE HUNDRED PAGES THAT ARE TO COME!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on April 29, 2014, 01:25:17 am

No one else got at least a little smile out of

Quote

animals talk to me less

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Starwing on April 29, 2014, 04:43:00 am

Now that we can talk to gods, will we be able to piss them off in conversation enough to make them turn us into Werebeast (Similar to how people get turned for profaning temples in world gen)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mendonca on April 29, 2014, 05:33:32 am

Quote from: Wimopy on April 29, 2014, 01:25:17 am

No one else got at least a little smile out of

Quote

animals talk to me less

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

You are not the only one!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 29, 2014, 06:48:41 am

Quote from: Starwing on April 29, 2014, 04:43:00 am

Now that we can talk to gods, will we be able to piss them off in conversation enough to make them turn us into Werebeast (Similar to how people get turned for profaning temples in world gen)?

I don't know if this is true for the current version, but in old versions if you joined a cult you could "talk" with your god, although you wouldn't get any answer. In the context of the next version, it could be the same or Toady is talking about the demons disguised as gods. Anyway, no mention of any change relating to the "real" gods was done by Toady.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dekana on April 29, 2014, 06:57:10 am

Quote from: Starwing on April 29, 2014, 04:43:00 am

Now that we can talk to gods, will we be able to piss them off in conversation enough to make them turn us into Werebeast (Similar to how people get turned for profaning temples in world gen)?

I only took that line in the devlog to mean Toady fixed bug 2077 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2077): crash talking to a deity. The ability to talk to a deity (and never get a response) was disabled in a previous build because of that crash. The devlog implies Toady re-enabled that feature, but it doesn't necessarily mean he added any actual conversation text.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 29, 2014, 09:16:50 am

Maybe if not yet actually talking to a gad, how much you prey or other things influence how others see you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on April 29, 2014, 12:32:28 pm

wait, what?

Are we talking about elves now?  I know if I prey on trees and wood products too frequently, they get rather prissy about it. ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on April 29, 2014, 12:48:20 pm

Quote from: wierd on April 29, 2014, 12:32:28 pm

wait, what?

Are we talking about elves now?  I know if I prey on trees and wood products too frequently, they get rather prissy about it. ;)

I think it's a case of AutoCorrectHateMe.  Zavvano was curious if your propensity to pray would affect others' opinions about you.

As for acually talking to a god, I can see it going something like this:

"Armok, I would like a set of ☼adamantine socks☼ for the winter holiday."

Syndrome-causing cloud of creeping mist appears at the edge of the map.

"I'll take that as a no."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on April 29, 2014, 02:37:59 pm

Quote from: Wimopy on April 29, 2014, 01:25:17 am

No one else got at least a little smile out of

Quote

animals talk to me less

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Yes. Out of context, the new devlog reads closer to a celebrity battling mental issues.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on April 29, 2014, 03:15:38 pm

And I meant the word god in my last post, not the stupid typo I made. Do not know if I should make it a question or not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tiresius on April 29, 2014, 07:39:41 pm

Maybe the filming was for "Rise of the Indies" film that already interviewed him once?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 29, 2014, 07:51:34 pm

Toady and Threetoe are going to New York around May 16th for some kind of event: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/04/25/kill-screens-two5six-conference-adds-more-industry-luminaries#.U2BGjPldWYI

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nasobema on April 30, 2014, 01:34:42 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 29, 2014, 07:51:34 pm

Toady and Threetoe are going to New York around May 16th for some kind of event: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/04/25/kill-screens-two5six-conference-adds-more-industry-luminaries#.U2BGjPldWYI

Ahh, and I'm sure Toady wants to get rid of the release before this trip, right?  :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 30, 2014, 02:16:22 am

Quote from: nasobema on April 30, 2014, 01:34:42 am

Quote from: thvaz on April 29, 2014, 07:51:34 pm

Toady and Threetoe are going to New York around May 16th for some kind of event: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/04/25/kill-screens-two5six-conference-adds-more-industry-luminaries#.U2BGjPldWYI

Ahh, and I'm sure Toady wants to get rid of the release before this trip, right?  :)

Would you want to have a trip and post-release fans on at the same time? I'm saying afterwards, hopefully very soon afterwards.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Visus Draconis on April 30, 2014, 03:05:34 am

Quote from: Dirst on April 29, 2014, 12:48:20 pm

As for acually talking to a god, I can see it going something like this:

"Armok, I would like a set of ☼adamantine socks☼ for the winter holiday."

Syndrome-causing cloud of creeping mist appears at the edge of the map.

"I'll take that as a no."

Well, looks like I got my first signature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Thanks to Footkerchief, Matoro, MrWiggles, InsanityIncarnate, smjjames, Eric Blank, thvaz, HugoLuman, DG, TastyMints, Quietust, Manveru Taurënér, Putnam, Urist Da Vinci, Knight Otu, Trif, Rockphed, DVNO, DarkDXZ and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions.  There were many, many answered questions this time, so please check back around where you posted if your question doesn't appear below!

Quote from: Witty

If I raided the human caravan, and their civ starts sending sieges, will they besiege the closet site of my civ, my fort, or potentially both?

This one is a little odd, because the caravans still don't have an actual presence -- generally, humans fight site-to-site if they initiate things, but the caravan isn't associated with any single human site.  The game likes to keep things symmetrical now, for the time being at least, so it opens up a broader war.  It currently has your fort on the menu regardless of distance, but it won't be the only place.  I'm not sure how or when that'll change.  The situation will be strange until caravans have more substance.

Quote from: neblime

Now that wars can start (and stop I assume) out of worldgen, can player adventurers directly cause them?  can you become affiliated with an entity to an extent where your actions could be considered a reason for war with that entity? (say i'm good friends of a dwarf civilization and I go kill some elves in another civ, is there any circumstance in which this will cause anger with the dwarf civ?)

It understands certain actions on behalf of your own entity or affiliated entity as hostile (like site takeovers), and your strong entity affiliations (by strong I mean position holder or squad member) are stored in all the incident records.  That filters back around to all the diplomatic calculations.  Assuming you get a rumor/witness report started in the offended entity (meaning people see the killing and aren't themselves dispatched, and they belong to the offended entity), that'll impact all of the decisions down the line.  And that can start a war the next time the leader of the offended entity sits down to plan their next action, though if they don't have available forces or deem your entity too powerful or whatever, they might not do anything.  If they operate on the civ level, they might also attack a different site than the one you are affiliated with as well (from the same civ), since they don't really understand site-civ or civ-site interactions yet (except by mistake).  That whole distinction probably needs some revisiting later.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Are we going to be able to order rough gems from caravans in the next release? Any changes to the caravan mechanics (i.e. more than four items of each kind can be brought).

I haven't changed anything, aside from basic stuff like allowing them to bring plant growths and that sort of thing.

Quote from: chevil

If I abandon my fort then you mentioned that my military dwarves may become bandits if the leader is a jerk. How does the game decide who will become the leader? Is it the squad leader or does the leader skill or personality matter in the selection process?

It's reasonably random for abstract power struggles at this point, since we don't really have a model for what is going on and there's not enough information yet.

Quote from: LordBaal

So, we'll get an announcement whenever we smell something funny and/or new? And it's going to be labeled with whatever thing is emanating the odor like "you smell a zombie" or do we get more vague hints like "you smell rotten meat" which could be whatever between just bad food up to a zombie titan.

It keeps you informed with an on-screen label if you have tracking information on, and it'll tell you when you press a button.  Whether you get a vague hint depends on if you have a raw string for the creature (otherwise you get the exact name), but the undead always smell like death.

Quote from: Inarius

Is there something about the strength of the odor ? Okay, the smell can be good or bad, but is there a raw for the force of the smell (the distance from where it can be smelt with a normal nose ?)

There's the level from 0 to 100, but I don't have any calculations about how that works with distance, time or anything else.  It only uses the wind and the trigger value now.

Quote from: Anatoli

Is the [odor] detection going to be randomized in any way besides the wind?

Not at this point.  I'm not sure where it'll go over time, and I don't really know anything about how scent trails are tracked or decay over time.

Quote from: thvaz

The smell system allow for detection of corpses and carrion? I'm asking not with undead in mind, but with normal corpses and miasma.

I haven't done anything with items yet, or even the flows/miasma, sadly enough.

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér

Are there any plans to sort these new crops into some kind of cultural groups or similar, and will these in that case be constructed randomly or based on the real world? (possibly also inluding livestock at some point)

I don't plan to adhere to real-world cultural groupings, though it might get slightly closer to that when we take soil into account later on.

Quote from: smirk

None of these have GROWDUR tokens. And every single one has [SPRING][SUMMER][AUTUMN][WINTER]. Assuming these are finalized raws, the seasonal crops mod will need some serious updating. Are these finalized raws, or still subject to revision?

They are always still subject to revision.  As far as farming time goes, I'm not really sure how that is going to play out.  World gen has always used a different (annual) system from the fort, there are no actually-harvested crops outside of your fort during play, and the growdur stuff is focused on underground mushrooms as they stood several years ago.  The default growdur is the same as it is for plump helmets, and I don't have enough infrastructure to think much beyond that yet.

Quote from: Inarius

Will we see eventually plants (exotic forms?) growing in the level under lava, and will the demons and FB have any odor and smell ?

I'm not quite sure what the plan is for the underworld -- the way it is described, it'll probably enter into the same mess the rest of the multiplanar stuff falls into, and become more procedural when we do that.  It has smell information for demons and FBs, though you'd have to get them out in the wind for it to matter at this point.

Quote from: LordBaal

On trees, will the smelly hippies get angry if you try to trade them fruits from trees now or if you harvest too much fruit from trees?

I don't think it upsets them.  They have orchards for fruit as well.

Quote from: Heph

I guess every crop/gardenplant is still single tile?

Yeah, that's right.  There should probably be some larger bushes and so on, but it's not properly supported now.

Quote from: smjjames

What about the bug with trees growing while submerged in 7/7 water? This bug specifically: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=457 With multi-tile trees, this bug will become even more annoying.

The situation has changed, but I'm not really sure about the particulars since I haven't observed a lot of underground growth over long periods of time.  I know the initial tree trunks have no mud and no water, and the functions are all the same so hopefully it is somewhat better.

Quote from: Rockphed

You mention vampire guards in the April report.  How are they different from the vampire cultists in the current version?  Do they likewise go on killing sprees when their master is unmasked?  Do the killing sprees on master unmasking still happen, or do the cultists only become hostile to the player at that point?

These are just the guards in the regular civ sense, but the civ has gone wrong, so everybody takes the situation into account, conversation-wise.  That's all I meant by a nod.  There are still cults.  I don't have enough information about what exactly the harsh laws are to go any further.  Presumably it involves farming people in some way, when the vampire is that brazen.  It'll be an enriching day when we finally establish legal systems.

Quote from: Verdant_Squire

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

It doesn't work with full uniforms of weapons and armor -- the uniforms have always just been little symbols or whatever.  They also don't have them available in stacks to hand out, so that whole old system is sort of on the backburner until I figure that part out.  It reminds me of those game quests where you have to go a few different places to get your new outfit.  It could turn out that way for all I know.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Are there any significant changes to the Legends mode in this release? What's going to be tracked in there now for us lore people to look forward to?

There are the site disputes, and the new demon stuff, but it wasn't really the focus, since we were trying to get the existing stuff out into play.

Quote from: smjjames

Shouldn't the pineapple 'tree' be more like 'shrub' since the plant isn't actually tree sized? Unless you don't have a category set for smaller plants or something.

Yeah, there were some vague descriptions and pictures that made me think the wild varieties could crack 3 meters, and I still don't really have any idea how the wild pineapples are/were or how much they varied.  I'll probably lean back to shrubs.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

I noticed the new drinks seem to be “beer” or “wine”, which are just fermented. Does that mean we’re going to be facing a distilling process to get whisky, vodka, brandy, and so on sooner than later?

I don't have a timeline for it, but we'd like to have the alcoholic beverages come about through vaguely proper processes at some point, rather than the crap we have now.  I defaulted to beer or wine when presented with many options, since I had to pick something, and most things probably have many options and will have that in the game when we get around to separating the methods.

Quote from: Talvieno

Are you planning on specifying more specific biome sets for all fruit trees? Most fruit trees don't do well in swamplands/marshlands/wetlands (inundating their roots with that much water eventually kills them), and I'm not entirely sure if you took that into account. Desert lime would be the most immediately obvious to exclude wetter biomes for, I suppose, but some of the other tree types have difficulty with it too.

I didn't have information immediately available for most things, especially as it regards our chosen set of biomes, so I just pushed on through.  I can use any sourced information for improvements, though I'm not quite sure what the future holds in terms of soil information for farming and all that.

Quote from: KillerClowns

To what extent will odors respect obstacles? Can you smell a creature that has a wall between you and it, provided there is open air above? And conversely, will it be possible to smell a creature on the other side of a solid wall with no gap for the odor to flow through? (I ask because dwarves panicking due to smelling creatures on the other side of a solid seal seems like a Day 1 bug waiting to happen.)

It's not a bug so much as an incomplete feature, but if the critters in question are "outside", then it doesn't check for more than that.  I'm not really sure how it'll be handled, since anything to do with connectivity or flows is a nightmare.

Quote from: PeridexisErrant

I'm pretty sure that the most potentially-problematic part is that DF can be redistributed if none of the accompanying files are modified, and the pack has different init settings and Phoebus graphics installed by default.  An argument can be made that this is not unusual or in the latter case replacing instead of changing the files... but it's potentially dodgy.

Is this kind of change a problem?

I don't have a problem with pack distributions in general, and tweaks to the init files etc. are part of that and it's usually fine.  I don't want things attributed to us that aren't ours (graphics/mods etc.), so it's best when people are clear about what they are doing.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

How fast is world generation right now? Is it slower or faster than in 0.31.11? Talking about “time to generate 1000 years of history on a medium map”.

Has the dictionary been updated at all for the coming release?

Tunnels: So according to the devlogs they are back in (AW YEAH). If we embark over a tunnel will the tunnel be open or sealed at the map edges?

World generation seems about the same speed (and there isn't all that much new going on in world gen if I remember), but I haven't really tried to stress it out.

I don't recall any dictionary changes.

I haven't gotten too far into tunnel particulars for forts (since you don't have attached deep sites and only get tunnels when reclaiming certain wg sites).  They are open but it doesn't mean much.  Unless it does...  I haven't reclaimed such a fort and tested it for long.  I'm not really sure what'll happen in the case of underground invaders.  Probably something wrong.

Quote from: Sizik

When converting from a color token to the nearest display color, does the game use the default RGB values for the comparison, or does it check the ones defined in colors.txt?

It takes the colors.txt data into consideration, but there's some preprocessing that skews calculations for non-standard values.  For instance, it assumes that the gray/white/black colors have RGB values that are roughly the same (it doesn't test them for matches with the rest).  It also zeroes out small values for RGB in the color raw object if there are high values, since that was screwing up matches.

Quote

Quote from: catenate

The big trees should look cool, at least.  Can you "mine" them, and make tree houses?  Can you chop them down and cut them up for hundreds of logs?  Do they grow an inordinate number of fruits, out on their long high branches?

Quote from: Dirst

What level of control do you foresee the player having over multi-tile trees?  Can the branches be trimmed topiary-style?  Can multi-tile plants be guided to grow in certain directions?  Can anything be built in or on them, like a little platform for a marksdwarf?

You don't get hundreds of logs, but you get more than one most of the time.  You can't currently mine them or otherwise trim them tile-by-tile.  There are lots of fruit, as well as catkins and leaves and samaras and flowers and various stuff.  I imagine there'll be a more to do tile-by-tile later on, though I don't have specific plans.  Forcing elves to walk though tunnels in a trunk seems stylish.  I think constructions attach to them as it pertains to cave-ins and so on, but I haven't actually tried to do it.

Quote from: MisterB777

Will we (or invaders) be able to climb up the side of furniture items that act as "walls" like Statues, Windows, Floodgates or Wall Grates?  Subquestion:  will building destroyers (trolls) be able to climb a wall and bust through an adjacent Window/Wall Grate or other blocking structure, thus making their way into the fortress proper?

I haven't changed anything about furniture.  As with various other invasion blockers (walls, traps, fluids, or whatever else), there'll need to be changes when we get around to that.

Quote from: Valtam

If you rescue an orphan, or if by some chance the parents that request your help die while you're at the goblin tower, is that child going to be embraced in someone's family, or at least going to be accepted in the community?

Orphans have never had it easy in dwarf fortress, and this isn't an exception.  The adventure mode children don't need to be fed, so that's a positive, anyway.  People in general still don't understand a lot of things.  I was kind of hoping to give you some place to settle a family-less child you rescued instead of having a permanent adventure companion.  At least the parents aren't currently required -- any relative works, and most people have lots of relatives.

Quote from: nomoetoe

Will people able to notice when your doing something like necromancy? I find it a bit odd when I raise dozens of corpses and no one nearby knowing.

I don't have a reaction for observing interactions in general, or sort of ethics classes for them or whatever it'll end up being.  Certainly something is needed there.

Quote from: neblime

Will retired adventurers be treated the same as normal histfigs?  Will they be able to set off into the wilds, become necromancers, marry, ascend to positions etc?

I'm mostly wondering if I'll be waylaid by a past adventurer who has become a bandit or if he might lead an attack on my fort or something hehe

Yeah, once they retire, they are the same and can do the things that the others do -- they don't have parents, but they can start families and be assigned to entity positions etc.  You can still unretire them if they are alive...  I'm not quite sure what that will imply sometimes, since they might be on the road doing something or other.

Quote from: smjjames

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

Climbable tiles can be grabbed mid-jump.  It's not always successful (I think it looks at the regular climb difficulty for the tile and increases it).  Since you mentioned equipment, I'm not sure if you were talking about tiles though -- branches are a tile to me, but if you were talking about items, it doesn't let you do that at the moment.  Eventually you'll need to be able to do things like jump vertically and grab an item or even pull a lever or something, but we haven't entered that time yet.

Quote from: fricy

With the new jumping/climbing AI will we see goblins/humans/hippies jumping down into our courtyards from now on, is it only horizontal jumping for now?

They can climb down if possible, but they don't think about jumping down.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Can item-clouds contain vermin? If so, is it possible for the vermin to be alive?

You can probably stick it in the file, but I have no idea what would happen.  I don't think they would be alive, since that would require a special exception.

Quote from: Visus Draconis

Since we're now getting growths for plants (fruits, flowers) are there any plans for growths on creatures? Say, egg sacks that burst open to spawn a creature, or chest-burster like monsters that grow in a hapless dwarf before exploding out of his/her body?

I don't have any particular plans, though certainly various roads might be embarked upon.  Plants didn't really have much of a system at all analogous to the body part/tissue system from creatures, and growths were the remedy for that -- now that they have growths rather than what the creatures have, I'm not sure what sort of unification efforts should be made.

Quote from: Wimopy

would a fruit growth made of sentient meat count as meat or fruit for eating purposes?

I'm not sure what you are asking because you put the sentient part in there -- are you talking about diet (like the game's carnivores) or the ethics of butchery?  I don't think the ethics come up anywhere, since the only place it checks is for corpses being processed (as far as I remember).  I think for carnivores, the current functions don't check the material flags, but I'll probably change that for moddings' sake now.

Quote from: Knight Otu

Is there a typo in the growth prints for the leaves in the new plant files? They all seem to have tile 7 for their picked tile, rather than tile 6 that you've posted for mango and maple leaves. Or was that a deliberate change?

Yeah, I assume I forgot to leave that as the to-be-decided mark when I copied it over.  I've made a note to check.

Quote from: Putnam

Quote

a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material, so a single reaction can produce different item types depending on the incoming reagent's material. I'm not sure how useful that is overall, but it could cut down on some clutter.

Is the syntax for that final enough to release it (the syntax, that is)? And if so... can you?

There's [ITEM_REACTION_PRODUCT:<class name>:<item type>:<item subtype>:<2-3 mat tokens as usual>].  It's all stored with the MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT stuff, so HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT and HAS_ITEM_REACTION_PRODUCT actually just check the same token and not how it got there (so be sure to use unique class names all around).  For the product itself, there's [PRODUCT:<chance>:<number>:GET_ITEM_DATA_FROM_REAGENT:<reagent token>:<class name>] -- so it works like GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT, but it also gets the item type and item subtype.

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

Yeah, it has settled on something now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 30, 2014, 06:04:54 pm

Before you vanish toady, quick question that I was just about to ask anyway: Can player adventurers, like outsiders with no affiliation to any entity, claim an abandoned site, and if they do who will be the civ and site entity in control of that site? The most recent ones before it was abandoned, or will a new one be created with the adventurer as the leader?

Thanks for the response to our questions, by the way!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 06:08:41 pm

Thanks!

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

Yeah, it has settled on something now.

Haha, love this answer, still lets me keep guessing until the release actually comes out.

I give it 50% 0.39, 20% 0.38, 15% 0.40, 10% 0.37, 5% 0.41.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on April 30, 2014, 06:16:28 pm

Thanks a lot Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on April 30, 2014, 06:38:09 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady! But what I would really like is to see this thread locked...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on April 30, 2014, 06:50:28 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 30, 2014, 06:38:09 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady! But what I would really like is to see this thread locked...

Why's that?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 30, 2014, 07:02:46 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 30, 2014, 06:50:28 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 30, 2014, 06:38:09 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady! But what I would really like is to see this thread locked...

Why's that?

Hatred of everything good and pure in the world is the only reasonable explanation for it that I can come up with.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on April 30, 2014, 07:11:49 pm

Quote from: Willfor on April 30, 2014, 07:02:46 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on April 30, 2014, 06:50:28 pm

Quote from: thvaz on April 30, 2014, 06:38:09 pm

Thanks for the answers Toady! But what I would really like is to see this thread locked...

Why's that?

Hatred of everything good and pure in the world is the only reasonable explanation for it that I can come up with.

Doesn't Toady start a new FoTF thread for a new major version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on April 30, 2014, 07:13:39 pm

Thanks for all of the replies Toady.

We all thank you for the invaluable information, enlightening opinions, and continued vexation.  Well done.

And, yes, a new FotF thread is made after each release (barring minor bug fix releases, IFAIK).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Willfor on April 30, 2014, 07:14:30 pm

Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that.

Sorry, thvaz.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 08:13:38 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 30, 2014, 06:04:54 pm

Before you vanish toady, quick question that I was just about to ask anyway: Can player adventurers, like outsiders with no affiliation to any entity, claim an abandoned site, and if they do who will be the civ and site entity in control of that site? The most recent ones before it was abandoned, or will a new one be created with the adventurer as the leader?

Thanks for the response to our questions, by the way!

If I remember, you can claim the site if somebody else is there for you to claim it at, and it would be your own entity with you as the leader.  You can pass it along or claim it under another entity, but it still needs an entity.  I haven't yet done you claiming a position in an existing entity (held or not), which is what you'd be doing if you tried to use the old entity.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Malimar on April 30, 2014, 08:24:04 pm

With the huge number of new plants, will the seed limit be lowered or allowed to be changed by the player? 200 seeds x 17 crops is already over 3000 items; I can see a fortress easily accumulating more seeds than every other kind of item combined with the new plants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on April 30, 2014, 08:33:26 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 08:13:38 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on April 30, 2014, 06:04:54 pm

Before you vanish toady, quick question that I was just about to ask anyway: Can player adventurers, like outsiders with no affiliation to any entity, claim an abandoned site, and if they do who will be the civ and site entity in control of that site? The most recent ones before it was abandoned, or will a new one be created with the adventurer as the leader?

Thanks for the response to our questions, by the way!

If I remember, you can claim the site if somebody else is there for you to claim it at, and it would be your own entity with you as the leader.  You can pass it along or claim it under another entity, but it still needs an entity.  I haven't yet done you claiming a position in an existing entity (held or not), which is what you'd be doing if you tried to use the old entity.

Ah, alright then. Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on April 30, 2014, 08:40:54 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: PeridexisErrant

I'm pretty sure that the most potentially-problematic part is that DF can be redistributed if none of the accompanying files are modified, and the pack has different init settings and Phoebus graphics installed by default.  An argument can be made that this is not unusual or in the latter case replacing instead of changing the files... but it's potentially dodgy.

Is this kind of change a problem?

I don't have a problem with pack distributions in general, and tweaks to the init files etc. are part of that and it's usually fine.  I don't want things attributed to us that aren't ours (graphics/mods etc.), so it's best when people are clear about what they are doing.

Got it, keep attribution clear and it's OK.  Thanks, Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on April 30, 2014, 10:22:58 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: smjjames

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

Climbable tiles can be grabbed mid-jump.  It's not always successful (I think it looks at the regular climb difficulty for the tile and increases it).  Since you mentioned equipment, I'm not sure if you were talking about tiles though -- branches are a tile to me, but if you were talking about items, it doesn't let you do that at the moment.  Eventually you'll need to be able to do things like jump vertically and grab an item or even pull a lever or something, but we haven't entered that time yet.

You did mention jumping between two branches on a tree in the devlog, but what I'm thinking of trying to do is brachiating, or swinging from branch to branch. I'll probably just wait for the release to see how things work.

Oh hey, a random thought I just had. Would it be possible to add item clouds as a syndrome effect? Though I hear you had it be used as an attack of sorts in the devlog.

Edit: Though if you want to respond to my response as well, that's fine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 11:07:52 pm

Item clouds are a material emission exactly like dragonfire, magma crab basalt rocks and FB dust.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 01, 2014, 12:19:10 am

"Tree lighting". It took me a moment to realize the dev log was talking about sunlight passing through tree branches, and not a new yule-time dwarven tradition involving magma.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on May 01, 2014, 12:23:08 am

Quote from: King Mir on May 01, 2014, 12:19:10 am

"Tree lighting". It took me a moment to realize the dev log was talking about sunlight passing through tree branches, and not a new yule-time dwarven tradition involving magma.

And thusly were all the great celebrations of yore born.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 01, 2014, 12:23:20 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: smjjames

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

Climbable tiles can be grabbed mid-jump.  It's not always successful (I think it looks at the regular climb difficulty for the tile and increases it).  Since you mentioned equipment, I'm not sure if you were talking about tiles though -- branches are a tile to me, but if you were talking about items, it doesn't let you do that at the moment.  Eventually you'll need to be able to do things like jump vertically and grab an item or even pull a lever or something, but we haven't entered that time yet.

Ral, Ral, Ral of the forest, watch out for that elf!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 01, 2014, 12:37:59 am

Quote from: flabort on May 01, 2014, 12:23:20 am

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: smjjames

In adventure mode, can you grab things that arent equipped on you like branches in mid-jump? This is essential for something I want to try when the new release comes out.

Climbable tiles can be grabbed mid-jump.  It's not always successful (I think it looks at the regular climb difficulty for the tile and increases it).  Since you mentioned equipment, I'm not sure if you were talking about tiles though -- branches are a tile to me, but if you were talking about items, it doesn't let you do that at the moment.  Eventually you'll need to be able to do things like jump vertically and grab an item or even pull a lever or something, but we haven't entered that time yet.

Ral, Ral, Ral of the forest, watch out for that elf!

Why did I get the immediate mental image of Ral Zarek and Nissa Revane..?

Anyhow, how will the vast number of new plants' seeds be kept under control? Are some plants just not generated in a world?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 01, 2014, 04:40:20 am

Thanks Toady.
I have no idea why I left the sentient part in there, but the question was basically if a fruit was made of meat (as can potentially be modded in), could say, an adventure mode character it eat if said character doesn't eat meat raw. (Or can't eat sentient meat, but can eat fruits, say).
I guess the question was of both ethics and diets, so I got my answer.

Now, I wonder how we can turn the fact that materials get checked when eating to our advantage... or is it a disadvantage? (Cloth cookies, anyone?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: discohorse on May 01, 2014, 04:49:32 am

Quote from: Wimopy on May 01, 2014, 04:40:20 am

(Or can't eat sentient meat, but can eat fruits, say).

You know I think the Elves' will eat the meat of a sentient. But I think even they would shy away from eating sentient meat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 01, 2014, 05:07:43 am

Quote from: discohorse on May 01, 2014, 04:49:32 am

Quote from: Wimopy on May 01, 2014, 04:40:20 am

(Or can't eat sentient meat, but can eat fruits, say).

You know I think the Elves' will eat the meat of a sentient. But I think even they would shy away from eating sentient meat.

Now, now. The meat of a dog is dog meat. The meat of a human is human meat. The meat of a cow is beef. The meat of a sentient is sentient meat. Which really does sound fishy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on May 01, 2014, 05:41:28 am

nono, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4GAuuBbb3w) is sentient meat.

what you are describing is the meat of sentients. ;)



 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kumis on May 01, 2014, 05:44:35 am

Thanks a lot for the answers Toady!
I'm getting pretty excited about this next release.

[I had a question, and then I removed it, so that's what this post is doing here.]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 01, 2014, 08:55:41 am

Quote from: wierd on May 01, 2014, 05:41:28 am

nono, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4GAuuBbb3w) is sentient meat.

what you are describing is the meat of sentients. ;)

No, that still results in the meat of a sentient.  Sentient meat would be trying to grab your fork and escape.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 01, 2014, 10:06:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 11:07:52 pm

Item clouds are a material emission exactly like dragonfire, magma crab basalt rocks and FB dust.

I did say it was a random thought.

Crazy idea (well, this is DF anyway) that I had last night. Could you use item clouds to have a dwarf (or some other creature) breathe anvils with the item cloud? If not, then what are item clouds limited to (like what things can't an item cloud make/use)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on May 01, 2014, 10:08:44 am

Ahh yes-- Biovitasteaks.
Of course. My bad.

Spoiler: From the Incal series of comics (click to show/hide)

(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/The_Incal_5_p04.jpg~original)

Eaten alive, and raw. Because things you kill yourself always taste better.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 01, 2014, 10:09:44 am

Quote from: wierd on May 01, 2014, 10:08:44 am

Ahh yes-- Biovitasteaks.
Of course. My bad.

Spoiler: From the Incal series of comics (click to show/hide)

(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/The_Incal_5_p04.jpg~original)

Eaten alive, and raw. Because things you kill yourself always taste better.

[FURIOUS MODDING]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on May 01, 2014, 10:15:54 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 01, 2014, 10:09:44 am

Quote from: wierd on May 01, 2014, 10:08:44 am

Ahh yes-- Biovitasteaks.
Of course. My bad.

Spoiler: From the Incal series of comics (click to show/hide)

(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/The_Incal_5_p04.jpg~original)

Eaten alive, and raw. Because things you kill yourself always taste better.

[FURIOUS MODDING]

Mission accomplished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 01:44:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 01, 2014, 10:06:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 11:07:52 pm

Item clouds are a material emission exactly like dragonfire, magma crab basalt rocks and FB dust.

I did say it was a random thought.

Crazy idea (well, this is DF anyway) that I had last night. Could you use item clouds to have a dwarf (or some other creature) breathe anvils with the item cloud? If not, then what are item clouds limited to (like what things can't an item cloud make/use)?

Item clouds IIRC can use any item but they are, in fact, clouds, which means that the results are probably not what you're expecting. They're more spatter than item.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 01, 2014, 01:47:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 06:08:41 pm

Thanks!

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

Yeah, it has settled on something now.

Haha, love this answer, still lets me keep guessing until the release actually comes out.

I give it 50% 0.39, 20% 0.38, 15% 0.40, 10% 0.37, 5% 0.41.

0.40.01 or bust!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 01, 2014, 02:19:08 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 01:44:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 01, 2014, 10:06:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 11:07:52 pm

Item clouds are a material emission exactly like dragonfire, magma crab basalt rocks and FB dust.

I did say it was a random thought.

Crazy idea (well, this is DF anyway) that I had last night. Could you use item clouds to have a dwarf (or some other creature) breathe anvils with the item cloud? If not, then what are item clouds limited to (like what things can't an item cloud make/use)?

Item clouds IIRC can use any item but they are, in fact, clouds, which means that the results are probably not what you're expecting. They're more spatter than item.

And I'm pretty sure Toady told us that item breaths are harmless right now. So, neither do we get menacing manticore spikes, nor do we get anvil cloud concussions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: catenate on May 01, 2014, 03:01:40 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 01, 2014, 01:47:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 06:08:41 pm

Thanks!

Quote from: Toady One on April 30, 2014, 05:52:46 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

Yeah, it has settled on something now.

Haha, love this answer, still lets me keep guessing until the release actually comes out.

I give it 50% 0.39, 20% 0.38, 15% 0.40, 10% 0.37, 5% 0.41.

0.40.01 or bust!

Surely there's enough new content to make it to 0.42.  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on May 01, 2014, 03:46:06 pm

I nominate .404, just because it will be comically silly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 01, 2014, 04:36:44 pm

Quote from: wierd on May 01, 2014, 03:46:06 pm

I nominate .404, just because it will be comically silly.

for how long it's been between releases, it'll feel more like .403 though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 01, 2014, 05:25:50 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 01:44:52 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 01, 2014, 10:06:14 am

Quote from: Putnam on April 30, 2014, 11:07:52 pm

Item clouds are a material emission exactly like dragonfire, magma crab basalt rocks and FB dust.

I did say it was a random thought.

Crazy idea (well, this is DF anyway) that I had last night. Could you use item clouds to have a dwarf (or some other creature) breathe anvils with the item cloud? If not, then what are item clouds limited to (like what things can't an item cloud make/use)?

Item clouds IIRC can use any item but they are, in fact, clouds, which means that the results are probably not what you're expecting. They're more spatter than item.

Cloud of anvils though...... And I know that the item breaths are harmless right now, unless you have it be some material so hot or so cold that it damages critters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on May 01, 2014, 05:44:52 pm

I'd go .412, personally. I'm just glad it won't be .402.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 06:09:34 pm

...the version after 0.99 will be 1.00, so no, it won't be any of those :P

It'll be 0.zx.01, where z is either 3 or 4 and x is more than 4 if z is 3.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on May 01, 2014, 06:48:59 pm

out of curiosity, I wonder what Toady's planning to add after this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 06:51:50 pm

IIRC better taverns, maybe fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BenLubar on May 01, 2014, 07:10:34 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 06:51:50 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on May 01, 2014, 06:48:59 pm

out of curiosity, I wonder what Toady's planning to add after this release.

IIRC better taverns, maybe fortress mode.

We don't have fortress mode yet?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 01, 2014, 07:29:49 pm

Not quite.  As it stands, we have only a Fortress Mode simulation. 

Eventually, we will play AS the Fortress itself in a semi-omniscient first person method.  The major stumbling block is going to be how to relay the ever expanding experience of actually being an active fortress in a manner that does not devolve the players objective reality outside of game.



Almost everything listed above is purely speculative.  And FUN.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 01, 2014, 07:49:34 pm

I think he meant active taverns in/for fortress mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 01, 2014, 08:29:22 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on May 01, 2014, 06:48:59 pm

out of curiosity, I wonder what Toady's planning to add after this release.

I think army ark and fort mode tavern's have both been things that Toady has said he's excited about that could be done as soon as the next big release. But he isn't making plans for that, and won't until near the end of the bug fixing release cycle.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 01, 2014, 11:03:54 pm

whatever is after net release, maybe he can put in a tiny little thing into arena mode called quivers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: wierd on May 02, 2014, 10:25:22 am

You can spawn items in arena mode already--

Getting creatures to equip them is another matter entirely-- but placing objects is already supported, IIRC.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 02, 2014, 10:31:35 am

Quote from: wierd on May 02, 2014, 10:25:22 am

You can spawn items in arena mode already--

Getting creatures to equip them is another matter entirely-- but placing objects is already supported, IIRC.

You can't place something in the arena that isn't available on the list, and quivers aren't on the list, niether are backpacks for that matter. You could use one of those adventure mode mods or make a reaction to make quivers, but like wierd said, getting them to equip them is another matter entirely.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Verdant_Squire on May 02, 2014, 11:08:24 am

In a previous devlog, you talked about Military Dwarves running from the enemy if they are cowardly enough. Will it be possible to "Straighten out" and discipline the more weak-willed Dwarves in training so that they become a little hardier in combat?

If a creature experiences a morale failure where he wants to run away in No-Quarter combat, but any route that he could use to run away is blocked by enemies, what happens? Does he attempt to surrender again, turn into a weeping mess, or will the "Cornered Rat still bite the cat"?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 02, 2014, 02:16:09 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on May 02, 2014, 11:08:24 am

Will it be possible to "Straighten out" and discipline the more weak-willed Dwarves in training so that they become a little hardier in combat?

There haven't been any changes to Fortress Mode training mechanics for this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 02, 2014, 02:34:27 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on May 02, 2014, 02:16:09 pm

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on May 02, 2014, 11:08:24 am

Will it be possible to "Straighten out" and discipline the more weak-willed Dwarves in training so that they become a little hardier in combat?

There haven't been any changes to Fortress Mode training mechanics for this release.

Verdant meant whether there are any ways to strengthen up their courage or whether you can.

Also, while it's true that the standard training mechanics haven't changed (aside from possible tweaks related to the new dual-weilding mechanics), there could be things outside of your standard training mechanics that can help this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on May 02, 2014, 03:09:06 pm

Maybe the "Doesn't really care about anything anymore." trait helps? Or does Toady refrain from mixing stuff from the old and new brain?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 02, 2014, 03:13:17 pm

Also, much has changed in the Dwarven mind for this release.  Necessarily, how the mind reacts to the world around it has changed as well.

What we haven't seen yet, is how the mind reacts to things. This may have to wait for !!SCIENCE!! after the release. We may or may not see conventional military training working on a unit's battle hardiness in some ways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 02, 2014, 04:15:20 pm

They say (I'm citing every military institution without evidence, yes) that no amount of training can ever prepare one's mind for warfare. It would seem silly for dwarves to be any different.

I'd expect it to be a separate trait from "getting used to tragedy." That's not being courageous or accepting and ignoring danger, just being apathetic to loss.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 02, 2014, 07:39:00 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on May 02, 2014, 03:09:06 pm

Maybe the "Doesn't really care about anything anymore." trait helps? Or does Toady refrain from mixing stuff from the old and new brain?

Besides the new trees, news coming by caravan, continuity of the world, and possibly 3D veins and tunnels, the new personality types mean we could see some interesting things happen in fortress mode. From what it said, the dwarven AI has changed a lot as a result.

With the changes made to the world, are we going to see people retain their titles after leaving the map? For example, the Outpost Liason will retain his or her post after leaving the map after the caravan?

This would be really good.

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 02, 2014, 04:15:20 pm

They say (I'm citing every military institution without evidence, yes) that no amount of training can ever prepare one's mind for warfare. It would seem silly for dwarves to be any different.

I'd expect it to be a separate trait from "getting used to tragedy." That's not being courageous or accepting and ignoring danger, just being apathetic to loss.

I think dwarves might end up fleeing combat if it gets very bad, unless they are either very strong willed or they have seen enough violence not to really care any more.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 02, 2014, 08:15:20 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Stopped prisoners from constantly agreeing to rescue each other.

Bug, or feature? _{Ignoring the fact it's obviously a bug or he wouldn't have fixed it}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 02, 2014, 08:35:28 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 02, 2014, 08:15:20 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Stopped prisoners from constantly agreeing to rescue each other.

Bug, or feature? _{Ignoring the fact it's obviously a bug or he wouldn't have fixed it}

I'm guessing bug because it sounds like they would repeatedly agree to rescue each other after it's already been agreed to once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 03, 2014, 01:34:46 am

Quote from: devlog

Got rid of residual grass that provided stealth bonuses after being trampled.

This might not be a bug at all!  If elephants can sneak into fortresses, I imagine skulking little Kobolds can hide behind trampled grass :)

More seriously, it's amazing how Toady even notices these problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Demonic Gophers on May 03, 2014, 01:43:50 am

Quote

Fewer logs hanging in the air, though they can still get stuck in trees which is a little odd but maybe not a deal-breaker.

From what I've seen, big chunks of branch getting stuck in nearby trees is entirely realistic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 03, 2014, 02:11:35 am

Quote from: Dirst on May 03, 2014, 01:34:46 am

Quote from: devlog

Got rid of residual grass that provided stealth bonuses after being trampled.

This might not be a bug at all!  If elephants can sneak into fortresses, I imagine skulking little Kobolds can hide behind trampled grass :)

More seriously, it's amazing how Toady even notices these problems.

Well, he has devtools that let him see data that would otherwise be hidden. That and he has mentioned doing a lot of testing on the new mechanics under various environmental variables. In fact, the need to test under specific variables that he would have to hunt around for is what led to the arena getting the upgrade.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on May 03, 2014, 02:40:02 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 02, 2014, 08:35:28 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 02, 2014, 08:15:20 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Stopped prisoners from constantly agreeing to rescue each other.

Bug, or feature? _{Ignoring the fact it's obviously a bug or he wouldn't have fixed it}

I'm guessing bug because it sounds like they would repeatedly agree to rescue each other after it's already been agreed to once.

This bug sounds oddly sweet. Like, imagine two prisoners in the same cell, and every time it gets really bad they comfort each other by talking about how they'll rescue the other one on the day they finally escape, and all the things they'll do once they're free.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on May 03, 2014, 04:06:45 am

Quote from: Authority2 on May 03, 2014, 02:40:02 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 02, 2014, 08:35:28 pm

Quote from: monk12 on May 02, 2014, 08:15:20 pm

Quote from: Devlog

Stopped prisoners from constantly agreeing to rescue each other.

Bug, or feature? _{Ignoring the fact it's obviously a bug or he wouldn't have fixed it}

I'm guessing bug because it sounds like they would repeatedly agree to rescue each other after it's already been agreed to once.

This bug sounds oddly sweet. Like, imagine two prisoners in the same cell, and every time it gets really bad they comfort each other by talking about how they'll rescue the other one on the day they finally escape, and all the things they'll do once they're free.

To me, it's not so much sweet as depressing revealing as to how desperate the prisoners must be, to resort to a ritual of comfort...

Quote from: me

Imagine Dwarven brothers, kidnapped by Goblins as children. Each day, before they're dragged out of the cage and put to work, they promise that they'll never leave each other captive. They know that it would mean near-certain recapture to return, but loyalty wins out. Years pass, and eventually the elder falls into despair and enters a fell mood. With his new artifact weapon he fights his way out out of captivity, holding his brother's hand; his promise is kept.

The next night his brother's ghost appears - what is this dagger I see before me / it's handle carved from my hand? - and, slaying the elder, unites them in freedom at last. Both prisoners have kept their promises, and the ghosts rest.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on May 03, 2014, 04:46:46 am

So far it looks like bugfixing of new bugs... :( Pray to Armok moar.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 03, 2014, 04:54:00 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on May 03, 2014, 04:46:46 am

So far it looks like bugfixing of new bugs... :( Pray to Armok moar.

There won't be any old bugs fixed before release other than as a side effect of other fixes at best. Old bugs are tackled in one of the shorter releases following after.

(a good deal of old bugs have been fixed already by changed and updated mechanics coming with the release though)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 03, 2014, 05:02:33 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on May 03, 2014, 04:46:46 am

So far it looks like bugfixing of new bugs... :( Pray to Armok moar.

Manveru beat me to it, but well, yeah, that's how Toady works - first he tries to fix as many bugs he introduced as he can, then he releases, then there'll be releases to fix other new bugs, then he adds fixes for old bugs into those releases, then adds minor new features, and finally he moves on to major new features that he hopes won't take another year again, then he likely lets features creep in that may be somewhere between fully required and completely unrelated (depending on your viewpoint). Any fixes right now of old bugs are incidental.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on May 03, 2014, 06:36:24 am

Prisoners agreeing to rescue each other repeatedly... That mental image.

"You're imprisoned!"
"So are you!"
"I'm going to save you!"
"No, I'll save you!"
"That's fine. I'm going to save you, too!"
"Great, I'll save you, and then you can save me! Or do you want to go first?"
"I don't mind really. Just as long as I get to save you. After you!"
"No, after you!"
"I insist, I I'll go second in the saving."
"I'm flattered, but I couldn't possibly impose on you like that! I'll save you after you save me..."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jheral on May 03, 2014, 07:56:29 am

Could be that they're roleplaying saving each other to pass the time...  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rapozk on May 03, 2014, 07:56:46 am

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 02, 2014, 04:15:20 pm

They say (I'm citing every military institution without evidence, yes) that no amount of training can ever prepare one's mind for warfare. It would seem silly for dwarves to be any different.

I'd expect it to be a separate trait from "getting used to tragedy." That's not being courageous or accepting and ignoring danger, just being apathetic to loss.

Well, do not for forget that, in the real world, stationing your cowardly soldiers in a drowning chamber, is not considered training. In Dwarf Fortress it is!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on May 03, 2014, 08:11:34 am

Yeah, you could have them stand in adjacent rooms separated by a glass window barrier with orders to attack and have your soldiers watch safely hidden behind the barrier as your useless cheesemaker migrants get slaughtered by a Dragon. Maybe use a pressure plate linked to two doors leading to a trapped hallway so that they can path to the Dragon but can never reach it.

EDIT: Probably not a Dragon now that I think about it, since they're building destroyers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kumis on May 03, 2014, 03:01:47 pm

This question is a little removed from the current line of conversation, and relates to possible economy developments in the future:

Critters already have preferences and levels of happiness and now you’ve added aspirations, but have you considered in the future giving them utility functions for goods that they possess?

The main advantages I can see to this are:
1. A logical level of hoarding – instead of merely collecting all the socks, maybe they’d see how many socks they have and would rather trade some in for a tunic (setting marginal utility equal and all that), and
2. It can serve as a foundation for a wider economy – rather than having to invent demand curves, and thus prices, for certain goods, the prices of those goods are determined by how many critters actually want them (and to what extent) in the wider world.

The main disadvantage I can see is that, unless abstracted, point 2 would lead to us all having to run super computers.

Or in any case, have you got any plans at the moment for future economic developments?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 03, 2014, 04:31:47 pm

Quote from: Kumis on May 03, 2014, 03:01:47 pm

This question is a little removed from the current line of conversation, and relates to possible economy developments in the future:

Critters already have preferences and levels of happiness and now you’ve added aspirations, but have you considered in the future giving them utility functions for goods that they possess?

The main advantages I can see to this are:
1. A logical level of hoarding – instead of merely collecting all the socks, maybe they’d see how many socks they have and would rather trade some in for a tunic (setting marginal utility equal and all that), and
2. It can serve as a foundation for a wider economy – rather than having to invent demand curves, and thus prices, for certain goods, the prices of those goods are determined by how many critters actually want them (and to what extent) in the wider world.

The main disadvantage I can see is that, unless abstracted, point 2 would lead to us all having to run super computers.

Or in any case, have you got any plans at the moment for future economic developments?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Threetoe:    From John: When will the dwarven economy make it's way back into the game and make the process of growing a fortress feel much more grand and important.

Now this is the second question about the dwarven economy and I just wanna say that you know, going back in time, the original economy I think was so that you would make coins and the coins would be paid to dwarves that would randomly slip them around in the fortress in their rooms. Just so that the adventurer would come in and find treasure in every room kind of I think was the original idea for that. So that's how it started, anyway.
Toady:   *laughs* Yeah, it was just about treasure placement. We made sure that they always brought the coins back to their rooms so that when you were wandering around the fortress there'd be...It'd be a nice surprise any time, or not really a surprise if you remember your own fortress, but just opening the door and there's the treasure. Obviously we've grown a bit beyond that and then we got annoyed with the economy and had to take it out. I don't recall but I think we said earlier that the taverns and inns is our current thinking right now about when the dwarven economy is going to restart. I don't if that makes the fortress feel grand and important because you turned the fortress into an inn before the economy finds it's way back into the game. *laughs* It's sort of the opposite.
Threetoe:    I think the other problem with it is all the dwarves just never had enough jobs. Like the massive amounts of stragglers just, they didn't have enough money to pay for their rooms and stuff like that. The idlers.
Toady:    Yeah, it's a difficult problem to get everything working right, but yeah, maybe your dwarves will clamour for more jobs a little more aggressively than they did before. If you start ignoring them and they start going broke. But we'll have to see how it pans out. It's one of the things where next time the economy goes into the game there's no chance for it getting turned off again. I mean if we go into it, we're gonna dedicate ourselves to fixing it. Because it's more time for it now. I think it was a little premature when we tried to have it before and didn't have the larger world, and didn't have any goods in the larger world. Now that all that stuff's in, the economy can actually make sense and we can start working it into trading with other people and so on. And make all those systems consistent based on supply and demand. All that kind of thing. So when we do it next time it'll be for keeps.

This is the latest update on reimplementing the economy afaik. I didn't play back when it was still in the game so I can't really say much about how the old economy worked, but whatever new is coming sure seems as ambitious as pretty much everything else DF ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 03, 2014, 07:52:42 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on May 03, 2014, 04:31:47 pm

Quote from: Kumis on May 03, 2014, 03:01:47 pm

This question is a little removed from the current line of conversation, and relates to possible economy developments in the future:

Critters already have preferences and levels of happiness and now you’ve added aspirations, but have you considered in the future giving them utility functions for goods that they possess?

The main advantages I can see to this are:
1. A logical level of hoarding – instead of merely collecting all the socks, maybe they’d see how many socks they have and would rather trade some in for a tunic (setting marginal utility equal and all that), and
2. It can serve as a foundation for a wider economy – rather than having to invent demand curves, and thus prices, for certain goods, the prices of those goods are determined by how many critters actually want them (and to what extent) in the wider world.

The main disadvantage I can see is that, unless abstracted, point 2 would lead to us all having to run super computers.

Or in any case, have you got any plans at the moment for future economic developments?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Threetoe:    From John: When will the dwarven economy make it's way back into the game and make the process of growing a fortress feel much more grand and important.

Now this is the second question about the dwarven economy and I just wanna say that you know, going back in time, the original economy I think was so that you would make coins and the coins would be paid to dwarves that would randomly slip them around in the fortress in their rooms. Just so that the adventurer would come in and find treasure in every room kind of I think was the original idea for that. So that's how it started, anyway.
Toady:   *laughs* Yeah, it was just about treasure placement. We made sure that they always brought the coins back to their rooms so that when you were wandering around the fortress there'd be...It'd be a nice surprise any time, or not really a surprise if you remember your own fortress, but just opening the door and there's the treasure. Obviously we've grown a bit beyond that and then we got annoyed with the economy and had to take it out. I don't recall but I think we said earlier that the taverns and inns is our current thinking right now about when the dwarven economy is going to restart. I don't if that makes the fortress feel grand and important because you turned the fortress into an inn before the economy finds it's way back into the game. *laughs* It's sort of the opposite.
Threetoe:    I think the other problem with it is all the dwarves just never had enough jobs. Like the massive amounts of stragglers just, they didn't have enough money to pay for their rooms and stuff like that. The idlers.
Toady:    Yeah, it's a difficult problem to get everything working right, but yeah, maybe your dwarves will clamour for more jobs a little more aggressively than they did before. If you start ignoring them and they start going broke. But we'll have to see how it pans out. It's one of the things where next time the economy goes into the game there's no chance for it getting turned off again. I mean if we go into it, we're gonna dedicate ourselves to fixing it. Because it's more time for it now. I think it was a little premature when we tried to have it before and didn't have the larger world, and didn't have any goods in the larger world. Now that all that stuff's in, the economy can actually make sense and we can start working it into trading with other people and so on. And make all those systems consistent based on supply and demand. All that kind of thing. So when we do it next time it'll be for keeps.

This is the latest update on reimplementing the economy afaik. I didn't play back when it was still in the game so I can't really say much about how the old economy worked, but whatever new is coming sure seems as ambitious as pretty much everything else DF ^^

Manveru, that quote deals with point 2.  Point 1 was envisioning an exchange economy... where there are things, people have ways of getting happiness from those things (eating them, wearing them, just owning them, etc.), and they are allowed to trade things with others to make each other mutually happier.

I think right now everyone's utilities are a bit to similar to each other to make this feasible.  If everyone values a sock the same, it will never be traded.  There are two ways to get "a difference of opinion" and therefore kickstart trade.

First is the idea of "enough" of something.  Urist has 2 socks worn for 100 utils of happiness (yes, economics has an actual unit of measurement for happiness), two more kept as spares for 25 additional utils, and only a couple utils per sock after that.  Now the guy with plenty of mittens and no socks will come over and trade some mittens for some socks.  (This gets more complicated depending on hoarding tendencies from personalities, but you get the idea.)

Second is preferences.  Each dwarf prefers certain materials, colors, items, etc.  Someone with a preference for pigtail fiber cloth might trade away cave spider silk socks to get pigtail fiber cloth socks.  If dyes were more prevalent, then color preferences would matter more as well.  A dwarf with a preference for variety due to personality traits would probably end up with mismatched socks.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on May 03, 2014, 08:11:04 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 01, 2014, 06:09:34 pm

...the version after 0.99 will be 1.00, so no, it won't be any of those :P

It'll be 0.99.02, I bet.

Quote from: PDF urist master on May 01, 2014, 06:48:59 pm

out of curiosity, I wonder what Toady's planning to add after this release.

Taverns are the big thing for the next big one. First will be bugfixes though, and probably some polish on the contents of this release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 04, 2014, 04:14:12 am

Quote from: Cruxador on May 03, 2014, 08:11:04 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on May 01, 2014, 06:48:59 pm

out of curiosity, I wonder what Toady's planning to add after this release.

Taverns are the big thing for the next big one. First will be bugfixes though, and probably some polish on the contents of this release.

It's more that taverns have a good chance. I don't think Toady has decided where to go after the bugfixes and minor features - or which minor features beyond job priorities he'll work on, for that matter.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kumis on May 04, 2014, 09:11:31 am

Quote from: Dirst on May 03, 2014, 07:52:42 pm

I think right now everyone's utilities are a bit to similar to each other to make this feasible.  If everyone values a sock the same, it will never be traded.  There are two ways to get "a difference of opinion" and therefore kickstart trade.

First is the idea of "enough" of something.  Urist has 2 socks worn for 100 utils of happiness (yes, economics has an actual unit of measurement for happiness), two more kept as spares for 25 additional utils, and only a couple utils per sock after that.  Now the guy with plenty of mittens and no socks will come over and trade some mittens for some socks.  (This gets more complicated depending on hoarding tendencies from personalities, but you get the idea.)

Second is preferences.  Each dwarf prefers certain materials, colors, items, etc.  Someone with a preference for pigtail fiber cloth might trade away cave spider silk socks to get pigtail fiber cloth socks.  If dyes were more prevalent, then color preferences would matter more as well.  A dwarf with a preference for variety due to personality traits would probably end up with mismatched socks.

Hey, Dirst, thanks a lot for the elaboration. I didn't want to write a wall of green text, so decided to skip the details.
What I had originally imagined is pretty much both of those points together. The carpenter starts trading his tables once he'd rather have a plump helmet roast than another table, and the hunter (especially one with featherwood and crossbow preferences) is willing to trade more for a featherwood crossbow than the carpenter is. I even made functions. I even imagined in steps how the economy could function. I am just that much of a party animal.

The problem was, the more I looked it the more problems arose. If you want I can PM you some of the issues. Some of them are utility function specific and some of them are more relevant to any economy, such as who owns the gold that's mined or crops that are grown and where do dwarfs get their initial endowments from - you can't make a table without first owning a log.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 04, 2014, 09:53:51 am

I think instead of simulating economics on a per-person basis for the whole world, it would make much more sense to simulate the macro economics that occurs between sites. Each site would supply and demand certain goods, which would set prices for merchants.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on May 04, 2014, 10:30:22 am

Out of curiosity, would we see caravan and wagons on the roads? And, if we were to, for instance, to ambush them, would the sites they were going to lack in supply?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on May 04, 2014, 10:44:23 am

Quote from: King Mir on May 04, 2014, 09:53:51 am

I think instead of simulating economics on a per-person basis for the whole world, it would make much more sense to simulate the macro economics that occurs between sites. Each site would supply and demand certain goods, which would set prices for merchants.

Toady's confirmed that if he does that it's not going to be implemented for a while. I think specifically he mentioned he's scared of it being as broken as the last economics and starving out all the world's sites.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 04, 2014, 11:01:25 am

Quote from: MDFification on May 04, 2014, 10:44:23 am

Quote from: King Mir on May 04, 2014, 09:53:51 am

I think instead of simulating economics on a per-person basis for the whole world, it would make much more sense to simulate the macro economics that occurs between sites. Each site would supply and demand certain goods, which would set prices for merchants.

Toady's confirmed that if he does that it's not going to be implemented for a while. I think specifically he mentioned he's scared of it being as broken as the last economics and starving out all the world's sites.

He's also said that the time to bring it back would most likely be in conjunction with adding in taverns, since they kind of require some sort of economy to function (unless he's going to waste time setting up some kind of placeholder system). And going by this quote he doesn't seem to think possible starvation as that big of an issue, more than annoying perhaps that it might require some fudging to avoid it.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Yeah, it's going to be grossly destabilising when we add the actual economy to the game, but it should be entertaining. If we have to we'll just put strict controls on certain things ... not the same kind of strict controls that might stagnate the economy or whatever, but just actual magical strict controls that give things where there was once nothing. Hopefully we won't need to do that, and just make the overall situation like there's enough food being farmed ... we're going to have a slightly higher ratio than what they could get away with so that there hopefully won't be quite as many artificial problems and just real famines caused by the game saying there's a drought, or the game doing this, instead of just like 'well, the numbers didn't work out that year because some random crap happened'. Random's good too, but it's going to be really kind of horrifying.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

We never have a timeframe for anything. There's just dependencies like when we get to the Dwarf Fortress end, and taverns we'll want to have an economy up for that probably, or some kind of payment system or something. Something to make the tavern make sense. In that sense, since we wanted to kind of, I mean, we're not sure exactly when we're going to work on that, but those are on kind of a similar time frame in any case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 04, 2014, 06:13:28 pm

For once I got to read a devblog soon after it was posted.
Keep them fixes coming, and get well soon!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 04, 2014, 08:12:25 pm

Quote

handled broken mushroom cap ramps

Waitasecond...
Giant mushroom caps with ramps to form domes?  I think I missed that somehow.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 04, 2014, 08:17:44 pm

I'm more concerned about:

Quote from: Devlog

hydras severing the same body part multiple times

I know Hydrae are badass, but they're not physics-exempt :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 04, 2014, 08:19:09 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 04, 2014, 08:17:44 pm

I'm more concerned about:

Quote from: Devlog

hydras severing the same body part multiple times

I know Hydrae are badass, but they're not physics-exempt :P

What about the Conservation of Mass and Conservation of Energy? :P That's part of why I always thought they were so badass.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 04, 2014, 08:32:40 pm

Conservation of mass and energy is of no value to us! How are we supposed to get infinite ‼socks‼ if we cant have infinite socks or ‼‼?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on May 04, 2014, 09:49:29 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on May 02, 2014, 07:39:00 pm

With the changes made to the world, are we going to see people retain their titles after leaving the map? For example, the Outpost Liason will retain his or her post after leaving the map after the caravan?

This seems like a bug report.  Is it on the tracker?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 04, 2014, 10:40:35 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on May 04, 2014, 11:01:25 am

Quote from: MDFification on May 04, 2014, 10:44:23 am

Quote from: King Mir on May 04, 2014, 09:53:51 am

I think instead of simulating economics on a per-person basis for the whole world, it would make much more sense to simulate the macro economics that occurs between sites. Each site would supply and demand certain goods, which would set prices for merchants.

Toady's confirmed that if he does that it's not going to be implemented for a while. I think specifically he mentioned he's scared of it being as broken as the last economics and starving out all the world's sites.

He's also said that the time to bring it back would most likely be in conjunction with adding in taverns, since they kind of require some sort of economy to function (unless he's going to waste time setting up some kind of placeholder system). And going by this quote he doesn't seem to think possible starvation as that big of an issue, more than annoying perhaps that it might require some fudging to avoid it.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Yeah, it's going to be grossly destabilising when we add the actual economy to the game, but it should be entertaining. If we have to we'll just put strict controls on certain things ... not the same kind of strict controls that might stagnate the economy or whatever, but just actual magical strict controls that give things where there was once nothing. Hopefully we won't need to do that, and just make the overall situation like there's enough food being farmed ... we're going to have a slightly higher ratio than what they could get away with so that there hopefully won't be quite as many artificial problems and just real famines caused by the game saying there's a drought, or the game doing this, instead of just like 'well, the numbers didn't work out that year because some random crap happened'. Random's good too, but it's going to be really kind of horrifying.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

We never have a timeframe for anything. There's just dependencies like when we get to the Dwarf Fortress end, and taverns we'll want to have an economy up for that probably, or some kind of payment system or something. Something to make the tavern make sense. In that sense, since we wanted to kind of, I mean, we're not sure exactly when we're going to work on that, but those are on kind of a similar time frame in any case.

Kumis, each Dwarf is endowed with a few bits of clothing when it's generated, and migrants sometimes show up with weapons and/or armor.  Everything else seems to be owned by the fort.  There are quite a few examples of outposts and colonies operating as commonwealths, so this gaming convenience isn't as contrived as it sounds.  This might change when The Economy™ is activated, and I would want to have better handle on what Toady plans before diving down the rabbit hole of utility functions.  However, you're more than welcome to bring your ideas over to the Suggestions forum if you want to get feedback now.  (By the way, the math behind an exchange economy can also be used to back out all of the dependencies of producing a particular bundle of final goods.)

King Mir, although it's certainly possible to create site-level supply and demand, it can lead to very broken outcomes if local prices and global prices get too out of whack.  These issues are swept under the rug in the current commonwealth setting, but kludging in site-level supply and demand now could make it difficult to do The Economy™ properly down the line.  A simple system (such as a multiplier based on distance to the closest friendly producer) might be okay, but I wouldn't want to see Toady waste time on a sophisticated site-level system then have to re-invent the wheel later.

Manveru, my take on the upcoming tavern for this release is something akin to a trade depot.  People with goods and/or news report there when they decide to come to your embark area.  You don't need coins for that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 01:04:49 am

Well, the Taverns for this release are more like generic buildings called (fake) taverns in name only and not much more. ANd they were adventure mode only in case you missed that. There's still a good chance the first true iteration of them will be based on bartering, nonetheless there's fairly strong indication Toady would want to do the economy along with it, either shortly before or after.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on May 05, 2014, 05:33:29 am

I should be mentioned that using currency on a regular basis within communities is a very recent development, and gift economies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy) have been the prevailing norm for most of history, really. Even on the empire level, a common problem into the 18th century for rulers was the lack of solid currency, since most taxes were paid in natura. The "fort owns everything" contrievance is a surprisingly accurate simplification - personally I would see intra-fortress exchange as a pretty low priority.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 05:58:30 am

Quote from: Henny on May 05, 2014, 05:33:29 am

I should be mentioned that using currency on a regular basis within communities is a very recent development, and gift economies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy) have been the prevailing norm for most of history, really. Even on the empire level, a common problem into the 18th century for rulers was the lack of solid currency, since most taxes were paid in natura. The "fort owns everything" contrievance is a surprisingly accurate simplification - personally I would see intra-fortress exchange as a pretty low priority.

Well, the only recent part is relying solely on currency. Coinage etc have been around for thousands of years, and obviously have an important part to play. The key thing is balancing it all properly so that both methods have their own place in the system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Kumis on May 05, 2014, 08:55:13 am

Dirst, that's why I gave up. I hit a point where to develop the ideas any further I'd basically be ascribing how Toady should make the economy, and I definitely don't want to do that. For two reasons actually: 1. it's not my place to ascribe it, and 2. if I work out how I think the economy definitively ought to look then I'm merely setting myself up for disappointment and maybe even ruining my ability to enjoy the game once the economy's implemented. Essentially, I put my faith in the Toady.

As for all this talk of whether the economy should use fiat money, money pegged to (a) precious metal(s) or be a barter economy. In a game complete with titans, dwarfs, dragons and the like realism in replicating someone's idea of the middle ages is pretty low on the list IMHO. I say adopt any system which makes gameplay the most fun, the world the most immersive and stops the processor from grinding to an over-heated halt.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 09:26:52 am

Quote from: Kumis on May 05, 2014, 08:55:13 am

Dirst, that's why I gave up. I hit a point where to develop the ideas any further I'd basically be ascribing how Toady should make the economy, and I definitely don't want to do that. For two reasons actually: 1. it's not my place to ascribe it, and 2. if I work out how I think the economy definitively ought to look then I'm merely setting myself up for disappointment and maybe even ruining my ability to enjoy the game once the economy's implemented. Essentially, I put my faith in the Toady.

As for all this talk of whether the economy should use fiat money, money pegged to (a) precious metal(s) or be a barter economy. In a game complete with titans, dwarfs, dragons and the like realism in replicating someone's idea of the middle ages is pretty low on the list IMHO. I say adopt any system which makes gameplay the most fun, the world the most immersive and stops the processor from grinding to an over-heated halt.

Well, Toady said a few years ago he'd been reading up on economic history, so replicating it to some extent sure seems the goal. Although flavour and atmosphere is of course stated as more important.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

I've been working through economic history books in preparation for the trade and site resource stuff, and there were these things that were innovative over time, these ideas; ideas like insurance, I don't know if our game should have insurance but it certainly existed before the 1400s if that's our cut-off.
Rainseeker:   Really?
Toady:   Yeah, all kinds of stuff. They were just as concerned as we are about losing their money, so they came up with all kinds of things, and it was really complicated. I don't know if we're going to go there or not, I don't want to pin myself to having systems like the Italians had near where our cut-off is, because we kind of decide based on the flavour and the atmosphere of the game as more important. But in a sense for the biggest cities to have that kind of feeling to them, at least in some cultures, of having some things like that going on instead of it all just being Conan-esque, is not really a problem for me so much. We'll see how it turns out, we certainly want a lot of those heroes running around doing things and not having to worry about if their sword is insured.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: MDFification on May 05, 2014, 12:35:13 pm

Edit: Changed my question since it's been answered; Will we be able to mod other races to use deep sites, or as with current animal people will this result in the race in question not interacting with surface civs?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 05, 2014, 12:41:41 pm

Quote from: MDFification on May 05, 2014, 12:35:13 pm

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but Do goblins have deep sites, and if so will we be vulnerable to sieges in the caverns?

Goblins do have sites like that now, with troll pens and everything, though not as deep as the caverns afaik.
Underground sieges still aren't in, so only aboveground for now. (With climbers and jumpers though)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 05, 2014, 01:28:20 pm

Quote from: MDFification on May 05, 2014, 12:35:13 pm

Edit: Changed my question since it's been answered; Will we be able to mod other races to use deep sites, or as with current animal people will this result in the race in question not interacting with surface civs?

If you mean deep sites only and seeing how that wotks, well, that is an experiment someone will have to try.

We should be able to set the civ to use whatever site type we want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 05, 2014, 01:32:13 pm

Indeed we can, however I suspect deep down and with great sadness that the different sub-types of dwarf sites like hill dwarf settlements, mountain homes, and deep sites will all wind up rolled up into the same CAVE_DETAILED package.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 05, 2014, 02:59:09 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on May 05, 2014, 01:32:13 pm

Indeed we can, however I suspect deep down and with great sadness that the different sub-types of dwarf sites like hill dwarf settlements, mountain homes, and deep sites will all wind up rolled up into the same CAVE_DETAILED package.

Well, I really do think they are seperate tags, that seems somewhat more logical, at least to me. Then again, I can't say for certain. Maybe it would be worth an FotF question or simply waiting for the patch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 05, 2014, 03:16:36 pm

Quote from: 5/4/14 devlog

handled broken mushroom cap ramps

 Just out of curiosity, are these just ramps made with mushroom cap wood or are you talking about ramps on top of the mushroom caps?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 03:21:54 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 05, 2014, 03:16:36 pm

Quote from: 5/4/14 devlog

handled broken mushroom cap ramps

 Just out of curiosity, are these just ramps made with mushroom cap wood or are you talking about ramps on top of the mushroom caps?

I don't see how that could possibly refer to anything but the top of the actual mushroom caps :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 05, 2014, 03:28:21 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 03:21:54 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 05, 2014, 03:16:36 pm

Quote from: 5/4/14 devlog

handled broken mushroom cap ramps

 Just out of curiosity, are these just ramps made with mushroom cap wood or are you talking about ramps on top of the mushroom caps?

I don't see how that could possibly refer to anything but the top of the actual mushroom caps :P

Maybe he omitted the word 'wood' by accident?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 05, 2014, 03:36:49 pm

Even if so, I find it hard to believe (although with DF bugs I guess anything goes) that the mushroom cap wood material would somehow specifically bug out with ramps. Not to mention there would have to be ramps constructed out of it somewhere, and Toady noticing it. It just seems a thousand times more likely he is referring to the mushroom caps, which are pretty much guaranteed to include ramps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 05, 2014, 03:49:28 pm

I'd also guess the mushroom caps, since multi-tile trees are a thing in this update and giant mushrooms are probably covered by that. If I had to guess, the large mushrooms are being constructed in some buggy fashion that interferes with the functionality of ramps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on May 05, 2014, 04:25:11 pm

Quote from: Henny on May 05, 2014, 05:33:29 am

I should be mentioned that using currency on a regular basis within communities is a very recent development, and gift economies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy) have been the prevailing norm for most of history, really. Even on the empire level, a common problem into the 18th century for rulers was the lack of solid currency, since most taxes were paid in natura. The "fort owns everything" contrievance is a surprisingly accurate simplification - personally I would see intra-fortress exchange as a pretty low priority.

I've read quite a bit (a lot, actually) about medieval economy, and it's true : during the MA the two systems existed. Money was mainly used for everything in relation to the "outside" (some taxes, trade, military things, mainly), while the regular use of money for everyday-life was slowly spread among common people. If DF is in the "spirit of the 14th century", you should have very wealthy (and with high economic inequalities) cities with traders always travelling and badass houses(palaces), people who used modern accounting (paper money, negotiable instrument, assurance as Toady said, optimization of change rate, etc.), highly educated, and on the other hand you had people (80/90%) who lived very poorly (not that they were miserable) with nearly no money at all - even taxes were paid in kind. The rest (10%, who lived mainly in cities) used some money, some where paid in money (like in cites, artisans, masons or butchers -butchers were very powerful at that time- for example).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 05, 2014, 07:55:40 pm

Quote from: Dirst on May 04, 2014, 10:40:35 pm

King Mir, although it's certainly possible to create site-level supply and demand, it can lead to very broken outcomes if local prices and global prices get too out of whack.  These issues are swept under the rug in the current commonwealth setting, but kludging in site-level supply and demand now could make it difficult to do The Economy™ properly down the line.  A simple system (such as a multiplier based on distance to the closest friendly producer) might be okay, but I wouldn't want to see Toady waste time on a sophisticated site-level system then have to re-invent the wheel later.

Although there is some benefit to giving each historic figure property and ambition, it is simply not enough to have a functional world economy when most of the population is not historic. You need to abstract the supply and demand of the bulk of site population, which requires site based economics, because that bulk doesn't exist as anything other than a site population number. Adding such a system need in no way be a stand in. On the contrary, such a system could be the beginning of an economic system for historical figures take part in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hetairos on May 06, 2014, 09:25:25 am

I hope banks will make it into DF one day.

Just think about it for a while. Economic features aside, you could have heists!

And yeah, definitely mushroom caps.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mate888 on May 06, 2014, 07:59:27 pm

Quote from: Hetairos on May 06, 2014, 09:25:25 am

I hope banks will make it into DF one day.

Just think about it for a while. Economic features aside, you could have heists!

And yeah, definitely mushroom caps.

As long as they don't add lawyers...
EDIT: why did I wrote that?! Toady! Don't read this!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 06, 2014, 10:58:50 pm

Quote from: mate888 on May 06, 2014, 07:59:27 pm

As long as they don't add lawyers...

They are in already. Aren't those the ones behind the cotton candy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 06, 2014, 11:13:54 pm

We've already got Brokers, Clerks, and Managers...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 07, 2014, 03:45:00 am

Lawyers? I don't really think there's a way to make an appeal in the dwarven justice system. If you get charged, start praying to Armok or whatever gods you have so that the hammerer doesn't kill you.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Areyar on May 07, 2014, 04:52:44 am

"Fixed a subset of migrants that had broken dreams and values."
Does that mean no more adults? ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 07, 2014, 08:22:10 am

" Fixed some new dwarf mode skill-gain issues (e.g. skills based on spotting sneakers were all out of whack)."
I knew Dwarves had an obsession with socks, but now sneakers, too?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 07, 2014, 08:55:29 am

" For instance, I made myself super-fast and ran just far enough that my companions were offloaded and they were still able to catch up eventually (spending a moment in army form). They also found their way home when I fired them without issues."

 Toady One, have you tried crossing a river (not neccesarily a major river) with companions, then making yourself super fast (though you probably won't have to in that situation) and offload them and see if they catch up? Companions getting stuck on the other side of a river and not crossing is a pretty big headache when dealing with them currently. It's also pretty much the best way to intentionally (and unintentionally) lose them.

It sounds like it should work, but I'm not sure how they'd interact with rivers in army form. So, hopefully you've checked out that situation.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 07, 2014, 11:13:43 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 07, 2014, 08:55:29 am

" For instance, I made myself super-fast and ran just far enough that my companions were offloaded and they were still able to catch up eventually (spending a moment in army form). They also found their way home when I fired them without issues."

 Toady One, have you tried crossing a river (not neccesarily a major river) with companions, then making yourself super fast (though you probably won't have to in that situation) and offload them and see if they catch up? Companions getting stuck on the other side of a river and not crossing is a pretty big headache when dealing with them currently. It's also pretty much the best way to intentionally (and unintentionally) lose them.

It sounds like it should work, but I'm not sure how they'd interact with rivers in army form. So, hopefully you've checked out that situation.

Hm, your companions are supposed to be able to cross rivers, even if they weren't quite prompt about it last I tested. If they get offloaded into an "army", they'd have to move around the river, I image (at least I seem to recall Toady saying armies don't cross rivers?), but if the companions managed to catch up in the first test, I see little reason why they couldn't in that situation (unless you keep running away from them over rivers).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 07, 2014, 11:21:10 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on May 07, 2014, 11:13:43 am

Hm, your companions are supposed to be able to cross rivers, even if they weren't quite prompt about it last I tested. If they get offloaded into an "army", they'd have to move around the river, I image (at least I seem to recall Toady saying armies don't cross rivers?), but if the companions managed to catch up in the first test, I see little reason why they couldn't in that situation (unless you keep running away from them over rivers).

Toady mentioned it, but it was in sort of a double-negative way.  Armies ignore rivers on the world map, since an army that can't cross a river is fairly useless.

Quote from: Toady One on February 27, 2014, 03:45:35 pm

Quote from: Spish

What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff.

I've always wanted to play a cliffside fortress where the perilous terrain actually performed its role as a natural barrier. Invaders showing up on the site at the top of a cliff (despite that path being blocked as far as the world map is concerned) is quite the nuisance.
Edit: And on that note, do travelling armies respect the path of entry when arriving on a player's site?

Manveru Taurënér addresses the ramp part, mentioning that I posted earlier that cliff faces will return and that we are in a better spot for that now with climbing in the game, but that it isn't done yet and won't be for this time.  Armies have some rudimentary path finding that respects certain obstacles (not rivers at all yet, since they have to be able to cross them), so mountains should be respected.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 07, 2014, 01:15:09 pm

I know your companions are supposed to be able to cross rivers, but it's pretty easy to lose companions while crossing a river, whether its because they didn't cross fast enough before they got offloaded, they got distracted by wildlife, or a combination of both.

Basically I'm just wondering if Toady One tested that situation. Though if they ignore rivers in army mode, I guess it shouldn't be a problem

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mate888 on May 07, 2014, 03:36:37 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 06, 2014, 10:58:50 pm

Quote from: mate888 on May 06, 2014, 07:59:27 pm

As long as they don't add lawyers...

They are in already. Aren't those the ones behind the cotton candy?

No, no, those are politicians.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on May 08, 2014, 12:19:33 am

A couple questions:

First, is it still possible to embark on an island that your dwarven civ doesn't normally have access to?

And second, is it possible to fast-travel through tunnels?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 08, 2014, 12:25:38 am

1. Embarking hasn't changed this release AFAIK.
2. Yes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 08, 2014, 08:55:26 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 07, 2014, 01:15:09 pm

I know your companions are supposed to be able to cross rivers, but it's pretty easy to lose companions while crossing a river, whether its because they didn't cross fast enough before they got offloaded, they got distracted by wildlife, or a combination of both.

Basically I'm just wondering if Toady One tested that situation. Though if they ignore rivers in army mode, I guess it shouldn't be a problem

I'm just picturing an adventurer who managed to recruit a few hundred Ant Woman soldiers then tries to out-run them.  Once far enough behind, they obligingly revert into an army.  At a point where they must be trying to cross a river, the adventurer doubles back to look.  Just image a huge mass of giant ants forming a living bridge to get over a river...

Can an adventurer irritate a faction sufficiently that even when it offloads into an army, that army decided to pursue the adventurer across the world map?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on May 08, 2014, 02:39:37 pm

According to the 2/17/2014 Devblog post:

Quote from: DevBlog Post

So you could throw a head into a room to freak people out, which is cool, but you can also throw a single tooth, and it would work too, if the person is dead. And if you drop a tooth from a bar fight in a different room with some relatives, nobody will care, but if you later go and kill the former owner of the tooth, then you'll hear people cry out in the distance as long as they are still on the map, since they'll suddenly recognize the tooth as belonging to somebody deceased. That's okay, as far as we need it to work for now.

Will creatures react emotionally to butchery returns as if it were a piece of a dead creature's corpse? Can I butcher a historical Giant Dingo, eat it, and throw its heart onto a table in a tavern to show everyone it is dead?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 08, 2014, 02:54:39 pm

Quote from: TastyMints on May 08, 2014, 02:39:37 pm

Will creatures react emotionally to butchery returns as if it were a piece of a dead creature's corpse? Can I butcher a historical Giant Dingo, eat it, and throw its heart onto a table in a tavern to show everyone it is dead?

"But this ≡dragon roast≡ is from the infamous Axekuta Tilokimaran that was terrorizing your village, I assure you."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: tfaal on May 08, 2014, 11:07:56 pm

Now that people react emotionally to you killing their family, how will quests interact with this? If an townsperson's relative is a bandit, will they still give the quest to kill them? If so, how do they react if you complete it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BurningPhoenixGames on May 09, 2014, 01:20:02 am

I'm relatively new to DF, how do you claim a site? That sounds like something I could have a lot of fun doing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 09, 2014, 01:21:27 am

Site claims aren't in yet. They are in some fashion in the much anticipated DF2014.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BenLubar on May 09, 2014, 01:50:25 am

Quote from: Dirst on May 08, 2014, 02:54:39 pm

Quote from: TastyMints on May 08, 2014, 02:39:37 pm

Will creatures react emotionally to butchery returns as if it were a piece of a dead creature's corpse? Can I butcher a historical Giant Dingo, eat it, and throw its heart onto a table in a tavern to show everyone it is dead?

"But this ≡dragon roast≡ is from the infamous Axekuta Tilokimaran that was terrorizing your village, I assure you."

My dwarves took the meat from two dragons and a plump helmet and a piece of cheese and turned them into a plump helmet roast. "Don't worry, it's vegetarian. It has one vegetable in it."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Drunken on May 09, 2014, 03:44:11 am

Quote from: Areyar on May 07, 2014, 04:52:44 am

"Fixed a subset of migrants that had broken dreams and values."
Does that mean no more adults? ;)

I always thought that was a feature, if my migrants didn't have broken dreams when they arrived at my fort, they certainly did soon after. :-p

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 09, 2014, 10:47:05 am

I wonder if you can have fortresses double as insane asylums. Not that we were anyways.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 09, 2014, 11:15:37 am

Quote from: PigtailLlama on May 09, 2014, 10:47:05 am

I wonder if you can have fortresses double as insane asylums. Not that we were anyways.

You build a wall around your fort and place a Note which reads "OUTSIDE OF THE ASYLUM".

Consult Wonko the Sane whether the Note should be inside or outside of the wall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Plancky on May 10, 2014, 05:02:34 am

Quote

Also cleaned up an issue causing residents to wander far away from their houses or into rooms they didn't intend to be in.

Well they definately are residents.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WordsandChaos on May 10, 2014, 03:39:48 pm

One Flew Over The *Mudstone Nesting Box* and Collided with an Obstacle, Shattering the Skull and Tearing the Brain!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 10, 2014, 06:39:17 pm

Tomorrow would be a fine day for a release.  :-\

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 10, 2014, 06:45:50 pm

Quote from: thvaz on May 10, 2014, 06:39:17 pm

Tomorrow would be a fine day for a release.  :-\

Couldn't the same be said on any other day ever?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 10, 2014, 07:02:48 pm

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 10, 2014, 06:45:50 pm

Quote from: thvaz on May 10, 2014, 06:39:17 pm

Tomorrow would be a fine day for a release.  :-\

Couldn't the same be said on any other day ever?

Not if I'm working at that day.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 11, 2014, 09:22:49 am

Quote from: XxoriginxX on May 11, 2014, 02:12:31 am

In adventure mode, will the incredibly detailed combat reports that detail things such as the severing of multiple nerves, et cetera, continue to be shown to the player in future updates? Or will the system still work functionally, without being fully shown to the user, in order to show that the character isn't fully aware of all the damage that they are doing with a given attack until they examine the corpse?

Part of the fun and awesomeness of DF is the fact that it is so detailed, right down to the combat. Though I'm sure it will be streamlined a bit at some point.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 11, 2014, 09:33:40 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 11, 2014, 09:22:49 am

Quote from: XxoriginxX on May 11, 2014, 02:12:31 am

In adventure mode, will the incredibly detailed combat reports that detail things such as the severing of multiple nerves, et cetera, continue to be shown to the player in future updates? Or will the system still work functionally, without being fully shown to the user, in order to show that the character isn't fully aware of all the damage that they are doing with a given attack until they examine the corpse?

Part of the fun and awesomeness of DF is the fact that it is so detailed, right down to the combat. Though I'm sure it will be streamlined a bit at some point.

I would like that you had more streamlined combat descriptions. You can't know for sure that hammer strike caused internal bleeding at the moment you hit, and you won't pay attention to details of a fight besides you. The excess information clutter the screen and make it hard for you to get the relevant information.

That said, I love the complexity of DF's combat. As with the rest of the game, the problem is in the interface.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 11, 2014, 09:36:41 am

Quote from: thvaz on May 11, 2014, 09:33:40 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 11, 2014, 09:22:49 am

Quote from: XxoriginxX on May 11, 2014, 02:12:31 am

In adventure mode, will the incredibly detailed combat reports that detail things such as the severing of multiple nerves, et cetera, continue to be shown to the player in future updates? Or will the system still work functionally, without being fully shown to the user, in order to show that the character isn't fully aware of all the damage that they are doing with a given attack until they examine the corpse?

Part of the fun and awesomeness of DF is the fact that it is so detailed, right down to the combat. Though I'm sure it will be streamlined a bit at some point.

I would like that you had more streamlined combat descriptions. You can't know for sure that hammer strike caused internal bleeding at the moment you hit, and you won't pay attention to details of a fight besides you. The excess information clutter the screen and make it hard for you to get the relevant information.

That said, I love the complexity of DF's combat. As with the rest of the game, the problem is in the interface.

A detail level setting would be nice, but I think it is quintessentially DF to have that level of detail in the combat.  It will allow for nightmare-inducing graphic scenes when the game gets around to a 3D interface :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Guylock on May 11, 2014, 12:44:27 pm

If your fort were to be crushed by Demons or a Forgotten Beast, will they be able to leave the fort site and cause havoc elsewhere?
Another question, will the NPC dwarf forts that were generated end up facing the same drama as the user made forts?

If so, that would be awesome as hell. :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 11, 2014, 01:50:42 pm

Quote from: Guylock on May 11, 2014, 12:44:27 pm

If your fort were to be crushed by Demons or a Forgotten Beast, will they be able to leave the fort site and cause havoc elsewhere?
Another question, will the NPC dwarf forts that were generated end up facing the same drama as the user made forts?

If so, that would be awesome as hell. :D

1) Unless things have changed since Toady last talked about it, megabeasts don't travel. So a beast that crushes your fort will stay at the site, using it like a cave.

2) they will face the same drama from other civilizations, such as goblins and angry elves, but not the other drama from beasts or digging too deep. Snatchers probably aren't part of the army system either.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on May 11, 2014, 04:51:09 pm

Quote from: King Mir on May 11, 2014, 01:50:42 pm

Quote from: Guylock on May 11, 2014, 12:44:27 pm

If your fort were to be crushed by Demons or a Forgotten Beast, will they be able to leave the fort site and cause havoc elsewhere?
Another question, will the NPC dwarf forts that were generated end up facing the same drama as the user made forts?

If so, that would be awesome as hell. :D

1) Unless things have changed since Toady last talked about it, megabeasts don't travel. So a beast that crushes your fort will stay at the site, using it like a cave.

2) they will face the same drama from other civilizations, such as goblins and angry elves, but not the other drama from beasts or digging too deep. Snatchers probably aren't part of the army system either.

There's also the drama from themselves. I'd love to see caved-in floors from the AI pretending to have channeled in the wrong order, bedrooms that probably shouldn't be flooded, etc.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 11, 2014, 07:10:32 pm

I would love to see evidence of such disasters in pre-genned forts. Dwarves will be dwarves, you know? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Severedicks on May 11, 2014, 08:37:40 pm

Why was the old version numbering system (40d and previous) abandoned?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Karlito on May 12, 2014, 08:44:27 pm

Quote from: Severedicks on May 11, 2014, 08:37:40 pm

Why was the old version numbering system (40d and previous) abandoned?

Because the old development goals system (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html) was abandoned. Toady used to divide the list into core goals, required features, and extra bloat features, and the number of each that had been completed made up the version number. 0.28.181.40d had 28 cores, 181 reqs, and 40 bloats checked off the list. Eventually it became too unwieldy, and Toady scrapped it for the current dev goals list, right around the time of the 2010 release and the website update, if I remember correctly.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Plancky on May 12, 2014, 09:38:34 pm

modders what does this mean? from todays dev log

Quote

Reaction modding alert: globs have an amount more like liquids/powders/bars now (came up during the contaminant stuff since it needed to be homogenized).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 12, 2014, 10:15:02 pm

Liquids, powders and bars are in amounts of 150 each; I assume this means that you can set how much stuff they're globbing at you now, which is nice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on May 12, 2014, 10:18:37 pm

Right, I see we have some changes to the contaminant stuff.

How exactly does this work? Does this mean we will no longer have permanently contaminated wells? Does it mean contaminants will dry up or disappear? Are we going to have more control about dwarves cleaning up areas, including outside aboveground buildings and courtyards?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 12, 2014, 10:46:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 12, 2014, 10:15:02 pm

Liquids, powders and bars are in amounts of 150 each; I assume this means that you can set how much stuff they're globbing at you now, which is nice.

Wrong, missed the word "reaction" (most important word there); glob items now have dimensions like liquids, bars etc. so that smaller parts can be used in reactions and such.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silicoid on May 12, 2014, 11:24:41 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 12, 2014, 10:46:57 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 12, 2014, 10:15:02 pm

Liquids, powders and bars are in amounts of 150 each; I assume this means that you can set how much stuff they're globbing at you now, which is nice.

Wrong, missed the word "reaction" (most important word there); glob items now have dimensions like liquids, bars etc. so that smaller parts can be used in reactions and such.

More importantly, they will now have weight, so theoretically you could lob something with the weight of a mountain.

This could all lead to monsters that shoot glob minecarts at dwarfs, and other such fun...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 13, 2014, 02:49:14 am

Would it be possible to post the current state of, say, human raws? And to avoid any literal genies interpretations of this question, if so, please do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Severedicks on May 13, 2014, 02:49:06 pm

Quote

Toady scrapped it for the current dev goals list

You mean this one? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)
Shouldn't points like

Quote

Expansion of personality system to support more value-judgment-based properties such as bravery vs. cowardice/apathy/recklessness
Better morale failures
Better opening explanation of the surrounding situation in your home town

and the like be in teal or purple then? I thought Toady was done working on them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 13, 2014, 02:51:33 pm

I don't think Toady updates that page too often. He'll probably get around to it, though, probably...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 13, 2014, 03:02:11 pm

Quote from: Severedicks on May 13, 2014, 02:49:06 pm

Quote

Toady scrapped it for the current dev goals list

You mean this one? (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)
Shouldn't points like

Quote

Expansion of personality system to support more value-judgment-based properties such as bravery vs. cowardice/apathy/recklessness
Better morale failures
Better opening explanation of the surrounding situation in your home town

and the like be in teal or purple then? I thought Toady was done working on them.

He probably hasn't updated it in a while, there's also the tracking stuff and non-lethal combat.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 14, 2014, 10:42:32 am

Toady has mostly updated the page post-release. But it seems he has since updated it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 14, 2014, 11:45:57 am

Wow, I just found this in the development page:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

(Cyan means it'll be in the next release.)

Toady said that there will be some new information pages, but he didn't announce this specific feature anywhere else, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 14, 2014, 11:53:46 am

Quote from: Trif on May 14, 2014, 11:45:57 am

Wow, I just found this in the development page:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

(Cyan means it'll be in the next release.)

Toady said that there will be some new information pages, but he didn't announce this specific feature anywhere else, right?

At least, I don't recall him saying anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 14, 2014, 12:03:34 pm

That is pretty goddamn useful information indeed!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on May 14, 2014, 12:50:31 pm

Quote from: Trif on May 14, 2014, 11:45:57 am

Wow, I just found this in the development page:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

(Cyan means it'll be in the next release.)

Toady said that there will be some new information pages, but he didn't announce this specific feature anywhere else, right?

Will the ability mentioned here be affected at all by the adventurer's memory and/or observation skill? And if not, is it planned to eventually be?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 14, 2014, 01:16:12 pm

Lol, I think he read what we were talking about and realized 'whoop, gotta update that stuff'. I can tell because the last time I looked, one entry that's about creatures leaving trails wasn't blue (whiih is why i mentioned it earlier), and now it is.

I do notice that the one spot that mentions non-lethal combat isn't blue, or at least magenta. Then again, it seems to be in the context of capturing people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 14, 2014, 01:30:26 pm

Indeed, he did it recently. I didn't acessed it for a long time before some day ago, and now I had to hard refresh to see the changes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 14, 2014, 02:46:09 pm

So many blue and magenta things showing up ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 14, 2014, 03:12:07 pm

Toady One, I notice that on the dev list, you havent colored the entry for non-lethal combat blue, or at least purple, so I'm wondering what's up with that. Then again it seems to be in the context of capturing people rather than in general.

Not so much a question than wondering about it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on May 14, 2014, 03:51:38 pm

Is the green text officially meant to be for Toady? As in using it for other things in this thread isn't allowed or was it just done to make the posts stand out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 14, 2014, 03:54:46 pm

(re: dev list, I just skipped that whole capture section by mistake)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 14, 2014, 03:58:57 pm

Quote from: sal880612m on May 14, 2014, 03:51:38 pm

Is the green text officially meant to be for Toady? As in using it for other things in this thread isn't allowed or was it just done to make the posts stand out?

It's done to make our questions for Toady stand out so Toady can easily locate and answer them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Streeter on May 14, 2014, 08:21:27 pm

Thank you so much for updating that page! It'll probably help answer a lot of questions that would have otherwise been asked here.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on May 15, 2014, 08:44:08 am

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

Pokedex, Dwarf edition.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on May 15, 2014, 10:57:00 am

Quote from: Broken on May 15, 2014, 08:44:08 am

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

Pokedex, Dwarf edition.

I'm now picturing a dwarf in full steel armour, covered in blood, holding up the damn thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on May 15, 2014, 04:14:54 pm

Quote from: Henny on May 15, 2014, 10:57:00 am

Quote from: Broken on May 15, 2014, 08:44:08 am

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Being able to look at a list of all known creatures you've seen and where

Pokedex, Dwarf edition.

I'm now picturing a dwarf in full steel armour, covered in blood, holding up the damn thing.

"Crap I forget the type weakness this night creature had. Was it silver or copper?"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Streeter on May 15, 2014, 09:02:36 pm

Oh, I have a couple technical questions for you to answer when you're not slaving away to armok. I hope this isn't a repost.


In the upcoming version of DF, will you upgrade to the much improved yet backwards-incompatible SDL v2.0, or stick to what ain't broken? I seem to recall that SDL support was implemented by another person, so you might not be the right person to ask.

And, to what extent is DF hardware accelerated? Do physics simulations, such as water flowing down a river, take any benefits from GPGPU? I would imagine the parallelization that comes with it would be beneficial, but I don't know if the flow of water relies on ticks in the main loop or what. If nothing like this is implemented right now, do you think utilizing GPU Compute would be viable? Would it be something you'd even consider doing yourself, this project being a one-man-band and such?


And of course, thank you for your dedicated work!  ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainLambcake on May 15, 2014, 09:05:23 pm

Since there will now be the possibility of non-lethal fights, one assumes they'd also be present in Fortress mode.  How would this work if a goblin surrenders instead of fleeing?  Would the dwarf simply leave him, execute him, or could we somehow cage him to keep him as a prisoner? Thanks for your dedication to the project.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on May 15, 2014, 09:16:44 pm

Unless the state has changed since the last WoT on the subject, Toady has stated that Fortress mode combat is still no quarter. That means no surrender is accepted, basically.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on May 15, 2014, 09:35:34 pm

Quote from: Streeter on May 15, 2014, 09:02:36 pm

In the upcoming version of DF, will you upgrade to the much improved yet backwards-incompatible SDL v2.0, or stick to what ain't broken? I seem to recall that SDL support was implemented by another person, so you might not be the right person to ask.

And, to what extent is DF hardware accelerated? Do physics simulations, such as water flowing down a river, take any benefits from GPGPU? I would imagine the parallelization that comes with it would be beneficial, but I don't know if the flow of water relies on ticks in the main loop or what. If nothing like this is implemented right now, do you think utilizing GPU Compute would be viable? Would it be something you'd even consider doing yourself, this project being a one-man-band and such?

Toady has said before that he doesn't really understand the SDL code, and the collaboration was a bad experience.  On that basis the upgrade is not planned for any time soon, unfortunately. 

DF is almost entirely single-threaded (with minor exceptions), and there are no plans for multi-threading support in the foreseeable future.  There's an old joke: I had a problem, so I decided to use multithreading - I/four/Now/problems/have...

Basically, things which require painful rewrites are deferred in favor of adding (simulation) features - remember that DF is only about a third of the way towards a complete alpha version!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on May 15, 2014, 09:49:59 pm

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on May 15, 2014, 09:35:34 pm

Quote from: Streeter on May 15, 2014, 09:02:36 pm

In the upcoming version of DF, will you upgrade to the much improved yet backwards-incompatible SDL v2.0, or stick to what ain't broken? I seem to recall that SDL support was implemented by another person, so you might not be the right person to ask.

And, to what extent is DF hardware accelerated? Do physics simulations, such as water flowing down a river, take any benefits from GPGPU? I would imagine the parallelization that comes with it would be beneficial, but I don't know if the flow of water relies on ticks in the main loop or what. If nothing like this is implemented right now, do you think utilizing GPU Compute would be viable? Would it be something you'd even consider doing yourself, this project being a one-man-band and such?

Toady has said before that he doesn't really understand the SDL code, and the collaboration was a bad experience.  On that basis the upgrade is not planned for any time soon, unfortunately. 

DF is almost entirely single-threaded (with minor exceptions), and there are no plans for multi-threading support in the foreseeable future.  There's an old joke: I had a problem, so I decided to use multithreading - I/four/Now/problems/have...

Basically, things which require painful rewrites are deferred in favor of adding (simulation) features - remember that DF is only about a third of the way towards a complete alpha version!

I could have sworn that the collaboration went fine, but that nobody has heard from the collaborator in about 2 years and we are all just happy that the code he wrote and included works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 15, 2014, 10:23:33 pm

Yeah, IIRC they had a good working relationship, but Baughn went on to bigger and better things; not many potential collaborators can commit to the "twenty years or so" timeframe DF is scheduled for, which is among the reasons Toady doesn't collaborate much.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Streeter on May 15, 2014, 11:46:47 pm

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on May 15, 2014, 09:35:34 pm

the collaboration was a bad experience

I'm sorry to hear that.

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on May 15, 2014, 09:35:34 pm

DF is almost entirely single-threaded (with minor exceptions), and there are no plans for multi-threading support in the foreseeable future.  There's an old joke: I had a problem, so I decided to use multithreading - I/four/Now/problems/have...

...huh? I never mentioned anything about multi-threading. Concurrency is difficult and bug-prone, I'm talking about stream processing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Warmist on May 16, 2014, 02:38:42 am

Quote from: Rockphed on May 15, 2014, 09:49:59 pm

I could have sworn that the collaboration went fine, but that nobody has heard from the collaborator in about 2 years and we are all just happy that the code he wrote and included works.

He is reachable, i wrote to him and he answered. Also anyone can modify the graphics part as it's available online. Though not sure if toady would accept changes. One thing that is not finished is TTF support for opengl mode (afaik it is not implemented).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on May 16, 2014, 03:11:10 am

I should clarify - the output was fine and the code works, but Toady doesn't want to do it again (IIRC).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: fricy on May 16, 2014, 04:44:32 am

Quote from: Warmist on May 16, 2014, 02:38:42 am

Quote from: Rockphed on May 15, 2014, 09:49:59 pm

I could have sworn that the collaboration went fine, but that nobody has heard from the collaborator in about 2 years and we are all just happy that the code he wrote and included works.

He is reachable, i wrote to him and he answered. Also anyone can modify the graphics part as it's available online. Though not sure if toady would accept changes. One thing that is not finished is TTF support for opengl mode (afaik it is not implemented).

AFAIK Baughn's work has been rewritten from scratch by lnxt (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94528.msg4335709#msg4335709), TTF over opengl is implemented, but it's only working on linux at the moment, it needs Toady's support on other platforms.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on May 16, 2014, 08:31:54 am

What is SDL, anyway?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 16, 2014, 08:53:08 am

Quote from: Tawarochir on May 16, 2014, 08:31:54 am

What is SDL, anyway?

Simple DirectMedia Layer. It's a programming library designed to simplify the process of setting up a Direct3D or OpenGL-based program. Initializing such a program is a hassle because of the all the code you have to create for I/O and hardware detection, and SDL does all this for you in a neat little package.

http://www.libsdl.org/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on May 16, 2014, 09:05:33 am

Oooh, OK. Thanks!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on May 16, 2014, 04:34:03 pm

Quote from: Toady One on April 02, 2014, 03:19:49 pm

[SMELL_TRIGGER:50] how good is your nose?  low is better.  minimum 1, default is 50, humans set to 90 because they suck

What about elves, dwarves, &c?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 16, 2014, 04:40:58 pm

I'd assume elves have somewhere between 1 and 50 and dwarves probably around 50 (how do they work underground?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 16, 2014, 05:00:38 pm

Elves probably have keen smell or whatever, since they're all in-tune with nature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DogsRNice on May 16, 2014, 06:43:47 pm

so if you are able to lead/be part of a trade caravan how would this be controlled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 16, 2014, 11:54:16 pm

Quote from: DogsRNice on May 16, 2014, 06:43:47 pm

so if you are able to lead/be part of a trade caravan how would this be controlled?

It's not possible to do this yet, though I guess it's a legit question for future versions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on May 17, 2014, 06:36:17 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 16, 2014, 11:54:16 pm

Quote from: DogsRNice on May 16, 2014, 06:43:47 pm

so if you are able to lead/be part of a trade caravan how would this be controlled?

It's not possible to do this yet, though I guess it's a legit question for future versions.

At present you can lead a group of people across the map as a group.  You can, theoretically, tag along with caravans, though I don't know if they are among the groups that are now active.  All that remains for leading a caravan is having wagons and beasts to carry your goods.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on May 18, 2014, 07:39:28 am

Perhaps this has been answered already, but:

Will there be new mechanical devices in the upcoming update? I'm especially interesting in something to life things vertically, like an elevator, to complement the current minecarts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on May 18, 2014, 07:53:54 am

Quote from: Rockphed on May 17, 2014, 06:36:17 pm

-snip- I don't know if they are among the groups that are now active.  -snip-

I believe that they are yet still abstractions that just appear at your fortress with no regard for the outside world. I think Toady mentioned this in the last FotF update. I'll go check.

EDIT:
I was right.
In the answer to the first question of the previous update, he said:

"caravans still don't have an actual presence"

Which I assume means that they do not yet move across the map like armies, and cannot be found and followed by an adventurer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 18, 2014, 09:09:29 am

Quote from: Henny on May 18, 2014, 07:39:28 am

Perhaps this has been answered already, but:

Will there be new mechanical devices in the upcoming update? I'm especially interesting in something to life things vertically, like an elevator, to complement the current minecarts.

No, no new tech coming afaik.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 18, 2014, 11:03:42 am

Quote from: Henny on May 18, 2014, 07:39:28 am

Perhaps this has been answered already, but:

Will there be new mechanical devices in the upcoming update? I'm especially interesting in something to life things vertically, like an elevator, to complement the current minecarts.

Reworking and expanding the mechanical framework is planned for some future release. As with most things no known timeline for when though (ie some time in the next 1-20 years).

Lifts are specifically mentioned on the development page, so those are most likely to be included when we get it all at least.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Moving fortress sections (lifts, crushing traps, etc.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 19, 2014, 04:45:19 am

Just a quick question, how long did Two5Six last?
I'm not sure if I should be concerned over the lack of an update or realize that it wasn't a one-day-long thing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on May 19, 2014, 05:28:32 am

Quote

I had what I thought was a small problem with world gen forts occasionally being placed too deeply in the mountains, but it ended up being a more subtle mess with how the mid-level mountain maps are generated, so I had to add an extra check to read ahead how those maps would turn out... the mountain forts seem to all be placed in accessible places now.

Probably asked pages ago, I'll scan/review them, but.......

Does this meant there WON'T be inaccessible fortresses in the mountains, but that are accessible by underground tunnel/underworld, mining or flying mount routes (potentially in some cases), or was it just a bugfix for completely inaccessible forts by any land/underground/tunnel routes?

Because having forts show up on mountains that "We can't get to easily, neither can the rest of the world, but they still sustained themselves" is pretty damn dwarfy. I'd actually like to see a few as long as it's not crashy.

Even if there is no other route in but flying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sambojin on May 19, 2014, 05:41:55 am

Can we, or will we eventually be able to, strike the earth to find the hidden fortresses? And will they crack the shits at us for archaeologically ruining a masterwork engraved wall?

(it'll be archaeology the moment they're dead and we start pilfering stuff. Including the plump helmet booze)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 19, 2014, 12:01:23 pm

Quote from: sambojin on May 19, 2014, 05:41:55 am

Can we, or will we eventually be able to, strike the earth to find the hidden fortresses? And will they crack the shits at us for archaeologically ruining a masterwork engraved wall?

(it'll be archaeology the moment they're dead and we start pilfering stuff. Including the plump helmet booze)

In the rehashed, multicolored version of the dev goals it's stated that, over time, sites will be covered by avaliable layers of soil. Couple that with the (also planned) ability to mine, dig and breach things with adventurers, and you've got some gold. Now, cracking shits for uncovering fortresses is something that hasn't been discovered, not even the dwarven sense of "preserving the past" in a physical state.

Maybe that will have to do with ethics or, perhaps, stronger reasons, like not touching the ad-hoc tomb of an ancient demon.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 19, 2014, 03:59:45 pm

Would that burial take place over a real amount of time, our would sites become covered in a matter of mere centuries or decades? Because having it take a really long time would be cool.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on May 19, 2014, 04:14:45 pm

I'd kind of like to see both and have it be dependent on the surroundings. Quicker in a desert and other similar biomes but slower in others.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 19, 2014, 04:31:12 pm

Many of the naturally buried ruins we've found IRL have been in deserts (or places that have become deserts since the ruining). Though, for the most part archeological sites (not necessarily ruins) have been just the foundations of dismantled or destroyed buildings, which were pretty much underground to begin with. It would probably take a long time for the above-ground monuments/buildings of a dwarf fortress to be buried in most locations, but far less time for the entrance to the underground parts to be covered.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 19, 2014, 05:06:51 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 19, 2014, 04:31:12 pm

Many of the naturally buried ruins we've found IRL have been in deserts (or places that have become deserts since the ruining). Though, for the most part archeological sites (not necessarily ruins) have been just the foundations of dismantled or destroyed buildings, which were pretty much underground to begin with. It would probably take a long time for the above-ground monuments/buildings of a dwarf fortress to be buried in most locations, but far less time for the entrance to the underground parts to be covered.

This is the actual fragment from the Development Page (bold is mine, for ease):

Quote from: Development

• Adventure sites
  
  • Non-town sites need to created and used for various purposes in world generation (prisons, tombs, temples, mines, castles, etc.)
  • These places should often fall into disuse (or not be active entity pop locations, as with a tomb)
  • Old abandoned structures can be partially buried in available soil layers
  • Sites should contain any appropriate items to their (possibly former) purpose
  • World gen should utilize defunct sites and get them new inhabitants
  • (...)

And it goes on. It would make sense for these ruins to have vegetation around them; but for avaliable soil to partially cover them, landslides and high precipitation should be a must, also taking into account unrooting and overall absence of nearby trees. Being that dwarves 1. settle around mountains, 2. love to chop down all the local flora and 3. are prone to cave-ins and related accidents, it's far from unreasonable to have partially buried fortresses due to soil erosion and lack of terrain engineering over time.

We're talking about something projected into the far future, so it might sound suggestion-y. We'll need to hear about it from the Toad himself whenever the chance comes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 19, 2014, 05:17:04 pm

Seeing as dwarves like to build mostly underground anyway, they seem pretty predisposed for burial.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on May 19, 2014, 05:22:24 pm

I would assume dwarven sites wouldn't be the only ones that could become ruins though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 19, 2014, 05:26:04 pm

True, but as in real life I imagine it would take a very long time for most (non-desert) human structures to be buried naturally, barring massive disasters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on May 19, 2014, 05:29:45 pm

I think that sites getting covered by soil layers is something which will likely happen during world gen only. Although sites being destroyed/altered in different ways is already planned (i.e. by occupying civ or after other entities did a reclaim)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WoobMonkey on May 19, 2014, 06:07:13 pm

Does anyone know whether there will be any future use for barrels of blood, ichor, 'liquid,' and the like, that are available from caravans?

It would be pretty awesome to be able to give vampires an alternate, non-dwarf, food source.  Or at least to cook up some blood puddings and the like.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 19, 2014, 06:26:08 pm

Quote from: Bandreus on May 19, 2014, 05:29:45 pm

I think that sites getting covered by soil layers is something which will likely happen during world gen only. Although sites being destroyed/altered in different ways is already planned (i.e. by occupying civ or after other entities did a reclaim)

Well, the plan is to have everything historical in world gen still happen after world gen, so I doubt this will be left out. There are obviously some limitations to work out with how tiles work though, lest your whole embark is suddenly covered by a z-level of dirt during play or other similar issues.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 19, 2014, 07:09:00 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 19, 2014, 05:17:04 pm

Seeing as dwarves like to build mostly underground anyway, they seem pretty predisposed for burial.

Such is the fate for many a fortress, is it not?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on May 19, 2014, 10:17:08 pm

Quote from: Today's devlog

Things are generally moving forward at a wholesome speed as the two year release anniversary creeps closer.

Anyone else now thinking there'll be a release on June 4?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 19, 2014, 10:35:49 pm

I'm hoping June 2nd because birthday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on May 19, 2014, 11:30:11 pm

I have reached the point where I doubt it will happen before the 4th even if Toady has it all in order before then.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on May 19, 2014, 11:43:04 pm

I imagine even if a release is ready he'll try to release at an unexpected time to avoid the website crashes of yore.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 19, 2014, 11:54:40 pm

He's never released it at an expected time. He released it at the least expected time for 0.31.01, but panicking ensued despite that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 19, 2014, 11:57:33 pm

Welp, nice to be able to refresh the page and see a new devblog for once! :D
Also,

Quote

Things are generally moving forward at a wholesome speed as the two year release anniversary creeps closer.

*hype intensifies*
Are we in for a 2 years+ development cycle here? Maybe. Let's hope not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on May 20, 2014, 07:48:21 am

Looks like Toady and Threetoe left some exclusive information at Two5six:

Quote from: https://twitter.com/killscreen/status/467343845105995776

Get hype: after 13 years, Dwarf Fortress is roughly 38% done, according to its creators. #two5six

Version number 0.38.01 confirmed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 20, 2014, 09:45:13 am

/me fist pumps

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 20, 2014, 10:08:28 am

Quote from: Trif on May 20, 2014, 07:48:21 am

Looks like Toady and Threetoe left some exclusive information at Two5six:

Quote from: https://twitter.com/killscreen/status/467343845105995776

Get hype: after 13 years, Dwarf Fortress is roughly 38% done, according to its creators. #two5six

Version number 0.38.01 confirmed?

HYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYPE

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 20, 2014, 10:17:57 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 19, 2014, 05:26:04 pm

True, but as in real life I imagine it would take a very long time for most (non-desert) human structures to be buried naturally, barring massive disasters.

This is Dwarf Fortress.  Massive disasters are a regular occurrence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

(nothing exclusive -- what they didn't say is that I acknowledged at the event that people were trying to guess the release date and to avoid spoiling all the fun the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 20, 2014, 04:26:42 pm

banking on 0.33.01

(seriously though my 0.38 or 0.39 guess still stands)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on May 20, 2014, 04:37:54 pm

0.40.01

I said.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 20, 2014, 08:14:14 pm

0.38.01

He said in a recent interview that the game was 38% done.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 20, 2014, 08:15:27 pm

Quote from: thvaz on May 20, 2014, 08:14:14 pm

0.38.01

He said in a recent interview that the game was 38% done.

We're talking about this because 3 posts above you he said this:

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

(nothing exclusive -- what they didn't say is that I acknowledged at the event that people were trying to guess the release date and to avoid spoiling all the fun the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 20, 2014, 09:14:00 pm

Quote from: Putnam on May 20, 2014, 08:15:27 pm

Quote from: thvaz on May 20, 2014, 08:14:14 pm

0.38.01

He said in a recent interview that the game was 38% done.

We're talking about this because 3 posts above you he said this:

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

(nothing exclusive -- what they didn't say is that I acknowledged at the event that people were trying to guess the release date and to avoid spoiling all the fun the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!)

Ooh, I missed that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bandreus on May 20, 2014, 09:15:49 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

(nothing exclusive -- what they didn't say is that I acknowledged at the event that people were trying to guess the release date and to avoid spoiling all the fun the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!)

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 20, 2014, 10:28:54 pm

Quote from: Bandreus on May 20, 2014, 09:15:49 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

(nothing exclusive -- what they didn't say is that I acknowledged at the event that people were trying to guess the release date and to avoid spoiling all the fun the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!)

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

the 38% figure was very approximate...  it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

Quote from: Toady One on May 20, 2014, 03:48:34 pm

it could be anything!

[POSSIBILITY INTENSIFIES]

No but seriously, Toady, do you think that the later (laaaater) versions of DF will have built in GUIs with similar form and function to (for example) DTherapist and StoneSense?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 20, 2014, 10:43:50 pm

At least things like DT and StoneSense point towards methods that work.

Who knows, he might be able to incorporate a variant of it (without some of the bells and whistles probably) into the game itself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 21, 2014, 11:10:20 am

Just remember that the case will likely be that it will be up to whoever Toady trusts with the graphical and UI code if he thinks such a major overhaul is next in the list. IIRC Toady really doesn't like messing with that part of the code, and it was someone other than him that moved DF over to SDL.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Da Vinci on May 21, 2014, 07:43:10 pm

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-05-21

It's a continuing process as usual. more climbing tweaks, culminating with the new debug button to place all of the dwarves in the fortress up in the tree tops and see if they can make their way down. That all seemed to work, so hopefully there won't be too much stranding upon the release.
...

Why did the dwarves make their way down from the treetops? Did any fail their climb checks and fall down to the ground, if that happens?

Under what non-combat situations will units climb?

Will dwarves stuck in holes try to climb out now?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 21, 2014, 10:54:15 pm

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci on May 21, 2014, 07:43:10 pm

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/#2014-05-21

It's a continuing process as usual. more climbing tweaks, culminating with the new debug button to place all of the dwarves in the fortress up in the tree tops and see if they can make their way down. That all seemed to work, so hopefully there won't be too much stranding upon the release.
...

Why did the dwarves make their way down from the treetops? Did any fail their climb checks and fall down to the ground, if that happens?

Under what non-combat situations will units climb?

Will dwarves stuck in holes try to climb out now?

I can think of a dozen reasons why they would make their way back down from the treetops.

In addition to Urist Da Vincis questions:

Will dwarves climb down if they manage to get themselves stuck on a wall which has no access down?

Quote from: 5/21 devlog

I ended up needing a preliminary conflict state "encounter" to handle some wilderness animal interruption issues. It doesn't do much at the moment aside from manage job cancellation issues, but I imagine it'll be the foundation for things like threat displays etc. later.

 What do you mean by threat displays here? Like what frilled lizards do for example?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 22, 2014, 07:47:13 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 21, 2014, 10:54:15 pm

Quote from: 5/21 devlog

I ended up needing a preliminary conflict state "encounter" to handle some wilderness animal interruption issues. It doesn't do much at the moment aside from manage job cancellation issues, but I imagine it'll be the foundation for things like threat displays etc. later.

 What do you mean by threat displays here? Like what frilled lizards do for example?

I can't think of anything else that Toady could reasonably mean here. It pretty much has to be that kind of display.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 22, 2014, 08:11:21 am

Yeah I'm basically wondering if that's what he means.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on May 22, 2014, 09:29:16 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on May 22, 2014, 07:47:13 am

Quote from: smjjames on May 21, 2014, 10:54:15 pm

Quote from: 5/21 devlog

I ended up needing a preliminary conflict state "encounter" to handle some wilderness animal interruption issues. It doesn't do much at the moment aside from manage job cancellation issues, but I imagine it'll be the foundation for things like threat displays etc. later.

 What do you mean by threat displays here? Like what frilled lizards do for example?

I can't think of anything else that Toady could reasonably mean here. It pretty much has to be that kind of display.

I know Toady said that this change wasn't that much significant by now, but if "manage job cancellation issues" means what I think it means, maybe our dwarves won't stop their lives when there's a snake wandering down inside a nearby, unreachable hole... Also, threat displays, I can only think of building "fear-inducing turrets" around this concept, with horrible beasts with their cages facing outwards, deterring potential interlopers.

Does this "cultural identity" affects directly which kind of management choices (e.g buildings, infraestructure, mining preferences) and conflicts involve these dwarves? Or is just for flavor measures and choosing the kind of engravings they might tend to carve?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on May 22, 2014, 10:09:15 am

Has jumping been tested on NPCs yet? Sometimes it's easier and quicker to jump down instead of climbing...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on May 22, 2014, 11:28:38 am

Will dwarf fortress have seamless terrain? Like,if you walk to the west long enough,and swim across the seas,you will end up back where you started? The map would not need to be mapped on a sphere.Just a seamless texture.It would add very much to the immersion.

and

Also,will the NPC-s stop being psychic in this update? It seems so very unlikely that the villagers and kings know about EVERY minor bandit and night creature.

as well as

Also,cave entrances? So far they have been holes on top of hills. I suggest having more,more NATURAL cave entrances,in locations other than the top of a hill,and less random holes in the ground,and more holes in the ground inside a CAVE,for the night creatures to live in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 22, 2014, 11:51:00 am

Quote from: magmaholic on May 22, 2014, 11:28:38 am

Will dwarf fortress have seamless terrain? Like,if you walk to the west long enough,and swim across the seas,you will end up back where you started? The map would not need to be mapped on a sphere.Just a seamless texture.It would add very much to the immersion.

and

Also,will the NPC-s stop being psychic in this update? It seems so very unlikely that the villagers and kings know about EVERY minor bandit and night creature.

as well as

Also,cave entrances? So far they have been holes on top of hills. I suggest having more,more NATURAL cave entrances,in locations other than the top of a hill,and less random holes in the ground,and more holes in the ground inside a CAVE,for the night creatures to live in.

This thread is for questions, not suggestions (or suggestions disguised as questions). None of the things you asked will be on the next update, but npcs won't know the exact localization of quest targets.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 22, 2014, 11:51:16 am

Quote from: magmaholic on May 22, 2014, 11:28:38 am

Will dwarf fortress have seamless terrain? Like,if you walk to the west long enough,and swim across the seas,you will end up back where you started? The map would not need to be mapped on a sphere.Just a seamless texture.It would add very much to the immersion.

and

Also,will the NPC-s stop being psychic in this update? It seems so very unlikely that the villagers and kings know about EVERY minor bandit and night creature.

as well as

Also,cave entrances? So far they have been holes on top of hills. I suggest having more,more NATURAL cave entrances,in locations other than the top of a hill,and less random holes in the ground,and more holes in the ground inside a CAVE,for the night creatures to live in.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Right now the edges just have this invisible barrier, but migrant groups and certain foreign materials can come in off the edges depending on the version you're playing; it's just not really well defined right now, what the world is. But it would be easy to make a torus or a cylinder, or to fudge a sphere with the proper edge behaviour, like something going off the top edge and then coming half way over on the other top edge. I don't remember if you actually get a sphere from that or some kind of weird projected space, but it's close enough. So we'll probably mess around with that later on ...

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   [1f]Concerning cave entrances like for the megabeasts - I just know this from adventure mode - when you're sent to go kill a dragon or something you go to the area where the cave is and the entrance is just like a hole in the ground, is that going to be changed eventually/soon? Where it's like it's actually a cave? I mean I'm sure it's going to be eventually ...
Toady:   When cliffs come back - when we get a notion of a cliff as an external feature - the problem with cliffs coming back was that you didn't have a way to climb, they were everywhere and you didn't have a way to climb in adventure mode. But cliffs can start to come back first probably as external features, just like the lava and so on, like lava and bottomless pits used to be these features underground, there are going to be special features above ground where you have a bit more interesting things that it also can have a handle on so it doesn't just put them everywhere and at that time you can start to think about a cave entrance that looks more interesting. The problem was that there's no real sheer faces to make a cave entrance look more like you'd expect a cave entrance to look like, so it just has to dig down, right? It has to dig in the dirt until it gets a cave entrance for you, which is really disappointing because you go and they all look like these little pits. So it's something we want to change but it's something that has an intermediate step that needs to go in first and I'm not sure when the aboveground thing ... when we put in things like canyons and mesas and other interesting constructions aboveground.

That should answer your first and third question at least, no idea on the second one though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 24, 2014, 05:12:05 am

While you wait, here, have something I dreamt about today.

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 24, 2014, 03:16:25 am

DF2014 dreams keep coming back!

[...]

The DF part was about Toady posting a devlog in which he mentioned that people have to take a shot of beer a day if he doesn't release the new version before the 28th of May, whiskey if it's not out by the 4th of June and whatever else afterwards.

[...]
Still, that's another DF2014 dream. Too bad I'm not legal to participate in Toady's drinking game, but I don't like alcohol anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 24, 2014, 05:14:23 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 24, 2014, 05:12:05 am

While you wait, here, have something I dreamt about today.

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 24, 2014, 03:16:25 am

DF2014 dreams keep coming back!

[...]

The DF part was about Toady posting a devlog in which he mentioned that people have to take a shot of beer a day if he doesn't release the new version before the 28th of May, whiskey if it's not out by the 4th of June and whatever else afterwards.

[...]
Still, that's another DF2014 dream. Too bad I'm not legal to participate in Toady's drinking game, but I don't like alcohol anyway.

((Seven dreams? You're catching up :P)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 24, 2014, 05:41:16 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on May 24, 2014, 05:14:23 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 24, 2014, 05:12:05 am

While you wait, here, have something I dreamt about today.

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 24, 2014, 03:16:25 am

DF2014 dreams keep coming back!

[...]

The DF part was about Toady posting a devlog in which he mentioned that people have to take a shot of beer a day if he doesn't release the new version before the 28th of May, whiskey if it's not out by the 4th of June and whatever else afterwards.

[...]
Still, that's another DF2014 dream. Too bad I'm not legal to participate in Toady's drinking game, but I don't like alcohol anyway.

((Seven dreams? You're catching up :P)

It's still a lot more than most people on the forums who probably haven't dreamt about it once.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 24, 2014, 01:38:32 pm

Never dreamed about it once. Not asleep anyway. My mid June release guessing and hunch seems to be holding pretty well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on May 24, 2014, 04:46:50 pm

I remembered having a dream about settling an outpost on a glacier once, and one where I'm playing adventurer mode as a dwarven wizard in the island of Uristlantis.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 24, 2014, 05:51:50 pm

I once had a dream in a DF-like format, but not with dwarves. It was a sci-fi setting with human scientists in an underground complex. Bits were in ASCII and menus. I ended up raising the temperature in the hydroponic farms. (This was before RimWorld existed, if anyone's wondering.) Next thing I know, the crops overgrow into a tropical jungle and the humans devolve into little monkey people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on May 24, 2014, 09:27:38 pm

In relation to the new devlog:

The "work animals get appointed to positions" bug sounds interesting.  Having a horse given a position of power by an insane ruler is a trope with some basis in reality. I'm almost sad that toady caught it before the release.

Was the king who appointed the yak as general insane?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 24, 2014, 09:34:14 pm

Does the liaison bug patch also fix the bug where other historical figures are similarly "fired" when they arrive and than leave your map area (Human diplomats, generals, etc.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 24, 2014, 09:59:19 pm

Quote from: 5/24 devlog

Toady One The highlight of the last few bug-fixer sessions was definitely yesterday, when the king of my dwarves appointed a visiting merchant's yak as the general of the army while I was trading.

lol! This sort of reminds me of when Caligula made his favorite horse a consul. Though this one was much more random, it's the same kind of crazy.

Quote from: Rockphed on May 24, 2014, 09:27:38 pm

In relation to the new devlog:

The "work animals get appointed to positions" bug sounds interesting.  Having a horse given a position of power by an insane ruler is a trope with some basis in reality. I'm almost sad that toady caught it before the release.

Was the king who appointed the yak as general insane?

Except that it wasn't some random horse, it was Caligulas favorite horse. This sounds like it'd be a fun little feature, as long as it doesn't completely screw everything up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 24, 2014, 10:35:17 pm

I have to ask... Was the yak a competent general?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 25, 2014, 03:40:22 am

That's no bug, Toady, that's an unintended feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on May 25, 2014, 03:55:01 am

Hm.. What if an insane king could appoint something based on what he likes?

Like his wife dies, he has to kill his best friend and such, but he survives, mentally insane. He also likes cats, so he appoints his pet cat as General?

Sounds like a feature to me, with minor shaping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 25, 2014, 04:37:25 am

Quote from: Wimopy on May 25, 2014, 03:55:01 am

Hm.. What if an insane king could appoint something based on what he likes?

Like his wife dies, he has to kill his best friend and such, but he survives, mentally insane. He also likes cats, so he appoints his pet cat as General?

Sounds like a feature to me, with minor shaping.

Or maybe a monarch could appoint any deities they believe in to positions of power. Or demon lords could give positions to other demons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on May 25, 2014, 05:24:29 am

“Trade liaison Urist, is there anything the Mountain Homes need from us?” - “Neigh!”

Quote from: Rockphed on May 24, 2014, 09:27:38 pm

Was the king who appointed the yak as general insane?

No. For one, insanity as it currently exists strips away noble titles, and I'm quite certain that hasn't changed. For two, interesting insanity and insane decisions as those simply don't exist in the game yet.

Quote from: Witty on May 24, 2014, 09:34:14 pm

Does the liaison bug patch also fix the bug where other historical figures are similarly "fired" when they arrive and than leave your map area (Human diplomats, generals, etc.)

I'd be surprised if it didn't fix those. I'd expect the same, now changed code, to be responsible. But I guess you never know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 25, 2014, 06:52:38 am

It did seemed like a feature. Of course it need to be shaped so only truly insane characters do that, and as pointed out that kind of insane is no in the game yet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EmeraldWind on May 25, 2014, 08:13:14 am

Now that the same liaison will visit your fort will it be possible for some of the fort dwarves to eventually become friends with the liaison or are the liaison meetings considered strictly business?

I ask because since the liaison has contact with the same dwarf I'm curious if a friendship might build, but then again the meetings might not allow for the friendship to build.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on May 25, 2014, 08:39:51 am

What would be more interesting is if you could infect the liaison with a syndrome. How would he react if you modded in snakes that caused vampirism and had one of them bite him? Is he going to continue being your liaison but return with a few hair and teeth from his victims next year? Would he spontaneously change his name during the meeting?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 25, 2014, 08:57:36 am

Quote from: EmeraldWind on May 25, 2014, 08:13:14 am

Now that the same liaison will visit your fort will it be possible for some of the fort dwarves to eventually become friends with the liaison or are the liaison meetings considered strictly business?

I ask because since the liaison has contact with the same dwarf I'm curious if a friendship might build, but then again the meetings might not allow for the friendship to build.

Since the liasons don't show up as passing accquantiances, I'm guessing strictly business.

You do have a point though that a relationship between your dwarves and the liason would build up over time, even if things are strictly business.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 25, 2014, 09:13:20 am

Quote from: Parisbre56 on May 25, 2014, 08:39:51 am

What would be more interesting is if you could infect the liaison with a syndrome. How would he react if you modded in snakes that caused vampirism and had one of them bite him? Is he going to continue being your liaison but return with a few hair and teeth from his victims next year? Would he spontaneously change his name during the meeting?

Toady already said that night creature stuff isn't going to continue post worldgen for this release. I'd imagine the syndrome just wouldn't be tracked once s/he leaves your embark site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Glatux on May 25, 2014, 09:59:34 am

Will dwarf be able to farm(grow and harvest) tree(for mass charcoal production) or farm fruit tree ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 25, 2014, 11:38:01 am

Quote from: Glatux on May 25, 2014, 09:59:34 am

Will dwarf be able to farm(grow and harvest) tree(for mass charcoal production) or farm fruit tree ?

I believe it was stated that we wouldn't be able to plant/farm trees yet, since proper propagation through seeds wasn't finished.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: BenLubar on May 25, 2014, 01:22:20 pm

Has there been anything that could have changed the stability of renderers other than PRINT_MODE:2D between 0.34.11 and DF2014?

2D is really stable (I don't think I've ever crashed while using it when I wasn't spawning thousands of creatures or messing with dfhack scripts) but STANDARD and VBO and FRAMEBUFFER feel faster/smoother. My frame rate stays around 48-50 (with a cap of 50) with any renderer, so I don't know what's doing that.

TEXT is also useful when I want to play Dwarf Fortress on a machine that has an SSH client and an ARM processor, but some key combinations don't work (specifically, anything involving arrow keys with modifiers and pretty much anything with alt). I'm not sure if that's my SSH client, /usr/bin/screen, or Dwarf_Fortress, but it's quite annoying.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on May 25, 2014, 11:25:30 pm

Will the ability of switching weapons in adventure mod be added into this version? Just dropping weapons that are in your hand instead of sheathing them can be tedious sometimes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 26, 2014, 12:38:18 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on May 25, 2014, 11:25:30 pm

Will the ability of switching weapons in adventure mod be added into this version? Just dropping weapons that are in your hand instead of sheathing them can be tedious sometimes.

I think he said there was sheathing weapons this release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dorf on May 26, 2014, 02:58:16 am

Regarding sheathing:

Quote from: Toady One on November 14, 2012, 05:13:11 am

Quote from: Yoink

Toady, if this is to be the release with non-lethal combat, do you have any plans for 'sheath' items for weapons? Since drawing a weapon will escalate a fight to lethal stakes.

I haven't done the items yet.  For now I've just added a fast "strap" option that lets you put your items away and take them out with one keypress.  Later it'll be tied to objects.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ubiq on May 26, 2014, 04:04:52 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on May 25, 2014, 03:40:22 am

That's no bug, Toady, that's an unintended feature.

As somebody who is all too familiar with ninja yaks in adventure mode, I agree; that king just knows a ruthless murder machine when he sees one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on May 26, 2014, 07:39:31 am

When you retire a dwarf site (or if you mod other playable races) will the AI setup patrols around the site using civilians or military you chose? and/or will the existing barracks, routes and military status of dwarves be respected? (on that note will designated meeting areas or bedrooms etc be respected?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 27, 2014, 06:32:58 am

Quote from: magmaholic on May 22, 2014, 11:28:38 am

Will dwarf fortress have seamless terrain? Like,if you walk to the west long enough,and swim across the seas,you will end up back where you started? The map would not need to be mapped on a sphere.Just a seamless texture.It would add very much to the immersion.

Following on from the earlier reply, it's a difficult problem in general to map a spherical world using a square grid, because of the non-Euclidian nature of sphere geometry.

If you are at any point on the Earth* and you travel a mile north, then a mile east, then a mile south, then a mile west, you will not be in the same position you started. Close to the equator and the difference is small enough in the human/dwarf scale that it can be fudged, but as you move towards either pole and it becomes so pronounced that a square grid starts to either be stupidly unrealistic or becomes confusing to a player/navigator.

The standard game solutions are either to use a toroidal (do[ugh]nut shaped) universe, where you go off the left of the map and appear at the right, and going off the top of the map you appear at the bottom, or you make the poles impassable and then reduce the problem to mapping a cylinder, which is much easier. A more 'sphere-like' effect can be done by mapping the world as a 20-triangular-sided icosahedron**, but then you need to map fundamentally as hexagons, with 20 pentagons dotted around the globe that really screw things up - very hard to map to a grid, but a good way if you have a 3D graphic engine. Toady's other option, where travelling north off the polar edge of a cylindrical world leaves the player travelling south at a point 180 degrees of longitude away, is liable to leave players very confused if there is any kind of in-game compass which would suddenly switch direction - although in theory this would happen on Earth when you travelled over the magnetic pole.

The problem boils down to the fact that at some point with any spherical model, you will have grid squares that behave very weirdly, so in a game the idea is to hide these weird squares from the player so that they don't detract from the experience. The 'impassable poles' cylinder is quite a sufficient model*** for most games (Sid Meier has done OK so far...) especially in a game where 99.99% of the world's inhabitants would die at that sort of exposure. Of course, in a fantasy realm, where magical heating/protection is available, you need something else - quite often the north and south poles are the locations of the homes of the gods (good and evil opposites perhaps) where mortals can be dealt with quickly......

Sorry to be so off-topic for the FotF thread, just wanted to pontificate on a favourite subject!

* other than half a mile south of the equator, or some specific latitudes near the poles

** or if you're really clever, a multiply-stellated icosahedron

*** in DF, because the grid mechanism is largely forced on the game by the choice of graphical engine, a really good compromise is to use an impassable poles cylinder and fractional time, then either make east-west movement take less time (by a factor of the cosine of the latitude) or additionally make the north-south grid similarly compressed to avoid confusing the player. So moving 1 square would take say 1.00 seconds at the equator, but 0.71 seconds at the 45th parallel. Since the player is essentially limited to walking speed for large-scale movement, the change in the compression effect wouldn't be noticable during gameplay.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on May 27, 2014, 06:55:21 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 27, 2014, 06:32:58 am

Quote from: magmaholic on May 22, 2014, 11:28:38 am

Will dwarf fortress have seamless terrain? Like,if you walk to the west long enough,and swim across the seas,you will end up back where you started? The map would not need to be mapped on a sphere.Just a seamless texture.It would add very much to the immersion.

Following on from the earlier reply, it's a difficult problem in general to map a spherical world using a square grid, because of the non-Euclidian nature of sphere geometry.

<snip interesting topology / geometry>

My favored mechanism would just be to reject the idea that our square world must map onto a sphere:  model the world as a 2-manifold or torus, and forget about the embedding.  Simply wrap around at the edges. 

It keeps the terrain generation scaled nicely regardless of location, and all you have to worry about is the way you smooth the fractal generation together to hid where the edges were - which iterating a few times while varying the location of the 'edges' can probably take care of.  In a universe with all the !!stuff!! deep down, where both the skies and the depths only extend a discoverable distance, we already accept that we're in a locally acceptable model rather than a macro-realistic cosmology.  This avoids any issues with map edges or odd distortions, and path-wise the topology is only different from a sphere if you're walking some truly odd spirals (because you can technically manage an area-filling straight line rather than just a circumference without crossing your own path). 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 27, 2014, 09:02:15 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 27, 2014, 06:32:58 am

A more 'sphere-like' effect can be done by mapping the world as a 20-triangular-sided icosahedron**, but then you need to map fundamentally as hexagons, with 20 pentagons dotted around the globe that really screw things up - very hard to map to a grid, but a good way if you have a 3D graphic engine.

Good points about the trade-offs that mapmakers have faced for centuries, but one quibble: If you go with the 20 triangles, there is no need to include pentagonal faces.  Pentagons show up in a truncated icosahedron (soccer ball).  If you are willing to keep the player away from the 12 corners, a hex map built on underlying triangles is quite serviceable.

(http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/Img/Z1/mp2_IcoSnyder-s82.45-z-41.1.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 27, 2014, 09:16:36 am

This all assumes that the in-game worlds are an entire planet, which absolutely nothing in the game hints at (all of the worlds are called "regions" or "islands" in worldgen, meaning small parts of a larger world).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on May 27, 2014, 09:19:42 am

Nothing in the game alludes to the world even being a planet. The entire thing could be a continuous plane with a levitating, rotating object in the sky, with one half on fire.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on May 27, 2014, 09:25:25 am

I quoted part of this earlier, but with how the discussion evolved the whole part might be appreciated as well for those've missed it :P

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_combined_transcript.html

Capntastic:   What is the cosmology of the dwarven world; is it heliocentric?
Toady:   So right now there is a sun that sets on one side and rises on the other side; I think it determines that at random, although those words depend on the sun and magnetism, so maybe that's meaningless, and there's also a moon. But we don't really have anything decided for those. What will probably end up happening further along is that you'll have the creation tale, there are several civilizations with different sets of gods, so I'm not really sure who's going to be right, or if's all going to be different sides of the same multi-sided coin, the same polyhedron or whatever, but it's probably going to be one of those things that's easily randomized and so it will be randomly decided what the deal is there. And that could also, with a little bit of work, have to do with the shape of the ... not just what is orbiting what, if anything's orbiting anything, rather than being dragged along in chariots and stuff, but also what the shape of the world is; how the edges work. Right now the edges just have this invisible barrier, but migrant groups and certain foreign materials can come in off the edges depending on the version you're playing; it's just not really well defined right now, what the world is. But it would be easy to make a torus or a cylinder, or to fudge a sphere with the proper edge behaviour, like something going off the top edge and then coming half way over on the other top edge. I don't remember if you actually get a sphere from that or some kind of weird projected space, but it's close enough. So we'll probably mess around with that later on ... the myth stuff might come sooner rather than later, just because I really want to mess around with that stuff, it's a lot of fun to do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 27, 2014, 09:32:00 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 27, 2014, 09:16:36 am

This all assumes that the in-game worlds are an entire planet, which absolutely nothing in the game hints at (all of the worlds are called "regions" or "islands" in worldgen, meaning small parts of a larger world).

That's true for now; I envision a region as being a bit less than a quadrant of the globe.  Round worlds are already a planned feature (as quoted by Manveru), and planes of existence are going to cause geometric headaches anyway.

Can't wait to build a fortress that extends into the fevered Dream World of an irrational noble, where all of the furniture is made of impossible materials...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on May 27, 2014, 10:26:25 am

Quote from: Dirst on May 27, 2014, 09:02:15 am

...one quibble: If you go with the 20 triangles, there is no need to include pentagonal faces.  Pentagons show up in a truncated icosahedron (soccer ball).  If you are willing to keep the player away from the 12 corners, a hex map built on underlying triangles is quite serviceable.

To keep nice 'cells' for the gameplay I would take the dual of a massively stellated icosahedron such as your map*, so that there would be a large number of hexagons and twenty pentagons. My background is in doing this stuff for paper-based RPGs, and in my experience, people don't like playing on a triangular grid.

Of course, in the modern 3D graphics world triangular meshes are all the rage, but it wasn't always so, and unless you're allowing fraction movement across the mesh, then it's very limiting to the player to only go in three directions.

* as near as makes no difference!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 27, 2014, 10:40:06 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on May 27, 2014, 10:26:25 am

My background is in doing this stuff for paper-based RPGs, and in my experience, people don't like playing on a triangular grid.

Of course, in the modern 3D graphics world triangular meshes are all the rage, but it wasn't always so, and unless you're allowing fraction movement across the mesh, then it's very limiting to the player to only go in three directions.

That's why I said a hex map based on the underlying triangles.  Unfortunately, people like to see 90-degree corners, which requires subdividing the triangles as well (each wall surface is either at a triangle edge or bisecting a triangle) or giving up on smooth even walls (as those hippie Elves would like us to do).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: magmaholic on May 27, 2014, 12:18:30 pm

Quote from: Dirst on May 27, 2014, 09:32:00 am

Quote from: Putnam on May 27, 2014, 09:16:36 am

This all assumes that the in-game worlds are an entire planet, which absolutely nothing in the game hints at (all of the worlds are called "regions" or "islands" in worldgen, meaning small parts of a larger world).

That's true for now; I envision a region as being a bit less than a quadrant of the globe.  Round worlds are already a planned feature (as quoted by Manveru), and planes of existence are going to cause geometric headaches anyway.

Can't wait to build a fortress that extends into the fevered Dream World of an irrational noble, where all of the furniture is made of impossible materials...

how about non-euclidean geometry?
It would enable things like this:(http://mcjirckedys-geometry.wikispaces.com/file/view/2000px-Impossible_staircase.svg_.png/288267656/401x298/2000px-Impossible_staircase.svg_.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bronze Dog on May 27, 2014, 01:33:21 pm

I say we make a klein bottle planet.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on May 27, 2014, 08:04:38 pm

I really hope it is a torus planet.

I do as many people want something wrong, while at the same time want things to be as stereotypical fantasy as possible, which is why I like to make things the opposite of what they want.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 27, 2014, 08:32:33 pm

Or, in the future, many different shapes will be possible?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 27, 2014, 11:59:21 pm

Square grids in the center and a "circle" as top and bottom would do.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Skuggen on May 28, 2014, 04:17:22 am

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on May 28, 2014, 08:48:04 am

thought of a bit of an extension to our previous question:
when retiring a fort, will AI dwarves mess with lever status at all?  if you have a drawbridge say that controls the only entrance to your fort and leave it closed when you retire will the dwarves lower it when you're gone? (and if they don't will the game recognize that the fortress is inaccesible while it's abstracted?)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sizik on May 28, 2014, 09:41:09 am

Quote from: Skuggen on May 28, 2014, 04:17:22 am

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

Ever look at the South Pole in Google Earth?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 10:00:23 am

To be done with it, I imagine it like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://s29.postimg.org/3jrrxfhtz/DF_whole_world_map.png)

Sorry if it's really crude, I literally made it in less than a minute with crayons and paint.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 28, 2014, 10:06:01 am

Quote from: Skuggen on May 28, 2014, 04:17:22 am

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

The Eternal Dimensions
This is a randomly generated medium world.  All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality.  It is studded with necromancer towers and encircled with biomes of terrifying glacier and mirthful jungle.  This object menaces with spikes of adamantine.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is being flooded with magma.  One the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is succumbing to a goblin siege.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is collapsing due to poorly planned mining.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is overrun with elephants.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is being flooded with water.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is suffering a tantrum spiral.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is succumbing to a forgotten beast attack.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is ...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 10:09:20 am

... making industrial quantities of cheese.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on May 28, 2014, 03:02:35 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 10:00:23 am

To be done with it, I imagine it like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://s29.postimg.org/3jrrxfhtz/DF_whole_world_map.png)

Sorry if it's really crude, I literally made it in less than a minute with crayons and paint.

This is how I'd try to map DF worlds. A cylinder with circular caps on the ends with multiple regions using the surface area of the cylinder. Simple enough, the height and diameter of the cylinder would depend on the region size generated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 28, 2014, 07:31:39 pm

One problem I see with curvature expressing maps, is that currently even a large map is only about the size of New Zealand. It's not actually near the size of the earth or even the moon. The map would need to be much larger, and probably use 64 bit addressing before it would be realistic to make it curve into itself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 07:43:43 pm

Nah, I mean, yeah, but are we really in need of such huge map? Or perhaps can be made in pieces and only completely load one region, like if you are in Europe it only loads that continent. Like currently loads sites. I don't really know...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spinning Welshman on May 28, 2014, 09:12:53 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 07:43:43 pm

Nah, I mean, yeah, but are we really in need of such huge map? Or perhaps can be made in pieces and only completely load one region, like if you are in Europe it only loads that continent. Like currently loads sites. I don't really know...

The issue with that is that while it only "loads" the local area (in the case of fortresses) or the local region (in the case of your idea) the rest is still loaded abstractly for the purposes of history progression. Toady wants the world to progress as you progress, and having regions offloaded would prevent that (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Bortness on May 29, 2014, 02:28:12 pm

Quote from: Spinning Welshman on May 28, 2014, 09:12:53 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on May 28, 2014, 07:43:43 pm

Nah, I mean, yeah, but are we really in need of such huge map? Or perhaps can be made in pieces and only completely load one region, like if you are in Europe it only loads that continent. Like currently loads sites. I don't really know...

The issue with that is that while it only "loads" the local area (in the case of fortresses) or the local region (in the case of your idea) the rest is still loaded abstractly for the purposes of history progression. Toady wants the world to progress as you progress, and having regions offloaded would prevent that (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong)

It would only prevent that from happening in real-time, which frankly is probably not desirable anyways due to frame rate concerns.  You got frame rate problems already with one (large) single-site fort?  Imagine the lag if you're processing the ENTIRE WORLD every single frame.

The obvious solution is to do live updates only in the local area (as it is now), and every 20 minutes or so, intentionally hang on a frame for 30 seconds or a minute while the rest of the world updates and "catches up" to your current timebase.

It's kinda complicated, but it's a solution that works in all situations - allows the world to stay current with your actual player maneuvers, and also avoids annihilating the gameplay frame rate.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 29, 2014, 03:28:39 pm

A whole year of worldgen takes 20 minutes worst case. I don't think updating the world once every 1200 ticks will be too problematic.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: neblime on May 29, 2014, 07:12:29 pm

what do you do to make it take 20 minutes 0_o
even on a large world with 1k years of history I would say I barely get up to 1 minute per year

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on May 29, 2014, 07:20:55 pm

The progress of off loaded sites is already implemented for the next release. Toady has said it is not a heavy FPS load in either play mode. It does use some of the same machinery as world gen itself, but in some way it is necessarily more detailed.

A larger map would indeed mean a higher FPS load, in part due to having more sites and events in the world, and in part because of less efficient caching. But maybe that increase would not be that high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 29, 2014, 08:53:20 pm

Quote from: neblime on May 29, 2014, 07:12:29 pm

what do you do to make it take 20 minutes 0_o

Have the kind of toaster computer I haven't had for years, I imagine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on May 29, 2014, 09:23:07 pm

On the biggest world with max civs, with nothing but livable land (teensy tiny oceans and smaller mountain ranges) and a ridiculous number of secrets, megabeasts, demons, etc, with cull history turned OFF, and 300 Z levels per layer or some such nonsense, with Masterwork Mod so there's like 300x the number of creatures and stuff, on an old old computer.

That's probably how you make it take 20 minutes a year. Just keep on piling up extra complexities until your computer overheats.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on May 30, 2014, 04:24:11 pm

I for one wonder...
How huge is the changelog gonna be?

Because I can't imagine it being something for a quick at-school read...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on May 30, 2014, 06:12:10 pm

Well i heard it will rival the bible in length and content.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 30, 2014, 06:14:49 pm

Well, there used to be a very well organized googledoc with most of the coming features, but it has since been deleted.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 30, 2014, 06:33:03 pm

Quote from: Witty on May 30, 2014, 06:14:49 pm

Well, there used to be a very well organized googledoc with most of the coming features, but it has since been deleted.

Wherever did you get that idea? (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vgy5h5tmWFZLqCJMYd1cbGG67SUCSIn30Y--DNymzdg/edit?pli=1)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 30, 2014, 06:47:44 pm

That document is completely blank, on my end at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on May 30, 2014, 06:50:35 pm

Quote from: Witty on May 30, 2014, 06:47:44 pm

That document is completely blank, on my end at least.

Don't exaggerate.  The document contains 11 carriage returns.

But otherwise it's blank.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 30, 2014, 07:22:57 pm

Quote from: Witty on May 30, 2014, 06:47:44 pm

That document is completely blank, on my end at least.

It's blank for me as well, I wonder what happened to it?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on May 30, 2014, 07:30:06 pm

Because the update it's so mind boggling that us, mere mortals can't even begin to comprehend it's deepness and importance, a thousand suns would be born and die in the time needed for our simple minds to understand it's greatness and universal encompassing. So no, it's not blank nor empty, we are simply incapable of deciphering it's true meaning, we are but children...

Yeah it's empty, anyway I'm guessing the change log will be pretty fat arsed and even then it will lack data.

In other news:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/GGqK149.jpg)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on May 30, 2014, 07:54:45 pm

I think Toady never does comprehensive changelogs.

That said, I won't sleep until we have a release. weeee

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 30, 2014, 07:58:37 pm

That's a lot months without sleep....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 30, 2014, 08:01:08 pm

Quote from: thvaz on May 30, 2014, 07:54:45 pm

I think Toady never does comprehensive changelogs.

That said, I won't sleep until we have a release. weeee

Check "file changes.txt" in your DF directory

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 30, 2014, 08:17:11 pm

Lol LordBaal. Really though, when did that document get blanked? I wonder if Toady One has access to it, but even then, why would he blank it out?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

Many thanks to Putnam, Knight Otu, Footkerchief, smjjames, Manveru Taurënér, Dirst, Cruxador, Wimopy, King Mir, Karlito, Mr S, PeridexisErrant, Valtam, thvaz and everybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time.  There were quite a few that were answered, so please go back and check just after your question if you were skipped below!

Quote

Quote from: Malimar

With the huge number of new plants, will the seed limit be lowered or allowed to be changed by the player?

Quote from: Lolfail0009

how will the vast number of new plants' seeds be kept under control? Are some plants just not generated in a world?

I'm not entirely sure yet.  I'd rather not lower the per-type seed limit, since people might want to grow a lot of a single plant, but I don't know how various sorts of dynamic limits might work out, especially if a fort wants to change gears and switch over to a lot of a different single plant.

Quote from: Verdant_Squire

In a previous devlog, you talked about Military Dwarves running from the enemy if they are cowardly enough. Will it be possible to "Straighten out" and discipline the more weak-willed Dwarves in training so that they become a little hardier in combat?

If a creature experiences a morale failure where he wants to run away in No-Quarter combat, but any route that he could use to run away is blocked by enemies, what happens? Does he attempt to surrender again, turn into a weeping mess, or will the "Cornered Rat still bite the cat"?

There's nothing right now.  If I remember, we have an unused discipline skill that could theoretically be built by training later, though I don't know how much I should soften the effect from the first actual combat, if at all.  I think somebody pointed out that we still have that kind-of PTSD thousand yard stare variable, and that might need to be diversified or improved.

If I'm reading it right, it looks like if they get truly cornered, they'll turn around and fight for a bit before attempting to look for a way out again, even if they are experiencing morale failure.  Being in an active wrestle also allows them to fight.  Now putting all that aside, if they are experiencing a horror or fear based meltdown based on injury or so on, rather than a combat terror morale failure, they can turn into a weeping mess on the ground and might not react to the combat situation at all.

Quote

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

With the changes made to the world, are we going to see people retain their titles after leaving the map? For example, the Outpost Liason will retain his or her post after leaving the map after the caravan?

Quote from: Witty

Does the liaison bug patch also fix the bug where other historical figures are similarly "fired" when they arrive and than leave your map area (Human diplomats, generals, etc.)

Yeah, this all was just a bug that should be fixed now.  It was firing everybody that left the map as if they had gone berserk.

Quote from: Dirst

Can an adventurer irritate a faction sufficiently that even when it offloads into an army, that army decided to pursue the adventurer across the world map?

So there are different ways people can offload -- they can be at a site, or they can be in an army.  The armies have guards around their camps and they can break up into coordinated subunits during attacks, but while they are in motion, they don't understand how to dispatch units for dynamic tasks -- certainly that'll be changed in the future, and there's a master/subordinate framework for it, but I don't have the little independent thought loop necessary for them yet to check incidents out and so on.  Individual members of the army that are loaded can respond to your rep.  The site is different -- it has the necessary thinking, and they can dispatch new army posse thingies with the intention of hunting you down specifically if they think you deserve it.

Quote from: TastyMints

Will creatures react emotionally to butchery returns as if it were a piece of a dead creature's corpse? Can I butcher a historical Giant Dingo, eat it, and throw its heart onto a table in a tavern to show everyone it is dead?

Yeah, right now I think anything where it would display the historical figure's name can be used for recognition (oddly enough).

Quote from: tfaal

Now that people react emotionally to you killing their family, how will quests interact with this? If an townsperson's relative is a bandit, will they still give the quest to kill them? If so, how do they react if you complete it?

The relatives talk about who is causing trouble, and depending on the trouble type they can acknowledge relations (as before with certain night creature relatives), but I haven't hit all the cases.  If they don't hate their relative, then they can react negatively if you kill them.  They don't really give you quests about anything, but there will probably be some odd situations where the wording implies the wrong outcome that they'd prefer.  We'll get them sorted out over time hopefully.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Right, I see we have some changes to the contaminant stuff.

How exactly does this work? Does this mean we will no longer have permanently contaminated wells? Does it mean contaminants will dry up or disappear? Are we going to have more control about dwarves cleaning up areas, including outside aboveground buildings and courtyards?

I don't remember specifically what this was about, but I didn't change anything relevant to this that I remember.  There was the sweat/tear evaporation stuff, but that was a minor change.

Quote from: Putnam

Would it be possible to post the current state of, say, human raws? And to avoid any literal genies interpretations of this question, if so, please do.

Sure, here is the definition as it stands now:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[CREATURE:HUMAN]
   [DESCRIPTION:A medium-sized creature prone to great ambition.]
   [NAME:human:humans:human]
   [CASTE_NAME:human:humans:human]
   [CREATURE_TILE:'U'][COLOR:3:0:0]
   [CREATURE_SOLDIER_TILE:154]
   [INTELLIGENT]
   [CANOPENDOORS]
   [BENIGN]
   [PREFSTRING:stature]
   [BODY:HUMANOID_NECK:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:5FINGERS:5TOES:MOUTH:TONGUE:FACIAL_FEATURES:TEETH:RIBCAGE]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS:SKIN:FAT:MUSCLE:BONE:CARTILAGE]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HEAD_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:EYEBROW:EYEBROW_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW:ABOVE:BY_CATEGORY:EYE]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:EYELASH:EYELASH_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:EYELID:EYELASH:FRONT]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:FINGER:NAIL:FRONT]
   [TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:TOE:NAIL:FRONT]
   [SELECT_TISSUE_LAYER:HEART:BY_CATEGORY:HEART]
    [PLUS_TISSUE_LAYER:SKIN:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT]
      [TL_MAJOR_ARTERIES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUES]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_HEAD_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_HEAD_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_RIBCAGE_POSITIONS]
   [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_RELSIZES]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SINEW:SINEW_TEMPLATE]
   [TENDONS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
   [LIGAMENTS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
   [HAS_NERVES]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:BLOOD:BLOOD_TEMPLATE]
   [BLOOD:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:BLOOD:LIQUID]
   [CREATURE_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
   [GETS_WOUND_INFECTIONS]
   [GETS_INFECTIONS_FROM_ROT]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:PUS:PUS_TEMPLATE]
   [PUS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:PUS:LIQUID]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SWEAT:SWEAT_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:TEARS:TEARS_TEMPLATE]
   [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SPIT:SPIT_TEMPLATE]
   [SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SWEAT:LIQUID:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SKIN:EXERTION]
   [SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:TEARS:LIQUID:BY_CATEGORY:EYE:ALL:EXTREME_EMOTION]
   [CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
      [CDI:ADV_NAME:Spit]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:NEGATIVE_SOCIAL_RESPONSE]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:TORMENT]
      [CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:MOUTH]
      [CDI:MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SPIT:LIQUID_GLOB]
      [CDI:VERB:spit:spits:NA]
      [CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
      [CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
      [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
      [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]
   [BODY_SIZE:0:0:4000]
   [BODY_SIZE:1:168:17500]
   [BODY_SIZE:12:0:70000]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EYE]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CLOSE_SET:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DEEP_SET:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:ROUND_VS_NARROW:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LARGE_IRIS:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:LIP]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:THICKNESS:50:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:lips:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:NOSE]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:25:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:UPTURNED:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CONVEX:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:nose bridge:SINGULAR]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EAR]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:SPLAYED_OUT:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HANGING_LOBES:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:ears:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:TOOTH]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:GAPS:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:teeth:PLURAL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:100:100:100:100:100:100:100] for vampires
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:1000]
         [APP_MOD_NOUN:teeth:PLURAL]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:30:60:90:110:150:190]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:SKULL]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HIGH_CHEEKBONES:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROAD_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:JUTTING_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:SQUARE_CHIN:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DEEP_VOICE:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:RASPY_VOICE:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
   [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
      [BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:90:95:98:100:102:105:110]
         [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:700]
         [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:91:94:98:102:106:109]
   [MAXAGE:60:120]
   [ATTACK:PUNCH:BODYPART:BY_TYPE:GRASP]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:GRASP_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:punch:punches]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_WITH]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
   [ATTACK:KICK:BODYPART:BY_TYPE:STANCE]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:STANCE_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:kick:kicks]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:4:4]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_WITH]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK]
   [ATTACK:SCRATCH:CHILD_TISSUE_LAYER_GROUP:BY_TYPE:GRASP:BY_CATEGORY:FINGER:NAIL]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:GRASP_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:scratch:scratches]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
   [ATTACK:BITE:CHILD_BODYPART_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:BY_CATEGORY:TOOTH]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:BITE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:bite:bites]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:SECOND]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH]
   [BABY:1]
   [CHILD:12]
   [EQUIPS]
   [DIURNAL]
   [SMELL_TRIGGER:90]
   [HOMEOTHERM:10067]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
   [SWIMS_LEARNED]
   [MANNERISM_FINGERS:finger:fingers]
   [MANNERISM_NOSE:nose]
   [MANNERISM_EAR:ear]
   [MANNERISM_HEAD:head]
   [MANNERISM_EYES:eyes]
   [MANNERISM_MOUTH:mouth]
   [MANNERISM_HAIR:hair]
   [MANNERISM_KNUCKLES:knuckles]
   [MANNERISM_LIPS:lips]
   [MANNERISM_CHEEK:cheek]
   [MANNERISM_NAILS:nails]
   [MANNERISM_FEET:feet]
   [MANNERISM_ARMS:arms]
   [MANNERISM_HANDS:hands]
   [MANNERISM_TONGUE:tongue]
   [MANNERISM_LEG:leg]
   [MANNERISM_LAUGH]
   [MANNERISM_SMILE]
   [MANNERISM_WALK]
   [MANNERISM_SIT]
   [MANNERISM_BREATH]
   [MANNERISM_POSTURE]
   [MANNERISM_STRETCH]
   [MANNERISM_EYELIDS]
   [SPOUSE_CONVERSION_TARGET]
   [MUNDANE]
   [CASTE:FEMALE]
      [FEMALE]
      [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
   [CASTE:MALE]
      [MALE]
      [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]
   [SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYELASH]
   [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:AMBER:1:AUBURN:1:BLACK:1:BROWN:1:BUFF:1:BURNT_SIENNA:1:BURNT_UMBER:1:CHARCOAL:1:CHESTNUT:1:CHOCOLATE:1:CINNAMON:1:COPPER:1:DARK_BROWN:1:DARK_CHESTNUT:1:DARK_TAN:1:ECRU:1:FLAX:1:GOLD:1:GOLDEN_YELLOW:1:GOLDENROD:1:LIGHT_BROWN:1:MAHOGANY:1:OCHRE:1:PALE_BROWN:1:PALE_CHESTNUT:1:PUMPKIN:1:RAW_UMBER:1:RUSSET:1:SAFFRON:1:SEPIA:1:TAN:1:TAUPE_DARK:1:TAUPE_GRAY:1:TAUPE_MEDIUM:1:TAUPE_PALE:1:TAUPE_SANDY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:GRAY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [TLCM_TIMING:ROOT:40:0:70:0]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:WHITE:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [TLCM_TIMING:ROOT:70:0:90:0]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYEBROW]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DENSE:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HIGH_POSITION:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyebrows:PLURAL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:EYELASH]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:eyelashes:PLURAL]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:LENGTH:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_RATE:1:DAILY:0:1000:0:0:NO_END]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:10:25:75:125:200:300]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:CURLY:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:GREASY:0:70:90:100:110:130:200]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:DENSE:50:80:90:100:110:120:150]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:55:70:90:110:130:145]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:HAIR:STANDARD_HAIR_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:hair:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHEEK_WHISKERS]
       [PLUS_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:CHIN_WHISKERS]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:BEARD:STANDARD_BEARD_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:beard:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:MOUSTACHE]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:MOUSTACHE:STANDARD_MOUSTACHE_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:moustache:SINGULAR]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:SIDEBURNS]
         [TISSUE_STYLE_UNIT:SIDEBURNS:STANDARD_SIDEBURNS_SHAPINGS]
            [TSU_NOUN:sideburns:PLURAL]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:SKIN]
   [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:BROWN:1:BURNT_UMBER:1:CINNAMON:1:COPPER:1:DARK_BROWN:1:DARK_PEACH:1:DARK_TAN:1:ECRU:1:PALE_BROWN:1:PALE_CHESTNUT:1:PALE_PINK:1:PEACH:1:PINK:1:RAW_UMBER:1:SEPIA:1:TAN:1:TAUPE_PALE:1:TAUPE_SANDY:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:skin:SINGULAR]
         [TISSUE_LAYER_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:WRINKLY:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]
            [APP_MOD_RATE:1:YEARLY:0:100:30:0:NO_END]
            [APP_MOD_NOUN:skin:SINGULAR]
            [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:0:0:0:1:25:50]
      [SET_TL_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:EYE:EYE]
         [TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:IRIS_EYE_AMBER:1:IRIS_EYE_AQUA:1:IRIS_EYE_AQUAMARINE:1:IRIS_EYE_ASH_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_AUBURN:1:IRIS_EYE_AZURE:1:IRIS_EYE_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_BRASS:1:IRIS_EYE_BRONZE:1:IRIS_EYE_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_CERULEAN:1:IRIS_EYE_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_CHOCOLATE:1:IRIS_EYE_CINNAMON:1:IRIS_EYE_COPPER:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_OLIVE:1:IRIS_EYE_DARK_TAN:1:IRIS_EYE_ECRU:1:IRIS_EYE_EMERALD:1:IRIS_EYE_FERN_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_JADE:1:IRIS_EYE_LIGHT_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_LIGHT_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_MAHOGANY:1:IRIS_EYE_MIDNIGHT_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_OCHRE:1:IRIS_EYE_OLIVE:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_BROWN:1:IRIS_EYE_PALE_CHESTNUT:1:IRIS_EYE_PERIWINKLE:1:IRIS_EYE_PINE_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_RAW_UMBER:1:IRIS_EYE_RUSSET:1:IRIS_EYE_SEA_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_SEPIA:1:IRIS_EYE_SKY_BLUE:1:IRIS_EYE_SLATE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_SPRING_GREEN:1:IRIS_EYE_TAN:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_DARK:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_GRAY:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_MEDIUM:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_PALE:1:IRIS_EYE_TAUPE_SANDY:1:IRIS_EYE_TEAL:1:IRIS_EYE_TURQUOISE:1]
            [TLCM_NOUN:eyes:PLURAL]

Quote from: CrzyMonkeyNinja

Will the ability mentioned here be affected at all by the adventurer's memory and/or observation skill? And if not, is it planned to eventually be?

The bestiary stuff isn't affected by those, and it's a little dicey going too far in that direction.  To some extent, what can be written on a piece of paper next to your computer probably shouldn't be wiped out based on some stat, to avoid inconveniencing people, but there are probably exceptions which work out well enough.  I'm really not sure where the memory attribute is going to be used for player adventurers yet.

Quote

Quote from: Urist Da Vinci

Why did the dwarves make their way down from the treetops? Did any fail their climb checks and fall down to the ground, if that happens?

Under what non-combat situations will units climb?

Will dwarves stuck in holes try to climb out now?

Quote from: smjjames

Will dwarves climb down if they manage to get themselves stuck on a wall which has no access down?

Quote from: PigtailLlama

Has jumping been tested on NPCs yet? Sometimes it's easier and quicker to jump down instead of climbing...

Right now, if the dwarf can't find a place to wander around to (like the wagon or a meeting hall), it'll sometimes run the "acrobatic" routine to see if that gets it better results.  Theoretically that'll help stranded dwarves get themselves out of situations whether they are in trees or up on top of a pillar or in holes or whatever.  The acrobatic routine is expensive, so it isn't called in many other non-combat situations.  Climb checks can be failed, though I don't remember if any of the tree dwarves failed them (if they fell one tile they wouldn't have been injured most likely, so I wouldn't have seen it).  I haven't seen any super tragedies overall, but I'm sure people will find certain problems where dwarves do things that are not smart, and we can handle those as they arise during the bug fixing period, which should be reasonably entertaining to the extent that it isn't crashy.

NPCs only jump horizontally for CPU safety purposes, and I've tested that.  With a series of little pillars I made in the arena they were quite hoppy.

Quote from: smjjames

What do you mean by threat displays here? Like what frilled lizards do for example?

Yeah.  In general, our animals only have fight-or-flight, but the pre-fight/in-between interactions will probably be the most fun while exploring caves with procedural critters, for example.  I'm looking forward to seeing a strange-looking creature and not really knowing how it's going to react, and watching its behaviors unfold, and then having to deal with it with all of everything else going on.

Quote from: Valtam

Does this "cultural identity" affects directly which kind of management choices (e.g buildings, infraestructure, mining preferences) and conflicts involve these dwarves? Or is just for flavor measures and choosing the kind of engravings they might tend to carve?

It isn't for either of those things at this point -- it's more for managing a persistence of rumors and reputations as people move around.  There are still entities that manage what the overall culture means.  Entities have always supported differences from their raw definition, technically, but I haven't implemented anything like that yet.  When those kind of differences start going in, the identity stuff will probably be used to make more minor differences between same-raw entities that are different from each other, although it's difficult to say exactly which data structures will survive or how they will evolve.  I think at this point a single creature could eventually have different ethics/values at the civ-entity, site-entity, religious-entity, cultural identity and personal level...  and there'll probably be more entities they can be involved with all at once.

Quote

Quote from: EmeraldWind

Now that the same liaison will visit your fort will it be possible for some of the fort dwarves to eventually become friends with the liaison or are the liaison meetings considered strictly business?

I ask because since the liaison has contact with the same dwarf I'm curious if a friendship might build, but then again the meetings might not allow for the friendship to build.

Quote from: smjjames

Since the liasons don't show up as passing accquantiances, I'm guessing strictly business.

You do have a point though that a relationship between your dwarves and the liason would build up over time, even if things are strictly business.

The new conversation code has shaken things up a bit, so the liaison will probably be able to get passing acquaintance status now, but I think with the way it cycles them out over time if they don't get to full friendship, they might not ever build into anything.  I don't have a particular plan for changing it at this point, but it could afford to be more interesting.  Start scenarios/hill dwarves will also introduce some other off-site dwarves that regularly visit the fort (and the whole inn/tavern bit will probably lead to repeat visitors as well).  It'll be neat to see how the relationships between all those critters evolve.  Even now, any rep issues between the liaison and other historical dwarves can come into play, as uncommon as those might be.  I suppose it could be most pronounced if a former adventurer with a colorful career is appointed liaison or migrates to a fort.

Quote from: BenLubar

Has there been anything that could have changed the stability of renderers other than PRINT_MODE:2D between 0.34.11 and DF2014?

I haven't changed any of that stuff.

Quote from: neblime

When you retire a dwarf site (or if you mod other playable races) will the AI setup patrols around the site using civilians or military you chose? and/or will the existing barracks, routes and military status of dwarves be respected? (on that note will designated meeting areas or bedrooms etc be respected?)

when retiring a fort, will AI dwarves mess with lever status at all?  if you have a drawbridge say that controls the only entrance to your fort and leave it closed when you retire will the dwarves lower it when you're gone? (and if they don't will the game recognize that the fortress is inaccesible while it's abstracted?)

It respects the positions you've assigned, and that includes squads, but since the maps aren't loaded it doesn't really understand the minute details and will just use soldiers for whatever it wants after you retire.  As we mess all around with fortress retirement and see how it is working, what happens with squads might become more customizable.  I'm not really sure.

That's speaking in terms of the retired fort vs. world.  If you visit the fort with an adventurer, it won't respect your patrols or anything -- we still don't have npc schedules back, and the fort mode squad orders likely won't be compatible anyway (due to time scale differences etc.).  In the same way, they don't use the lever buildings at all.  There isn't really any attempt here to make an AI fort-playing thingy.  The game also doesn't understand if your fort is retired as a completely inaccessible trap, though it will try to keep caged beings in place upon load, and try to respect disconnected components a bit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on May 30, 2014, 08:43:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames on May 30, 2014, 08:17:11 pm

Lol LordBaal. Really though, when did that document get blanked? I wonder if Toady One has access to it, but even then, why would he blank it out?

Toady wasn't in charge of the googledoc. It was a fan complied list. After some nasty vandalism, the creator locked it down into comment-only mode. So only s/he could have deleted the doc, for whatever reason.

And thanks Toady for the response (very short this time round), squash them bugs dead!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on May 30, 2014, 09:42:10 pm

Cheers Toady, waiting patiently.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gabrek on May 30, 2014, 10:03:33 pm

We love you Toady! Make us love you even more! ^_^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Necrisha on May 30, 2014, 11:25:22 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

Quote from: Malimar

With the huge number of new plants, will the seed limit be lowered or allowed to be changed by the player?

Quote from: Lolfail0009

how will the vast number of new plants' seeds be kept under control? Are some plants just not generated in a world?

I'm not entirely sure yet.  I'd rather not lower the per-type seed limit, since people might want to grow a lot of a single plant, but I don't know how various sorts of dynamic limits might work out, especially if a fort wants to change gears and switch over to a lot of a different single plant. [/quote]

So, Does this mean you'd consider putting the per type seed limit as a configurable part of the init/d_init text file?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 11:48:09 pm

It was pretty short this time.  I think there are fewer questions to ask when I'm just doing bug stuff.

Quote from: Necrisha

So, Does this mean you'd consider putting the per type seed limit as a configurable part of the init/d_init text file?

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Silicoid on May 31, 2014, 01:13:34 am

What do these numbers in the raws do?
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on May 31, 2014, 02:00:48 am

Those are for the combat/move speed split. That means that it takes 3 steps for a human to throw a punch and 3 steps for the follow-through.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Di on May 31, 2014, 02:53:57 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

[CREATURE:HUMAN]
   [CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
      [CDI:ADV_NAME:Spit]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:NEGATIVE_SOCIAL_RESPONSE]
      [CDI:USAGE_HINT:TORMENT]
      [CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:MOUTH]
      [CDI:MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SPIT:LIQUID_GLOB]
      [CDI:VERB:spit:spits:NA]
      [CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
      [CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
      [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
      [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]

Wow, that's quite a long range spitters we got here.

Is the material emission still hard-wired to throwing skill?  Will they spit on chained goblins? Criminals?
How will disabled temperature affect the sweating?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 31, 2014, 07:38:16 am

Could you post some of the gait Raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on May 31, 2014, 07:45:58 am

Quote from: Urist Mc Dwarf on May 31, 2014, 07:38:16 am

Could you post some of the gait Raws?

There were some gait raws posted with a FotF Q&A several months ago..

Edit: Found them, spoilered for length.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Gaits:

Humans, for example, have


[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS:900:675:450:225:1900:2900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS:2900:2175:1450:725:3900:5900]


which goes to


[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_BIPED_GAITS]
   GAIT:type:name:full speed:build up time:turning max:start speed:energy use
      use NO_BUILD_UP if you jump immediately to full speed
      these optional flags go at the end:
         LAYERS_SLOW - fat/muscle layers slow the movement (muscle-slowing counter-acted by strength bonus)
         STRENGTH - strength attribute can speed/slow movement
         AGILITY - agility attribute can speed/slow movement
         STEALTH_SLOWS:<n> - n is percentage slowed
         it would be interesting to allow quirky attributes (like mental stats), but they aren't supported yet
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Sprint:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Run:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Jog:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Walk:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Stroll:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:WALK:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Faster Climb:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Fast Climb:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Climb:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Slow Climb:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CLIMB:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_SWIMMING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Maximum Swim Speed:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Faster Swim:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Fast Swim:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Swim:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Slow Swim:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:SWIM:Creeping Swim:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

[CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CRAWLING_GAITS]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Scramble:!ARG4:10:3:!ARG2:50:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:50]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Faster Crawl:!ARG3:5:3:!ARG2:10:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:20]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Fast Crawl:!ARG2:NO_BUILD_UP:5:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY:STEALTH_SLOWS:10]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Crawl:!ARG1:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Slow Crawl:!ARG5:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]
   [CV_NEW_TAG:GAIT:CRAWL:Creep:!ARG6:NO_BUILD_UP:0:LAYERS_SLOW:STRENGTH:AGILITY]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on May 31, 2014, 10:13:25 am

I can't wait to go jumping around, spitting on people.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 31, 2014, 10:21:06 am

And jumping on people. Perhaps even at the same time.

I think this was mentioned before, but does jumping into people count as a hostile action?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sergarr on May 31, 2014, 10:42:15 am

Quote from: HugoLuman on May 31, 2014, 10:21:06 am

And jumping on people. Perhaps even at the same time.

I think this was mentioned before, but does jumping into people count as a hostile action?

Next version I'm going to mod in Mario.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on May 31, 2014, 11:21:44 am

Forget Mario. I'm modding in Spiderman :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on May 31, 2014, 11:35:00 am

Playing as a man dressed like a bat will be yet more fun.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on May 31, 2014, 12:01:03 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on May 31, 2014, 11:21:44 am

Forget Mario. I'm modding in Spiderman :P

Make sure to add in "Neighborhood" as an adjective and set a custom title.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spectre Incarnate on May 31, 2014, 07:01:06 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: CaptainArchmage

Right, I see we have some changes to the contaminant stuff.

How exactly does this work? Does this mean we will no longer have permanently contaminated wells? Does it mean contaminants will dry up or disappear? Are we going to have more control about dwarves cleaning up areas, including outside aboveground buildings and courtyards?

I don't remember specifically what this was about, but I didn't change anything relevant to this that I remember.  There was the sweat/tear evaporation stuff, but that was a minor change.

I'm confused about this. Front page news on May 12th says...

Quote from: Toady One

...fixed up evaporation of sweat/tears/etc. so dwarves wouldn't be so clean-happy, changed contaminant drinking, and so on.

Could you please clarify what changed about contaminant drinking?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on May 31, 2014, 08:07:08 pm

IIRC that one made it so if you are covered in rain/sweat/blood it will evaporate eventually, instead of covering you forever and providing an infinite source of drinking... liquid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on May 31, 2014, 08:24:53 pm

Is there any affect on infinite puddles? Or will that exploit still work as long as you are quick?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smirk on June 01, 2014, 01:51:45 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

NPCs only jump horizontally for CPU safety purposes, and I've tested that.  With a series of little pillars I made in the arena they were quite hoppy.

Not sure if this has been asked before, so if anyone knows I would be much obliged: Will NPCs only jump orthogonally, or can they jump diagonally as well? For example:

Code: [Select]

DIOID
I...I
O.C.O
I...I
DIOIDIn the above diagram, will an NPC stuck in the (C)enter be able to jump only to (O)rthogonal tiles, or can they also jump to (I)ndirect or even (D)iagonal tiles?

Planning trapped pillar-top maze entrances for my next Fort o' Doom. Soon kobolds will see there is nothing they can possess that I cannot take away.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on June 01, 2014, 03:48:16 am

Quote from: monk12 on May 31, 2014, 08:07:08 pm

IIRC that one made it so if you are covered in rain/sweat/blood it will evaporate eventually, instead of covering you forever and providing an infinite source of drinking... liquid.

I think it also means that licking the water off your leg won't stop you from being thirsty. Or that you can't do it that much at all.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 01, 2014, 06:10:54 am

Quote from: smirk on June 01, 2014, 01:51:45 am

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

NPCs only jump horizontally for CPU safety purposes, and I've tested that.  With a series of little pillars I made in the arena they were quite hoppy.

Not sure if this has been asked before, so if anyone knows I would be much obliged: Will NPCs only jump orthogonally, or can they jump diagonally as well? For example:

Code: [Select]

DIOID
I...I
O.C.O
I...I
DIOIDIn the above diagram, will an NPC stuck in the (C)enter be able to jump only to (O)rthogonal tiles, or can they also jump to (I)ndirect or even (D)iagonal tiles?

Planning trapped pillar-top maze entrances for my next Fort o' Doom. Soon kobolds will see there is nothing they can possess that I cannot take away.

I see no reason why jumping would be limited to orthogonal directions. Toady one meant that they won't jump across z levels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 01, 2014, 06:21:56 am

Either way, now we can add proper obstacle courses for military dwarves on their way to the training room.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: gabrek on June 01, 2014, 11:55:57 am

Any word on how jumping/climbing will effect hauling? We already know any 13 year old can drag an elephant in a lead cage by herself, but can she climb walls and leap chasms with it as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on June 01, 2014, 12:29:11 pm

If we were to mod the game to allow goblins or kobolds to be played in adventure mode, would we spawn in the respective sites?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Will adventure mode get multi-drop, multi-pickup, multi-select on string(during trading) select all (during trading), and filter on string so it's much less of a chore?

Will there be an adv mode init option to have an items weight in urists added to the items name as a prefix or suffix? Weight becomes a very critical issue early on and remains so throughout.

Will the dorf mode trade depot menu get a select all key so just throwing all your hauled stuff into the trade isn't a finger annihilating nightmare if you made crafts?

Will we finally be able to re-stack things in adventure mode so we no longer have a pile of Eighty, 1 gold coin - minted 765

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 01, 2014, 01:40:47 pm

I'm pretty sure the answer to nearly all of those is no
but there is a plugin that allows you to select all on trade depot (or that could be in vanilla, I can't really recall)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on June 01, 2014, 02:46:48 pm

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Things that aren't yet generated can't be rejected based on the results of that said generation, so you can't strictly reject worlds before generating them, no matter how good your code is. As far as I'm aware each rejection parameter kicks in as soon as the world is generated to the point that it can assess that parameter -- so, for instance, partial and complete edge ocean requirements reject the world as soon as it's done with generating geographic height info. Is there any particular rejection parameter you have in mind that could be judged earlier in the world generation process than it currently is? Or, keeping in mind that settings that influence how the world is likely to turn out and settings that reject worlds based on not actually turning out as desired need to be adjusted together in order to avoid conflicts, are there particular settings you have in mind that cause rejections that the corresponding rejection settings can't be adjusted to fit?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lethosor on June 01, 2014, 03:08:28 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on June 01, 2014, 02:46:48 pm

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Things that aren't yet generated can't be rejected based on the results of that said generation, so you can't strictly reject worlds before generating them, no matter how good your code is. As far as I'm aware each rejection parameter kicks in as soon as the world is generated to the point that it can assess that parameter -- so, for instance, partial and complete edge ocean requirements reject the world as soon as it's done with generating geographic height info. Is there any particular rejection parameter you have in mind that could be judged earlier in the world generation process than it currently is? Or, keeping in mind that settings that influence how the world is likely to turn out and settings that reject worlds based on not actually turning out as desired need to be adjusted together in order to avoid conflicts, are there particular settings you have in mind that cause rejections that the corresponding rejection settings can't be adjusted to fit?

I think Azure was referring to making the message that allows you to ignore rejections appear when asked for (or having that option before generating) instead of having to wait through a certain number of rejected worlds (which can take a long time in some cases).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 01, 2014, 03:09:52 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

Quote from: Dirst

Can an adventurer irritate a faction sufficiently that even when it offloads into an army, that army decided to pursue the adventurer across the world map?

So there are different ways people can offload -- they can be at a site, or they can be in an army.  The armies have guards around their camps and they can break up into coordinated subunits during attacks, but while they are in motion, they don't understand how to dispatch units for dynamic tasks -- certainly that'll be changed in the future, and there's a master/subordinate framework for it, but I don't have the little independent thought loop necessary for them yet to check incidents out and so on.  Individual members of the army that are loaded can respond to your rep.  The site is different -- it has the necessary thinking, and they can dispatch new army posse thingies with the intention of hunting you down specifically if they think you deserve it.

Thank you for all the tireless work, Toady!

What I had in mind was an adventurer being chased by a mob with torches and pitchforks (to make for a silly example).  The adventurer just runs for it, and at some point is far enough ahead that the mob becomes a world-map army.  Assuming the mob hadn't already given up the chase, it's now a strategic army with the goal of attacking the adventurer.  Just curious if it would go to your old location, then wander home... or if it would keep on your heels throughout the game like the paperboy in Better Off Dead.  Extra super bonus points if the individuals peeled off at their own tolerances ("I gotta get home and tend the fields."  "It's been a long time since I had a drink."  "Oh crap! I left the stone on!"), but that doesn't sound like the upcoming version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on June 01, 2014, 03:21:51 pm

Quote from: lethosor on June 01, 2014, 03:08:28 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on June 01, 2014, 02:46:48 pm

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Things that aren't yet generated can't be rejected based on the results of that said generation, so you can't strictly reject worlds before generating them, no matter how good your code is. As far as I'm aware each rejection parameter kicks in as soon as the world is generated to the point that it can assess that parameter -- so, for instance, partial and complete edge ocean requirements reject the world as soon as it's done with generating geographic height info. Is there any particular rejection parameter you have in mind that could be judged earlier in the world generation process than it currently is? Or, keeping in mind that settings that influence how the world is likely to turn out and settings that reject worlds based on not actually turning out as desired need to be adjusted together in order to avoid conflicts, are there particular settings you have in mind that cause rejections that the corresponding rejection settings can't be adjusted to fit?

I think Azure was referring to making the message that allows you to ignore rejections appear when asked for (or having that option before generating) instead of having to wait through a certain number of rejected worlds (which can take a long time in some cases).

Hmm, I may have misread that... I kinda thought all the rejections could be selectively turned off by altering their settings though?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 01, 2014, 03:56:00 pm

Quote from: Scotsmen on June 01, 2014, 12:29:11 pm

If we were to mod the game to allow goblins or kobolds to be played in adventure mode, would we spawn in the respective sites?

In the current one, if you mod them to build cities (haven't tried with normal Kobold sites though), then you'll spawn in the respective site for the civilization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Azure on June 01, 2014, 04:32:06 pm

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Cobbler89 on June 01, 2014, 02:46:48 pm

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Things that aren't yet generated can't be rejected based on the results of that said generation, so you can't strictly reject worlds before generating them, no matter how good your code is. As far as I'm aware each rejection parameter kicks in as soon as the world is generated to the point that it can assess that parameter -- so, for instance, partial and complete edge ocean requirements reject the world as soon as it's done with generating geographic height info. Is there any particular rejection parameter you have in mind that could be judged earlier in the world generation process than it currently is? Or, keeping in mind that settings that influence how the world is likely to turn out and settings that reject worlds based on not actually turning out as desired need to be adjusted together in order to avoid conflicts, are there particular settings you have in mind that cause rejections that the corresponding rejection settings can't be adjusted to fit?

I'm booty blasted about a maxed volcano parameter in smaller maps with unsuitable volcanism generation, high number of civs counts in addition to other tweaks that end up making unsuitable maps until I get the option to allow all rejects and then I get something magical. I have to let it chug for about 6 hours+ until I can get it to ignore all rejects. And if it crashes while it's saving that world after I accept it well it's back to square 1 and having to let it chug overnight.

Furthermore,
Will we be able to activate and configure stockpile-esque filters on containers in adv mode to auto put something into a container? Like an alder chest set to store meat products from butchering, another for bones/hooves/horn/skull, a bag for hides/hair

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on June 01, 2014, 08:32:00 pm

Toady has withdrawn from society!

Toady has claimed a craftstoad's workshop!

Toady sketches pictures of a Dwarf Fortress update.

Toady sketches pictures of a bugswatter.

Quote

We are planning to release the next version of Dwarf Fortress in the beginning of next month.

Toady works furiously!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on June 01, 2014, 08:39:16 pm

Quote from: Dear Leader

I suspect that many of the faster usability ideas will make it in during the bug-fix period and during the job priorities work that'll follow this release.

Toady, what are you envisioning for the job priorities redo? What will it entail, and how will it work?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 01, 2014, 09:12:07 pm

Wait, so the next version is going to be released on 1st July? Another month to go?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nomoetoe on June 01, 2014, 09:58:41 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 01, 2014, 09:12:07 pm

Wait, so the next version is going to be released on 1st July? Another month to go?

Aye or maybe a little earlier or a little later. c: (I'm hoping for a little earlier)

Toady, will it be possible for hamlets/forest retreats etc or regions of land to become cursed?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 01, 2014, 10:06:47 pm

Wow, a semisolid release deadline and he's caught up on combing through the Suggestions forum? Cool beans!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on June 01, 2014, 10:22:55 pm

Quote from: Devlog

It's almost here! After over two years in the making, we plan to release the next version of Dwarf Fortress in the beginning of July.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

        IT'S
(http://i.imgur.com/B8llXP5.gif)
  HAPPENING!

Quick, someone go bang the tankards! The hype train is approaching the station!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 01, 2014, 11:45:43 pm

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 01:30:49 pm

Will we get a worldgen option to enable allowing all rejections at the start of worldgen instead of 6 hours of chugging through rejections later? There are some worldgen setting configurations that you can't aim for a desired effect and still disable the rejection parameters like you can with other stuff

Will adventure mode get multi-drop, multi-pickup, multi-select on string(during trading) select all (during trading), and filter on string so it's much less of a chore?

Will there be an adv mode init option to have an items weight in urists added to the items name as a prefix or suffix? Weight becomes a very critical issue early on and remains so throughout.

Will the dorf mode trade depot menu get a select all key so just throwing all your hauled stuff into the trade isn't a finger annihilating nightmare if you made crafts?

Will we finally be able to re-stack things in adventure mode so we no longer have a pile of Eighty, 1 gold coin - minted 765

Quote from: Azure on June 01, 2014, 04:32:06 pm

Will we be able to activate and configure stockpile-esque filters on containers in adv mode to auto put something into a container? Like an alder chest set to store meat products from butchering, another for bones/hooves/horn/skull, a bag for hides/hair

None of these have changed in the upcoming version.  These may be fair game later on, but:

Quote from: Toady One on February 15, 2012, 01:49:19 am

[...] specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0).

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on June 01, 2014, 08:39:16 pm

Quote from: Dear Leader

I suspect that many of the faster usability ideas will make it in during the bug-fix period and during the job priorities work that'll follow this release.

Toady, what are you envisioning for the job priorities redo? What will it entail, and how will it work?

It's been touched on:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_10_transcript.html

Job priorities [...] involves rewriting the entire dwarf AI, but it's more than job priorities ... it's actually rewriting it to allow all kinds of things, to get them to think a little bit about whatever you might think of, so they can priorities things like parties better and their little personal life stuff along with their jobs, and make it less of a strict hierarchy that it runs through. It should be really beneficial but it's a big rewrite [...]

Quote from: Toady One on October 30, 2013, 05:53:18 am

Job priorities, whatever that ends up meaning, are coming just after the release and bug fixes, so we should see large changes to how the job queue works in the not too distant future.  What that'll do for dwarven autonomy is anybody's guess at this point.

Specific details might not be available until Toady starts actually working on it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on June 01, 2014, 11:48:53 pm

Quote from: Baffler on June 01, 2014, 10:22:55 pm

Quote from: Devlog

It's almost here! After over two years in the making, we plan to release the next version of Dwarf Fortress in the beginning of July.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

        IT'S
(http://i.imgur.com/B8llXP5.gif)
  HAPPENING!

Quick, someone go bang the tankards! The hype train is approaching the station!

I'll get the booze! Let's get this update staaarteed!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on June 02, 2014, 12:16:17 am

Quote from: monk12 on June 01, 2014, 10:06:47 pm

Wow, a semisolid release deadline and he's caught up on combing through the Suggestions forum? Cool beans!

Catching up with the suggestions alone is madness. Nice one Toady!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 02, 2014, 01:22:13 am

Did someone say "imminent release"?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://fat.gfycat.com/ActualFeistyBettong.gif)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spectre Incarnate on June 02, 2014, 02:09:51 am

Quote from: monk12 on May 31, 2014, 08:07:08 pm

IIRC that one made it so if you are covered in rain/sweat/blood it will evaporate eventually, instead of covering you forever and providing an infinite source of drinking... liquid.

Ohh... okay. Was worded a bit oddly, sorry for misunderstanding. Damn, thought that meant wells were fixed. Originally told some fellow players about the "fixed contaminant drinking" news and they were overjoyed. Whoops. >_> LOL

It was also my understanding that the classic fantasy plants like plump helmets, pig tail, prickleberries and the like were being removed from the game and replaced with real world plants? Please say I misunderstood this one, also... o_o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 02, 2014, 03:37:02 am

Quote from: Spectre Incarnate on June 02, 2014, 02:09:51 am

Quote from: monk12 on May 31, 2014, 08:07:08 pm

IIRC that one made it so if you are covered in rain/sweat/blood it will evaporate eventually, instead of covering you forever and providing an infinite source of drinking... liquid.

Ohh... okay. Was worded a bit oddly, sorry for misunderstanding. Damn, thought that meant wells were fixed. Originally told some fellow players about the "fixed contaminant drinking" news and they were overjoyed. Whoops. >_> LOL

It was also my understanding that the classic fantasy plants like plump helmets, pig tail, prickleberries and the like were being removed from the game and replaced with real world plants? Please say I misunderstood this one, also... o_o

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.

They're not gone yet, but might in the future. Note that this is for the aboveground plants only, since the underground ones don't really have real-world equivalents. Emphasis on the bolded part.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 02, 2014, 03:59:35 am

I think it's for underground plants too, since they'll probably be replaced by proceduraly generated ones in the far future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 02, 2014, 04:51:13 am

Quote from: Parisbre56 on June 02, 2014, 03:59:35 am

I think it's for underground plants too, since they'll probably be replaced by proceduraly generated ones in the far future.

I very much doubt that. For one the underground plants are far more ingrained in the DF culture than the aboveground ones. Also, having some familiar items in various categories throughout the game will only become more important as more and more randomized content is added in. Having to start each new game by looking through the details of all the crops (and metals, animals, etc) to find out which does what would become a nuisance quite fast. Sure, it's been stated as a future goal to have the option to play a completely random world if one wants to, but there'll still be some stock content for those that want it.

Sure, some of them might be touched upon a bit (cave wheat for instance could easily be grouped into the category of "crappy"), but you seriously can't mean to say plump helmets will be going anywhere ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 02, 2014, 06:52:35 am

Well, I'm not against randomized metal, for example. Each player should have to rely on the "general knowledges" of the Dwarves themselves, and experiment for the unknown metals. This could be fun (particularly with anything related to magma and floodgates)

// 1816 most online...on bay12forums stat...lol ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2014, 08:25:11 am

Quote from: Threetoe

It's almost here! After over two years in the making, we plan to release the next version of Dwarf Fortress in the beginning of July.

Amazing !

Will it be possible to access the Legends mode without having to abandon/retire a fortress/adventurer before ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 02, 2014, 09:05:15 am

Quote from: Robsoie on June 02, 2014, 08:25:11 am

Quote from: Threetoe

It's almost here! After over two years in the making, we plan to release the next version of Dwarf Fortress in the beginning of July.

Amazing !

Will it be possible to access the Legends mode without having to abandon/retire a fortress/adventurer before ?

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

It's probably legitimate to have some kind of restricted mode, but being able to see everything would spoil stuff, including outside threats to your fortress, vampires and whatever else.

Worth noting that we'll now be able to ask the liaison about what's going on in the outside world, so that's one step forward to that end ^^

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Jordan~ on June 02, 2014, 11:13:47 am

Are there any plans to implement a plant domestication system similar to the animal domestication system that exists at present? For example, wild plants obtained by gathering could be gradually cultivated over many generations, with yields improving over time, towards a peak at domestication, and progress towards domestication could be charted on a screen similar to the one that now exists for animal domestication.

I think it could raise some interesting gameplay mechanics for procedurally generated plants in future versions, and add a more strategic element to farming (what with greater importance of seed management, etc.). It might also be possible, if difficult and requiring even more micromanagement, to connect seeds to their parent plants so that players could select plants for their desired traits in much the same way as they can at present with animals, by culling the specimens that lack those traits (or in this case, cooking or dumping their seeds).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Robsoie on June 02, 2014, 11:30:57 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 02, 2014, 09:05:15 am

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

It's probably legitimate to have some kind of restricted mode, but being able to see everything would spoil stuff, including outside threats to your fortress, vampires and whatever else.

Worth noting that we'll now be able to ask the liaison about what's going on in the outside world, so that's one step forward to that end ^^

Thanks, i'm really looking forward to the ability to get informations about the outside world from the liaison. It was my reason to get to Legends mode during a Fortress/Adventure game as i was noticing all those civs and characters around but without anyone telling me anything about them.

Can't wait for July to come :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 02, 2014, 01:20:41 pm

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 02, 2014, 09:05:15 am

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2013, 08:05:32 pm

Quote from: tyrannus007

Can you make Legends Mode accessible from within Dwarf Mode or Adventure Mode, so you don't have to abandon fort to see it?

It's probably legitimate to have some kind of restricted mode, but being able to see everything would spoil stuff, including outside threats to your fortress, vampires and whatever else.

Worth noting that we'll now be able to ask the liaison about what's going on in the outside world, so that's one step forward to that end ^^

A new restricted Legends mode becomes available, but only while the Liaison is there.

"Sigh... now, the Clutch of Sweaty Belts was founded in Granite of 180.  Its founder, Urist McHistoricalLeaderDude, had eighty-seven kills.  Why am I telling you all of this anyway?  I want to go home!"

Not sure what Toady really has in mind for the restricted Legends, but I hope it limits you to what your Dwarves know.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on June 02, 2014, 05:06:01 pm

I know Toady didn't plan it so that it released after I finally finish school for the year, but I like to think he did.

You know what I'm looking forward too? Everything. Not even going to qualify that statement.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 02, 2014, 05:13:01 pm

I hope we keep plump helmets due to them being a fixture of the game('s silly mythology).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 02, 2014, 10:04:43 pm

When we retire our forts and come back in adventure mode to massacre the inhabitants.  Will your fort's military respond instead of the entire fort coming for you? Some of us want to see a dwarf hammer lord come at us in full steel while we are trying to dodge crossbow fire from our former dwarves.

Also is it possible to retire your fort during a siege? Then come back later in adv. mode to take on the FB or goblins trying to siege your fort?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 02, 2014, 10:58:59 pm

I'd assume you succumb to the invasion just as you do when you try to abandon in the current version.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainMcClellan on June 02, 2014, 11:38:04 pm

This might be a stupid/already asked question, but will NPCs maintain relationships with family/friends that have become werebeasts or night trolls? Further, will they react negatively if you slay their werebeast brother/sister/whatever? Or are all NPCs automatically set to regard them as dead when they become a creature? I guess, what I'm trying to ask is if its possible for a still human family member to still have a positive relationship with a relative that has been turned into a creature, and if so will they aid or attempt to avenge them? If not, would that be something you'd consider implementing or would it just make quests become a never-ending visit from logic hell for player and coder both?

( I ask because I like the idea of a family still loving their relative, and their relative specifically not attacking them despite the monstrous form. However, this would/should be a rare occurrence. It just adds more of a story-feel to it. Makes adventure mode feel more like a piece of literature.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 03, 2014, 03:39:21 am

Quote from: CaptainMcClellan on June 02, 2014, 11:38:04 pm

This might be a stupid/already asked question, but will NPCs maintain relationships with family/friends that have become werebeasts or night trolls? Further, will they react negatively if you slay their werebeast brother/sister/whatever? Or are all NPCs automatically set to regard them as dead when they become a creature? I guess, what I'm trying to ask is if its possible for a still human family member to still have a positive relationship with a relative that has been turned into a creature, and if so will they aid or attempt to avenge them? If not, would that be something you'd consider implementing or would it just make quests become a never-ending visit from logic hell for player and coder both?

( I ask because I like the idea of a family still loving their relative, and their relative specifically not attacking them despite the monstrous form. However, this would/should be a rare occurrence. It just adds more of a story-feel to it. Makes adventure mode feel more like a piece of literature.)

I get the sense that ware-beasts are still considered relatives for grieving purposes, meaning that they cause negative reactions when the creature dies, not when they become infected. But warebeasts are still exiled from town, and there are no special interactions between them and anyone else who might be a friend or family.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 03, 2014, 09:12:55 am

Quote from: King Mir on June 03, 2014, 03:39:21 am

Quote from: CaptainMcClellan on June 02, 2014, 11:38:04 pm

This might be a stupid/already asked question, but will NPCs maintain relationships with family/friends that have become werebeasts or night trolls? Further, will they react negatively if you slay their werebeast brother/sister/whatever? Or are all NPCs automatically set to regard them as dead when they become a creature? I guess, what I'm trying to ask is if its possible for a still human family member to still have a positive relationship with a relative that has been turned into a creature, and if so will they aid or attempt to avenge them? If not, would that be something you'd consider implementing or would it just make quests become a never-ending visit from logic hell for player and coder both?

( I ask because I like the idea of a family still loving their relative, and their relative specifically not attacking them despite the monstrous form. However, this would/should be a rare occurrence. It just adds more of a story-feel to it. Makes adventure mode feel more like a piece of literature.)

I get the sense that ware-beasts are still considered relatives for grieving purposes, meaning that they cause negative reactions when the creature dies, not when they become infected. But warebeasts are still exiled from town, and there are no special interactions between them and anyone else who might be a friend or family.

To bring in a common thematic element to the whole he's-a-monster-but-I-love-him story: Toady, are there plans to lift curses?  I'm curious if the curse itself will come with some tags that describe how to reverse it, some new interaction removes curses by class, or one needs to cobble together different effects that undo each tag change.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 03, 2014, 10:16:19 am

Quote from: Dirst on June 03, 2014, 09:12:55 am

To bring in a common thematic element to the whole he's-a-monster-but-I-love-him story: Toady, are there plans to lift curses?  I'm curious if the curse itself will come with some tags that describe how to reverse it, some new interaction removes curses by class, or one needs to cobble together different effects that undo each tag change.

It'll eventually be possible to lift curses, especially since that tends to happen with curses in stories. How the mechanics work out can't really be said until Toady goes to work on lifting curses (which I would not expect to happen once Toady goes to work on night creatures again). Some quotes from DF Talks (there's probably some stuff in this thread as well - I sort of remember a quote that essentially said that what happens in stories is fair game):

Quote

Rainseeker:   Now can that be cured, is there a method to cure these things?
Toady:   We haven't really gotten to curing curses. It's basically ... if you want to be a grave robber then you get what's coming to, although it's certainly fair - especially if you want to have an adventure that lasts awhile - to be able to deal with stuff like this; but we're probably not going to do it at first, you'll probably just have to deal. And there are some other things we were thinking of doing, we don't need to spoil everything for the moment. So that's mummies and that's what we're on now.

Quote

ThreeToe:   Okay, so now the second question is, 'Is there a possibility that we see these gods manifest themselves in a more physical form, and possibly playing a more influential role, such as maybe providing their power to boost the harvesting of crops, or removing curses, or controlling the elements.' These are the gods that we talked about on another Dwarf Fortress Talk.
Toady:   I'm not sure when this question was asked, it was one of the older ones, and I'm not sure if they knew at the time that gods were cursing people. Now that the gods curse people ... maybe that's why it came up, because they asked if the gods are going to be removing curses, well, they're adding curses, so there's nothing to say that there's not going to be ways for people to, kind of, redeem themselves after they've despoiled temples, and that kind of thing, or having the gods even fight with each other over who gets redeemed and who gets cursed, and all that kind of thing.

Edit: The quote I was thinking of was in the previous thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84398.msg2411117;topicseen#msg2411117):

Quote

Quote from: Thundercraft

Will curses eventually be developed in a way that Adventurers will be able to cure an intelligent creature cursed into an animal form with something as mundane and simple as a kiss or hug?

Similarly, will there be a chance for dwarves in Fortress Mode to encounter a talking cursed creature and the player be given the option to lead their dwarves to find a cure for it... with cured being either joining the fort or giving them some sort of reward?

Whatever happens in fairy tales is fair.  I have no idea what or when though.

Also, some of ThreeToe's stories, like Curse of the Cyclops (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_cyclops.html) deal with curses and how to (not) lift them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Spectre Incarnate on June 03, 2014, 10:36:15 pm

Quote from: Toady One on March 31, 2014, 06:47:20 pm

Quote from: smjjames

Now that we have real world fruits, etc, what will happen to the other ones (aside from the underground crops) which were basically analogs to real world crops? Like will bloated tubers become potatoes or something?

That's an open question.  My thought was to scrap them, since the real-world ones are more interesting and I want to use that stronger diverse base of mechanics and potential mechanics as a place to generate random ones from eventually.  Generated plants can have more intricate ties to generated mythology than the made-up plants without constraining the game, I think, and it allows for more possibilities (and our made-up plants are crappy enough that they could all have easily been generated without decreasing the quality at all...).

All the same, they could end up dying a slow lingering death instead, and some might survive indefinitely.

Real world plants are more interesting?? The classics are crappy?? You've got to be kidding me.

The fantastical plants, both the underground plump helmets, pig tail, quarry bushes, sweet pods, and other such things, as well as the aboveground ones like bloated tubers, prickle berries, sun berries, rat weed, etc... are a piece of Dwarf Fortress culture and myth. They're not a bug. They're not crappy. And regardess of how easy they were to make or to replace and regardless of whether or not they have real world counterparts or were imagined in under five minutes, they are a historical feature of the game which has been established in the minds of all players since the beginning. They make up a huge majority of countless narratives. Just look at my recent signature. And to anyone that says it could have been any plant that Stodir fell in love with or that I could just mod them back in, then you miss the point entirely. To you, it may be simple code. To us... if you don't know the answer to this, blood god save you.

Just saying they're crappy is pretty disrespectful to the community. You're basically telling us as players what we should and should not like. My personal preferences say otherwise. "Likes bloated tubers for their CULTURAL CHARM". You can think real world plants are more interesting if you want to, but for me it's one of the main reasons Gnomoria and other DF clones bore me to tears compared to the beauty and personality that is Dwarf Fortress. You are seriously barking up the wrong tower cap if you think we'll have a party at stone table while watching a big part of the game's heritage and personality go up in magma smoke because you suddenly decided all the classic plants are crappy.

Please, for the love of all things dwarven, leave the original base plants and trees in and enhance them if needed. You can add real world and procedurally generated plants also, but please do not remove what has been happily drilled into our skulls for the last decade. This would be the same as removing goblins or strange moods or carp. The game is a tool for making wonderful narratives, but the game also *is* a narrative. That's why it's in the Museum of Modern Art, after all.

I blame the humans. Them and their dumb real world plants can go to HFS! The day I have to mod the classic plants back into my game just to have them again will be a fell day indeed!  :'(

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on June 03, 2014, 11:39:10 pm

Well said. However, I have a better idea. Have a option (maybe in one of the init files) that allows the player to choose one of three "play types". One will be the classic DF fantasy stuff, with dwarves, elves, goblins, plump helmets, etc. etc. Another will be real world stuff: rather than dwarves, you play as humans in medieval times, fantasy things do not exist, blah blah blah. That one I don't particularly want to see, but you seem to think real world stuff is "more interesting" anyway. And finally, the one that would be completely randomized. Randomized per-world plants, creatures, everything. Basically, Spore but DF. Oh, and dwarves would be some for randomized monstrosity as well. That would be the "hard mode", as every time you play you would have to basically re-learn the game. I would love to see that.

I basically just wrote this as I thought it, so if it comes across as dissing Toady or anyone else, I'm sorry.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nomoetoe on June 03, 2014, 11:44:30 pm

Quote from: Scotsmen on June 03, 2014, 11:39:10 pm

Well said. However, I have a better idea. Have a option (maybe in one of the init files) that allows the player to choose one of three "play types". One will be the classic DF fantasy stuff, with dwarves, elves, goblins, plump helmets, etc. etc. Another will be real world stuff: rather than dwarves, you play as humans in medieval times, fantasy things do not exist, blah blah blah. That one I don't particularly want to see, but you seem to think real world stuff is "more interesting" anyway. And finally, the one that would be completely randomized. Randomized per-world plants, creatures, everything. Basically, Spore but DF. Oh, and dwarves would be some for randomized monstrosity as well. That would be the "hard mode", as every time you play you would have to basically re-learn the game. I would love to see that.

I basically just wrote this as I thought it, so if it comes across as dissing Toady or anyone else, I'm sorry.

You diabolical dastardly demonic devious delicious delectable dependable desirable dedicated devoted divine DEMON!

Nah ye wrote your thoughts and they don't seem dissy, at least in my opinion. c:

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 04, 2014, 01:30:31 am

I haven't seen much arguing against the crappiness of the DF plants, but I have seen many share with us their emotional attachment to the current names.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vattic on June 04, 2014, 02:54:04 am

Do you plan to try and keep up with the suggestions board now you've cleared the backlog?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 04, 2014, 02:58:04 pm

Are the dwarven hill and deep sites tied with the CAVE_DETAILED tag, or will they have their own, separate tags?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uristsonsonson on June 04, 2014, 11:55:13 pm

I just realized. In the next release, we're finally going to get to see NPC dwarves. As far as I remember, there's a bug preventing fortress born NPC critters from reaching full size. Does anyone know if this will still be in?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on June 05, 2014, 12:06:07 am

Uh...I'm fairly certain that bug affects all fortress born critters. Not just animals.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 05, 2014, 12:08:14 am

It affects all creatures born after worldgen, not just fortress-born ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 05, 2014, 12:39:02 am

Here's the bug report. (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6334)  I don't think Toady mentioned fixing it, but I expect it'll get fixed in the post-release bugfixing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vgray on June 05, 2014, 12:45:01 am

*Tilts head*

But people aren't born outside of worldgen or a fort. Not yet anyway.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TastyMints on June 05, 2014, 12:47:42 am

With the separation of movement and attack speed being implemented does that also mean that Crossbow and Bow Users no longer stand planted in one spot while "reloading" their weapon? For example: Can an archer knock a new arrow while moving? If so is there a stat penalty or skill roll associated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 05, 2014, 01:10:09 am

Quote from: Vgray on June 05, 2014, 12:45:01 am

*Tilts head*

But people aren't born outside of worldgen or a fort. Not yet anyway.

If one were to be, they would be subject  to the bug all the same.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 05, 2014, 09:20:19 am

Quote from: TastyMints on June 05, 2014, 12:47:42 am

With the separation of movement and attack speed being implemented does that also mean that Crossbow and Bow Users no longer stand planted in one spot while "reloading" their weapon? For example: Can an archer knock a new arrow while moving? If so is there a stat penalty or skill roll associated?

The next version will still force archers to reload immediately, but it'll be easier to change later on:

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2012, 02:19:52 am

Quote from: Dae

Toady, will the next changes include a nerfing of crossbows, both overpowered in Fortress mode and on enemies and VERY inconvenient as a beginner adventurer due to the fact you automatically reload right after firing (instead of doing something more useful, like fleeing or dropping your crossbow and pulling out a sword) ?

I haven't changed them yet, but the special firing delay variable is up for the chopping block now that they can be merged with the other actions.  And yeah, that'll give us some more freedom, since we couldn't make the post-fire delay very slow in the old system.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Minister on June 05, 2014, 10:03:04 am

As far as substantive releases go (adding new features as opposed to bug fixes), clearly some take longer than others.  It seems to be the case that there are shorter release cycles in which you make one or two substantive additions to the game, and others that involve some major structural change which necessitates rewriting numerous aspects of the code and, therefore, results in a longer development time to the release. 

How many major structural changes remain with DF that will require extended development cycles/release periods like the one that we are currently experiencing?  Can you list the remaining major structural changes to DF that you presently envision as necessary to complete DF 1.0?

Obviously, development plans change and some releases take longer than others, so I don't mean for this question to pin you down on any specific development plan or release schedule, but I think it would be encouraging to me and the community to hear that there is some discrete number of major structural changes that will happen leading up to DF 1.0, and each of these long release cycles does, in fact, complete some certain major structural elements, thereby reducing the number of future extended release cycles.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:22:25 am

In the next release, will animal domestication persist across forts, so that if a fort falls or is abandoned after domesticating a species of animal, that animal will be domesticated in any subsequent forts in that world? Possibly even purchasable from caravans of your civ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Trif on June 05, 2014, 10:32:37 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:22:25 am

In the next release, will animal domestication persist across forts, so that if a fort falls or is abandoned after domesticating a species of animal, that animal will be domesticated in any subsequent forts in that world? Possibly even purchasable from caravans of your civ?

That happens in the current version already.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-03-10

When your dwarf caravan leaves, your civ now picks up a small portion of what you have learned about animal training for future forts.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:38:08 am

Quote from: Trif on June 05, 2014, 10:32:37 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:22:25 am

In the next release, will animal domestication persist across forts, so that if a fort falls or is abandoned after domesticating a species of animal, that animal will be domesticated in any subsequent forts in that world? Possibly even purchasable from caravans of your civ?

That happens in the current version already.

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2012.html#2012-03-10

When your dwarf caravan leaves, your civ now picks up a small portion of what you have learned about animal training for future forts.

Yes, but I've been informed that basically doesn't do anything, just making training slightly easier in future forts. There's currently no way to get every single type of animal in one fort short of cheesing it and adding them all to the same biome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 05, 2014, 10:44:03 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:38:08 am

Yes, but I've been informed that basically doesn't do anything, just making training slightly easier in future forts. There's currently no way to get every single type of animal in one fort short of cheesing it and adding them all to the same biome.

Every single type of animal?  Are you expecting a big flood?

The problem seems to be that only a portion of the fort's knowledge is transferred to the Mountainhome.  It would take many, many caravans (years) to transfer everything, probably over the course of several different forts (because Fun happens).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 05, 2014, 10:48:58 am

Quote from: Dirst on June 05, 2014, 10:44:03 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:38:08 am

Yes, but I've been informed that basically doesn't do anything, just making training slightly easier in future forts. There's currently no way to get every single type of animal in one fort short of cheesing it and adding them all to the same biome.

Every single type of animal?  Are you expecting a big flood?

The problem seems to be that only a portion of the fort's knowledge is transferred to the Mountainhome.  It would take many, many caravans (years) to transfer everything, probably over the course of several different forts (because Fun happens).

From the wiki:

Quote from: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Animal_trainer#Taming

Although a number of farm animals are domesticated by your civilization from the beginning of the game, your fortress cannot individually "civilization-level" domesticate a species.^{1 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121150.0)}

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:50:08 am

Quote from: Dirst on June 05, 2014, 10:44:03 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:38:08 am

Yes, but I've been informed that basically doesn't do anything, just making training slightly easier in future forts. There's currently no way to get every single type of animal in one fort short of cheesing it and adding them all to the same biome.

Every single type of animal?  Are you expecting a big flood?

The problem seems to be that only a portion of the fort's knowledge is transferred to the Mountainhome.  It would take many, many caravans (years) to transfer everything, probably over the course of several different forts (because Fun happens).

Really? Interesting. Is there any way to test how long that takes? Does a larger sample size (i.e. more animals of that species) affect the amount of knowledge gained? Has anyone actually had a fort run long enough that they've managed to be able to purchase 'newly' domesticated species from the mountainhome?

I am currently in the process of replacing all [AQUATIC] with [AMPHIBIOUS] and all [IMMOBILE_LAND] with [PET_EXOTIC]. I am going to have the biggest zoo ever.

EDIT:

Quote from: Parisbre56 on June 05, 2014, 10:48:58 am

Quote from: Dirst on June 05, 2014, 10:44:03 am

Quote from: Zaerosz on June 05, 2014, 10:38:08 am

Yes, but I've been informed that basically doesn't do anything, just making training slightly easier in future forts. There's currently no way to get every single type of animal in one fort short of cheesing it and adding them all to the same biome.

Every single type of animal?  Are you expecting a big flood?

The problem seems to be that only a portion of the fort's knowledge is transferred to the Mountainhome.  It would take many, many caravans (years) to transfer everything, probably over the course of several different forts (because Fun happens).

From the wiki:

Quote from: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Animal_trainer#Taming

Although a number of farm animals are domesticated by your civilization from the beginning of the game, your fortress cannot individually "civilization-level" domesticate a species.^{1 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=121150.0)}

Ah dammit.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 05, 2014, 11:01:34 am

I love this game, but the moment it becomes too realistic, I may have to stop playing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 05, 2014, 11:18:01 am

Quote from: The Minister on June 05, 2014, 10:03:04 am

As far as substantive releases go (adding new features as opposed to bug fixes), clearly some take longer than others.  It seems to be the case that there are shorter release cycles in which you make one or two substantive additions to the game, and others that involve some major structural change which necessitates rewriting numerous aspects of the code and, therefore, results in a longer development time to the release. 

How many major structural changes remain with DF that will require extended development cycles/release periods like the one that we are currently experiencing?  Can you list the remaining major structural changes to DF that you presently envision as necessary to complete DF 1.0?

Obviously, development plans change and some releases take longer than others, so I don't mean for this question to pin you down on any specific development plan or release schedule, but I think it would be encouraging to me and the community to hear that there is some discrete number of major structural changes that will happen leading up to DF 1.0, and each of these long release cycles does, in fact, complete some certain major structural elements, thereby reducing the number of future extended release cycles.

The Core items on this page are basically that list: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

However, the size of individual features is not what causes year-plus release cycles.  Rather, it's the number of features that get bundled into the release.  Long release cycles happen because all programmers have the impulse to bite off too much at once, even when they've been trained not to, even when they have colleagues or supervisors calling them out on it. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 05, 2014, 11:42:41 am

Yeah, this one has at least 4 of the things on that list included in here. By my last count, it was 6, but then that list is outdated and the current version numbering scheme may be different enough to make my guess completely off-base.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 05, 2014, 12:48:30 pm

Nice new avatar Putnam.
I think it would be too cumbersome (but necesary, at least for me, being a little compulsive neat freak) to have such list. I also think that Toady's time would be implented better developing the game instead of doing such chore.
Guiding myself by this (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) which is what you actually get when you click on the link instead of the dev_single one. However it's lost to me if that's up to date. I recall Toady saying something about coloring some list and I assume is this one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 05, 2014, 12:57:04 pm

Which avatar is a new one? O_o

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 05, 2014, 01:21:18 pm

It keeps changing as I reload the page! What kind of accursed, dark sorcery is this?!?!  :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 05, 2014, 01:27:13 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 05, 2014, 01:21:18 pm

It keeps changing as I reload the page! What kind of accursed, dark sorcery is this?!?!  :P

It's called SignAvatar. Would post a link or elaborate but I'm using my phone atm so eeeeeeh...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: The Minister on June 05, 2014, 03:12:31 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on June 05, 2014, 11:18:01 am

Quote from: The Minister on June 05, 2014, 10:03:04 am

As far as substantive releases go (adding new features as opposed to bug fixes), clearly some take longer than others.  It seems to be the case that there are shorter release cycles in which you make one or two substantive additions to the game, and others that involve some major structural change which necessitates rewriting numerous aspects of the code and, therefore, results in a longer development time to the release. 

How many major structural changes remain with DF that will require extended development cycles/release periods like the one that we are currently experiencing?  Can you list the remaining major structural changes to DF that you presently envision as necessary to complete DF 1.0?

Obviously, development plans change and some releases take longer than others, so I don't mean for this question to pin you down on any specific development plan or release schedule, but I think it would be encouraging to me and the community to hear that there is some discrete number of major structural changes that will happen leading up to DF 1.0, and each of these long release cycles does, in fact, complete some certain major structural elements, thereby reducing the number of future extended release cycles.

The Core items on this page are basically that list: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

However, the size of individual features is not what causes year-plus release cycles.  Rather, it's the number of features that get bundled into the release.  Long release cycles happen because all programmers have the impulse to bite off too much at once, even when they've been trained not to, even when they have colleagues or supervisors calling them out on it.

Thanks for the response Footkerchief.  I think my question was a little bit different, and maybe a little unclear.

I was specifically wondering which particular development items will require "major structural changes" to game code that will require updating many parts of the game, if you can say at present.

By "major structural changes" I am referring to fundamental changes to part of the code that necessitate rewriting code in several areas of the game because they would actually break other parts of the game if they were not simultaneously updated.  For example, adding the Z-coordinate, DF 2010's material abstraction rewrite, and the combat speed/move speed split required rewriting code underlying a number of different aspects of the game because the updated code so significantly varied from the placeholder that preceded it that the change would simply have broken various aspects of the game if a wide ranging rewrites were not simultaneously introduced.  Those particular release cycles were also relatively long, at least partly because of the breadth of those rewrites.  In contrast, when night creatures were added, that release took some time, but not nearly as long because, although they were a pretty significant substantive new feature, they did not have such wide ranging effects that required rewriting tons of code underlying different parts of the game.  At least, it seems that not all the items on the development arcs list describe the kind of "major structural changes" about which I was trying to inquire. 

I'm not a programmer by profession, so if this question is unclear or misapprehends the development process anyone can please feel free to let me know and I will try to rephrase.

EDIT:  I guess, to be clear, I'm less interested in knowing how many long release cycles there will be as I am interested in knowing how many major structural changes remain before the fundamental framework of DF is in place.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 05, 2014, 03:35:48 pm

Quote

EDIT:  I guess, to be clear, I'm less interested in knowing how many long release cycles there will be as I am interested in knowing how many major structural changes remain before the fundamental framework of DF is in place.

Well, even if this is not very precise, I think that the biggest fundemental change to come will be the economy, and the different "planes" (I think I remember reading Toady saying that the latter was the change he "feared" most to implement).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on June 05, 2014, 06:39:05 pm

And in early June, 2014, the Fortress gained the ability to alter its own object data templates mid-process. Skynet's next attack was promptly foiled, and humanity continued the production of cheese and socks the Fortress so desires.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scotsmen on June 05, 2014, 08:09:30 pm

Quote from: Cobbler89 on June 05, 2014, 06:39:05 pm

And in early June, 2014, the Fortress gained the ability to alter its own object data templates mid-process. Skynet's next attack was promptly foiled, and dwarvenkind continued the production of cheese and socks the Fortress so desires.

FTFY

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 06, 2014, 12:18:17 am

And why can't humans enjoy cheese and socks?

Will this ability to generate new object types mid-game allow us to potentially add new modded objects mid-game as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on June 06, 2014, 11:07:28 am

This may have been answered already but in the next version with the addition of history continuing to be generated post world gen and the possibility to retire fortresses will the embark options change based on what we do in our own forts if we retire them? ie if we tame elephants long/well enough or embark in an evil biome and get a hold of some silver barbs will those then become available from the embark screen in future forts?
If no, is this a planned for the future?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 06, 2014, 01:57:43 pm

Is the reverse possible? Deleting all objects of some type?

The dark god of elves bans the existence of axes and anvils. It is up to our young dwarf hero, champion of Armok to restore unbalance to the universe...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 06, 2014, 03:23:02 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on June 06, 2014, 12:18:17 am

And why can't humans enjoy cheese and socks?

Will this ability to generate new object types mid-game allow us to potentially add new modded objects mid-game as well?

It might be a start, but I doubt it. There is probably more that needs to be done for that to work, such as doing a diff on the save raws and the data structures of the save.

Quote from: sal880612m on June 06, 2014, 11:07:28 am

This may have been answered already but in the next version with the addition of history continuing to be generated post world gen and the possibility to retire fortresses will the embark options change based on what we do in our own forts if we retire them? ie if we tame elephants long/well enough or embark in an evil biome and get a hold of some silver barbs will those then become available from the embark screen in future forts?
If no, is this a planned for the future?

There was a bit of this further upthread with regards to domestication. Either way, what your fortress is doing is supposed to impact the world. In some future update, if you manage to domesticate elephants (it's currently not possible to reach domestic status for undomesticated animals), then you should eventually be able to get elephants through caravans, assuming your civ can get access to enough elephants to domesticate and trade away. Similarly for sliver barbs - if you put enough of them into circulation, you might get some sliver barb products into the world, which may then reach your future forts. If you send out seeds, that might end up granting the civs around the world the ability to plant sliver barbs.

Quote from: Parisbre56 on June 06, 2014, 01:57:43 pm

Is the reverse possible? Deleting all objects of some type?

The dark god of elves bans the existence of axes and anvils. It is up to our young dwarf hero, champion of Armok to restore unbalance to the universe...

That seems really doubtful. Deleting object types holds pitfalls that adding them doesn't. And in your example, you certainly don't want to delete anvils or axes - you want to destroy the existing ones, then edit the civilizations to remove the ability to make axes and anvils from them, and then set up some events that restore that ability to those civs. Deleting the item types in question would be counterproductive in this case. I suppose it could make some sense, for example, for curing all vampirism, but even then, I'd keep the vampire curse objects around for reference at least.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: itruelso on June 06, 2014, 06:49:21 pm

What determines if a dwarf notices furniture? Does it happen every time they walk past a statue?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on June 06, 2014, 08:31:43 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 06, 2014, 03:23:02 pm

<-snip->

Thanks for the answer. I remember reading something about this before but I thought it was more an inquiry into the current state than about what the state would be in the next release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Align on June 07, 2014, 05:37:20 am

Will magic & ranged combat get as detailed as melee combat?

I like how you can attack specific parts of the enemy, down to the backs of their teeth, and with the reaction moments in the upcoming version it'll get even better.

While ranged combat (and necromancy?) is basically just pointing at a target and hoping it works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 07, 2014, 05:47:55 am

Quote from: Align on June 07, 2014, 05:37:20 am

Will magic & ranged combat get as detailed as melee combat?

I like how you can attack specific parts of the enemy, down to the backs of their teeth, and with the reaction moments in the upcoming version it'll get even better.

While ranged combat (and necromancy?) is basically just pointing at a target and hoping it works.

I think it would be unfair to say that it won't. Being able to target specific bodyparts with throwing/shooting would go a long way, though, even though the results of hitting someone are equally detailed as when using melee...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 07, 2014, 04:22:09 pm

Quote from: Align on June 07, 2014, 05:37:20 am

Will magic & ranged combat get as detailed as melee combat?

I like how you can attack specific parts of the enemy, down to the backs of their teeth, and with the reaction moments in the upcoming version it'll get even better.

While ranged combat (and necromancy?) is basically just pointing at a target and hoping it works.

Not yet:

Quote from: monk12 on March 28, 2013, 12:30:58 pm

Quote from: Toady One

Quote from: DarkDXZ

Also, slightly unrelated, but are there plans for aimed ranged attacks (firing and throwing), so that we aren't just hoping that we hit something worth hitting?

I'm all for being able to aim at what you want to aim at, and it's the kind of thing I imagine will happen fairly early on next time I mess with ranged combat, but I don't know when that'll be.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 08:49:16 pm

What happens with the individual population when you decide to declare lordship over a site? Do they have differing views, or is it a unanimous yes/no response?

Also:

Quote from: The Devlog

I wonder if the game has become odd.

Was your first clue the mermaid farms or the demon checkers?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 07, 2014, 09:52:52 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 08:49:16 pm

Quote from: The Devlog

I wonder if the game has become odd.

Was your first clue the mermaid farms or the demon checkers?

I think he meant that particular adventurer gamesave.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 10:17:10 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 07, 2014, 09:52:52 pm

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 08:49:16 pm

Quote from: The Devlog

I wonder if the game has become odd.

Was your first clue the mermaid farms or the demon checkers?

I think he meant that particular adventurer gamesave.

You're probably right.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: raler on June 08, 2014, 01:38:18 am

He said asking to be employed as a guard does that mean we can get jobs like that

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 08, 2014, 04:03:35 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 08:49:16 pm

What happens with the individual population when you decide to declare lordship over a site? Do they have differing views, or is it a unanimous yes/no response?

Your site claim is not recognized unless you "control" the main building of the site (keep, mead hall, etc). The population, for the time being at least, doesn't care much, but has its own share of opinions. The 12/12/13 devlog tells much of the story:

Spoiler: spoilered for length (click to show/hide)

Quote

In part for preparation of restoring governments after completing insurrections and otherwise turning over sites to other people, but also just for the mess of village-to-village fighting, you can now claim a site when you are there. Which site claims from which entities take precedence in a given site should be pretty complicated later on, but it's not time for more complications, so the recognized claim (for purposes of diplomacy and site disputes and displacement after invasions and all that) is just based at this point on who is physically holding the main building (whether that's a keep or a mead hall). A neighboring site entity maintains old grudges and other diplomatic info with a site entity even when it has lost its site, but the neighbor won't act on that for the time being, and the newly recognized site entity will be the one it now treats with. Regular citizens have their various factional loyalties (which we'll work with as we head into more insurrection notes), but they basically don't care who is in charge as long as the new leaders aren't real trouble (like goblin occupiers). That said, it's quite possible for this release that there'll be enough variety that you'll have more trouble taking over a site where citizens appreciate the current leadership more than average, since they'll be willing to jump in.

 In order to make a claim, you have to tell somebody else about it, since an entity can't just exist in your own mind (although there might be reasons for something like that later, to establish rules for retired hermits in a ruin or something). Once you state a claim, you become the leader of a new site entity based on your current culture, but it is meaningless (other than as a new rumor) if you don't take the main building from the previous owners (at which point you get a handy announcement). What you do with control of the site is going to be up to you, in a few limited ways anyway. Once you've got a successful site claim, if you don't just want to retire, you'll be able to pass it off to a subordinate or give it to your former leader to handle as they please. Or you can run around the world with some of your own guards (in which case you'll probably lose the top site claim shortly after somebody looks your town's way).

 In this simplistic system, the overall power of people is basically determined by the total population after considering the number of abstract tribute relationships they maintain. Note that taking over a site doesn't necessarily involve killing everybody in the main structure -- the upcoming plan is that if they yield, they can become regular citizens of the new entity, or if they run (or are sent away), they'll become bandits (taking their old entity and its site claim with them). You should also be able to leave a defeated leader in charge without ever making a site claim of your own in the first place, forcing them to send (abstract) tribute to whomever you want (including one of your own site entities elsewhere) for as long as it takes them to reassert themselves and break the agreement. So yeah, it still needs work, but it should be reasonably fun to mess around with even in its current form.

Quote from: raler on June 08, 2014, 01:38:18 am

He said asking to be employed as a guard does that mean we can get jobs like that

Yes, you'll be able to work as a guard/troublemaker for site leaders. You can also start your adventurer as one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dree12 on June 08, 2014, 09:30:55 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 08, 2014, 04:03:35 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 07, 2014, 08:49:16 pm

What happens with the individual population when you decide to declare lordship over a site? Do they have differing views, or is it a unanimous yes/no response?

Your site claim is not recognized unless you "control" the main building of the site (keep, mead hall, etc). The population, for the time being at least, doesn't care much, but has its own share of opinions. The 12/12/13 devlog tells much of the story:

Spoiler: spoilered for length (click to show/hide)

Quote

In part for preparation of restoring governments after completing insurrections and otherwise turning over sites to other people, but also just for the mess of village-to-village fighting, you can now claim a site when you are there. Which site claims from which entities take precedence in a given site should be pretty complicated later on, but it's not time for more complications, so the recognized claim (for purposes of diplomacy and site disputes and displacement after invasions and all that) is just based at this point on who is physically holding the main building (whether that's a keep or a mead hall). A neighboring site entity maintains old grudges and other diplomatic info with a site entity even when it has lost its site, but the neighbor won't act on that for the time being, and the newly recognized site entity will be the one it now treats with. Regular citizens have their various factional loyalties (which we'll work with as we head into more insurrection notes), but they basically don't care who is in charge as long as the new leaders aren't real trouble (like goblin occupiers). That said, it's quite possible for this release that there'll be enough variety that you'll have more trouble taking over a site where citizens appreciate the current leadership more than average, since they'll be willing to jump in.

 In order to make a claim, you have to tell somebody else about it, since an entity can't just exist in your own mind (although there might be reasons for something like that later, to establish rules for retired hermits in a ruin or something). Once you state a claim, you become the leader of a new site entity based on your current culture, but it is meaningless (other than as a new rumor) if you don't take the main building from the previous owners (at which point you get a handy announcement). What you do with control of the site is going to be up to you, in a few limited ways anyway. Once you've got a successful site claim, if you don't just want to retire, you'll be able to pass it off to a subordinate or give it to your former leader to handle as they please. Or you can run around the world with some of your own guards (in which case you'll probably lose the top site claim shortly after somebody looks your town's way).

 In this simplistic system, the overall power of people is basically determined by the total population after considering the number of abstract tribute relationships they maintain. Note that taking over a site doesn't necessarily involve killing everybody in the main structure -- the upcoming plan is that if they yield, they can become regular citizens of the new entity, or if they run (or are sent away), they'll become bandits (taking their old entity and its site claim with them). You should also be able to leave a defeated leader in charge without ever making a site claim of your own in the first place, forcing them to send (abstract) tribute to whomever you want (including one of your own site entities elsewhere) for as long as it takes them to reassert themselves and break the agreement. So yeah, it still needs work, but it should be reasonably fun to mess around with even in its current form.

Quote from: raler on June 08, 2014, 01:38:18 am

He said asking to be employed as a guard does that mean we can get jobs like that

Yes, you'll be able to work as a guard/troublemaker for site leaders. You can also start your adventurer as one.

How is main building defined? For instance, if I abandon a fortress and then try reclaiming it as an adventurer, what should I occupy?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 08, 2014, 09:32:32 am

Quote from: dree12 on June 08, 2014, 09:30:55 am

How is main building defined? For instance, if I abandon a fortress and then try reclaiming it as an adventurer, what should I occupy?

Mayor/Baron/Count/Duke/Monarch's chambers/office?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 08, 2014, 10:00:10 am

What the main building is is hard-coded for the different site types, most likely. For the human villages and towns, it's either the mead hall (which is returning), or the keep. A player-created fortress (most likely) won't have a main building, so you won't get an official chance to lord over them.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will adventurers be able to reclaim abandoned fortresses for their Civ through capturing the main building, such as a keep or mead hall? When goblins capture a dwarf fortress, is the site map converted to a goblin fortress template and vice versa? How long does this take? Will players be able to embark on recently conquered sites?

Quote from: Ribs

What happens if you attack the leader of one of your retired fortresses? Can you claim it with your adventurer? Can you claim dwarven fortresses at all?
If so,

Will there be some variation there, or will the dwarves from retired fortresses always be the more loyal types who will try very hard to kill your adventurer before surrendering?

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?

I think the way it "works" now, you could claim one of your retired fortresses, but it wouldn't actually know how to have it change hands, since there is no power location (at least not in a way that is currently understood by the adventure part of the game).  Abandoned fortresses don't have people in them, so you'd have to bring a companion along, state a claim to them, and then not have it recognized because there is no power location.  You can kill whomever, but you can't obtain the civ-level positions.  If you kill a monarch, you'll end up with a replacement, if there's a claimant around, or a lack of decision making -- which doesn't matter so much for dwarves, since they don't attack anybody yet.  I haven't allowed adventurers to place a claim on an existing entity position (they can only form a new entity with a new site claim), but you'll definitely be able to do that when we get into the meat of succession wars later.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on June 09, 2014, 07:57:53 am

I was listening to the last DF talk from 2013 again. Do all the changes to the combat system that Toady talks about still apply forvthis release?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 09, 2014, 08:43:24 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 08, 2014, 10:00:10 am

What the main building is is hard-coded for the different site types, most likely. For the human villages and towns, it's either the mead hall (which is returning), or the keep. A player-created fortress (most likely) won't have a main building, so you won't get an official chance to lord over them.

Quote from: Toady One on December 29, 2013, 07:03:49 am

Quote

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Will adventurers be able to reclaim abandoned fortresses for their Civ through capturing the main building, such as a keep or mead hall? When goblins capture a dwarf fortress, is the site map converted to a goblin fortress template and vice versa? How long does this take? Will players be able to embark on recently conquered sites?

Quote from: Ribs

What happens if you attack the leader of one of your retired fortresses? Can you claim it with your adventurer? Can you claim dwarven fortresses at all?
If so,

Will there be some variation there, or will the dwarves from retired fortresses always be the more loyal types who will try very hard to kill your adventurer before surrendering?

What complications would occour from doing something like dethroning a dwarven king? Is that going to be possible? I imagine you would be able to take the dwarven capital by killing a whole bunch of people and making the king yield to you. But what happens then? Is it possible for your adventurer to aquire the title of king if he conquers enough dwarven settlements?

I think the way it "works" now, you could claim one of your retired fortresses, but it wouldn't actually know how to have it change hands, since there is no power location (at least not in a way that is currently understood by the adventure part of the game).  Abandoned fortresses don't have people in them, so you'd have to bring a companion along, state a claim to them, and then not have it recognized because there is no power location.  You can kill whomever, but you can't obtain the civ-level positions.  If you kill a monarch, you'll end up with a replacement, if there's a claimant around, or a lack of decision making -- which doesn't matter so much for dwarves, since they don't attack anybody yet.  I haven't allowed adventurers to place a claim on an existing entity position (they can only form a new entity with a new site claim), but you'll definitely be able to do that when we get into the meat of succession wars later.

Toady, are there plans to define a power location for player (and non-player) forts, perhaps the office/study/throneroom of the highest rank dwarf?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 09, 2014, 09:04:46 am

Quote from: Dirst on June 09, 2014, 08:43:24 am

Toady, are there plans to define a power location for player (and non-player) forts, perhaps the office/study/throneroom of the highest rank dwarf?

Probably not, since that would be a gross hack and the "power location" system is a temporary one:

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html#2013-12-12

Which site claims from which entities take precedence in a given site should be pretty complicated later on, but it's not time for more complications, so the recognized claim (for purposes of diplomacy and site disputes and displacement after invasions and all that) is just based at this point on who is physically holding the main building (whether that's a keep or a mead hall).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 09, 2014, 10:39:53 am

Quote from: Owlbread on June 09, 2014, 07:57:53 am

I was listening to the last DF talk from 2013 again. Do all the changes to the combat system that Toady talks about still apply for this release?

Why wouldn't they?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 09, 2014, 10:52:09 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 09, 2014, 10:39:53 am

Quote from: Owlbread on June 09, 2014, 07:57:53 am

I was listening to the last DF talk from 2013 again. Do all the changes to the combat system that Toady talks about still apply for this release?

Why wouldn't they?

Yeah, if a feature was described as implemented for the next release, that still applies.  No combat stuff has been scaled back that I remember (although some of the "maybe"s ended up being "no").  If there's a question about a specific feature, we can provide more details.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Owlbread on June 09, 2014, 02:44:23 pm

Quote from: Footkerchief on June 09, 2014, 10:52:09 am

Yeah, if a feature was described as implemented for the next release, that still applies.  No combat stuff has been scaled back that I remember (although some of the "maybe"s ended up being "no").  If there's a question about a specific feature, we can provide more details.

The features I was thinking of were things like the messages that would come up and the arrow system e.g. a pulsing arrow appears with a message like "Goblin levels an attack at your right lower arm with his iron dagger". There was also the stuff about being able to choose how you performed an attack e.g. whether you wanted your attack/swing/stab to be "wild", "heavy", "quick" and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 09, 2014, 02:49:53 pm

Yes, all very definitely in.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on June 09, 2014, 11:00:35 pm

Will you be able to find fallen trees acting as natural bridges over, say, streams and minor rivers, as often happens in real life?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 10, 2014, 12:29:27 am

Quote from: Paaaad on June 09, 2014, 11:00:35 pm

Will you be able to find fallen trees acting as natural bridges over, say, streams and minor rivers, as often happens in real life?

No, because fallen trees become log items, not terrain features.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on June 10, 2014, 01:34:23 am

Quote from: King Mir on June 10, 2014, 12:29:27 am

Quote from: Paaaad on June 09, 2014, 11:00:35 pm

Will you be able to find fallen trees acting as natural bridges over, say, streams and minor rivers, as often happens in real life?

No, because fallen trees become log items, not terrain features.

Which is sad, because that would be awesome.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DVNO on June 10, 2014, 02:06:42 am

Can retired adventurers be entombed by their civ after death? If so, do their worldly possessions and signature gear end up inside the tomb as well?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 10, 2014, 03:09:37 am

I can see the tomb honoring the hero who killed most everyone with the stereotypical pig-tial fiber sock with that question.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 10, 2014, 09:11:59 am

Quote from: DVNO on June 10, 2014, 02:06:42 am

Can retired adventurers be entombed by their civ after death? If so, do their worldly possessions and signature gear end up inside the tomb as well?

Burial won't happen in the next version yet.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

...

Also, will monarchs and law-givers that die post-worldgen be entombed/mummified during play? And, do you plan to eventually allow the practice of mummification (if it is a practice) during Fort mode?

...

There's no handling of post-world-gen burial, and I don't have particular plans for how that is going to play out.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 10, 2014, 10:39:52 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 10, 2014, 09:11:59 am

Quote from: DVNO on June 10, 2014, 02:06:42 am

Can retired adventurers be entombed by their civ after death? If so, do their worldly possessions and signature gear end up inside the tomb as well?

Burial won't happen in the next version yet.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

...

Also, will monarchs and law-givers that die post-worldgen be entombed/mummified during play? And, do you plan to eventually allow the practice of mummification (if it is a practice) during Fort mode?

...

There's no handling of post-world-gen burial, and I don't have particular plans for how that is going to play out.

Nothing stopping you from making a tomb dedicated to that adventurer in your fort. Minus the body though. Though it would be a memorial rather than a tomb in that case.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Paaaad on June 10, 2014, 11:49:21 am

Quote from: InsanityIncarnate on June 10, 2014, 01:34:23 am

Quote from: King Mir on June 10, 2014, 12:29:27 am

Quote from: Paaaad on June 09, 2014, 11:00:35 pm

Will you be able to find fallen trees acting as natural bridges over, say, streams and minor rivers, as often happens in real life?

No, because fallen trees become log items, not terrain features.

Which is sad, because that would be awesome.

Just to specify, I was referring to trees that fell on their own and in adventure mode in particular, although I suppose one could find these upon embark in fort mode as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 10, 2014, 12:53:22 pm

I don't think there's been any mention of trees falling on their own.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 10, 2014, 01:02:04 pm

Well, it remains to be seen if Toady ever do something about it, because as it stands it's most likely that any tree that feels for whatever reason becomes logs. Now, I don't know if the process is automatic or there's something to be done first. It could be awesome if a tree felled becomes a placeholder construction with the form of the tree, and then that construction is gradually chopped down to logs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 10, 2014, 02:42:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 10, 2014, 01:02:04 pm

Well, it remains to be seen if Toady ever do something about it, because as it stands it's most likely that any tree that feels for whatever reason becomes logs. Now, I don't know if the process is automatic or there's something to be done first. It could be awesome if a tree felled becomes a placeholder construction with the form of the tree, and then that construction is gradually chopped down to logs.

The problem with chopped down trees as temporary constructions, is that makes it hard to make the fall work properly, at least until you have proper moving fortress parts. A 3D rotation of a tree as it falls, while handling obstacles is not trivial to do.  I agree that it'd be awesome though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 10, 2014, 07:11:37 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 10, 2014, 10:39:52 am

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 10, 2014, 09:11:59 am

Quote from: DVNO on June 10, 2014, 02:06:42 am

Can retired adventurers be entombed by their civ after death? If so, do their worldly possessions and signature gear end up inside the tomb as well?

Burial won't happen in the next version yet.

Quote from: Toady One on January 31, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Nasikabatrachus

...

Also, will monarchs and law-givers that die post-worldgen be entombed/mummified during play? And, do you plan to eventually allow the practice of mummification (if it is a practice) during Fort mode?

...

There's no handling of post-world-gen burial, and I don't have particular plans for how that is going to play out.

Nothing stopping you from making a tomb dedicated to that adventurer in your fort. Minus the body though. Though it would be a memorial rather than a tomb in that case.

You can now build a tomb chamber for adventurers inside your fort, retire from your fort, retrieve bodies with other adventurers and return to fort mode so you can at least haul the body to the built tomb. However, as the adventurer didn't die inside the fort and it's not part of it, it might be currently impossible to appropiately entomb their body. So the question is...

Toady, is it possible to bring a dead body (say, from the wilderness) inside a fortress and memorialize it? Or does it need to be part of the fortress history to do so?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 10, 2014, 08:20:06 pm

As of the current version of DF, it is fully possible to memorialize non-citizens who died on fortress property.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 10, 2014, 09:07:59 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 10, 2014, 08:20:06 pm

As of the current version of DF, it is fully possible to memorialize non-citizens who died on fortress property.

But those non-citizens are required to die, as you said, on fortress property. My question goes more into memorializing someone whose body has been brought inside the fortress, but didn't die inside it. Maybe I can edit phrasing so it's understood like that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 11, 2014, 02:40:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 10, 2014, 08:20:06 pm

As of the current version of DF, it is fully possible to memorialize non-citizens who died on fortress property.

yeah, even the wagons.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on June 11, 2014, 07:17:01 am

Quote from: Inarius on June 11, 2014, 02:40:38 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 10, 2014, 08:20:06 pm

As of the current version of DF, it is fully possible to memorialize non-citizens who died on fortress property.

yeah, even the wagons.

Excellent! That's a weird touch I would like to see continued!

On a more somber note, RIP Wagon ):

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 12, 2014, 12:03:09 am

We're halfway through! :D
If they're gonna keep that rate we really are gonna get our hands on DF2014 in early July, or possibly even this month (though that's not entirely likely, but it can happen).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dishwater on June 12, 2014, 12:57:42 am

With the attack/move split will archers be able to move and reload or attack with melee mid reload?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 12, 2014, 01:31:15 am

No.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on June 12, 2014, 02:41:50 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on June 12, 2014, 12:03:09 am

We're halfway through! :D
If they're gonna keep that rate we really are gonna get our hands on DF2014 in early July, or possibly even this month (though that's not entirely likely, but it can happen).

I'm really happy that I was wrong about my earlier 2015 predictions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 12, 2014, 09:09:05 am

So doe Toady saying there are blood-drinking test mean there are going to be limits on things like that to make it harder to cross areas that will not be impossible to? or am I jumping to conclusions?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 12, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on June 12, 2014, 09:09:05 am

So doe Toady saying there are blood-drinking test mean there are going to be limits on things like that to make it harder to cross areas that will not be impossible to? or am I jumping to conclusions?

Drinking contaminants has been changed yes, I don't recall any specifics given as to how though. Contaminants will now also evaporate so you won't be covered in rain water blood and stuff (?) forever for example.

Quote from: Devlog 05/12/2014

fixed up evaporation of sweat/tears/etc. so dwarves wouldn't be so clean-happy, changed contaminant drinking, and so on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 12, 2014, 11:40:39 am

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on June 12, 2014, 09:27:22 am

Quote from: Zavvnao on June 12, 2014, 09:09:05 am

So doe Toady saying there are blood-drinking test mean there are going to be limits on things like that to make it harder to cross areas that will not be impossible to? or am I jumping to conclusions?

Drinking contaminants has been changed yes, I don't recall any specifics given as to how though. Contaminants will now also evaporate so you won't be covered in rain water forever for example.

Quote from: Devlog 05/12/2014

fixed up evaporation of sweat/tears/etc. so dwarves wouldn't be so clean-happy, changed contaminant drinking, and so on.

But water already evaporates and change state depending of the weather; blood is the one that always cling to you, no matter if it's freezing or searing hot.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 12, 2014, 12:00:17 pm

Right. I haven't really played adventure mode (but certainly will come the next release), but for some reason I recalled reading of there being some issue with rain water lingering as well. Maybe it was just fixing so you couldn't drink off of your skin and armor and such then??

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 12, 2014, 02:44:00 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on June 12, 2014, 09:09:05 am

So doe Toady saying there are blood-drinking test mean there are going to be limits on things like that to make it harder to cross areas that will not be impossible to? or am I jumping to conclusions?

I hope the tests results are consistent with this: WhatIF 98 (http://what-if.xkcd.com/98/)

That would be awesome :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 12, 2014, 06:02:33 pm

Quote from: Heph on June 12, 2014, 02:44:00 pm

I hope the tests results are consistent with this: WhatIF 98 (http://what-if.xkcd.com/98/)

That would be awesome :P

That would be interesting if blood made you sick in the game unless you where something it would not do that to.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: FearfulJesuit on June 12, 2014, 06:35:07 pm

The DF Facebook fan page has leaked a secret e-mail from Toady to a fan.

Quote from: Toady

I've recently caught up on all of the suggestion threads in time for
the release, so after the release I'm planning to add some helpful
stuff along with all the bug fixing I'm going to be doing. The trade
interface is one of the highest complaint getters as far as I can tell
from the threads, so we'll probably do multiple things with it

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 12, 2014, 06:38:26 pm

Oh Armok....

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Witty on June 12, 2014, 06:50:07 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on June 12, 2014, 06:35:07 pm

Quote from: Toady

I've recently caught up on all of the suggestion threads in time for
the release, so after the release I'm planning to add some helpful
stuff along with all the bug fixing I'm going to be doing. The trade
interface is one of the highest complaint getters as far as I can tell
from the threads, so we'll probably do multiple things with it

Oh baby

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on June 12, 2014, 07:30:15 pm

Quote from: FearfulJesuit on June 12, 2014, 06:35:07 pm

The DF Facebook fan page has leaked a secret e-mail from Toady to a fan.

Quote from: Toady

I've recently caught up on all of the suggestion threads in time for
the release, so after the release I'm planning to add some helpful
stuff along with all the bug fixing I'm going to be doing. The trade
interface is one of the highest complaint getters as far as I can tell
from the threads, so we'll probably do multiple things with it

While this can only be good news, I really wish people wouldn't leak this kind of thing - we'll all hear about it soon enough anyway, and it creates exactly the kind of pressure that Toady hates.  Which links talking about bugfixing to unwanted pressure, and we don't want that link to exist. 

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 12, 2014, 09:29:36 pm

I could have sworn we already knew that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 12, 2014, 10:03:44 pm

I know we knew about the suggestion forum catching up and the imminent implementation of the easier tweaks, though I think that's the first we've heard the trade interface specifically addressed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on June 12, 2014, 10:14:03 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 12, 2014, 09:29:36 pm

I could have sworn we already knew that.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 13, 2014, 12:21:14 am

Toady catching up with the suggestions forums we've definitely knew about. Trade interface changes I couldn't care less about, but I guess there's a reason why it was the most suggested thing...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 13, 2014, 01:00:30 am

He already told this before, but it's uncool to leak this. I suppose that if he wanted to tell it literaly, he would have done it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Manveru Taurënér on June 13, 2014, 01:07:34 am

I don't really get how it could be considered leaking. Toady spreads bits of info all over the place, be it through mail, tweets, interviews, forum threads etc and it's not like any of it is supposed to be a secret imparted only there, not to be spread further. Having to make sure to always update the devblog etc every time you let slip a new scrap of info somewhere would get quite tedious.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Murphy on June 13, 2014, 01:37:46 am

I thought the blood drinking tests were about vampires, not about drinking blood while hiking through mountains...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 13, 2014, 03:08:09 am

Quote from: Murphy on June 13, 2014, 01:37:46 am

I thought the blood drinking tests were about vampires, not about drinking blood while hiking through mountains...

It could have been both.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on June 13, 2014, 04:49:31 am

Quote from: King Mir on June 13, 2014, 03:08:09 am

Quote from: Murphy on June 13, 2014, 01:37:46 am

I thought the blood drinking tests were about vampires, not about drinking blood while hiking through mountains...

It could have been both.

To be honest, it could have been anything. "Blood drinking test" is pretty non-specific in a game like DF.
It could be blood-transmitted syndromes or drinking contaminated blood.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hops on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 13, 2014, 08:03:44 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

Actually, it sounds like something an elf would do. Like, seriously.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Orange Wizard on June 13, 2014, 08:05:02 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

What do you mean, Objective? Do you have a problem with my lifestyle?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Broken on June 13, 2014, 08:10:20 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

I always found amusing that you can live for days drinking the blood over your eyelids.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on June 13, 2014, 08:21:26 am

Quote from: Lolfail0009 on June 13, 2014, 08:03:44 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

Actually, it sounds like something an elf would do. Like, seriously.

Well,unlike Tolkien elves,DF elves eat sentient's and aren't wise so much as blindly stupid.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 13, 2014, 08:22:15 am

And a good replacement for fossil fuels.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sephimaru on June 13, 2014, 08:23:48 am

On the topic of getting drunk from drinking blood of a drunk person:
Dwarfen vampires don't get drunk from drinking dwarfen blood, do they?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 13, 2014, 08:24:27 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

I just have an irrational, and instinctive impulse when people mention how unrealistic a game is. It is not like you can see anything or have to do anything yourself X3

What is the point of suspension of disbelief if there is nothing to disbelieve?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on June 13, 2014, 08:38:30 am

Quote from: Sephimaru on June 13, 2014, 08:23:48 am

On the topic of getting drunk from drinking blood of a drunk person:
Dwarfen vampires don't get drunk from drinking dwarfen blood, do they?

Surprisingly not,considering that a Dwarf's blood is 90% alcohol,though that would be a good way to fix the whole vampires not drinking beer.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 13, 2014, 08:54:01 am

This should clarify all questions about drinking the blood of someone drunk. (http://what-if.xkcd.com/98/)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 13, 2014, 08:58:24 am

Quote from: LordBaal on June 13, 2014, 08:54:01 am

This should clarify all questions about drinking the blood of someone drunk. (http://what-if.xkcd.com/98/)

BUT!! What if we got drunk and drank our own blood? Or heck, if we drunk our own blood sober, would any of the other effects happen?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 13, 2014, 09:43:36 am

I'm guessing it would be all the same less the next to nonexistent alcohol intoxication. In any case apparently you can't drink more than a gallon of blood (don't know if it's only blood or liquids in general, I'm inclined to the second guess) without puking, so...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 13, 2014, 10:26:56 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

Weren't we just talking about a page ago about the contaminants which prevents exactly this?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 13, 2014, 11:10:45 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 13, 2014, 10:26:56 am

Quote from: Objective on June 13, 2014, 07:40:21 am

On the topic of blood, I highly hope that blood drinking become less of a thing because it's weird to contemplate a person walking around drenched in blood and satisfying their thirst by licking the blood off their body.

Weren't we just talking about a page ago about the contaminants which prevents exactly this?

It's Deja Vu of the Fortress lately.  :P The XKCD link's also been posted yesterday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 13, 2014, 11:25:03 am

I wonder how much of a DF fan the author of xkcd is, and I'm sure many of his readers are as well.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 13, 2014, 11:46:32 am

http://xkcd.com/1223/

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on June 13, 2014, 01:24:14 pm

I think it might be a viable way for dwarven vampires to get alcohol though. I mean, they're smaller than humans and probably have less blood but drink BARRELS of booze that are quite strong too.
I wonder if that's what Toady added... it would be far more interesting to lose that way to identify vampires (I'm a Fun lover.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 13, 2014, 01:25:29 pm

Dwarves have larger livers than normal (1.5x the relative size).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on June 13, 2014, 01:53:26 pm

@Putnam your avatar is annoying me. Not only does it change randomly I feel like I recognize half of the picture but for the life of me can't place them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 13, 2014, 01:57:55 pm

They're all from Ace Combat 3. They might look familiar because the character design and cutscenes in that game were by Production I.G and had some heavy (seriously, theme venn diagram's got a big midsection) inspiration from Ghost in the Shell.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: danmanthedog on June 13, 2014, 09:55:12 pm

Quote from: sal880612m on June 13, 2014, 01:53:26 pm

@Putnam your avatar is annoying me. Not only does it change randomly I feel like I recognize half of the picture but for the life of me can't place them.

I am on the same page as you pal.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on June 17, 2014, 03:44:47 am

So I was making a post on crops about how if planted at the end of their growing period crops that are only active for part of the year can disappear if they don't mature in time and started wondering if this bug/issue was addressed fixed in the upcoming release as the above ground plants have been expanded on/overhauled?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on June 17, 2014, 07:28:43 am

Quote from: sal880612m on June 17, 2014, 03:44:47 am

So I was making a post on crops about how if planted at the end of their growing period crops that are only active for part of the year can disappear if they don't mature in time and started wondering if this bug/issue was addressed fixed in the upcoming release as the above ground plants have been expanded on/overhauled?

The disappearing part sounds like an intended feature, the issue seems to be that one has to manually tell growers to stop planting them. Which is pretty annoying, I agree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sephimaru on June 17, 2014, 07:41:09 am

yes, but its also a pretty minor bug...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 17, 2014, 08:44:36 am

Quote from: Sephimaru on June 17, 2014, 07:41:09 am

yes, but its also a pretty minor bug...

Assuming you can get your planters to plant with reasonable priority, it is only an issue the first year a farm plot is in use.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on June 17, 2014, 11:55:06 am

... I have no problem with crops disappearing when then would grow into next season, I was more interested in whether the dwarves would be intelligent enough not to cause it anymore by something like suspending planting.

That depends on your planters skill level and availability of seeds. If you are only getting seeds through herbalism not being able to lose them because of something like this would be nice.

Either way it isn't really a big deal, and I was just curious if the behaviour had been changed because of the additions to plants is the new release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 17, 2014, 12:41:08 pm

NO


At least I don't recall anything about it :)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 18, 2014, 12:41:21 pm

You can avoid that thing by having the next season on that plot be fallow and have a crop rotation thing going on with a second plot being planted while one is left fallow.

Of course though, once your planters skill gets high enough, you'll have a significant surplus. As others said, it's really only an issue during the first year.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Keldane on June 18, 2014, 03:11:38 pm

I've run into the disappearing crops issue, and I've had it screw me over pretty good, eating all of a type of seed and leaving me to wait until the third year to plant again, because the caravan didn't bring any more the first year. It's annoying, and it can be worked around if you're careful.

In my case, I only plant crops with limited seasonal growth for one season, if the crop grows in two seasons, or for two seasons if the crop grows for three. I also dedicate each farm plot to one crop only, as in my experience the disappearing crop issue happens most often in plots that are set to have a different crop grow in the next season.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 19, 2014, 10:30:46 pm

Since the issue fixing and testing phase is wrapping up, heres a bit of a question just for fun:

What was the most fun (not neccesarily the !!!FUN!!! or RAAGGEE fun type, maybe you simply had fun messing with it) bug/issue for you to fix? Or maybe the one with the silliest results while trying to fix.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 19, 2014, 11:07:17 pm

122 issues at the start of the month, 35 left means he's been going at a rate of a bit over 6 per day, which means at current trucking rate we could see new DF in 6-7 days...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 20, 2014, 12:12:49 am

Or 2-3 weeks. There could very well be more issues that crop up in the midst of testing fixes for what he works on.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 20, 2014, 03:50:07 am

As long as it's released before the 15th of July I'm okay with whatever at this point.
Still, at this rate he was going with 4-5 issues per day on average (if my calculations are anywhere close to correct), which could mean that the release might happen in a week or two...

[EXCITEMENT INTENSIFIES]

This is, of course, assuming an ideal scenario in which no extra issues pop up, as said before. But it's definitely not unlikely we may see a new download link very soon...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Vaftrudner on June 20, 2014, 06:07:34 am

I'm so excited! The last big release was such a step up, I've been waiting impatiently for this one for a long long time now and it's finally time :D Yay to all of us!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on June 20, 2014, 06:13:35 am

MATH HAS SPOKEN

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sephimaru on June 20, 2014, 07:22:37 am

I feel its time again to say this:

Thank you Toady for your hard and dedicated work you put in this truely remarkable project.
It's much appreciated

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on June 20, 2014, 07:48:31 am

Quote from: Sephimaru on June 20, 2014, 07:22:37 am

Thank you Toady for your hard and dedicated work you put in this truely remarkable project.
It's much appreciated

Hear hear!

The excitement is incalculable.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2014, 08:04:08 am

There could be always a single bug that could stall him for a day or two for example, or the other way around, maybe he can bug out 15 on a single day. Whenever is ready it's good for me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 20, 2014, 08:55:10 am

Sorry guys, my hype core is going critical; for the safety of myself and others I'm going to go lock myself in a basement for a week.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on June 20, 2014, 08:58:11 am

In the Basement?

Don't forget your phone!

You may still have internet connection down there...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 20, 2014, 09:12:11 am

Thank you Zach and Toady, for all your continued efforts in the noble name of Fun.

Finals end next week for me, so everything is scheduled as expected. Might as well stash some provisions for the forecoming months.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 20, 2014, 10:55:51 am

Quote from: monk12 on June 19, 2014, 11:07:17 pm

122 issues at the start of the month, 35 left means he's been going at a rate of a bit over 6 per day, which means at current trucking rate we could see new DF in 6-7 days...

I worked it out to 4.5 per day, and done in 8 days. Which is still before the end of the month!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: H.P. Urist on June 20, 2014, 10:58:27 am

Toady, during the clean up for the last release you spontaneously (Well, it seemed spontaneous to me) added minecarts and changed how hauling of stone was handled. Would you mind speculating wildly about things you'd like to add and change during the bugfixing rounds next month? Or, if that's too much of a strech, what do you see as the next arc to work on after the current release is cleaned up?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on June 20, 2014, 11:29:20 am

Quote from: H.P. Urist on June 20, 2014, 10:58:27 am

Toady, during the clean up for the last release you spontaneously (Well, it seemed spontaneous to me) added minecarts and changed how hauling of stone was handled. Would you mind speculating wildly about things you'd like to add and change during the bugfixing rounds next month? Or, if that's too much of a strech, what do you see as the next arc to work on after the current release is cleaned up?

So far, he's mentioned the trade interface (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg5369684#msg5369684) in a facebook post, and job priorities (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139054.0) in the June report. In that second link, they also suspect "that many of the faster usability ideas will make it in during the bug-fix period and during the job priorities work that'll follow this release".




As for the next big thing, it's anybody's guess at this point. The dev page for the next year or four (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html) is the most reliable source for speculation; there was another page related to that one with a rough estimate of the order in which they were going to work on that stuff, but that order got all bjorked; this release (Phase 2) was originally just planned to be civ sites and mine maps if I recall (I haven't actually tracked down that second page yet, if it still exists), but they decided that they needed post-worldgen history (from Phase 5 or so) sooner.


EDIT: Looks like that other page was just part of the main dev page, in which case it's gone now (and rather outdated and wrong anyway). It's too bad the wayback machine's banned from the dev page for bandwidth reasons, it'd be neat to see some old incarnations of it (we still have the really old one (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html), though).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ribs on June 20, 2014, 11:35:01 am

Quote from: H.P. Urist on June 20, 2014, 10:58:27 am

Toady, during the clean up for the last release you spontaneously (Well, it seemed spontaneous to me) added minecarts and changed how hauling of stone was handled. Would you mind speculating wildly about things you'd like to add and change during the bugfixing rounds next month? Or, if that's too much of a strech, what do you see as the next arc to work on after the current release is cleaned up?

From what Toady said in his appearence on the red pages podcast (http://redpagespodcast.com/episodes/) thing just now, the next big release is probably going to be about inns and taverns, which he's actually been talking about doing for a while. Aparently, we also could see some caravan arc stuff, as well as fairs and markets in dwarf mode, paving the way for the eventual return of the dwarven economy. Also, maybe the integration of hill and deep dwarves with player fortresses in dwarf mode?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 20, 2014, 02:27:32 pm

That would be interesting if your fortress affected the hill sites or their growth.

And fairs sound fun as that seems close to holidays. It will be nice in the far future when you enter a festival and wonder if you are the lucky target of whatever good or bad tradition the revelers have.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 20, 2014, 02:35:21 pm

Quote from: Zavvnao on June 20, 2014, 02:27:32 pm

That would be interesting if your fortress affected the hill sites or their growth.

And fairs sound fun as that seems close to holidays. It will be nice in the far future when you enter a festival and wonder if you are the lucky target of whatever good or bad tradition the revelers have.

The festival's dancing and music pause as you enter the courtyard.
"Praise Armok!  The sauce has arrived!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2014, 02:37:42 pm

In the devlog the "* Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans" is still white. As I understands for this release caravans will be real caravans coming and going from real places and not "generated". Or am I wrong?

I would very much like economy to be tackled next.

With the FIFA world cup going on and all, I wonder, It's planed to have some sports at regional levels at least? Obviously not football but things like festivals with various competitions, for example hand to hand combats, archery, jousting, etc... for money, positions in a court or other rewards held every X amount of time or exponentially or times of plentiful or need?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 20, 2014, 02:40:43 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 20, 2014, 02:37:42 pm

In the devlog the "* Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans" is still white. As I understands for this release caravans will be real caravans coming and going from real places and not "generated". Or am I wrong?

I'm pretty sure it's just armies and refugees for now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on June 20, 2014, 02:54:30 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 20, 2014, 02:37:42 pm

With the FIFA world cup going on and all, I wonder, It's planed to have some sports at regional levels at least? Obviously not football but things like festivals with various competitions, for example hand to hand combats, archery, jousting, etc... for money, positions in a court or other rewards held every X amount of time or exponentially or times of plentiful or need?

Arena sports have come up a lot:

Quote from: http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Bloat233, ARENAS, (Future): Fight for food or money, stuff can be on chains or just waiting inside. Various associated industries.

PowerGoal41, THE ARENA, (Future): You read the schedule of the stadium's coming attractions, including wrestling, spear-throwing, full-armored combat and man versus beast.

PowerGoal67, THE LOCAL ARENA, (Future): You are in charge of taking the bets for the local arena. Somebody loses all their farm animals on a fight, and you have to collect the debt.

PowerGoal113, DIVINE INTERVENTION, (Future): You are playing goblin ball in the arena when your son yells "dad! dad! goal! goal!". Your son had been praying all day just so that you would win. Your kick is short, but the god Markad manifests and finishes the kick.

They are also the subject of a ThreeToe story (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_passion_arena.html).

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 20, 2014, 03:43:09 pm

Ohhh I searched for jousting, festival, sports but not for arena... silly me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sergarr on June 20, 2014, 03:45:57 pm

Goblin ball? I wonder what the rules for that might be...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 20, 2014, 09:44:35 pm

Quote from: Sergarr on June 20, 2014, 03:45:57 pm

Goblin ball? I wonder what the rules for that might be...

I bet they're related to Scream Ball own rules, as much as soccer is related to rugby.

Quote from: Dev_single

PowerGoal49, SCREAM BALL, (Future): Trolls take the captives and see if they can throw them all the way over the chasm to each other.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on June 21, 2014, 09:39:09 am

Quote from: Sergarr on June 20, 2014, 03:45:57 pm

Goblin ball? I wonder what the rules for that might be...

*Sniffs derisively*

If you'd ever even bothered to read the Hobbit, you'd know you are referring to Golf.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on June 21, 2014, 09:43:57 am

Quote

PowerGoal67, THE LOCAL ARENA, (Future): You are in charge of taking the bets for the local arena. Somebody loses all their farm animals on a fight, and you have to collect the debt.

I see where this is going... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Neonivek on June 21, 2014, 03:31:04 pm

Quote

PowerGoal113, DIVINE INTERVENTION, (Future): You are playing goblin ball in the arena when your son yells "dad! dad! goal! goal!". Your son had been praying all day just so that you would win. Your kick is short, but the god Markad manifests and finishes the kick.

Honestly if this happened in a game... I would probably count it as interference.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 21, 2014, 07:29:46 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on June 21, 2014, 03:31:04 pm

Quote

PowerGoal113, DIVINE INTERVENTION, (Future): You are playing goblin ball in the arena when your son yells "dad! dad! goal! goal!". Your son had been praying all day just so that you would win. Your kick is short, but the god Markad manifests and finishes the kick.

Honestly if this happened in a game... I would probably count it as interference.

And incur the wrath of a God? Nah, that'd be a bad idea.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 22, 2014, 12:23:25 am

Quote from: Neonivek on June 21, 2014, 03:31:04 pm

Quote

PowerGoal113, DIVINE INTERVENTION, (Future): You are playing goblin ball in the arena when your son yells "dad! dad! goal! goal!". Your son had been praying all day just so that you would win. Your kick is short, but the god Markad manifests and finishes the kick.

Honestly if this happened in a game... I would probably count it as interference.

It's not interference, He's a force of nature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Aninimouse on June 22, 2014, 12:27:49 am

Quote from: Putnam on June 21, 2014, 07:29:46 pm

And incur the wrath of a God? Nah, that'd be a bad idea.

 The crowd falls silent as the ball hits the ground, moving slowly and obviously doomed to fall short of the goal. However, in just moments the stadium erupts into cheers and applause as, instead of slowing to a halt, the ball accelerates towards the goal. The Referee whistles, and is in the middle of calling out the interference by the gods when the ball rebounds off the head of one of the chained, goblin goalkeepers - (bruising the muscle, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain!) - and rockets in the direction of the now, terrified referee. (the severed part sails off in an arc!).

Content with the bloodshed, Armok guides the ball rolling back to the goal, and victory is claimed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on June 22, 2014, 08:57:39 am

Imagine the Basketball.

Bloodyball.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hetairos on June 22, 2014, 05:13:55 pm

Cue a Blood Bowl mod.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on June 24, 2014, 04:16:42 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Rulers who get were-beasted or who learn necromancy leave their position.  In the coming version, rulers will get replaced during play.  Does that answer your question?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Hetairos on June 24, 2014, 05:48:44 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Abdication isn't in, if that's what you mean.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Deus Asmoth on June 24, 2014, 07:12:44 am

Quote from: Hetairos on June 24, 2014, 05:48:44 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Abdication isn't in, if that's what you mean.

Can't they already leave their position to become leader of a religion, though? I seem to remember that happening one time while I was looking through some legends, but there may have been a curse involved.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 24, 2014, 12:13:55 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on June 24, 2014, 04:16:42 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Rulers who get were-beasted or who learn necromancy leave their position.  In the coming version, rulers will get replaced during play.  Does that answer your question?

Thanks, but I was trying to say if a ruler lost all of their limbs and couldn't do anything.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 24, 2014, 12:23:22 pm

He could still sit on a throne like a paperweight and give orders.

Maybe if you cut out the tongue, though...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Helgoland on June 24, 2014, 12:39:07 pm

A monarch's usefulness is inversely correlated with his capacity to meddle in governmental matters, you know?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sephimaru on June 24, 2014, 02:59:58 pm

Well, I think it would make sense that he should be able to conduct meetings.
No high priority though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Rockphed on June 24, 2014, 06:51:51 pm

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 24, 2014, 12:13:55 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on June 24, 2014, 04:16:42 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 23, 2014, 08:14:00 pm

Can rulers step down from power if they are incapable to rule in this version?

Rulers who get were-beasted or who learn necromancy leave their position.  In the coming version, rulers will get replaced during play.  Does that answer your question?

Thanks, but I was trying to say if a ruler lost all of their limbs and couldn't do anything.

If you don't like your ruler, you can kill them and they will be replaced.  They might not decide to come if the replacement is living off site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on June 24, 2014, 08:08:43 pm

Quote from: Sephimaru on June 24, 2014, 02:59:58 pm

Well, I think it would make sense that he should be able to conduct meetings.
No high priority though.

How do you make someone unable to conduct meetings? I don't think Df models a way to make someone become mute.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 24, 2014, 08:42:36 pm

Quote from: Rockphed on June 24, 2014, 06:51:51 pm

If you don't like your ruler, you can kill them and they will be replaced.  They might not decide to come if the replacement is living off site.

That works.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 24, 2014, 08:52:54 pm

New Devlog!

I really hope Toady is able to handle the exposition issues well; it seems to me that knowing/finding out what the hell is going on is going to be a huge challenge, and one that only grows as all these complex social models get added to the game. To be fair, it's a pretty big hassle in analogous real world situations (which is why news agencies are such a huge thing,) but hopefully there's some concessions to gameplay as far as explaining the nonsense goes.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainArchmage on June 24, 2014, 09:24:57 pm

From the new devlog, it looks like the monsters of twilight got scared out of their lairs and ran into the trees. This should happen in the release, and you should be able to get missions from these monsters to clean out the beasts.

I expect a lot of adventure mode play this time around.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 24, 2014, 09:35:10 pm

Wow.. it seems this baby will see the light in August maybe?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 24, 2014, 09:36:51 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on June 24, 2014, 09:35:10 pm

Wow.. it seems this baby will see the light in August maybe?

July.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 24, 2014, 09:44:04 pm

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 24, 2014, 09:24:57 pm

From the new devlog, it looks like the monsters of twilight got scared out of their lairs and ran into the trees. This should happen in the release, and you should be able to get missions from these monsters to clean out the beasts.

I expect a lot of adventure mode play this time around.

That would be pretty sweet. Well, apart from them being afraid due to bloodsensing cavern creatures through solid rock, but I get your meaning.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 24, 2014, 10:37:11 pm

Honestly, monsters being afraid of worse things seems like an almost-feature more than a bug.

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

I know what you mean, man.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on June 24, 2014, 10:51:28 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 24, 2014, 10:37:11 pm

Honestly, monsters being afraid of worse things seems like an almost-feature more than a bug.

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

I know what you mean, man.

Taken on its own, it sounds like existential crises are now an implemented feature. What's the fantasy medieval universe equivalent of buying a motorcycle? A horse with barding?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: flabort on June 24, 2014, 10:53:04 pm

Adamantine socks?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 24, 2014, 11:21:32 pm

Quote from: monk12 on June 24, 2014, 10:51:28 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 24, 2014, 10:37:11 pm

Honestly, monsters being afraid of worse things seems like an almost-feature more than a bug.

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

I know what you mean, man.

Taken on its own, it sounds like existential crises are now an implemented feature. What's the fantasy medieval universe equivalent of buying a motorcycle? A horse with barding?

+Trained+ Beak Dog.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 25, 2014, 12:20:04 am

"Kill 'em all and let Armok sort 'em out" has always been an Adventure Mode thing, only now it'll be marginally more defensible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 25, 2014, 01:00:44 am

Now I'm wondering if the market brawl was caused by the area being loaded, or if it would have happened without Toady's presence.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 25, 2014, 02:53:53 am

The twilight creatures thing  is really awesome. Now I really want it badly ! I hope this "bug" won't be corrected because, to me, it's not really a bug.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 25, 2014, 03:15:23 am

I suppose you're joking or it was a throwaway line, but I see enough of "I hope x doesn't get fixed because it's not really a bug" to spur me into commenting.

You want night creatures who are too paralyzed by fear to do anything more than clamber up trees because they can sense the horrors in the deeps miles beneath even when said horrors can't reach them? It's like the dwarf-cancels-job-because-of-groundhog-across-ravine issue. I'm not convinced you want it to stay in, but maybe you really do.

It's an interesting outcome of current implementation, but advocating that it stay that way is a stretch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on June 25, 2014, 04:22:43 am

Of course, you're right.

But who said that this vision had to go "miles beneath" ?
That's the broken part (reducing the sight), not the fear in itself, which is a quite good surprise to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: nanomage on June 25, 2014, 04:35:21 am

Don't the night creatures get the NOFEAR tag from their transformation? If it is true, then it certainly looks like bug, because they are supposed to be afraid of nothing aren't they?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on June 25, 2014, 05:49:14 am

All those mentions of trucks in the latest devblogs really make me think that Toady is actually implementing trucks into DF.
It'd be a damn good wagon replacement for sure.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on June 25, 2014, 07:21:37 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on June 25, 2014, 05:49:14 am

All those mentions of trucks in the latest devblogs really make me think that Toady is actually implementing trucks into DF.
It'd be a damn good wagon replacement for sure.

Trustworthy internet sources tell me that there's an easter egg - if you rename the wagon into "mew", it will turn into a truck.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Uronym on June 25, 2014, 07:29:06 am

Quote from: DarkDXZ on June 25, 2014, 05:49:14 am

All those mentions of trucks in the latest devblogs really make me think that Toady is actually implementing trucks into DF.
It'd be a damn good wagon replacement for sure.

Suddenly, semitrucks began appearing on the muddy rural roads. While they did not exactly work well, the trucks revolutionized the medieval economy. Suddenly, it did not take 200 souls marching for 7 days to get a load of stone to town. Transportation was no longer a serious obstacle. Trade and the sharing of ideas creating a richer world which rapidly advanced its science and technology.

At least, until they ran out of fuel.

Whoops.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mel_Vixen on June 25, 2014, 11:01:12 am

Urist McAdventurer approaches Twilight Monster, it screams: "Stephanie Meyer is down there!"

What i wonder about is the thing with the Mayor in the hilldwarf settlement. why did they run from him and why did that one dwarf turn onto toady after he attacked the Mayor.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mephansteras on June 25, 2014, 11:17:10 am

Quote from: CaptainArchmage on June 24, 2014, 09:24:57 pm

From the new devlog, it looks like the monsters of twilight got scared out of their lairs and ran into the trees. This should happen in the release, and you should be able to get missions from these monsters to clean out the beasts.

I expect a lot of adventure mode play this time around.

Hehe. That's a great bug!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 25, 2014, 11:39:23 am

maybe they can rework the bug into an occasional thing that makes sense at some times depending on the night creature's situation, personality, rivals, etc?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on June 25, 2014, 11:50:15 am

In my opinion, being able to sense the horrors deep underground and therefore cowering in fear is an awesome feature. The problem, however, is that this behavior should be for the occasional "insane, possessed weirdo", not EVERY NIGHT CREATURE. The crippling awareness of some great evil lurking beneath the miles of stone is awesome. Night creatures in trees is not.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: XArgon on June 25, 2014, 12:35:55 pm

The latest devlog is a awesome. :)

If the scared night creatures bug could inspire an actual feature, it could make for some good nightmare fuel - imagine: an adventurer sees a night creature suddenly let out a scream and cower in fear... because somewhere, someone has dug too deep. :D

Also,

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

Some decent DF insanity... :D

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 25, 2014, 01:12:48 pm

Quote from: CrzyMonkeyNinja on June 25, 2014, 11:50:15 am

In my opinion, being able to sense the horrors deep underground and therefore cowering in fear is an awesome feature. The problem, however, is that this behavior should be for the occasional "insane, possessed weirdo", not EVERY NIGHT CREATURE. The crippling awareness of some great evil lurking beneath the miles of stone is awesome. Night creatures in trees is not.

This. And it would require the character to be able to explain why it's up a tree.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sergarr on June 25, 2014, 01:44:57 pm

It looks like the new metagame for adventures in the new version is going to be tree camping.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: WillowLuman on June 25, 2014, 01:52:46 pm

Or leaping from trunk to trunk, singing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 25, 2014, 02:54:57 pm

Quote from: HugoLuman on June 25, 2014, 01:52:46 pm

Or leaping from trunk to trunk, singing.

How about brachiating?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 25, 2014, 04:02:42 pm

I would be perfectly happy with night creatures that live in trees/ambush adventurers from above. And maybe a night creature that runs around screaming in fear of certain things, then turns around and bites someone's face off.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 25, 2014, 04:53:45 pm

That would be spooky-scary.  "Don't go in the forest, the things that live in the trees will jump on your head and rip your face off!"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cobbler89 on June 25, 2014, 05:29:32 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on June 25, 2014, 01:12:48 pm

Quote from: CrzyMonkeyNinja on June 25, 2014, 11:50:15 am

In my opinion, being able to sense the horrors deep underground and therefore cowering in fear is an awesome feature. The problem, however, is that this behavior should be for the occasional "insane, possessed weirdo", not EVERY NIGHT CREATURE. The crippling awareness of some great evil lurking beneath the miles of stone is awesome. Night creatures in trees is not.

This. And it would require the character to be able to explain why it's up a tree.

It'd be pretty funny if they'd tell you exactly what spooked them...

"Uh, you're a bogeyman, aren't you? What are you doing shivering in a tree?"
"The forgotten beast Stuxslo has come! Stuxslo has come! The feathery quadropod has three lidless eyes and undulates rhythmically! *GULP*"

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CrzyMonkeyNinja on June 25, 2014, 06:49:05 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on June 25, 2014, 04:53:45 pm

That would be spooky-scary.  "Don't go in the forest, the things that live in the trees will jump on your head and rip your face off!"

New modding task: drop bears: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_bear (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_bear)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on June 25, 2014, 08:44:37 pm

I'm not sure if forgotten beasts as they stand now would warrant that kind of worry but yea, its actualy a pretty cool effect to have the world's minor, more sensitive nasties suddenly going crazy because somewhere in the area or in the world a grand nastie has broken free. Like a sort of a prelude for a huge evil HFS tier monstrosity apocalypse comming up.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on June 25, 2014, 09:09:15 pm

Quote from: TempAcc on June 25, 2014, 08:44:37 pm

I'm not sure if forgotten beasts as they stand now would warrant that kind of worry but yea, its actualy a pretty cool effect to have the world's minor, more sensitive nasties suddenly going crazy because somewhere in the area or in the world a grand nastie has broken free. Like a sort of a prelude for a huge evil HFS tier monstrosity apocalypse comming up.

Actually, this could be the basis of one of those "disturbance in the Force" effects... something unspeakable happens in a Dark Tower, and the wildlife are spooked for miles around.

Now the lack of birds chirping could be a legitimate clue to be on the lookout.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on June 25, 2014, 10:49:00 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on June 25, 2014, 04:53:45 pm

That would be spooky-scary.  "Don't go in the forest, the things that live in the trees will jump on your head and rip your face off!"

I think the extant stranglers are meant to fill that niche, or at least the idea of it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Strangler

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on June 25, 2014, 11:03:49 pm

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

And then they list all 398  cultural events that led to the  brawl today.  In ascending order of magnitude.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on June 25, 2014, 11:42:12 pm

Quote from: Authority2 on June 25, 2014, 11:03:49 pm

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

And then they list all 398  cultural events that led to the  brawl today.  In ascending order of magnitude.

Descending. "They think crafstmanship is worthless, don't think family is worth much, think artwork is not worth its time" ... "do not find nature that disturbing, consider fairness unimportant and they are in general not nice to each other."

(you can check out the new Entity Values here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4649312#msg4649312))

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Authority2 on June 25, 2014, 11:53:31 pm

Quote from: Putnam on June 25, 2014, 11:42:12 pm

Quote from: Authority2 on June 25, 2014, 11:03:49 pm

Quote

Sometimes you just want to grab somebody and scream "what's going on?!"

And then they list all 398  cultural events that led to the  brawl today.  In ascending order of magnitude.

Descending. "They think crafstmanship is worthless, don't think family is worth much, think artwork is not worth its time" ... "do not find nature that disturbing, consider fairness unimportant and they are in general not nice to each other."

(you can check out the new Entity Values here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4649312#msg4649312))

In the summer of 15,  the human Eric Ancestorguy spat upon the dwarf Obol Fatherofmany.
 In the summer of 15,  the dwarf  Obol Fatherofmany started a  fistfight with the human Eric Ancestorguy.
 (continues for ten pages)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mr S on June 26, 2014, 10:04:41 am

What I see going on here is an artifact of how blood sense is implemented. Blood sense allows a creature to "see" others through solid objects. However, it appears to not respect the media through which said sense is detected.
 So, this means that they can sense a living creature through solid objects, regardless of line of sight, with equal range as through open space. I imagine calculating vision through media will likely not see any major change until light and vision at large are reworked substantially.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 26, 2014, 10:54:57 am

Will wind affect scent at all?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 26, 2014, 11:08:34 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 26, 2014, 10:54:57 am

Will wind affect scent at all?

Yes.

Quote

Site riling now includes little groups that try to track you down after the rumor has gotten around that you've done something bad. As part of finishing that up, I also handled some older promises I had written down regarding smell and low-light vision. The wind is involved, and creatures with a keen sense of smell, including elven adventurers, can detect creatures nearby in the proper windy direction. There's no blood-houndy types of scent trails yet (though there are the other kinds of trails). Animated corpses can be smelled even by humans if the wind is right, though there's a whole set of ambient smells that are not in the game yet and won't be this time.

Quote from: nanomage on June 25, 2014, 04:35:21 am

Don't the night creatures get the NOFEAR tag from their transformation? If it is true, then it certainly looks like bug, because they are supposed to be afraid of nothing aren't they?

I'd need to check some generated raws, but it's quite possible that the troll/hag type night creatures don't have that tag. Remember there's different types of night creatures.

Ed: Yeah, they have NOFEAR.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: HooliganintheFort on June 26, 2014, 07:44:32 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on June 26, 2014, 11:08:34 am

Quote from: HooliganintheFort on June 26, 2014, 10:54:57 am

Will wind affect scent at all?

Yes.

Quote

Site riling now includes little groups that try to track you down after the rumor has gotten around that you've done something bad. As part of finishing that up, I also handled some older promises I had written down regarding smell and low-light vision. The wind is involved, and creatures with a keen sense of smell, including elven adventurers, can detect creatures nearby in the proper windy direction. There's no blood-houndy types of scent trails yet (though there are the other kinds of trails). Animated corpses can be smelled even by humans if the wind is right, though there's a whole set of ambient smells that are not in the game yet and won't be this time.

Quote from: nanomage on June 25, 2014, 04:35:21 am

Don't the night creatures get the NOFEAR tag from their transformation? If it is true, then it certainly looks like bug, because they are supposed to be afraid of nothing aren't they?

I'd need to check some generated raws, but it's quite possible that the troll/hag type night creatures don't have that tag. Remember there's different types of night creatures.

Ed: Yeah, they have NOFEAR.

Thanks man.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on June 27, 2014, 05:29:52 am

So in fact there are two bugs. First that they fear despite having NOFEAR tag (possibly due to interactions of new personality system with old tags). Second that they are able to sense blood at unreasonable range and circumstances (zilion tons of rock between them and monsters in the deep).

Third possible bug IMO worth checking: someone running in fear should not always climb up nearby tree and sit there until starved. Ooh, I think I found new cause of Yet Another Stupid Dwarf Death.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on June 27, 2014, 05:29:28 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on June 27, 2014, 05:29:52 am

Third possible bug IMO worth checking: someone running in fear should not always climb up nearby tree and sit there until starved. Ooh, I think I found new cause of Yet Antorher Stupid Dwarf Death.

I think dwarves make periodic pathing attempts using the more expensive method that includes climbing and jumping in the new version, so unless the source of the danger remains under the tree, the dwarf will eventually be able to climb down or at least fall to his death. And, well, if the forgotten beast Murderous Dwarfious decides to camp under the tree you've taken refuge on and starts barking at you, I think staying on that tree might be a good idea. Unless it can climb. Then your dwarf will either have to learn to fly or jump.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on June 27, 2014, 06:41:26 pm

Urist McCat got stuck in the tree again, somebody call the fire station.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainLambcake on June 27, 2014, 07:39:40 pm

Once an enemy surrenders to you in combat, what options do you have besides killing/leaving them?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 27, 2014, 08:27:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainLambcake on June 27, 2014, 07:39:40 pm

Once an enemy surrenders to you in combat, what options do you have besides killing/leaving them?

Greened the question for you. If you want Toady One to answer, you should make it green (lime green also works). Just letting you know.

The release is coming pretty dang soon, so we'll find out soon enough. Still a good question though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 27, 2014, 08:38:57 pm

I think punching them unconscious was mentioned somewhere. But might be just a dream or something.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: CaptainLambcake on June 27, 2014, 08:59:30 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 27, 2014, 08:27:15 pm

Quote from: CaptainLambcake on June 27, 2014, 07:39:40 pm

Once an enemy surrenders to you in combat, what options do you have besides killing/leaving them?

Greened the question for you. If you want Toady One to answer, you should make it green (lime green also works). Just letting you know.

The release is coming pretty dang soon, so we'll find out soon enough. Still a good question though.

Thanks man, I fixed it up myself too, completely forgot about greening it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Verdant_Squire on June 28, 2014, 08:30:01 am

How specific can we expect conversations to be? Will we have a word for word rendition of what was said, or will we receive more of a text summary of the conversation?

I also wanted to ask a question about your future plans that I've been really interested in knowing your opinion on.
Can we expect to see more variation between the layouts of towns and villages in the future? IE: One village has a keep and a bread mill, but the one a couple miles over has a palisade and a general store.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 28, 2014, 10:41:04 pm

Whoo, new devlog and the release sounds just about imminent.

Quote from: devlog

Even the grizzly bears the elves ride come from actual populations now, so make every axe-chop and drowning count and you won't have to deal with that particular site's denizens for a good long while.

So, I assume that attrution will finally make it's toll?

Also, a thought and something that everybody has ended up with at one time or another (the first one, not the second):
Say the goblin civ that is in contact with you only has a few members remaining (perhaps the demon is the only one left) and only one site left, where do siege and ambush participants get pulled from?

And if all members of a civ manage to get themselves wiped out in one final siege on your fort, what happens next? Does that civ go extinct and another civ take it's place?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on June 29, 2014, 05:18:37 am

Quote from: smjjames on June 28, 2014, 10:41:04 pm

Whoo, new devlog and the release sounds just about imminent.

Quote from: devlog

Even the grizzly bears the elves ride come from actual populations now, so make every axe-chop and drowning count and you won't have to deal with that particular site's denizens for a good long while.

So, I assume that attrution will finally make it's toll?

Also, a thought and something that everybody has ended up with at one time or another (the first one, not the second):
Say the goblin civ that is in contact with you only has a few members remaining (perhaps the demon is the only one left) and only one site left, where do siege and ambush participants get pulled from?

And if all members of a civ manage to get themselves wiped out in one final siege on your fort, what happens next? Does that civ go extinct and another civ take it's place?

Just guessing here, but from the devlog, I would assume that civs that can't mount an effective attack force will try to recoup their numbers and simply not attack. If we somehow do manage to destroy the civ we're in contact with, I'd assume that - until our neighbors are actually reflected through the trade network and such - we'd simply be left alone by civs of that type, since we haven't heard anything to the contrary that I recall.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: XArgon on June 29, 2014, 08:21:02 am

Quote from: Verdant_Squire on June 28, 2014, 08:30:01 am

How specific can we expect conversations to be? Will we have a word for word rendition of what was said, or will we receive more of a text summary of the conversation?

Just guessing here, but I presume that the overall style of conversations wouldn't really change from what we have now. After all, the current version has the whole framework that allows people to tell you about other people and historic events. Now you'll be able to ask more specific information (other than just "Tell me about any random place in the surrounding area"), but they'll still be historic events (and entity descriptions), code-wise. Maybe there'll just be a slightly different text template for responses about the more recent events (and maybe some personal reaction of this NPC to the event.)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on June 29, 2014, 01:09:49 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 28, 2014, 10:41:04 pm

Whoo, new devlog and the release sounds just about imminent.

Quote from: devlog

Even the grizzly bears the elves ride come from actual populations now, so make every axe-chop and drowning count and you won't have to deal with that particular site's denizens for a good long while.

So, I assume that attrution will finally make it's toll?

Also, a thought and something that everybody has ended up with at one time or another (the first one, not the second):
Say the goblin civ that is in contact with you only has a few members remaining (perhaps the demon is the only one left) and only one site left, where do siege and ambush participants get pulled from?

And if all members of a civ manage to get themselves wiped out in one final siege on your fort, what happens next? Does that civ go extinct and another civ take it's place?

What Knight Otu said.
And remember also that some sites (specially human ones) can have up to a few thousand inhabitants, so it has to be a pretty long attrition war in a few cases in order to significatively crush their population.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on June 29, 2014, 02:55:32 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 27, 2014, 08:27:15 pm

If you want Toady One to answer, you should make it green (lime green also works). Just letting you know.

Other way around. You make it limegreen, but normal green also works. See: the first post in this thread wherein Toady reiterates this guideline and explains how to. We just say things like "greening" instead of "limegreening" because "limegreen" is an awkward word.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on June 29, 2014, 11:01:12 pm

Quote from: Valtam on June 29, 2014, 01:09:49 pm

Quote from: smjjames on June 28, 2014, 10:41:04 pm

Whoo, new devlog and the release sounds just about imminent.

Quote from: devlog

Even the grizzly bears the elves ride come from actual populations now, so make every axe-chop and drowning count and you won't have to deal with that particular site's denizens for a good long while.

So, I assume that attrution will finally make it's toll?

Also, a thought and something that everybody has ended up with at one time or another (the first one, not the second):
Say the goblin civ that is in contact with you only has a few members remaining (perhaps the demon is the only one left) and only one site left, where do siege and ambush participants get pulled from?

And if all members of a civ manage to get themselves wiped out in one final siege on your fort, what happens next? Does that civ go extinct and another civ take it's place?

What Knight Otu said.
And remember also that some sites (specially human ones) can have up to a few thousand inhabitants, so it has to be a pretty long attrition war in a few cases in order to significatively crush their population.

I was talking about the situation where the civ in contact only has a few members left, I don't mean a few hundred, I mean a handfull, or less even.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 29, 2014, 11:23:36 pm

Well, assuming the invasion mechanics is forced to respect population, then you might not see anybody, unless the population increases. Maybe babysnatchers, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Scoops Novel on June 30, 2014, 04:58:32 am

Can we expect conversations tone and form, (e.g how someone talks as well as about what) to be affected by personality? I'm holding out for elven castaways making Legendary Jokes which are 2000 years out of date, myself.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: hermes on June 30, 2014, 06:00:20 am

Haha, that would be awesome if the game respected that kind of thing.  The stinky rat god being the butt of all jokes in the year one, and an elf that thinks they never get old.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PigtailLlama on June 30, 2014, 01:16:27 pm

Can we rename supply and trade wagons as trucks? Y'know, just to fit with the current theme, and it can be changed back in the bugfix update that usually comes out a week or two later. :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on June 30, 2014, 02:21:49 pm

No, far better, change them to actual trucks... in fact, robotic trucks capable of transforming into robots... that ride robotic t-rexes that breathe fire...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on June 30, 2014, 02:23:23 pm

At this point Toady should just hardcode the game to read any RAW with the name "truck" as some sort of horrifying megabeast.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 30, 2014, 03:25:34 pm

With limited populations, maybe there should be something programed into elves or such that secretly hide or breed endangered things to keep their silly little natural balance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on June 30, 2014, 04:22:56 pm

That actually wouldn't be a bad plan for elves to act like that. Not sure if they'd make it secret, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on June 30, 2014, 05:27:54 pm

I know. Just remove the secret part I said then. I thought of it to fit with elves while being useful for the players in some way, also something of potential conflict among elves between soldier elves who want fancy mounts and those tasked with protection of nature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: samanato on June 30, 2014, 10:39:48 pm

I'm quite intrigued by the new civ sites as I've heard them described.  Are their specific traits hard-coded, or can you modify them in different ways with the entity raws?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PeridexisErrant on June 30, 2014, 11:10:51 pm

Quote from: samanato on June 30, 2014, 10:39:48 pm

I'm quite intrigued by the new civ sites as I've heard them described.  Are their specific traits hard-coded, or can you modify them in different ways with the entity raws?

Hardcoded for the foreseeable future, though I think there are plans to open that up eventually.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on July 01, 2014, 12:29:23 pm

Hey look, a new report!

Quote from: DarkDXZ on July 01, 2014, 12:28:22 pm

Quote from: ThreeToe in the July report

The game is coming out next week!

PRAISE BE TO TOADY!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 12:33:46 pm

Yep, they ran into some last minute crash issues, so they are doing some cleanup just to be sure. So, just a LIIIIITLE bit longer.

Hey Toady One, are you going to save the final FoTF reply until the release next week? Or just go ahead with it and answer any questions that come up between now and next week when you do the release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 01, 2014, 12:34:12 pm

Quote from: Threetoe

Soon you will get to join us in the living hell of debugging this monster.  I'm only sort of playing!  Almost everything about dwarf behavior had to be changed for this release, so literally every aspect of the game is crawling with bugs.

Quote from: Toady

I just crashed after walking 10 steps with an adventurer, and there were a few justice crashes fixed yesterday.  Soon...  soon...

Only DF makes me go "yessssss" when the devs say something like this.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 01, 2014, 12:42:13 pm

Quote from: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 12:33:46 pm

Hey Toady One, are you going to save the final FoTF reply until the release next week? Or just go ahead with it and answer any questions that come up between now and next week when you do the release.

I haven't 100% decided, but it hasn't happened yet, so I might just do it after the release.  I could also regret that decision, so I dunno.  There's a lot going on, and there won't be time enough for it to actually fit day by day until several weeks from now.  Then we will be decompressed again.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on July 01, 2014, 12:45:45 pm

Toady and ThreeToe.  I love you.   If I was female I would have your mutant guineapigtoad babies.

Anyway keep up the good work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 01, 2014, 12:55:56 pm

Never mind bothering with questions, we'll figure out all the questions after release :D
This really made my week.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: monk12 on July 01, 2014, 12:58:49 pm

Answer to all questions: "I just released the new version, so go find out for yourself."

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 01, 2014, 01:04:22 pm

Every other game in alpha-betha state:
-Guys, our next release it's coming. It'll be bug-ladden.
-Boohoo, we hate you! why'd you take our money with that Kickstarter? Update things right or don't update at all, *goes on and on*...

Dwarf Fortress:
-"Soon you will get to join us in the living hell of debugging this monster. [...] literally every aspect of the game is crawling with bugs."
-Yaaay! Let me get into the plastic ball pit FIRST!

***

Eagerness aside, we're always thankful for this chance. It'll be a fun ride. I'm also with everyone else about questions, we'll have time to answer them ingame and a completely different batch of them around the end of July.

By the way, I've never used the Mantis bug tracker (or any bug tracker before). Is there some kind of how-to or tutorial for the uninitiated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on July 01, 2014, 01:12:21 pm

Quote from: Valtam on July 01, 2014, 01:04:22 pm

By the way, I've never used the Mantis bug tracker (or any bug tracker before). Is there some kind of how-to or tutorial for the uninitiated?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 01:16:21 pm

It's pretty easy to use really. Just check if the bug has been reported first so that we reduce the number of duplicates.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on July 01, 2014, 01:19:34 pm

It's been awhile but I think you need to make an account (just an email verification thing if I recall).  Once you have an account you hit view issues and you can click on the blue buttons near the top to change filter settings like categories.

If you find an issue that isn't reported you click on report issue and it will give you a little document to fill out.  With dropdowns for stuff like category and severity.  And some space to put in descriptions and how to reproduce the bug and stuff like that.

I think it's made to be used by other people working on the project as well as bug reporters, because the main button brings up a page of stuff 'assigned to you' which would probably be stuff you are expected to fix if yer working on the project.  I've never seen a need to use anything but view issues, report issues, and changelog myself.

P.S. View issues may not need an account, but I do think you need one to report an issue, otherwise I would not have gotten one.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 01, 2014, 01:21:12 pm

For especially obscure bugs it helps, if possible to have a save game to recreate it.... and it's posterior weaponization.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 01:44:41 pm

It's a bit of a shame the new release didn't come out today (I was planning on maybe doing a quick Let's Play video of it), but when there's a bug as severe as crashing 10 steps into adventure mode, it's understandable why you'd wanna hold off a bit longer!

So instead, I'll probably try a short "I still have no idea what I'm doing" LP as a farewell to DF2012 (and a hello to DF2014!) Looking forward to hopping into this and doing my part to squash bugs with the rest of the community!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 01, 2014, 01:52:09 pm

Quote from: LordBaal on July 01, 2014, 01:21:12 pm

For especially obscure bugs it helps, if possible to have a save game to recreate it.... and it's posterior weaponization.

Saves are actually useful for many bugs, especially crash bugs. Also, whenever possible, try to put the saves on the DFFD (http://dffd.wimbli.com/) so they don't vanish into the internet limbo between the time you upload them and when someone gets around to looking at them. I'd say, when in doubt, supply a save.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 01, 2014, 02:23:43 pm

Quote from: Knight Otu on July 01, 2014, 01:52:09 pm

Saves are actually useful for many bugs, especially crash bugs. Also, whenever possible, try to put the saves on the DFFD (http://dffd.wimbli.com/) so they don't vanish into the internet limbo between the time you upload them and when someone gets around to looking at them. I'd say, when in doubt, supply a save.

Yup, this is important.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: samanato on July 01, 2014, 03:15:49 pm

Quote from: PeridexisErrant on June 30, 2014, 11:10:51 pm

Quote from: samanato on June 30, 2014, 10:39:48 pm

I'm quite intrigued by the new civ sites as I've heard them described.  Are their specific traits hard-coded, or can you modify them in different ways with the entity raws?

Hardcoded for the foreseeable future, though I think there are plans to open that up eventually.

Just to clarify, does this mean, the DEFAULT_SITE determines every new feature of a mountain-hall (including hill-dwarves), forest retreat, etc? Take for example the dark fortress sites, which for goblins have prisons for snatched children and suchlike.  If a civ lives in a dark-fortress and has no [BABYSNATCHER] tag, will those cells will be empty?

Also now that bodies are pulpable, I'm assuming, this affects the vulnerability of things like sponges and husks by way of cumulative damage?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on July 01, 2014, 03:21:43 pm

The impending release is polarizing for me. On one hand, I'll be able to try out new features that I'm really excited for like multi tile trees and climbing. It'll also give me an opportunity to experiment with the new features and new defence mechanics with climbing (though for some reason, I feel like it really won't change much)

On the other hand, the new version is incompatible with DF 0.34, so I'll have to permanently retire my forts, some of which I've got really attached to. Moreover, utilities like DF hack and LNP, which I use a lot, are gonna be incompatible for weeks.

I feel like I have to give up old memories, but I look forward to making new ones.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 01, 2014, 03:31:15 pm

Trow them into a pit of lava. Here, pull the lever.
Precisely because of this I haven't played DF in like what it seems like months now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mesa on July 01, 2014, 03:38:50 pm

One idea from me: try to recreate your greatest forts/heroes/whatever from 34.11 in DF2014?
Of course you can't hope for randomness to be that nice to you, but you could create a fort with the name of your old fort and build it in a similar-but-not-really fashion?

As a sort of reminder of the past days...
I don't know, man, you have to make the choice.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 04:00:41 pm

I have not played for months but I will be playing non stop once a few bug fix releases get put out. Though I would say that bugs drive me insane so I tend to have a hard time sticking with forts due to bugs...wish Toady would spend a good 6 months on bug fixing...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Zavvnao on July 01, 2014, 04:34:21 pm

I want to see how much more random and awesome this release will be. I am waiting for more epic heroes o fun characters.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 04:48:47 pm

Quote from: Greiger on July 01, 2014, 01:19:34 pm

It's been awhile but I think you need to make an account (just an email verification thing if I recall).  Once you have an account you hit view issues and you can click on the blue buttons near the top to change filter settings like categories.

If you find an issue that isn't reported you click on report issue and it will give you a little document to fill out.  With dropdowns for stuff like category and severity.  And some space to put in descriptions and how to reproduce the bug and stuff like that.

I think it's made to be used by other people working on the project as well as bug reporters, because the main button brings up a page of stuff 'assigned to you' which would probably be stuff you are expected to fix if yer working on the project.  I've never seen a need to use anything but view issues, report issues, and changelog myself.

P.S. View issues may not need an account, but I do think you need one to report an issue, otherwise I would not have gotten one.

Viewing issues don't need an account, but to comment on one or report an issue, yes. Also, I think all you need is a forum account? Not sure if it uses the forum account, but yeah, just a quick register and email verification.

Aside from posting a save up on DFFD, you can also post screenshots if you want. Though you'll have to use an image editing program to paste the printscrn screenshot, save and then upload to your preferred image hosting site.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: lethosor on July 01, 2014, 04:52:01 pm

Quote from: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 04:48:47 pm

Viewing issues don't need an account, but to comment on one or report an issue, yes. Also, I think all you need is a forum account? Not sure if it uses the forum account, but yeah, just a quick register and email verification.

It requires a separate account.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 05:07:58 pm

Quote from: lethosor on July 01, 2014, 04:52:01 pm

Quote from: smjjames on July 01, 2014, 04:48:47 pm

Viewing issues don't need an account, but to comment on one or report an issue, yes. Also, I think all you need is a forum account? Not sure if it uses the forum account, but yeah, just a quick register and email verification.

It requires a separate account.

Not sure why I was thinking that, but yeah, separate account. Although most people use their forum name on the bug tracker, it's not required.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Inarius on July 01, 2014, 05:12:27 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 04:00:41 pm

which Toady would spend a good 6 months on bug fixing...

On what are you basing your supposition ? How long did it take last time ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 05:14:40 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on July 01, 2014, 03:21:43 pm

On the other hand, the new version is incompatible with DF 0.34, so I'll have to permanently retire my forts, some of which I've got really attached to. Moreover, utilities like DF hack and LNP, which I use a lot, are gonna be incompatible for weeks.

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about how long it'll take to bring the mods up to date, and as a result I'm half-pondering waiting for a bit until at least DFHack and DwarfTherapist are enabled, along with a couple other bits and pieces (Though the two I mentioned are the main ones I can't live without, honestly!)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 01, 2014, 05:18:42 pm

Just play adventure mode, no therapist required.

...

Join us...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: DG on July 01, 2014, 05:29:43 pm

Quote from: Inarius on July 01, 2014, 05:12:27 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 04:00:41 pm

which Toady would spend a good 6 months on bug fixing...

On what are you basing your supposition ? How long did it take last time ?

I suspect he meant "wish" instead of "which".

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 01, 2014, 05:54:00 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 04:00:41 pm

I have not played for months but I will be playing non stop once a few bug fix releases get put out. Though I would say that bugs drive me insane so I tend to have a hard time sticking with forts due to bugs...wish Toady would spend a good 6 months on bug fixing...

He usually spends a while making bug fix updates...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 06:05:36 pm

yes I believe I was talking to someone while typing and accidentally typed "which" instead of wish...there is no supposition...only the desire of a more bug free DF...I am more than aware of how long it takes Toady to do bug fixes after a release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Footkerchief on July 01, 2014, 06:12:33 pm

Quote from: Inarius on July 01, 2014, 05:12:27 pm

Quote from: dennislp3 on July 01, 2014, 04:00:41 pm

which Toady would spend a good 6 months on bug fixing...

On what are you basing your supposition ? How long did it take last time ?

Quote from: Footkerchief on October 23, 2011, 11:28:29 am

[...] the 31.01 release required months of followup work -- 31.02 through 31.12 (July 25, almost 4 months later) all had fixes for game-breaking crashes (with the exception of 31.04, which integrated the 40d* rendering updates).  19-month release cycle => 4 months of bugfixing.

32a (the first 3D release) followed a similar pattern -- it was followed by 6 bugfix releases over almost 2 months.  9.5 months of work => 2 months of bugfixing.  Actually, that's more than similar -- it's almost exactly the same ratio, 1 month of bugfixing for every 4.75 months of work.

That predicts 5+ months of bugfixing for this 25-month release.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:31:32 am

Quote from: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 05:14:40 pm

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about how long it'll take to bring the mods up to date, and as a result I'm half-pondering waiting for a bit until at least DFHack and DwarfTherapist are enabled, along with a couple other bits and pieces (Though the two I mentioned are the main ones I can't live without, honestly!)

Jump in and use the standard interface. It puts hairs on your chest!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on July 02, 2014, 03:29:39 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:31:32 am

Quote from: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 05:14:40 pm

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about how long it'll take to bring the mods up to date, and as a result I'm half-pondering waiting for a bit until at least DFHack and DwarfTherapist are enabled, along with a couple other bits and pieces (Though the two I mentioned are the main ones I can't live without, honestly!)

Jump in and use the standard interface. It puts hairs on your chest!

What? There's another way to play this game? Blasphemy! Heresy! Anything-Else-That-Can-Get-You-Burnt-At-A-Stake-y!

Or as Wrex from Mass Effect would put it: This is a MAN EMERGENCY!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Henny on July 02, 2014, 06:12:14 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:31:32 am

Quote from: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 05:14:40 pm

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about how long it'll take to bring the mods up to date, and as a result I'm half-pondering waiting for a bit until at least DFHack and DwarfTherapist are enabled, along with a couple other bits and pieces (Though the two I mentioned are the main ones I can't live without, honestly!)

Jump in and use the standard interface. It puts hairs on your chest!

I'm already going bald, I don't want to speed up the process!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 02, 2014, 08:47:28 am

Quote from: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:31:32 am

Quote from: Chaz GELF on July 01, 2014, 05:14:40 pm

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about how long it'll take to bring the mods up to date, and as a result I'm half-pondering waiting for a bit until at least DFHack and DwarfTherapist are enabled, along with a couple other bits and pieces (Though the two I mentioned are the main ones I can't live without, honestly!)

Jump in and use the standard interface. It puts hairs on your chest!

The standard interface is a grave tool, only to be used in times when nothing else can prevail...

Standard interface. Got it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dutchling on July 02, 2014, 08:59:17 am

I'll just use the standard interface. It's not like a x.0 fort lasts more than a couple of years anyway, due to bugs.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on July 02, 2014, 11:41:35 am

At any rate the current interface and mechanics are still better than they were years ago.  Imagine playing the game without being able to forbid items, or without restricting dwarves to burrows during sieges, or without the ability to build walls...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Eric Blank on July 02, 2014, 12:39:06 pm

The interface is workable. I've never extensively used anything else.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Baffler on July 02, 2014, 12:43:03 pm

Quote from: Eric Blank on July 02, 2014, 12:39:06 pm

The interface is workable. I've never extensively used anything else.

Same. I tried Therapist and it didn't really do much for me. The automatic assigning to custom job sets was nice, though.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 02, 2014, 12:44:33 pm

I used tools when starting to get familiar. After it I only use graphic mods at home and pure vanilla at work.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:30:57 pm

Quote from: Baffler on July 02, 2014, 12:43:03 pm

Same. I tried Therapist and it didn't really do much for me. The automatic assigning to custom job sets was nice, though.

I went through a phase of using Therapist etc.and it was very useful while learning the game. But after a while, I realised that it just isn't that necessary to micromanage that much. Just let immigrants keep their default labours, and if a job isn't getting done, just grab a nearby idle dwarf and turn it on. Who cares if you end up with a Farmer-Blacksmith?

I happily trade in a sub-optimal armour production line for ease of play and not having to jump back and forth to multiple windows.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: dennislp3 on July 02, 2014, 01:40:47 pm

Even with dwarf therapist I tend to have multi job Dwarves...I personally just like the easier interface...I could never do one job only dwarves I dont think...way to much micromanagement

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 02, 2014, 02:07:19 pm

Dwarf therapist has been making crazy progress in micromanagement and easing the appointing of fit dwarves for every roll. I will probably play a lot with it again, specially since I'll sure be rusty.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 02, 2014, 02:48:15 pm

Well, DTs UI is a heck of a lot more user friendly than the job interface ingame. Can't play fort mode without it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: samanato on July 02, 2014, 02:56:25 pm

I just cannot play a fort past the first year without DT's layout.

I suppose I could play without Hack, but I'll really miss the bugfixing tweaks, if they're not already done in the game itself, and the cleaning commands. It really helps out with mod-testing too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on July 02, 2014, 03:11:23 pm

Puny mortals. I have transcended the material plane and play manly, raw DF without wimpy 3rd party utility seasonings and tileset spices.

Long live the vanilla*!

^{_{*Excluding my additions like ashandarei and blue-crowned conures}}[/sub]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on July 02, 2014, 03:17:28 pm

Ashandarei?

Where could one obtain said addition? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Greiger on July 02, 2014, 03:21:29 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 02, 2014, 03:11:23 pm

Puny mortals. I have transcended the material plane and play manly, raw DF without wimpy 3rd party utility seasonings and tileset spices.

Long live the vanilla*!

^{_{*Excluding my additions like ashandarei and blue-crowned conures}}[/sub]

*Elitism Brofist*
You, you are allowed on my lawn.

Joking aside though, I see why folks really need the utilities, and when DFHack is available I do have it installed, I just usually don't use it outside of fixing a bug or incomplete feature. (My most used DFHack feature is the siege engine targeting)  I just figure everybody who hasn't tried vanilla should give it at least an hour or two shot. 

There's just something satisfying about knowing you accomplished a task without 3rd party tools.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on July 02, 2014, 03:25:11 pm

I only use Dwarf Therapist.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wimopy on July 02, 2014, 03:27:21 pm

Quote from: SmileyMan on July 02, 2014, 01:30:57 pm

Quote from: Baffler on July 02, 2014, 12:43:03 pm

Same. I tried Therapist and it didn't really do much for me. The automatic assigning to custom job sets was nice, though.

I went through a phase of using Therapist etc.and it was very useful while learning the game. But after a while, I realised that it just isn't that necessary to micromanage that much. Just let immigrants keep their default labours, and if a job isn't getting done, just grab a nearby idle dwarf and turn it on. Who cares if you end up with a Farmer-Blacksmith?

I happily trade in a sub-optimal armour production line for ease of play and not having to jump back and forth to multiple windows.

Exactly how I play. It might not look good, it might not be the most efficient, but Armok! The blood and the magma will still flow.
And there'll be things to trade.

Quote from: Greiger on July 02, 2014, 03:21:29 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 02, 2014, 03:11:23 pm

Puny mortals. I have transcended the material plane and play manly, raw DF without wimpy 3rd party utility seasonings and tileset spices.

Long live the vanilla*!

^{_{*Excluding my additions like ashandarei and blue-crowned conures}}[/sub]

*Elitism Brofist*
You, you are allowed on my lawn.

Joking aside though, I see why folks really need the utilities, and when DFHack is available I do have it installed, I just usually don't use it outside of fixing a bug or incomplete feature. (My most used DFHack feature is the siege engine targeting)  I just figure everybody who hasn't tried vanilla should give it at least an hour or two shot. 

There's just something satisfying about knowing you accomplished a task without 3rd party tools.

I like the fixes too.  But honestly, I can't use anything but the default tileset and I find it more complicated to use the utilities.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dirst on July 02, 2014, 03:28:20 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on July 02, 2014, 03:25:11 pm

I only use Dwarf Therapist.

Whenever I try to do that, all I get is a pop-up asking if I'm sure Dwarf Fortress is running ;)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on July 02, 2014, 03:30:06 pm

:P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Wirevix on July 02, 2014, 05:26:17 pm

I do like Therapist for quickly disabling and enabling a ton of jobs--like, when I decide everyone needs to work on a mass hauling project.  It's just faster than using the keyboard commands since I can commit 15 changes at once.  But other than that, I don't use any outside tools, since I just don't find them useful enough for my own purposes.  Some of DFHack's finish-something-not-currently-working-right features have seemed interesting, but I don't generally play forts long enough to really have a buildup of problems it would fix.  I tend to be too addicted to modding in a new race or creature that I have to regenerate to have right now...

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Ianflow on July 02, 2014, 06:46:46 pm

Quote from: Toady One on May 30, 2014, 08:23:26 pm

The new conversation code has shaken things up a bit, so the liaison will probably be able to get passing acquaintance status now, but I think with the way it cycles them out over time if they don't get to full friendship, they might not ever build into anything.  I don't have a particular plan for changing it at this point, but it could afford to be more interesting.  Start scenarios/hill dwarves will also introduce some other off-site dwarves that regularly visit the fort (and the whole inn/tavern bit will probably lead to repeat visitors as well).  It'll be neat to see how the relationships between all those critters evolve.  Even now, any rep issues between the liaison and other historical dwarves can come into play, as uncommon as those might be.  I suppose it could be most pronounced if a former adventurer with a colorful career is appointed liaison or migrates to a fort.

I'm a little out of the loop, but I've always hoped that a sort of Tavern/Inn thing would be potential. Designating a series of rooms as an Inn, such as an Inn Dining Hall, specific rooms for guests. I think the game could get more interesting, say a Werebeast chose to stay the night haha.
I suppose my question here is: Can we look forward to making a Fort have "Hospitality" as a factor in the Economy, such as running Inns or Taverns, even being able to have a sort of Tourism Income? Potentially designating a tower of Soap as a "Landmark", making an event in the history, and thereby creating a site of forms? Or will the Tavern/Inn bit more be just the Trading Depot where the Caravan stays?

It would also be interesting to see the Mayor become close with a Liason for example, even marrying. I mean, a long distance, seasonal relationship would be quite impressive. Heheh, Dwarven Custody Battles
Are there plans for the Liason or other Visiting Persons to become involved with a resident, making a sort of Long Distance Relationship? Could this lead to repeated visits? Or could it potentially lead to the gain of a visitor and potential children, or the emmigration of a citizen? On a further note, is there any plan for a "Divorce" and resulting moods if a couple has been exceptionally distant, has had a public fight (leading to divorce by court order), and an actual custody battle?

Sorry if what I'm asking sounds crazy.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on July 03, 2014, 04:41:03 am

Quote from: Ianflow on July 02, 2014, 06:46:46 pm

(...)

Um, game suggestions disguised as questions are frowned upon in this thread.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lordinquisitor on July 03, 2014, 08:26:25 am

The new version will offer us amazing stuff like insurrections; But i wonder- Is some of it restricted to humans and goblins, civilizations with variable positions, and if so which aspects? Just wondering because currently some events, like demons taking over civilzations, will only happen if the civilization in question has variable positions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TalonisWolf on July 03, 2014, 11:50:57 am

  In the same vein as the post above, Necromancers lead insurrections? If so, would both sides turn on them when the Necromancer/s undead minions are raised? When they attack?
[/quote]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on July 03, 2014, 01:12:24 pm

Kinda related to the above:
Was there any mention of the undead not using the old "kill all living, ignore others" system anymore?

Because that way we could have two necromancers fighting it out with their undead armies or zombies vs vampires or similar. Seems reasonable for the undead to have a system similar to the one humans and other creatures have (or is that system related to souls and thus not applicable?). That could also lead to zombies being turned to someone else's side or being controlled by another necromancer's spell temporarily in the future.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mohl on July 03, 2014, 09:47:51 pm

I'm planning on going back to wrestling. especially of the pounce things from trees type. That said:
If I jump from a tree deliberately, will I take hardcore fall damage because I fell more than 0 z-levels? Or will I be able to perfectly tackle things from treetops?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 03, 2014, 09:52:40 pm

Quote from: Mohl on July 03, 2014, 09:47:51 pm

I'm planning on going back to wrestling. especially of the pounce things from trees type. That said:
If I jump from a tree deliberately, will I take hardcore fall damage because I fell more than 0 z-levels? Or will I be able to perfectly tackle things from treetops?

I have no idea if you can tackle things from treetops, would be cool if you could draw a weapon and jump on them from the treetops. Though if you miss or you can't actually tackle, you'll take the expected damage that you'd get from falling one z level.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on July 03, 2014, 10:04:50 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on July 02, 2014, 03:17:28 pm

Ashandarei?

Where could one obtain said addition? :P

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_TH4DW4RFY1]
[NAME:ashandarei:ashandarei]
[SIZE:400]
[SKILL:SPEAR]
[TWO_HANDED:47500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:5000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:19000:4000:slash:slashes:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK:EDGE:35:2000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:20000:4000:slap:slaps:flat:1250]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:10000:6000:bash:bashes:shaft:1250]I kinda named it for you, ehehe.

It's basically a short sword on a stick, which is because it translates correctly that way. :P It's less effective at stabbing than a spear, but moreso than a sword; it's worse at slashing than a sword, but then again, it's also usable by speardorfs and pointier than a short sword.

I generally give it to dorfs and humans.

Quote from: Greiger on July 02, 2014, 03:21:29 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 02, 2014, 03:11:23 pm

Puny mortals. I have transcended the material plane and play manly, raw DF without wimpy 3rd party utility seasonings and tileset spices.

Long live the vanilla*!

^{_{*Excluding my additions like ashandarei and blue-crowned conures}}

*Elitism Brofist*
You, you are allowed on my lawn.

Joking aside though, I see why folks really need the utilities, and when DFHack is available I do have it installed, I just usually don't use it outside of fixing a bug or incomplete feature. (My most used DFHack feature is the siege engine targeting)  I just figure everybody who hasn't tried vanilla should give it at least an hour or two shot. 

There's just something satisfying about knowing you accomplished a task without 3rd party tools.

*rebrofist*

Quote from: freeformschooler on July 11, 2010, 11:28:11 am

blah blah yada yada NOW FOR THE QUESTION

I have heard of this new "pulping" mechanics. Would, for example, mauls, or unrealistically large hammers, be ideal for pulping? Because they're really sort of useless right now.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Mohl on July 03, 2014, 10:17:02 pm

Quote from: smjjames on July 03, 2014, 09:52:40 pm

Quote from: Mohl on July 03, 2014, 09:47:51 pm

I'm planning on going back to wrestling. especially of the pounce things from trees type. That said:
If I jump from a tree deliberately, will I take hardcore fall damage because I fell more than 0 z-levels? Or will I be able to perfectly tackle things from treetops?

I have no idea if you can tackle things from treetops, would be cool if you could draw a weapon and jump on them from the treetops. Though if you miss or you can't actually tackle, you'll take the expected damage that you'd get from falling one z level.

Well, if I can't tackle people, at least i can stun them by landing on them.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 03, 2014, 10:31:25 pm

Quote from: TalonisWolf on July 03, 2014, 11:50:57 am

  In the same vein as the post above, Necromancers lead insurrections? If so, would both sides turn on them when the Necromancer/s undead minions are raised? When they attack?

I don't think they will, because of their unique allegiance to no civ or entity in particular, other than theirs, which (again, I think) is required to insurrect against something.

I might be wrong.

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 03, 2014, 10:04:50 pm

I have heard of this new "pulping" mechanics. Would, for example, mauls, or unrealistically large hammers, be ideal for pulping? Because they're really sort of useless right now.

That's the idea now, yes. Blunt weapons will be effective to destroy limbs and body parts with sheer crushing force, specially things that don't bleed, cleric-style.

Right now they're quite useful to deal with armored types, but these are limited to invaders at sieges (specially humans and goblins) and certain high-ranking bandits in adventure mode.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on July 04, 2014, 03:30:34 am

Quote from: Valtam on July 03, 2014, 10:31:25 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 03, 2014, 10:04:50 pm

I have heard of this new "pulping" mechanics. Would, for example, mauls, or unrealistically large hammers, be ideal for pulping? Because they're really sort of useless right now.

That's the idea now, yes. Blunt weapons will be effective to destroy limbs and body parts with sheer crushing force, specially things that don't bleed, cleric-style.

Right now they're quite useful to deal with armored types, but these are limited to invaders at sieges (specially humans and goblins) and certain high-ranking bandits in adventure mode.

Hammers will be able to smash limbs?

*Blazing Glory starts getting hyped up about the next DF version*

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Dbuhos on July 04, 2014, 03:56:05 am

Considering we get sheathing as a feature will we also get it as an object ?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 04, 2014, 04:01:52 am

It's kind of an abstract sheathing right now, sort of like strapping it to your belt or behind your back or something and automagically have the sheath appear there.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sergarr on July 04, 2014, 05:23:20 am

Quote from: blazing glory on July 04, 2014, 03:30:34 am

Quote from: Valtam on July 03, 2014, 10:31:25 pm

Quote from: Tawarochir on July 03, 2014, 10:04:50 pm

I have heard of this new "pulping" mechanics. Would, for example, mauls, or unrealistically large hammers, be ideal for pulping? Because they're really sort of useless right now.

That's the idea now, yes. Blunt weapons will be effective to destroy limbs and body parts with sheer crushing force, specially things that don't bleed, cleric-style.

Right now they're quite useful to deal with armored types, but these are limited to invaders at sieges (specially humans and goblins) and certain high-ranking bandits in adventure mode.

Hammers will be able to smash limbs?

*Blazing Glory starts getting hyped up about the next DF version*

Don't forget that in the next version you'll be able to reaction attack people who are attacking you, so you can manually counter-attack!

[HYPE_INTENSIFIES]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on July 04, 2014, 09:28:03 am

[!!HYPE!! INTENSIFIES]

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 04, 2014, 09:37:24 am

I wonder how all the changes will be reflected in military sparring sessions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 04, 2014, 07:13:48 pm

Quote from: Dbuhos on July 04, 2014, 03:56:05 am

Considering we get sheathing as a feature will we also get it as an object ?

Toady already answered this, and it's a temporary no. It'll be an action, but there's no actual sheath yet, not unlike two handed weapons in Skyrim, which sort of float behind the player's back.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 05, 2014, 07:41:00 am

Today and tomorrow will be the only days off work I will have for a month. I bet Toady will release it Monday.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 09:37:34 am

Okay so I went trough the pages for a little bit and I haven't noticed anyone asking this. So my question is, will we be able to join to a side of an army and fight with them? Will there be actual army fights to which we can go and perhaps join?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Parisbre56 on July 05, 2014, 11:00:57 am

Quote from: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 09:37:34 am

Okay so I went trough the pages for a little bit and I haven't noticed anyone asking this. So my question is, will we be able to join to a side of an army and fight with them? Will there be actual army fights to which we can go and perhaps join?

Not yet. Army fights and village raids are still abstracted and instantaneous. You don't see them impaling things on upright weapons. Or at least that's what Toady answered last time this was asked. Don't know if anything changed during that time.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 12:12:56 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on July 05, 2014, 11:00:57 am

Quote from: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 09:37:34 am

Okay so I went trough the pages for a little bit and I haven't noticed anyone asking this. So my question is, will we be able to join to a side of an army and fight with them? Will there be actual army fights to which we can go and perhaps join?

Not yet. Army fights and village raids are still abstracted and instantaneous. You don't see them impaling things on upright weapons. Or at least that's what Toady answered last time this was asked. Don't know if anything changed during that time.

So the epic battles are still not yet?
(http://i.imgur.com/4t8Xlck.png)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tabithda on July 05, 2014, 01:32:45 pm

Quote from: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 12:12:56 pm

Quote from: Parisbre56 on July 05, 2014, 11:00:57 am

Quote from: RageBob on July 05, 2014, 09:37:34 am

Okay so I went trough the pages for a little bit and I haven't noticed anyone asking this. So my question is, will we be able to join to a side of an army and fight with them? Will there be actual army fights to which we can go and perhaps join?

Not yet. Army fights and village raids are still abstracted and instantaneous. You don't see them impaling things on upright weapons. Or at least that's what Toady answered last time this was asked. Don't know if anything changed during that time.

So the epic battles are still not yet?

Er, not quite.  Many of Toady's more recent devlogs, in particular the 02/08/2014 devlog, seem to indicate that you will be able to witness and take part in town invasion battles.

And a question:
What role do castles and their lords/ladys play in human nations in the next version in regard to the new same-nation site conflict?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 05, 2014, 04:48:32 pm

You guys do know that the answer to (most of) these questions will be 'check in the new version' when it gets released?

Though Toady One will probably answer them anyway just to give a sense of completeness.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: blazing glory on July 05, 2014, 04:53:59 pm

Will kings and lords and ladies ever have interesting history? Instead of "for 43 years,I was a clothier" we could have hero's that proved themselves in the battlefield.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Sergarr on July 05, 2014, 04:58:04 pm

Quote from: blazing glory on July 05, 2014, 04:53:59 pm

Will kings and lords and ladies ever have interesting history? Instead of "for 43 years,I was a clothier" we could have hero's that proved themselves in the battlefield.

In the next version, you can become the king.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TD1 on July 05, 2014, 05:10:53 pm

How does that work? Do you declare yourself king, or do you need some of the lords you quested for to vouch for you?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 05, 2014, 05:17:12 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on July 05, 2014, 05:10:53 pm

How does that work? Do you declare yourself king, or do you need some of the lords you quested for to vouch for you?

We'll just have to figure out the specifics when it gets released.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 05, 2014, 05:17:50 pm

Quote from: Tabithda on July 05, 2014, 01:32:45 pm

in particular the 02/08/2014 devlog

Now you made me go read all the old devlogs about in-play fighting within sites and personality traits and forts getting conquered by megabeasts in worldgen.  My release hype levels have gotten too damn high.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 05, 2014, 05:22:41 pm

Quote from: blazing glory on July 05, 2014, 04:53:59 pm

Will kings and lords and ladies ever have interesting history? Instead of "for 43 years,I was a clothier" we could have hero's that proved themselves in the battlefield.

There occasionally are heroes that proved themselves on the battlefield in the cuirrent worldgen. Even in RL, not all monarchs did great things during their reigns, some might have not done a whole lot of notable stuff.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Knight Otu on July 05, 2014, 05:23:39 pm

Quote from: blazing glory on July 05, 2014, 04:53:59 pm

Will kings and lords and ladies ever have interesting history? Instead of "for 43 years,I was a clothier" we could have hero's that proved themselves in the battlefield.

Ever? Yes. As personalities and world gen and post-world-gen decisions get better, we should get more interesting historical figures, and thus more interesting rulers.

Quote from: Sergarr on July 05, 2014, 04:58:04 pm

In the next version, you can become the king.

You can become a site leader. That's a bit lower in the hierarchy than a king (or law-giver or master or whatever's making the big decisions). I suppose you can become the de-facto king if you control all sites, but becoming actual royalty isn't in the cards yet, as far as I remember.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 05, 2014, 06:19:16 pm

Right now pressing a claim on a site involves taking over its central building.  Presumably the civilization-wide version of that would be taking control of the capitol's central building, but Toady's said nothing about that so I'd assume there is no process for seizing a Kingdom at the moment.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 05, 2014, 08:37:16 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on July 05, 2014, 05:10:53 pm

How does that work? Do you declare yourself king, or do you need some of the lords you quested for to vouch for you?

You declare yourself king, and then kill everyone that disagrees. Same as real life.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Tawa on July 05, 2014, 09:10:42 pm

Quote from: Cruxador on July 05, 2014, 08:37:16 pm

Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on July 05, 2014, 05:10:53 pm

How does that work? Do you declare yourself king, or do you need some of the lords you quested for to vouch for you?

You declare yourself king, and then kill everyone that disagrees. Same as real life.

You forgot a crucial part!

You have to kill everybody else, too! That way, they can't change their minds!

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 05, 2014, 10:47:32 pm

Heh, when was the last time there was a devlog update so short (not counting releases)?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Untelligent on July 05, 2014, 11:24:32 pm

Quote from: Putnam on July 05, 2014, 10:47:32 pm

Heh, when was the last time there was a devlog update so short (not counting releases)?

Ignoring Bay 12 reports, "Here's a DF Talk" posts, and "here's a FotF thread reply" posts, the april 5th and 6th posts are very short, but not quite as short as today's.



March 23rd, 2013 was the last time we had a shorter post:

Quote

The reddit Ask Me Anything (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/) has started. Here is my alien user name picture. (http://www.bay12games.com/imgs/reddit.png)

And if that doesn't count either, the most recent shorter post that pertains directly to development would be February 10, 2012:

Quote

Couple more down, having to do with historical figure housing and equipment.

That post was four days before the 34.01 ("DF2012") update. Add +2 to Hype.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Cruxador on July 06, 2014, 01:20:37 am

Quote from: Untelligent on July 05, 2014, 11:24:32 pm

That post was four days before the 34.01 ("DF2012") update. Add +2 to Hype.

Considering that the release is slated for sometime in the upcoming week, I don't think the hype can be increased by t his.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 06:25:53 am

How can the hype increase with today's devlog? It looks pretty negative to me.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 06, 2014, 06:42:31 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 06:25:53 am

How can the hype increase with today's devlog? It looks pretty negative to me.

Considering the game seemed to have been given a dash of Ryan Haywood, negative is relative~

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 06:59:43 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 06:25:53 am

How can the hype increase with today's devlog? It looks pretty negative to me.

I don't know about you, but I consider info about bugfix positive news.

Oh, you mean from "OH NOES RELEASE MAY SLIP" point of view. I don't care.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 06:59:43 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 06:25:53 am

How can the hype increase with today's devlog? It looks pretty negative to me.

I don't know about you, but I consider info about bugfix positive news.

Oh, you mean from "OH NOES RELEASE MAY SLIP" point of view. I don't care.

I didn't ask if you care.

But it sounds as if Toady is having a lot of problems.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

I didn't ask if you care.

Maybe I was unclear, I wasn't talking about you. I do not care about this idiotic release hype and people that want release RIGHT NOW. Goddamn instant gratification generation. I could wait few more weeks or even months if this time would be used for eradicating bugs in game and nothing else*.

I find DF unplayable with no DT. Add to that inevitable zilion bugs and I get "wait about month more, in meantime reading on forums about bugs and whatever they managed to do in new version".

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

But it sounds as if Toady is having a lot of problems.

This is normal state of affairs in programming.

* Yes, will never happen, I know, I know. I can dream, right?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: smjjames on July 06, 2014, 08:28:19 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

I didn't ask if you care.

Maybe I was unclear, I wasn't talking about you. I do not care about this idiotic release hype and people that want release RIGHT NOW. Goddamn instant gratification generation. I could wait few more weeks or even months if this time would be used for eradicating bugs in game and nothing else*.

I find DF unplayable with no DT. Add to that inevitable zilion bugs and I get "wait about month more, in meantime reading on forums about bugs and whatever they managed to do in new version".

Guys, calm down, theres no reason to get heated over this.

You don't need DT for adventure mode or arena mode, which is what I'm planning on messing around with while I wait for DT to get updated.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 06, 2014, 08:49:52 am

(spirit of calm replaces this post)

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 08:57:58 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

I didn't ask if you care.

Maybe I was unclear, I wasn't talking about you. I do not care about this idiotic release hype and people that want release RIGHT NOW. Goddamn instant gratification generation. I could wait few more weeks or even months if this time would be used for eradicating bugs in game and nothing else*.

I find DF unplayable with no DT. Add to that inevitable zilion bugs and I get "wait about month more, in meantime reading on forums about bugs and whatever they managed to do in new version".

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

But it sounds as if Toady is having a lot of problems.

This is normal state of affairs in programming.

* Yes, will never happen, I know, I know. I can dream, right?

It is as good thing the release isn't decided on the basis of what we want. I, like many others, think that as this is a freaking ALPHA, it is normal to have bugs and more playtesters will help to find more bugs and consequently improve the game.

However, as those with the mindset of consumers (like you) usually complain a lot about the bugged state of releases , Toady and Threetoe are the only playtesters in the hope of getting the game in a better state before releasing.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EvilTwin on July 06, 2014, 09:22:23 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

But it sounds as if Toady is having a lot of problems.

This is normal state of affairs in programming.

Programming basically consists of nothing more than a long, long chain of problems that you work down. Only sometimes there is a splash of paint on one of the chain links, that's what people call a feature.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: misko27 on July 06, 2014, 02:29:03 pm

Quote from: EvilTwin on July 06, 2014, 09:22:23 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 06, 2014, 07:10:03 am

But it sounds as if Toady is having a lot of problems.

This is normal state of affairs in programming.

Programming basically consists of nothing more than a long, long chain of problems that you work down. Only sometimes there is a splash of paint on one of the chain links, that's what people call a feature.

This is my (somewhat limited) experience: add something, "wait now what's the problem?"x10^y, repeat. I finished the code for a webpage with a tic-tac-toe game, then spent some hours going through the many errors. Discovered later that the hard mode (which was designed to be unbeatable) was actually beatable through some single specific combination of moves. Called it an easter egg. :P

Anyway that was a hilarious error to come upon. Glad he found it first too.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: PDF urist master on July 06, 2014, 02:37:54 pm

so... knife fights. Can we expect a more localized version of this bug (say for a village or a small town) and call it a feature?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TsiOriol on July 06, 2014, 03:18:12 pm

Quote from: PDF urist master on July 06, 2014, 02:37:54 pm

so... knife fights. Can we expect a more localized version of this bug (say for a village or a small town) and call it a feature?

I wish, it would be a town I would love to sneak into an watch.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on July 06, 2014, 03:25:26 pm

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

I could wait few more weeks or even months if this time would be used for eradicating bugs in game and nothing else*.

To eradicate bugs, you first need to a) detect them and b) duplicate them repeatedly.

Releasing an early version just massively parallelises this operation, what's not to like?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mineforce on July 06, 2014, 07:29:04 pm

Will the new update affect performance.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Xanmyral on July 06, 2014, 07:46:51 pm

Completely and utterly, those without i9 twenty core processors beware.

But no, I don't believe so. I think he stated there wasn't much of a noticeable difference for himself, but chances are once it hits the public we'll probably see some differences on the more lower end computers.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: sal880612m on July 06, 2014, 08:29:29 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on July 06, 2014, 07:46:51 pm

Completely and utterly, those without i9 twenty core processors beware.

Isn't DF not capable of properly utilizing multiple cores?

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Lolfail0009 on July 06, 2014, 08:36:43 pm

Quote from: sal880612m on July 06, 2014, 08:29:29 pm

Quote from: Xanmyral on July 06, 2014, 07:46:51 pm

Completely and utterly, those without i9 twenty core processors beware.

Isn't DF not capable of properly utilizing multiple cores?

Correct. DF is a single-threaded program.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: metime00 on July 06, 2014, 08:44:12 pm

I think some code relating to display is on another core, but it was contributed far in the past by someone other than Toady, so for all intents and purposes it is single core

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: King Mir on July 06, 2014, 09:32:37 pm

That's correct, graphics are a separate thread. This is why FPS and graphics FPS are two different settings. So you get some marginal benefit from running on a 2 core machine.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: mineforce on July 07, 2014, 12:15:02 am

512 mb ram 1.6 ghz and gma booster thingy. Sidewalk curve.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 07, 2014, 07:01:14 am

So.... "next week" has begun today... :D

Buut I rather you take all the time needed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Putnam on July 07, 2014, 11:03:42 am

Quote from: reality.auditor on July 06, 2014, 08:19:24 am

Goddamn instant gratification generation.

DAE THIS GENERATION SUCKS HOW LE WORLD HAS FALLEN I WAS BORN IN LE WRONG GENERATION LEL

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: LordBaal on July 07, 2014, 11:08:13 am

Hehehe that post from reality.auditor made me laugh a lot! I don't really know why. I just keep imagining him all angry shouting at the screen while typing the post... hahahaha!!!

But well, in fact a few pages ago I did pointed the release could be in august? That wouldn't be bothersome for me, I rather Toady bug out most mayor things and then we only work out what we can find. I think that way he would be less overwhelmed by a gazillion people posting the same bugs over and over.

I know they said this week, but I wouldn't mind if they take another week or two for a better test drive.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: thvaz on July 07, 2014, 11:28:11 am

Just one small minority will use the bug tracker. Some will suffer in silence. Many will flood the forums to complain. And the majority will wait until the bugs are ironed out. So, it is better we begin as soon as possible.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Valtam on July 07, 2014, 11:55:28 am

Quote from: Toady One on July 07, 2014, 02:41:50 am

Quote from: thvaz on July 07, 2014, 01:57:33 am

So not this minute, but soon? And soon as, today?

Depends on a lot of things, all technical at this point...  like what happens when I turn on the other computers that haven't been turned on for 2 years.  And what this mem leak analyzer thingy tells me.  That sort of stuff.  I'm not sure if it will be ready before you have to go to work all month, unfortunately.  Maybe at exactly the wrong time.

So, it seems the glorious Sequence has started. Reading such a small and cherised info snippet, I wonder what are the odds, exactly? This will be a historic moment for the Bay12 forums, and I want to be prepared.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: TempAcc on July 07, 2014, 05:18:50 pm

Is it weird that I'm usualy more excited about testing a new and possibly very buggy version of DF rather then mainstream game releases? :P

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: EnigmaticHat on July 07, 2014, 05:26:08 pm

Quote from: TempAcc on July 07, 2014, 05:18:50 pm

Is it weird that I'm usualy more excited about testing a new and possibly very buggy version of DF rather then mainstream game releases? :P

I was so happy when I reported the creature cloning bug before anyone else and thus got to have one of those bugs that has a whole list of other bugs attached to it.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: SmileyMan on July 07, 2014, 05:59:19 pm

Quote from: EnigmaticHat on July 07, 2014, 05:26:08 pm

I was so happy when I reported the creature cloning bug before anyone else and thus got to have one of those bugs that has a whole list of other bugs attached to it.

I had a little one where irregular-shaped stockpiles wouldn't fill properly, I was quite proud when it got fixed.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 07, 2014, 08:07:20 pm

I'll post a new one of these in a bit when the dust settles, and I'll probably link back to some answers to relevant questions.

Title: Re: Future of the Fortress
Post by: Toady One on July 13, 2014, 07:28:52 pm

Thanks to smjjames, Cobbler89, lethosor, Manveru Taurënér, Footkerchief, Knight Otu, Trif, Putnam, King Mir, Ribs, PeridexisErrant, Valtam, Parisbre56 and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions for this final posting in the 0.34 thread!  I left out some questions that people might like to answer for themselves now that we've got 0.40, but feel free to re-ask them in the new thread.

Quote from: FearfulJesuit

Toady, what are you envisioning for the job priorities redo? What will it entail, and how will it work?

We're still just kicking around ideas and reading relevant threads.  It was from the vote system, so we'd more or less like to solve some of the problems people had there, but there are a few big things at the root of many woes, like v-p-l being a crappy way to edit a row on a spreadsheet that you don't want to have to deal with at all in the first place...  at the same time allowing enough control for people that want control, and better decision making for people that want to let their migrants do whatever, but still have skilled workers do jobs designated as important (or whatever), and so on.  Guilds are on the table as an AI-organizer starting point, but we're still considering how that interacts with the specific intent of the player and what sort of non-crap twiddling works for management if v-p-l is ditched.  Aside from standard labors, there are also specific things like levers and broker jobs that might require a different approach.

Quote from: Vattic

Do you plan to try and keep up with the suggestions board now you've cleared the backlog?

Yeah, it would be a shame to fall back again.  It's on my daily checklist, anyway.

Quote from: Witty

Are the dwarven hill and deep sites tied with the CAVE_DETAILED tag, or will they have their own, separate tags?

We were hoping to make it separate, but everything was done quickly.  At least all the basic sites are in now, so blurring the boundaries is a little more imaginable anyway.

Quote from: The Minister

I was specifically wondering which particular development items will require "major structural changes" to game code that will require updating many parts of the game, if you can say at present. ... I guess, to be clear, I'm less interested in knowing how many long release cycles there will be as I am interested in knowing how many major structural changes remain before the fundamental framework of DF is in place.

There are still lots of things to do -- even the upcoming job priority rewrite still needs some underlying work (fortunately we got some of that out of the way).  Inarius mentioned the economy and planes, and those are certainly major.  It's not a clear-cut distinction between major structural changes and not...  sort of hard to answer this one.

Quote from: Eric Blank

Will this ability to generate new object types mid-game allow us to potentially add new modded objects mid-game as well?

Knight Otu mentioned some of the difficulties -- it would basically need to figure out what's new and try to get them in, and changing existing items is much harder than adding new ones.  In addition, new items added mid-game would not exist anywhere unless you tell them to, so it's tricky all around.  In the most basic way, it would work now, but it wouldn't mean much.

Quote from: itruelso

What determines if a dwarf notices furniture? Does it happen every time they walk past a statue?

I think there's a random chance, but yeah, that's about it.

Quote from: Valtam

Toady, is it possible to bring a dead body (say, from the wilderness) inside a fortress and memorialize it? Or does it need to be part of the fortress history to do so?

So like, bringing a dead body from faraway, dropping it in a fort, retiring, and then assuming control of the fort with the body there?  Hmmm...  I have no idea.  I don't remember what comes along for the ride to maintain the identity of the body, and if that's the same stuff used in the memorial list (or if the memorial list relies on the unit-in-play list).

Quote from: Verdant_Squire

Can we expect to see more variation between the layouts of towns and villages in the future? IE: One village has a keep and a bread mill, but the one a couple miles over has a palisade and a general store.

Towns get variations in shops based on the goods produced in world generation, and I suspect that sort of distinction will continue.  Ideally the different cultures would have major variations as well.

Quote from: smjjames

Say the goblin civ that is in contact with you only has a few members remaining (perhaps the demon is the only one left) and only one site left, where do siege and ambush participants get pulled from?

And if all members of a civ manage to get themselves wiped out in one final siege on your fort, what happens next? Does that civ go extinct and another civ take it's place?

If they aren't numerous, they don't get pulled from anywhere -- they won't be sent until the numbers replenish, if they do.  Assuming it works.  If a civ goes extinct, you don't necessarily have one take its place, especially if there isn't one.  I think I still have to work on some stuff before I can scrap the artifical neighbor tag completely, so within a single fort you might run out if you wipe some but not all civs out.

Quote from: Tabithda

What role do castles and their lords/ladys play in human nations in the next version in regard to the new same-nation site conflict?

I've removed them for the time being -- as they stood, they relied on a civ-level infrastructure (which is practically gone for humans now).  We've got the nobility framework used for dwarves, but we still don't have strong enough notions of territorial control or any sort of strategic thinking at all, so it might be a bit before we see them again.